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This is one columnist’s stab at what a candidate might sound like if he or she were trying to appeal to the majority of voters in the middle of the electorate who feel both parties are failing us. My fellow alienated Americans: How’s this for something different? I want to raise your taxes, cut spending on programs you like, and force you to rethink how we run our schools, banks, armies, hospitals and elections. And I want you to cheer when I’m done. Because if you embrace the “decade of renewal” I’m calling for, we’ll emerge with a more competitive, sustainable and just America — the kind of America we all want to leave to our children. I’m running for president as an independent because we need to change the debate if we’re going to change the country. Neither of our two major parties has a strategy for solving our biggest problems; they have strategies for winning elections, which isn’t the same thing. Democrats and Republicans will tell you, as I do, that they want to make America competitive again, keep faith with our deepest values of fairness and opportunity, and fix our broken political system. But the Democrats’ timid half-measures and the Republicans’ mindless anti-government creed can’t begin to get us there. Both parties are prisoner to interest groups and ideological litmus tests that prevent them from blending the best of liberal and conservative thinking. And neither party trusts you enough to lay out the facts and explain the steps we need to take to truly fix things — in fact, their pollsters tell them that if they do, you’ll vote them out. Well, I’m happy to take on that job. I won’t give you the usual pabulum about how we’re going to “save the American Dream” or restore our supremacy as the sole superpower. The loss of our economic dominance was at some point inevitable. We’ve had quite a run since World War II, when we were the only economy left standing, and others were bound to start catching up. The spread of capitalism is helping hundreds of millions of people rise out of poverty in India and China. That’s a fantastic thing for humanity. And if we manage it right, that can also be a positive thing for the United States, because the growing wealth of nations means billions of new customers for the kind of goods and services America ingenuity can produce. We can make this an era of opportunities, not threats. But only if we think differently. When the changes reshaping the global economy are dramatic, incremental responses won’t suffice. We need a bold agenda equal to the scale of our challenges. I believe that it will take seven big domestic initiatives to get America back on track. Bear with me if I go a little deep on the details, because that’s the only way for you to see what I mean. 1. Fix the economy. Our economy is working off a massive hangover of debt that makes this recession and recovery different from those we’ve gone through before. That means we need to make major moves to get jobs and growth back to anything like what we think of as normal. It also means that, for a couple years, worries about the budget deficit have to take a backseat to spurring growth. Fix the economy, and it’ll be easier to fix the budget. To boost jobs and growth, we first need major, permanent tax reform. I propose we slash, and over five years eliminate, our sky-high corporate income and payroll taxes, and, once unemployment comes down to 6 percent again, we replace those job-killing, wage-crushing taxes with new taxes on consumption and dirty energy. This is the way to unleash a new era of entrepreneurial innovation while funding the government we need. At the same time, to win back the million jobs now lost because China’s currency manipulation artificially raises the price of our exports to that country, I would impose a proportionate tax on imports from China. Let me be clear: China’s rise as an economic power is a good thing for the world and a great thing for the Chinese people. China is not the source of all our economic woes. But we can no longer allow China’s brazen currency manipulation — nor its routine theft of American intellectual property — to tilt the playing field unfairly against American jobs. Next, until private-sector job growth gets back to where it should be, we should use government funds to create millions of short-term, labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, elder care, public health and safety, and urban infrastructure maintenance. I would also put Americans to work on the countless roads, bridges, airports, schools and sewer systems across the country that need to be modernized. Finally, over the longer-term, we need to make sure in-person service-sector work is well compensated. Global economic integration is putting downward pressure on the wages of American jobs that can be performed elsewhere. But in-person service work — jobs ranging from home health care to retail sales to teaching to personal grooming and more, accounting for roughly 30 million jobs in the United States — is immune to these pressures, since it can’t be offshored. If we could find ways to guarantee that this kind of work delivers a middle-class living, it would offer an important measure of security and optimism for millions. I’ll also develop new “carrots” and “sticks” to get multinational firms to locate more manufacturing and high-value jobs in America. 2. Fix education. We’ve been tinkering at the edges when it comes to school improvement, because we’ve ignored the most important question: Who should teach? While the world’s highest-performing school systems — those in places like Singapore, Finland and South Korea — recruit their teachers from the top third of their graduating class, we recruit ours from the middle and bottom thirds, especially for schools in poor neighborhoods. This “strategy” isn’t working. Up through the 1970s, the quality of our teacher corps was in effect subsidized by discrimination, because women and minorities didn’t have many other job opportunities. All that’s changed, but as career options have multiplied for those who used to become teachers, salaries haven’t kept pace to attract top talent. I see an America where our most talented young people flock to the classroom, not to Wall Street. They should see teaching as the most exciting profession in the country — with top teachers and principals able to earn $150,000 a year or more. To get there will take federal investment. We’ll need to stop condemning millions of poor children to schools that can never get great teachers and principals because they’ve been shortchanged by a 19th century system of local school finance that’s rigged against them. This investment should also help to fund universal preschool from age 3, and longer school days and years, where we lag our major economic competitors. 3. Fix health care. We need to make sure every person in America has basic health coverage that doesn’t break the bank. To achieve that, Democrats must accept a private insurance industry and Republicans must accept that some people can’t afford decent policies on their own. This “grand bargain” is about liberals agreeing that innovation shouldn’t be regulated out of U.S. health care and conservatives agreeing that justice has to be regulated into it. The 50 million uninsured may seem invisible, but today their ranks are equal to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. Would America turn its back on these 25 states if they all lacked basic health coverage? That is what we’ve been doing for decades. Making the system more efficient is the key to access and affordability. But change won’t come easy, because while there’s much to admire in American health care, our Medical-Industrial Complex knows that every dollar of health-care “waste” is somebody’s dollar of income. It’s time to learn from a nation like Singapore, which spends 4 percent of GDP on health care and gets as good or better results than we do spending 17 percent. Singapore’s blend of market forces, public provision and personal responsibility shows it is possible to do more with less. I applaud President Obama for taking on the health-care challenge and for persisting in spite of wrongheaded GOP charges that his extension of Mitt Romney’s reform in Massachusetts is a “socialist takeover.” Repealing President Obama’s legislation would be a terrible step backward. But the law can be dramatically improved before it is fully phased in. We should “mend it, not end it.” I’d tweak President Obama’s reform so that it aims for less costly catastrophic insurance for every American, which would cap health expenses as a percent of income. I’d then give vouchers, or funded health-savings accounts, to folks who need help buying primary and preventive care via the fitness-club model being pioneered around the country (unlimited care for a flat monthly fee). I’d replace today’s malpractice litigation lottery with a system that protects doctors from liability so long as they’ve followed evidence-based best practices. This would put an end to the “defensive medicine” that runs up costs — a common-sense reform that Democrats shamefully reject as a sop to the trial lawyers who fund their campaigns. It’s also time we got corporations out of the business of running our welfare state — they’ve got enough to do to compete with China and India — and ensure that every American has access to group rates through health reform’s insurance exchanges. 4. Rein in Wall Street. The banking system is now more concentrated than it was before the financial crisis. There are two ways to avoid the “too big to fail” threat that still exists. We can limit the risks these big banks take — though regulators don’t have a great track record of getting this right. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is make sure big banks have enough capital to absorb any conceivable losses. Yet bank lobbyists are now swarming Washington to keep capital requirements low – in part because higher levels of capital reduce what top bankers can pay themselves. Their bonuses are often based on such metrics as a firm’s “return on equity,” which can be goosed by continually piling debt atop a tiny equity base. That’s Wall Street’s plan. Heads, I win; tails, taxpayers lose. Again. Fixing this is not complicated, it just takes the will to reject the banks’ demands. I would boost capital requirements for our “too big to fail” banks toward 20 percent, as Switzerland has done — well beyond the inadequate 5-percent to 7-percent levels bank lobbyists are counting on. I’ll also ban “naked credit default swaps” – those fancy securities that let traders buy the financial equivalent of insurance on other people’s lives. These instruments serve no social purpose other than to enrich the bankers who peddle them while turning our financial system into the casino that just cost millions of Americans their jobs. The banks will squeal, but does anyone think we should listen to their pleas after their greed, mismanagement and poor judgment nearly brought down the world economy? It’s time for finance to serve our broader society, not the other way around. And it’s past time to prosecute those whose crimes contributed to the crisis. 5. Fix our broken political system. We’ll never get where we need to go unless we deepen our democracy. I have several proposals that go beyond the usual “small ball” in this terrain, so please keep an open mind. First, let’s enter everyone who votes in a national election into a lottery. Prizes could range from $10 million for a winner to dozens of $1 million runners-up. For a modest cost, this would lift turnout from today’s pathetic 60 percent in presidential years, and one-third in off-years, closer to 100 percent every time. Unorthodox? You bet. But we need to shake things up. Next, on campaign finance, we should stop deluding ourselves that we can ever get private money out of politics. We can’t. It’s like ants in the kitchen. You plug one hole and they come back somewhere else. Instead, let’s offset this private cash by giving each voter 50 publicly funded “patriot dollars” to contribute to the candidate or cause of her choice in national elections. This would introduce $6 billion each election cycle — more than enough to offset private donations. And it would encourage candidates to appeal to average Americans rather than just grovel before wealthy donors. Pair this publicly funded voucher with instant Web-based disclosure of all donations and we’d have a far more level, transparent playing field. Finally, let’s lower the voting age to 15. From debt to schools, and climate to pensions, the distinctive feature of public life today is a shocking disregard for the future. Yes, politicians blather on about “our children and grandchildren” all the time – but when it comes to what they do, the future doesn’t have a vote. We should give our elected leaders a reason not simply to praise children but to pander to them. A crusade to amend the constitution to lower the voting age would inspire a generation that’s being robbed by the adults in power to enter the arena and raise its voice. It’s also time we restored majority rule to America by scrapping the filibuster in the Senate. We can’t govern ourselves if national legislation can be blocked by senators who represent as little as 15 percent of the country. 6. Require national service. The conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. was right: The proper response to the blessings that are every American’s patrimony is gratitude. It’s only right that this be expressed through a period of mandatory service of some kind by every young American, who will not only give back to his country but, in the process, get to know fellow citizens from every race and place and background. 7. Get our fiscal house in order. Finally, I would aim to balance the budget by 2018 and make sure we can sustainably fund the government by enacting measures that would start once the economy has fully recovered and unemployment is back near 6 percent. We’ll need both spending cuts and tax increases borne fairly by every sector of society. On the spending side, let me mention the three big areas we need to tackle. First, national security is job one for any president. To make sure that no power can threaten us, I believe we must spend far more than any conceivable rival. But I also believe, in the Eisenhower tradition, that we need to be smart hawks. If Ike were here, he’d say it was crazy that the defense budget is 50 percent higher in real terms than it was throughout the Cold War. That’s why I’d insist we spend seven times more than China – but not nine times more, as our two political parties want; 13 times more than Russia, but not 17 times more; and 26 times more than Iran, North Korea and Syria combined – but not 33 times more. The result would be an annual military budget of $550 billion, not $700 billion. Second, on Social Security, the path to solvency starts with a fresh look at automatic increases built into the system that few Americans are aware of — increases that no politician dares mention for fear of being attacked for “cutting” Social Security. I’m not talking about the way benefits are hiked each year to keep up with inflation; no problem there. But under today’s formulas, the starting benefits for future retirees are substantially higher than for current retirees. For example, today, medium wage retirees get a starting benefit of about $18,000. Similar retirees in the year 2030 are slated to get roughly $24,000 in today’s dollars; by 2050, the number in today’s dollars rises to $29,000. Doubling the number of retirees on Social Security as the boomers age is a major fiscal challenge. Promising a 60 percent increase in starting benefits on top of this creates a budget hole that is frightening. Advocates for these built-in increases, which didn’t exist before the late 1970s, say Social Security should always replace the same portion of wages as it does today; since real wages will grow as the economy grows, so should benefits. That’s a worthy objective. But in an era when health care and pensions for seniors are poised to crowd out cash for every other public priority, or else require tax increases beyond what anyone thinks would be good for the economy, that shouldn’t be our only objective. Halting these automatic benefit escalators a few years from now would make Social Security solvent in one stroke. It would assure that every retiring senior receives slightly higher benefits than new retirees do today. Yet it would leave America the room to address new needs down the road. This is the kind of action a prudent nation takes. If, years from now, we think seniors need additional protection, 76 million baby boomers will be breathing down our politicians’ necks clamoring for it. Third, it’s the same with Medicare. Given how inefficient our health-care system is, we simply have to establish targets that get growth in health costs in line with the growth rate of our economy, and ideally something well below that. We know this is possible, because every other advanced nation does more with less. And it’s the only way to free up resources to invest in the infrastructure, education, and research and development that fuels long-term growth. For both Social Security and Medicare, we’ll also need to phase in higher eligibility ages to reflect the longer lifespans Americans now enjoy — with eligibility exceptions for those engaged in physical labor. Higher-income Americans will also need to contribute something more to these programs, and receive a bit less, to make the boomers’ golden years affordable for the country. Getting our fiscal house in order will also mean higher taxes. New taxes on dirty energy would push markets toward the clean energy solutions that reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on unstable foreign regimes. And we could offset the impact on folks with lower incomes with lower payroll taxes. I would challenge the oil companies to support this vision, as several did when Ross Perot proposed higher gas taxes in 1992. I would also introduce a tiny tax on Wall Street trading transactions and a 50 percent tax bracket for Americans earning more than $5 million a year. This isn’t an attempt to “punish” anyone’s success — it’s about asking the most fortunate among us to help in ways that won’t affect their lifestyle or incentives. Finally, I’d end the Bush tax cuts for all Americans, not just for those earning more than $250,000. Anyone who looks honestly at the numbers knows this is necessary as our population ages. Some people will say these ideas involve too much tough medicine and too little optimism. But I am optimistic. I believe Americans are ready for the sturdier brand of hope that comes from dealing squarely with the facts. And if we come together for a decade of renewal, we’ll emerge with an America that’s more competitive, sustainable and just. We won’t have to storm the beaches of Normandy or Guadalcanal. We’ll just have to accept slightly higher taxes and some trims in future spending on programs we like, and we’ll have to commit to making our health care and education systems more productive. We’ll need to think creatively about the national interest, not just our own. Isn’t a stronger America worth these modest sacrifices? As you may have noticed, I haven’t said anything about abortion, the death penalty, guns or gay marriage. These are important issues, but they’re not the most important things a president should address in the years ahead. As a result, I won’t discuss them at all in the campaign. If they’re your top priority, I’m not your candidate. Can we win with this message and this agenda? That’s up to you. Republicans and Democrats have a longtime lock on things. They’ve rigged the system when it comes to getting on the ballot and raising money. But two things are clear. First, a third-party movement in 2012 won’t be a “spoiler.” There is little risk of a Ralph Nader-style result that diverts a handful of votes and throws the election to a candidate those voters can’t abide. The terrain this campaign is contesting is very different. Most Americans now tell pollsters they’re open to a third party. The millions of Americans ready to stand behind the banner of pragmatic renewal means we’ll be playing for keeps, not tinkering at the margins. Plus, we don’t have to win the election to change the country. As historian Richard Hofstadter suggested, the role of third parties in American politics is to sting like a bee and then die. I say, let the stinging begin! If we get 30 percent of the vote, we’ll make more than enough noise to transform the debate. And once we start proving there’s a constituency for honest talk and real answers, there’s no telling where it will lead. In the end, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve, and I’m wagering most of us think we deserve better. That iron law of politics still holds: Politicians will scramble to lead any parade that forms. Let’s get busy organizing the right parade, and together we might just save the country. Matt Miller writes a weekly online column for The Post. ||||| So here’s where we are. Our president calls himself “a warrior for the middle class” because he’s campaigning for a plan that might add 2 million new jobs next year at a time when 25 million Americans who want full-time work can’t find it. If that’s war, what would surrender look like? Meanwhile, Republican zealots apparently feel that if they can’t cut 0.04 percent of the budget in the next few days they’d rather shut down the government. The party’s presidential candidates boast that a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases isn’t good enough on a long-term debt deal — even though we’re about to double the number of seniors on Social Security and Medicare. Why should we have to choose between timid half-measures and anti-tax fanaticism? Why doesn’t the president propose measures equal to the scale of our challenges? Why can’t Republicans acknowledge demography or math? Three reasons, mainly. First, both parties’ chief aim is to win elections, not solve problems. Second, both parties are prisoner to interest groups and ideological litmus tests that prevent them from blending the best of liberal and conservative thinking. Finally, neither party trusts us enough to lay out the facts and explain the steps we need to take to truly fix things. This goes well beyond the jobs crisis or the budget. Take education. Democrats can’t say we need to fire bad teachers who are blighting the lives of countless kids, because teachers unions are the party’s most powerful interest group. But Republicans can’t say we need to raise salaries for new teachers substantially if we’re going to lure a new generation of talent to the classroom, because that’s admitting that money is part of the answer. Trouble is, we’ll never solve what ails education without getting bad teachers out and paying up for new talent to come in. That means Democrats and Republicans can’t solve the problem. Or take health care. Republicans say the answer is to repeal President Obama’s reforms — but they won’t offer plans to insure more than 3 million of the 50 million Americans who lack coverage. Yet Democrats want to micromanage providers, protect the trial lawyers who bankroll their campaigns, and fully insulate people from the costs of their own care, assuring that there’s no consumer brake on runaway costs. Again, Democrats and Republicans can’t solve the problem. Multiply this dynamic across every major issue and you’ll see there’s a staggering void in the debate. The parties act this way because their core constituencies have a stake in a failed status quo. But where does that leave the majority of us who are not in the Republican or Democratic base? Where does it leave the country? Daniel Patrick Moynihan wisely observed that if issues can’t be discussed, they can never be advanced. Given the abdication of both parties, and the pinched boundaries of debate we’re thus left with, the only way to learn if a constituency can be built for a bold agenda to renew the country is for independent candidates to try to do just that in 2012. This doesn’t mean both parties are equally to blame for Washington’s dysfunction. But they’re unacceptable and disappointing in their own ways. I’m a former Clinton aide who believes President Obama has done many good things, and that his agenda is much better than the current Republican creed. But with America on the road to slow decline, the stakes are too high for “inadequate” and “retrograde” to be our only choices. As always in a democracy, better leadership starts with better followership. New groups such as Americans Elect and No Labels are showing the way, building the infrastructure and local networks for a new politics of problem-solving. But we’ll never mobilize the “far center” without an agenda around which people can rally. To move this ball forward, I’ve taken a crack at a policy-heavy version of the third-party stump speech we need, to suggest what it would sound like if an independent candidate called seriously for a “decade of renewal.” “If you build it, he will come” worked baseball magic in “Field of Dreams.” Who knows? Maybe “if you write it, they will come” is the mantra for pundits who pray candidates with the vision and nerve to fill today’s void may yet step forward. Read Matt Miller’s sample third-party stump speech.

– Take a gander at the political landscape, and odds are you won’t like your choices. You might, like Matt Miller of the Washington Post, start asking things like, “Why doesn’t the president propose measures equal to the scale of our challenges?” or “Why can’t Republicans acknowledge demography or math?” Most of all you might wonder, “Why should we have to choose between timid half-measures and anti-tax fanaticism?” The answer: Because both parties are more concerned with winning elections than solving problems. On issue after issue “there’s a staggering void in the debate,” with issues and ideas neither party will touch. A third party could cover that ground; Miller’s even written a massive third-party stump speech, advocating tax hikes, cuts to popular programs, and other policies that won’t poll well, but that the “far center” should rally around. “Politicians will scramble to lead any parade that forms,” he writes. “Let’s get busy organizing the right parade, and together we might just save the country."

LAKE SELIGER, Russia (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means “like a parasite” on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin answers questions from the audience during his visit to the summer camp of the pro-Kremlin youth group "Nashi" at lake Seliger, some 400km (248miles) north of Moscow, August 1, 2011. REUTERS/Mikhail Metzel/Pool “They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy,” Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow. “They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar,” Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls. US President Barack Obama earlier announced a last-ditch deal to cut about $2.4 trillion from the U.S. deficit over a decade, avoid a crushing debt default and stave off the risk that the nation’s AAA credit rating would be downgraded. The deal initially soothed anxieties and led Russian stocks to jump to three-month highs, but jitters remained over the possibility of a credit downgrade. “Thank god,” Putin said, “that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision.” But Putin, who has often criticized the United States’ foreign exchange policy, noted that Russia holds a large amount of U.S. bonds and treasuries. “If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone,” Putin told the young Russians. “Countries like Russia and China hold a significant part of their reserves in American securities ... There should be other reserve currencies.” U.S.-Russian ties soured during Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency but have warmed significantly since his protégé and successor President Dmitry Medvedev responded to Obama’s stated desire for a “reset” in bilateral relations. EARLY CAMPAIGNING? Casually dressed in khaki trousers and a striped white shirt, Putin flew by helicopter to the tented camp as part of a string of appearances that are being closely watched in the run-up to the elections. He did not say whether he plans a return to the Kremlin or will stand aside for Medvedev, his partner in Russia’s leadership tandem, to run for a second term. But young people crowding round Putin, caught up in the campaigning spirit created by huge portraits of Putin hung from trees, were not shy about saying who they wanted as president. “Russia’s next president will be small, bald and look like Putin,” 17-year-old Ilya Mzokov joked with reporters. Asked why Medvedev was not paying a visit to the summer camp, he said: “Only serious people come here.” Youngsters chanted Putin’s name and applauded his remarks as he strolled round the camp, where US-style business seminars, extreme sports and political mudslinging were among the topics on offer. Putin, whose macho image appeals to many Russians, briefly swung himself up the first half of a climbing wall, filmed by a gaggle of state television cameras. Nashi, which means “Our People,” was created by the Kremlin to counter popular dissent after youth activism helped topple a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine’s 2005 Orange revolution. The group has worked to spread a personality cult around Putin and regularly campaigns against Kremlin critics. Opinion polls show Putin, still widely viewed as the country’s paramount leader, retains near 70 percent approval. But his United Russia party is trying to reverse a slide in popularity before December parliamentary polls, hoping to use a strong showing there to help Putin in the March 2012 presidential vote. ||||| Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com MOSCOW—Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the U.S. "a parasite" because of its huge debt load, evoking a term used by Soviet leaders to demonize people who didn't work, study or serve the Communist state. In a speech Monday, Mr. Putin said Russia and other countries should seek new reserve currencies to hedge against "a systemic malfunction" in the U.S. Both Russia and China in the past have questioned the dollar's pre-eminence as a reserve currency and its role in international trade and investment. Russia keeps almost half its reserves in dollar assets. "The country is living in debt," Mr. ...

– Vladimir Putin is using Soviet-era terminology to criticize the US over its huge debt load. The Russian prime minister, speaking to a pro-Kremlin youth rally yesterday, called the US a "parasite" and said Russia and other countries should seek a new reserve currency to replace the dollar, reports Reuters. "They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," he said. "They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar." Soviet leaders routinely used the term "parasite" to describe those who didn't contribute to the Communist state, the Wall Street Journal notes. Putin said the deal to raise the debt ceiling came as a relief, "but it simply delayed a more systemic solution." Russia, which keeps about 50% of its reserves in dollar assets, has been in talks with China about making the yuan a more convertible currency.

A leading credit ratings agency warned on Monday that Greece would be considered to be in default if banks rolled over their holdings in the country's debt as proposed recently in a French plan. Standard & Poor's said in a statement that two proposals by an association of French banks "would likely amount to a default" under its criteria because both options offer "less value than the promise of the original securities." S&P's position could wreak havoc on Europe's attempts to deal with the Greek debt crisis, especially if rivals Moody's and Fitch come to the same conclusion. A so-called "selective default" could trigger insurance claims on Greek bonds and cause another bout of turmoil in the financial markets. "A default is exactly what the European politicians want to avoid," said Louise Cooper, markets analyst at BGC Partners. "I imagine there are a lot of phone calls being made between the European political elite and the bosses at S&P." The French banks had announced they were ready to help Greece by accepting a significant debt rollover as part of a second bailout for Greece. Germany's banks later said they were also considering helping out on similar terms. French and German banks are among the biggest holders of Greek sovereign debt _ euro15 billion ($21 billion) and euro16 billion ($23 billion) respectively, according to the Bank of International Settlements. The French finance ministry and banks BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole would not comment Monday on the S&P warning but an EU spokesman insisted that a rating of "selective default" would have to be avoided. Amadeu Altafaj Tardio, spokesman for the EU's Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, said work on private sector involvement was ongoing and that there is no decision yet on its exact nature. In Berlin, German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Kotthaus said "We have to look carefully to see what model we can find to have as few side effects as possible." A second bailout for Greece beyond the current euro110 billion ($159 billion) package is currently being discussed in the hope of being completed by September. The Greek government has conceded that it will need more money to make bond repayments because it's not in a position to tap financial markets. Rather than bearing the entire cost of a second bailout, European policymakers are looking at ways to get banks and other financail institutions involved. One proposal sees them reinvesting at least 50 percent of their proceeds from maturing Greek government bonds in newly-issued 30-year Greek bonds, and another 20 percent in debt from other countries as a guarantee. The interest rate would be linked to Greece's economic growth and their trading would be restricted. A second option being considered would see French financial institutions investing at least 90 percent of the proceeds of expiring Greek bonds in newly-issued five-year bonds. There would again be restrictions on their trading and the bonds would have the same interest rate formula as the 30-year issue. The proposals received a fair degree of support, and appear to be the basis for a similar German plan for some euro3.2 billion ($4.6 billion) in debt that is due for repayment by 2014. Greece avoided a near-term default on its debts after its Parliament backed further austerity measures in return for more bailout money from international creditors. Over the weekend, finance ministers from the eurozone agreed to release the vital installment of aid money for Greece but confirmed they will leave the final decision on a second bailout for the debt-ridden country until later this summer. They agreed to sign off on an euro8.7 billion ($12.6 billion) tranche of Greece's existing. An extra euro3.3 billion will come from the IMF after its board's expected decision to authorize the payment in a meeting later this week. Without the euro12 billion ($17 billion), Greece would have defaulted on its massive debts within days. The country needs tens of billions of euros in further assistance over the coming years, but ministers have delayed a second aid package until they know how much banks and other private creditors will contribute. S&P's warning comes in the wake of last month's decision to slap a triple C rating on Greece _ leaving Greece at the bottom of the pile of 131 countries the agency gives ratings to. The other two major agencies Moody's and Fitch, which rate Greece moderately higher than S&P, have yet to pronouce on the French proposals. No one at Moody's was available for comment but Paul Rawkins, a senior director at Fitch, said the proposals were "under scrutiny." ___ Angela Charlton in Paris, Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report. ||||| A woman talking on a mobile phone is reflected on an electronic stock indicator in Tokyo Monday, July 4, 2011. Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 1 percent to 9,965.09, having breached the psychologically... (Associated Press) European stocks struggled to extend last week's gains on Monday after Standard & Poor's warned that a recent French proposal to get banks involved in helping Greece would trigger a default on the country's debt. Sentiment last week was buoyed by an easing in the Greek debt crisis after the country's lawmakers backed austerity measures required from international creditors in return for more bailout cash. Relief that a Greek default has been avoided helped stock markets around the world post one of the best weeks in months _ the Dow Jones index in the U.S. actually had its best week in two years. However, S&P's warning on Monday that two proposals by an association of French banks "would likely amount to a default" weighed on the European opening despite earlier gains in Asia. U.S. markets are closed for Independence Day, meaning that volumes will be limited. The S&P warning came a week after French banks said they were ready to help Greece by accepting a significant debt rollover. Germany's banks later said they were also considering helping out on similar terms. Analysts said S&P's position could wreak havoc on Europe's attempts to deal with the Greek debt crisis, especially if rivals Moody's and Fitch come to the same conclusion. A so-called "selective default" could trigger massive insurance claims on Greek bonds, likely triggering another bout of turmoil in the financial markets. "The reactions of ratings agencies is still rather unpredictable and the comments from S&P....are likely to keep tensions high," said Joshua Raymond, market strategist at City Index. The retreat in stocks has not been substantial, though, as investors remain relieved that Greece has avoided a potential default in July. Over the weekend, finance ministers from the eurozone agreed to release a vital installment of aid money for Greece but confirmed they will leave the final decision on a second bailout for the debt-ridden country until later this summer. Without the (EURO)12 billion ($17.4 billion) from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund, Greece would have defaulted on its massive debts within days. In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.6 percent at 6,028 while Germany's DAX rose 0.2 percent at 7,436. The CAC-40 in France was 0.1 percent lower at 4,003. The euro currency failed to brush off the S&P warning as easily as stock markets. It was trading 0.4 percent lower on the day at $1.4513. Though the Greek debt crisis has the capacity to flare up, the coming week is expected to be dominated by an interest rate increase from the European Central Bank and the monthly U.S. nonfarm payrolls data. On Thursday, the ECB is expected to raise its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point for the second time since April, taking it up to 1.5 percent as it tries to rein in rising inflation levels. Most interest will center on what the bank's chief Jean-Claude Trichet says in his ensuing press conference. On Friday, attention will turn to the U.S. jobs data, which often set the stock market tone for a week or two after their release. After a string of mostly poor economic indicators in recent weeks, investors will be looking for indications on the health of the U.S. recovery. "A better than expected payrolls number on Friday has the capacity to lend further support to risk appetite, but in all likelihood the view that the U.S. economy still faces a prolonged period of slow growth rates is likely to prevail," said Jane Foley, an analyst at Rabobank International. Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 1 percent to 9,965.09, having breached the psychologically important 10,000 mark earlier in the day for the first time since May 5. Sentiment was lifted by optimism about the U.S. economy after manufacturing figures last Friday from the Institute for Supply Management buoyed hopes about a possible end to the soft patch. South Korea's Kospi added 0.9 percent to 2,145.30 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng climbed 1.7 percent to 22,770.47. Mainland Chinese shares extended gains as investors interpreted comments by vice premier Wang Qishan on the slowing economy, and news of stalling growth in non-manufacturing industries, as a sign Beijing may relax monetary policy. The Shanghai Composite Index jumped 1.9 percent to 2,812.82 and the Shenzhen Composite Index surged 2.3 percent to 1,188.91. Oil prices were fairly steady alongside the tepid performance in stock markets, particularly in Europe. Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 9 cents to $95.03 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. ____ Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

– Greece got yet more bad news today, when Standard & Poor's issued a statement saying that a proposed rescue plan from banks in France "would likely amount to a default" as far as it was concerned. French banks planned to roll over their holdings in the country's debt, and German banks had said they'd consider doing the same. But S&P says that counts as defaulting, because the banks would wind up with "less value than the promise of the original securities," according to the AP. The statement threw cold water on European markets that had been buoyed by Greece's Austerity vote, and put a major monkey wrench in Europe's rescue plans. "A default is exactly what the European politicians want to avoid," says one market analyst. "I imagine there are a lot of phone calls being made between the European political elite and the bosses at S&P." Even a "selective default" like this one could trigger insurance claims on Greek bonds, and wreak havoc on financial markets.

CLOSE The father of the former Meghan Markle says he wishes he could have walked her down the aisle during her wedding to Prince Harry. Still, Thomas Markle told broadcaster ITV that he was "very proud" and honored to be replaced by Prince Charles. (June 18) AP “Meghan and I were as close as a father and daughter could be right up until her wedding to (Prince) Harry,” Thomas Markle says. “Then it all fell apart.” (Photo: Samir Hussein/WireImage) Duchess Meghan’s dad Thomas Markle isn’t through talking about the rift in his relationship with the young royal, who is expecting a baby with her husband, Prince Harry. “Meghan and I were as close as a father and daughter could be right up until her wedding to Harry,” he told The Daily Mail on Sunday. “Then it all fell apart.” Markle, 74, shared family photos and handwritten notes to document the close bond he shared with his 37-year-old daughter, including a photo of the two together at her first wedding to film producer Trevor Engelson, and a loving Valentine’s Day card, addressed to “Daddy” and affectionately signed “Bean,” the Duchess of Sussex’s childhood nickname. “Daddy, everything you do for me has turned me into who I am and I am so grateful. All I want to do is make you proud - and I promise, no matter what, I’ll do it,” the note reads. “I love you with all my heart now and forever.” In another, a 2015 Christmas card sent after her success on TV’s “Suits,” he says she sent him $2,000. “Because you have always been so generous with me and taken the best care of me it brings me so much joy to be able to give you this this Christmas. I love you to no end,” the card says, signed “Meg.” “I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence,” Markle told The Mail. “They have done what they once told me not to do – they are believing everything negative that has been written about me. So I am reaching out to them, once again, to try to correct the lies and get the truth out there.” He says he’s reached out to Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, in an effort to re-establish contact (“I even hand-delivered a letter to Doria asking her why our daughter won’t speak to me”). He also shared medical documents in response to speculation that he faked his heart attacks because he was too embarrassed to attend her nuptials in May after a flap over staged photos of him being measured for a wedding tuxedo (“I had two heart attacks, the second of which the doctor called a widow-maker and nearly killed me”). “I’ve been accused of every terrible thing you can think of,” he says. “In one magazine they had an awful story about Prince Charles right beside one about me. But no one is shunning Prince Charles.” Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/12/09/thomas-markle-shares-emotional-notes-duchess-meghan-all-fell-apart/2258134002/ ||||| They are touching, heartfelt notes in elegant handwriting, sent from a devoted daughter to the ‘Daddy’ she clearly adores. In one she vows: ‘All I want to do is make you proud… and I promise, no matter what, I’ll do it.’ In another she thanks her father for taking ‘the best care of me’ and adds: ‘I love you to no end.’ For Thomas Markle, estranged father of the Duchess of Sussex, the treasured words are a painful reminder of the bitter rift and ‘wall of silence’ between him, his pregnant daughter and Prince Harry, the son-in-law he has never met. While Meghan and Harry will spend their Christmas at Sandringham with the Queen, Prince William and Kate, the upcoming festive season fills Mr Markle with dread as it will be his first Christmas without a card, call or visit from his beloved youngest child. In an exclusive interview, Thomas Markle revealed this photo of himself with his daughter at her first wedding - banishing rumours he didn't attend ‘I have been frozen out and I can’t stay silent,’ he said last night. ‘I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence. They have done what they once told me not to do – they are believing everything negative that has been written about me. So I am reaching out to them, once again, to try to correct the lies and get the truth out there. ‘Everyone says, why don’t I just shut the f*** up? That Meghan can’t speak to me because I’ll give away secrets. But that’s bull****. I’ve been accused of every terrible thing you can think of. In one magazine they had an awful story about Prince Charles right beside one about me. But no one is shunning Prince Charles.’ This is just his fourth interview since the fall-out with Harry and Meghan after he staged paparazzi pictures shortly before the couple’s wedding in May and then suffered two heart attacks, preventing him walking his daughter down the aisle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Today, in a wide-ranging interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Markle, for the first time, categorically rejects some of the most ‘grievous’ lies against him and produces evidence in the form of photographs, medical statements and even a faded plane ticket that he says proves he is telling the truth: Mr Markle shared several heartwarming photos and notes of his estranged daughter Meghan - admitting that the treasured memories remind him of the bitter wall between him and Meghan THE LIE: He ‘faked’ his heart attacks out of embarrassment over the staged paparazzi pictures to give himself an excuse not to travel to Britain for the wedding. FACT: He produces a stack of private medical bills, a hospital discharge letter citing ‘heart failure’ and a list of medications prescribed to prevent future heart attacks: ‘I had two heart attacks, the second of which the doctor called a widow-maker and nearly killed me.’ THE LIE: He failed to attend Meghan’s first wedding in 2011 to film producer Trevor Engelson at the beach resort of Ocho Rios, Jamaica. FACT: Mr Markle produces a picture of himself and Meghan, taken just moments before he walked her down the beach alongside ex-wife Doria, the only member of Meghan’s family to attend the Royal Wedding. He even kept his business-class plane ticket to the nuptials. A father's anguish: 'Murderers are not punished like I've been' Thomas Markle admits to ‘stupid mistakes’, including posing for paparazzi pictures before the Royal Wedding, but says that being frozen out by Meghan and Harry ‘is a punishment which does not fit the crime’. He has apologised repeatedly for the pictures, which included one of him being measured for a wedding suit. ‘I was a fool. I was convinced to do these pictures to change my image. I was sick of seeing schlubby pictures of me buying beer which wasn’t even for me,’ he says. ‘I apologised to Harry on the phone and all he said was, “If you’d listened to me, none of this would have happened.” I did a few things wrong, said a few things I should not have said. But some of the Royals have done far worse things… There are convicts in prisons who have murdered and committed all kinds of horrible crimes, and their daughters still visit them.’ THE LIE: Meghan and her father were never that close. FACT: Mr Markle has ‘hundreds’ of notes and cards from Meghan, who lived solely with him from the age of 11 until she went to university: ‘People are trying to rewrite history. Meghan and I were as close as a father and daughter could be right up until her wedding to Harry. Then it all fell apart.’ THE LIE: Mr Markle ‘sold out’ his daughter and has been quoted giving his opinion on recent negative stories about her, including that she brought Kate to tears in a row over the bridesmaid outfit for Princess Charlotte at Meghan’s wedding. FACT: ‘I’m not selling stories. People make things up and my daughter and her husband believe the lies, the one thing they told me never to do. They think I’m giving hundreds of interviews. That’s rubbish. I am not perfect, I made mistakes but my punishment does not fit the crime. Even murderers get visits from their daughters in jail.’ Sitting in a hotel room close to his home in Rosarito, a beach town just across the US-Mexico border, Mr Markle said he has repeatedly reached out to Meghan to try to heal the rift. ‘I have sent several texts. Her number hasn’t changed and they haven’t bounced back,’ he says. ‘I’ve pleaded with her to pick up the phone. I wrote her a two-page letter and sent it by certified mail via her representative in Los Angeles. I asked her why she was believing the lies. I also pointed out the Royals haven’t always been perfectly behaved. I wrote that I’ve never played pool naked, nor have I dressed up as a Nazi [a reference to Harry’s infamous pictures in Las Vegas in 2012 and the time that he wore a crude imitation of a Nazi uniform, including a swastika armband, in 2005]. ‘I even hand-delivered a letter to Doria asking her why our daughter won’t speak to me. They are the words of love from a daughter who clearly adores her father. In a Valentine's card, Meghan writes: 'Daddy, Everything you do for me has turned me into who I am and I am so grateful. ‘All I want to do is make you proud… and I promise, no matter what, I’ll do it. Thank you for everything daddy. I love you with all my heart now and forever. Love Bean’ – her childhood nickname ‘Everything has been met with a stony silence. Their silence means people continue to attack me and write lies about me.’ Mr Markle says he has been surprised by a spate of recent negative stories about his daughter that portray her as a petulant diva. One claimed she reduced a staff member to tears with her 5am demands and another said she wanted to spray air freshener around ‘musty’ St George’s Chapel – a request rejected by the Queen. Perhaps the most damaging claim concerns an alleged rift between Meghan and Kate, who is said to have been ‘reduced to tears’ by Meghan’s demands over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid gown and who later, allegedly, reprimanded Meghan for ‘berating’ a member of her staff. Kate is said to have told Meghan: ‘That’s unacceptable. They’re my staff and I speak to them.’ Meghan’s father says he is baffled by the reports. ‘I don’t recognise this person,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘The Meghan I know was always sweet, kind, generous. She was always demanding but never rude. I don’t want to say or do anything to hurt my daughter but I worry she is going to hurt herself.’ And in a Christmas card, left, showing a colourful llama, she writes: ‘Because you have always been so generous with me… it brings me so much joy to be able to give you this this Christmas. I love you to no end. Meg.’ Inside was a gift of $2,000 for a holiday Mr Markle, a retired Emmy award-winning Hollywood lighting director, adds: ‘Meghan grew up on set. I taught her to have respect for the crew. They can make you look good or awful. I don’t pretend to know what she’s like now. ‘She bends the rules. She’s good at that. But this acting up is new. She’s never been rude to me before. I can’t believe I’ve done anything severe enough to be treated this way by her.’ Indeed, he believes his bond with Meghan is ‘unbreakable’ – a point illustrated by two cards from his treasured collection. Meghan trained as a calligrapher and wrote wedding invitations to help support herself through the early days of her acting career, a skill highlighted in her cards to her father, which are written in elegant cursive script. ‘I loved getting cards from Meghan,’ Mr Markle says. ‘She wrote me hundreds of little cards and notes through the years. Sometimes they were for special occasions, other times just little notes she would leave around the house. I’ve still got a Post-It Note on my fridge which says, “I love you Daddy.” I see it every day. I got a card every Valentine’s Day.’ He pulls one Valentine’s card from a manila folder. It shows a picture of a chubby baby holding a daffodil with a touching message: ‘Daddy… I don’t express as often as I should how much you mean to me. Everything you do for me has turned me into who I am and I am so grateful. All I want to do is make you proud… and I promise, no matter what, I’ll do it. Thank you for everything daddy. I love you with all of my heart now and forever. Love Bean’ – a reference to his childhood nickname for her. Mr Markle suffered two heart attacks, preventing him walking his daughter down the aisle at St George’s Chapel, Windsor when she married Prince Harry - who he is yet to meet Over the years, Mr Markle ‘willingly’ spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his daughter, sending her to private school and even cashing in Facebook shares to help pay for her first wedding. A Christmas card showing a llama and the words ‘Fa-La-La Llama’ arrived at Mr Markle’s Mexican home just a couple of years ago, by which time Meghan was a successful actress, earning $50,000 (£40,000) an episode on the hit TV show Suits. The card contained $2,000 for him to put towards a holiday. She wrote: ‘Daddy, Because you have always been so generous with me and taken the best care of me it brings me so much joy to be able to give you this this Christmas. I love you to no end. Meg.’ For Mr Markle, the prospect of never speaking to his daughter again is unbearable: ‘I’m hurt by what’s happened but I’m not going to stay silent. In a wide-ranging interview with Caroline Graham near his home in Mexico, Mr Markle revealed the anguish he feels at the thought of never seeing his daughter again ‘My life has been turned upside down since my daughter met Harry. When they announced her pregnancy I had seven paparazzi on my doorstep night and day for seven days. They rented the house next door. ‘Their treatment of me is harsh, hurtful and unforgiving. I’m being punished for things I didn’t say. ‘I’m trolled on the internet by one guy who sits in his mother’s basement spewing lies about me. Twitter is the worst but I can’t avoid it. ‘I don’t read things but then people send them to me anyway. They say I faked my heart attacks, that I wasn’t at the first wedding. It’s all bull****. Meghan and I never had any problems before this. ‘If she would just speak to me, things could be different. I love Meghan very much. I want her and Harry to have a beautiful, healthy baby and a great life. ‘But I want them to stop believing the lies.’ Does he believe he and Meghan will ever be reunited? He shrugs. ‘Maybe. Some day.’ 'I was so proud and overcome with emotion to see my baby in a white gown': Thomas Markle unveils touching photograph that proves he DID go to his daughter's first wedding but said no to the party bag marijuana He was reduced to what he calls ‘a footnote in history’ when two heart attacks prevented him from walking his daughter Meghan down the aisle of St George’s Chapel amid the pomp and pageantry of the Royal Wedding in May. But Thomas Markle did take a starring role at Meghan’s very different first wedding to Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson in 2011, which took place under swaying palm trees on a Jamaican beach, complete with a Caribbean steel drum band and a most unusual welcome gift for the guests. Mr Markle says he is ‘sick and tired’ of reading erroneous reports that he failed to attend the wedding, which sadly ended in divorce for the couple two years later. He explains that he asked the photographer to ignore him and concentrate on the young people showing off their beautiful bodies in swimwear. The invitationto Meghan’s first wedding showed her entwined with Trevor on a beach with a beer ‘There are no pictures out there of me at the wedding because it was on the beach and everyone else was in their 30s and I was in my 60s’, Mr Markle said last night, before showing The Mail on Sunday a photograph – published here for the first time. It shows him posing proudly with Meghan just moments before he and his ex-wife Doria walked her across the sand to marry Trevor. Mr Markle also kept his business-class ticket to the four-day affair, along with an invitation, which featured a picture of a bikini-wearing Meghan on the beach entwined in Trevor’s arms, and a chilled bottle of Red Stripe beer within arm’s reach. The wedding took place at the famous Jamaica Inn, where Meghan booked all 55 rooms and villas, taking the £1,200-a-night largest villa for herself and her new husband. ‘Meghan planned everything down to the tiniest detail. She took control of everything. I was given a white shirt to wear, as were all the male guests. She micro-managed everything,’ says Mr Markle. ‘The picture was taken when I walked into her bungalow just moments before the ceremony was due to start. I was so proud and overcome with emotion to see my baby in a white gown, looking so beautiful. We took the picture and then Doria and I both walked her down the aisle. ‘Trevor is Jewish and his father, who is a rabbi, conducted the service. But it was not a traditional Jewish ceremony. Meghan read vows she’d written herself.’ Mr Markle said he did take a starring role at Meghan’s very different first wedding to Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson in 2011, which took place under swaying palm trees on a Jamaican beach There were 100 guests – including the cast of Suits, the TV show in which Meghan starred – for the ceremony on September 10, 2011. In the US, where the month is written first, that results in 9/10/11, a date Meghan chose because it would be easy for Trevor to remember. The guests were welcomed with a gift of a small fabric bag containing a welcome note from Meghan and Trevor along with a small plastic ‘baggy’ of marijuana. Mr Markle says: ‘It’s illegal, but it’s no big deal in Jamaica. It’s almost customary down there. I don’t smoke weed and to the best of my knowledge nor does Meghan. I don’t know what I did with mine. I think I gave it away. I kept the bag and I use it to keep the sea air [at his Mexican beachside home] off one of my Emmys.’ He has won three of the awards, known as the TV Oscars. Festivities included ‘beach yoga with Doria’ – while she is now well known, she was listed simply as ‘Meg’s mum’ on the invitation. The Jamaica Inn is famous as the honeymoon designation of Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe and her third husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and was a regular haunt of James Bond author Ian Fleming. ‘If it’s good enough for Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller… it’s good enough for us,’ read the invitation. On the day before the ‘beach chic’ wedding, the couple hosted ‘beach Olympics’ featuring the bride’s team versus the groom’s team in events such as tug-of-war and kayaking, followed by a barbecue. That night everyone danced to a reggae band. Mr Markle, who helped pay for the celebration, is mentioned twice in the wedding literature. He is credited with ‘generously hosting’ brunch on the final day and gets a special ‘thank you’ for his ‘incredible generosity’. Guests who chose not to stay at the Jamaica Inn were offered alternative accommodation nearby at The Royal Plantation. The wedding invitation reads: ‘Cheers to love, cheers to laughter, cheers to happily ever after.’ Two years later, the marriage was over. Thomas Markle neither asked for nor received payment for this interview. Evidence he did have a heart attack - and what Harry said Thomas Markle produced piles of medical bills that ‘prove conclusively’ he had not one, but two heart attacks before the wedding of Meghan and Harry. Mr Markle had the first heart attack the weekend before the ceremony and has documents proving he was in hospital in Mexico for a day and a half. He then felt well enough to drive to Los Angeles to deliver flowers to his ex-wife Doria before being taken ill again when he returned home to Rosarito. ‘The doctors told me I was having a second heart attack,’ he says. ‘I had a blocked artery which they call the widow maker. A friend took me across the border to a US hospital and they saved my life.’ Bills totalling more than a £100,000 show he was discharged from Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center in California on May 17. Prince Harry called when Mr Markle was recovering in hospital and said: ‘If you’d listened to me none of this would have happened’ – referring to the media stories about the faked paparazzi pictures. Mr Markle hung up on Harry but says he regrets this because it started the rift. Mr Markle shared these documents, including an expensive receipt from a California hospital, as proof he suffered a heart attack

– Thomas Markle just wants "to get the truth out there." That's why, per USA Today, the estranged father of Meghan Markle "isn't through talking about the rift" between himself and his daughter, spilling to the Daily Mail about how he's been "frozen out" by the new duchess and her husband, Prince Harry. The elder Markle, 74, says he's tried to reach out to his 37-year-old daughter via texts and notes to no avail, and he tries to prove to the Mail that much of what's been said about him have been "grievous lies." The publication lays out those alleged fabrications one by one, as well as his rebuttals, including whispers that he faked a heart attack to avoid attending Meghan and Harry's wedding (he shows hospital documents and his list of meds), that he betrayed Meghan by blabbing to the press about her ("I'm not selling stories"), and that the two were never close. To disprove that last bit, Markle produced for the Mail a trove of handwritten letters, photos, medical papers, and even an old plane ticket he says proves he attended her first wedding to Trevor Engelson (it was rumored he didn't). Markle says his bond with Meghan is "unbreakable," and letters he says are from her show affection. "Daddy ... everything you do for me has turned me into who I am and I am so grateful," one note signed by "Bean," said to have been Meghan's childhood nickname, reads. Markle says he even gave Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland, a note to see if she could offer any insight into why their daughter won't speak with him; it was met with silence, he says. "I made mistakes, but my punishment does not fit the crime," he adds. "Even murderers get visits from their daughters in jail." (Meghan's half-sister has also weighed in.)

Race takes another turn as Santorum gains 14 points since winning Feb. 7 GOP contests PRINCETON, NJ -- Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are now statistically tied for the lead in Republican registered voters' preferences for the 2012 GOP nomination -- 32% to 30%, respectively. Newt Gingrich, who led the field as recently as late January, is now third, favored by 16%, while Ron Paul's support has dwindled to 8%, the lowest level yet seen for him in 2012. These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking from Feb. 8-12 -- the first Gallup tracking period conducted wholly after Santorum's sweep of the Feb. 7 state nominating contests. Santorum's 14-point surge in support since just before Feb. 7, from 16% to 30%, appears to have come at the expense of all of his major opponents. Support for Romney and Gingrich has declined by five and six percentage points, respectively, over the same period, and support for Paul, by three points. The percentage unsure has increased slightly, from 11% to 13%. Santorum's Wins Spur Robust Bounce Santorum's surge coming off of his wins in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota is not unusual, given the volatility already seen in national Republican preferences. However, the magnitude of his 14-point gain over the five-day periods bracketing the Feb. 7 contests is the largest post-primary/caucus bounce Gallup has recorded since the primary season began. By contrast, Romney's support grew by six points in the first five days after his apparent win in the Iowa caucuses -- with state election officials revising the results and declaring Santorum the winner a few weeks later. Santorum's support also swelled, by 12 points -- from 6% to 18% -- within the first week after he purportedly placed second in Iowa. Romney then enjoyed a seven-point gain after winning the New Hampshire primary. Gingrich gained nine points after winning the South Carolina primary, building on a 10-point gain he made in the period between New Hampshire and South Carolina. Romney then recovered by 10 points after his decisive victory in Florida. It is too soon to say whether Romney's slim victory in Saturday's Maine caucuses (or his important symbolic victory in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) straw poll the same day) will advance his support, thereby stalling or reversing some of Santorum's recent gains. Bottom Line Gallup Daily tracking conducted in the days after Santorum's sweep of three little-anticipated nominating contests last week shows national Republicans responding as they have each time there has been a big win or an upset in the caucuses and primaries thus far -- by jumping on the winner's bandwagon. Romney's win in Nevada on Feb. 4 represents the only exception to that, possibly because it was so closely followed by Santorum's victories on Feb. 7. As a result, Santorum is now roughly tied with Romney for the lead, Gingrich has been relegated to third, and Paul is in a weakened fourth position. How long this scenario will last is anyone's guess, but will likely be dictated by the outcome of the next round of primaries at the end of February, in Arizona and Michigan. Track every angle of the presidential race on Gallup.com's Election 2012 page. Sign up to get Election 2012 news stories from Gallup as soon as they are published. ||||| Santorum Catches Romney in GOP Race Obama Leads Both in General Election Matchups Overview Rick Santorum’s support among Tea Party Republicans and white evangelicals is surging, and he now has pulled into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. In polling conducted Feb. 8-12, 30% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters favor Santorum while 28% favor Romney. As recently as a month ago, Romney held a 31% to 14% advantage over Santorum among all GOP voters. Santorum is now the clear favorite of Republican and GOP-leaning voters who agree with the Tea Party, as well as white evangelical Republicans. Currently, 42% of Tea Party Republican voters favor Santorum, compared with just 23% who back Romney. Santorum holds an almost identical advantage among white evangelical Republican voters (41% to 23%). The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Feb. 8-12 among 1,501 adults, including 1172 registered voters and 552 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, finds that Barack Obama holds sizable leads over Santorum, Romney and Newt Gingrich in general election match-ups. Obama leads Santorum by 10 points among all registered voters (53% to 43%) and his lead over Romney is nearly as large (52% to 44%). Romney ran about even with Obama in November and mid-January. Obama has a larger advantage over Newt Gingrich than over Santorum or Romney: Obama leads the former House speaker by 18 points (57% to 39%). Obama has made gains among independent voters. Today, 51% of independents favor Obama in a matchup against Romney, up from 40% a month ago. (View detailed tables to see a full demographic breakdown of Obama-Romney and Obama-Santorum matchups). Romney Trailing among GOP Conservatives In the early GOP primaries, Romney has struggled at times in winning over the conservative elements of the Republican electorate – Tea Party supporters, conservatives and white evangelical Republicans. The new poll shows that nationally he trails Santorum among all three groups. In contrast, Romney holds leads over Santorum among non-Tea Party Republicans (34% to 19%) and moderate and liberal Republicans (34% to 20%). While Santorum holds a substantial advantage over Romney among white evangelical Republicans, he also runs about even with Romney among white mainline Protestants (24% Santorum, 30% Romney). Romney also trails Santorum among Republican and GOP-leaning voters who have not completed college (33% to 24%). Romney leads among Republican college graduates (39% to 25%). More Doubts about Romney’s Conservatism, Consistency Three months ago, a slim majority (53%) of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said Mitt Romney was a strong conservative. Today, 42% see him this way, while the number who say he is not a strong conservative has jumped from 33% to 50%. This growing skepticism about Romney’s conservatism is most pronounced among Tea Party Republicans. Among Republican and Republican-leaning voters who agree with the Tea Party, just 29% say Romney is a strong conservative, down from 51% three months ago. Fully 68% of Tea Party Republicans say Romney is not a strong conservative. Fewer Republican voters today think Romney has been consistent as well. By a 48% to 39% margin, more Republicans say Romney does not take consistent positions on the issues. In November, 47% felt he was consistent and just 33% said he was not. By contrast, Romney has lost virtually no ground among Republican voters in evaluations of his qualifications and honesty. Roughly as many today as in November say that he is well-qualified to be president (69%) and that he is honest and trustworthy (64%). These were Romney’s strongest traits in November, and remain so today. Obama Leads in General Election Matchup Barack Obama now holds an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney in a general election matchup, and he has gained significant ground among independent voters. A month ago, 40% of independents said they would back Obama over Romney – today 51% say they would, while the number expressing support for Romney has slipped from 50% to 42%. Over the course of the campaign, Romney’s image among independent voters has suffered substantially. Most notably, the number who believe he is honest and trustworthy has fallen from 53% to 41%, while the number who say he is not has risen from 32% to 45%. And even on his qualifications for the office – Romney’s strong suit – he has lost ground among independents. In November, a 58% majority of independents said Romney was well-qualified to be president, while just 31% said he was not. Today, 48% say he is well qualified, while 41% say he is not. Despite these problems, Romney runs slightly better against Barack Obama among independents than either of the other leading GOP candidates. Independent voters favor Barack Obama over Rick Santorum by a 54% to 40% margin, and favor Obama over Gingrich by a wide 58% to 34% margin. GOP Voters Say Party Would Unite Behind Romney While Romney has lost support in the GOP nomination contest, a majority (57%) of Republican and Republican-leaning voters say that the party would unite solidly behind him if he wins the nomination. Roughly a third (32%) say disagreements within the party will keep many Republicans from supporting him. In February 2008, following that year’s Super Tuesday contests, 58% of Republican voters said the party would unite behind John McCain. A substantial majority (70%) of GOP voters who support Romney for the Republican nomination say the party would coalesce behind the former Massachusetts governor if he is the nominee. A smaller percentage (54%) of Santorum supporters express this view. A majority of GOP voters (55%) also say that it is a good thing the race has not yet been decided. As might be expected, Santorum supporters are more likely than Romney backers to express this view (62% vs. 45%). In the Democratic primary race four years ago, a comparable percentage (57%) of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in February said it was good for the party that the race had not yet been decided. But that figure fell to 35% in April, as the Democratic primary contest continued.

– Three polls, three declarations about Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum: virtual tie, statistical tie, and essential tie. According to Pew, Gallup, and the New York Times/CBS News, Romney officially has some company at the top following Santorum's wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri: Pew's poll, released yesterday, puts Santorum at 30% to Romney's 28% among Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters. Santorum easily captures the top spot among Tea Party Republican voters (42% to 23%) and evangelical Republican voters (41% to 23%). One bright spot for Romney: 70% of his supporters believe the GOP would back him if he becomes the nominee; only 54% of Santorum's supporters feel the same. Gallup's poll, also released yesterday, found that 32% of Republican registered voters preferred Romney, and 30% favor Santorum. That's a 14-point jump for Santorum in recent days, and Gallup notes that his rise came at the expense of every candidate: He grabbed five points from Romney, six from Newt Gingrich, and three from Ron Paul. Side note: Paul's support hit a 2012 low: 8%. The New York Times/CBS poll out today shows that 30% of GOP primary voters support Santorum, to Romney's 27%. But it's still anyone's game: Last month, 74% of voters who backed a candidate said they might still change their pick; that has dropped, but only to 60%.

PRETORIA, South Africa — The trial of Oscar Pistorius on murder charges began Monday, with a neighbor of the South African double-amputee track star saying that she heard “bloodcurdling screams” shortly before Mr. Pistorius’s girlfriend was shot and killed. On a drizzly, gray day in Pretoria, Mr. Pistorius appeared before the court to deny that he had murdered his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, saying in a clear but soft voice that he was not guilty. He also denied several firearms offenses. On the murder charge, Judge Thokozile Masipa asked if he understood the accusation. “I do, I do, my lady,” Mr. Pistorius replied. A lawyer reading a statement by Mr. Pistorius said later that the allegation of murder “could not be further from the truth.” He also accused the police of contaminating the crime scene at Mr. Pistorius’s villa in a gated complex here and denied prosecution assertions that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp had argued on the night of her killing. But the first witness, Michelle Burger, who lived near Mr. Pistorius at the time of the shooting on Feb. 14, 2013, said that she heard a man and a woman screaming before the gunshots. Photo “It was very traumatic for me,” Ms. Burger said. “You could hear that it was bloodcurdling screams. It leaves you cold. You can’t translate it into words, the anxiousness in her voice and fear.” Ms. Burger described the sound of the gunfire as a first shot, then a pause and three shots in quick succession. According to testimony in preliminary hearings, Mr. Pistorius fired four shots through a closed bathroom door. At least three bullets struck Ms. Steenkamp, in the head, arm and hip, vaulting Mr. Pistorius into the notorious ranks of celebrity murder defendants. Mr. Pistorius’s lead defense counsel, Barry Roux, cross-examined Ms. Burger aggressively, at times sounding impatient, even exasperated, and dwelling on whether she and her husband might have influenced each other’s testimony. Mr. Roux also questioned whether Ms. Burger was changing or at least adding to her story from an earlier statement and whether the sounds she described as gunshots were actually made by Mr. Pistorius breaking down the bathroom door with a cricket bat. He even raised the issue of whether the high-pitched screams that Ms. Burger said she heard were not a woman’s but his client’s voice rising from anxiety. The witness said repeatedly that she heard two different voices. Defense lawyers have portrayed Ms. Steenkamp’s death as an accident, but prosecutors have not accepted Mr. Pistorius’s explanation that he believed he was shooting a burglar. South Africa is plagued by violent crime, and home invasions are a common fear. Earlier, Mr. Pistorius, 27, said in an affidavit that he had been terrified. Vulnerable without his prosthetic legs, he said, he rashly fired through the bathroom door, only to find later that he had killed his girlfriend. “I approached the bathroom door armed with my firearm so I could defend Reeva and I,” Mr. Pistorius said in the statement read by one of his lawyers on Monday. “I believed Reeva was still in bed.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story There is no death penalty in South Africa, but premeditated murder carries a minimum sentence of 25 years. As he awaited the start of the trial, Mr. Pistorius, wearing a dark suit and black tie, perched on a cushion on his chair. Photographs showed June Steenkamp, the mother of the victim, weeping. She has told South African reporters that she wants him to look her in the eye. Photo “Oscar’s Date With Destiny” read a headline in red ink on the front page of The Pretoria News. After more than a year of preparation, during which Mr. Pistorius has mostly been free on bail, more than a hundred witnesses may be called during the trial, including forensics and ballistics experts. Since there are no jury trials in South Africa, Judge Masipa will decide his guilt or innocence, assisted by two assessors whom she swore in at the beginning of the hearing. The judge, a former crime reporter, is known locally for handing down long sentences in cases of crimes against women. The case has been compared to the O. J. Simpson murder trial that transfixed Americans in the 1990s. Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were a celebrity couple in South Africa. Mr. Pistorius, known as Blade Runner for the flexible, sickle-shaped carbon-fiber prosthetic legs he uses to compete, achieved worldwide fame by challenging able-bodied athletes. Ms. Steenkamp, who was 29 at the time of her death, was a budding reality television star, a model and a law school graduate. After the killing, however, news reports built a different portrait of Mr. Pistorius — that of a reckless, jealous young man with a passion for guns and a history of mishandling them. Ms. Steenkamp told her mother that they had quarreled a lot, according to some news reports. Journalists from around the world have gathered to cover the trial, which will be a highly public test for the South African justice system, even more so after a judge ruled last week that much of it would be broadcast live on television. Live images of testimony by Mr. Pistorius and witnesses called by the defense will not be shown, but the audio from all hearings will be broadcast. The prosecution may have an uphill battle against Mr. Pistorius’s expensive team of lawyers and experts after the lead investigator on the case, Detective Warrant Officer Hilton Botha, resigned last year, acknowledging mistakes in the police work. A magistrate later said he had blundered in gathering evidence. In the statement read in court, Mr. Pistorius said that the crime scene had been “contaminated, disturbed and tampered with.” As a sprinter, Mr. Pistorius, who was born without fibulas and had both legs amputated below the knee before he was a year old, won two gold medals and a silver at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London after competing at the Olympics a few weeks earlier, though without winning medals. The repercussions continue to echo for family and friends of Ms. Steenkamp. Her father, Barry Steenkamp, was reported to have had a stroke recently while reading an article about the case. ||||| The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius begins today as South Africa prepares for what is expected to be a marathon legal battle that throws a spotlight not just on the world-famous double-amputee athlete, but on his homeland's criminal justice system and gun culture. The trial, which has been compared to that of the OJ Simpson case in the United States 20 years ago, has led to the establishement in South Africa of a unique cable television channel dedicated to it. The 24-hour channel, called The Oscar Pistorius Trial – A Carte Blanche Channel, launched on Sunday night with footage of the sportsman's girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who was shot dead by him in the early hours of the morning on February 14 last year at his home. While the Olymian denies murder and says that he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder, the prosecution maintains that he intentionally shot her several times after an argument. State prosecutors are expected to paint an unflattering portrait of Pistorius as reckless, hot-headed and obsessed with guns, and have lined up 107 witnesses for the trial, including Pistorius's ex-girlfriends Melissa Rom and Samantha Taylor, whose mother welcomed the end of their relationship. Erin Stear, who has denied reports she had an affair with Pistorius, will also take the stand, as will the former footballer Mark Batchelor, who has claimed that Pistorius threatened to "break my legs" because he was a close friend of Steenkamp, a law graduate, model and reality TV star. Police have said they found unlicensed .38-calibre ammunition in Pistorius's house, while his Twitter account revealed he had boasted of going into "full attack recon mode in the pantry" after thinking an intruder was in his home. The court will hear how, in one incident, Pistorius accidentally discharged a pistol under the table in a Johannesburg restaurant. He also put a bullet through the sunroof of a girlfriend's car in a fit of rage. Pistorius will also come face to face with Steenkamp's mother, June, who made her feelings clear in a TV interview last year, recalling an incident in which Steenkamp phoned her from Pistorius's car. "She was afraid," June said. "She was so afraid. She said, 'Mummy, I'm in the car with Oscar and he's driving like a lunatic. Like a lunatic.' So I said, 'Will you just give him the phone?' She gave the phone to Oscar straight away. And I said, 'If you hurt my baby, I will have you wiped out.'" Mobile phone records could be key during the trial, potentially indicating evidence of a fight. Steenkamp is said to have had her phone with her in the toilet when she was shot. Police have been trying to gain access to Pistorius's iPhone, which might contain evidence of a fight in the form of text messages. Another key piece of evidence, according to experts, may be the blood-spatter analysis of the inside of the toilet cubicle, which could give an indication of Steenkamp's position when she was shot, including whether she was sitting on the toilet, or hiding behind the door, as prosecutors suspect. Pistorius faces charges of murder, illegal possession of ammunition, and two additional counts relating to shooting a gun in public in two separate incidents before last year's Valentine's Day killing. Criminal law experts believe that if the prosecution fails to prove premeditated murder, firing several shots through a closed door could bring a conviction for the lesser charge of culpable homicide, a South African equivalent of manslaughter covering unintentional deaths through negligence. Sentences in such cases range from fines to prison. They are left to courts to determine and are not set by fixed guidelines. ||||| FILE : In this Monday, Aug. 19, 2013 file photo, double-amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius, left, talks with his lawyer, Kenny Oldwage, right, at the magistrates court in Pretoria, South Africa, where Pistorius... (Associated Press) PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — A cable TV channel devoted to the Oscar Pistorius murder trial went on air in South Africa on Sunday night showing footage of the blonde model the world-famous athlete shot dead at his home a year ago. The video includes footage of her playing with dolphins. The 24-hour channel began broadcasting just over 12 hours before Pistorius is expected in court for the start of his trial. Dedicated completely to the trial, some of its early programming focused on the life of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the model and reality TV star Pistorius killed on Valentine's Day last year when he fired shots through a toilet door at his house. In one video taken by security camera, a smiling Steenkamp is seen arriving at the gated community where Pistorius lived just hours before she was killed. There was also video of her swimming with dolphins while shooting a reality TV show for South African television. At one point, two dolphins tap their snouts on her cheeks. As Pistorius' trial starts on Monday, live television pictures and a live audio feed will be broadcast from the courtroom at North Gauteng High Court in the South African capital, Pretoria, after permission was granted by a judge. Pistorius' lawyers opposed the applications to broadcast the trial on television and radio. The channel, called "The Oscar Pistorius Trial - A Carte Blanche channel" is on South Africa's most popular cable TV network which is one of the three broadcasters which asked the judge to allow live coverage of the trial. Three remote-controlled cameras have been installed in the courtroom. There are some restrictions on the live broadcasts of the trial. Testimony by Pistorius and defense witnesses will not be shown because of objections by his defense team. Some prosecution witnesses can also ask for their testimony not to be shown and the trial judge, Thokozile Masipa, has the option of stopping the live coverage if it becomes intrusive. Pistorius faces charges of murder, illegal possession of ammunition and two additional counts relating to shooting a gun in public in two separate incidents before the Valentine's Day slaying of Steenkamp last year. Pistorius denies murder and says he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for a dangerous intruder inside a toilet cubicle in his bathroom during the night. ___ Gerald Imray is on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GeraldImrayAP ||||| PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — A female judge will ultimately decide Oscar Pistorius' fate and pronounce him innocent or guilty of murder in his girlfriend's shooting death on Valentine's Day last year. South Africa has no trial by jury meaning Judge Thokozile Masipa will have the final say in the blockbuster court case. A look at the judge and some other main players in the Pistorius trial: FILE In this file photo taken Thursday, March 28, 2013 state prosecutor Gerrie Nel, prepares for a hearing in the Pretoria, South Africa high court opposing the bail conditions of athlete Oscar Pistorius... (Associated Press) FILE In this file photo taken Thursday, March 28, 2013 the defense team for athlete Oscar Pistorius, led by Barry Roux, left, prepares for a hearing in the Pretoria, South Africa high court opposing... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Feb. 19, 2013 file photo, a mourner carries a program at the funeral for Reeva Steenkamp, portrait, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. With his athletic triumphs tarnished by the killing... (Associated Press) FILE- In this Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 file photo, Investigating officer Hilton Botha, sits inside the court witness box during the Oscar Pistorius bail hearing at the magistrate court in Pretoria, South... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013 file photo Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius stands inside a court during his bail hearing at the magistrate court in Pretoria, South Africa. With his athletic triumphs... (Associated Press) ___ THE JUDGE: Judge Thokozile Masipa will preside over the biggest and most closely-watched case in her career when Pistorius goes on trial for murder in Reeva Steenkamp's shooting death. Masipa has 15 years' experience as a judge, but was once a reporter with a South African newspaper before turning to law. Her appointment to oversee and ultimately judge Pistorius' case will satisfy both prosecution and defense, legal experts say, because of her reputation for being unwaveringly fair. She was the second black woman to be appointed a judge in South Africa, according to the South African Press Association. While she has become a figure of intense interest, South Africa's department of justice has warned reporters not to attempt to contact her during Pistorius' trial. Masipa will be aided by two assessors whom she has appointed but who have not yet been named. In South Africa, judges are sometimes helped by assessors, often experts in criminal law who can help the judge reach a verdict but have limited roles in the trial. South Africa abolished juries in criminal trials in 1969. ___ THE PROSECUTION: Gerrie Nel is considered South Africa's top state prosecutor. He secured a conviction for corruption against former South African police chief Jackie Selebi, one of the country's biggest cases before Pistorius killed Steenkamp. Nel is described as a master of presenting evidence by legal analysts. In Pistorius' bail hearing last year, Nel painted a picture of Pistorius as a man who was "willing and ready to fire and kill" and Steenkamp as cowering, terrified and hiding in the toilet before Pistorius shot through the toilet door to kill her. "She couldn't go anywhere," Nel said in court last February. "It must have been horrific." ___ THE DEFENSE: Described even by other attorneys as South Africa's best defense lawyer, Barry Roux's cross-examination of police detective Hilton Botha in Pistorius' bail hearing last February was so extensive that Botha, who was later removed from the case, had to concede that nothing about Pistorius' version of events could be disproved at the time. Roux, an attorney for about 30 years, also succeeded in getting the court to agree to release Pistorius on bail of 1 million rand (then $113,000) despite the fact that the double-amputee athlete was charged with premeditated murder. He also got another court to relax some of Pistorius' strict bail conditions on appeal. ___ THE GUNMAN: Oscar Pistorius is now probably the world's best-known track athlete. Initially a poster boy for disabled sport, Pistorius' ability to also run alongside the best able-bodied athletes made him a sportsman whose endorsement was purchased by international brands like Nike. A multiple Paralympic champion and record-breaker, Pistorius is still the only amputee to run at the world championships and the Olympics. He is also the defendant in a murder trial and faces a possible life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison before the possibility of parole if convicted. Other aspects of Pistorius' life have been scrutinized since he killed Steenkamp, especially that he was also a gun enthusiast and collector and owned a 9 mm Parabellum pistol for self-defense and was pursuing licenses for six more guns, including an assault rifle. ___ THE VICTIM: Reeva Steenkamp was a model and reality TV star, but also a law graduate. The 29-year-old had been dating Pistorius for only a few months when she was killed by the Olympic athlete. They were introduced by mutual friends in late 2012 and decided to attend an awards ceremony together the day after. Steenkamp's parents, Barry and June, have talked about her dedication to fighting domestic abuse rather than her modeling career and said she intended to open a shelter for abused women. Her parents will now start a foundation to help "the poor and abused" in her memory, they said. ___ THE TOP COP: After Hilton Botha's bungled testimony in the bail hearing and the revelation that he was facing charges of attempted murder himself, Lt. Gen. Vinesh Moonoo was appointed to take over as the head police investigator in the Pistorius shooting. Moonoo was described by South Africa's national police commissioner as the country's No. 1 detective. He is not listed by the prosecution as one of its witnesses but has overseen the investigation for the last year. He is renowned for avoiding the limelight, according to South African crime reporters who say he has rarely given media interviews. ___ Gerald Imray is on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GeraldImrayAP ||||| Media caption LIVE: BBC coverage of Oscar Pistorius murder trial South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Mr Pistorius shot Ms Steenkamp, 29, a model and reality TV star, at his home in Pretoria on 14 February 2013. State prosecutors allege the killing was premeditated, but he claims he mistook her for an intruder. For the first time in South Africa, parts of the trial will be televised live. Media interest is high. The state's case - and the memorably hapless performance of now ex-lead detective Hilton Botha - took a battering at [Mr Pistorius's bail] hearing. Did the state have more compelling evidence that it chose not to reveal? The battle ahead The arrest of the national sporting hero astounded South Africa. The 27-year-old double amputee won gold at the London 2012 Paralympic Games and also competed at the Olympics. 'Heard screaming' Mr Pistorius pleaded not guilty to all charges, including the "wilful and intentional murder of Reeva Steenkamp" as the trial began. His lawyer read out a statement from the athlete, giving his version of events of how Ms Steenkamp died, saying he believed his girlfriend was in bed when he shot at the toilet door in the early hours of Valentine's Day last year. The start to proceedings at the court in the capital were delayed by 90 minutes as an Afrikaans translator was absent. The BBC's Andrew Harding in the courtroom says Mr Pistorius looked calm, or at least neutral as he arrived in court - a far cry from the emotional wreck he seemed at the bail hearing last year. Mr Pistorius's uncle, brother and sister are also in court; next to them on the relatives' bench is the family of Ms Steenkamp, including her mother June, our correspondent says. Image caption Reeva Steenkamp's mother June arrives at the high court on Monday morning Image caption Oscar Pistorius walked into the court without any apparent glance at the relatives' bench Image caption South Africa was stunned when he shot dead his girlfriend the model Reeva Steenkamp Gerrie Nel, who is leading the prosecution team, read out the indictment and has called the first witness, Michelle Burger, a neighbour of Mr Pistorius who has requested that her testimony not be televised. She says she awoke hearing a woman's screams and heard a call for help. Clickable 3D model of Oscar Pistorius' house What happened on the night? Our correspondent says Mr Nel, who has begun to lay out the state's case, is a quiet, determined figure - "fox-like", according to a friend and fellow-lawyer. State prosecutors say Mr Pistorius planned the killing and shot Ms Steenkamp after a row. But Mr Pistorius says he shot his girlfriend through the bathroom door of his home in Pretoria after mistaking her for a burglar. If found guilty of premeditated murder, he could face life imprisonment. He has also been charged with illegally possessing ammunition. There are no juries at trials in South Africa, and his fate will ultimately be decided by Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa. Much of the case will depend on ballistic evidence from the scene of the shooting, correspondents say. On the anniversary of the shooting, Mr Pistorius released a rare statement in which he said: "The loss of Reeva and the complete trauma of that day, I will carry with me for the rest of my life." Media caption Reeva Steenkamp's friend Gwyn Guscott: "We just need to know what happened" Last week, a judge ruled that an audio feed of the whole trial could be broadcast. Some parts will also be televised, including opening arguments, evidence of experts, police witnesses and closing arguments. The testimony of the accused and his witnesses is exempt. One South African TV station, MultiChoice, has set up a dedicated Oscar Pistorius Trial channel to provide 24-hour coverage. It is due to begin broadcasting on Sunday. Defence lawyers had said it would prejudice proceedings.

– The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius is under way, with the double-amputee athlete pleading not guilty in what the New York Times calls a "clear voice" to the murder charge. The trial's first witness, neighbor Michelle Burger, then testified that she awoke after 3am on Feb. 14 of last year to a woman's "bloodcurdling screams," the Guardian reports. "It was a climax. She was very scared," said Burger, who went on to say that the screams were followed by four shots, with a pause between the first and second. In other developments: South Africa is so transfixed by the case that a 24-hour channel has been launched to cover it. The channel, called "The Oscar Pistorius Trial—A Carte Blanche Channel" launched last night with footage of the life of Reeva Steenkamp. The network behind the trial channel is one of three broadcasters that will be allowed to cover the trial live, though the testimony of Pistorius and other defense witnesses will not be shown and the judge has the option of halting coverage if it becomes intrusive, the AP reports. Pistorius faces life in prison if found guilty. He insists that he shot Steenkamp through a bathroom door after mistaking her for a burglar, and the trial is likely to hinge on ballistic evidence from his Pretoria home, the BBC reports. South Africa has no trial by jury, so Pistorius' fate will be decided by Judge Thokozile Masipa, the second black woman to become a judge in South Africa. Legal experts say both the prosecution and defense are happy with Masipa as the judge because of her reputation for being unwaveringly fair, the AP finds in a look at the key players in the case.

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — The showing of a controversial video for Black History Month has sparked a big debate amongst the community at Glen Allen High School. The animated video, which was presented by a VCU graduate to the entire student body, showed men and women, both black and white, running a race through American history. The black students get a late start and face countless obstacles throughout the race. Meanwhile, the white male gets older and passes his riches from generation to generation. At the end, the white male easily wins the race with the while female placing second. The black competitors finish last. One mother, whose child attends Glen Allen High, told 8News she is outraged, claiming the clip is divisive and racist. Another mom told us she felt the video was age appropriate and could spark a meaningful discussion about race. Kenny Manning, a student at Glen Allen High, said the video was an eyeful. “A lot of people thought it was offensive to white people and made them feel bad about being privileged,” Manning told 8News reporter Jonathan Costen. “Others thought that it was good to get the information out there. There is oppression going on in the world, and it that needs to be looked at with a magnifying glass, I guess.” Manning said he was offended by the video, but doesn’t think it was harmful to the student body. I feel like our student body gets along pretty well; there are virtually no fight at Glen Allen High School, and that’s something we should all be proud of,” he said. “There’s definitely no racially-motivated things that happen.” In a statement to 8News, spokesperson Andy Jenks said school officials welcome any feedback and will address concerns “directly as they come forward.” The students participated in a presentation that involved American history and racial discourse. The video was but one component of a thoughtful discussion in which all viewpoints were encouraged. As always, we are welcoming of feedback from students and their families, and we address concerns directly as they come forward. ||||| This short film produced for the African American Policy Forum shows metaphors for obstacles to equality, which affirmative action tries to alleviate. (Erica Pinto/The African American Policy Forum) A Virginia school district has banned the use of an educational video about racial inequality after some parents complained that its messaging is racially divisive. The four-minute, animated video — “Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race” — was shown last week to students at an assembly at Glen Allen High School, in Henrico County, as a part of the school’s Black History Month program. The video contextualizes historic racial disparity in the United States using the metaphor of a race track in which runners face different obstacles depending upon their racial background. It has been shown hundreds of thousands of times at schools and workshops across the country since it was created more than a decade ago, according to the African American Policy Forum, which produced it. “The video is designed for the general public,” said Luke Harris, co-founder of the African American Policy Forum and an associate professor of political science at Vassar College. “We produced something you could show in elementary and secondary schools or in college studies courses.” He added: “We found that the video has a huge impact on the people that we’re showing it to. Most of us know very little about the social history of the United States and its contemporary impact. It was designed as a tool to throw light on American history.” But in Glen Allen, about 14 miles north of Richmond, some parents complained, calling it a “white guilt video.” Henrico County Public Schools officials initially defended the video, saying it was “one component of a thoughtful discussion in which all viewpoints were encouraged.” But after the story began to spread nationally, school officials switched gears, labeling the video “racially divisive” two days later. “The Henrico School Board and administration consider this to be a matter of grave concern,” School Board Chair Micky Ogburn said in a statement released to The Washington Post. “We are making every effort to respond to our community. It is our goal to prevent the recurrence of this type of event. School leaders have been instructed not to use the video in our schools.” “In addition, steps are being taken to prevent the use of racially divisive materials in the future. We do apologize to those who were offended and for the unintended impact on our community.” [Texas officials: Schools should teach that slavery was ‘side issue’ to Civil War] Ravi K. Perry — an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and President of the National Association for Ethnic Studies — told The Post that he worked closely with school officials over several months to plan the presentation, which he also moderated. The video, he said, was just one element of a 30-minute-long, interactive presentation that was shown to two separate groups, each with around 1,000 students. He asked students to fill out a “group membership profile” and write a poem describing their identity. He said the students were “fully engaged” and the response afterwards was overwhelmingly positive. The objective, Perry said, was to allow students to “engage American history through the lens of African Americans and other marginalized groups” and to understand that “we all have multiple identities.” The idea for the presentation came about, he said, after a racist song was played over the loud speakers at a football game in October in which the visiting team was from a predominately black high school. The song, a racist parody of the theme song from Disney’s “Duck Tales,” included 13 racial epithets in a single minute, according to Raw Story. “I feel extremely grateful to the principal and her staff for being courageous enough to provide a comprehensive educational experience on race in America,” he said. “That is something that you should be applauded for doing and not something that millions of people across the country should find distasteful.” He added: “Had I been presenting at an environment where the state standardized curriculum had fully integrated the experience of African Americans, then perhaps the material selected to present to students would have been different. Because the information that many students nationwide are learning about race in America is limited or wrong, it’s important to provide them with historical context.” The scope of the backlash remains unknown, but the statement noted that “school division leaders” received “numerous emails and phone calls objecting to the video.” Among the parents who found the video problematic was Don Blake, whose granddaughter attended the Glen Allen High assembly, according to NBC affiliate WWBT. “They are sitting there watching a video that is dividing them up from a racial standpoint,” Blake told the station. “It’s a white guilt kind of video. I think somebody should be held accountable for this.” Kenny Manning, a student at Glen Allen High, told ABC affiliate WRIC that reaction on campus was mixed. “A lot of people thought it was offensive to white people and made them feel bad about being privileged,” Manning said. “Others thought that it was good to get the information out there. There is oppression going on in the world, and that needs to be looked at with a magnifying glass, I guess.” The video begins with four athletes — two of them white, two of them non-white — taking their marks before a race. After the starting gun fires, the two non-white runners are forced to remain in the starting blocks while their white counterparts begin running. The non-white runners are hit with words such as “slavery,” “broken treaties,” “genocide” and “segregation” as the white runners pass them by. The white runners eventually pick up dollar-symbol-marked batons that grow in size and are eventually passed off to younger white runners who enter the race. It takes more than a minute until the non-white competitors are allowed to begin running. Not long after they do, they are confronted by overwhelming physical obstacles, such as a rainstorm, rocks, a large hole in the track and sharks. Each obstacle, the viewer learns, symbolizes real-life barriers to success, such as discrimination, poor schooling, standardized tests, racial profiling, the school-to-prison pipeline and housing discrimination. The video shows that these obstacles result in shortened lifespans for the non-white runners. [‘Workers’ or slaves? Textbook maker backtracks after mother’s online complaint.] A white male runner then crosses the finish line ahead of everyone else on a rapidly moving conveyor belt. He holds a water bottle labeled “Yale” and the word “privilege” hovers nearby. A white female runner finishes shortly behind him. As the video ends, viewers are left with a written message: “Affirmative action helps level the playing field.” Harris, the African American Policy Forum co-founder, told The Post that the video is intended to show that race-conscious programs are not designed to create “favoritism for damaged individuals,” but instead are about creating remedies for damaged institutions. The backlash from some white parents in Virginia didn’t surprise him, he said. “The anger is a reaction that we expect to get from some Americans, because we live in a society that doesn’t have honest discourse about race,” Harris said. “Our society is as heterogeneous as any on the planet, but American social history from a multicultural, multiracial perspective is just something that people have not been exposed to. “When someone highlights that message, some people go after the messenger.” Henrico Superintendent Pat Kinlaw said in the district’s statement that the video presentation at Glen Allen High remains under investigation. “The matter continues to be under review internally after first coming to the attention of school division leadership on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 4,” Kinlaw said. “While we as educators do not object to difficult and constructive conversations about American history and racial discourse past and present, we understand why many people feel this video in particular was not the best way to deliver such an important lesson.” Perry said it was unfortunate that school officials had chosen not to use anger about the video to engage in a larger dialogue about race within their community and instead chosen to support the views of the loudest voices. “In politics,” he told The Post, “that’s what we call ‘pandering.'” “It’s where you assume, for example, that the only types of folks you should be paying attention to are the ones who call your office. If you only pay attention to the people who call or email you, you are immediately shutting off the people who don’t have the time or the resources to get in touch and that goes to the heart of what was being talked about in that video.” MORE READING: Students pressing for more black history are left feeling criminalized Virginia textbook criticized over claims on Black Confederate soldiers Mom: I have a real issue with my kindergartner’s Valentine’s Day homework assignment Amid national backlash, Mount St. Mary’s president defends his tenure in letter to parents He couldn’t afford to stay at Morgan State, but once he made it he gave back millions

– An educational video about racial inequality has been banned by one Virginia school district after "numerous emails and phone calls" from parents calling it "racially divisive" and a "white guilt video," the Washington Post reports. The video—Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race—uses a literal race as a metaphor and has been shown hundreds of thousands of times schools around the US for a decade. "It was designed as a tool to throw light on American history," says the cofounder of the African American Policy Forum, which created the video. Others didn't see it that way. “A lot of people thought it was offensive to white people and made them feel bad about being privileged,” Kenny Manning, a Glen Allen High School student, tells WRIC. The video was shown as part of a Black History Month presentation at Glen Allen. Presenter Ravi Perry tells the Post it got an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction at the time. Then the school started getting complaints. "They are sitting there watching a video that is dividing them up from a racial standpoint. It's a white guilt kind of video," Don Blake, the grandfather of a student, tells KSLA. The school district caved, banning the video. Manning tells WRIC the video wasn't necessary anyway because there aren't any "racially motivated things" happening at Glen Allen. The Black History Month presentation was held in response to a racist song played over the loud speakers during a football game against a predominantly black high school. The song contained 13 racial epithets in a single minute.

A family on their way to the French Riviera for their holidays left their three-year-old daughter in a motorway layby on Sunday and drove more than 93 miles (150km) before realising they had forgotten her, police said. The parents, who are French, twigged she was missing only when an alert was issued on the radio, officers said. The child was found by other holidaymakers in a rest area off the A7 “Autoroute du Soleil” – or highway of the sun – near Loriol in the Drome region of southern France just after lunch on Sunday. All she could tell them was that she had a brother and a sister and that she was “going to the seaside” when she saw “Daddy’s car pull away”, a gendarme said. It was only when they heard the alert – 45 minutes after the child had been found – that the parents called the police and turned around to drive back up the motorway. “The family had passed Aix-en-Provence [150km away] and were going towards Saint-Raphaël and none of them had noticed she wasn’t there,” the officer said. The parents were being questioned on Sunday evening by officers at the police station where the child was being looked after. “We are going to listen to what they have to say and talk to the prosecutor at Valence to see if this should be taken further,” the officer added. Millions of French families take to the roads during August’s annual holiday rush to the sea and mountains, putting often unbearable strain on the country’s motorway system and their own nerves. Even the British prime minister, David Cameron, is not immune to misplacing a child, having left daughter Nancy, then aged eight, in a pub following a Sunday lunch in 2012. Agence France Presse contributed to this report ||||| The child was found at a play area by the A7 motorway A little girl was found alone at a motorway services play area in France after her parents drove off without her. The three-year-old was able to tell police that she "was going to the beach" and "saw daddy's car drive off" after a tourist couple alerted the authorities on Sunday afternoon. The child - who was left at the Bras de Zil services near Loriol in the Drome region - also told officers she had "one brother and one sister". The girl's parents apparently drove for more than 100 miles, passing Aix-en-Provence on the way to Saint-Raphael on the Cote D'Azur, before noticing their daughter was missing, police said. The child's father called police at around 3pm, some two hours after his daughter had been spotted, after alert messages had been broadcast on a traffic news radio station. The family was reunited late on Sunday afternoon. Police said they would listen to the parents' version of events and speak to the public prosecutor in Valence before deciding whether to take any further action.

– When hitting the road on a summer holiday, you're bound to forget something. Hopefully it's not your toddler. Police are questioning a French family after they apparently forgot their 3-year-old daughter at a rest stop while heading south to the French Riviera for a vacation. Travelers found the girl yesterday at a rest stop outside Loriol-sur-Drome, south of Valence, and waited for her family to return before calling police. The child could only tell officers that she had a brother and a sister and was "going to the seaside" when she saw "daddy's car pull away," per the Guardian. Police issued an alert and the parents only noticed their mistake when they heard it on the radio about 45 minutes after the girl was found. The child had apparently been left at the rest stop—which included a playground, per Sky News—around midday. "None of them had noticed she wasn't there" in the vehicle, an officer says. The BBC reports the girl's father called police at 3pm. By that point, the family had traveled 93 miles and were more than halfway to their destination. They turned around and were reunited with their daughter about two hours later at a police station. Police were questioning the girl's parents last night to ensure the incident was just a case of forgetfulness. "We are going to listen to what they have to say and talk to the prosecutor at Valence to see if this should be taken further," the officer says. They're still likely to lose out on the Parents of the Year award thanks to this pair.

Police in Sweden are hunting for jewel thieves who stole two priceless royal crowns and an orb from a cathedral before making their escape in a motorboat. The audacious heist at the historic, hilltop Strängnäs Cathedral took place at about midday on Tuesday. The cathedral was open to visitors at the time and a lunch fair was being held in a side chapel. The crowns and orb were used by the 17th-century King Karl IX and Queen Kristina. They are made of gold and enamel and encrusted with beads, crystals and pearls. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crown jewels from the Swedish royal family’s collection. Photograph: Reuters They were stolen from a locked and alarmed display cabinet in the Gothic-style cathedral, which lies 60 miles west of the capital, Stockholm. There has been no confirmation from police, but the assumption is that the thieves could have got to the items only by smashing the glass, which would have triggered the alarm. Tom Rowsell, who is getting married in the cathedral next week, told Aftonbladet he saw two men run from the building, jump into a small white motorboat and speed away. “We contacted the police and told them and they told us that something had been taken from the cathedral,” he said. “I knew immediately they were burglars because of the way they were behaving. It’s despicable that people would steal from a holy building and a historical building.” There were no threats by the thieves or any acts of violence and no one was injured, Aftonbladet reported. The motorboat was waiting at the foot of the hill on Lake Mälaren, police said. It is believed the thieves fled via the vast system of lakes west of Stockholm. Police mobilised a huge search operation with a helicopter and boats to try to find the men and recover the items, but they have so far been unsuccessful. The thieves, who have not been identified, and the jewels are being sought internationally via Interpol. A Swedish police spokesman, Stefan Dangardt, said the objects were national treasures and would probably be very difficult to sell. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view of the cathedral, with the river nearby. Photograph: Alamy Thomas Agnevik, another police spokesman, told Aftonbladet: “It’s 1-0 to them right now. We want to spread information and pictures of these items so that they can be identified as stolen objects. “It’s too difficult to translate these things into some kind of value. They are such unique objects. What usually happens with this type of object is that they are recovered sooner or later, because there are very few people who are prepared to handle them. We have high hopes of getting them back.” Maria Ellior, from the Swedish police’s national operations department, told Sweden’s TT news agency the items would be impossible to sell. Catharina Fröjd, who works at Strängnäs Cathedral, called the theft “an enormous loss in cultural value and economic value”. In 2013, a crown and sceptre used in the funeral of Sweden’s 16th-century King Johan III were stolen from Västerås, another city on the shore of Lake Mälaren. They turned up a few days later in two large rubbish bags at the side of a highway after a tip-off to police. The perpetrators of Tuesday’s heist risk up to six years in prison for aggravated theft. ||||| The Swedish royal family is no doubt glamorous, and so is the crime that left them—and their subjects—short two priceless historical crowns and a royal orb. On July 30, in broad daylight, two thieves jumped into a speedboat moored below the Strängnäs Cathedral in southeastern Sweden and escaped with these 17th-century accessories. “One of my friends saw two people running,” says Tom Rowsell, who called police after witnessing the escape, reports the Daily Mail. “I saw the boat just there, a white little boat with a motor on the back. The two men hurriedly jumped on board. I knew immediately they were burglars because of the way they were behaving..the fact that the boat was waiting, it was obvious to me that they were burglars.” Swedish police press release/with permission The stolen items. Police pursued the perpetrators by land, sea, and air—in boats, planes, helicopters, and cars heading in all directions—to no avail. Authorities say they still have no notion where the thieves disappeared to. “It’s 1-0 to them right now,” police spokesman Thomas Agnevik told reporters. “By boat you can reach Mälaren, Köping or Arboga in the west, or Västerås, Eskilstuna or Stockholm if you drive east.” He said the search continues. Authorities seek observations from any witnesses willing to come forward. “Let the police determine what is interesting information,” advises a press release (in Swedish). They have not put a price on the centuries-old crown jewels. One of the missing crowns belonged to Karl IX, who reigned from 1604-1611, and the other to his wife, Kristina. The royals were buried with the headgear, which was later exhumed and put on public display. The stolen items had been locked in glass boxes and were on view to the public when the audacious heist occurred in the open church, where staff were working. No one was physically injured during the crime, though the pride of the royals and people was perhaps slightly bruised. “This is part of the national cultural heritage—this is a theft from Swedish society,” Christofer Lundgren, dean of the cathedral, told reporters. As mastermind heists go, though, there’s a key missing piece even if the thieves continue to elude police. A great getaway is exciting but the criminals have to offload their loot to make the crime worth the time and risk—anyone who’s seen a heist movie knows this. But that seems difficult to do with the Swedish royal family’s crown jewels. ||||| Swedish police said Tuesday they were hunting for suspects who broke into Strängnäs Cathedral and stole two crowns and an orb, a symbol of royal authority. The theft took place around lunchtime Tuesday, while the 13th century cathedral was open to visitors. The two men smashed the protective cases, grabbed the loot, and fled towards the shore of a nearby lake. "I saw a white little boat and the men jumped in the boat and sped away," a witness told the Swedish daily Aftonbladet. In a press statement, police said they then launched a manhunt by land, sea and air but by the evening had not been able to catch the robbers. Police spokesman Thomas Agnevik refrained from describing them as professional thieves, saying it was possible that they had left traces at the scene. "The score is 1-0 for them right now, but we don't know what it would be like tomorrow," Agnevik said. Read more: Swedish monarchy 'aren't special at all,' says author One of the stolen crowns belonged to Queen Christina, the second wife of King Charles IX of Sweden The stolen items, made of gold, pearls and other precious materials, once belonged to Charles IX and his wife Christina, who ruled Sweden in the 17th century. They were buried in the cathedral which is located some 58 kilometers (37 miles) west of the capital Stockholm. Talking to Sydsvenskan newspaper, church dean Christofer Lundgren said the items were insured, but stressed that the cultural value of the treasures is bigger than their material value. "These are items that are completely unique, well-known ... in Sweden and probably even internationally," he said. ||||| Image copyright Alamy Image caption The stolen jewels belonged to the Swedish monarchs who lived in the early 1600s Police in Sweden have launched a manhunt after thieves swiped some of the country's crown jewels from a cathedral and escaped by speedboat. Two priceless crowns and an orb belonging to a 17th Century king and queen were taken at around midday on Tuesday in Strängnäs, near Stockholm. Witnesses said they saw two men running from the cathedral, which was open to the public and hosting a lunch fair. They were seen motoring off into Lake Malaren, and have not been seen since. Police have launched a huge search operation, but currently have no suspects. "It's 1-0 to them right now," police spokesperson Thomas Agnevik told Swedish media. "It is not possible to put an economic value on this, it is invaluable items of national interest." The royal jewels are adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls, and come from the 1611 funeral regalia of Sweden's Charles IX and Kristina the Elder. A witness, who is getting married in the Strängnäs Cathedral next week, told local news channel Aftonbladet he contacted the police. "I knew immediately they were burglars because of the way they were behaving," Tom Rowell said. "It's despicable that people would steal from a holy building and a historical building." Mr Agnevik said that the crown jewels would have been kept in locked and alarmed glass displays that the thieves would have had to break into. No one was hurt during the burglary but church staff were shaken, local media reported. Timeline: More major jewel heists February 2003 - Robbers steal jewels, then worth €100m (now $117m; £89m), from the Antwerp Diamond Centre in Belgium February 2005 - An armed gang disguised as airport workers hijack a lorry carrying €75m ($88m; £67m) of diamonds and other jewels at Amsterdam airport December 2008 - A group of men steal over €85m ($99m; £76m) of watches and jewels in two Paris heists - one in 2007 and the other a year later August 2009 - Armed men take jewellery worth £40m ($61m; €45m) in a raid on the Graff Diamonds shop in central London July 2013 - An armed man takes jewels worth about €40m ($47m; £36m) from a hotel jewellery exhibition in the French Riviera resort of Cannes April 2015 - A group of men - mostly in their 60s and 70s - drill into a safety deposit vault in London's Hatton Garden, taking £13.7m ($18m;€15.4m) in gold, cash and gems ||||| The two crowns – worn by King Charles IX and his wife Queen Christina – as well as an orb and cross were stolen from a display cabinet in Strängnäs Cathedral on Tuesday. The thieves escaped on a boat moored in the nearby lake Mälaren and have not yet been traced. Officers worked throughout the night but it “did not result in any significant breakthroughs in the form of suspects or detentions,” police explained on Wednesday morning, appealing to the public for any information they may have. READ ALSO: Thieves steal 1600s Swedish royal crowns from cathedral The theft will now be registered in Interpol's system in an effort to make the objects impossible to sell. “Images are being shown in the media. It's simply not possible to sell these kind of items. So you can only wonder what their intentions are, and how much they know about these crowns," Maria Ellior from the Swedish Police National Operations Department (Noa) told news agency TT. Registering the theft with Interpol means "even international police will be on their toes," she added, noting that the theft was likely well planned. Charles IX's crown is made of gold and decorated with jewels, silver and pearls, while the queen's is also made of gold. Queen Christina's crown. Photo: Strängnäs domkyroförsamling/TT The theft took place while the cathedral was open for visitors, and the robbers had already fled in their boat by the time police arrived at the scene, Aftonbladet reports. If caught they face up to six years in prison. In 2013, a crown and sceptre used in the funeral of Sweden's King Johan III were stolen from Västerås. They subsequently turned up in two large rubbish bags at the side of a highway following a tip-off to police. READ ALSO: Swedish royal regalia found in rubbish bags

– It was a daring daytime heist involving crown jewels, a cathedral, a speedboat, and little in the way of clues, at least so far. "It's 1-0 to them right now," the BBC quotes police rep Thomas Agnevik as saying about the men behind the theft of some of Sweden's royal jewels. They were taken Tuesday from Strängnäs Cathedral, in the town of the same name near Stockholm. Police say two crowns made of gold, pearls, and jewels and an orb that were part of the 17th-century funeral regalia of Sweden's Charles IX and Kristina the Elder were lifted around noon, with witnesses describing two men fleeing and then taking off in a speedboat on Lake Malaren. The Guardian reports that's the country's third largest lake and sits "a couple hundred meters" from the cathedral. "It's simply not possible to sell these kind of items. So you can only wonder what their intentions are, and how much they know about these crowns," a rep with the Swedish Police National Operations Department says, per the Local. Agnevik echoes that: "What usually happens with this type of object is that they are recovered sooner or later, because there are very few people who are prepared to handle such items. We have high hopes of getting them back." King Charles IX died in 1611; his wife died in 1625. The two are buried in the cathedral, per Deutsche Welle, and Quartz adds that they were interred wearing the crowns, which were later exhumed and displayed in the glass cases broken by the thieves. (An arrest was made earlier this year in England's biggest burglary ever.)

The discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor buried under a medieval Georgian village provides a vivid picture of early evolution and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than some believe, scientists say. This 2005 photo provided by the journal Science shows a pre-human skull found in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi, Georgia. The discovery of the estimated 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human... (Associated Press) This 2005 photo provided by the journal Science shows a 1.8 million-year-old pre-human skull found in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi, Georgia. It's the most complete ancient hominid skull... (Associated Press) This photo provided by the journal Science shows an aerial view of the Dmanisi excavation site, situated below a medieval Georgian village, where an estimated 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor... (Associated Press) In this photo taken Oct. 2, 2013, ancient skulls and jaws of pre-human ancestors are displayed at the Georgia National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia. The discovery of an estimated 1.8-million-year-old skull... (Associated Press) In this photo taken Oct. 2, 2013, in Tbilisi, Georgia, David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum, holds a 1.8 million-year-old pre-human skull and jaw found in 2005 in the ground at... (Associated Press) In this photo taken Oct. 2, 2013, in Tbilisi, Georgia, David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum, holds a pre-human skull found in 2005 in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi,... (Associated Press) In this photo taken Oct. 2, 2013, David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum, displays the ancient skull and jaws of a pre-human ancestor at the National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia,... (Associated Press) This photo taken Oct. 2, 2013, in Tbilisi, Georgia, shows a pre-human skull, that was found in 2005 in the ground at the medieval village Dmanisi, Georgia. The discovery of the 1.8 million-year-old human... (Associated Press) The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. With other partial remains previously found at the rural site, it gives researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The skull and other remains offer a glimpse of a population of pre-humans of various sizes living at the same time _ something that scientists had not seen before for such an ancient era. This diversity bolsters one of two competing theories about the way our early ancestors evolved, spreading out more like a tree than a bush. Nearly all of the previous pre-human discoveries have been fragmented bones, scattered over time and locations _ like a smattering of random tweets of our evolutionary history. The findings at Dmanisi are more complete, weaving more of a short story. Before the site was found, the movement from Africa was put at about 1 million years ago. When examined with the earlier Georgian finds, the skull "shows that this special immigration out of Africa happened much earlier than we thought and a much more primitive group did it," said study lead author David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum. "This is important to understanding human evolution." For years, some scientists have said humans evolved from only one or two species, much like a tree branches out from a trunk, while others say the process was more like a bush with several offshoots that went nowhere. Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as Africa. However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but are considered to be the same species. So, they reason, it's likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species. To see how a species can vary, just look in the mirror, they said. "Danny DeVito, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal are the same species," Lordkipanidze said. The adult male skull found wasn't from our species, Homo sapiens. It was from an ancestral species _ in the same genus or class called Homo _ that led to modern humans. Scientists say the Dmanisi population is likely an early part of our long-lived primary ancestral species, Homo erectus. Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, wasn't part of the study but praised it as "the first good evidence of what these expanding hominids looked like and what they were doing." Fred Spoor at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, a competitor and proponent of a busy family tree with many species disagreed with the study's overall conclusion, but he lauded the Georgia skull discovery as critical and even beautiful. "It really shows the process of evolution in action," he said. Spoor said it seems to have captured a crucial point in the evolutionary process where our ancestors transitioned from Homo habilis to Homo erectus _ although the study authors said that depiction is going a bit too far. The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later _ on Lordkipanidze's 42nd birthday _ they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, putting it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne. It matched the jaw perfectly. They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said. The skull was from an adult male just shy of 5 feet (1.5 meters) with a massive jaw and big teeth, but a small brain, implying limited thinking capability, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich. It also seems to be the point where legs are getting longer, for walking upright, and smaller hips, she said. "This is a strange combination of features that we didn't know before in early Homo," Ponce de Leon said. ___ Borenstein reported from Washington. ___ Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears ||||| The discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull has offered evidence that humanity's early ancestors emerged from Africa as a single adventurous species, not several species as believed, drastically simplifying the story of human evolution, an international research team said Thursday. The skull—the most complete of its kind ever discovered—is "a really extraordinary find," said paleoanthropologist Marcia Ponce de Leon at the... ||||| Fossil Find Points To A Streamlined Human Lineage Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Georgian National Museum Courtesy of Georgian National Museum Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of J.H. Matternes Courtesy of J.H. Matternes Fossils of human ancestors are rare. You could pile all the ones that scientists have found in the back of a pickup truck. But a remarkable site in Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, has produced a rich group of bones dating back almost 2 million years — and the discovery is shaking the family tree of human evolution. The fossil hunters found the cache of bones more than a decade ago in a place called Dmanisi, but kept most of the find under wraps. Now, they've lifted the veil, revealing the fossilized remains of five creatures who lived 1.8 million years ago. William Jungers, a professor of anatomy at Stony Brook University who was not involved in the research, is impressed, particularly with the skull of one adult male. "That skull is incredible," he says. "It's got to be one of the most complete skulls ever discovered in the fossil record of human evolution." Having bones from five different skeletons is amazing, too. Team member Marcia Ponce de Leon, a senior researcher at the Anthropological Institute in Switzerland, says that is unique this far back in time. "For the first time, we can see a population. We only had individuals before," she says, referring to the isolated bones of individuals found in Africa from the early Pleistocene — about 2 million years ago. Having a "population" to examine meant the scientists could look for similarities in the bones that would help characterize what this entire species was like. What puzzled them, though, were the big differences they found in the bones — a lot of variation from individual to individual, and an unusual mosaic of features in some. One adult male, for example, seemed to have almost a grab bag of features — a small brain case, big protruding jaw, and giant teeth. The Dmanisi Five looked like a mix of species. But Ponce de Leon's colleague, Christoph Zollikofer, notes that all five apparently died within centuries of each other in the same place. They had to be the same species, he concluded. "We are pretty sure that the variation that we see is ... within a species," Zollikofer says, "a single evolving lineage." Finding a human ancestral species with a lot of physical variety from one individual to the next poses another puzzle. The conventional wisdom about early human evolution has it that there were several species that arose in Africa: Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and maybe even more. Now this new discovery suggests that a single species, exemplified by the Dmanisi Five, can have more physical variety than previously thought. In fact, the team found as much variation among modern humans and among chimps and among the Dmanisi Five as there is among those ancient African fossils that have long been thought to be different species. And that might mean, Zollikofer says, that there weren't numerous early human species. Maybe there was just one. "You know, I think there are going to be people who won't like this," says Jungers. Those people have argued that there were lots of sibling species of early humans that popped up independently in Africa, Asia and Europe, only to die out. They were stages or experiments in human evolution, according to that strain of thought. But the new research suggests a different narrative. "There may have been one very successful species that emerges from Africa," Junger says, "and rapidly spreads to Southeast Asia. That's a picture of a very successful, cosmopolitan species." It's different from the notion, held by many, of a wide range of early-human-like forms that emerged independently, and eventually were culled until only one was left standing. Like most new ideas about human evolution, this one has skeptics. Brian Richmond, an anthropologist at George Washington University, says the technique used in this new research glosses over the true amount of variation among those earliest African fossils. "It doesn't get at the more fine-grained aspects of anatomy that actually distinguish species from one another," Richmond says. "It's a bit like using a telescope when in this case they need a magnifying glass." Others say if you look more at individual traits, like the ridges on teeth or the shape of certain bones, rather than a gestalt of the whole organism, you'll find enough differences to justify splitting those early Africans into separate species. Still, Richmond says the discovery, published in the current issue of the journal Science, is a treasure of new data for scientists to ponder ... and argue about.

– Many scientists have argued that several different species of human ancestors spread from Africa—but a 1.8 million-year-old skull and the fossilized remains of four other creatures seem to tell a different story. The scientists who found the bones at Dmanisi, in the country of Georgia, in 2005 say they show that a single species fanned out from the continent, the Wall Street Journal reports. "There are these jaw-dropping moments in the life of a scientist," says a neurobiologist who examined "Skull #5," as it's called. "Preconceived ideas ... start falling to pieces." The crux of the finding: Scientists have for years debated whether humans evolved from only one or two species (think tree branches out from a trunk) or many off-shoots that dead-ended (think a bush). This find bolsters the tree theory. The bones found in Georgia show a great deal of variation, but the pre-humans are believed to have died in the same place, within a few centuries of each other. So the researchers believe they are members of the same species, and reason that it's likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations of one species. Even aside from the tale it tells, the skull is a pretty impressive discovery. "It's got to be one of the most complete skulls ever discovered in the fossil record of human evolution," an anatomy professor tells NPR. And as the oldest batch of pre-human fossils found outside Africa, the bones set the date of departure from Africa "much earlier" than previously believed, David Lordkipanidze, the lead author of the study published in Science, tells the AP. (Previously, that movement was thought to have happened 1 million years ago.) With the Dmanisi finds, "For the first time, we can see a population. We only had individuals before," says another researcher.

Two years ago, when we first wrote about the availability of President Obama's old two-bedroom apartment at 142 West 109th Street, it was going for $1,900 a month. Now the apartment is up for grabs again, but for $2,400. Ugh, rent in New York — are we right? We're right. Anyway, price boost or not, the opportunity to live in the apartment that Obama once called home is going to appeal to a lot of New Yorkers. For one thing, you could jokingly refer to it as the "presidential suite" when you show it to people for the first time. That has to be worth about $2 a month right there. ||||| A seemingly ordinary two-bedroom apartment available to rent at 142 West 109th Street actually has a special past: President Obama lived there in 1981 during his junior year at Columbia University. "It’s a dinner conversation," an agent from Citi Habitats tells the Times. Not only that — it's history. Can you really put a price on cooking pasta in the same kitchen nook where Obama cooked, squeezing past your roommate in the same narrow hallway where Obama squeezed, or staring at the alleyway across the street where Obama slept his first night in the city when he couldn't get into the apartment, or for that matter, the hydrant where he supposedly washed up the next morning with a homeless man? Actually, yes, you can. The price is $1,900. And it would be exactly the same whether the president used to live there or not, a Citi Habitats rep tells us. [Citi Habitats]

– Barack Obama's old New York apartment needs new tenants. For $2,400 a month, you can live like—well, if not a king, then at least a future president. The two-bedroom Upper West Side abode was last available two years ago, Daily Intel notes, for just $1,900 a month. Obama lived there in 1981, as a junior at Columbia. Interesting tidbit: He reportedly couldn't get in during his first night, so he slept on the street and washed at a fire hydrant with a homeless man. See the listing and photos here.

Prince Harry gave a speech earlier today, where he praised his South Pole challengers [PA] West, who suffered frost bite to one cheek during the expedition in often atrocious conditions of heavier than expected snow, 50mph winds and -50C temperatures, added: "Harry also massively helped me out when I was struggling with my skis at first. He was a great guy." He also told how the Prince joined in some exuberant celebrations when they reached the South Pole on December 13. Two Australians stripped naked, while Harry and the others sipped Champagne from bottles wedged in one of the artificial limbs of Duncan Slater, a Sergeant in the RAF regiment injured in Afghanistan in 2009. "Two of the Aussie guys stripped naked and ran round the pole but most of us, Harry included, just went on a two-day bender with the Icelandic truck drivers who had brought some lethal home brew with them," West said. The young prince emphasised the importance of supporting injured personnel [PA] "There was a lot of liqueur drunk.We all drank champagne out of Duncan's favourite prosthetic legs." Asked what was Harry's greatest talent, he replied: "Well he told some eye-wateringly rude jokes which for a non-soldier like me was pretty shocking." Sgt Slater, 34, from Diss, Norfolk, said Harry was brilliant at keeping up the morale of the 12 wounded service personnel and the support workers by arranging cricket games in the snow or competitions to build the most elaborate latrines. "It was always him who was instigating it. There were so many wind-ups," he said. "He would kind of spread himself quite thinly to be honest. He would spend time with each team member. He would make sure he mixed with everyone." Sgt Slater, who insisted his injuries paled into insignificance compared to the difficulties of blind American team member Ivan Castro, will join the British team of three men and one woman, Major Kate Philp, in running the London Marathon on April 13. He spoke highly of the challengers and said they were an inspiration to others [PA] "For some the journey may be more of a challenge and it falls to all of us to help them where we can, be that in training, employment, sport or even adventure." Prince Harry Harry, who is patron of the marathon as well as Walking With The Wounded, will not compete but is expected to present the medals. The young prince spoke out about the brave challengers, who spent almost two weeks pulling sleds across the frozen wastes of Antarctica to reach the South Pole, and used his speech to both praise the wounded and to emphasise the importance of supporting all personnel returning home from war. "These injured men and women are not seeking pity," he said. "They just simply want to be treated in the same way that they were before they were injured." Harry, who last week announced he is leaving his role as an Apache helicopter pilot to begin a new job with the army based in London, added: "For some the journey may be more of a challenge and it falls to all of us to help them where we can, be that in training, employment, sport or even adventure. The royal reunited with his team members in London today [SPLASH] "So if anybody out there has the ability or resources to give these guys and girls a stepping stone back into employment then please do, you certainly won't regret it." During the trek, which saw them face extreme weather conditions every day, Harry said: "Every single person who takes part in this challenge is extraordinary. "The fact these guys have made it to this point is extraordinary and I count myself incredibly lucky to be part of it." Before the speech the fourth-in-line to the throne was reunited with his British team-mates including Duncan Slater, Ibrar Ali, Kate Philp, Guy Disney, guide Conrad Dickinson and mentor Richard Eyre. Meanwhile, Harry has praised fellow South Pole adventurers Ben Saunders and Tarka L'Herpiniere, who are currently on their way back home from the same challenge that Captain Scott took on back in 1912. The pair received their royal message on January 17, the day Captain Scott and his party reached the South Pole in 1912 - an anniversary they commemorated while on the ice. ||||| Prince Harry kept up morale on his trek to the South Pole by telling “filthy” jokes and building elaborate castle-style latrines, one of his fellow adventurers has revealed. The Prince also celebrated reaching the bottom of the world by drinking champagne out of a prosthetic leg belonging to one of the wounded servicemen on his team - while others danced naked around the Pole. Harry’s antics were disclosed by the actor Dominic West, who was the celebrity patron of one of three teams competing to reach the Pole first on the trek to raise money for the charity Walking With the Wounded. He said: “It was cool having Harry there because he was very much part of the team. He seemed to specialise in building the latrines and he built these incredibly elaborate ones. “He did one with castellated sides and a flag pole, a loo roll holder, and you’re sitting there thinking ‘this is a real royal flush’. He must have spent about 40 minutes making it. “I remember thinking that he did art A-level and you can tell he is artistic.” A clean shaven Prince Harry attends press conference for the Walking With The Wounded charity (REX FEATURES/PA) The three teams, representing Britain, the US and the Commonwealth, had to dig latrine pits at each overnight stop during their journey, with a wall of snow around it to keep out the wind while people used it. They reached the pole on Dec 13 after pulling sleds all the way to the pole with their supplies on them. West, who was part of Team Commonwealth, said the Prince also told “eye-wateringly rude jokes, which for a non-soldier like me was quite shocking”. He added: “He was very kind to me - when I was having trouble with the skis he helped me out and I thought what a nice guy.” The three teams were initially competing to get to the Pole first, but when the Antarctic weather made conditions worse than expected they joined forces to make sure they all got to their goal safely. West said: “When we got to the Pole a couple of the guys stripped naked and ran round the Pole. It was a sunny day with no wind so it was safe to do that. “The Icelandic truck drivers who were driving the support vehicles had saved some booze for us to celebrate, so we had a bit of a binge, we were drinking champagne out of one of the team’s prosthetic leg.” West said he had suffered mild frostbite on one cheek and other team members had been frostbitten on their fingers and ears, though none had needed surgery when they got home. Prince Harry, 29, who has now shaved off the beard he grew during the trek, returned home in time for Christmas. Harry said: “The conditions were a lot tougher than we necessarily could have expected. The wind and the storms proved horrendous. However, video doesn’t lie and Team UK did win. We did. Those are the facts. “To the Australian contingent if you’re watching - sorry. “On a serious note, inspiring others is one of the of the cornerstones of this charity, to demonstrate to those who have experienced life-changing injuries that everything is still possible. I hope this truly unbelievable achievement will remind everybody that they can achieve anything they want to. “Our wounded, injured and sick do not want pity, they simply want to be treated in the same way that they were before they were injured, with respect and admiration. “For some the journey may be more of a challenge and it falls to all of us to help them in any way we can.” The Prince trekked to the Pole with four injured service veterans, including amputees. One of his team, Sgt Duncan Slater, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009, described using one of his legs as an ice bucket for the champagne the team drank to celebrate. He said: "We pulled back from the Pole about 20km to wait for our flight and someone produced some champagne. I used my legs as a primitive ice bucket and wedged the champagne bottle in there and passed them around." He said the Prince had been "absolutely brilliant", adding: "If we had a bit of spare time it would always be, right, we're going to have a game of cricket, or we're going to make a latrine but it's going to be like a castle, and it would always be him that was instigating it. He just fitted right in." ||||| Plus, He Shaved Dominic West lifts lid on South Pole celebrations Prince Harry celebrated reaching the South Pole with a "two-day bender" and the teams took turns drinking champagne out of one of his fellow trekkers prosthetic leg as part of their celebrations, the actor Dominic West said today at a high-spirited press conference to mark the success of the mission. Mr. West was appearing with Prince Harry at a press conference about the Walking With The Wounded expedition which saw a group of wounded veterans trek through freezing temperatures and hostile conditions to the South Pole. The only bad news? Prince Harry had shaved. Yup, the beard is officially no more. Prince Harry joked that the British team had won, but decided to 'hand the trophy back' although in fact the race element of the walk was abandoned due to the terrible conditions which risked injury. Mr West told reporters that Harry developed a reputation for building complex latrines. AP; Rex He said: "He would often reach the meeting point before the rest of his men and would build these incredibly lavish, castellated latrines, with battlements and loo roll holders. It must have taken him 40 minutes at least to build, they were just fabulous. I would often sit on the latrine thinking, 'This is a royal flush in every way!'" Mr. West also revealed that two members of the Australian team stripped naked and ran around the point that marks the South Pole when they arrived, but said the rest of them just "went on a two-day bender." Mr. West added, "We all drank champagne out of Duncan Slater's favourite prosthetic legs." Sgt Duncan Slater, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009, confirmed the unlikely story and described using one of his legs as an ice bucket for the champagne the team drank to celebrate. He said: "We pulled back from the Pole about 20km to wait for our flight and someone produced some champagne. I used my legs as a primitive ice bucket and wedged the champagne bottle in there and passed them around." He said the Prince had been "absolutely brilliant", adding: "If we had a bit of spare time it would always be, right, we're going to have a game of cricket, or we're going to make a latrine but it's going to be like a castle, and it would always be him that was instigating it. He just fitted right in."

– Prince Harry trekked to the South Pole last month, and he celebrated exactly as you'd expect: by going on "a two-day bender" with some Icelandic truck drivers and drinking champagne out of a prosthetic limb. That according to actor Dominic West, who was on the expedition with the prince and spoke about the experience today, the Express reports. There were wounded veterans along, and upon reaching the destination, "there was a lot of liquor drunk" including the champagne out of one of those veterans' artificial legs, West said. The veteran in question confirms the story and says it was his idea to use the prosthetic "as a primitive ice bucket," the Daily Beast reports, citing the Telegraph. Upon reaching the pole, "two of the Aussie guys stripped naked and ran round the pole but most of us, Harry included, just went on a two-day bender with the Icelandic truck drivers who had brought some lethal home brew with them," West says. Harry also "told some eye-wateringly rude jokes." One of the veterans adds that, for some reason, Harry liked to build complicated latrines; West calls him "the king of the royal flush."

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas judge resigned Monday after new allegations surfaced that he used his authority for the last 30 years to sexually prey on young men charged with crimes who needed financial help or who were afraid of losing their children or jobs. Part-time Cross County District Judge Joe Boeckmann resigned after a state judicial commission presented him with new allegations, including one case when a man said he was taken to a courtroom, told to strip naked and photographed in handcuffs. Allegations were made public last year that Boeckmann had engaged in inappropriate sexual relationships including photographing and paddling defendants in exchange for lighter sentences. Documents detailing the new allegations were provided to The Associated Press by the commission under an open records request. "He's a criminal predator who used his judicial power to feed his corrupt desires. Every minute he served as a judge was an insult to the Arkansas Judiciary," said David Sachar, executive director of the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, which had been investigating to determine if the judge should be sanctioned or kicked off the bench. The former judge has not been charged with a crime. Sachar said Monday that he turned parts of the information over to the Arkansas State Police, a special state prosecutor and federal authorities. He said since part of the allegations stretched to when Boeckmann was a private attorney and a deputy prosecutor, the commission will contact the Arkansas Judiciary's Committee on Professional Conduct to investigate— including allegations from at least one witness that Boeckmann tried to pay him not to speak with investigators. Boeckmann had previously denied the allegations against him. But in his resignation letter dated Monday, he agreed never to work in public service again. "I further promise to never seek employment as a local, county or state employee or public servant in the State of Arkansas." he wrote. Jeff Rosenzweig, Boeckmann's attorney, said he will not make any further comments. The documents show that investigators found thousands of photos on Boeckmann's home computers of naked and semi-naked men, many of whom were identified by the commission as former defendants whose cases had gone before Boeckmann both as a judge and as a deputy prosecutor. Sachar wrote in a May 3 letter that Boeckmann still had the opportunity to resign before those allegations were added to the complaint. Sachar also wrote that the commission planned to file a subpoena asking Boeckmann to turn over a paddle used to spank several of the young men and seen in many of the photographs. Sachar said investigators also found hundreds of checks written from the judge's personal and professional accounts paying defense attorneys and court fines for defendants. He said the commission is considering whether to turn those records over to the Internal Revenue Service or the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. The panel alleges Boeckmann showed preferential treatment to white men and allowed sentencing not recorded on court dockets, including performing the task of picking up trash at his home. He's accused of coercing some of the men into sexual acts ranging from spanking to masturbating on camera in return for paying their attorney fees or forgiving their fines. One man, whose name was withheld, said Boeckmann handled his case involving a child custody allegation. The man told the commission that Boeckmann drove him to the Cross County Courthouse, took him into a courtroom and told him to strip naked. The judge then handcuffed him and took pictures of him naked in various positions, the man said. The commission launched a more than yearlong investigation after an Arkansas Department of Human Services investigator lodged a complaint that the judge had not recused himself from a case involving a woman who is related to a man with whom Boeckmann allegedly had a long-term intimate relationship. The commission previously admonished Boeckmann for not recusing himself from hearing cases involving people he had a personal relationship with. The Arkansas Supreme Court appointed a special judge in November to hear Boeckmann's cases in the Wynne division of Cross County, about 100 miles northeast of Arkansas, during the investigation. ||||| A Cross County judge accused by a state panel of abuse of authority and engaging in sexual relationships with male defendants has resigned from his post, effective immediately. In a statement Monday, the state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission announced the resignation of part-time District Judge Joseph Boeckmann Jr. of Wynne, marking the end of the panel's investigation. “I further promise to never seek employment as a local, county or state employee or public servant in the State of Arkansas,” his resignation letter read. Boeckmann sent the letter to the commission’s executive director, David Sachar, about 10:57 a.m. Monday morning. That letter, which did not include a detailed explanation behind his departure, was also copied to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Had Boeckmann not resigned Monday, Sachar said, the commission would have filed an amended complaint to include more specific conduct and additional alleged victims. Among the additional evidence the commission said it had recently obtained were images of young men, many naked, “in various poses inside the judge’s home and outside in his yard.” About 1,050 photos had been taken from the judge's computer, and the panel anticipated "receiving in excess of 3,400 more photographs very soon," Sachar wrote in a letter dated Friday to the judge’s attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig. “We identified many of the young men as those that your client [Boeckmann] had in front of him as defendants in Cross County District Court," Sachar said. Sachar called the discovery "a turning point" in the investigation. Friday's letter to Rosenzweig included an opportunity for Boeckmann to resign after the latest accusations, providing a response deadline of noon Monday. “The lengthy, detailed analysis of some of the evidence that came out last week made a difference," he said. "I also think there’s certain witnesses out there that came forward that were key.” The commission's executive director said his office received a call Friday from Rosenzweig indicating that a letter dated Monday would be sent. In November, the commission filed its initial complaint, which included allegations that the judge had broken 14 judicial ethics rules by offering young white men lenient rulings in court if they agreed to perform sexual favors. Boeckmann, represented by Rosenzweig, denied the allegations in December. The commission added allegations in January that included the judge asking a teenager about being “paddled” and offering a defendant $300 if he posed nude, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously reported. At least 12 alleged victims had been named, Sachar said, estimating that there were "several dozen more, if not 100 or more." As part of its case, the state panel also filed a motion for evidence of past conduct, with the commission concluding that there was a pattern of alleged misconduct dating back to the 1970s. No criminal charges have been filed against Boeckmann, and Sachar declined to comment on the possibility of such charges at a later date. He added that the commission's findings have been turned over to prosecutors for review. An attempt to reach Rosenzweig for comment on behalf of the judge was not successful Monday afternoon. Read Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

– Arkansas Judge Joe Boeckmann was a sexual predator who cared a lot more about paddling young white men than he did about justice, according to investigators, whose evidence includes thousands of photos of nude defendants. Boeckmann, under investigation since last year amid accusations that he exchanged leniency for sexual favors, stepped down on Monday after the state's Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission informed him that it was in the process of recovering up to 4,500 images from his computers showing "young men, many naked who are in various poses inside the judge's home and outside in his yard," NBC News reports. "There are numerous photos of naked young men bending over after an apparent paddling," says the letter, which warns Boeckmann not to dispose of the paddle. Investigators say Boeckmann preyed upon men who fearing losing their jobs or custody of their children, telling them they could perform "community service." Women and minority suspects, meanwhile, were yelled at and received harsher sentences in his courtroom, according to allegations released last year. Commission chief David Sachar says 12 victims have been named but there could be up to 100 from the last 30 years, ArkansasOnline reports. Boeckmann, a part-time judge in Cross County, is "a criminal predator who used his judicial power to feed his corrupt desires," Sachar tells the AP. "Every minute he served as a judge was an insult to the Arkansas Judiciary." In his resignation letter, Boeckmann, who is still being investigated by state and federal authorities, promised to never seek public office again.

Fox News' Greta Van Susteren received an email from a viewer, "Brian," saying that her "brain is empty." Naturally, she started a poll on her blog: "Who is dumber? Greta, or Brian." Guess who's winning. Van Susteren, the network's resident weird Scientologist, is an experienced blogger who knows that the best way to deal with personal slights is to blog about them extensively. So when she received an insulting email from viewer "Brian" of "Tahlequah, OK," she posted it without hesitation: Greta, You got that right, you have a mind like a seive. Your brain is empty. Matter of fact, it is so empty, if you put a pea in your skull it would rattle around like a BB in a boxcar. You said it, gal, not me, but I sure do agree with you. A true blonde. Brian *** Tahlequah, OK PS How do you get that cush job, anyway? What Greta seems to have forgotten is that while the internet is a great place to air grievances, it is not a great place to find personal validation. In fact, it is the actual worst place to find personal validation. Especially in poll form: Can you guess how this is going for Greta? If you have been on the internet before, even for five minutes, you may have a clue. Obviously, as a professional blogger, I took the poll very seriously and weighed the evidence carefully: On the one hand, "Brian" doesn't know how to spell the word "sieve." On the other hand, Greta actually made a poll asking if she was dumber than a guy who wrote her an email. I voted for Greta, in the hopes that they will replace her. I look forward to On the Record with Brian from Tahlequah. [GretaWire via LurkinMerkin; pic via AP] ||||| Greta Van Susteren | May 24, 2010 10:55 PM (Why does Brian watch if he thinks I am so stupid? How stupid is that???? And yes, I removed his last name from the email.) Greta, You got that right, you have a mind like a seive. Your brain is empty. Matter of fact, it is so empty, if you put a pea in your skull it would rattle around like a BB in a boxcar. You said it, gal, not me, but I sure do agree with you. A true blonde. Brian *** Tahlequah, OK PS How do you get that cush job, anyway?

– Ask the Internet a stupid question, it’ll give you a stupid answer. Greta Van Susteren got an angry email from Brian in Tahlequah, Okla., complaining that her “brain is empty” and she has “a mind like a seive,” and decided to post it on her blog. She then took it a step further and posted a poll asking who’s dumber—her, or Brian for watching someone he thinks is dumb?—and you can probably figure out who’s “winning.” Max Read “took the poll very seriously and weighed the evidence carefully,” he writes on Gawker. “On the one hand, ‘Brian’ doesn't know how to spell the word ‘sieve.’ On the other hand, Greta actually made a poll asking if she was dumber than a guy who wrote her an email.” He went with Greta—who is, at the moment, leading with 63% of the vote.

Supreme Court Turns Away Billionaire Who Wanted To Turn People Away From Calif. Beach Enlarge this image toggle caption Marcin Wichary/flickr Marcin Wichary/flickr The Supreme Court has refused to take up a billionaire's appeal of a lower court ruling that forced him to maintain public access to surfers and others who visit Martins Beach, a scenic spot near Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. The case had been shaping up to be a showdown over California's Coastal Act, with possible ramifications for other states with laws to preserve public access to beaches. Advocates for public access are hailing the court's decision to decline the case as a victory. The Supreme Court declined the case on Monday, the first day of its new session. A legal fight over the beach had been brewing since 2008, when Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, bought Martins Beach for some $37 million. Within a year, his management companies had begun locking a gate at the property; it then shut down a parking lot where members of the public had been able to pay a fee to reach the beach. The abrupt change angered surfers and other locals and drew a lawsuit from the Surfrider Foundation, which said Khosla shouldn't be allowed to privatize a beach that people had used regularly for decades. A California court ruled against Khosla in 2014; in August 2017, a California appeals court backed that decision, ordering Khosla — a venture capitalist who has invested in solar power, biofuels and clean energy — to reopen the beach. "Today's decision is a significant win for beach access rights across the nation," said attorney Eric Buescher, part of the legal team representing Surfrider Foundation. In a statement released by the group, he added, "By declining to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the owner's attempt to purchase a public resource." To prepare for a potential Supreme Court showdown, Khosla had hired well-known attorney Paul Clement, a veteran of dozens of cases at the high court, including the challenge to the Obama health care overhaul. But the justices declined to take the case on Monday, ending a lengthy process that included the initial appeal, a response by Surfrider, a counterresponse by Khosla's lawyers and numerous briefs filed by interested parties. Those exchanges had fed speculation that the Supreme Court would take the case. But the two sides also disagreed on whether the case was "ripe" for the Supreme Court's review at all. In its filing, Surfrider said the case wasn't ripe, because "the property owner has not applied for a permit to gain the relief they seek." In reply, Khosla's legal team said their case revolved around private property rights, writing, "There is simply nothing unripe about having the government in your backyard or strangers on your property." With the Supreme Court declining to take the case, the road to the beach must remain open to the public. Khosla still has the option of pursuing a Coastal Development Permit to change the status of the area along the beach. ||||| His chances were slim — of the thousands of appeals filed each year, only about 100 are granted review. But he hired a seasoned Supreme Court lawyer with a record of overcoming the odds and presenting arguments before the nation’s top justices. And with conservative interpretations of property rights gaining prominence and President Trump’s appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch — and possibly another conservative appointment on the way — legal experts had said that having the right lawyer and a well-crafted argument could have been enough to capture the attention of the justices.

– The public can continue to visit a billionaire's private beach in Northern California—as long as they pony up $10 for parking. That's the upshot of the Supreme Court's decision Monday not to take up the strange saga of Martin's Beach, owned by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla. One reason the saga is strange? Khosla has been fighting in court for a decade to keep the public out, but he has said that victory would have left him "depressed." Details and developments: The land: In 2008, Khosla bought the coastline property encompassing the beach and about 50 cottages, reports NPR. The previous owner allowed people access to the beach through a private road for a $10 fee, but Khosla opted to put up a locked gate. Why? "The costs of keeping the beach, the parking lot, and other facilities in operable and safe condition significantly exceeded the fees the business generated," he said in legal filings. The lawsuit: A group called the Surfrider Foundation sued, saying Khosla couldn't legally block access to the beach under the the state's landmark Coastal Act of 1976, which declares that everyone has a right to beach access, reports the Los Angeles Times.

As such, there are plenty of people disappointed in the 27-year-old, and Rosie O'Donnell is one of them . On April 13, O'Donnell expressed that disappointment via Twitter, calling Lohan's show a "tragedy." The Lindsay show is a tragedy - on every level - I hope one day she gets sober for real and watches these episodes - n sees what we all do It's not the first time Lohan and O'Donnell, who claims to have given up alcohol in 2009 after her son told her she was drinking too much, have butted heads. In 2012, O'Donnell made some negative remarks regarding Lohan's portrayal of Elizabeth Taylor in the Lifetime movie "Liz & Dick," and the "Mean Girls" star responded: "It’s funny that someone you don’t know at all can say something so intrusive and so knowing," she told Access Hollywood. ||||| Just four days before telling David Letterman she was clean and sober, Lindsay Lohan was reportedly drunk as a skunk at a viewing party for her sobriety-focused reality show. On April 6, the troubled actress, 27, decided to watch her self-titled OWN show with a group of friends — and alcoholic beverages — at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel. PHOTOS: Meet The Parents! Hollywood’s Best & Worst Moms And Dads “Lindsay was laughing at herself and having drinks,” an eyewitness tells Star magazine in the latest issue. “When she stepped inside the elevator, she reeked of booze and could barely stand!” And the star — who recently admitted to relapsing on her show — didn’t seem too worried about covering up her boozy behavior. “She was walking in a zigzag, and everyone in the lobby was staring,” adds the insider. “She was definitely not sober.” PHOTOS: Celebs Who Have Been In Rehab Indeed, by all indications the party is still in full swing for sobriety-challenged Lohan: the six-time rehab alum was reportedly caught with drinks in hand during the Coachella Film Festival in Indio, California on April 12 as well. For more on Lohan’s boozy viewing party, pick up the latest issue of Star, on stands Thursday! ||||| Lindsay Lohan has never been open about her boozing problems, hiding them from the world until she’s forced to admit what happened and RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned that she’s treating the latest incident of her drinking the same way – by completing ignoring the fact. “Lindsay is in denial this time,” a source close to the Mean Girls actress told Radar. “She hasn’t spoken about her drinking at Coachella with anyone close to her, not family or friends. She is just avoiding the situation entirely.” PHOTOS: Lindsay Lohan Through The Years Lohan, 27, was reportedly drinking vodka at the California desert music festival but the source said she’s not admitting that she did consume the booze. “Lindsay is only talking about going to the gym and working out. And going on The View,” the source said. “Those close to Lindsay have learned not to accuse her of drinking or doing anything other than staying sober. She WILL admit when she’s done something wrong but she’s not ready to this time.” PHOTOS: How Lo Can She Go? Lindsay Lohan’s 25 Most Outrageous Secrets & Scandals As viewers saw on her OWN reality show, Lohan is loathe to talk about her problems, shutting her life coach A.J. Johnson out after she brought up a drink the actress had. “It was so blatant on the show that she was drinking but no one would talk about it,” the source told Radar. “Michael [her sober coach] would’t say it, Matt [her assistant] wouldn’t say it, only A.J. would. PHOTOS: Meet The Parents! Hollywood’s Best & Worst Moms And Dads “In the past when she was on the straight and narrow she was on time and always show up on time, but then when she was off the wagon she was late and tardy for production,” the source recalled. And now that Lohan is booking jobs, the source said her actions are raising tough questions for those around her. “Why is she doing this? Why is she risking what she has going on now? She has a disease and time will tell if she can beat it.” ||||| EXCLUSIVE: Oprah pulls plug on second season for Lindsay Lohan's reality show - but no one has told her yet! Lindsay Lohan's OWN network reality TV show will not be renewed, but no one's told her yet! The OWN network honcho Oprah Winfrey, 60, has called time on the show after poor ratings. So far only her head TV network executives know, while Lindsay has been kept guessing if she will return. The part reality show/ documentary turned into a 'meltdown' rather than a comeback series. Scroll down for video Out on her a**: Lindsay Lohan had a chance at a second series of her OWN reality/documentary show, but ratings were poor and she has been accused of failing to promote it properly Gone: A source told MailOnline that Oprah grew tired of hearing about Lindsay and her private life in other media outlets Insiders say Oprah is livid with Lindsay, 27, for her behavior on the shows and for leaks of trashy stories about the show and her rumored sex list. Oprah also feels that Lindsay could've done more to publicize the show in the right way. Ratings for the prime time episodes were low. The premiere attracted less than 700,000 viewers - a third less than they hoped for. Bosses at the network originally commissioned the show for a one off run, but had given the star options for further follow ups if it was a success. 'Oprah will tell Lindsay later this month that her show won't be reappearing for in the future,' an insider divulged. ' First and foremost, the ratings were an absolute disaster. It didn't pull in the viewers that Oprah had hoped for. Off the wagon: Reports from Coachella at the weekend claimed she has failed to stay sober. Oprah is said to be very displeased at her off-screen 'trashy' antics 'Also, Oprah grew tired of hearing about Lindsay and her private life in other media outlets. It became a little worrying when stories about her private life appeared in magazines, while Lindsay never talked about anything like that on the show. 'Leaked stories from those around her also generated what many felt was trashy publicity, which didn't really improve her image or send out a message that her star was on the rise. ' A story about Lindsay's supposed sex list story left many with a bad feelings too. Lindsay did very little publicity for the show either. Oprah kind of expected that, but it would've been nice if Lindsay went some chat shows to talk about the reality show. 'Oprah has cut her losses and said there will be no second season for Lindsay.' The source continued: 'OWN saw the Lindsay show as a possible long term hit series. And Oprah was hoping that it would chart her time from coming out of rehab to making it back into the A list movie ranks. 'In reality the series has simply showed that Lindsay is a long way from returning to Hollywood. And her attitude towards the advice and help Oprah gave her seemed to be ignored in the main. 'O n paper this show had huge potential, but in practice it has been a poor show.' This weekend Lindsay Lohan went out partying at the Coachella Music festival. 'Far from Hollywood': OWN had hoped that they could follow the transformation of Lindsay back to stardom. But these days she has to accept cameos, like above in CBS' 2 Broke Girls Oprah didn't send out any of her camera crews to follow Lindsay's antics. Had they gone, they may have scored some interesting footage. Reports say that 'sober' Lindsay started drinking again during her partying after the music shows. The one time Disney Starlet now faces an uncertain future. She has not attracted a leading role in a major successful movie for almost a decade. Instead, she has been forced to take less high profile jobs. Most recently, she has taken on a cameo as a difficult bride in the hit CBS series, 2 Broke Girls. And critics have been harsh on comeback performances in Liz And Dick and The Canyons.

– We'd tell you to take this news with a grain of salt, seeing as it comes from the Daily Mail ... but let's be honest, we all saw this coming: Sources tell the British tabloid Oprah Winfrey is furious with the way Lindsay Lohan's reality show on the OWN network has turned out, and has decided not to renew it for a second season. The problems are many, but the most interesting (and predictable) one is that Winfrey thinks the show, which was meant to show Lohan's comeback, has instead documented her continuing "meltdown." Not only has Lohan behaved badly on the series itself, but she's made Oprah's network look bad by continuing to go out and party, resulting in "trashy" stories about her appearing in the media. Plus, ratings have been dismal, with fewer than 700,000 tuning in for the premiere. "Oprah will tell Lindsay later this month that her show won't be reappearing," says one insider, though LiLo is for now clueless about her show's future (unless she happens to Google herself today). Just this week, Rosie O'Donnell called the reality show "a tragedy ... on every level," the Huffington Post reports. We'd have to agree, considering LiLo was reportedly even drunk at a viewing party for the show.

"A true hero, Mohammed Nabbous of Sawt Libia al-Hurra, the Voice of Free Libya, was killed in fighting in Benghazi today." It was a stark, raw tweet from Ben Wedeman with a big impact on our newsroom Saturday morning. One of our first and most-trusted sources of information on the conflict in Libya had become a victim of the very civil war he in some ways had helped to spark. In the first few days of the conflict back in February, "Mo" as we called him had become an inspiration, friend and "go-to" source as well as a regular witness on CNN's shows. Of course, you wouldn't know that from watching. We blurred his face and gave him code-names like "Benghazi Protester" in order to protect him and his young family. It was a struggle to keep him from blurting out his name and even phone number on air, sometimes, as Mohammed said that he wanted freedom for Libya, or to be martyred trying to achieve it. "I am not afraid to die, I am afraid to lose the battle," the young, western-educated software engineer would tell us when we asked him to keep his identity secret. Libya before the fighting started was one of those very few "black holes" on the world's map for us: like North Korea or Syria, it was a country where the regimes iron grip on information was so strong and the secret police so brutal and pervasive that the risk of contacting people was simply not justified for putting peoples lives at risk by staying in regular communication. When that all began to crumble beginning on February 17th and Libyans in the country's east began to rise up, we had to develop webs of witnesses from scrap. But one quickly became our most savvy source: a 27-year-old technology expert and former internet provider in Benghazi. Mohammed and other supporters had set up a kind of protest command center in the city's courthouse after ejecting Ghadhafi's forces in the first days of fighting. That's where we first contacted him on February 18th - a guy who looked more Silicon Valley in a hooded sweatshirt and big headphones than a partisan in a Libyan war zone. Amazingly, Mohammed had beaten the regimes firewalls and jerry-rigged a live signal from the building. The camera showed the few hundred protesters huddled outside against the walls due to the cold and whipping winds - worried that Gadhafi's forces could swoop in at any moment. It was our first view of the protests there, and we were worried that all this would be traced back and used to target the band of students and young people defying the Gadhafi regime. At first Mo just wanted to get that picture to us, as he felt that it provided a thin blanket of security. He thought Ghadhafi might hold back if he knew that ordering the army or his feared African mercenaries to slaughter the protesters would be seen on live television around the globe. Mohammed pushed the technical know-how limits of our engineers and desk editors such as Yousuf Basil, Jack Maddox, Ben Brumfield and myself as he came up with elaborate ways to get more and more cameras going around the courthouse. But it wasn't until we started interviewing him on air that we realized how special he was. Mohammed poignantly told us about how the army had shot into the crowds, then using armored vehicles to roll over protesters after they had run out of ammunition, and how the demonstrators would not give up. After the first two days he told us with his live stream and webcasts he had become some sort of leader. "People have been calling my mobile non-stop. I woke up today with 125 missed calls. People have been calling and checking on me to see if I am safe. One person called from Serbia just to say they are thinking of me and my struggle." Chillingly, the newly married man with his first baby just a month from being born told us he believed the government knew who he was and there would be a price to be paid for his boldness. "I would love to wake up tomorrow and people not be dead. But I know 200 people will be dead," he told one of our desk editors, Mitra Mobasherat. "Libyans lives to Gaddafi are very cheap." Our correspondents in the field eventually caught up with Mohammed as CNN teams like Ben Wedeman and Mary Rogers led the push to get into the rebel territory, with Arwa Damon featuring him in one gripping package. Later, as the rebel lines advanced toward Tripoli, we were in contact with him less often, but he expanded his presence and contact with the rest of the world. Along with his supporters he developed social media sites like Feb17.info, set up an independent internet TV signal "Libya al-Hurrah" and conducted interviews with dozens of broadcasters. And as the conflict surged back toward Benghazi in recent days he began to go out into the field to interview people about the dangers and loss they were suffering from the ongoing struggle. That's what he was doing Friday when he was fatally shot. Reports are still sketchy, but his wife and supporters say he was killed by a headshot from a sniper while going out to videotape rocket attacks on one neighborhood where he heard several children had been killed. He phoned in one last report that morning to al-Hurrah, with the sounds of heavy machine gun fire rattling and artillery exploding around him. Then, nothing else until Ben's tweet, and the following announcement he had been killed after the fighting. On Feb17.info was one final favorite quote of Mohammed Nabbous: "A Candle loses nothing by lighting another Candle." ||||| Mohammed “Mo” Nabbous (Screengrab) A bittersweet update to the story of killed Libyan journalist Mohammed “Mo” Nabbous. The citizen journalist stated a Livestream news channel to capture the life of war-torn Libya. While investigating a report of wounded children, he was shot and killed by sniper fire, and the sounds of his death were caught on camera. He was survived by a pregnant wife Perdita Nabbous, who recorded an emotional message announcing his death, encouraging others to keep up the fight against the government. His favorite quote, Elizabeth Flock wrote in March shortly after his death, was, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” On YouTube on Wednesday, Perdita Nabbous posted a tribute to her dead husband by introducing their child to the world. Maya Mohamed Nabbous is shown in all the adorableness of a newborn, sleeping peacefully on a Libyan flag. “This is dedicated to the loving father who never got to see his first and only baby,” the post reads.

– A Libyan citizen journalist and CNN contributor who started his own Livestream news channel was killed by a sniper while reporting—but his legacy lives on, thanks to a tribute from his wife and baby daughter. Perdita Nabbous, who was pregnant when Mohammed “Mo” Nabbous died, posted a video of their daughter yesterday, the Washington Post reports. “This is dedicated to the loving father who never got to see his first and only baby,” Perdita writes.

Play Facebook Twitter Embed Did Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Abdulazeez have help? 2:15 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday authorized members of the Wisconsin National Guard to carry weapons on duty, making his state at least the seventh to take that step after the attack on two military facilities in Tennessee last week. “Allowing our National Guard members to carry weapons while on duty gives them the tools they need to serve and protect our citizens as well as themselves,” Walker, a Republican and presidential candidate, said in a statement. The governors of Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, all Republicans, have already announced plans to arm Guardsmen. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez killed four Marines and a sailor last week when he opened fire on a military recruiting station and a Navy and Marines reserve center in Chattanooga. Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee has ordered a review of the weapons rules at military facilities in his state. The federal military has ordered increased security at recruiting stations and reserve centers. Those measures have not been spelled out, but two defense officials told NBC News on Monday that they will not include arming recruiters. The Army chief of staff told reporters after the Chattanooga attack that there would be legal problems with taking such a step, and that it would also raise the rise of accidental shootings. ||||| Bryan Thaboua kneels with his 8-month-old son, Cooper Thaboua, on Monday in front of the Lee Highway memorial for last Thursday's Chattanooga, Tenn., shooting victims. Credit: Dan Henry / Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP SHARE By of the Gov. Scott Walker issued an executive order Tuesday allowing Wisconsin National Guard members to carry weapons while they are on duty. The move came less than a week after a gunman in Chattanooga, Tenn., opened fire on a military recruiting center, then drove to a Navy operations support center and launched a second attack, killing four Marines and a sailor. "Safety must be our top priority, especially in light of the horrific attack in Chattanooga," Walker said in a written statement. "Allowing our National Guard members to carry weapons while on duty gives them the tools they need to serve and protect our citizens, as well as themselves. I am also directing Adjutant General Donald Dunbar to evaluate longer-term plans to ensure the safety of our service members." Walker joins governors in six other states, including Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, in calling for National Guard members to be armed. The Wisconsin Army and Air National Guard has about 10,000 members. Dunbar immediately ordered that armed National Guard security forces be posted at the guard's four storefront recruiting centers in La Crosse, Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee, spokesman Maj. Paul Rickert said. Walker's executive order calls on arming "certain Wisconsin National Guard personnel as reasonably necessary to preserve the lives, property, and security of themselves and other persons subject to the threat of an attack" like last week's shooting. It did not specifically say which — or how many — National Guard members in the state would be armed as a result of the order. Rickert said, "The Wisconsin National Guard leadership are currently reviewing the security measures we have in place." The hope is that the move will prevent a similar attack, said John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States. "What I believe everybody is concerned about is some kind of copycat," Goheen said. "The knowledge that some guardsmen are armed may provide some deterrence." He said it's not yet clear whether the Chattanooga gunman was a lone wolf or motivated by a group. "Unfortunately, military in this country are to some degree targets," Goheen said. ||||| The Army National Guard (ARNG) is one of the seven reserve components of the United States armed forces. It is also the organized militia of 54 separate entities: the 50 states, the territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Administered by the National Guard Bureau (a joint bureau of the departments of the Army and Air Force), the ARNG has both a federal and state mission. The dual mission, a provision of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Code of laws, results in each Soldier holding membership in both the National Guard of his or her state and in the U.S. Army.

– Wisconsin is joining six other states in arming on-duty National Guard members after last week's deadly Chattanooga shootings. "Allowing our National Guard members to carry weapons while on duty gives them the tools they need to serve and protect our citizens as well as themselves," Republican Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement today, per NBC News. The Republican governors of Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas had already made similar announcements in the wake of the shootings. It’s not yet clear how many or which of the Wisconsin Army National Guard force, made up of about 7,700 members, would be armed, with a spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States saying "certainly" not all of them, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "What I believe everybody is concerned about is some kind of copycat," the spokesman tells the paper. "The knowledge that some guardsmen are armed may provide some deterrence." (The Chattanooga shooter's family says he suffered from depression.)

Just One More Thing... We have sent you a verification email. Please check your email and click on the link to activate your PalmBeachPost.com profile. If you do not receive the verification message within a few minutes of signing up, please check your Spam or Junk folder. Close ||||| FILE - In this March 20, 2017, file photo, golfer Tiger Woods prepares to sign copies of his new book at a book signing in New York. Police say golf great Tiger Woods has been arrested on a DUI charge... (Associated Press) FILE - In this March 20, 2017, file photo, golfer Tiger Woods prepares to sign copies of his new book at a book signing in New York. Police say golf great Tiger Woods has been arrested on a DUI charge in Florida. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office says on its website that Woods was booked into... (Associated Press) JUPITER, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on Tiger Woods' arrest in Florida on suspicion of driving under the influence (all times local): 10:30 a.m. Police say Tiger Woods was asleep at the wheel but had no alcohol in his system when officers spotted his car stopped along a Florida road. An affidavit released Tuesday said Woods was alone and wearing his seat belt when Jupiter Police officers found his Mercedes early Monday in the right lane. The car's engine was running and its lights were on. The report says officers woke Woods, who had "extremely slow and slurred speech" and told them he took several prescriptions. According to the report, Woods was confused and asked how far he was from his Hobe Sound home. Officers said Woods was cooperative but failed a roadside sobriety test. Breath tests showed no alcohol in his system, and Woods also agreed to a urine test. Woods' arraignment in Palm Beach County court on a DUI charge is scheduled for July 5.

– Tiger Woods said his DUI didn't involve alcohol, and now police are backing that up, saying the golfer had none in his system at the time of his arrest, reports the AP. Woods has blamed a bad reaction to prescription drugs, and something was clearly wrong: Officers found the 41-year-old asleep at the wheel with his car stopped in the right lane of a road in Jupiter, Fla., early Monday, per a newly released affidavit. The Mercedes' engine was running, but its brake lights were on and the right blinker was flashing, reports the Palm Beach Post. When officers woke Woods, who still had his seatbelt on, he had "extremely slow and slurred speech." Officers say Woods was cooperative but confused, and he couldn't stand on his own. When they inquired whether he understood their instructions to recite the alphabet backward, he responded, "Yes, recite entire national anthem backward." Woods failed his roadside sobriety test, but breath tests showed no sign of alcohol. He also agreed to a urine test, the results of which haven't yet been made public. Woods, who was taken into custody but released on his own recognizance a few hours later, will be arraigned on his DUI charge in July.

NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WKBW) - A suspect is under arrest, accused of torching the home of a North Tonawanda firefighter. Matthew Jurado, a former firefighter and neighbor of Kenneth Walker, was taken into custody Thursday night. Walker and his family are homeless after flames tore through his apartment in North Tonawanda Wednesday afternoon. However, police say the 39-year-old has not admitted to sending a racist note that was delivered to Walker's home on Monday. The typed letter repeatedly called Walker the "n-word" and demanded he resign from the fire department. "I'm not going to be intimidated," Walker said. "I'm not at this point going to resign from doing my job. I'm going to take a long hard look at the situation and see what's best for my family and the end result may be to resign or transfer to a different company, but as of now I'm going to stand fast and see what happens." "That was everything that we owned and we pretty much have to start all over," he said. "We have two young kids and trying to explain to our 4-year-old that we have to move and go to a different house it's going to be a change for her, for us." The Walkers spent time Wednesday picking up the pieces, taking things that were still salvageable from the home. The community has been coming out to donate food, clothing and money. A Go Fund Me Account has already raised thousands of dollars. The FBI released the following statement to 7 Eyewitness News: "The FBI has received a copy of the note left at Mr. Walker’s residence and we were notified of the fire that occurred there today. Our office is conducting a review to determine what investigative steps are indicated under FBI policy with regard to federal jurisdiction in this matter." "I've been in the department 26 years, and we've never had any issues whatsoever remotely close to this situation. So, it's extremely surprising," said North Tonawanda Fire Chief Joseph Sikora when asked about the letter. Walker is still with the department. He told 7 Eyewitness News he isn't going to let the threat change how he lives his life. Jurado will be arraigned Friday morning in North Tonawanda court. ||||| Please donate to help out North Tonawanda firefighter Ken walker in this hard time. For those that don't know Ken received a letter in the mail threatening to leave the fire service or he will regret it. This morning his house caught on fire. I'm a fellow firefighter from a neighboring company that is trying to help someone who is in need of help. From one firefighter to another. From one human to another human. It is amazing to have to raise the goal again! The Walker family appreciates all of the generosity! New goal is now 130k!!Thank you again for all the donations! Help spread the word! Share Tweet 13k shares on Facebook shares on Facebook ||||| In just 24 hours, the North Tonawanda Police Dept. captured a man accused of starting a fire that made national headlines. But who is Matthew Jurado? Right now, he’s accused of being an arsonist–one who targeted a black volunteer firefighter because of his race. Jurado, who has confessed to the arson, said he did not write the racist, threatening letter. He also said the arson was not racially motivated but stemmed instead from his anger about being blackballed from Gratwick Hose Volunteer Fire Co. after being thrown out of Live Hose Co., another NT fire department on Vandevoort Street. One former fellow fireman, who asked not to be named, said Jurado was a “troublemaker” who gave younger volunteers “a hard time.” Though Jurado has not been a member of any fire company for some time, it clearly makes up a large part of his identity: roughly every photo he posted on Facebook had something to do with firefighting fires or firetrucks. His profile photo shows him suited up in full firefighter gear standing inside yellow fire line tape. Other posts say “Firefighting is life,” “100 percent firefighter” and “I fight what you fear.” The rare exceptions are photos of his family, and one shot of him camping with a cub scout troop. From Jurado's Facebook page Jurado is pictured atop the firetruck Photo from Jurado's Facebook page photo credit: Facebook From Jurado's Facebook page Photo from Jurado's Facebook page Post on Jurado's Facebook page Photo from Jurado's Facebook page Facebook Comments

– Buffalo police have a suspect in custody in the arson of a black firefighter's apartment—and he's no stranger. Police say former firefighter Matthew Jurado, 39, who lives across the street from Kenneth Walker, has been charged with second-degree arson after he admitted to starting the blaze on Wednesday, reportedly in the family's living room, reports Buffalo News. Jurado, however, denied writing a racist, threatening letter Walker received days earlier. He instead gave police the name of a person he said had written it. Walker's uncle describes the development as "mindboggling" because his nephew trained with Jurado. "Kenneth kind of thought of him as a friend." Walker's wife says Jurado actually helped her husband join North Tonawanda's Gratwick Hose Volunteer Fire Co. However, the North Tonawanda Times reports Jurado was "blackballed" by the company after he was fired from Live Hose Company in July, apparently because he lacked the right training. Jurado—whose Facebook page is filled with references to firefighting—was spotted at the scene of the fire and his girlfriend was the one to call 911, say officials and relatives. "I'm not going to be intimidated," Walker tells WKBW. "I'm not at this point going to resign from doing my job." Some $88,000 has been raised for the family, which lost two cats and all of their belongings.

Michael Jordan's longtime personal residence in suburban Chicago is for sale for $29 million. (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.) ADVERTISEMENT (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.) FILE - This Jan. 8, 2002 aerial file photo shows the home of former Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan. Jordan's longtime personal residence was put on the market Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012, for $29 million.... (Associated Press) The sprawling estate is in Highland Park, along Lake Michigan, and has more than 56,000 square feet of living space. That includes nine bedrooms, 15 baths and five fireplaces. There's also a three-bedroom guesthouse, pool area, outdoor tennis court and three climate-controlled multi-car garages. An indoor basketball complex features a full-size regulation court with specially cushioned hardwood flooring and competition-quality high intensity lighting. It has a sound system set up to provide perfect acoustics within the court space. The property was put on the market Wednesday by Katherine Chez-Malkin of Baird & Warner Real Estate.

– It would make a nice souvenir for any Chicago Bulls fan: Michael Jordan's estate along Lake Michigan in suburban Chicago is up for sale, reports AP. It's got the usual estate specs: 56,000 square feet, nine bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, five fireplaces, plus a few Jordan-esque touches: a regulation-size basketball court with "competition-quality" lighting, and a giant 23 on the estate's gates. All yours for just $29 million. The Wall Street Journal has a video tour here.

Life Expectancy In U.S. Drops For First Time In Decades, Report Finds Enlarge this image Image Source/Getty Images Image Source/Getty Images One of the fundamental ways scientists measure the well-being of a nation is tracking the rate at which its citizens die and how long they can be expected to live. So the news out of the federal government Thursday is disturbing: The overall U.S. death rate has increased for the first time in a decade, according to an analysis of the latest data. And that led to a drop in overall life expectancy for the first time since 1993, particularly among people younger than 65. "This is a big deal," says Philip Morgan, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who was not involved in the new analysis. "There's not a better indicator of well-being than life expectancy," he says. "The fact that it's leveling off in the U.S. is a striking finding." Now, there's a chance that the latest data, from 2015, could be just a one-time blip. In fact, a preliminary analysis from the first two quarters of 2016 suggests that may be the case, says Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the new report. Anderson says government analysts are awaiting more data before reaching any definitive conclusions. "We'll have to see what happens in the second half of 2016," he says. Still, he believes the data from 2015 are worth paying attention to. Over that year, the overall death rate increased from 724.6 per 100,000 people to 733.1 per 100,000. While that's not a lot, it was enough to cause the overall life expectancy to fall slightly. That's only happened a few times in the past 50 years. The dip in 1993, for example, was due to high death rates from AIDS, flu, homicide and accidental deaths that year. On average, the overall life expectancy, for someone born in 2015, fell from 78.9 years to 78.8 years. The life expectancy for the average American man fell two-tenths of a year — from 76.5 to 76.3. For women, it dropped one-tenth — from 81.3 to 81.2 years. "It's remarkable," Morgan says. "There are lots of things about this that are unexpected." Most notably, the overall death rate for Americans increased because mortality from heart disease and stroke increased after declining for years. Deaths were also up from Alzheimer's disease, respiratory disease, kidney disease and diabetes. More Americans also died from unintentional injuries and suicide. In all, the decline was driven by increases in deaths from eight of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. "When you see increases in so many of the leading causes of death, it's difficult to pinpoint one particular cause as the culprit," Anderson says. The obesity epidemic could be playing a role in the increase in deaths from heart disease, strokes, diabetes and possibly Alzheimer's. It could also be that doctors have reached the limit of what they can do to fight heart disease with current treatments. The epidemic of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin abuse is probably fueling the increase in unintentional injuries, Arun Hendi, a demographer at Duke University, wrote in an email. The rise in drug abuse and suicide could be due to economic factors causing despair. "Clearly, that could be related to the economic circumstances that many Americans have experienced in the last eight years, or so, since the recession," says Irma Elo, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever the cause, the trend is concerning, especially when the death rate is continuing to drop and life expectancy is still on the rise in most other industrialized countries. "It's pretty grim," says Anne Case, an economist at Princeton University studying the relationship between economics and health. ||||| 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. ||||| Image copyright SPL Image caption Deaths from dementia saw one of the biggest rises Life expectancy in the United States has declined for the first time in more than two decades. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed a drop for men from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. The preliminary figures show rises in several causes of death, especially heart disease, dementia and accidental infant deaths. Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993. It has improved slightly but steadily in most of the years since World War Two, rising from a little more than 68 years in 1950. It also fell in 1980, after a severe outbreak of flu. Overall life expectancy for men and women is now 78.8 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2014. "This is unusual," lead author Jiaquan Xu, an epidemiologist at the NCHS, told AFP news agency. "2015 is kind of different from every year. It looks like much more death than we have seen in the last few years." The report is based mainly on 2015 death certificates. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Rising obesity, heart disease and diabetes are all concerns How far has life expectancy declined? A decline of 0.1 years in life expectancy means people are dying, on average, a little over a month earlier - or two months earlier for men. To compare it with the two other declines in the past 30 years, the drop from 1992 to 1993 was 0.3 years, and the drop from 1979 to 1980 was 0.2%. What's also worrying some experts is that the trend had been largely flat for the preceding three years, rather than steady increase which has prevailed since the 1970s. What's causing the drop? The figures show a mixture of factors. Death rates have risen for eight out of 10 of the leading causes of death: heart disease (0.9% rise), chronic lower respiratory diseases (2.7% rise), unintentional injuries (6.7% rise), stroke (3% rise), Alzheimer's disease (15.7% rise), diabetes (1.9% rise), kidney disease (1.5% rise) and suicide (2.3% rise). Heart disease is the biggest killer - accounting for more than four times as many deaths as each of the others - so even the relatively small 0.9% rise in the heart disease death rate is a major contributor. Two of the biggest rises were deaths from Alzheimer's disease and also an 11.3% increase in the rate of death for babies under one due to unintentional injuries. Experts point to obesity levels, an ageing population and economic struggles as wider factors. What's behind the rise in accidental infant deaths? "Most of them died from accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed," said Jiaquan Xu. Michael Grosso, medical director at Northwell Health's Huntington Hospital in New York, told AFP that these deaths would include car crashes, falls, suffocation and fires, and were therefore complex to explain. He linked the rise to "social stressors", such as financial pressures and addiction. "The dramatic upswing in the use of opiates and narcotic use across our country is potentially a big factor in driving a phenomenon like accidental injury," he said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the country is "in midst of an opioid overdose epidemic", with a record 28,000 people killed in 2014. No figures are yet available for 2015, though the 6.7% rise in deaths caused by "unintentional injuries" may be partly related. Image copyright AP Image caption A decline in the cancer death rate is one of the few positive trends Is there any good news? The death rate for cancer has gone down 1.7%, which is significant as cancer is the second-biggest cause of death, causing almost as many fatalities as heart disease. But it seems that fast-developing research into cancer treatments, as well as campaigns on public education and early detection, are having an impact. How does the US compare with other countries? The US ranks 28th out of 43 OECD countries, according to 2014 figures - the most recent available. It is just behind the Czech Republic, Chile and Costa Rica, and just above Turkey, Poland and Estonia. The world's highest life expectancy is in Japan, which is well known for the longevity of its elderly citizens. People there live, on average, to 83.7 years, which is followed by Switzerland and Spain on 83.3. The world's lowest life expectancy is in Sierra Leone, at 50.1 years, according to the World Health Organization.

– More than a month was slashed from an average American life in 2015, according to National Center for Health Statistics data. A person born in the US in 2015 can expect to live 78.8 years, compared to 78.9 years in 2014. Life expectancy also fell from 76.5 years to 76.3 for men and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. "This is a big deal," a demographer tells NPR, noting this is the first time US life expectancy has fallen since 1993, which had high death rates from AIDS, flu, murder, and accidents. "There's not a better indicator of well-being than life expectancy," he says. "The fact that it's leveling off in the US is a striking finding." What gives? Well, the overall death rate rose from 724.6 per 100,000 people in a standard population to 733.1 in 2015 as deaths increased from heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide, reports the Los Angeles Times. Deaths from Alzheimer's actually jumped 15.7%, while accidental deaths increased by 6.7%, per the BBC. "When you see increases in so many of the leading causes of death, it's difficult to pinpoint one particular cause as the culprit," says an NCHS rep. Officials suggest obesity is responsible for more heart-related deaths, economic factors responsible for the increase in suicides, and drug overdoses tied to more accidental deaths. But it's too early to determine if 2015 marks the start of a trend. "We'll have to see what happens in the second half of 2016," the rep says. There is some good news: The death rate for cancer fell 1.7%. However, death rates rose 1.6% for white women, 1% for white men, and 0.9% for black men. (Here's why white people are dying earlier.)

After topping out at 1,102 lbs., Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty is leaving the hospital 713 lbs. lighter. El Aty successfully underwent laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy surgery on March 9, and after close to two months in the hospital, she is down to 389 lbs. “The team of doctors at Saifee Hospital has done a fabulous job and her recovery has been unprecedented,” the Save Eman Cause announced in a press release shared with PEOPLE. “She is stable and all parameters are under control. She will continue to need neurological rehabilitation and physiotherapy.” El Aty, who is from Egypt, went to Saifee Hospital in Mumbai for pro-bono surgery thanks to Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala, who responded to pleas for help from El Aty’s sister, Shaimaa on Twitter. After a fundraising effort, El Aty was flown to India on a chartered cargo plane. Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty in December Dr. Muffi Ladawala/Twitter “She came on a chartered cargo plane and goes back as a passenger on a flight in Business Class.” Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty in April Save Eman Cause Before arriving at Saifee Hospital, El Aty had been confined to her bed for the last two decades in deteriorating health, particularly after a stroke two years ago that further impaired her speech and mobility. El Aty is now on her way to the United Arab Emirates, where she’ll continue rehabilitation closer to her family in Egypt. RELATED VIDEO: Watch How Chantel and Allyson Lost Half Their Size! “Eman is an inspiration to millions of critical and obese patients world over that someone as serious as her can get better with expert medical care and advances in medical science,” the Save Eman Cause added. ||||| Doctors and officials from Abu Dhabi visited Eman Ahmed yesterday The tiff between Eman Ahmed's sister, Shaimaa, and doctors at Saifee Hospital worsened on Thursday, with the hospital calling the police on Shaimaa as she tried to feed a few drops of water to Eman, something that is risky for her since her throat is paralysed. Unsupervised feeding could cause the water to go into her lungs. Shaimaa claimed the hospital did not warn her of this, but Saifee insisted it had. Also read: Maharashtra Health Minister criticises Eman Ahmed's sister "On April 11, Dr Muffazal Lakdawala sent me a text message saying that he gave chocolates to Eman and that made her happy. So, when Eman was asking for water today, I gave her a few drops of it. But I didn't know it would lead to so much trouble," Shaimaa told mid-day. Eman Ahmed with her sister Shaimaa at their home in Egypt Guards call on COO When security guards present at her room saw Shaimaa feeding Eman, they quickly informed Huzefa Shehabi, the COO of Saifee Hospital, who then came to her room to speak to Shaimaa. However, she allegedly refused to listen to his pleas. Also read - Mumbai: Now, Eman Ahmed's mother levels shocking allegations against Dr Lakdawala and Saifee Hospital "Eman can't drink water as she could aspirate and the water could go to her lungs. When I requested her not to feed her water, she called me crazy. She became very abusive," said Shehabi. He then wrote about the incident to the Egyptian consulate, asking them to request Shaimaa to follow the doctors' orders, as violation can prove fatal. Then, the hospital security called the police. Cops arrive, and leave "Our police station received calls from the hospital, saying the patient's sister tried to feed her water, which was not permitted by the treating doctors. So, a few of our officers went to the hospital as asked," said Sanjay Kamble, senior officer, VP Road police station. The police came in and asked Shaimaa if Eman could talk, to which she replied in the negative. They left soon after. "If anything happens to Eman while she is staying in India, it would affect the image of the Indian medical fraternity. So, we have to be very careful," said Shehabi. Shaimaa claims Eman used to eat solid food in Egypt. "She could eat solid food in Egypt. Then what happened to her here that she can't even drink water? I wasn't told that she couldn't drink at all," said Shaimaa. Also read - Eman Ahmed's story comes undone: Sister levels shocking allegations against Mumbai surgeon The hospital claims that one police officer might be installed near her room to stop such incidents in future. "The police were saying that they would station one officer in front of her room. But we aren't sure about it," said Shehabi. But Kamble refuted the claim and said, "If a patient's relative doesn't follow the doctor's instructions, then it is the internal problem of the hospital. We can't do anything about it. We can't install any officer inside the hospital. There might have been some misunderstanding." Abu Dhabi it is While the water incident left a bad taste in Shaimaa's mouth, there was a silver lining in the events of Thursday. It has been confirmed that Eman will soon fly to Abu Dhabi for the rest of her treatment. Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, chairman and MD, VPS Healthcare, Dr Shajir Gaffar CEO, Senet Meyer, director of VPS Medical Evac, Dr Vivek Singh, director of VPS Rockland Hospital, Delhi visited Eman yesterday, after which they issued a statement confirming the move. The statement said, "As the treatment here concludes, she is being shifted to Burjeel Hospital in UAE (initially introduced to the family by Dr Lakdawala). Secondary physiotherapy will continue there as it is closer to home for Eman." However, the date of her departure hasn't been fixed yet. "Everything is in process. The date hasn't been finalised yet," said Shaimaa. But this time around, instead of going on a chartered cargo plane, Eman will fly business class. Incidentally, Burjeel is one of the hospitals that came forward to treat Eman a year ago, when they were in Egypt. But Shaimaa had opted for Saifee, as per a friend's suggestion. ||||| Mumbai: The battle between Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty’s sister Shaimaa Selim and Saifee Hospital took an ugly turn on Thursday with the latter sending a written complaint to V.P. Road police station requesting them to restrict the sister from making deliberate attempts to spoil Ms. Ahmed’s health. In their complaint, Saifee Hospital’s chief security officer Rakesh Singh alleged that Ms. Selim has been forcefully attempting to feed the patient through the mouth even when she is at the risk of aspirating food into the airway. Minister visits hospital On Thursday, Health Minister Deepak Sawant visited the hospital to get the real picture. “I saw her reports and met her. I don’t think the doctors have left any scope of complaints,” said Dr. Sawant, adding that the ongoing spar has put doctors in the bad light. “I wanted to see the reality with my own eyes and I feel very disappointed by whatever the patient’s relative has done,” he said. He added that he had conveyed his thoughts to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who had facilitated visas for Ms. Ahmed and her sister so that she could be brought to Mumbai for a bariatric surgery. Ms. Swaraj also took updates on Ms. Ahmed’s health from Dr. Mufazzal Lakdawala and hospital COO Huzaifa Sehabi. Inspiration to millions Ms. Ahmed weighed 500 kg before she was started on treatment by Dr. Lakdawala and his team. She now weighs 176 kg. A statement issued by the doctor on Thursday said, “As the treatment here concludes she is being shifted to Burjeel Hospital (a hospital initially introduced to the family by Dr. Lakdawala) in U.A.E . Secondary physiotherapy will continue over there as it is closer to home for Ms. Ahmed and her family. Ms. Ahmed is an inspiration to millions of critical and obese patients world over that someone as serious as she can get better with expert medical care and advances in medical science.” Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil, managing director of VPS Healthcare that runs Burjeel Hospital, visited her early on Thursday. Ms. Selim said, “I don’t know how much time they will take to shift her. Probably, two more days.” She said no one told her that she is not supposed to feed water to her sister. “I gave her water with wet cotton. What is the problem with that? If there is a problem, no one told me that.” “I am extremely scared now. I am taking care of my sister all alone. These people called the police for such a small issue,” she said, adding Dr. Lakdawala told her that he gave a piece of chocolate a few days ago. “So why would I think that water is not allowed to her?” Hospital unaffected Mr. Sehabi said the entire episode has not affected the functioning of the hospital. “We are carrying out our regular work. We are seeing our patients the same way. All this has not affected us,” he said, adding that the Saifee doctors have managed the most crucial part of her treatment. “Now there is only physiotherapy for her. We were anyway in the process of arranging someone to visit her home in Alexandria before she sent out the video.” Early this week, Ms. Selim had circulated a video stating that her sister’s condition is bad and that everything was done for propaganda. ||||| Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| “Tests Say Eman Ahmed Happens To Be The Only One In The World With This Rare Gene Defect Causing Obesity” The much-awaited gene studies of Ms. Eman Ahmed are finally out, proving to be the cause of her obesity. Ms. Eman Ahmed who currently weighs 340 kgs. has been under the care of a team of super specialists at Saifee Hospital lead by Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala. A high-risk patient with myriad medical conditions, she has recently successfully undergone a Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy surgery at Saifee Hospital. This special gene study for the 91 different types of genes isolated with obesity related syndrome has been carried out gratis on Ms. Eman Ahmed, by CORE Diagnostics Pvt. Ltd. details of which are being shared in view of public interest in the case. The gene identified as the cause of Obesity in Ms Eman Ahmed is a homozygous missense variant c.1055G>A, p.(Cys352Tyr) in the LEPR gene. This variant has been previously detected in one individual in research setting by Personalized Diabetes Medicine Program, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and has been classified as a variant of uncertain significance (VUS). However, in Eman’s case this has assumed pathologic consequences leading to her obesity. Ms. Eman Ahmed happens to be the only one in the world with this gene defect causing obesity. She also has another gene defect SDCCAG8 associated with PHENOTYPE Bardet‐Biedl syndrome, Senior‐ Loken syndrome but we believe that it may not be as significant the cause of obesity in her case as the LEPR Gene. Leptin receptor is involved in the regulation of body weight. The leptin receptor protein is found on the surface of cells in many organs and tissues of the body, including a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus controls hunger and thirst as well as other functions such as sleep, mood, and body temperature. It also regulates the release of many hormones that have functions throughout the body. Mutations in this gene have been associated with an autosomal recessive disorder causing obesity and pituitary dysfunction. Leptin receptor deficiency caused by the LEPR gene mutations leads to a disorder, which is associated with excessive hunger, massive weight gain, and reduced production of hormones that direct sexual development (hypogonadotropic hypogonadism). Mutations result in less receptor protein getting to the cell surface where leptin binding takes place. The receptors that get to the cell surface may bind to leptin, but their signalling function is impaired. The resulting shortage of leptin signalling disrupts normal feelings of hunger and satiety. In a collective statement the Team of Doctors, treating Ms. Eman Ahmed at Saifee Hospital lead by Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala, said “ There is a hormone called leptin which comes from fat tissue and tells the brain when fat stores are being depleted. In this unfortunate person, the docking station in the brain that leptin plugs into seems to be very defective so leptin doesn’t send its signal. Because of this. from early life., this patient’s brain has perceived that she is constantly starving. That has led her to constantly seek food, store it avidly in her body as fat and conserve energy. Unfortunately, there is currently no specific treatment for this condition. The operation that she has had may have some beneficial effects but does not deal with the underlying problem. New drugs are being developed which may be able, at least partially, to "bypass” the signalling block in the brain may have some promise in this situation but it is very early days for these drugs. So if she has access to these drugs and they are effective then we have a solution for her obesity. If not, then she may need a more radical surgery which causes malabsorption a little later in life.” The Doctors consulted for these studies were: Dr. David Cummings, M.D. Professor of Medicine Senior Investigator, Diabetes & Obesity Centre of Excellence University of Washington . Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly MD FRS FMedSci Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine and Director, Metabolic Research Laboratories, University of Cambridge Director, MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit Scientific Director, Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre Hon. Consultant Physician, Addenbrooke’s Hospital Professor Sadaf Farooqi PhD, FRCP, FMedSci Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellow and Professor of Metabolism and Medicine Director, Wellcome-MRC IMS Translational Research Facility Dr. Shehla Shaikh Consultant Endocrinologist Saifee Hospital Mumbai Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala & Team ||||| Twelve out of the 13 doctors treating Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty have withdrawn themselves from her daily treatment as a symbolic resignation after her sister’s allegations that Ms. Ahmed has not lost much weight and her condition has been critical for long. Ms. Eman Ahmed is considered to be the heaviest living woman in the world. The doctors submitted their letters to the Saifee Hospital authorities on Tuesday, stating that Shaaima Selim’s backlash is the worst kind of assault that a patient’s family can do to a doctor. “We will not see her on a daily basis and only go when the patient needs us. Whatever has happened is extremely disappointing,” said bariatric surgeon Dr. Aparna Govil Bhasker, who is one of the doctors in Dr. Mufazzal Lakdawala’s team. “The allegations have stemmed out of the fact that Ms. Selim doesn’t want to take her sister home.” To Ms. Selim’s allegations that doctors are not taking proper care, Dr. Bhasker said she even came on holidays to attend to Ms. Eman Ahmed. “It is very hurtful when she claims that the doctors have not been seeing her.” On Tuesday morning, Ms. Eman Ahmed was finally put into a CT scan machine. Doctors claimed that she weighed 171 kg and therefore could get into the machine that has a capacity of 204 kg. The scan report revealed that she did not have fresh brain ailment. “The scan suggested an old vascular insult in the left middle cerebral territory of her brain. There is no appreciable area of fresh infarct or intracranial haemorrhage,” said Dr. Rajiv Mehta, chief consultant and head of imaging sciences at Saifee Hospital, in a statement. ‘My sister will die’ Ms. Selim claimed that her sister is not in a condition to leave Mumbai. “The doctors want to send her back. But her condition is not good at all. The claims of her weight loss are false and just for the media,” she said, adding that Dr. Lakdawala had said that Ms. Eman Ahmed may lose 50 kg in a year after the surgery. “Now suddenly, he claims that she had lost 300 kg. It is not possible. My sister will die.” The hospital authorities, however, felt that her backlash began after Ms. Eman Ahmed was shifted to the main hospital building’s seventh floor from the specially-constructed ward. Ms. Selim also had a fully-equipped room next to her sister’s. Doctors said shifting her was possible only because she can now fit in a regular bed and also that she could be closer to physiotherapy and occupational therapy rooms. On Tuesday, Egyptian consul general Ahmed Khalil had a meeting with the doctors and Ms. Selim, but could not pacify her. ||||| 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.

– Just a few months ago she was billed as the world's heaviest woman, but doctors in India now say Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty has dropped more than 700 pounds and will be transferred to a hospital in the United Arab Emirates to continue her medical treatment closer to her family, People reports. "A proud moment in Indian Medical History!" reads a statement from the Save Eman Cause Tumblr account, which appears to be updated by the medical staff at Mumbai's Saifee Hospital who've been treating the Egyptian woman. The statement adds that Abd El Aty, who weighed about 1,100 pounds in September before undergoing gastric sleeve surgery in early March, now weighs 389 pounds. "The team of doctors … has done a fabulous job and her recovery has been unprecedented," it reads. That's not quite the story Abd El Aty's sister is telling. Per Al Arabiya, Abd El Aty is really going to the UAE due to a fight between the Indian doctors and Abd El Aty's family, specifically sister Shaimaa Selim. Selim reportedly penned a letter to a UAE hospital noting her sister was in bad shape, having seizures, and in no condition to be moved, per the Hindu. Mid-Day notes Saifee Hospital called the cops Thursday to complain Selim has been trying to give her sister water, which could lead to fluid in her lungs (Selim says she wasn't warned about this; the hospital says she was). Per another Hindu report, 12 of the 13 doctors treating Abd El Aty have stepped away from her treatment to protest Selim, who they say has also accused them of exaggerating Abd El Aty's weight loss. (People were enraged by a cancer survivor's weight-loss story.)

The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| Have you heard the one about the kid who got his mom to call his boss and ask for a raise? Or about the college student who quit her summer internship because it forbade Facebook in the office? Yep, we’re talking about Generation Y — loosely defined as those born between 1982 and 1999 — also known as millennials. Perhaps you know them by their other media-generated nicknames: teacup kids,for their supposed emotional fragility; boomerang kids, who always wind up back home; trophy kids — everyone’s a winner!; the Peter Pan generation, who’ll never grow up. Now this pampered, over-praised, relentlessly self-confident generation (at age 30, I consider myself a sort of older sister to them) is flooding the workplace. They’ll make up 75 percent of the American workforce by 2025 — and they’re trying to change everything. These are the kids, after all, who text their dads from meetings. They think “business casual” includes skinny jeans. And they expect the company president to listen to their “brilliant idea.” When will they adapt? (Michael Byers for The Washington Post) They won’t. Ever. Instead, through their sense of entitlement and inflated self-esteem, they’ll make the modern workplace adapt to them. And we should thank them for it. Because the modern workplace frankly stinks, and the changes wrought by Gen Y will be good for everybody. Few developed countries demand as much from their workers as the United States. Americans spend more time at the office than citizens of most other developed nations. Annually, we work 408 hours more than the Dutch, 374 hours more than the Germans and 311 hours more than the French. We even work 59 hours more than the stereotypically nose-to-the-grindstone Japanese. Though women make up half of the American workforce, the United States is the only country in the developed world without guaranteed paid maternity leave. All this hard work is done for less and less reward. Wages have been stagnant for years, benefits shorn, opportunities for advancement blocked. While the richest Americans get richer, middle-class workers are left to do more with less. Because jobs are scarce and we’re used to a hierarchical workforce, we accept things the way they are. Worse, we’ve taken our overwork as a badge of pride. Who hasn’t flushed with a touch of self-importance when turning down social plans because we’re “too busy with work”? Into this sorry situation strolls the self-esteem generation, printer-fresh diplomas in hand. And they’re not interested in business as usual. The current corporate culture simply doesn’t make sense to much of middle-class Gen Y. Since the cradle, these privileged kids have been offered autonomy, control and choices (“Green pants or blue pants today, sweetie?”). They’ve been encouraged to show their creativity and to take their extracurricular interests seriously. Raised by parents who wanted to be friends with their kids, they’re used to seeing their elders as peers rather than authority figures. When they want something, they’re not afraid to say so. And what the college-educated Gen Y-ers entering the workforce want is engaging, meaningful, flexible work that doesn’t take over their lives. The grim economy and lack of job opportunities don’t seem to be adjusting their expectations downward much, either. According to a recent AP analysis, more than 53 percent of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed, but such numbers don’t appear to keep these new grads from thinking their job owes them something. In a MarchMTV survey of about 500 millennials, called “No Collar Workers,” 81 percent of respondents said they should be able to set their own hours, and 70 percent said they need “me time” on the job (compared with 39 percent of baby boomers). Ninety percent think they deserve their “dream job.” They expect to be listened to when they have an idea, even when they’re the youngest person in the room. “Why do we have to meet in an office cross-country when we can call in remotely via Skype?” asks Megan Broussard, a 25-year-old New Yorker who worked at a large PR firm for three years before quitting to become a freelance writer and career adviser. “Why wouldn’t my opinion matter as much as someone else’s who only has a few more years of experience than I do?” These desires are not exactly radical. Who wouldn’t want flexibility, autonomy and respect? What’s different, says Lindsey Pollak, the author of “Getting From College to Career: Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World,” is how Gen Y-ers are asking for those things. Pollak, a consultant who advises companies on how to deal with Gen Y, says these workers — at least, the well-educated ones who can afford to make demands — want what everyone wants out of a job, they’re just asking for it in a more aggressive way. “And they’re the first ones to leave when they don’t get it,” Pollak says. According to surveys, 50 percent of Gen Y-ers would rather be unemployed than stay in a job they hate. Unlike their child- and mortgage-saddled elders, many can afford to be choosy about their jobs, given their notorious reliance on their parents. After all, they can always move back in with Mom and Dad (40 percent of young people will move home at least once, per Pew research), who are likely to be giving them financial help well into their 20s (41 percent of Gen Y-ers receive financial support from their parents after college, according to research from Ameritrade). In fact, it’s possible that a bad economy can make being choosy even easier — if more people are struggling to find work and living at home, there’s no stigma to it. Nancy Sai, a 25-year-old who works at a nonprofit in Manhattan, spent a year living with her parents and working at a gas station while trying to snag her dream job. Her mom kept bugging her to look for something different — teaching! government! anything! — but Sai held firm. While it took her a year to find the ideal gig, she’s glad she waited. Her job is meaningful, the office environment friendly and welcoming, her bosses forthcoming with feedback. Some of her friends have not been so lucky — one quit her job in politics when her boss refused to give her any time off. “She couldn’t separate her work life from her personal life at all,” Sai says. “She quit without another job lined up. She said she felt the most liberated she had in two years.” Despite the recession, or perhaps because of it, corporations are eager to hire and retain the best, most talented Gen Y workers. “In this risky economic environment, the energy, insight and high-tech know-how of Gen Yers will be essential for all high-performing organizations,” said a 2009 study on Gen Y from Deloitte, the professional services giant. Companies are beginning to heed Gen Y’s demands. Though flextime and job-sharing have been staples of the workforce for a few decades, they are becoming more accepted, even in rigid corporate culture, says Laura Schildkraut, a career counselor specializing in the needs of Gen Y. There has also been a rise in new work policies, such as ROWE, or “results only work environment,” a system in which employees are evaluated on their productivity, not the hours they keep. In a ROWE office, the whole team can take off for a 4 p.m. “Spider-Man” showing if they’ve gotten enough done that day. Radical-sounding perks such as unlimited paid vacation — assuming you’ve finished your pressing projects — are more common among companies concerned with attracting and retaining young talent. By 2010, 1 percent of U.S. companies had adopted this previously unheard-of policy, largely in response to the demands of Generation Y. The Deloitte study warns that, to retain Gen Y-ers, companies “must foster a culture of respect that extends to all employees, regardless of age or level in the organization.” In other words: Treat your Gen Y workers nicely. But we should be treating everyone nicely already, shouldn’t we? Beyond that, Gen Y’s demands may eventually help bring about the family-friendly policies for which working mothers have been leading the fight. Though the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 afforded some protections for working parents, genuine flexibility is still a privilege of the lucky few, and parents who try to leave the office at 5:30 p.m. are often accused of not pulling their weight. Well, guess what? Now everybody wants to leave the office at 5:30. Because they’ve got band practice. Or dinner with their grandma. Or they need to walk their rescue puppy. The American workplace has been transformed during economic upswings and downturns. The weekend was a product of labor union demands during the relative boom of the early 20th century. The Great Depression led to the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act, which introduced the 40-hour workweekand overtime pay to most Americans. But now, workplace change is coming from unadulterated, unorganized worker pushiness. So we could continue to roll our eyes at Gen Y, accuse them of being spoiled and entitled and clueless little brats. We could wish that they’d get taken down a peg by the “school of hard knocks” and learn to accept that this is just the way things are. But if we’re smart, we’ll cheer them on. Be selfish, Gen Y! Be entitled! Demand what you want. Because we want it, too. Emily Matchar is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Salon, Gourmet and Outside, among other publications. She is the author of an upcoming book about “new domesticity.” Read more from Outlook: The new domesticity: Fun, empowering or a step back for American women? Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

– Gen Y millennials have begun arriving in force in the workplace, and given their reputation as self-centered, spoiled brats, this can only be a bad thing, right? Exactly the opposite, writes Emily Matchar in the Washington Post, who at 30 thinks of herself as an "older sister" to millennials. These younger workers are not going to adapt to the workplace as we know it. "Instead, through their sense of entitlement and inflated self-esteem, they’ll make the modern workplace adapt to them," writes Matchar. "And we should thank them for it," because everybody is going to benefit. Go ahead and roll your eyes at them, but it's the rest of us who are the suckers, content to put in too-long hours without complaint and to sacrifice much of our personal lives for the office. Gen Y ain't having it. And considering that they'll make up 75% of the workforce come 2025, business-as-usual is about to change fast. "If we’re smart, we’ll cheer them on," writes Matchar. "Be selfish, Gen Y! Be entitled! Demand what you want. Because we want it, too." Read her full piece here.

AFP Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, being treated for shrapnel wounds in Riyadh, will not return home, a top Saudi official told AFP on Friday, contrary to Sanaa's claims that he will return soon. "The Yemeni president will not return to Yemen," the official said, requesting anonymity. "It has not been decided where he will stay," the official added, apparently suggesting that Saleh might eventually leave Saudi Arabia for another country. The official did not specify whether the decision not to return home was taken by Saleh himself. Advertisement The veteran leader was flown to Riyadh on June 4 on board a Saudi medical aircraft, a day after he was wounded in a bomb explosion at a mosque inside his Sanaa presidential compound. He has not been seen in public since the attack. Reports on the condition of Saleh's health have been sketchy, but Bahrain's King Hamad was reported to have called him on Thursday, two days after Saudi King Abdullah had a phone conversation with him. In Saleh's absence, his deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has been coming under intensive local and international pressure to heed the demands of protesters to set up an interim ruling council, which would prevent Saleh returning to power. On Wednesday, Hadi met representatives of youth protests which have raged since late January demanding the ouster of Saleh. They pressed him to give a clear stance on their demands, and gave him two weeks to respond. The meeting followed talks between Hadi and the parliamentary opposition in which they agreed on calming the situation as a first step towards reviving the political process. Washington on Thursday welcomed Hadi's talks with opponents of Saleh, who was a key US-ally in the war on Al-Qaeda. "We have been encouraged that Vice President Hadi has started some outreach to the opposition and started some dialogue," said US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. "Because, as you know, we believe that there is no time to lose in moving on to the democratic future that Yemen deserves," she added. Protesters had on Monday given Hadi 24 hours to declare his position on their call for him to join the proposed council which they said would lead the country for a maximum of nine months. The activists said the council would "appoint a nationalist and compatible figure to form a government of technocrats." They also called for the dissolution of parliament and Yemen's consultative council, for the formation of a committee to draw up a new constitution, and for dates to hold a referendum on the constitution and for elections. The ruling General People's Congress and government officials have been adamant that Saleh was quickly recovering and that he would return to Yemen soon. Saleh, who has been in power since 1978, has steadfastly refused to endorse a Gulf states proposal for him to transfer power to his deputy and resign in return for parliamentary immunity against prosecution. His presidential term is due to end in 2013. ||||| Anti-government protestors shout slogans during a demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa, Yemen, Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Islamic militants emboldened... (Associated Press) A ruling party official says Yemen's president plans to return home in days after surviving an attack on his palace. President Ali Abdullah Saleh was badly wounded but official Yasser al-Yamani said Friday that the embattled leader plans to return in days. That's despite protesters taking to the streets to keep up the pressure, and international pressure for him to formally hand over power to a transitional government. Yemen's leader of nearly 33 years has held onto power in the face of massive protests demanding his ouster since February. Yemen is home to one of the most active al-Qaida branches, which has been linked to the plot to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner in December 2009.

– Last week's rumors could be coming to pass ... or they could still be rumors: Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not return to his country, an unnamed top Saudi official tells AFP, adding that it is not clear if Saleh, who is being treated for injuries in Riyadh, will stay in Saudi Arabia or settle in another country. But a ruling party official in Yemen today insisted Saleh plans to return home in days, the AP reports. Pressure has been increasing on his deputy, Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, to create an interim ruling council and prevent Saleh's return. On Wednesday, Hadi met with representatives of the protesters demanding Saleh's exit; they gave him two weeks to decide whether or not to oust Saleh. He also opened up talks with the parliamentary opposition, a move the US supported.

All Select the department you want to search in ||||| If you're a rich baron of industry out to impress your beloved with a pricey piece of jewelry, forget Tiffany's. Go to Costco. They're selling a big 'ol 6.77 ct diamond solitaire ring for $1,000,000. And true to form, it's a bargain. The piece has been valued at $1,601,875. The discount club warehouse has been in the high-end diamond ring market for a while, they made their first foray with a yellow diamond ring for $180,000 back in 2005, but $1,000,000 is a heck of a bump up from that price point. Costco will even let you return it if you change your mind, just as long as you haven't damaged, resize, or reset it. However, unlike, two-year-old kiddie pools and lawn hoses, you'll need a receipt. 6.77 ct IF Clarity, D Color Diamond Solitaire Ring [Costco] (Thanks to Megan!)

– Finally, Costco is catering to its multi-millionaire clientele. The discount retailer is now selling a 6.77 ct diamond ring for a million bucks, the Consumerist reports. Costco has sold some high-end diamond jewelry in the past, starting with a $180,000 ring in 2005, but a million is quite the step up, the blog notes. And while it might seem out of place at a store known for bulk-priced groceries, it is a discount; Costco lists the ring’s IGI value at $1,601,875.

(CNN) A judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who claimed he was unfairly kicked out of a New York City bar for wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap. The man, Greg Piatek of Philadelphia, had said he felt "extremely humiliated" after being told to leave The Happiest Hour bar in the city's West Village in January 2017 by a manager who told him anyone who supports Donald Trump is not welcome. But New York State Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen ruled Wednesday that the bar didn't violate the law. "Here the claim that plaintiff was not served and eventually escorted out of the bar because of his perceived support for President Trump is not outrageous conduct," the judge said in his ruling. According to The New York Post, Cohen characterized the incident from the bench as nothing more than a "petty" slight. Piatek had sued the bar and was seeking unspecified damages. The dispute stemmed from a trip Piatek and some friends made to New York to visit the Freedom Tower and the September 11 Memorial and Museum. Piatek wore a red "Make America Great Again" hat which, according to the court documents, "holds significant and symbolic import" to him and "is an essential component of [his] overall personal and spiritual expression." The cap's slogan was popularized in 2015 and 2016 by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who often wore a similar hat on the campaign trail. Afterwards, Piatek's group stopped at the bar, where Piatek said he was intentionally ignored by the bartender due to his hat. Piatek said he was told to remove the cap if he wanted service, and when he refused, he and his friends were thrown out. Piatek alleged in court documents that The Happiest Hour's manager told him, "I spoke directly to the owner and the owner told me that anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here! And you need to leave right now because we won't serve you!" Piatek said he and his friends were thrown out into the cold and he felt "extremely humiliated, degraded, victimized, embarrassed, and emotional distressed." But Jon Neidich, the owner of The Happiest Hour, disputes Piatek's account. In a statement to CNN, he said the bar and its owners "firmly support women's rights, marriage equality, gun control, the environment, and regard for the truth -- we don't discriminate." "What's gotten lost in this story is that the guest wasn't kicked out because he was wearing a Trump hat -- he was asked to leave after being verbally abusive to our staff, which is something we don't tolerate regardless of who you are," Niedich said. Piatek's attorney, Paul Liggieri, said they will review the judge's opinion to see if they want to appeal. "Certainly while we respect the judge's ruling, it will have implication for those that wish to express their creed, especially in New York and within New York City," Liggieri said. "You have to look to the legal definition and the reason why he wore that hat. He didn't wear it specifically to support Trump, the hat doesn't say Trump. He was paying tribute to 9/11 victims. "There are many people (who) think that hat and the sentiment represent more than a political candidate." Neidich also said Piatek spent nearly $200 at the bar and left a 20% tip, something Piatek's attorney disputes. "He was not personally served. It's a mischaracterization of the facts," Liggieri said. "It happens to have been his tab that was opened. His friends at the bar were there and they were served, he wasn't. They had his card (but) he was personally refused service." ||||| Cheers, Trump haters. A Manhattan judge ruled Wednesday that there’s nothing “outrageous” about throwing the president’s supporters out of bars — because the law doesn’t protect against political discrimination. Philadelphia accountant Greg Piatek, 31, was bounced from a West Village watering hole in January 2017, just after Trump took the oath of office, for wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, according to his lawsuit over the incident. “Anyone who supports Trump — or believes in what you believe — is not welcome here! And you need to leave right now because we won’t serve you!” Piatek claims the staff of The Happiest Hour on West 10th Street told him after he and his pals complained about the rude service they were getting from a bartender. So he sued in Manhattan Supreme Court, claiming the incident “offended his sense of being American.” But on Wednesday, when the bar’s lawyer, Elizabeth Conway, pointed out that only religious, and not political, beliefs are protected under state and city discrimination laws, saying, “supporting Trump is not a religion” — Piatek pivoted. “The purpose of the hat is that he wore it because he was visiting the 9/11 Memorial,” his attorney Paul Liggieri told Justice David Cohen in court Wednesday. “He was paying spiritual tribute to the victims of 9/11. The Make American Great Again hat was part of his spiritual belief,” Liggieri claimed. Piatek and his pals had, in fact, visited the memorial before the bar. “Rather than remove his hat, instead he held true to his spiritual belief and was forced from the bar,” Liggieri said. When the judge asked how the bar employees were supposed to be aware of Piatek’s unusual religious beliefs, Liggieri answered, “They were aware he was wearing the hat.” The judge pressed Liggieri on the idea of his client’s professed creed. “How many members are in this spiritual program that your client is engaged in?” the judge asked. “Your honor, we don’t allege the amount of individuals,” Liggieri said. “So, it’s a creed of one?” the judge asked. “Yes, your honor,” Liggieri replied. After nearly an hour of argument the judge took a short break and then returned to the bench with his ruling. “Plaintiff does not state any faith-based principle to which the hat relates,” Cohen said in tossing the case. Piatek had sued for unspecified emotional damages, but the judge said the incident amounted to nothing more than a “petty” slight. “Here the claim that plaintiff was not served and eventually escorted out of the bar because of his perceived support for President Trump is not outrageous conduct,” the judge ruled. Liggieri said he plans to review the decision to determine whether or not to appeal. Related Video 2:08 Trump's biggest supporter is still mad as hell

– A New York bar can apparently toss out a customer for wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap—which Greg Piatek found out the hard way, CNN reports. The Philadelphia man says he went to The Happiest Hour bar in the West Village last January and couldn't get served because of his hat. First a bartender ignored him; then he was told to take it off; and when he wouldn't, he and his friends were kicked out. The bar's owner says Piatek got booted for being "verbally abusive," but Piatek alleges that the bar manager told him, "I spoke directly to the owner and the owner told me that anyone who supports Trump or believes what you believe is not welcome here! And you need to leave right now because we won't serve you!" So Piatek filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court and said the encounter "offended his sense of being American," the New York Post reports. But when the bar's lawyer pointed out in Manhattan court Wednesday that only religious beliefs—not political ones—are protected under city and state law, Piatek lawyer Paul Liggieri said his client was in New York "paying spiritual tribute" at the 9/11 Memorial. "The Make American Great Again hat was part of his spiritual belief," Liggieri said. Liggieri eventually conceded that Piatek's spiritual group had only one member, and the judge dismissed the incident and a "petty" slight. Liggieri says his client may appeal.

stand clear of the closing doors Well-Educated Person Wrongly Accused of Being Loud on Train According to the description of this video taken on a Metro-North train recently, this spat between a passenger and a conductor began after the passenger "was talking too loud on the train when the conductor politely asked her to keep it down and stop using profanity or to take it to the vestibule." Now, there's no way we can really know the full context of this disagreement, or whether or not the conductor's suggestion was warranted. But the passenger does repeatedly point out that she is "a very well-educated person" who has attended good schools, so she is automatically blameless. Nobody who is well-educated has ever talked too loudly. ‘Educated’ Snob Berates Train Conductor for No Good Reason [Gawker] ||||| A woman who was escorted off an Amtrak train by police last weekend after she allegedly refused to stop talking loudly on her cell-phone has the Internet cheering her fate. Civilians and quiet-car champions are supporting her ejection for violating policy at high volume during the 16-hour journey. It doesn't help her cause that she became belligerent when confronted about it by one of her fellow passengers. KOMO News reports that Lakeysha Beard says she felt "disrespected" by the incident, though passengers said it was Beard who was being rude by refusing to stop yapping while sitting in one of the train's designated quiet cars. She had not stopped talking since the train pulled out of Oakland, California, 16 hours before it reached Salem, Oregon, when a passenger confronted her about the talking. That's when Beard got "aggressive," KATU reports, and conductors stopped the train so that police could remove her and charge her with disorderly conduct. Amtrak created quiet cars in 2001 when a group of passengers who rode the Philadelphia to D.C. route every morning asked if they could reserve a car where cell-phone loudmouths weren't welcome. Ever since, the rare havens of quiet have become a battlefield between silence-loving rule-followers and rebellious cell-phone addicts. Gawker suggested, not without a dose of sincerity, that the cops who removed Beard from the train were heroes, and that Beard should be charged with "unspeakable crimes against humanity and sentenced to life on some distant planet where there are no reception bars, ever." According to a very scientific reader poll at The Huffington Post, 77 percent of people were happy the woman was hauled off the train. And CNN personality Anderson Cooper blasted the woman on his "ridiculist" last night, asking "What could someone possibly talk about for 16 hours?" He even compared being stuck on the train with a person who would do such a thing to the "fifth circle of hell." The Internet is full of tales of innocent people's quiet-car journeys being marred by loud passengers who ignore the rules. An Israeli blogger with a PhD in conflict resolution wrote a lengthy post about the best way to get a fellow passenger to shut up without starting World War III. "Always assume the transgressor is ignorant, not arrogant. This way you won't feel wronged and can communicate your message with less contempt and hostility," he suggests. Meanwhile writer Christopher Buckley, a self-described quiet car Nazi, wonders why there would be any confusion as to the correct behavior in that part of the train: "The Quiet Car does not hide its light under a bushel. Prominent and explicit signs hang from the ceiling at five-foot intervals. They declare, unequivocally, that NO CELL PHONES ARE PERMITTED and that conversation must be kept to a minimum and in hushed tones." In a video taken of Beard's removal from the train, she appears to be quietly cooperating with the officers. You can watch, below: (Screenshot of Beard: YouTube.) ||||| Video of an exchange between a college football player from San Francisco who was thrown off an airplane in a dispute over his sagging pants and the pilot shows the young man pleading his case and... Video: Sagging pants debate aboard Flight 488 Video: Sagging pants debate aboard Flight 488 Video of an exchange between a college football player from San Francisco who was thrown off an airplane in a dispute over his sagging pants and the pilot shows the young man pleading his case and insisting that he had pulled up his "pajama pants." Deshon Marman, 20, was arrested on suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest in connection with the incident Wednesday on US Airways Flight 488 at San Francisco International Airport. The Lincoln High School graduate was returning to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque after attending the funeral of his best friend, former city football standout David Henderson, who was fatally wounded in a shooting last month. The Chronicle obtained the three-minute, six-second video from the passenger seated next to Marman. In it, Marman can be heard saying to the pilot and a San Francisco police officer that he had told an airline employee that he would pull his pajama pants up after he was seated. 'I'm ready to go' "My pants are up, sir," Marman said to the pilot, adding, "I paid my fees and I'm ready to go." Marman was seated during the videotaped portion of the exchange, which ended before he was removed from the plane. It is impossible to tell how he was wearing his pants. During the exchange, one of the men standing over Marman said, "Listen to me - we can have you off this aircraft." "I told her when I sit down everything would be taken care of," Marman responded. "I'm sitting down and everything is taken care of. I'm OK. This is all unnecessary, sir." The passenger who shot the video said that before he started filming, crew members and an officer had asked Marman to come to the ramp leading to the jet. 'I'm not getting up' "Deshon immediately said, 'No. I didn't do anything wrong, there's nothing to talk about,' " said the passenger, a sales representative from Phoenix who asked to remain anonymous and said he did not know Marman. "His demeanor never changed from, 'I'm not getting up, I didn't do anything wrong, I paid for my ticket.' " The passenger said he had started filming after Marman rebuffed the pilot's first request to get up and continued until shortly before all the passengers had to leave the plane, delaying the flight for an hour and a half. The passenger said Marman's sweatpants sagged to mid-thigh level and revealed skin-tight black underwear. "When I first saw him coming down the aisle, I was like, 'Come on man, really?' " he said. "But after he sat down, you couldn't see anything." Police reported that an airline employee had said she asked Marman to pull up his pants before he boarded the flight, but that he had refused. Marman's attorney, Joe O'Sullivan, said Marman had tried to lift up his pants at the time, but couldn't because he had bags in both hands. "Once he was seated," O'Sullivan said, "his buttocks were at the back of his seat and nothing could have been seen, nor was anything displayed. The issue should have been over." Police say he resisted US Airways says Marman was pulled from the plane for not following the pilot's orders. Police said he resisted as he was led away. O'Sullivan said Marman had left the aircraft after being told he would receive a refund. Police surprised him by handcuffing him, O'Sullivan said, setting off a scuffle. San Mateo County prosecutors have not decided whether to file charges against Marman, who is free on bail. On Friday, Marman released a statement saying, "I'm embarrassed by the negative attention that has been brought upon my family, my football team, my teammates, and most of all myself." O'Sullivan said Marman planned to return to the New Mexico campus within the next few days. "He'll fly Southwest," he said. JUSTIN BERTON is a general assignment reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/justinberton Posted By: Justin Berton (Email, Twitter) |

– Today's installment in people being booted off pubic transportation, this one involving saggy pants and the classic line, "My pants are up, sir." A 20-year-old University of New Mexico football player got thrown off a US Airways flight because the airline says he refused to pull up his pants, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Worse, Deshon Marman may face charges including trespassing and resisting arrest. A video captured by a fellow passenger shows Marman pleading his case to the pilot and a police officer, who want him off the plane. It cuts off before all the passengers had to leave and Marman got escorted off, all of which delayed the flight by 90 minutes. Marman's defense: An airline employee told him to hike up his low-hanging "pajama pants" as he boarded, but he couldn't do so while carrying his bags. (One passenger says they were at mid-thigh.) But "once he was seated, his buttocks were at the back of his seat and nothing could have been seen, nor was anything displayed," says his lawyer. "The issue should have been over." This is not to be confused with the woman who insisted she wasn't talking loudly on a train because she is so well-educated or another loud train-talker who got kicked off Amtrak for disrupting the quiet car.

In one of the more surprising events of the U.K. chart year, 1980s pop favorite Rick Astley has scored his first U.K. No. 1 in 29 years with the album 50 (BMG). Meanwhile, Drake's “One Dance” (Cash Money/ Republic/Universal), featuring Wizkid & Kyla, tops the singles chart for a remarkable tenth straight week. 50, which marks Astley's 50th birthday last February, is the singer's first studio album since 2005's Portrait, which reached No. 26. An Ultimate Collection release then hit No. 17 in 2008. In his pop heyday, Astley had hit No. 1 with his first album Whenever You Need Somebody in the wake of chart-topper "Never Gonna Give You Up." The new album won a close sales race with British singer-songwriter Tom Odell's sophomore release Wrong Crowd (Columbia/Sony), finishing 3,700 combined sales ahead, according to the Official Charts Company. Odell's debut set Long Way Down debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. in July 2013. A busy week of new entries on the album chart also included a No. 3 start for Paul McCartney's new Pure McCartney collection on Concord. The release of a special edition of the Electric Light Orchestra's All Over The World — The Very Best Of retrospective (Legacy/Epic/Sony) brought it back to the top 75 at a new peak of No. 4. Drake's Views fell 2-5. British soul star Beverley Knight notched a fourth top 10 album (and first since 2007's Music City Soul) with Soulsville, her first for East West/Warner Music. Just beyond the top 10, veteran singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan came in at No. 11, his highest album ranking since A Stranger In My Own Back Yard reached No. 9 in 1974, with The Essential Collection (USM Media). Drake held off a strong challenge from “This Girl” (3 Beat) by Kungs Vs. Cookin' On 3 Burners to record its tenth week at No. 1. The Kungs track had led the way earlier in the sales week, but “One Dance” edged back into the lead and took the honors by a mere 1,773 combined chart sales. It's the first time a song has spent ten weeks at No. 1 in the U.K. since Rihanna's “Umbrella” did it in 2007. Justin Timberlake's “Can't Stop The Feeling” (RCA/Sony) fell 2-3 on the new chart, and “This Is What You Came For” (Columbia/Sony) by Calvin Harris and Rihanna dipped 3-4. Another guest appearance by Rihanna, on Drake's “Too Good,” saw a 6-5 climb. The other new title within the top ten was “Sex” (Spinnin') by Cheat Codes and Kris Kross Amsterdam. ||||| 29 years after achieving record-topping success with his debut record, singer Rick Astley has hit the UK album chart's number one spot. The singer's first release in over a decade, 50, won out against some stiff competition to claim the victory with Tom Odell's latest record and a new Paul McCartney compilation falling by the wayside. Speaking about the feat, Astley said: "It's amazing, it's incredible. It's been a very, very, very long time." Astley's debut album Never Gonna Give You Up reached number one in 1987. His closest competitor this time around was Odell whose second record Wrong Crowd was number one at several stages throughout the week. The Official Charts Company has since revealed that Odell racked up more digital sales and streams while Astley sold more physical copies - ultimately outselling him by a mere 3,700. Most-watched videos on YouTube 10 show all Most-watched videos on YouTube 1/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Psy - 'Gangnam Style' 2/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Justin Bieber - 'Baby' 3/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull - 'On the Floor' Getty Images 4/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube 'Charlie Bit My Finger - Again!' Youtube 5/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube LMFAO ft. Lauren Bennett and GoonRock - 'Party Rock Anthem' 6/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Shakira - 'Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)' 7/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Eminem ft Rihanna - 'Love the Way You Lie' 8/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Psy - 'Gentleman' 9/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Miley Cyrus - 'Wrecking Ball' 10/10 Most-watched videos on YouTube Katy Perry - 'Roar' YouTube Astley continued: "I like Tom Odell. I bought his last album and I'm going to buy this one as well, but I've held off from buying it this week!" Paul McCartney compilation, Pure McCartney, entered the charts at number three. The singles chart sees Drake match Rihanna's record-breaking ten-week chart reign with "One Dance." Rihanna earned the feat with "Umbrella" in 2007.

– Looks like fans are never going to give him up or desert him. Almost 30 years after topping the charts with "Never Going to Give You Up"—and almost a decade after "rickrolling" became a hazard of Internet use—Rick Astley has scored another No. 1 in the UK with new album 50, the Independent reports. "It's amazing, it's incredible," says the 50-year-old, who beat singer-songwriter Tom Odell to the top spot. "It's been a very, very, very long time since this happened before, I'm ecstatic, I couldn't be happier." Astley's previous album, 2005's Portrait, never rose higher than No. 26, Billboard notes. (Even the White House rickrolled its followers at one point.)

A federal court in Chicago on Tuesday became the first U.S. appellate court in the nation to rule that LGBT employees are protected from workplace discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sends the case involving Kim Hively, a former Indiana community college teacher who claims she was denied promotions and let go from her job because she is a lesbian, back to a federal district court in Indiana. "It's really good to know that it's making some headway," said Hively, who now works as a high school math teacher in Indiana. "I always thought there was a big disconnect when they legalized gay marriage but didn't extend any protections against workplace or housing discrimination. What they're doing is allowing people to lose jobs and homes just because they fell in love." Eight judges on the Chicago appellate court agreed that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Three judges wrote dissenting opinions. "Viewed through the lens of the gender non-conformity line of cases, Hively represents the ultimate case of failure to conform to the female stereotype," chief judge Diane P. Wood wrote for the majority. "Hively's claim is no different from the claims brought by women who were rejected for jobs in traditionally male workplaces, such as fire departments, construction, and policing." The ruling comes just three weeks after a three-judge panel in Atlanta ruled that employers aren't prohibited from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation. The Hively case stems from an incident in 2009, when someone reported seeing the adjunct teacher at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana in South Bend kiss her girlfriend goodbye in a car in the campus parking lot. The next day, Hively said, an administrator reprimanded her for "sucking face" and chastised her unprofessional behavior. In the following five years, Hively was not granted full-time status despite multiple applications and was let go in 2014. She sued the community college herself in 2013, claiming she was "blocked from fulltime employment without just cause," specifically her sexual preference. Hively was represented by lawyers with LGBT advocacy group Lambda Legal in her appeals. Gregory Nevins, Lambda's counsel and employment fairness project director, who has argued prejudice against gender and sexual orientation are the same thing, called Tuesday's ruling a "game changer" for the LGBT community. "Now that we see this in the right light, I think we'll see a domino effect (court by court)," Nevins said. "All of those cases ruled in the last 15 or 30 years, that's a moot point. It's a new day." Tuesday's ruling creates a precedent for lower courts in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin to follow. Hively's case, Nevins said, will return to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Indiana, which previously had sided with Ivy Tech and dismissed Hively's case with prejudice. "It means Kim Hively will have her day in court," Nevins said. "It's a process that takes time. You want protections right away, but this will go a long way in courts across the country. It's only a matter of time our courts see the light too." Saying that the college will not seek Supreme Court review, Ivy Tech spokesman Jeff Fanter said the college "denies that it discriminated against the plaintiff on the basis of her sex or sexual orientation and will defend the plaintiff's claims on the merits in the trial court." The entire federal appeals court reheard oral arguments on the case in November. The focus of the discussion was on the meaning of the word "sex" in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the provision that bans workplace bias based on race, religion, national origin or sex. Judges directed the toughest questions at John Maley, a lawyer for Ivy Tech, who argued only Congress could extend the protections in the act. Multiple court rulings back Maley's contention that Congress meant for the word to refer only to whether a worker was male or female. Given that, he said it would be wrong to stretch the meaning of "sex" in the statute to also include sexual orientation. He conceded the law is imprecise, but added: "That makes it an issue for Congress." But aggressive questions from the federal judges suggested the court might be willing to expand the 53-year-old landmark law. Judge Richard Posner asked Maley: "Who will be hurt if gays and lesbians have a little more job protection?" When Maley said he couldn't think of anyone who would be harmed, Posner shot back, "So, what's the big deal?" Posner also said it was wrong to say a decades-old statute is "frozen" on the day it passed and that courts can never broaden its scope. Nevins' argument that "sex" and "sexual orientation" discrimination were synonymous was rejected by the three dissenting judges, including Judge Diane S. Sykes, who wrote in her dissent that the 1964 federal statue was quite literal. "Title VII does not define discrimination 'because of sex,'" Sykes said. "In common, ordinary usage in 1964 — and now, for that matter — the word 'sex' means biologically male or female; it does not also refer to sexual orientation." Sykes prefaced her dissent by writing, "Any case heard by the full court is important. This one is momentous." The ruling comes as President Donald Trump's administration has begun setting its own policies on LGBT rights. In late January, the White House said an Obama administration order barring companies that do federal work from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual identity would no longer be enforced. In February, it revoked guidance on transgender students' use of public school bathrooms, deferring to states. The Associated Press contributed. tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com Twitter @_TonyBriscoe ||||| CHICAGO (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Tuesday that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBT employees from workplace discrimination, setting up a likely battle before the Supreme Court as gay rights advocates push to broaden the scope of the 53-year-old law. The 8-to-3 decision by the full 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago comes just three weeks after a three-judge panel in Atlanta ruled the opposite, saying employers aren't prohibited from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation. The 7th Circuit is considered relatively conservative and five of the eight judges in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents, making the finding all the more notable. The case stems from a lawsuit by Indiana teacher Kimberly Hively alleging that the Ivy Tech Community College in South Bend didn't hire her full time because she is a lesbian. In an opinion concurring with the majority, Judge Richard Posner wrote that changing norms call for a change in interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin or sex. "I don't see why firing a lesbian because she is in the subset of women who are lesbian should be thought any less a form of sex discrimination than firing a woman because she's a woman," wrote the judge, who was appointed by Republican Ronald Reagan. The decision comes as President Donald Trump's administration has begun setting its own policies on LGBT rights. Late in January, the White House declared Trump would enforce an Obama administration order barring companies that do federal work from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual identity. But in February, it revoked guidance on transgender students' use of public school bathrooms, deferring to states. Hively said after Tuesday's ruling that she agreed to bring the case because she felt she was being "bullied." She told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the time has come "to stop punishing people for being gay, being lesbian, being transgender." "This decision is game changer for lesbian and gay employees facing discrimination in the workplace and sends a clear message to employers: it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation," said Greg Nevins, of Lambda Legal, which brought the case on behalf of Hively. Ivy Tech said in a statement that its policies specifically bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and that it denies discriminating against Hively, a factual question separate from the 7th Circuit's finding regarding the law. The Chicago ruling came on the anniversary of the assassination of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, whose marches against racism prompted Congress to pass the landmark civil law. A GOP-majority House and Senate make it unlikely the current Congress will amend the Civil Rights Act, likely leaving it for the Supreme Court to decide. Debate in the Hively case revolved around the meaning of the word 'sex' in Title VII, the section of the law that deals with discrimination. Other courts have concluded that Congress meant for the word to refer only to whether a worker was male or female. They said that it would be wrong to stretch the meaning of 'sex' in the statute to include sexual orientation. The majority of the 7th Circuit sided with a broader meaning. "Any discomfort, disapproval, or job decision based on the fact that the complainant — woman or man — dresses differently, speaks differently, or dates or marries a same-sex partner, is a reaction purely and simply based on sex. That means that it falls within Title VII's prohibition against sex discrimination ...," Judge Diane Wood, a President Bill Clinton appointee, wrote for the majority. The dissenting opinion — written by Judge Diane Sykes, a conservative who was on Trump's list of possible Supreme Court appointees — said the majority were stretching the meaning of the law's text too far. "We are not authorized to infuse the text with a new or unconventional meaning or to update it to respond to changed social, economic, or political conditions." The dissent alludes to the judicial philosophy of Trump's high-court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who advocates adhering largely to original legislative texts in deciding legal disputes. "It's understandable that the court is impatient to protect lesbians and gay men from workplace discrimination without waiting for Congress to act. Legislative change is arduous and can be slow to come. But we're not authorized to amend Title VII by interpretation," Sykes wrote. Posner, though, said sticking to outdated meanings and cultural standards didn't make sense. "It is well-nigh certain that homosexuality, male or female, did not figure in the minds of the legislators who enacted Title VII," he wrote in his concurring opinion. "(Lawmakers in the 1960s) shouldn't be blamed for that failure of foresight," he wrote. "We understand the words of Title VII differently not because we're smarter than the statute's framers and ratifiers but because we live in a different era, a different culture."

– The Civil Rights Act protects gay and lesbian employees from workplace discrimination, a federal appeals court decided Tuesday—three weeks after a three-judge panel in Atlanta ruled the opposite. In a ruling that is being called a "game changer" by LGBT rights groups, the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago decided 8 to 3 that the 1964 act covered the case of Kim Hively, a teacher in Indiana who says she was discriminated against for being a lesbian, the AP reports. "I don't see why firing a lesbian because she is in the subset of women who are lesbian should be thought any less a form of sex discrimination than firing a woman because she's a woman," wrote Judge Richard Posner for the majority. Posner—a Ronald Reagan appointee—argued that a law like the 53-year-old Civil Rights Act should not be considered "frozen" on the day it is passed. The three dissenting judges argued that while Title VII of the act did not define discrimination based on sex, "sex" and "sexual orientation" did not mean the same thing in 1964 or today, the Chicago Tribune reports. Posner said the words of Title VII are interpreted differently today "not because we're smarter than the statute's framers and ratifiers but because we live in a different era, a different culture." Hively's former employers do not plan to appeal to the Supreme Court, though the issue is expected to end up there at some point anyway because of the Atlanta panel's conflicting ruling.

CLOSE Intersex individuals are born with sex characteristics that don't match what's traditionally classified as male or female. Video provided by Newsy Newslook Doctors and parents are doing irreversible harm solely due to discomfort with difference. We are erased before we can even tell them who we are. Kimberly Mascott Zieselman, months after her intersex surgery, in Concord, Mass., in 1983. (Photo: Family photo) I was born with typically “male” XY chromosomes and internal testes instead of ovaries and a uterus, but my body developed to appear typically female. My intersex condition was invisible until I reached puberty and failed to menstruate like other girls. On the advice of doctors at a major hospital, my parents agreed that I should have surgery to remove my healthy gonads, without my knowledge or consent. A clinical trial saved my life. It could save yours, too. Transgender military ban: Trump isolates America once again My natural hormone production ceased, and I was forced onto hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life. I was just 15. Doctors also recommended to my parents that I receive invasive surgery to create a more “typically” sized vagina — thankfully, my parents refused. I didn’t find out about any of this until I was 41 years old. Intersex people like me — up to 1.7% of the population — are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions of male or female. I have androgen insensitivity syndrome. Because my body was resistant to androgens, including testosterone, in the womb, my natural hormones automatically converted into estrogen through a process called aromatization. Intersex people have been the last bastion of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with doctors commonly telling parents for many years that the best thing they could do for their children was to have surgery done, even when they are infants, so they can grow up “normal.” These and other surgeries have been commonly performed on intersex children in the USA since the 1960s. But in the 1990s, intersex adults began speaking out against these non-consensual and medically unnecessary procedures because of their lifelong physical and psychological consequences. Despite decades of controversy over the procedures, doctors continue to operate on children’s gonads, internal sex organs and genitals when the kids are too young to participate in the decision — even though the surgeries are dangerous and could be safely deferred. It’s rare that urgent health considerations require immediate surgical intervention. The results of these cosmetic surgeries are often catastrophic and the supposed benefits largely unproven. As executive director of interACT, the nation’s only organization dedicated exclusively to protecting the legal and human rights of intersex youth, I am thrilled that since interACT’s founding in 2006, we have seen progress from medical associations — but not enough, and not nearly quickly enough. It’s not time for more data collection or dialogue; it’s time for these surgeries to stop. I know firsthand the devastating impact they can have, not just on our bodies but on our souls. We are erased before we can even tell our doctors who we are. Every human rights organization that has considered this practice has condemned it, some even to the point of recognizing it as akin to torture. We know that most physicians want to do the right thing for their patients, just as parents want to do the right thing for their children. The right thing, unequivocally, is to wait until an intersex person can participate in these life-altering decisions. The right thing is to afford them the same dignity and autonomy that is due to everyone — and refrain from inflicting irreversible harm solely because of a discomfort with difference. The few doctors who refuse to bring their practices in line with human rights standards tell us there is a silent majority of patients who are happy they had their childhood surgeries, but they have been unable to produce those happy patients for us to talk to. We do hear from people who are extremely grateful they were spared surgery, as well as parents of intersex children who are growing up just fine without medical intervention. Donald Trump just sent a painful message to me and other LGBT people Jeff Sessions' Justice Department goes after affirmative action's institutional racism POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media Some doctors have dismissed us as “angry activists,” but our position has support from the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, the State Department, every majorLGBTQ rights organization in the United States, three former U.S. surgeons general and almost every intersex organization in the world. Now, interACT and Human Rights Watch have published a new report echoing those calls for a ban. These institutions are not just “angry activists.” They are principled human rights defenders drawing on data, laws and the medical ethics concept of “do no harm.” Most important, intersex children and adults are telling us that they want the freedom to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Working with intersex youth every day, I can tell you these kids are perfect as they are — and they are telling us that their bodies aren't shameful and don’t need to be “fixed.” Kimberly Mascott Zieselman is executive director of interACT, an organization that advocates for intersex youth. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2wGVyuW ||||| Androgen insensitivity syndrome is a condition that affects sexual development before birth and during puberty. People with this condition are genetically male, with in each cell. Because their bodies are unable to respond to certain male sex hormones (called androgens), they may have mostly female external sex characteristics or signs of both male and female sexual development. Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome occurs when the body cannot use androgens at all. People with this form of the condition have the external sex characteristics of females, but do not have a and therefore do not menstruate and are unable to conceive a child (infertile). They are typically raised as females and have a female gender identity. Affected individuals have (testes) that are undescended, which means they are abnormally located in the pelvis or abdomen. Undescended testes have a small chance of becoming cancerous later in life if they are not surgically removed. People with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome also have sparse or absent hair in the pubic area and under the arms. The partial and mild forms of androgen insensitivity syndrome result when the body's tissues are partially sensitive to the effects of androgens. People with partial androgen insensitivity (also called Reifenstein syndrome) can have genitalia that look typically female, genitalia that have both male and female characteristics, or genitalia that look typically male. They may be raised as males or as females and may have a male or a female gender identity. People with mild androgen insensitivity are born with male sex characteristics, but they are often infertile and tend to experience breast enlargement at puberty. ||||| What's intersex? Intersex people are born with some biological characteristics that are considered “female” and others that are considered “male.” What does intersex mean? The intersex definition is a person is born with a combination of male and female biological characteristics, such as chromosomes or genitals, that can make doctors unable to assign their sex as distinctly male or female. Being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans, and isn’t a medical problem. It’s also more common than most people realize. It’s hard to know exactly how many people are intersex, but estimates suggest that about 1 in 100 people born in the U.S. is intersex. There are many different intersex variations. Some intersex people have ambiguous genitalia or internal sex organs, such as a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have a combination of chromosomes that is different than XY (male) and XX (female), like XXY. And some people are born with what looks like totally male or totally female genitals, but their internal organs or hormones released during puberty don’t match. If a person is born with intersex genitalia, they might be identified as intersex at birth. For people born with more clearly male or female external genitals, they might not know they’re intersex until later in life, like when they go through puberty. Sometimes a person can live their whole life without ever discovering that they’re intersex. What happens when someone is born intersex? Awareness of intersex conditions is growing. In the past, when a baby was born intersex, doctors and the family would decide on a gender and raise the baby as that gender — either male or female. It was common for surgery to be done on the baby’s genitals and also for the child to be given male or female hormones as they went through puberty. But of course sometimes the gender they picked didn’t match the gender identity the young person grew up to have. So today, more and more people believe unnecessary surgery and other medical interventions should be postponed until intersex people are old enough to decide for themselves what gender they identify with and what, if any, treatments they want. If you have a child who’s intersex, open conversation about gender is especially important throughout your child’s life — whether or not your child has gender-assignment surgery. It can help your child develop a healthy gender identity and body image.

– When Kimberly Mascott Zieselman was 15, she had surgery she now says caused "irreversible harm" due to others' "discomfort with difference." In her op-ed for USA Today, Zieselman explains how, as a young teen, she didn't get her period like other girls, and when her parents took her to get examined, doctors made a surprising discovery: She was intersex, meaning a person born with both male and female characteristics. In Zieselman's case, that meant that even though on the outside she appeared female, she had male XY chromosomes and testes (instead of ovaries and a uterus) inside her body. She had androgen insensitivity syndrome, so that her body resisted male sex hormones called androgens and led to an external appearance of being female. She says her parents agreed, per physician advice, to have her "healthy gonads" taken out, "without my knowledge or consent." She was also placed on a lifelong hormone replacement therapy, as her natural hormones had halted. She says these types of "non-consensual and medically unnecessary procedures" on intersex kids have been common since the '60s, with "often catastrophic" results and "largely unproven" benefits. "We are erased before we can even tell our doctors who we are," she writes. Zieselman believes most doctors and parents think they're doing the right thing—but she notes the "devastating impact" on patients and says "every human rights organization that has considered this practice has condemned it." "The right thing is to wait until an intersex person can participate in these life-altering decisions," she writes. Read the full piece.

To put this collection of 13 coordinated research papers from the COGS (Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study) Consortium into context, we have commissioned two accompanying Commentaries. On page 345, John Witte and colleagues survey all of the COGS studies in this collection. Hilary Burton and colleagues provide a public health perspective on these studies (page 349). Burton reports on the efforts of the Foundation for Genomics and Population Health (PHG Foundation) to consider the potential for genetic risk prediction, based on currently known genetic susceptibility loci for breast, ovarian and prostate cancers and considerations for population-based risk screening programs. Finally, we have highlighted a selection of the eight coordinated research publications from COGS published in Nature Communications, The American Journal of Human Genetics, Human Molecular Genetics and PLoS Genetics (page 352). Together, these papers roughly double the number of susceptibility loci associated with breast, ovarian and prostate cancers. In this issue, Douglas Easton and colleagues report 41 loci newly associated with breast cancer (page 353), Rosalind Eeles and colleagues report 23 loci newly associated with prostate cancer (page 385), and Paul Pharoah and colleagues report 3 loci newly associated with ovarian cancer (page 362). Together with the additional publications in this collection, the authors report a combined total of 74 new susceptibility loci for these cancers, as well as fine-mapping and follow-up functional experiments. Each of these three studies began with a large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) and meta-analysis. The five cancer-specific consortia that comprise COGS selected SNPs showing promising association in each GWAS to include on a custom genotyping array, the iCOGS array, which they developed in coordination with Illumina. The COGS authors also nominated additional variants within regions of particular interest to include on the iCOGS array. They then conducted the replication phase for each of the studies with the shared iCOGS array. This study design provided efficient genotyping for large case-control samples and replication with the high-density iCOGS array designed with content selected from GWAS findings across the three cancers. The benefit of this design is evident in the large yield of new susceptibility loci for each of the cancers studied. The COGS project serves as an excellent model for collaboration among consortia of consortia. The groups pooled their resources in order to design the single shared custom array in collaboration with Illumina. They also coordinated their ongoing efforts to characterize genetic susceptibility to a range of common cancers. In a similar spirit of cooperation, we were pleased to work with the authors to carry out the coordinated review and publication of this collection of manuscripts from COGS. We are grateful to our sponsor Illumina, whose support has provided for freely available access to the papers in this Focus and an accompanying website for the next 6 months. The iCOGS website accompanying this Focus offers additional content and analysis in the form of five Primers, hypertext essays that provide a guided tour through the entire collection of COGS publications. This new publishing format interlaces editorial analysis with threads (the latter is a format that we first used for the ENCODE website, comprising a series of direct quotations from relevant sections of the original research publications). In the Primers, we discuss the relevance of these studies' primary findings to genetic susceptibility to these three hormone-related cancers and the heritability explained (doi:10.1038/ngicogs.1), provide an analysis of the shared susceptibility regions (doi:10.1038/ngicogs.2), give a guide to subsequent functional annotation and mechanistic interpretation (doi:10.1038/ngicogs.3), examine genetic risk estimates and considerations for the development of population-based screening programs (doi:10.1038/ngicogs.5), describe the history of the COGS consortium, and the development of the iCOGS array and discuss what the authors have planned for future studies (doi:10.1038/ngicogs.4). We hope that you will find this printed Focus, as well as the accompanying website, a useful guide to this milestone in genetic epidemiology. We look forward to receiving your feedback on how you use these materials and hope that this will enable your own collaborative research. ||||| A massive gene-hunting effort involving hundreds of scientists has identified 74 newly discovered regions of DNA that are associated with breast, ovarian and prostate cancers — diseases that strike about half a million Americans every year. The international project, known as the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, or COGS, nearly doubled the number of genetic markers known to be linked with the three cancers, scientists reported Wednesday. Their findings could lead to more effective ways to screen, study and treat these diseases. "While these papers may not be what the average person is looking for — e.g., a cure for cancer — they have important near-term value" for medical researchers, said John Witte, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco and co-author of a commentary on the work that appeared in Nature Genetics, one of five journals that published 13 studies detailing the COGS results. Witte was not a member of the collaboration. For the last decade or so, cancer researchers have been working hard to ferret out the DNA changes associated with cancers and other common afflictions. They examine the DNA of large groups of people with and without certain diseases to see if any genetic variations can be linked to particular conditions. One hope has been to pinpoint the people at highest risk for developing health problems. Another has been to identify the individual genes that cause illness in the first place so that scientists can better understand how those genes cause harm and use that information to develop better treatments. But the work has been difficult because many of the variations linked to diseases are turning out to be more rare than scientists had originally thought, said Harvard Medical School genetics professor Raju Kucherlapati, who was not involved in the COGS group. By examining hundreds of thousands of locations on the genome in 250,000 people with and without cancer, the COGS study was able to reveal more associations than smaller studies could. In addition to confirming many genetic markers that had already been found, scientists discovered 41 new regions linked with overall risk for breast cancer, three associated with overall risk for ovarian cancer and 23 tied to overall risk for prostate cancer. Researchers also found additional variations linked to subtypes of breast and ovarian cancer, and noted that 16 of the new regions associated with prostate cancer were linked to aggressive forms of the disease. Generally, the risks associated with the genetic changes were modest — about 10% to 20% more than the small risks faced in the general population. To put that in perspective, Kucherlapati said, more than half of women who have the most dangerous mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes will develop breast cancer during their lives. But relatively small increases in risk can add up to become significant, said geneticist Rosalind Eeles of the Institute for Cancer Research in Sutton, England, co-author of a study in Nature Genetics that detailed the prostate cancer findings. In Eeles' paper, men who fell in the top 1% of risk were nearly five times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the rest of the men in the study. (According to the National Cancer Institute, 16% of American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.) Perhaps targeting such men for additional tests could improve screening, Eeles and her co-authors wrote. Scientists said that looking for the small genetic changes — known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs — in people who are already at high risk for disease could help physicians' early detection efforts. "If you have a family history, the SNPs can improve the risk estimate," Eeles said, adding that much more research is needed before SNP screening would be ready for use. In the meantime, both Witte and Kucherlapati said the COGS findings could help scientists study the genes that cause cancer, as well as other biological aspects of the disease. The new data also underscore how much scientists still haven't figured out about how the genes we inherit contribute to our cancer risk. For instance, it is thought that there are more than 1,000 genetic regions associated with breast cancer. Yet only 76 common variants have been identified so far, University of Cambridge cancer researcher Douglas Easton and co-authors wrote in one of the studies published in Nature Genetics. In all, the scientists said, about a third of the variants believed to be associated with the three cancers had been discovered. What explains the remaining two-thirds is "obviously" the $64-million question, Easton said. eryn.brown@latimes.com

– A huge, international cancer study has identified 74 DNA regions associated with breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, more than doubling the number of genetic markers known, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study, or COGS, combined the research on 250,000 people around the world to create a more complete genetic map than a smaller study could by itself—approaches the researchers call "model strategies for designing future arrays." Doctors say they hope these results could eventually improve early detection and treatment. But with breast cancer alone thought to have more than 1,000 genetic regions associated with it, researchers estimate two-thirds of the variations remain unknown. "While these papers may not be what the average person is looking for—e.g., a cure for cancer—they have important near-term value" for medical researchers, says one epidemiologist. Click to check out the full original study in Nature Genetics.

A judge did not take Donald Trump’s tweets seriously — which saved him from a lawsuit. On Monday, a libel case against Trump was dumped by a New York judge, who claimed because the president-elect uses “simplistic insults” like “wacko” and “loser” on Twitter, his “hyperbolic” comments just show his opinions and aren't based in truth or fact. The lawsuit comes after Cheryl Jacobus, a political strategist, was on the receiving end of some Twitter insults thrown around by President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign. Jacobus sued Trump for libel, claiming his tweets and his followers' responses damaged her reputation and professional opportunities. Two of Trump's tweets listed in the suit were: Great job on @donlemon tonight @kayleighmcenany @cherijacobus begged us for a job. We said no and she went hostile. A real dummy! @CNN — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2016 Really dumb @CheriJacobus. Begged my people for a job. Turned her down twice and she went hostile. Major loser, zero credibility! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2016 In the suit, Jacobus claims the tweets prompted online hate from Trump's followers, which included "demeaning, sometimes sexually charged, comments and graphics, including insults aimed at her professional conduct" and her experience and qualifications. Another tweet was an image of a “grossly disfigured face, and a depiction of (Jacobus) in a gas chamber with Trump standing nearby ready to push a button marked 'Gas.'" Trump's tweets came after Jacobus said she was asked to interview for a campaign communications director position in May 2015 before Trump announced his candidacy. She said she didn't pursue the job because she didn't want to work for former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. @realDonaldTrump here are screenshots of the messages from your campaign asking me for two meetings https://t.co/FU7itmOrRr Stop lying — Cheri Jacobus (@CheriJacobus) February 6, 2016 The Hollywood Reporter posted the full decision to dismiss the case Monday after an October hearing in which Trump's lawyer, Lawrence Rosen, argued that "perception is reality." According to the American Bar Association Journal, Judge Barbara Jaffe considered her ruling in "the spirit of the First Amendment" and considered Trump's statements "imprecise and hyperbolic political dispute cum schoolyard squabble." She also said because Trump's comments were on Twitter, they should not be taken seriously. "His tweets about his critics, necessarily restricted to 140 characters or less, are rife with vague and simplistic insults such as 'loser' or 'total loser' or 'totally biased loser,' 'dummy' or 'dope' or 'dumb,' 'zero/no credibility,' 'crazy' or 'wacko' and 'disaster,' all deflecting serious consideration," Jaffe wrote. "His tweets ... are rife with vague and simplistic insults." Ultimately, she concluded his "intemperate tweets" are "clearly intended to belittle and demean" the plaintiff. She went on to explain how the quick Twitter hits aren't based in truth. "Indeed, to some, truth itself has been lost in the cacophony of online and Twitter verbiage to such a degree that it seems to roll of the national consciousness like water off a duck's back." trump dodges a libel lawsuit by saying his tweets shouldn't be taken too literally because lol nothing matters https://t.co/wPlJYLVhYK — Maya Kosoff (@mekosoff) January 10, 2017 Looks like Trump can safely keep tweeting insults. ||||| Trump wins dismissal of suit over nasty tweets President-elect Donald Trump talks with reporters at Trump Tower in New York on Jan. 9, 2017. (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP) A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday brought by a GOP political consultant who says her business was harmed by a series of tweets and on-air appearances by Donald Trump and his campaign. Cheri Jacobus, a longtime political consultant briefly in talks to join the campaign and went on to comment on the race, filed the $4 million suit in April. Judge Barbara Jaffe ruled that the “heated rhetoric” amid a “particularly raucous Republican primary” served as important context for the tweets that were demeaning, but did not rise to the level of defamation. In her 20-page ruling, Jaffe called Trump’s bombastic Twitter profile “rife with vague and simplistic insults such as ‘loser’ or ‘total loser’ or ‘totally biased loser,’ ‘dummy’ or ‘dope’ or ‘dumb,’ ‘zero/no credibility,’ ‘crazy’ or ‘wacko’ and ‘disaster,’ all deflecting serious consideration.” On Feb. 5, Trump called Jacobus: “Major loser, zero credibility!” Really dumb @CheriJacobus. Begged my people for a job. Turned her down twice and she went hostile. Major loser, zero credibility! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2016 The ruling will be appealed, said Jay Butterman, Jacobus’ attorney, who called it, “a sad day for free speech, a sad day for freedom of the press and sad day for democracy.” “Today a court gave Trump a free pass to trample on the rights of free speech of any critic,” Butterman told USA TODAY. “What the court is doing is allowing defamation in the context of political speech—Trump can now eliminate his critics by dominating the media.” Ultimately, Jaffe ruled Trump’s tweets veered into opinion and were not able to be measured as factual. “Indeed, to some, truth itself has been lost in the cacophony of online and Twitter verbiage to such a degree that it seems to roll off the consciousness like water off a duck’s back,” Jaffe wrote. Trump had about 75 lawsuits open as of Election Day. Read more: Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2ifREF2

– Donald Trump's tweets are "intemperate" and "rife with vague and simplistic insults" but he has every right to keep firing them off, a New York judge has decided. Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe dismissed a libel suit from GOP strategist Cheryl Jacobus this week, ruling that Trump's tweets are protected free speech, Mashable reports. Jacobus filed the $4 million lawsuit last year after Trump called her a "major loser" and a "real dummy" in response to her criticism of his campaign's lack of transparency on financing. Trump's "intemperate tweets" are rife with insults including "'total loser' or 'totally biased loser,' 'dummy' or 'dope' or 'dumb,' 'zero/no credibility,' 'crazy' or 'wacko' and 'disaster,' all deflecting serious consideration," Jaffe wrote in her decision. Trump clearly intended to "belittle and demean" Jacobus, the judge wrote, but his tweets should be treated as opinion, not fact. "Truth itself has been lost in the cacophony of online and Twitter verbiage to such a degree that it seems to roll off the national consciousness like water off a duck's back," she wrote. Jacobus plans to appeal. "Today a court gave Trump a free pass to trample on the rights of free speech of any critic," her attorney told USA Today after the ruling. "What the court is doing is allowing defamation in the context of political speech—Trump can now eliminate his critics by dominating the media," he said, calling the ruling "a sad day for free speech, a sad day for freedom of the press, and a sad day for democracy."

Sorry, we're having problems with our video player at the moment, but are working to fix it as soon as we can HOPES are high that the UK’s first panda baby could be born at Edinburgh Zoo, after signs from female Tian Tian indicated she could be pregnant. The zoo said changes to her hormone levels as well as differences in her behaviour meant she could be ready to give birth within weeks. Tian Tian was artificially inseminated in April. Picture: Phil Wilkinson But it won’t be known for definite whether she is pregnant until shortly before she is due to give birth. It is quite common for pandas to have phantom or pseudo pregnancies, and Tian Tian had one last year. However, experts say the indications this time are more encouraging. Key changes in her protein and hormone levels suggest the artificial insemination she underwent on 21 April was successful. Senior keepers have also noted restlessness, a lack of appetite and nesting behaviour such as making a bed of straw. The zoo said a spike in her level of the hormone progesterone, which is measured by sending urine samples to the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, was among the key indicators. The spike was first detected on 15 July and confirmed on Wednesday. At five months, the gestation period is relatively short and if Tian Tian is pregnant, the cub will by born in late August or early September. If so, it would first be displayed to the public on 1 January, 2014. Iain Valentine, director of the zoo’s giant panda programme, said: “Tian Tian had a pseudo-pregnancy last year but the behaviour wasn’t as pronounced, so when you compare last year to this year, you start to think something is a bit different. “It’s hugely exciting. There’s never been a baby panda born in the UK.” He said keepers were more hopeful than last year due to the greater change in hormone levels. “Now that progesterone levels are rising, she is going off her food, spending less time interacting with the keepers and becoming more sleepy,” he said. Determining if a panda is expecting a baby is notoriously difficult as cubs can weigh as little as 100 grams (3.5oz) and there are few physical changes in the mother-to-be. Further hormone results will be available by mid-August and if the Tian Tian is not pregnant, her hormone levels will have reduced to zero. She and male panda Yang Guang were not able to mate naturally in April, so she was artificially inseminated with sperm from him and from Bao Bao, who died at Berlin Zoo last year at the age of 34. Dr Martin Dehnhard, from the Leibniz Institute, said: “The hormone concentrations we measured in the urine sample from the panda increased. “That tells me that she is pregnant or pseudo-pregnant.” Chris West, chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland – the charity that runs Edinburgh Zoo – said: “Results so far are very encouraging. But we don’t want to count our pandas until they are born.” Pandas often have twins which Mr Valentine said would present a unique problem. Tian Tian can raise only one cub and zoo staff would have to raise the other. The first would remain in Edinburgh for two years – and be displayed to the public for about 18 months – before going to China as part of the agreement with the authorities there. The second, raised by staff, is likely to be sent to China sooner to live in a “panda crèche”. Some 24 hours before giving birth, Tian Tian would be expected to become restless and start to bleat. Two incubators will be on standby in the zoo’s panda nursery in case of twins. Mr Valentine said: “You could say there’s a 50 per cent chance there could be twins. When we did the artificial insemination, we could only see one follicle, but there were other follicles in development. “Now whether they fully developed and ovulated since that scan we don’t know, so we have to plan for twins. Basically we don’t know until the birth. “We are planning for one of our Chinese colleagues to come over to help, and our staff have been to China to work with pregnant pandas, so we’ll be as prepared as we can be.” News of the possible panda pregnancy sparked a surge in visitor numbers at the zoo, with families travelling from across Scotland and south of the border to catch a glimpse of the animals yesterday. Staff estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 flocked there, and the panda enclosure’s daily capacity of 2,100 was reached. They were all eager to catch a glimpse of Tian Tian, who after sleeping for the morning, awoke early in the afternoon and hung off the edge of her bench, to the delight of visitors. Zoo guide Cheryl-Ann Beattie, 26, said there was huge excitement among visitors and staff. “We arrived at work and the press were already here,” she said. “People had heard the news at 7am and visitors were lined up outside before we opened. We told the visitors they had come on a very exciting day. It’s going to be mayhem for the next few weeks but very exciting.” Even bookies are getting in on the act, offering 10/1 odds on a cub being called Wang Lei if male or Zhang Lei if female. They are among the most popular names in China and translate as “rock pile” in English. Other local-themed favourites include Choi (mountain) at 14/1, Bao Bao (castle) at 25/1 and Adingbao Xiongmao (a literal translation of Edinburgh Panda) at 33/1. Science Giant pandas are renowned for having a very low birth rate, and artificial insemination is the most common method of breeding them in captivity, as they often lose interest in mating once taken from the wild. Tian Tian seemed ready to mate in spring, but the decision was taken to intervene after attempts at a natural coupling with Yang Guang failed. Pandas in the wild usually mate with more than one partner, so Tian Tian was inseminated three times with samples from both Yang Guang and Berlin Zoo’s Bao Bao, whose sperm was frozen before he died last year. This means a twin pregnancy could produce cubs with different fathers. Identifying whether or not conception has occurred is difficult in pandas, which often experience a pseudo-pregnancy, where they display all the behavioural and hormonal changes seen in a real pregnancy. Even an ultrasound scan may not determine whether a female is pregnant, since a foetus is so small and late in developing that it can be impossible to detect. The gestation period for a panda ranges from 95 to 160 days, and successfully predicting the due date of a successful conception is further complicated by a phenomenon known as delayed implantation. This means a fertilised egg can float about in the uterus for months before attaching to the womb lining and beginning to develop into a foetus. Hormone tests have shown encouraging results for Tian Tian. Rises in progesterone occur in females at the time of breeding and again when the embryo implants in the uterus, with experts putting the birth at 40 to 55 days after the second rise. This suggests the pitter patter of tiny panda feet may be expected in Edinburgh between 24 August and 10 September. If it turns out Tian Tian is experiencing a phantom pregnancy, progesterone levels will drop in the next few weeks. Results from Tian Tian’s urine tests, which were carried out in Berlin, indicate that she is pregnant and will carry to term, but it won’t be known for certain until a few days before the birth. Signs that she may be about to go into labour include restlessness and bleating. Twins If Tian Tian gives birth, her cub, or cubs, will be the first born in the UK. But twins will bring added complications for Edinburgh Zoo. When twin cubs are born in the wild, usually only one will survive, as panda mothers seem unable to produce enough milk for two. She will select the stronger of the two, leaving the other to die. In the event of twins for Tian Tian, it is expected one will be hand-reared, though innovative techniques have been developed in China to “trick” mothers into rearing two cubs. This involves switching the twins between their mother and an incubator to ensure they are properly fed, kept warm and receive equal maternal nurturing. Newborns are blind, toothless and tiny, weighing only 90 to 150 grams. They are completely helpless and dependent on their mothers for survival. They are born pink, but a week or two later, the skin will turn grey in the areas where the hair will eventually be black. Cubs should start to crawl after 75 to 80 days. They usually stay with their mothers until they are one and a half to two years old. Read more on Edinburgh’s giant pandas • Edinburgh Zoo panda set for ultrasound test • Hope for Edinburgh pandas after Taipei birth • Edinburgh zoo pandas to celebrate first anniversary with early night in bid to boost breeding ||||| The problem with panda pregnancies If all goes to plan Tian Tian could give birth to a cub later this month Predicting a panda pregnancy is problematic. For decades scientists have been searching for a sure-fire way of determining whether a giant panda is going to give birth. The biggest problem is the bears' tendency to have a pseudo - or phantom - pregnancy. That means indicators such as changes in behaviour and hormones are not definitive. Even an ultrasound scan is not guaranteed to help as a panda foetus is tiny, difficult to detect and develops late. At Edinburgh Zoo they are well aware of the problem as they try to assess whether Tian Tian, the UK's only female panda, is pregnant following an attempt in April at artificial insemination. Biological marker "They have a complicated biology," explains Iain Valentine, director of the zoo's giant panda programme. "You've got this pseudo-pregnancy factor so using hormones as a biomarker for pregnancy in pandas just doesn't work. You have to use other tests." The search for this biomarker, or biological marker, has been going on for decades. Recent advances in the US have given hope to panda breeders around the world, including the team in Scotland. Researchers from Memphis Zoo in Tennessee have developed a test for an "acute phase protein" - a protein which is affected by inflammation. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The profile for a panda that will get pregnant and carry full term is different from one that will get pregnant and lose the pregnancy or one that is not pregnant at all” End Quote Iain Valentine Edinburgh Zoo An initial paper on the subject published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2011 suggested that a urinary protein called ceruloplasmin increased in pregnant pandas. "The thought is that (the fertilised egg) causes an inflammation reaction within the uterus and then this causes this acute protein to appear and you then pick up the traces of this in the urine," said Mr Valentine. Researchers have been refining the technique, he added, with a further paper due soon. Helpfully ceruloplasmin also appears to predict whether or not the pregnancy will be successful. "What seems to be the case is that the profile for a panda that will get pregnant and carry full term is different from one that will get pregnant and lose the pregnancy or one that is not pregnant at all," Mr Valentine added In Tian Tian's case the test suggested that she is pregnant and is likely to carry to term. Her urine is being analysed in Berlin: American research assessed in Germany to help the breeding of a Chinese panda which lives in Scotland. It is "the proving of collaborative international science," according to Professor Chris West, chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the charity which runs Edinburgh Zoo. He believes such international co-operation is "hugely important" for the survival of the species. Tian Tian's keepers will not know for sure that she is pregnant until shortly before she gives birth "We aim to breed them as a genetic reservoir in case they go extinct in the wild," he says. "All of the organisations that care for pandas including the Chinese share information and expertise very generously so we're not working on this alone." Ceruloplasmin analysis sounds extremely promising but assessing a panda's hormone levels is not a waste of time. Tian Tian's urinary progesterone showed a sharp jump on 15 July, a result which was confirmed this week by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. Although this could suggest either a pregnancy or a pseudo-pregnancy, it does enable keepers to narrow down the window when the panda might give birth. The gestation period is difficult to assess since giant pandas exhibit what is called "delayed implantation." A study by Hemin Zhang and colleagues published by the journal Reproduction in 2009 describes the phenomenon thus: "...the embryo floats in the womb and arrests development until it attaches to the uterus months later." There is an initial rise in progesterone when the animal breeds and research suggests that a secondary rise occurs around the time that the embryo is implanted in the wall of the uterus. Scientists estimate that a panda will give birth between 40-55 days after the second rise in her progesterone. In Tian Tian's case that means the possibility of a cub between 24 August and 10 September. If she is not pregnant her progesterone levels will begin to drop sharply in mid-August. If she is, they will remain high and the hope of a cub will increase by the day. "There is a sense of pressure. There is a sense of expectation," says Prof West, adding "we want to deliver." So, presumably, does Tian Tian.

– UK newspapers are filled with headlines of another high-profile pregnancy, or at least a suspected pregnancy. This time it's Tian Tian, a giant panda at the Edinburgh Zoo, reports the Scotsman. Tian Tian seems like she's pregnant—her hormone levels have changed, and she's showing signs of nesting—but zoo keepers probably won't know for certain until shortly before a baby arrives, possibly as early as next month, reports AFP. It would be the first panda born in the UK, but, alas, this royal baby would have to return to China in about a year. (The zoo pays China $1 million a year to keep Tian Tian and male companion Yang Guang.) The zoo used artificial insemination in April, and things are looking "quite promising," says the leader of its panda project. The tricky part is that panda are notorious for having "pseudo pregnancies," says the BBC in a primer on the topic. (The National Zoo in DC just got some new arrivals of its own—rare tiger cubs.)

Lena Dunham was not the Internet's first pick to write the screenplay about a Syrian refugee. (Photo: Evan Agostini, Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) Steven Spielberg is no stranger to stories of war and refugees, having made "Schindler's List" and the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers." J.J. Abrams directed the pilot episode of "Lost," which took place in the immediate aftermath of a plane crash. So it would seem the movie adaptation of "A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival," was safe in their hands. But the internet is not pleased with their choice of screenwriter: Lena Dunham. Twitter quickly registered its displeasure after The Hollywood Reporter and Variety announced that the creator of "Girls" and "Camping" had been chosen to adapt Melissa Fleming's book, which tells the story of Doaa Al Zamel, a young Syrian mother who survived two days in open water holding her children afloat after the rickety boat carrying them to Europe was rammed by a fishing boat piloted by hostile Egyptians. @arabized appealed to two actors of color, Riz Ahmed and Mindy Kaling, to use their influence to stop the project from moving forward with Dunham involved: "Can you guys please please voice a complaint? I don’t want Lena to tell my family’s story as a Syrian." @rizmc@mindykaling can you guys please please voice a complaint. 💔 I don’t want Lena to tell my family’s story as a Syrian. — Arabized (@arabized) October 29, 2018 "What makes her think she can speak accurately about the refugee experience?" asked @CatOuellette. "Please stop this while you’re ahead of a disaster." What makes her think she can speak accurately about the refugee experience? Please stop this while you’re ahead of a disaster. pic.twitter.com/NgyYquwDRY — Catherine Ouellette (@CatOuellette) October 29, 2018 "Not the person who needs to be this voice, yikes," said @katarinahit. Not the person who needs to be this voice, yikes. — Katarina Hit (@katarinahit) October 29, 2018 "Because clearly there’s no one who knows that demographic better than a spoiled, talentless, young, rich white girl," @keithmontesano chimed in. "Yikes." Because clearly there’s no one who knows that demographic better than a spoiled, talentless, young, rich white girl. Yikes. — Keith Montesano (@keithmontesano) October 29, 2018 Some predicted the project will be a trainwreck. "Willing to bet this...will not go well," @psyourewrong speculated. Willing to bet this...will not go well. pic.twitter.com/jAD3VC9D2Z — P.S. You’re Wrong: A Pop Culture Podcast (@psyourewrong) October 29, 2018 "There’s not one supportive comment here!" @Popculjunkie observed after reading through the replies to the Variety tweet. "She’s the worst." Lol there’s not one supportive comment here! She’s the worst. — janinnie (@Popculjunkie) October 29, 2018 Some other folks couldn't quite put their displeasure into words, so they resorted to using lots of gifs. @samnoaches turned to Steve Carell's character from "The Office" to express the inherent awkwardness. Whereas @mexcellentt went with "SNL"-era Amy Poehler. Dunham, 32, did get some pats on the back Monday – though not because of her latest writing gig. During a guest appearance on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast, she revealed that she was six months sober after becoming dependent on the anti-nxiety drug Klonopin. She said that she had no trouble getting the drug and that she upped her dose after receiving a PTSD diagnosis. The actress has been open about her past sexual trauma and her struggles after she underwent a complete hysterectomy to end the chronic pain brought on by endemetriosis, a condition that occurs when uterine tissue grows outside the womb. "It stopped being, 'I take one when I fly,' and it started being like, 'I take one when I’m awake,' " she recalled of the period when she became dependent on the medication. But she wasn't prepared for the withdrawal symptoms when she gave up Klonopin. "Nobody I know who are prescribed these medications is told, 'By the way, when you try and get off this, it’s going to be like the most hellacious acid trip you’ve ever had where you’re (expletive) clutching the walls and the hair is blowing off your head and you can’t believe you found yourself in this situation,' " she told Shepard. Six months into life without anti-anxiety meds, Dunham says her brain is still adjusting. "I still feel like my brain is recalibrating itself to experience anxiety,” she observed. "I just feel, literally, on-my-knees grateful every day." Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2018/10/29/lena-dunham-slammed-twitter-plans-adapt-syrian-refugee-story/1809056002/ ||||| Lena Dunham says she’s six months sober after quitting the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin. The actress opened up about her decision to get sober during an appearance on Dax Shepard‘s podcast Armchair Expert. “I’ve been sober for six months,” she said. “My particular passion was Klonopin.” Dunham, 32, said she started taking the medication after her anxiety became so intense that it held her back from daily activities and hindered her work. “I was having crazy anxiety and having to show up for things that I didn’t feel equipped to show up for,” she explained. “But I know I need to do it, and when I take a Klonopin, I can do it.” She said the drug made her “feel like the person I was supposed to be.” “It was like suddenly I felt like the part of me that I knew was there was freed up to do her thing,” she continued. Klonopin is a type of Benzodiazepine used to treat symptoms of anxiety, panic disorders and seizures. RELATED: Lena Dunham Had Her Left Ovary Removed: ‘It Got Worse and Worse’ Over the years, Dunham said she started taking Klonopin most frequently. “It stopped being ‘I take one when I fly,’ to ‘I take one when I’m awake.’ “ “I didn’t have any trouble getting a doctor to tell me, ‘No you have serious anxiety issues, you should be taking this. This is how you should be existing,’ ” she said. She said she had increased her dosage after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “I was diagnosed with pretty serious PTSD. I have a few sexual traumas in my past and then I had all these surgeries and then I had my hysterectomy after a period of really extreme pain,” she said. “It stopped feeling like I had panic attacks and it started feeling like I was a living panic attack. The only thing that was notable was the parts of the day where I didn’t feel like I was going to barf and faint.” RELATED: Lena Dunham Had a Full Hysterectomy to Remove Her Uterus and Cervix and End Endometriosis Pain Dunham said that while she knew the Klonopin she was taking wasn’t making her feel better, she was scared of what going off the drug would feel like. “If I look back, there were a solid three years where I was, to put it lightly, misusing benzos, even though it was all quote unquote doctor prescribed,” she said. Hutton Supancic/Getty She said that while she’s had her “fair share of opioid experiences” due to her health issues, she didn’t realize the just how hard quitting would be. “Nobody I know who are prescribed these medications is told, ‘By the way, when you try and get off this, it’s going to be like the most hellacious acid trip you’ve ever had where you’re f—– clutching the walls and the hair is blowing off your head and you can’t believe you found yourself in this situation,’ ” she said. “Now the literal smell of the inside of pill bottles makes me want to throw up.” Six months later, Dunham said she is still getting used to her new normal. “I still feel like my brain is recalibrating itself to experience anxiety,” she explained. “I just feel literally on my knees grateful every day.” ||||| Thank you to SquareSpace Quip , and Robinhood for sponsoring this week's episode. Create a beautiful website with SquareSpace - go to squarespace.com/dax for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch, use the offer code "dax" to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You’ve heard us obsess over my MeUndies and all the amazing colors and prints they offer, to get your 15% off your first pair, free shipping, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee, go to MeUndies.com/dax . Quip was designed to make brushing your teeth more simple, affordable and enjoyable. Quip starts at just $25 and if you go to getquip.com/dax right now, you get your first refill pack for free with a Quip electric toothbrush. Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFS, options, and cryptos - all commission-free. Robinhood is giving listeners a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build your portfolio - sign up at armchair.robinhood.com

– Lena Dunham is six months sober after getting addicted to the anxiety medication Klonopin, People reports. The Girls star said during an appearance on Dax Shepard's podcast that her anxiety and PTSD got so bad she easily found a doctor to prescribe the drug. "I was having crazy anxiety and having to show up for things that I didn’t feel equipped to show up for. But I know I need to do it, and when I take a Klonopin, I can do it," explained the 32-year-old, who is also in the news Monday due to her controversial plan to adapt a Syrian refugee story for the big screen, USA Today reports. But eventually, "it stopped being 'I take one when I fly,' to 'I take one when I'm awake,'" she said of the pills. "If I look back, there were a solid three years where I was, to put it lightly, misusing benzos [benzodiazepines, drugs used to treat anxiety], even though it was all quote unquote doctor prescribed," she continued. Getting off Klonopin was not pleasant: "Nobody I know who are prescribed these medications is told, 'By the way, when you try and get off this, it's going to be like the most hellacious acid trip you've ever had where you're f---ing clutching the walls and the hair is blowing off your head and you can’t believe you found yourself in this situation,'" she said. "Now the literal smell of the inside of pill bottles makes me want to throw up." (Dunham's before/after photos have a message.)

We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. ||||| Brian O’Callaghan fought in Iraq, mastered Arabic and became a division chief at the National Security Agency. Last year, wanting a second child for their young family, he and his wife adopted a 3-year-old boy from South Korea. “He was so loving of him,” a family member said. It is a background that made allegations revealed in Montgomery County District Court on Tuesday seem all the more stunning: Alone with the boy — with his wife out of town, his other son in a different part of the house — O’Callaghan repeatedly struck the child, hitting him so hard that the boy died two days later. “An absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Fenton, listing injuries to the boy’s head, neck and back. “Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe.” Based in part on her assertions, Judge William Simmons denied bond for O’Callaghan, who has been charged with first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. The hearing was the first in the case, one that O’Callaghan’s attorney said was not what police and prosecutors were making it out to be. Brian O'Callaghan and his wife, Jennifer O'Callaghan, in a 2013 photo. (Courtesy of family) “This was a terrible, terrible tragedy — and not a crime,” said the lawyer, Steven McCool. O’Callaghan’s wife, Jennifer, his parents and his in-laws came to court. “He has the unwavering support of his family,” McCool said. “They know he is incapable of committing the crimes alleged.” O’Callaghan, 36, said little during the hearing as his image was piped in via a video feed from jail. He attended the University of Northern Colorado and, by 1997, was serving in the Marine Reserve, according to McCool and military officials. He served in Kosovo. In 2003, while deployed in Iraq, he earned the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his part in a firefight that helped lead to the rescue of captured soldier Jessica Lynch, according to military records and McCool. At some point, O’Callaghan went to work for the NSA, where he is chief of the Korea Division in the analysis and production section and holds a top-secret intelligence clearance, McCool said. At home, he and his wife had one son, who is now 7. They worked through Catholic Charities to qualify to adopt a child with special needs — which is how they adopted Hyunsu from Korea in October. The family called him Madoc, an Irish addition to his name. For three months, Jennifer O’Callaghan was the boy’s primary caretaker, according to police. In January, Brian O’Callaghan went on leave to care for Madoc, while his wife went back to work. On Jan. 31, she went to New Jersey, and he and their sons stayed at their home in Damascus, authorities said. It is here that the accounts about what happened differ substantially. According to Fenton, the prosecutor, some time on the night of Jan. 31 or into the next day, O’Callaghan beat Madoc. From there, O’Callaghan didn’t render aid, Fenton said. Instead, he moved his injured son from a bed to a blanket and cleaned bodily fluids from inside the home — finally taking Madoc to a hospital in Germantown. The child was in full arrest, Fenton said. The boy died Feb. 3, police said. An autopsy confirmed injuries consistent with being beaten, Fenton said. Among them: a fracture at the base of skull, bruises to the forehead, swelling of the brain and wounds to other parts of the body. There was also “blunt impact to the back from a linear and triangular shaped object,” Fenton said in court. Detectives questioned O’Callaghan. He said that on the evening of Jan. 31, he helped Hyunsu take a shower because the child didn’t like having water hit him. “During the shower, Hyunsu was crying and upset,” Detective Mike Carin wrote in court papers, summarizing his conversation with O’Callaghan. “After the shower had ended, Hyunsu slipped in the bathtub, falling backwards. As he fell, he hit his shoulder. Brian consoled him and he went to bed without incident.” The next day, O’Callaghan took his sons to breakfast, followed by a trip to a swim center, according to Carin’s summary. The three eventually returned home, O’Callaghan told the detectives, and Hyunsu took a nap. At 4 p.m., O’Callaghan went to check on his younger son and saw pink stains on the bedding and mucus coming from the boy’s nose, Carin wrote. O’Callaghan told detectives that he changed the sheets, returned an hour later to check on the boy and found his condition had worsened. O’Callaghan told the detectives that the boy was unresponsive and that he washed him off in a bathtub, eventually taking him to the hospital. “Brian O’Callaghan could not provide an explanation” for the injuries, Carin wrote. “These facts are strong, these facts are horrific, and what this man did to this child is murder,” Fenton said in court. Detectives got a warrant for O’Callaghan’s arrest Feb. 12 but allowed him to attend his son’s memorial service, McCool said. In court Tuesday, McCool said that medical tests performed at the hospital appear to contradict the autopsy. “There was a full CT scan done of Madoc, and there were no skull fractures,” he said. William Rose, O’Callaghan’s grandfather, said the memorial service was moving. The pastor reminded mourners that the boy’s organs had gone to save people’s lives. “I find it impossible to believe,” Rose said of the murder charge, “because he’s worked so hard to get this baby. He was so loving with him. He’s been so wonderful with his other child. I’ve never seen him do anything that would make me believe he is capable of that.” Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report. ||||| DAMASCUS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man and military combat veteran has been charged in the fatal beating of his 3-year-old son who was adopted months earlier from South Korea, police said. This photo provided by Jennifer O'Callaghan via the law office of Mallon & McCool, LLC shows Brian Patrick O'Callaghan, 36, of Damascus, Md., and his wife Jennifer. Brian O'Callaghan has been charged... (Associated Press) This image provided by Montgomery County Police Department, shows Brian Patrick O'Callaghan. He was charged in the fatal beating of his 3-year-old son who was adopted months earlier from Korea, police... (Associated Press) Brian Patrick O'Callaghan, 36, of Damascus, has been charged with first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in the death of the boy earlier this month. He was ordered held without bond during a court appearance Tuesday. O'Callaghan, a former Marine, did not commit any crime and is a National Security Agency worker who specializes in Korea, his attorney said. Investigators were called to Children's National Medical Center in Washington on Feb. 2, where police say the boy's injuries, including bleeding in the brain and a skull fracture, indicated he had been beaten. The boy died the next day of multiple blunt impact injuries, which O'Callaghan could not explain or account for, according to police charging documents. Montgomery County police say O'Callaghan told investigators he had been caring for the child while his wife was out of town when the boy at one point fell backward in the shower and hit his shoulder. The following day, O'Callaghan said, he put the boy down for a nap. But when he went to check on him, the child had mucus coming from his nose and began vomiting while unresponsive after he was picked up, police said. O'Callaghan said he took the boy to a hospital emergency center. Doctors became concerned that the child might be brain dead because of internal bleeding in the brain and hemorrhaging in the eyes, police said. O'Callaghan's lawyer, Steven McCool, called the allegations of murder "unfounded." He said he disputes that the child suffered a skull fracture or multiple injuries to his head. "My client, a decorated Iraqi war veteran, is grieving the loss of his son while fighting what ultimately will be shown to be unfounded charges," McCool said. O'Callaghan's lawyer identified him as an ex-Marine and combat veteran who received awards for his service in Iraq and Kosovo. He said O'Callaghan now specializes in Korea at the NSA. The NSA did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Police identified the child as Hyunsu O'Callaghan. An obituary posted on the website of the Frederick News-Post spelled the boy's name as Madoc Hyeonsu O'Callaghan and said he was born in South Korea and had joined the family last October. The child was described in the obituary as a "smiling, content, and loving son and brother." "He loved his dogs, his big brother Aidan, and anything his parents made for him to eat. He wasn't dealt the simplest hand in life, but he found something to love in it every day," the obituary said.

– Brian O'Callaghan and his wife, Jennfer, badly wanted a second child. Working with Catholic Charities, in October they adopted a South Korean toddler with special needs, whom they named Madoc Hyeonsu O'Callaghan, according to this obituary. On February 3, the 3-year-old died, with injuries police say were consistent with being beaten, the Washington Post reports. O'Callaghan, a former Marine who served in Kosovo and Iraq and works at the NSA, has been charged with his murder, and prosecutors have an awful story: They say he beat his son on January 31 or the next day, didn't help him for hours as he cleaned up bodily fluids around the home, and eventually took him to the hospital on February 1. This is "an absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim," says a State's attorney. "Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe." O'Callaghan, who appeared in court yesterday, says the boy slipped in the shower and hit his shoulder on January 31, while his wife was out of town, and that the next day everything seemed fine until the toddler went down for a nap in the afternoon and O'Callaghan noticed pink stains on the bedding and mucus coming from his son's nose. An hour later, he says, the boy was unresponsive and his condition had worsened (the AP reports that the toddler was vomiting); he washed him off in the bathtub before taking him to the hospital. A detective says O'Callaghan had no explanation for the injuries shown on the boy's autopsy—including a skull fracture, brain swelling, bruising on the forehead, and "blunt impact to the back from a linear and triangular shaped object." But O'Callaghan's attorney says a CT scan contradicted the autopsy, showing no skull fractures. He adds that his client "has the unwavering support of his family." Says O'Callaghan's grandfather, "I find it impossible to believe, because he’s worked so hard to get this baby. He was so loving with him."

An undated photo released by Town of Beloit Police Department is of Kayden Powell. The FBI and state law enforcement agencies are helping local authorities in a search for the 5-day-old baby in Rock County,... (Associated Press) TOWN OF BELOIT, Wis. (AP) — Federal investigators have joined the search for a 5-day-old infant who disappeared from a bassinette at a home in southern Wisconsin. The baby's 18-year-old mother called 911 after waking about 4:30 a.m. Thursday to find that her son, Kayden Powell, was missing from his bassinette in a room where she was sleeping at a home in the Town of Beloit, authorities said. Police said Thursday night that about 40 officers from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were working on the case, but no suspects have been identified and no have been arrests made. The baby's mother, Brianna Marshall, and the infant's 23-year-old father, Bruce Powell, were staying at the house, Town of Beloit Police Chief Steven Kopp said. Investigators were questioning people who were at the house Wednesday night, Kopp told The Janesville Gazette. Police said the infant's mother and father continue to be cooperative. A woman who had been at the house but left around 1:30 a.m. Thursday — the last time people at the residence saw the baby — was questioned but is not a person of interest in the case, the police chief said. Kopp told the Beloit Daily News that the woman was visiting the home Wednesday evening but left early Thursday for Colorado where she lives. Police were able to reach the woman on her cellphone, and she pulled off the highway in Iowa. Authorities took the woman into custody on an unrelated outstanding warrant from Texas. The incident is not believed to be a custody dispute, Kopp said. An Amber Alert was not issued because the disappearance doesn't meet the criteria, he said. The FBI and Wisconsin Department of Justice are assisting with the investigation. Police were still at the house Thursday evening. Authorities kept media away from the small A-frame home. The Town of Beloit, home to about 7,700 people, is about 50 miles south of Madison near the Illinois border. ||||| Print Article TOWN OF BELOIT – The Town of Beloit and other agencies are investigating a report of a missing 4-day-old baby boy, Kayden J. Powell. Town of Beloit Police Chief Steve Kopp said the baby’s mother, Brianna Marshall, called 911 at 4:30 a.m. Thursday to report the child missing from his basinette at their home at 836 Homeland Court. The baby’s father is Bruce Powell, authorities say. “We have mobilized all the resources and are working with the City of Beloit, Sheriff’s Department, Division of Criminal Investigations from the state and the FBI,” Kopp said. “We are scambling because time is of the essence. With a child only four days old we have concerns with a baby. We are doing everything we can do to locate this child.” Kopp said police are in the process of interviewing a number of people and locating others who were at the house the night before, because there were visitors at the home. As of Thursday morning Kopp said there was no suspect or vehicle description at this time and no arrests have been made. Police were interviewing four people who had visited the home at the police department in addition to a family member who was being interviewed in Iowa who had come to visit the family. Neighbor Kristen Terwilliger said she heard about the missing baby online. After hearing the news she said she went into the backyard and was looking for footprints but didn’t find anything. She described the neighborhood as very quiet, and said residents there tend to keep to themselves. No further details were being released by authorities at presstime today. ||||| More Video... Related Documents Kayden Powell 9-1-1 Call Log TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) – We’re hearing the frantic 9-1-1 call made the moment a local mom found out her newborn baby was missing. 31-year-old Kristen Smith is charged with kidnapping after missing newborn Kayden Powell was found alive Friday after he was missing for nearly 30 hours. The FBI alleges Smith took her half-sister’s son and left him outside an Iowa gas station before being arrested on Thursday. Right now, Smith is in her own jail cell for safety reasons. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- It’s been a day of rest and reunion for the parents of Kayden Powell, the newborn who was taken from his home in the town of Beloit on Thursday. The family of three is in Chicago spending some much needed quality time together. It’s a story that has tugged on the heartstrings of many parents and the community around Beloit has joined in the family's celebration. The sign in the window says it all: “Welcome home Kayden Powell”. That message from the newborn's family has echoed by many throughout the town of Beloit “I'm just glad that sweet baby is home with his parents where he belongs," says Beloit township neighbor Patty Walker. The week old baby was separated from his parents, 18-year-old Brianna Marshall and 23-year-old Bruce Powell, for more than 30 hours. Around 4:30am Thursday morning, some one snatched Kayden from his crib inside his great grandmother's house on homeland court. It was a crime that astounded parents across the Stateline, and seemed like everyone in the Stateline who followed the case, let out a collective sigh of relief when Kayden was found on Friday. It was the police chief in West Branch, IA, who found the newborn alive and well inside of a tote bag at a gas station. Many who watched the story unfold called the discovery a miracle. “That was truly amazing that he had the inclination to even look in that thing. That’s just wonderful," says Jerry Wilson from the town of Beloit. Kayden was reunited with his parents Friday night and his family says they're grateful for the well wishes that have come from neighbors around town and across the country. “I thank the, all you guys and everyone that helped, to all the friends and moral support we got from everybody," says Kayden’s uncle Matt Bennett. Kristen Smith, Kayden's aunt, is charged with his kidnapping. She was wanted in Texas and was arrested at a different gas station in West Branch, IA, a full day before the baby was found. If found guilty of the kidnapping, she could spend the rest of her life in prison. TOWN OF BELOIT, Wis. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors have charged a Denver woman with kidnapping a newborn from a southern Wisconsin home. U.S. Attorney John Vaudreuil filed the charge against Kristen Smith on Friday afternoon, hours after an Iowa police chief discovered the nearly week-old Kayden Powell alive and well in a plastic storage bin outside a West Branch, Iowa, gas station. The newborn disappeared from the Town of Beloit house where he was staying with his mother early Thursday morning. Police arrested Smith hours later at a gas station about a half-mile from the station where the newborn was found. Smith faces life in prison if she's convicted. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. Federal prosecutors charged a Denver woman on Friday with kidnapping her half-sister's newborn boy from a Wisconsin home hours after police discovered the infant in a storage crate outside an Iowa gas station, alive and well in single-digit weather. Kristin Smith faces life in prison if she's convicted of kidnapping Kayden Powell, who's nearly a week old. The newborn's parents reported him missing from the Town of Beloit home in southern Wisconsin where the family was staying early Thursday morning. According to an affidavit accompanying the kidnapping charge, Smith is the mother's half-sister and had come to visit the family in Wisconsin. She left the home early Thursday morning. Several hours later the newborn's mother reported the baby missing. Police arrested Smith at a West Branch, Iowa, gas station on Thursday morning on an outstanding warrant from an unrelated case in Texas. The baby was not in the car, although she had baby clothes, a fake pregnancy belly and a stroller with her, according to the affidavit. Hundreds of officers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, meanwhile, began searching possible stops on her route. West Branch Police Chief Mike Horihan was searching the area around a BP gas station off Interstate 80 -- about 500 yards from the Kum & Go station where Smith was arrested -- when he heard cries that led him to a closed storage crate alongside the building. The baby was inside the crate, swaddled in a blanket but healthy and responsive. West Branch is about 180 miles southwest of the Town of Beloit. "I had tears in my eyes," BP station manager Jay Patel said, recalling his reaction to the police chief telling him that the infant had been found. "It's good news but it's sad, too." Milwaukee FBI Acting Special Agent-In-Charge G.B. Jones said the effort now is "clearly focused on reuniting mother and child and the rest of the family members with the child." It's unclear how long the newborn was outside in the cold, Jones said. The temperature was about minus 10 Thursday night in the town and only in the single digits when the child was found. The infant was taken to an area hospital for evaluation, Horihan said. The baby's great-grandfather, Brian Bennett, said he was "surprised" the child was in good condition. "It's funny he lived that long outside. A miracle, I guess," Bennett, 68, said. "They were just lucky they found him." ------ Foley reported from West Branch, Iowa. IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) -- A Wisconsin infant who was abducted and left out in the cold in Iowa has been reunited with his parents and is on his way home. Kayden Powell's mother discovered him missing early Thursday morning from his bassinet in a Town of Beloit home. Police found him tucked in a storage crate outside an Iowa gas station in frigid temperatures more than 24 hours later. A spokeswoman for University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City says Kayden is in good condition and was discharged from the hospital Friday evening. Hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Brown says the nearly week-old baby is with his parents and heading back to Wisconsin. Kayden's aunt has been charged in his disappearance. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) – The missing Town of Beloit infant has been found alive and abandoned inside a duffle bag outside an Iowa gas station this morning and now the baby’s aunt has just been charged with kidnapping the baby boy. 31-year-old Kristen Smith is accused of stealing Kayden Powell from a home in Beloit early Thursday morning, before taking him to Iowa. You may remember, Police originally said Smith was found with baby clothes in her car. She now faces life in prison for federal kidnapping. We spoke with family members today who were overcome with emotion after hearing Kayden was found alive. Tears of joy and relief were Mark Bennett’s reaction after finding out his six day old nephew Kayden Powell, who went missing early Thursday morning, is alive and healthy. The nearly 30 hour search by local and federal authorities didn’t end in Beloit, rather about 130 miles away in West Branch Iowa. Investigators say the police chief was searching outside the gas station off I-80 around 10:15 this morning and heard Kayden crying. He was inside a duffle bag, swaddled in clothes alive and healthy. “It’s very unique and very special and I’m just glad everything seems to be fine. The baby seems to be doing just fine,” said West Branch Police Chief Mike Horihan. Kristen Smith, the baby’s aunt, is now charged with kidnapping the infant, but there are still a lot of questions. “We don’t know how long the baby was outside. There are a lot of things we don’t know in this investigation. It will persist until we have a lot of those questions answered,” said FBI Special Agent G.B. Jones. At this point, all baby Kayden’s family cares about is getting him back home. This morning, police were working on reuniting mom and dad with their baby. The manager of the gas station where Kayden was found says the baby was in a plastic storage bin. You may remember, Smith was arrested yesterday morning at a gas station. It was about half a mile from the station where Kayden was found. WISCONSIN (WIFR) -- A Colorado woman has been charged with kidnapping in the case of a Beloit baby that had been missing for over 24 hours since Thursday. According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Attorney's office, 31-year-old Kristen Smith took the infant from a home in the Town of Beloit and took the child to Iowa. She was arrested yesterday in Iowa on unrelated charges. She is currently being held at the Cedar County Jail. Six-day-old Kayden Powell was recovered earlier this morning. The West Branch police chief found him outside a gas station in West Branch, Iowa. If Smith is convicted, she would face up to life in prison. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- A six-day-old boy has been found safe and healthy after going missing early Thursday morning. Police say the infant, Kayden Powell, was found inside a bag, wrapped in clothes outside a gas station off I-80 in Iowa. Police say it's the same gas station where they arrested Kristen Smith on Thursday morning. She was wanted on a warrant out of Texas. She's the baby's aunt. Smith's family says she was going back to her home in Colorado. She is now being called a "person of interest" in the case. Investigators say an officer was canvassing the area when he heard the baby's cries coming from the duffel bag. Despite the freezing temperatures, paramedics say the baby is in good health. Police aren't sure how long the infant was outside before he was found. The parents are now being reunited with baby Kayden. The investigation is ongoing. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- A six-day-old boy has been found safe and alive in a duffel bag near a gas station off of I-80. Kayden Powell is currently on his way to reunite with his parents. Authorities are currently holding a press conference on his recovery. We will update when we have all details confirmed. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- Authorities will be holding a press conference from the Town of Beloit on the missing six-day-old boy. We will stream this live on WIFR and wifr.com. According to police, there are no suspects nor arrests at this time in the disappearance of Kayden Powell. Police say about 40 officers are working on the case. According to authorities, the baby's 18-year-old mother called 911 around 4:30 a.m. Thursday. She found the child missing from his basinette in a room where the mother was sleeping in the Town of Beloit. The infant's mother and father are both cooperating with police. The home where the baby was last seen continues to be processed for evidence. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) – We’re continuing to follow a story out of the Town of Beloit where Police have roped off a house where they say a 5-day-old infant boy was taken from the home early this morning. Right now, no suspects are in custody, however the FBI and multiple police departments are on the case. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare having their baby disappear in the middle of the night. Police say the family is cooperating and there is still a lot of activity going on at the house on Homeland Court where Kayden Powell disappeared. Police say they don’t have any suspects at this time. They interviewed a number of people, including the parents and two others who were in the home when Kayden was found missing around 4:30 this morning. No one seems to have any clue who could have taken the baby. Police say there were no signs of forced entry into the home. Right now, authorities say time is of the essence. “Obviously you know in this case, a 5-day-old baby can’t take care of itself. We’ve got frigid temperatures out and it’s just a frantic search to try to locate this baby,” said Town of Beloit Police Chief Steve Kopp. A woman was arrested this morning in Iowa on a warrant. The great-uncle of the child says she’s a stepsister to one of the parents, but police say she is not a suspect. UPDATE: TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- Police are still looking for a baby that went missing early Thursday morning from a home in the Town of Beloit. At this time, police do not have any suspects in this case. So far, 8 people have been interviewed and all of them were known to be in the house within 12 hours of the time 5-day-old Kayden Powell was reported missing. Police say all eight people they have interviewed have been cooperative. One of those people was Kristen Smith, a woman who was arrested around 5:30 this morning in West Branch, Iowa. She is not a suspect in this case. There were four people at the home when the baby was reported missing, the mother, the father, a brother of the mother, and a great grandmother of the child. Police say there was no forced entry in the home and police say it is still an active search. 40 investigators from four agencies (Town of Beloit, City of Beloit, Rock County Sheriff, and FBI) are working on this case. Anyone with information on this incident can contact the Town of Beloit Police Department at 608-757-2244, or Greater Beloit Crimestoppers at 608-362-7463. UPDATE: TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- Police are trying to locate a 5 day-old baby boy who went missing from a home in the Town of Beloit early Thursday morning. Town of Beloit Police Chief Steve Kopp says the mother of Kayden Powell contacted police immediately after she woke up around 4:30 Thursday morning in a home located in the 800 block of Homeland Court when she discovered her son was gone. The home belongs to the great-grandmother of the infant. According to police an Amber Alert has not been issued because the case does not meet the criteria at this time. Right now, police say no one is in custody and they do not have a possible vehicle description. Law enforcement have brought 4 people in for questioning including both parents, another family member, and a friend. Along with Beloit police, the FBI, the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation, and the Rock County Sheriff's Department are also involved in the search. Anyone with information on this incident can contact the Town of Beloit Police Department at 608-757-2244, or Greater Beloit Crimestoppers at 608-362-7463. TOWN OF BELOIT, Wis. (AP) -- Federal and state law enforcement agencies are helping local authorities in a search for a 5-day-old baby in Rock County. Authorities say the newborn's mother called 911 after waking about 4:30 a.m. Thursday to find the child, Kayden Powell, missing from his bassinette in a room where she was sleeping at a home in the Town of Beloit. Town Police Chief Steven Kopp says the 18-year-old mother, Brianna Marshall, and the infant's 23-year-old father, Bruce Powell, were staying at the house. Kopp tells The Janesville Gazette (http://bit.ly/1gPPBSJ ) investigators are questioning people who were at the house Wednesday night. Kopp says the incident is not believed to be a custody dispute. The chief says an Amber Alert was not issued because the disappearance doesn't meet the criteria. The FBI and Wisconsin Department of Justice are assisting with the investigation. TOWN OF BELOIT (WIFR) -- Police are trying to locate a 4 day-old baby who went missing from a home in the Town of Beloit early Thursday morning. Town of Beloit Police Chief Steve Kopp says the mother of Kayden Powell contacted police immediately after woke up around 4:30 Thursday morning in her home located in the 800 block of Homeland Court when she discovered her son was gone. Police do not have any suspects in custody nor a possible vehicle description but did bring in two people who were at the home last night for questioning. Along with Beloit police, the FBI, the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation, and the Rock County Sheriff's Department are also involved in the search.

– Brianna Marshall awoke at 4:30am yesterday morning to find her 4-day-old son, Kayden, had disappeared from his bassinet in the same room where she'd been sleeping, and phoned 911. That call has prompted a missing baby case in Beloit, Wis., that now has 40 federal, state, and local investigators racing against the clock. Police have ruled out a custody dispute, the AP reports, and the baby's father, Bruce Powell, was also home when Marshall sounded the alarm, just three hours after she last checked on the baby when visitors left the home around 1:30am. WIFR reports there was no sign of forced entry, and interviews with those visitors turned up no suspects, though one woman who was returning to her home in Colorado pulled off the highway in Iowa when she got a call from police and was detained for an unrelated outstanding warrant. "We have mobilized all the resources and are working with the City of Beloit, Sheriff's Department, Division of Criminal Investigations from the state, and the FBI," Beloit's police chief told the Beloit Daily News yesterday. "We are scrambling because time is of the essence. With a child only four days old we have concerns ... We are doing everything we can do to locate this child."

The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| It should have been a triumphant day for women's soccer in North America – both Canada and the US had secured qualification for London 2012 by virtue of advancing to Sunday's final of the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament. But less than 24 hours after the US women's national team defeated Canada 4-0 to win the tournament, the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) announced plans to cancel the 2012 season. Two WPS players, Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, played a starring role in USA's win, scoring two goals apiece. Most, if not all, of the vitriol will be hurled in the direction of Dan Borislow, who owned and operated the magicJack franchise in WPS during the 2011 season. The controversial owner, who made a tidy fortune with his magicJack internet phone system, has been involved in a legal battle with the league's owners since they voted to terminate his franchise at the conclusion of the 2011 season. The WPS announcement specifically stated that the league is "suspending the 2012 season in order to address the legal issues head-on before moving forward with competition". Borislow clashed early and often with the rest of the league since he bought the Washington Freedom at the end of 2010. After relocating the team to Florida, Borislow seemed at odds when it came to everything from uniforms, player payments and in-stadium advertisements. Last July, the WPS players' union even filed a grievance against Borislow, with accusations of players being bullied. The current legal battle began on October 25, when WPS terminated Borslow's franchise. It took less than a month for the owner to file a lawsuit seeking reinstatement of the team. Even in the face of the legal storm, WPS appeared to be staying the course. In December, the league received conditional sanctioning from the US Soccer Federation for the 2012 season, and on January 13, held its annual draft to allocate collegiate stars to the pro ranks. Five teams were scheduled to comprise the league. Only a week and a half ago, it looked like a crisis had been averted altogether, with a legal compromise reportedly reached that would have seen a magicJack team play exhibition games against other WPS teams. But that was not to be with Monday's news that the 2012 season would be canceled. Clearly Borislow had made his share of enemies. But he's also won over his share of those involved in the women's game, including Wambach, who played for magicJack in 2011. The forward voiced her support in an interview with ESPN's Julie Foudy a few days ago, after the U.S. clinched a spot in the Olympics (both tournament finalists qualified for London 2012). "I know that Dan Borislow, he's got some ideas up his sleeve and if you know me, I'm always going to back that guy," Wambach said. "He's an inspiration to me and as much as I can be a part of women's soccer and keeping women's soccer going in this country, I'm going to support it as long as I can." The U.S. has already seen one women's league come and go, with the former Women's United Soccer Association lasting from 2000-2003. And while this isn't the final nail in the coffin of WPS, it's future is uncertain. The league had already been struggling and had to ask for special dispensation for such a small number of teams in the league this year. Team ownerships, however, seem determined to fight on, and early reports indicate that some might even still try to play in 2012. With the US women looking to defend their Olympic gold in London – they were also runners-up in the last World Cup – it's another chance to capture the nation's attention, and perhaps instill hope for WPS in 2013.

– The thrill of victory was quickly followed by the agony of defeat for US women soccer players this week. The good news: They won a berth in the London Olympics. The bad: The 2012 season of the Women's Professional Soccer League has been canceled. At issue is a legal battle with a controversial owner of one of the teams. Dan Borislow, who made a fortune with his magicJack Internet phone system, was bounced from the league at the end of last season. He's fighting that decision in court, and WPS officials are suspending this year's season to "address the legal issues head-on before moving forward with competition," according to a statement. News of the season shutdown followed shortly a 4-0 Olympic-qualifying victory over Canada by the US women's national team. WPS players Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan played a key role in the win, each scoring two goals. Complicating the ongoing league battle are different positions on Borislow. He made trouble over everything from team uniforms to stadium advertisements to location (he moved the Washington Freedom to Florida), and a union bullying grievance was filed against him, reports the Guardian. But Wambach supports Borislow. "He's got some ideas up his sleeve and if you know me, I'm always going to back that guy," says Wambach, who plugs magicJack on Borislow's website.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team was one holdout juror away from winning a conviction against Paul Manafort on all 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, juror Paula Duncan told Fox News in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18 counts,” Duncan, 52, said. She added that Mueller’s team of prosecutors often seemed bored, apparently catnapping during parts of the trial. The identities of the jurors have been closely held, kept under seal by Judge T.S. Ellis III at Tuesday's conclusion of the high-profile trial. But Duncan gave a behind-the-scenes account to Fox News on Wednesday, after the jury returned a guilty verdict against the former Trump campaign chairman on eight financial crime counts and deadlocked on 10 others. Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller’s team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case. “Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn’t have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump,” Duncan said of the special counsel’s case, which she separately described as a “witch hunt to try to find Russian collusion,” borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more than 100 times. “Something that went through my mind is, this should have been a tax audit,” Duncan said, sympathizing with the foundation of the Manafort defense team’s argument. She described a tense and emotional four days of deliberations, which ultimately left one juror holding out. Behind closed doors, tempers flared at times, even though jurors never explicitly discussed Manafort’s close ties to Trump. “It was a very emotionally charged jury room – there were some tears,” Duncan said about deliberations with a group of Virginians she didn’t feel included many “fellow Republicans.” A political allegiance to the president also raised conflicted feelings in Duncan, but she said it ultimately didn’t change her decision about the former Trump campaign chairman. “Finding Mr. Manafort guilty was hard for me. I wanted him to be innocent, I really wanted him to be innocent, but he wasn’t,” Duncan said. “That’s the part of a juror, you have to have due diligence and deliberate and look at the evidence and come up with an informed and intelligent decision, which I did.” Duncan, a Missouri native and mother of two, showed Fox News her two notebooks with her juror number #0302 on the covers. In the interview, Duncan also described how the special counsel’s prosecutors apparently had a hard time keeping their eyes open. “A lot of times they looked bored, and other times they catnapped – at least two of them did,” Duncan said. “They seemed very relaxed, feet up on the table bars and they showed a little bit of almost disinterest to me, at times.” The jury box was situated in a corner of the courtroom that gave them an unobstructed head-on view of the prosecutors and defense, while members of the media and the public viewed both parties from behind. COULD MANAFORT COOPERATE WITH MUELLER'S TEAM? A LOOK AT HIS OPTIONS AFTER THE GUILTY VERDICT Judge Ellis told jurors, including Duncan, that their names would remain sealed after the trial’s conclusion, because of dangerous threats he received during the proceedings. But the verdict gave Duncan a license to share her story without fear. “Had the verdict gone any other way, I might have been,” Duncan said. MANAFORT CONVICTED ON BANK AND TAX FRAUD CHARGES Her account of the deliberations is no longer a secret. And neither is the pro-Trump apparel she kept for a long drive to the federal courthouse in Alexandria every day. “Every day when I drove, I had my Make America Great Again hat in the backseat,” said Duncan, who said she plans to vote for Trump again in 2020. “Just as a reminder.” Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this report. ||||| Jury Finds Paul Manafort Guilty In Federal Tax And Bank Fraud Trial Enlarge this image toggle caption Art Lien Art Lien Updated at 6:26 p.m. ET A federal jury on Tuesday found Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, guilty on eight of the 18 charges he faced in his tax and bank fraud trial. The verdict delivered a painful fall from grace for a top political operative who has advised presidents from Gerald Ford to Donald Trump and a shot in the arm to an investigation derided by President Trump as a "witch hunt." Judge T.S. Ellis III declared a mistrial on the other 10 counts. Prosecutors have until Aug. 29 to notify the judge if they are going to retry Manafort on those counts. The Manafort trial marked the first public court test of the work by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed 15 months ago to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and any American conspirators. As is their practice, government lawyers made no comment after the verdict. Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing told reporters outside the courthouse that Manafort is evaluating his options. "Mr. Manafort is disappointed at not getting acquittals all the way through or a complete hung jury on all counts," Downing said. Manafort blinked slowly as the first few charges were read, but he said nothing. He was led out of the court by U.S. Marshals Service deputies but was not handcuffed. Manafort's defense attorneys and the government's lawyers shook hands solemnly. Political reaction Speaking on Tuesday evening in Charleston, W.Va., Trump said Manafort was a "good man." "It doesn't involve me, but I still feel, you know, it's a very sad thing that happened. This has nothing to do with Russian collusion ... This is a witch hunt and a disgrace," Trump said. Mueller's supporters said Manafort's conviction showed just the opposite: how real the work of the special counsel's office actually is. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, also used a statement to warn Trump against disrupting the special counsel's office or trying to vitiate the work of the jury. "This verdict makes it absolutely clear that the Mueller probe is not a 'witch hunt' — it is a serious investigation that is rooting out corruption and Russian influence on our political system at the highest levels. "The president's campaign [chairman] was just convicted of serious federal crimes by a jury of his peers, despite the president's continued attempts to undermine the investigation which has brought Mr. Manafort to justice. Any attempt by the president to pardon Mr. Manafort or interfere in the investigation into his campaign would be a gross abuse of power and require immediate action by Congress." Sometime Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., however, underscored that neither Manafort's conviction nor the separate case involving Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen had established any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian attack on the 2016 election. On Tuesday, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal charges, including campaign finance violations, in federal court in New York. The road ahead No sentencing hearing has been scheduled so far. Manafort was expected to be returned to custody; another federal judge had ordered that he be confined after he was charged with witness tampering in another case. Manafort is set to go on trial in a separate federal case in September in Washington, D.C. He has also been charged with conspiracy and failing to register as a foreign agent in that case. Jurors had been deliberating since Thursday and had sent a few notes to Ellis asking questions about their work. He had urged them to continue to try to reach consensus on all the charges but that did not appear to be possible by Tuesday afternoon. The judge had allowed lawyers for the government and Manafort to read the notes sent into court by the jury. The deliberations followed two weeks of evidence and testimony. The government says Manafort hid income from foreign consulting from the IRS and then, when that work dried up, lied to banks to qualify for loans to sustain his lavish lifestyle. Manafort's defense attorneys say he didn't pay close enough attention to his personal finances in order to have deliberately broken the law, and they sought to damage the credibility of the star witness in the case, former Manafort protégé Rick Gates. ||||| After being found guilty on eight counts of federal crimes on Tuesday, Paul Manafort’s journey through the legal system is far from over. He faces a second trial for more alleged crimes in Washington, DC, in September, and he still needs to be sentenced for the counts that were decided Tuesday. He could still be re-charged on the 10 counts the jury couldn’t decide on Tuesday. He could potentially appeal. And that’s without getting into the wild cards, such as a plea deal in the upcoming trial or even a presidential pardon. Manafort, the former chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and a longtime GOP lobbyist, was found guilty by a Virginia jury on Tuesday of five counts of subscribing to false income tax returns, one count of failing to report his foreign accounts, and two counts of bank fraud. The jury deadlocked on 10 other charges against him, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort’s got a long road ahead of him now in terms of what’s next. First, Manafort, jailed since June, will be sentenced for his eight-count conviction on Tuesday, and Mueller’s team will have to decide whether to charge him again on the other 10 counts. On the counts he’s already been found guilty of, Manafort faces a maximum of 80 years in prison. But his time in the courts isn’t over: Manafort faces another trial in September on seven separate charges in Washington, DC. Brought against him separately for jurisdictional reasons, the charges relate to his foreign lobbying work and alleged witness tampering earlier this year. The trial will start on September 17. Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, told the Wall Street Journal that Manafort’s attorneys could have a good argument for moving the trial somewhere else or delaying it so that the publicity around their client settles. Manafort could also plead guilty to avoid another legal fight. Thus far, he’s remained defiant and refused to cooperate with prosecutors or enter any sort of a deal. Per WSJ, Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, said he was still deciding whether to appeal Tuesday’s conviction and figuring out his next steps. What happens with Manafort on the Trump front isn’t yet decided, either There is the still-unresolved question that’s far more central to Mueller’s probe: whether Manafort or others in the Trump campaign worked with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 campaign. Manafort was a figure of interest in the Russia investigation for a few obvious reasons: He chaired the Trump campaign, and he had longtime ties to Russia. Namely, he had worked for and was indebted to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, his employee Konstantin Kilimnik had alleged ties to Russian intelligence, and his Ukrainian work was for the country’s pro-Russian political faction. But Manafort was also involved in a couple of mysterious exchanges in 2016. He attended Don Jr.’s infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian delegation, where dirt on Hillary Clinton was promised. He also exchanged some curious, cryptic emails with Kilimnik about getting into contact with Deripaska during the campaign. Mueller’s team confirmed in a court filing this year that he was investigating Manafort for potential crimes related to Russian interference with the election. Neither he nor any others in the Trump campaign have been charged with any such crimes yet. But the special counsel’s investigation is still proceeding. Manafort could conceivably lessen his sentence by agreeing to cooperate with Mueller’s team — if they’re even still interested in his cooperation. It seems more likely at this point that Manafort is gunning for a pardon from President Trump. After all, Trump’s attorney reportedly discussed a potential pardon with Manafort’s attorney last year. And Trump himself has flaunted his pardon power in some high-profile ways. No recent president has used the pardon power to short-circuit a continuing investigation into a major scandal from his administration. If this were to happen, it would indisputably be Trump’s most provocative move with regards to the Russia probe since the firing of FBI Director James Comey last year. Trump has not yet been ready to take that step. But it’s certainly possible that one day, he might. The president has publicly lamented how unfair he feels the system has been to Manafort. On Tuesday after the verdict came down, Trump said it was a “very sad thing that happened” and said he feels “very badly” for Manafort. He also expressed his sympathy for Manafort and his family on Twitter on Wednesday and juxtaposed his case against that of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges also on Tuesday and seems open to turning on his former boss. “Unlike Michael Cohen, [Manafort] refused to ‘break,’” Trump wrote, alleging that Cohen had made up stories to get an agreement. “Such respect for a brave man!” He also repeated his claim that the Russia investigation is a witch hunt. I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018

– Paul Manafort was apparently one woman's opinion away from being found guilty on 10 additional charges. This according to a juror in the trial who spoke with Fox News on Wednesday. "It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18 counts," Paula Duncan said of the jury's four days of deliberation, during which she said "there were some tears." The 52-year-old, described by Fox as an ardent Trump supporter, said the holdout maintained she had reasonable doubt. Duncan explained her own thinking, saying the four boxes' worth of exhibits put forth as evidence by Robert Mueller's team were compelling, and that "certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn't have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump." She used the phrase "witch hunt" in her comments. One other tidbit getting pickup is her observation of what seemed to be the prosecution's "disinterest" in the proceedings. "A lot of times they looked bored, and other times they catnapped—at least two of them did. They seemed very relaxed, feet up on the table bars and they showed a little bit of almost disinterest to me, at times." A mistrial was called on the 10 charges the jury deadlocked over, and as Vox points out, it's far from case closed for Trump's former campaign chair: Prosecutors need to decide whether they'll retry Manafort on those 10 counts (NPR reports they have to tell the judge of their intentions by Wednesday), he awaits sentencing for the eight counts he was found guilty of (he faces a maximum of 80 years), and he goes on trial in Washington, DC, on Sept. 17 for additional charges.

Carmen Perez had just removed the baby from a vehicle and placed her in the stroller near a Catholic Charities building when she saw Valdez quickly approaching her, police said. ||||| SAN BERNARDINO (CBSLA.com) — A brave nanny fought off a would-be kidnapper who tried to snatch a baby from her stroller in San Bernardino Tuesday. Scratches and bruises on Carmen Perez’s arms are battle scars from the dangerous and scary close call she and the infant faced around 9:30 a.m. Police said the nanny had just removed 4-month-old Chloe from a vehicle and put her in a stroller when a man came at her. “He went just straight to me like he wants to get the baby or something like that. So I just run because I didn’t want him to take it,” Perez recalled. “So scary, so scary because I thought he was going to take it or do something to us.” Perez tried to run into the Catholic Charities Building at D Street and Magnolia Avenue. But the predator “grabbed onto the stroller before she could enter the building,” according to a press release from the San Bernardino Police Department. But Perez refused to let go. “After a short struggle, the suspect forcibly pushed the female onto the ground but still could not release the stroller from her grip,” police said. When he could not get the baby, the predator who police identified as Edgar Valdez, 35, ran to the back of a business and changed clothes to try and hide his identity. A group of Good Samaritans followed the suspect and shouted at him to stop. Martin Aguilar, who was working as a security guard at a nearby marijuana shop, managed to detain Valdez and handcuff him until police arrived. “We can’t have men like this going around taking people’s kids. That could have been my mom. That could have been my sister. That could have been anyone’s family member,” Aguilar said. Perez was shaken up and grateful that baby Chloe was safe. “I feel so scared. But when I saw the baby, and she was OK. I feel good because when I start screaming, all the people come from the side, and he run away.” Perez said. The baby was taken to the hospital to get checked out. So far, it did not look like she was hurt.

– A dedicated babysitter fought off a man who was allegedly trying to take a 4-month-old baby away from her Tuesday morning in San Bernardino, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reports. According to CBS Los Angeles, Carmen Perez had just put baby Chloe into her stroller when a man started hustling toward them. "He went just straight to me like he wants to get the baby or something," Perez says. "I thought he was going to take it or do something to us.” She ran screaming toward a nearby business, but authorities say the man—later identified as 35-year-old Edgar Valdez—caught up with her and tried to take the stroller. Perez refused to let go of the stroller, even after being pushed to the ground, and Valdez ran off. A number of bystanders followed Valdez behind a building, where he was allegedly changing clothes to fool police. A security guard at a nearby marijuana shop handcuffed Valdez until officers arrived. “We can’t have men like this going around taking people’s kids," the security guard tells CBS. Valdez was arrested, and Perez and Chloe were taken to the hospital with bruises and cuts.

KIEV, Ukraine — In an effort to stabilize Ukraine and extend its authority, the interim government has set a deadline of Friday for turning in the illegal firearms that are now carried openly by so-called self-defense groups in Independence Square, the politically important plaza in the center of the capital. The order was seconded on Thursday by the French ambassador to Ukraine, Alain Rémy, who said the disarmament of the militias that helped overthrow the former government is a central requirement for the European Union to begin disbursing financial aid, along with the government fighting corruption. Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, who was a staunch supporter of the protesters but never condoned violent tactics, set the deadline for Friday, the day Ukraine is scheduled to sign the political articles of an association agreement with the European Union. “For those who want to defend their country with an assault rifle in their hands, welcome to the National Guard or the Army,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said in a speech this week. Photo Members of the self-organized defense groups that formed to defend Independence Square and other protest sites during the uprising have been reluctant to comply. Like gun owners in countries like the United States and Switzerland where ownership of firearms is widespread, they contend that the weapons are needed to defend the country against a possible foreign invasion and to defend their freedoms from potential government abuse. “It’s not normal to ask people to hand in their weapons in the situation we have now,” Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of a right-wing paramilitary group, Right Sector, said in an interview this week. His organization opposes the request to surrender its weapons, but will comply with the law, he said. Mr. Yarosh said lawyers with his group were drafting a bill for consideration in Parliament that was modeled on Swiss notions of firearms possession, in which an armed population is seen as a quick deterrent against a foreign invasion. “Allow people to keep weapons at home,” Mr. Yarosh said, describing the logic of gun ownership in the context of Ukraine. “Then, when the enemy walks down the streets of your country, you can shoot him right from your own window.” Members of Right Sector have not just hunting rifles but also military weapons that were seized from an Interior Ministry arsenal in western Ukraine in the final days of the uprising. The hunting weapons are legal, if the owner has a permit. In Ukraine, people 21 and older may apply for a license to own a shotgun for hunting, and those 25 and older may apply for a permit to own a rifle. Pistols that fire nonlethal plastic or rubber bullets are also legal for citizens who can demonstrate a risk of assault because of their profession, which in Ukraine can include law enforcement officers for off-duty use, civil servants and journalists. The self-defense units have been reluctant to describe in detail the seized military weapons, which were from an arsenal outside the city of Lviv. Mr. Yarosh said Right Sector helped move the weapons to the capital in late February. Today, he said of his supporters, “in part they handed in these weapons, in part they keep them.” The military weapons reached the capital too late to play a role in the street fighting, protest leaders have said. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Most of the opposition street fighters who clashed with the police in Kiev in February carried only baseball bats and other improvised bludgeons, like lead pipes or table legs with nails driven through the ends. But analysts said it was the size of the crowds, rather than weaponry, that was the pivotal political factor. The interim government is now seeking to integrate the loosely organized militias into a newly formed national guard, though several hard-line groups, including Right Sector, have declined to join. At the group’s headquarters in the Dnipro Hotel here, where men in jeans and military fatigues guarded the hallways this week, some of them with black-and-red bandannas over their faces, a man with a submachine gun stood guard outside the office of Mr. Yarosh. “We are ready to become partisans, and are preparing for this role,” Mr. Yarosh said. “Patriots with guns are the best protection.” Hryhoriy Nemyria, a Parliament member and a former deputy prime minister who supports the government’s position on collecting firearms, said in an interview that far from discouraging a Russian intervention, the widespread distribution of illegal firearms could just as easily be used to justify one. “Arms out of control of the state are of course a factor in instability, and should not be allowed to drift by inertia,” he said. “In the context of Russian agents crossing the border, the guns are a catalyst for disorder. Arming the population is not our policy.” ||||| MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin has signed bills making Crimea part of Russia, completing the annexation from Ukraine. Members of the State Duma, lower parliament chamber, applaud for their voting during a plenary session in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 20, 2014. The Kremlin-controlled State Duma voted Thursday to... (Associated Press) A soldier in an unmarked uniform stands guard at APC outside the Ukrainian Military Prosecutor's Office in Simferopol, Crimea, Thursday, March 20, 2014. The lower house of Russian parliament voted Thursday... (Associated Press) Pro-Russian soldiers check the traffic entering the Ukrainian navy headquarters, after taking control Wednesday, in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Thursday, March 20, 2014. Pro-Russian forces seized three Ukrainian... (Associated Press) A child gives fruit to a Ukrainian officer at the Ukrainian Military Prosecutor's Office in Simferopol, Crimea, Thursday, March 20, 2014. The lower house of Russian parliament voted Thursday to make Crimea... (Associated Press) Putin hailed the incorporation of Crimea into Russia as a "remarkable event" before he signed the bills into law in the Kremlin on Friday. Russia rushed the annexation of the strategic Black Sea peninsula after Sunday's hastily called referendum, in which its residents overwhelmingly backed breaking off from Ukraine and joining Russia. Ukraine and the West have rejected the vote, held two weeks after Russian troops had taken over Crimea. The U.S. and the European Union have responded by slapping sanctions on Russia. ||||| Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte meet at the start of the second day of a European leaders summit in Brussels March 21, 2104. BRUSSELS The European Union and Ukraine signed the core elements of a political association agreement on Friday, committing to the same deal former president Viktor Yanukovich rejected last November, a move which led to his overthrow. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, EU leaders Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, and the leaders of the bloc's 28 nations signed the core chapters of the Association Agreement on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels. The deal commits Ukraine and the EU to closer political and economic cooperation, although more substantial parts of the agreement concerning free trade will only be signed after Ukraine has held new presidential elections in May. Van Rompuy, the European Council president, said the agreement would bring Ukraine and its 46 million people closer to the heart of Europe and a "European way of life". "(This) recognizes the aspirations of the people of Ukraine to live in a country governed by values, by democracy and the rule of law, where all citizens have a stake in national prosperity," he said. Two sets of the documents were passed around the table for the EU's leaders and Yatseniuk to sign in a solemn atmosphere. Van Rompuy and Yatseniuk then shook hands and exchanged the documents to applause, witnesses said. Coinciding with the signing in Brussels, Russia's upper house of parliament unanimously approved a treaty annexing Ukraine's Crimea region, clearing the way for President Vladimir Putin to sign it into law. Yanukovich turned his back on signing the EU agreement last November in favor of closer ties with Moscow, prompting months of street protests that eventually led to his fleeing the country. Soon afterwards, Russian forces occupied Crimea, drawing outrage and sanctions from the United States and EU. As well as the closer political ties, the European Commission has agreed to extend nearly 500 million euros worth of trade benefits to Ukraine, removing customs duties on a wide range of agricultural goods, textiles and other imports. Once Ukraine has held presidential elections on May 25 and a new administration is in place, the EU plans to move ahead with signing a free-trade agreement with Ukraine, giving the country unfettered access to the EU's market of 500 million consumers. That has far more potential to strengthen Ukraine's shattered economy, but also runs the risk of provoking retaliatory steps from Russia, which has already imposed stricter customs checks on trade with Ukraine. The other burden for Kiev is meeting the obligations that come with EU political association, including instituting changes to the rule of law and justice, and adopting business and environmental standards that will require hard work and long-term investment to meet. (Reporting by Adrian Croft and Luke Baker; editing by Luke Baker) ||||| Vladimir Putin has mocked US sanctions imposed on Russia, saying he will open an account at US-sanctioned Rossiya Bank. During a meeting with the country's senior security officials he added that he won’t introduce a visa regime with Ukraine. Putin treated with irony the recent sanctions imposed on certain Russian lawmakers. “Yes, these are those so-called ‘polite people in camouflage with guns’,” ironically said Putin hinting at Western accusations that Russian soldiers have taken bases in Crimea. “Look at them, typical Moskals [pejorative term for Russians – ED.],” he added, pointing at US sanctioned prominent businessmen Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, Gennady Timchenko, head of the Volga Group and Yury Kovalchuk, the owner of Rossiya Bank. “I need to avoid these citizens as they are ‘compromising the country’.” On Thursday the US expanded its sanctions list by adding 20 more names. US President Barack Obama announced a new executive order imposing further sanctions on top Russian officials and businessmen. Aleksey Gromov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration; Sergey Ivanov, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office; and Sergey Naryshkin, Speaker of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament, are among those mentioned. Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin is also on the list. The order also allows for measures against Russian energy, mining, defense, and engineering sectors. Putin also commented on the latest sanction of the US authorities that concerned Russia’s Rossiya Bank, to which international payment systems Visa and MasterCard stopped serving clients on Friday. The Russian president said he will get his salary via the sanctioned bank. “I’ve already said that I was going to open an account in this bank, more than that I asked for my salary to be transferred to this account,” he said. Putin added that Russian authorities should provide any possible support for the clients of the blocked Rossiya Bank, as this “finance establishment has nothing to do with Ukraine crisis.” “The clients of the bank must be taken under our protection. We also should make sure that neither clients nor the bank will sustain any negative outcome from this situation,” he added. Putin assured that Russia will refrain from retaliatory sanctions against the US and introducing a visa regime with Ukraine. Putin believes that millions of innocent Ukrainian would suffer should Russia introduce a visa regime with Ukraine. “These people are not rich. They work in Russia to provide for their families. We shouldn’t do this,” he added. Putin also said Russia will continue leading a project to repair helicopters in Afghanistan, which is run by NATO and Russia. “We should continue this cooperation despite our NATO partners vow to freeze our partnership,” he said. The so-called helicopter project, financed by both Russia and Western countries, aims at helping Afghanistan repair helicopter equipment produced in Russia and training special personnel to operate this equipment. Putin’s statement about the visa regime came after reports this week that Ukraine might introduce a visa regime for Russians, but Ukraine’s coup-appointed PM, Arseny Yatsenuk, said the authorities are in no hurry to impose it. ||||| Story highlights "Russia needs Europe more than Europe needs Russia," Cameron says Russia's President Vladimir Putin signs law allowing joining of Crimea to Russia EU leaders and Ukraine's PM sign the political part of a Ukraine-EU trade deal Tough U.S. and EU sanctions have been imposed on members of Putin's inner circle Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk signed the political elements of a trade pact with the European Union on Friday, even as Russian lawmakers finalized annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. The signing in Brussels signals Europe's solidarity with Ukraine -- and carries additional symbolic force because it was the decision by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in November to ditch the trade pact in favor of closer ties with Russia that triggered the protests that led to his ouster in February and spiraled into the current crisis. It also comes a day after the European Union and the United States slapped sanctions on Russian lawmakers and businessmen; Russia responded with its own list of sanctions against a number of U.S. lawmakers and officials. In another sign of defiance, Russian President Vladimir Putin, flanked by the speakers of both houses of Parliament, signed a treaty Friday finalizing the accession to Russia of the Crimea region and its port city of Sevastopol. JUST WATCHED New sanctions 'will be noticed' in Moscow Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH New sanctions 'will be noticed' in Moscow 00:30 JUST WATCHED Ukraine volunteers train to fight Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Ukraine volunteers train to fight 01:27 JUST WATCHED EU announces new round of sanctions Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH EU announces new round of sanctions 02:09 JUST WATCHED Obama hits Russia with more sanctions Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Obama hits Russia with more sanctions 03:16 JUST WATCHED EU announces new round of sanctions Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH EU announces new round of sanctions 02:09 The upper house unanimously approved ratification of the treaty a day after Russia's lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, passed it by an overwhelming margin. The political crisis has been the biggest blow to Russia's relations with the West since the Cold War. In a sign that Western sanctions are already weighing on Russian authorities, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Friday in Moscow that the government will have to pay more to borrow money, state news agency ITAR-Tass said. Russia "will look at our oil and gas revenues. If the situation is like it is now, we will probably have to give up external borrowings and cut domestic ones," Siluanov said. Yatsenyuk: EU speaking in one voice Moscow has doggedly pursued its own course even as Western leaders have denounced its actions as violations of Ukraine's sovereignty and a breach of international law. Though Russia insists that its actions are legitimate, Ukraine's interim government has said Kiev will never stop fighting for Crimea. Human Rights Watch said in a statement Friday that it has concluded that the international law of occupation applies to Russian forces in Crimea. "The occupying party is ultimately responsible for violations of international law committed by local authorities or proxy forces," it said. While in Brussels, Yatsenyuk held talks with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso. He said Russia's ratification of the treaty annexing Crimea is less important than the EU trade pact he has signed with EU leaders. "Frankly speaking, I don't care about Russia signing this deal; I care about Ukraine, Ukrainians and our European future," he said. "This deal covers more existential and most important issues, mainly security and defense cooperation." Yatsenyuk said the European Union would "speak in one single and strong voice" to protect its values and defend Ukraine's territorial integrity. Van Rompuy said the deal "shows our steadfast support for the course the people of Ukraine have courageously pursued." EU travel bans, asset freezes The European Union confirmed details of the sanctions against 12 Russian officials agreed to late Thursday at the EU Heads of State or Government summit. Those targeted with travel bans and asset freezes include Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, as well as the chairwoman of the Russian upper house, Valentina Matvienko, and two Putin advisers. "Sanctions are not a question of retaliation; they are a foreign policy tool," Van Rompuy said. "Our goal is to stop Russian action against Ukraine, to restore Ukraine's sovereignty, and to achieve this, we need a negotiated solution." He said the European Union expected soon to finalize approval of the remaining parts of the deal, particularly its economic provisions. British Prime Minister David Cameron said the European Commission will draw up further sanctions -- in finance, military and energy -- for use if the situation escalates. "Europe is, I think, 25% or so reliant on Russian gas," he said. "But if you look at Gazprom's revenues, something like 50% of them come from Europe. So, you know, Russia needs Europe more than Europe needs Russia." Cameron said the measures agreed to in Brussels will carry a cost for Crimea, whose goods would face heavy penalties and tariffs in Europe if they are shipped through Russia, not Ukraine. EU leaders want to see an international observer mission in Crimea, preferably under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe but, if not, sent by the European Union, Cameron said. Ban: 'Deeply concerned' A day after speaking with Putin in Moscow, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Friday in Kiev with acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, then told reporters he was "very deeply concerned" by the tensions in parts of Ukraine and between Kiev and Moscow. "These are some of the most traumatic and difficult times in the history of Ukraine," he said. Ban urged a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the crisis and said all parties should refrain from inflammatory actions and rhetoric. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic arrived Friday in Crimea for a two-day visit aimed at laying the groundwork for a U.N. human rights monitoring mission, the United Nations said. He and a team were to meet with Crimean leaders, the head of the Crimean Tatar minority and others, including the families of Ukrainian servicemen, the United Nations said. The United Nations and other organizations stand ready to assist with the country's elections, slated to be held May 25, Ban said. While in Kiev, he was also planning to meet with Yatsenyuk and other ministers and lawmakers. In another sign of solidarity with Ukraine, France is offering to strengthen a NATO air-policing mission in the Baltic area by sending four jets, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Friday. The offer, accepted by the Baltic states, was extended Friday as French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian traveled to Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, said Sacha Mandel, the minister's communication adviser. His trip followed a visit to the Baltics this week by Vice President Joe Biden. Putin's inner circle JUST WATCHED The deadly day that changed Kiev Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH The deadly day that changed Kiev 03:35 The U.S. sanctions announced Thursday target 20 people seen as close to Putin, as well as a bank, Rossiya, believed to serve the President and senior Russian officials. Putin rejected the putative link. "I personally didn't have an account there, but I'll definitely open it on Monday," he said Friday, according to the Kremlin. The individuals named by the U.S. Treasury include Putin allies in the Kremlin and in business. Among the 16 government officials are Putin's chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov; the speaker of the State Duma, Sergey Naryshkin; and Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the Security and Defense Committee of the Russian Parliament's upper house. Four others were named as members of the government's inner circle. They are financier Yuri Kovalchuk, labeled Putin's personal banker by a senior U.S. administration official; magnate Gennady Timchenko, whose activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin, according to the Treasury; and businessmen Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. Washington aid In Washington, the House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced a bill Friday that provides aid to Ukraine. "The United States must stand with the people of Ukraine in the wake of Russia's attack on and occupation of Crimea," said ranking member Eliot Engel, D-New York, in a statement. "It sends a clear message to President Putin and his corrupt cronies that we will not tolerate Russian aggression." The House had passed a loan-guarantee bill and a non-binding resolution calling for sanctions, but Friday's legislation proposes statutory language to put those sanctions into law. President Barack Obama is to meet next week with other leaders of the so-called G7 group of industrialized nations, on the sidelines of a nuclear summit in the Netherlands. Russia has been excluded from the talks. Obama signed an executive order that authorizes further sanctions on key sectors of the Russian economy if Moscow does not act to deescalate the situation. Sanctions affect Russian markets Washington had already announced sanctions Monday on 11 individuals; the European Union had imposed travel bans and asset freezes on 21 people. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the new round of U.S. sanctions would be "significantly more powerful than the first one." The latest round "hits significant economic interests that are fairly close to the ruling circles in Moscow," he said. "It will be noticed." Markets were down Friday in Moscow, amid uncertainty in the business community. The Moscow Interbank Curency Exchange, or MICEX index, fell more than 2% -- bringing its 2014 losses to 14%. The ruble rebounded after falling early in the day; it has lost about 10% since the start of the year. In contrast, the markets and ruble had risen Monday, when the first round of sanctions was announced and did not appear to target those in Putin's inner circle. The business community now appears to fear that Putin is on a collision course with the West, and that that could undermine its interests. Russia's Foreign Ministry said Friday that it had asked Putin to draft countermeasures in response to the expanded Western sanctions. On Thursday, Moscow imposed measures against nine U.S. officials and lawmakers, including House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sens. John McCain, Robert Menendez, Daniel Coats and Mary Landrieu, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. ||||| SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Ukraine has joined two weeks of multinational military exercises that involve troops from 12 NATO member and partner nations, and demonstrate that cooperation continues between the alliance and the crisis-torn former Soviet republic. The drills, dubbed Saber Guardian, began Friday at the Novo Selo training facility in eastern Bulgaria and will include some 700 troops from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States, as well as representatives from NATO. The exercise, planned before the current East-West standoff over Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, is aimed at increasing regional flexibility, preserving and enhancing NATO interoperability, and facilitating multinational training, U.S. Army Europe spokesman Jesse Granger said. It follows joint exercises by U.S., Romanian and Bulgarian naval forces in the Black Sea.

– Vladimir Putin officially signed the bills completing Russia's annexation of Crimea today, hailing the move as a "remarkable event," the AP reports. It was one of the day's two auspicious signings; earlier, interim Ukrainian President Arseniy Yatsenyuk signed on to what Reuters refers to as a "landmark" political association agreement with the European Union. It was ousted president Viktor Yanukovich's opposition to the pact—in favor of closer ties to Russia—that started the protests that began the crisis. The deal calls for greater political and economic cooperation, and eventually free trade once a new president is elected in May. Yatsenyuk said the deal indicated that the EU would "speak in one single and strong voice" to support the Ukraine, CNN reports. As for that other signing? "Frankly, I don't care about Russia signing" the annexation bill, Yatsenyuk said. "I care about Ukraine, Ukrainians, and our European future." In other Ukraine news: Ukraine set today as the deadline for the militias patrolling Independence Square in Kiev to turn in the illegal weapons that they openly carry, the New York Times reports. Europe is insisting the groups disarm before any financial aid flows to Ukraine. Ukrainian troops will today join NATO training exercises in Bulgaria, the AP reports. The exercises were planned before the crisis broke, but take on an extra significance now. Vladimir Putin laughed off US sanctions, RT reports. Referring to the targeted lawmakers he derisively said, "Yes, these are those so-called 'polite people in camouflage with guns.' ... I need to avoid these citizens as they are 'compromising the country.'" He also said that he'd open an account at the sanctioned Rossiya bank. But Russia won't issue retaliatory sanctions, he said, and it will keep repairing NATO helicopters in Afghanistan. Apparently retaliatory visa bans are another matter.

The idea of contraception has been around for thousands of years as a way to prevent pregnancy. While some of the first written descriptions of contraception appear as early as 1550 B.C., the safest and most effective methods of birth control were developed and refined in the 20th and 21st centuries. To determine the most and least effective birth control methods, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most common forms of contraception. The most effective birth control methods led to 12 or fewer pregnancies in every 100 women, and the least effective methods led to 18 or more pregnancies per 100 women. The effectiveness of a contraceptive method does not correlate with the rate of usage, as some of the least effective methods are the most common. The leading form of birth control in the United States is the oral contraceptive pill, used by 9.7 million women. With a 9% failure rate, the pill is less effective than five other major forms of birth control. The second most common form of birth control, female sterilization, is the fourth most effective contraceptive. Click here to see the most and least effective birth control methods. While the most effective methods of birth control are a statistically surefire way to avoid unwanted pregnancy, they do not completely eliminate the risks associated with sexual intercourse. According to the CDC, some the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States are chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. The CDC estimates that nearly 20 million Americans contract an STD each year. The CDC recommends always using a condom to reduce the risk of contracting a STD. Widespread access to methods of contraception is one of the hallmarks of a developed country and a major prerequisite of gender equality. The presence of family planning assistance in a country has been associated with a rise of female participation in the workforce. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, the oral contraceptive pill was one of the first widely available birth control measures in the United States. The pill, as well as the introduction of new forms of intrauterine devices several years later, contributed to an increase in graduation and college attendance rates among women, as well as a rise in female workforce participation. Female workforce participation rose from 36.6% in March 1960 to 57.1% in March 2017. In many developing countries, however, the widespread need for potentially life-saving birth control is not being met. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that roughly 222 million women worldwide have an unmet need for modern contraception, the majority of whom are in poor, developing countries. Given the poor medical infrastructure and high rates of infant and maternal mortality in many developing countries, providing birth control to all women in need of contraception could prevent 79,000 maternal deaths and 1.1 million infant deaths. To determine the most and least effective birth control methods, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most common forms of contraception. The birth control methods with the highest failure rates were considered the least effective, and the lowest failure rates the most effective. Failure rates refer to the number out of every 100 women who experienced an unintended pregnancy within the first year of using the contraceptive method. Data on usage rates for the most and least effective methods of birth control among all female contraceptive users in the U.S. are for 2012 and came from the Guttmacher Institute. These are the most and least effective forms of birth control. ||||| The idea of contraception has been around for thousands of years as a way to prevent pregnancy. While some of the first written descriptions of contraception appear as early as 1550 B.C., the safest and most effective methods of birth control were developed and refined in the 20th and 21st centuries. To determine the most and least effective birth control methods, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most common forms of contraception. The most effective birth control methods led to 12 or fewer pregnancies in every 100 women, and the least effective methods led to 18 or more pregnancies per 100 women. The effectiveness of a contraceptive method does not correlate with the rate of usage, as some of the least effective methods are the most common. The leading form of birth control in the United States is the oral contraceptive pill, used by 9.7 million women. With a 9% failure rate, the pill is less effective than five other major forms of birth control. The second most common form of birth control, female sterilization, is the fourth most effective contraceptive. Click here to see the most and least effective birth control methods. While the most effective methods of birth control are a statistically surefire way to avoid unwanted pregnancy, they do not completely eliminate the risks associated with sexual intercourse. According to the CDC, some the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the United States are chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis. The CDC estimates that nearly 20 million Americans contract an STD each year. The CDC recommends always using a condom to reduce the risk of contracting a STD. Widespread access to methods of contraception is one of the hallmarks of a developed country and a major prerequisite of gender equality. The presence of family planning assistance in a country has been associated with a rise of female participation in the workforce. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, the oral contraceptive pill was one of the first widely available birth control measures in the United States. The pill, as well as the introduction of new forms of intrauterine devices several years later, contributed to an increase in graduation and college attendance rates among women, as well as a rise in female workforce participation. Female workforce participation rose from 36.6% in March 1960 to 57.1% in March 2017. In many developing countries, however, the widespread need for potentially life-saving birth control is not being met. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that roughly 222 million women worldwide have an unmet need for modern contraception, the majority of whom are in poor, developing countries. Given the poor medical infrastructure and high rates of infant and maternal mortality in many developing countries, providing birth control to all women in need of contraception could prevent 79,000 maternal deaths and 1.1 million infant deaths. To determine the most and least effective birth control methods, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most common forms of contraception. The birth control methods with the highest failure rates were considered the least effective, and the lowest failure rates the most effective. Failure rates refer to the number out of every 100 women who experienced an unintended pregnancy within the first year of using the contraceptive method. Data on usage rates for the most and least effective methods of birth control among all female contraceptive users in the U.S. are for 2012 and came from the Guttmacher Institute. These are the most and least effective forms of birth control.

– The pill is the most common form of birth control in the US—but it's far from the most effective. With a 9% failure rate, the pill finds itself at the No. 6 spot on 24/7 Wall St.'s list of the most effective methods, based on CDC data showing the number of women who experienced an unintended pregnancy while using them. The most and least effective forms of birth control with their rate of failure: Most effective: Implant (.05%) Male sterilization (0.15%) IUD (0.2-0.8%) Female sterilization (0.5%) Injectable contraceptives (6%) Pill (9%) Patch (9%) Vaginal ring (9%) Least effective: Spermicide (28%) Fertility-awareness based methods (24%) Sponge (12%-24%) Withdrawal (22%) Female condom (21%) Male condom (18%) Diaphragm (12%) Check out more details here or see the fastest-growing birth control method.

(CNN) -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stands by his support for a Palestinian state, his spokesman said Saturday, despite his comment about an "invented Palestinian people" that has drawn fire from leaders in the West Bank and from a GOP rival. Gingrich backs a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, said his spokesman, R.C. Hammond. But the Gingrich camp made no apology for the remark -- which some Palestinian leaders declared "racist" -- saying the former House speaker was simply referencing "decades of complex history." Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, who has negotiated in talks with Israel and the United States, said the remark shows "how really despicable things can get" in American politics. "Such thinking should be an alarm and concern for the world," said Erakat, calling it "the most racist statement I've ever seen." Gingrich made the comments in an interview that aired Friday with The Jewish Channel, a U.S. cable channel. "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state," Gingrich said in the interview. "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community." He added, "And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s. I think it's tragic." Gingrich in bull's-eye at GOP showdown His comments come days after Gingrich attended a forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C., and as the current crop of GOP candidates compete for the Jewish vote. They initially seemed off the path from United States foreign policy, which supports a two-state solution in the Middle East. But Gingrich press secretary R.C. Hammond said Saturday that the candidate backs "a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state." Hammond emphasized that understanding "what is being proposed and negotiated" requires a grasp of "decades of complex history -- which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview. " Still, Palestinians including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Gingrich needs to reexamine the history books. "The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history, and intend to remain in it until the end times," Fayyad said Saturday at an event in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "People like Gingrich must consult history, as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era." Fayyad said "despite oppression, occupation, and assaults, the Palestinian people remain steadfast in their historic land, and will achieve their legitimate rights." An executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hanan Ashrawi, said Gingrich has "lost touch with reality." The statements show "ignorance and bigotry" and are "a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote," Ashrawi told Voice of Palestine radio, in comments reported by the Palestinian Authority-controlled WAFA news agency. Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dimitri Diliani said Gingrich's remarks reflect "the ignorant, provocative, and racist nature of Mr. Gingrich," according to WAFA. Then and now: A lot the same for Gingrich "The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E.," Diliani said. The "Gingrich remarks are ignorant of the basic historical facts of the Middle East." Diliani also said Gingrich was simply seeking the pro-Israel vote, which he said is "a pathetic political scheme that jeopardizes peace and stability in the region." While some Israelis share the view espoused by Gingrich, successive Israeli governments have negotiated over the creation of a two-state solution that includes the establishment of a Palestinian state. But Gingrich, in the interview, described the Middle East peace process as "delusional." He placed heavy blame on the Palestinian Authority and the role of Hamas, the ruling political party in Gaza, for the ongoing unrest, saying they both "represent an enormous desire to destroy Israel." The Gingrich comments quickly drew criticism from a fellow Republican, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. A spokesman for Romney, who is Gingrich's closest competitor, questioned the former House speaker's approach. "I'm not sure that kind of statement gets us any closer to accomplishing an agenda," said Mary Kramer, former U.S. Ambassador to Barbados and Romney supporter. "And so that's one of the things that I think makes me a little bit nervous about Speaker Gingrich is that he sometimes makes comments that open to very broad interpretations." Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Gingrich's "divisive and destructive" remarks were simply an effort to attract attention to himself. "Gingrich is wrong to think his attempt to turn the Palestinians into a non-people with no claim to a state will appeal to his audience on the Jewish Channel," he said. CNN's Kevin Flower, Ashley Killough, Shawna Shepherd and Rachel Streitfeld contributed to this report. ||||| A slew of Palestinian officials reacted with dismay Saturday to Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's statement that the Palestinians are an "invented" people. FILE - In this Dec. 5, 2011 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks in New York. Gingrich's rapid rise has left veteran Republicans perplexed, given that... (Associated Press) Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a business forum, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt) (Associated Press) The Jewish Channel, a U.S. cable TV network, released excerpts of the interview on Friday in which the former House speaker said Palestinians were not a people because they never had a state and because they were part of the Ottoman Empire before the British mandate and Israel's creation. "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state _ (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places," Gingrich said, according to a video excerpt posted online. The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, demanded Gingrich "review history." "From the beginning, our people have been determined to stay on their land," Fayyad said in comments carried by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. "This, certainly, is denying historical truths." Gingrich's statements struck at the heart of Palestinian sensitivities about the righteousness of their national struggle. Palestinians never had their own state _ they were ruled by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years, like most of the Arab world. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the aftermath of World War I, the British, then a global colonial power, took control of the area, then known as British Mandate Palestine. During that time, Jews, Muslims and Christians living on the land were identified as "Palestinian." Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said Gingrich had "lost touch with reality." She said his statements were "a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote." A spokesman for the militant Hamas rulers of the Palestinian Gaza Strip called Gingrich's statements "shameful and disgraceful." "These statements ... show genuine hostility toward Palestinians," said spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. Palestinians bristle at the implication that they were generic Arabs with no specific attachment to the land that Zionist Jews coveted. Using the word "Palestinians" is a way for them to emphasize their claims. Palestinians are culturally Arabs _ they speak Arabic and their culture is broadly shared by other Arabs who live in the eastern Mediterranean. But they, for the most part, identify themselves as Palestinians, just as the Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrians also identify themselves with a specific national identity. For Palestinians, their identity was hewed over decades of fighting against another nationalist struggle over the same land _ that of Zionist Jews. During the war surrounding the Jewish state's creation in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled, or were forced to flee their homes. Gingrich's reasoning was popular in the decades following Israel's creation, although that argument has since fallen out of favor among mainstream Israelis. Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the Jewish Sabbath.

– Newt Gingrich has outraged many in the Palestinian community with this line from an interview on the Jewish Channel cable network: "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community." His comments—he added that Palestinians have "had the chance to go many places"—even caught the attention of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank, reports CNN. "The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history, and intend to remain in it until the end times," Fayyad said in Ramallah. "People like Gingrich must consult history, as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era." Gingrich also called the peace process "delusional" and said the Palestinian Authority was bent on destroying Israel. The Romney camp responds: "I'm not sure that kind of statement gets us any closer to accomplishing an agenda," says a spokeswoman. "And so that's one of the things that I think makes me a little bit nervous about Speaker Gingrich is that he sometimes makes comments that open to very broad interpretations." The AP has more details on the flap.

Heavy rains Wednesday afternoon kept emergency officials across Connecticut busy responding to reports of flooding, house fires, washed-out roadways and vehicle incidents. No major injuries were reported. Lisa Beaulieu, of Enfield, was driving along Mountain Road in Suffield near Ratley Road about 3 p.m. when a telephone pole adjacent to the road cracked and came tumbling down in front of her car, police said. "She was unable to avoid it," said Suffield Police Chief Richard Brown. "The car got tangled up in the telephone wire." Brown explained that because a tree had fallen on a support wire for the telephone pole, it came crashing down, and the front wheels of the car got tangled in the telephone wire, pulling Beaulieu's car up off the road. With two front tires suspended off the road as her car dangled, Beaulieu, who was in the car with her son, called for help at 3:07 p.m, Brown said. State Department of Transportation Torrential downpour yesterday washed out a section of Route 125 in Cornwall yesterday, which remains closed and is being assessed by the State Department of Transportation Torrential downpour yesterday washed out a section of Route 125 in Cornwall yesterday, which remains closed and is being assessed by the State Department of Transportation (State Department of Transportation) (State Department of Transportation) In Manchester, Kyle Macci of Stanford Road was watching the storm outside his window when he suddenly saw lightning strike his neighbor's house, he said. "I saw a lightning flash at the house so I knew the house was hit. Within a matter of seconds I saw smoke billowing out," he said. "I had to take a second look just to make sure it was real. I ran outside to see it better and sure enough, there were flames." Macci said he called 911 at 4:31 p.m. and the fire department rushed to the two-story home on 15 Stanford Road, which belongs to Christopher and Rhonda Day. "The neighbor across the street made a quick call," said Manchester Fire Chief Dave Billings. "That's what saved these people's house." With six inches of water rushing down the road, Billings said firefighters had to pull the heavy hose through the water in order to put out the house fire. "There was literally a river running down the street," he said. "[The firefighters] were all really tired afterward." The lightning hit the right rear corner of the roof, "blew a big hole in the back of the house" and set fire to a second floor bedroom, which was contained by 5:03 p.m., according to Billings. The house was saved and the only damage is in the bedroom, Billings said. "It was fortunate that the neighbor was watching the storm, because it was raining so hard, no one would have seen any indication of the fire until it was much more advanced," he said. Though the storm was only in town for about 90 minutes, Billings said within that timeframe, while they were also dealing with the house fire, the department received 35 calls for storm-related incidents such as motor vehicle accidents, flooded homes, tree limbs hitting houses, wires going down, and manhole covers blowing up off the street due to the water pressure. "It was a busy day," Billings said. "It got crazy for about two hours." No one was inside the house at the time of the fire, and the Days' black cat named Jack was rescued, according to Macci. "Obviously it was a bad situation but it could've been a lot worse," he said In Cornwall, one road, Route 125, remained closed Thursday due to the significant amount of damage to the road, according to Kevin Nursick, a spokesperson for the State Department of Transportation. Nursick said the road literally washed away, leaving rubble and exposed patches of dirt along a section of the road in between Route 4 and Dibble Hill Road. "In certain locations when we have heavy rain events, the geography and topography coupled with the soil's inability to absorb water, means the location is conducive to flash-flood effects," Nursick said. The state Department of Transportation is still assessing the area, Nursick said, but he said it's likely that they'll need to pave the road over again. "Water was traveling over, under and around the road," he said. "It's that high velocity water that'll erode everything, including the asphalt." Conditions like these make it dangerous to drive on flooded roads, Nursick said, and he warned to avoid situations like this when driving in a storm. Another road that flooded during the storm, according to Cromwell Police Chief Denise Lamontagne was South Street in Cromwell. The section of the road between Main Street and Ranney Street was flooded and closed during the storm, but was able to reopen with no damage afterward, according to Lamontagne. "This is pretty typical when there's a heavy rain in a short time period," she said. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video SUFFIELD -- A mother from Suffield is thanking the first responders who helped her and her children out of their car after an unusual accident during Wednesday’s storm. Lisa Beaulieu told FOX61 she was driving home from her mother-in-law’s house with her two young children, ages 4 and 5, when the storm hit abruptly. “I never anticipated it would get that bad,” she said. When she reached Mountain Road in Suffield, she said she saw some debris falling from a tree up ahead, which caused a telephone pole to snap toward its top. “At that point, we were pretty much right underneath it,” said Beaulieu. She explained, “What we didn’t know at the time was that there was a wire still attached to it.” Beaulieu said the wire somehow got lodged underneath her car and lifted them into the air. All three of them were OK but trapped. She called 911 from the car and said the dispatcher stayed with her on the phone the whole time. Emergency crews from Suffield responded, along with Eversource to make sure that wire wasn’t live. Eventually, they were able to open the doors and carry the children out safely. Then they brought a ladder over to Beaulieu’s side and helped her out that way. In all, they were in that car balancing on its rear bumper for around 45 minutes. “I was panicking but I did understand obviously,” she said. “They knew that we were in the car. I knew that we were safe.” Beaulieu said, “The dispatcher was amazing, the firefighters, everybody that approached us and helped us out made my kids feel very safe. The EMS team that took us out of the scene were so, so good with my kids. They just made us feel so calm and safe, and so that made the situation better.” ||||| A Suffield mother and her children were trapped in a car after it became entangled by electrical wires during a storm. A Suffield family is grateful to be safe after downed electrical wires snagged their car and hoisted it in the air during the storms on Wednesday. The driver, Lisa Beaulieu, said she was heading home with her two children in the car when an electrical pole snapped in half as she drove down Mountain Road. "We saw a telephone pole snap and fall down as we were approaching it, our car got stuck in the wires that were attached to it, and we got air lifted," she said. Beaulieu drove over the power lines which reeled her vehicle into the air. Their car dangled over Mountain Road until rescuers could come free them. "I prayed the entire time we were in the car. I prayed please don't let lightning hit us, please don't let the car shift," Beaulieu said. The mother waited for help inside the car with her 5-year-old son Drew and her 4-year-old daughter Noella. The mother called 911 and the operator remained on the line until help arrived. When help did arrive, Drew was the first to see them because he could see out the back window. "I cleaned the window off and started crying for the firefighters," said the 5-year-old boy said. More than 40 minutes later, the Beaulieu family was free and unharmed. They are thankful for all crews who helped them during their time of need. "Thank you so much," said Beaulieu to the emergency crews. Surprisingly, Beaulieu said the car may be salvageable.

– A Connecticut woman driving home with her children Wednesday found herself in quite the predicament: improbably dangling in the air, suspended from an electrical wire. Lisa Beaulieu tells Fox 61 a storm hit as she was heading home with her kids, but she didn't think "it would get that bad." It did. Suffield Police Chief Richard Brown says a tree fell on a support wire and brought a telephone pole crashing down while Beaulieu was driving by, the Hartford Courant reports. Beaulieu didn't have a chance to avoid it and drove over an electrical wire that somehow became tangled under her car, which hoisted itself off the ground until it was dangling perpendicular with the road. “I was panicking," Beaulieu tells Fox. She called 911, and the operator stayed on the line with her until help arrived, NBC Connecticut reports. "I prayed the entire time we were in the car," Beaulieu says. "I prayed please don't let lightning hit us, please don't let the car shift." Emergency crews were able to get Beaulieu and her children out safely after about 45 minutes trapped in the car. Beaulieu thanks everyone who helped make her and her children "feel so calm and safe." The storm that hit the Suffield area Wednesday resulted in a wave of emergency calls for flooding, house fires, and more. But despite all the calls, there were no reported injuries.

Thank you for Reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading. To subscribe, click here. Already a subscriber? Click here. ||||| Local police chief announces investigation into Nathaniel Robinson’s use of stun gun, after pulling mechanic over for a class C misdemeanour A Texas police officer is under investigation for using a stun gun on a 76-year-old mechanic he had pulled over for an expired inspection certificate. In dashboard-cam footage uploaded by local newspaper the Victoria Advocate, officer Nathaniel Robinson, who is 23, can be seen slamming Pete Vasquez on to the hood of the police car. He then puts him in a restrictive hold, before the two abruptly fall out of the camera’s field of vision. Soon after, Robinson returns into sight holding his stun gun, shouting “put your hands behind your back.” Police later confirmed the stun gun had been used twice on Vasquez. The car was a dealer vehicle, and so Vasquez was exempt from being cited. If he had been cited, an expired inspection certificate is a class C misdemeanour. The Victoria police chief, Jeffrey Craig, told the Advocate that he was opening an investigation into the incident. “Public trust is extremely important to us. Sometimes that means you have to take a real hard look at some of the actions that occur within the department,” he said. Craig also apologised to Vasquez. Larry Urich, a co-worker of Vasquez who witnessed the incident, told the Guardian that he made Robinson aware that the car had dealer plates, and that the expired sticker was not a violation. He said he had called Robinson a “goddamned Nazi stormtrooper”. “It’s a tragedy,” Urich said. “There was absolutely no reason to grab and try and restrain this 76-year-old guy. This was a muscled-up cop who was in absolutely no distress whatsoever.” Urich said that he saw Vasquez Sunday evening, and that his shoulder, back and arm were hurting. “I’ve known the guy for years,” he said. “He’s a nice, sweet, gentle man. I’ve never seen him be smart-aleck, or rude to anyone.” Urich said that he had the utmost respect for the Victoria police department, but that in his opinion this should be a firing offence for Robinson. “You just don’t do this to senior citizens.”

– A police officer in Victoria, Texas, is being investigated over a routine traffic stop where he slammed a 76-year-old man onto his cruiser then Tasered him twice when he was on the ground. Dashboard camera video shows Pete Vasquez being pulled over on the way to the auto dealership where he works as a mechanic by 23-year-old officer Nathaniel Robinson, the Guardian reports. Vasquez, who was stopped for driving with an expired inspection sticker, points to the dealer tags that made the vehicle exempt but is arrested by the officer after he pulls away when Robinson grabs his arm. The officer can be seen holding the Taser and shouting, "Put your hands behind your back" after Vasquez falls out of sight. "He just acted like a pit bull, and that was it," Vasquez tells the Victoria Advocate, which notes Vasquez was arrested for the expired sticker but was ultimately released from the hospital without a citation. "For a while, I thought he was going to pull his gun and shoot me." Robinson, who has been with the force since 2012, has been placed on administrative duty, and the local police chief says he is investigating the incident. A co-worker who witnessed the arrest describes Vasquez as a "nice, sweet, gentle man" and says he thinks the officer should lose his job. "I told the officer, 'What in the hell are you doing?' This gentleman is 76 years old," the co-worker says. "The cop told me to stand back, but I didn't shut up. I told him he was a godd---ed Nazi stormtrooper." The Advocate reports that the dealer tags did indeed make the vehicle exempt; had they not, such an offense is considered a Class C misdemeanor, and typically does not involve arrest.

Image copyright GCDT Image caption The vault's remote location in the Arctic Circle means there is very little need for human intervention More than 20,000 crops from more than 100 nations have arrived at a "Doomsday vault" in the Arctic Circle. The latest delivery coincides with the sixth anniversary of the frozen depository in Svalbard, which now houses more than 800,000 samples. The shipment includes the first offering from Japan, where collections were threatened by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The facility is designed to withstand all natural and human disasters. Deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago - located halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole - the vault, which cost £5m (US $7m) and took 12 months to build, offers permanent protection for the world's food crops, say its operators. The purpose of the depository, owned by the Norwegian government and maintained by the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resources Center, is to store duplicates of all seed samples from crop collections around the world. Image copyright GCDT The GCDT says permafrost and thick rock ensure that, even in the case of a power cut, the seed samples will remain frozen. "The vault can therefore be considered the ultimate insurance policy for the world's food supply," it adds. "It will secure, for centuries, millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today." The Japanese barley samples were provided by the Barley Germplasm Center at Okayama University. Image copyright N.Palmer/CIAT Image caption National seed collections around the world have provided the samples being stored in the vault Prof Kazuhiro Sato from the university's Institute of Plant Science and Resources said experts became concerned about the long-term safety of the national collection following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused widespread devastation. "If something bad happened to our genebank, these resources could be damaged permanently," he said. "Barley is very important not just for Japan but for the food security of the world - we have varieties that are productive even in dry conditions and in saline soil." Speaking ahead of a meeting at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, GCDT executive director Marie Haga said: "Our annual gatherings at the seed vault are a sort of Winter Olympics of crop diversity, only we are not competing against each other but against the wide array of threats - natural and man-made - ranged against the diversity of food crops, diversity that is so crucial to the future of human civilisation." She added: "We are particularly excited to be welcoming our first seed deposits from Japan, which has been very active globally in the preservation of a wide array of crop species." ||||| A Noah's Ark of 20,000 plant species will unload this week at a remote Arctic port to deposit humanity's latest insurance payment against an agricultural apocalypse or a man-made cock-up. Brazilian beans and Japanese barley are among the botanical varieties that are carried aboard the ship that is shortly expected to dock near the Svalbard global seed vault, that celebrates its sixth anniversary this week. The facility, which is bored into the side of a mountain by the Barents Sea, is primarily designed as a back-up for the many gene banks around the world that keep samples of crop diversity for agricultural businesses. But its operators, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, say the "Doomsday Vault" could also help to reboot the world's farms in the event of a climate catastrophe or a collapse of genetically modified crops. Built to withstand a nuclear strike, a tectonic shift or rising sea levels, the vault has the capacity to store 4.5m different seed varieties for centuries. Currently, it holds 820,619 samples of food crops and their natural relatives, but this is steadily increasing with one or two shipments each year, according to the trust, which maintains the seed vault in partnership with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resources Centre. Currently, it holds 820,619 samples of food crops and their natural relatives, but this is steadily increasing with one or two shipments each year. Photograph: Jim Richardson/NGC/Alamy The latest shipment contains deposits from more than 100 countries and institutions, including the International Potato Centre, the Australian Tropical Crops Collection and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre. A first collaboration with the Barley Germplasm Centre of Okayama will see the addition of the plant widely used for Japanese whisky and shochu. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation is sending 514 samples of "the common bean" which is the primary ingredient in the national dish of feijoada. Eventually it is thought that the vault may serve as a repository for every plant species used by humans. "Each and every single deposit into the vault provides an option for the future," said Marie Haga, the Crop Trust's executive director. "At a time of unprecedented demands on our natural environment, it is critical to conserve plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. This will guarantee farmers and plant breeders continued access to the raw materials they need to improve and adapt crops." ||||| Varieties of Japanese barley – used in everything from miso to beer – will join the existing stock of 800,000 crops, which researchers have been collecting for six years to protect the world’s biodiversity in the event of a disaster. Samples of more than 20,000 crops from 100 nations were added to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island, including a rare red okra from Tennessee, a Brazilian bean, 195 samples of wild potato, and the “Unger’s Hungarian” cherry tomato from the US. Marie Haga, the executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said the range of new samples was “a sort of winter Olympics of crop diversity”. But she warned they were competing against a “wide array of threats, natural and man-made, ranged against the diversity of food crops, diversity that is so crucial to the future of human civilisation”. The Doomsday Vault, which cost £5m to construct, was designed to protect against such threats, and can withstand nuclear war, asteroid strikes and extreme weather. Behind an entrance carved into the rock on a remote island near the North Pole, a tunnel reaches 125m inside the mountain. There, behind four sets of air-locked doors, are three vaults, which can house up to two billion seeds. Because of its location under the ice, the seeds would be preserved even if all power was cut. An armed guard stands outside the entrance to the 'Doomsday Vault' (Getty) It was a natural disaster which prompted the Barley Germplasm Centre at Japan’s Okayama University to deliver the 575 duplicate samples. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami brought the realisation that the university’s current crop banks may not be safe. “If something bad happened to our gene bank, these resources could be damaged permanently,” Professor Kazuhiro Sato said. “Barley is very important not just for Japan but for the world’s food security. We need to do everything we can to ensure they will be available to future generations.”

– Earth is now slightly better prepared for an agricultural apocalypse: The "Doomsday Vault" is 20,000-species stronger as of this week—its sixth birthday. A new wave of seed varieties were deposited that hail from more than 100 countries and represent a "sort of winter Olympics of crop diversity," per the director of the trust that maintains the facility. Among them: varieties of Japanese barley that will ensure the world won't lose its access to miso should disaster strike, reports the Independent. Samples of that key miso ingredient, along with Brazil's "common bean," a rare Tennessean red okra, and nearly 200 types of wild potato have been added to the 820,619 samples that have been placed in the vault since it opened in 2008. It was constructed to hold up to 4.5 million seed samples, and sees one to two new deliveries each year, notes the Guardian. The Doomsday Vault, more formally known as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, functions as a sort of backup, holding duplicates of seed samples otherwise housed in gene banks around the world. But this location is about as secure as possible: It sits within a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago, between Norway and the North Pole, behind four sets of air-locked doors. It can weather nuclear war, an asteroid strike, and climate change. That hardiness likely influenced Japan's decision to send seeds for the first time. The BBC reports that the 2011 earthquake and tsunami convinced the Barley Germplasm Center at Okayama University to pony up 575 samples after realizing its own storehouse wasn't impenetrable.

CULIACAN, MEXICO (AP) — As Mexican troops forced their way into Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's main hideout in Culiacan, the country's most powerful drug lord sneaked out of the house through an escape tunnel beneath the bathtub. A door remains open at the entrance to the high-rise condominium where famed drug boss Joaquin Guzman Loera "El Chapo" was arrested, in Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday Feb. 22, 2014. At the moment of his arrest,... (Associated Press) FILE - In this June 10, 1993 file photo, Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is shown to the press at the Almoloya de Juarez, a high security prison on the outskirts of Mexico City. A senior U.S.... (Associated Press) CORRECTS TYPE OF LODGING Clothes and toiletries are scattered on a bed in a bedroom of a high-rise condominium where famed drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was arrested, in Mazatlan, Mexico, Saturday... (Associated Press) Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Saturday,... (Associated Press) FILE - This undated file image released by Mexico's Attorney General's Office on May 31, 1993, shows drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman at an undisclosed location. A senior U.S. law enforcement official... (Associated Press) Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Saturday,... (Associated Press) Mexican marines working with U.S. authorities chased him but lost the man known as "Shorty" in a maze of tunnels under the city, a U.S. government official and a senior law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Sunday. It would be a short-lived escape for Guzman, who was captured early Saturday hiding out in a condominium in Mazatlan, a beach resort town on Mexico's Pacific Coast. He had a military-style assault rifle with him but didn't fire a shot, the officials said. His beauty queen wife, Emma Coronel, was with him when the manhunt for one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers ended. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss specific details of how U.S. authorities tracked down Guzman. For 13 years Guzman watched from western Mexico's rugged mountains as authorities captured or killed the leaders of every group challenging his Sinaloa cartel's spot at the top of global drug trafficking. Unscathed and his legend growing, the stocky son of a peasant farmer grabbed a slot on the Forbes' billionaires' list and a folkloric status as the capo who grew too powerful to catch. Then, late last year, authorities started closing in on the inner circle of the world's most-wanted drug lord. Bit by bit, they got closer to the crime boss. Then on Feb. 16, investigators from Mexico along with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshal Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement caught the break they badly needed when they tracked a cellphone to one of the Culiacan stash houses Guzman used to elude capture. The phone was connected to his communications chief, Carlos Manuel Ramirez, whose nickname is Condor. By the next day Mexican authorities arrested one of Guzman's top couriers, who promptly provided details of the stash houses Guzman and his associates had been using, the officials said. At each house, the Mexican military found the same thing: steel reinforced doors and an escape hatch below the bathtubs. Each hatch led to a series of interconnected tunnels in the city's drainage system. The officials said three tons of drugs, suspected to be cocaine and methamphetamine, were found at one of the stash houses. An AP reporter who walked through one of the tunnels had to dismount into a canal and stoop to enter the drain pipe, which was filled with water and mud and smelled of sewage. About 700 meters (yards) in, a trap door was open, revealing a newly constructed tunnel. Large and lined with wood panels like a cabin, the passage had lighting and air conditioning. At the end of the tunnel was a blue ladder attached to the wall that lead to one of the houses Mexican authorities say Guzman used as a hideout. A day after troops narrowly missed Guzman in Culiacan, top aide Manuel Lopez Ozorio was arrested. The officials said he told investigators that he picked up Guzman, Ramirez and a woman from a drainage pipe and helped them flee to Mazatlan. A wiretap being monitored by ICE agents in southern Arizona provided the final clue, helping track Guzman to the beachfront condo, the officials said. The ICE wiretap proved the most crucial lead late last week as other wiretaps became useless as Guzman and his associates reacted to coming so close to being caught. "It just all came together and we got the right people to flip and we were up on good wire," the government official said. "The ICE wire was the last one standing. That wire in Nogales. That got him (Guzman) inside that hotel." Alonzo Pena, a former senior official at ICE, said wiretaps in Arizona led authorities to the Culiacan house of Guzman's ex-wife, Griselda Lopez, and to the Mazatlan hotel where Guzman was arrested. The ICE investigation started about a year ago with a tip from the agency's Atlanta office that someone was crossing the border with about $100,000 at a time, said Pena, who was briefed on the investigation. That person led investigators to another cartel operative, believed to be an aircraft broker, and that allowed them to locate Guzman's communications equipment. The senior law enforcement official said the Mexican marines deserve credit for taking Guzman alive and without either side firing a shot. "We never anticipated, ever, that he would be taken alive," the official said. It is not yet clear what will happen next to Guzman, except that he will be the focus of a lengthy and complicated legal process to decide whether Mexico or the U.S. gets to try him first. In Mexico, he is likely to face a host of charges related to his role as head of the Sinaloa cartel, which is believed to sell cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine in some 54 countries. Grand juries in at least seven U.S. federal district courts, including Chicago, San Diego, New York and Texas, have already issued indictments for Guzman on a variety of charges, ranging from smuggling cocaine and heroin to participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise involving murder and racketeering. Federal officials in Chicago were among the first to say they wanted to try Guzman. On Sunday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Tiscione in Brooklyn became the second. In an email Sunday, Tiscione said his office would also be seeking extradition but it would be up to Washington to make the final call. A Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because it's a matter of sensitive diplomatic discussions, said decisions regarding extradition have not been made. When Guzman was finally in handcuffs, the man who eluded Mexican authorities for more than a decade looked pudgy, bowed and middle-aged in a white button-down shirt and beltless black jeans. Now 56, he had been on the run since escaping from prison in 2001 in a laundry truck. During those 13 years, Guzman was rumored to live everywhere from Argentina to Mexico's "Golden Triangle," a mountainous, marijuana-growing region straddling the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua. Under his leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel grew deadlier and more powerful, taking over much of the lucrative trafficking routes along the U.S. border. His undoing started late last year as authorities on both sides of the border arrested people close to Guzman and one of his two top associates, Ismael "Mayo" Zambada. This month federal forces began sweeping through Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. They closed streets, raided houses, seized automatic weapons, drugs and money, and arrested a series of men that Mexican officials carefully described to reporters as top officials for Zambada. On Feb. 13, a man known as "19," whom officials called the new chief of assassin for Zambada, was arrested with two other men on the highway to Mazatlan. Four days later, a man described as a member of the Sinaloa cartel's upper ranks was seized along with 4,000 hollowed-out cucumbers and bananas stuffed with cocaine. In the middle of last week, a 43-year-old known by the nickname "20" and described as Zambada's chief of security, was arrested transporting more cocaine-stuffed produce. By the middle of the week at least 10 Sinaloa henchmen had been seized. The final strike came when marines closed the beachside road in front of the Miramar condominiums, a 10-story, pearl-colored building with white balconies overlooking the Pacific and a small pool in front. Smashing down the door of an austerely decorated fourth-floor condo, they seized Guzman a few minutes after the sun rose. ___ Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell reported this story from Washington and Adriana Gomez Licon reported in Culiacan. AP writers Katherine Corcoran in Mexico City and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report. ___ Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/acaldwellap Adriana Gomez Licon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/agomezlicon ||||| WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The seizure of a phone belonging to the son of Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman’s deputy at the U.S.-Mexico border was an important break in the operation that led to the drug lord’s capture, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said on Sunday. Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman is being escorted by soldiers during a presentation at the Navy's airstrip in Mexico City February 22, 2014. REUTERS/Henry Romero Guzman, who long ran the feared Sinaloa Cartel and was Mexico’s most wanted criminal, was caught on Saturday in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa with help from U.S. agents. It was a major victory for the Mexican government in its fight against powerful drug gangs and for the cause of cooperation between Mexican and U.S. security forces. The phone that helped lead to Guzman’s downfall belonged to the son of his deputy, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who could now be in line to take over from his boss. The break came when Zambada’s son, Serafin Zambada-Ortiz, was arrested in November trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, where he faced sealed drug charges. “This was one of several important turning points. But it was critical,” the official said. A lawyer for Zambada-Ortiz, Michael McDonnell of La Habra, California, said no data from his client’s phone or other electronics led U.S. authorities to Guzman. “He didn’t know him ... His father did,” McDonnell said. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information but Serafin Zambada had no connection to Guzman’s arrest, period.” U.S. prosecutors said on Sunday they plan to seek the extradition of Guzman to face trial in the United States. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, New York, said his office would request Guzman’s extradition to face a variety of charges. A spokesman for the Mexican attorney general’s office declined to comment on the extradition request. President Enrique Pena Nieto’s office also declined to comment. Sensitivities over the issue could mean Guzman is more likely to face justice first in Mexico, where he still has an outstanding term to finish. He broke out of prison, reportedly in a laundry cart, in 2001. The United States had a $5 million bounty on Guzman’s head. His cartel has smuggled billions of dollars’ worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine into the United States, and fought vicious turf wars with other gangs across Mexico. ELECTRONIC TRAIL Zambada-Ortiz, who is a U.S. citizen, entered the United States at Nogales, Arizona, to take care of a visa matter for his wife, the U.S. official said. He apparently did not know that he was facing sealed cocaine and methamphetamine charges in San Diego when he crossed the border. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him and seized his phone. The Drug Enforcement Administration then compared the numbers in the phone with a database of more than 1 billion records, which includes information collected by subpoena, search warrants and arrests during other drug investigations. The DEA also receives information on Mexican cartel telephone and email data from the U.S. National Security Agency, but U.S. officials declined to say whether the NSA played a role in the case. “We handled this case like we handled many: using technology to work up the chain, person by person, to the top,” the U.S. official said. Last week, that trail led them to some of Guzman’s senior henchmen but the drug boss himself narrowly escaped, using a network of tunnels and sewers to give his pursuers the slip. Guzman, 56, was eventually captured on Saturday in a pre-dawn raid on a seaside condominium in the northwestern tourist resort and fishing and shrimp-processing center of Mazatlan, 135 miles from Guzman’s suspected base in Culiacan. “This is the biggest success in the drug war in 20 years, and shows that contrary to what you hear in the press, behind the scenes the U.S. and Mexico have been working well together,” said the U.S. official. In addition to facing U.S. criminal charges in Chicago and New York, Guzman was indicted in 2007 in Miami for cocaine smuggling with additional charges added last month. Guzman also was charged in 2012 in Texas with importing cocaine and marijuana, money laundering, firearms violations and running a criminal enterprise that included murder. More than 80,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s drugs war over the last seven years with much of the violence in western and northern regions that have long been smuggling routes. Many of the victims are tortured and beheaded and their bodies dumped in public places or in mass graves. The violence has ravaged border cities and even beach resorts such as Acapulco. ||||| Before dawn this month, a convoy of Mexican marines quietly surrounded a house in the Spanish colonial city of Puebla and arrested an alleged drug trafficker also wanted for questioning over the kidnapping of a Mexican politician. Little did the marines know then, but his capture would become a vital piece of the puzzle that would help Mexican and U.S. officials several days later to nab the world's most sought after drug lord,...

– A network of escape tunnels with entrances concealed under bathtubs helped the world's most powerful drug lord evade capture before his arrest over the weekend, investigators say. Early last week, Joaquin Guzman is believed to have escaped just minutes ahead of Mexican authorities, using a network of tunnels under the streets of Culiacan, headquarters of his Sinaloa cartel. US officials had traced Guzman to his hideout using a number on a phone seized in a raid earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reports. Guzman's escape was short-lived: Using the same number, authorities were able to track him to the resort city of Mazatlan, where he was finally arrested after 13 years on the run. The arrest of a senior aide the day after Guzman's narrow escape also provided key clues, and a wiretap being monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided the final breakthrough, the AP finds. A senior US official tells Reuters that another key break in the case came last fall, when a phone belonging to the son of Guzman's deputy was seized at the US-Mexico border. "We handled this case like we handled many: using technology to work up the chain, person by person, to the top," he says. Guzman is now being held in an underground cell while Mexico and the US work out who gets to prosecute him.

By Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- Running regularly has long been linked to a host of health benefits, including weight control, stress reduction, better blood pressure and cholesterol. However, recent research suggests there may a point of diminishing returns with running. A number of studies have suggested that a "moderate" running regimen -- a total of two to three hours per week, according to one expert -- appears best for longevity, refuting the typical "more is better" mantra for physical activity. The researchers behind the newest study on the issue say people who get either no exercise or high-mileage runners both tend to have shorter lifespans than moderate runners. But the reasons why remain unclear, they added. The new study seems to rule out cardiac risk or the use of certain medications as factors. "Our study didn't find any differences that could explain these longevity differences," said Dr. Martin Matsumura, co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa. Matsumura presented the findings Sunday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Studies presented at medical meetings are typically viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. Matsumura and his colleagues evaluated data from more than 3,800 men and women runners, average age 46. They were involved in the Masters Running Study, a web-based study of training and health information on runners aged 35 and above. Nearly 70 percent reported running more than 20 miles a week. The runners supplied information on their use of common painkillers called NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications such as ibuprofen and naproxen/Aleve), which have been linked with heart problems, as well as aspirin, known to be heart-protective. The runners also reported on known heart risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, family history of heart disease and smoking history. None of these factors explained the shorter lives of high-mileage runners, the researchers said. Use of NSAIDs was actually more common in runners who ran less than 20 miles weekly, Matsumura's team noted. "The study negates the theory that excessive use of NSAIDs may be causing this loss of longevity among high-mileage runners," Matsumura said. So what's the advice to fitness-oriented Americans? "I certainly don't tell patients 'Don't run,' " Matsumura said. But, he does tell high-mileage runners to stay informed about new research into the mileage-lifespan link as more becomes known. "What we still don't understand is defining the optimal dose of running for health and longevity," he said. Even though the heart disease risk factors couldn't explain the shorter longevity of high-mileage runners, there do seem to be potentially life-shortening ill effects from that amount of running, said Dr. James O'Keefe, director of preventive cardiology at the Mid-American Heart Institute in Kansas City. O'Keefe, who reviewed the findings, believes there may simply be "too much wear and tear" on the bodies of high-mileage runners. He has researched the issue and is an advocate of moderate running for the best health benefits. Chronic extreme exercise, O'Keefe said, may induce a "remodeling" of the heart, and that could undermine some of the benefits that moderate activity provides. In O'Keefe's view, the "sweet spot" for jogging for health benefits is a slow to moderate pace, about two or three times per week, for a total of one to 2.5 hours. "If you want to run a marathon," he said, "run one and cross it off your bucket list." But as a general rule, O'Keefe advises runners to avoid strenuous exercise for more than an hour at a time. More information To learn more about this field of research, head to the Masters Running Study. ||||| A new study says too much running can be bad for your health. The study, conducted by Dr. Martin Matsumura at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network, found high-mileage marathon runners and people who get no exercise both have shorter lifespans than moderate runners. Study: Too Much Running Can Shorten Lifespan Running every day can have a number of health benefits, but a new study says too much running can actually shorten one’s lifespan. NBC 7's Liberty Zabala explains why running multiple marathons a year could be harmful to one's health. (Published Wednesday, April 2, 2014) "Too much of anything is not really as good for you,” said running coach Jason Karp, Ph.D. “You shouldn't be running 20 marathons a year, but there will be people who do two marathons a month and they will do that every year of their lives. That might be a little bit too much." Researchers say extreme, strenuous exercise can be damaging to the heart. “When you do a lot of aerobic exercise, that actually suppresses the immune system and damages skeletal muscles, can cause some scarring of the heart,” Karp said. “But again, that’s the very extreme case. I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh no, I shouldn't run because that's not good for my heart.’ For very extreme endurance athletes, there is some slight risk. But most of the population they should be running a lot more than they are." Competitive runner Vera Ross says she runs 40 to 50 miles a week. “I haven't done a 50 or 100 mile race yet, and I know there's some school of thought that that is more on the detrimental side of running," she said. Ross says she knows her limits. “I can see how too much of anything could be a bad thing,” she said. “Everything in moderation." Doctors recommend running at a slow to moderate pace two or three times a week for a total of two and a half hours. ||||| Roger Carlson, 70, takes a three-mile run down Highway 96 in Stillwater on Wednesday to make it 1,762 days in a row of running. Carlson is a marathoner who said that after running 7,813 straight days, he learned in a heart study that he had a major blockage in a coronary artery. He got a stent put into his artery and started running 12 days later. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri) Exercise usually is regarded as good medicine for your heart, but maybe there's such a thing as an overdose, according to a new study that involved researchers and marathoners from Minnesota. The study, recently published in the journal Missouri Medicine with a cover title "Marathons in the Long Run Not Heart Healthy," compared heart scans done on 23 sedentary men and 50 male marathon runners recruited from longtime participants of the Twin Cities Marathon. The results show the runners "paradoxically" had greater volume of coronary plaque. That condition narrows the vessels leading to the heart, which can result in a heart attack. Robert Schwartz, a Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation researcher, and his fellow researchers wrote that "an emerging body of scientific data" is starting to suggest that "chronic, high-intensity exercise" may be stressing the heart and accelerating problems like plaque build up and cardiac chamber stiffness. "It is plausible, not proof by any stretch, that metabolic changes when running, could be moderately toxic to arteries," Schwartz said The runners in the study, men who had done at least 25 Twin Cities Marathons in a row, had a mean age of 59 and had lower heart rates and were thinner than the sedentary men, who had a mean age of 55. Advertisement The runners also had higher levels of good cholesterol, were less likely to have hypertension and none had diabetes, compared with four of the 23 men in the sedentary control group. But more than half the runners had a history of smoking, compared with less than 40 percent of the sedentary men. The study said "long-term marathon running in men may not engender protection against coronary artery plaque development" despite providing other benefits in blood pressure, lipid levels and glucose metabolism. Roger Carlson, 70, relaxes after running and lifting weights. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri) The results do not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between marathon running and accelerated coronary plaque, according to the study. And doctors aren't certain whether that higher volume of coronary plaque in otherwise fit runners is as damaging as it would be among couch potatoes, Schwartz said. The study cited another heart study in Copenhagen that showed that levels of physical activity produced a "U-shaped" curve in mortality. Moderate levels of exercise resulted in the lowest mortality rates. But mortality rates rose at the ends of spectrum in physical activity, among those who were sedentary or who were high-volume, high-intensity runners. "In other words, excessive running may have abolished the remarkable improvements in longevity conferred by lower doses of running," the Minnesota plaque study authors wrote. Sudden deaths among runners during marathons are rare -- about one death in 100,000 participants, according to the plaque study. "However, the bigger concern may be the fact that excessive exercise ultimately deprives the individual from reaping the significant longevity benefits conferred by moderate exercise," the study said. The study noted that the number of marathon participants has risen dramatically in the past 40 years, approaching half a million in the United States in 2012. "We suspect some runners might choose shorter, less exhausting challenges if they were aware of the potential adverse cardiac effects of chronic extreme endurance efforts," the study said. Or maybe not. "Are far as not running, are you crazy? We're addicted," said Timothy Zoerb, 57, of Eden Prairie, who participated in the marathon heart study. Zoerb, who has run 37 marathons, said a heart scan showed that his coronary arteries were fine. But he said he watches what he eats, and not all runners do. "I think there's some kind of bravado: 'I can do whatever I want because I'm a runner,' " Zoerb said. "You certainly don't want to tell people that exercise is bad," said Paul Arbisi, 58, of Edina, who also participated in the study. He said his coronary plaque levels were within acceptable levels, and he doesn't intend to break his streak of 32 Twin Cities Marathons. The clinical psychologist said there are emotional and psychological benefits to marathon running that go beyond physical health. Roger Carlson, 70, of Stillwater said that after running 7,813 days straight, he stopped after taking part in the study and learning he had major blockage in a coronary artery. But he had a stent put into his artery and resumed running 12 days later. He said his current running streak is more than 1,760 days, including running with a catheter after prostate surgery. He said running makes him feel fit and full of life, despite what the heart scan says. "I'm willing to bet that anyone's whose run more than two marathons is going to say, 'I don't care; I'm going to run,'" Carlson said. "I never had any symptoms. I think generally my heart is healthy. It's just full of plaque." But one person who has given up marathoning is Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. McCullough, 51, has run 54 marathons, but he's given up the long-distance event because of concerns it may be hurting his heart. "I've personally been woken up about it," said McCullough, who co-authored an editorial overview in the Missouri Medicine issue about marathon running. McCullough said the plaque buildup seen in the study of Minnesota marathoners "really shouldn't be happening in runners, and it really shouldn't be happening more than nonrunners." McCullough said he suspects a certain percentage of the population -- perhaps as many as one-fourth of marathon runners -- might have a genetic variation that makes marathon running unhealthy for their hearts. "The exercise community has had a mantra that more exercise is better," he said. "We're finding out that more is not better." Richard Chin can be reached at 651-228-5560. Follow him at twitter.com/RRChin.

– Training to run a marathon has got to be one of the healthiest things you can do, right? Maybe not: A new study found that "moderate" runners lived longer than people who don't exercise at all—and people who run lots of miles, HealthDay reports. The study, led by the co-director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Lehigh Valley Health Network, involved 3,800 runners who supplied info on their heart risk factors and their use of NSAIDs like ibuprofen; almost 70% of the group clocked more than 20 miles a week. The findings were presented Sunday, but have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. According to the results, how much should you run? One cardiologist who reviewed the data suggests you do so no more than 2.5 hours per week, spread out between two or three sessions consisting of slow or moderately-paced running. It's not clear why too much running might be bad for longevity, but the study appears to rule out factors like prior cardiac risk (linked to things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, family history, and smoking) or excessive use of NSAIDs (which have been linked to heart problems). One doctor who's also a running coach tells NBC San Diego that extreme exercise can actually "cause some scarring of the heart." And another recent study found that male marathon runners had more plaque in their coronary arteries—which can lead to a heart attack—than non-runners, Pioneer Press reports. Again, it's not clear why, but one researcher notes, "It is plausible, not proof by any stretch, that metabolic changes when running could be moderately toxic to arteries." (Another way to live longer: eat nuts?)

Will You Go Bald? Your Genes Could Tell, Finds New Research Newly identified genetic markers can find subgroups of men who are at a much higher risk for hair loss than others. ||||| More than 200 new genetic markers linked with male pattern baldness have been identified, according to a new study from the United Kingdom. The findings greatly increase the number of known genetic markers linked with baldness in men; a previous large study identified just eight such markers. The researchers in the new study were also able to use their set of genetic markers to predict men's chances of severe hair loss, although the scientists noted that their results apply more to large populations of people than to any given individual. "We are still a long way from making an accurate prediction for an individual's hair-loss pattern. However, these results take us one step closer," study co-author Riccardo Marioni, of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, said in a statement. "The findings pave the way for an improved understanding of the genetic causes of hair loss," Marioni said. [5 Myths About the Male Body] In the study, the researchers analyzed information from more than 52,000 men ages 40 to 69 years in the United Kingdom. Of these men, about 32 percent said they had no hair loss, 23 percent said they had slight hair loss, 27 percent said they had moderate hair loss and 18 percent said they had severe hair loss The researchers then analyzed participants' genomes, looking for genetic variations, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, that were linked with severe hair loss. That search revealed 287 genetic variations, located on more than 100 genes, that were linked with severe hair loss. Many of the genetic variations were located on or near genes that have previously been linked with hair growth, hair graying or the biological structures involved in making hair, the researchers said. Forty of the genetic variations were located on the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mothers, the researchers said. One of the genes on the X chromosome — the gene for the androgen receptor, which binds to the hormone testosterone — was strongly linked with severe hair loss. Previous studies have also pinpointed this gene as tied to male pattern baldness. The researchers then created a formula, which resulted in a genetic "risk score," to try to predict the chances of severe hair loss in the men. Among those men with a below-average score, 39 percent had no hair loss and 14 percent had severe hair loss. In contrast, among those with a high score that put them in the top 10 percent of those in the study, 58 percent had moderate-to-severe hair loss. The researchers noted that in the study, they did not collect information on the age at which the men started losing their hair. The scientists said they would expect to see even stronger genetic associations with hair loss if they were able to include information about which men experienced early onset hair loss. As more information from these participants becomes available, the researchers may be able to further refine their predictions, they said. The study was published today (Feb. 14) in the journal PLOS Genetics. Original article on Live Science. ||||| A genomic study of baldness identified more than 200 genetic regions involved in this common but potentially embarrassing condition. These genetic variants could be used to predict a man's chance of severe hair loss. The study, led by Saskia Hagenaars and W. David Hill of The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, is published February 14th, 2017 in PLOS Genetics. Before this new study, only a handful of genes related to baldness had been identified. The University of Edinburgh scientists examined genomic and health data from over 52,000 male participants of the UK Biobank, performing a genome-wide association study of baldness. They pinpointed 287 genetic regions linked to the condition. The researchers created a formula to try and predict the chance that a person will go bald, based on the presence or absence of certain genetic markers. Accurate predictions for an individual are still some way off, but the results can help to identify sub-groups of the population for which the risk of hair loss is much higher. The study is the largest genetic analysis of male pattern baldness to date. Many of the identified genes are related to hair structure and development. They could provide possible targets for drug development to treat baldness or related conditions. Saskia Hagenaars, a PhD student from The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, who jointly led the research, said: "We identified hundreds of new genetic signals. It was interesting to find that many of the genetics signals for male pattern baldness came from the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mothers." Dr David Hill, who co-led the research, said: "In this study, data were collected on hair loss pattern but not age of onset; we would expect to see an even stronger genetic signal if we were able to identify those with early-onset hair loss." The study's principal investigator, Dr Riccardo Marioni, from The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, said: "We are still a long way from making an accurate prediction for an individual's hair loss pattern. However, these results take us one step closer. The findings pave the way for an improved understanding of the genetic causes of hair loss." ### In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Genetics: http://journals. plos. org/ plosgenetics/ article?id= 10. 1371/ journal. pgen. 1006594 Citation: Hagenaars SP, Hill WD, Harris SE, Ritchie SJ, Davies G, Liewald DC, et al. (2017) Genetic prediction of male pattern baldness. PLoS Genet 13(2): e1006594. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006594 Funding: This research was conducted, using the UK Biobank Resource, in The University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, part of the cross-council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Initiative (MR/K026992/1). Funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) is gratefully acknowledged. WDH is supported by a grant from Age UK (Disconnected Mind Project). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. ||||| Researchers searching for the genetic roots of hair loss say they’ve found more than 280 different genes are involved. And they’ve come up with a formula that can predict a man’s risk of losing his hair, although it’s too soon to say there could be a blood test to forecast whether and when a man would start losing his hair. Genetics of male pattern baldness. University of Edinburgh researchers found 287 genes linked with hair loss Douglas Robertson, University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology / PLoS Genetics It turns out that hair loss is very complicated genetically, the British team reports in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Genetics. “In this large genome-wide association study study of male pattern baldness, we identified 287 independent genetic signals that were linked to differences in the trait,” Riccardo Marioni and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh wrote. Related: Cancer Drug Could be Baldness Remedy, Too “The results of this study might help identify those at greatest risk of hair loss, and also potential genetic targets for intervention.” The team studied the DNA from more than 52,000 mostly middle-aged men taking part in a gigantic British genetic experiment called BioBank. “ Male pattern baldness affects around 80 percent of men by the age of 80 years.” "We identified hundreds of new genetic signals," said Saskia Hagenaars, a student who worked on the study. Although hair loss runs strongly in families, men cannot always look at their fathers and predict their own fates, hair-wise. Some can blame their mothers, the researchers found. The trawl though all of the mens’ genes found 40 linked with baldness on the X chromosome. The rest were scattered across the genome. "It was interesting to find that many of the genetic signals for male pattern baldness came from the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mothers,” Hagenaars said in a statement. Of the men in the study, 16,700 had no hair loss. Another 12,000 had slight hair loss; 14,000 had moderate hair loss and 9,800 had severe hair loss. Related: New Technique Could Reverse Baldness The researchers linked each man’s genetic pattern with the degree of hair loss. Those with fewer-than-average hair loss genes were predictably less likely to go bald. Only 14 percent in this group were bald and 39 percent hadn’t lost any hair at all. And 58 percent of those with the top 10 percent count of baldness genes also had some hair loss. That makes the genetic pattern only somewhat predictive. Related: Hair Loss Drug Linked to Severe Depression However, it’s possible to predict whether a man will lose hair with pretty good certainty. Most are fated to at least have their hair thin out. “Male pattern baldness affects around 80 percent of men by the age of 80 years,” the researchers wrote. "We are still a long way from making an accurate prediction for an individual's hair loss pattern,” Marioni said in a statement. “However, these results take us one step closer. The findings pave the way for an improved understanding of the genetic causes of hair loss."

– Guys, if you've ever wished you could look into a crystal ball and see if hair plugs are in your future, scientists have good news. Using data from 53,000 men in the UK, they've come up with a DNA-based algorithm that could someday predict whether one is likely to go bald—one that's more reliable than family history. More to the point for those worried about it is the second half of this sentence: "The results of this study might help identify those at greatest risk of hair loss, and also potential genetic targets for intervention," says a study co-author, per NBC News. In the study, the largest such one of male-pattern baldness to date, University of Edinburgh researchers identified 287 genetic markers linked to hair loss, per a release. That's quite a step up, given that only eight such markers had been previously identified, reports Live Science. "We are still a long way from making an accurate prediction for an individual's hair-loss pattern," says co-author Riccardo Marioni. "However, these results take us one step closer" and "pave the way for an improved understanding of the genetic causes." For now, researchers say their algorithm can be applied only to groups of people, but they hope to fine-tune it, perhaps by factoring in ages at the onset of baldness in future studies. Another of the researchers points to a notable factor: "It was interesting to find that many of the genetics signals for male pattern baldness came from the X chromosome, which men inherit from their mothers." That suggests the maternal side is more to blame than previously thought, notes Seeker. (An alleged Rogaine thief had a predictable mugshot.)

Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| Twitter A Bullfighter is now fighting for his life after being gored several times during his debut appearance. 23-year-old Daniel Garcia Navarrete is in a critical condition after getting pierced multiple times after making his bullfighting debut at the Las Ventas arena in Madrid. In front of 10,000 shocked spectators at Spain’s biggest bullfighting arena, the young Matador was continuously mauled by the raging bull before his fellow bullfighters stepped in to help him. Twitter Navarrete was pierced by the bull’s horns several times, including in his throat. He was also flipped in the air before staff tried to come to his rescue. Of his many wounds, the worst were six and eight inches deep, penetrating the roof of his mouth and underneath his tongue, respectively. He also suffered severe bruises and extensive cuts. He was immediately seen to by the arena’s medical staff who said he’s lucky to be alive. Navarrete underwent emergency surgery at the Hospital San Francisco of Assisi, who said that his condition remains ‘severe’. Spectators described the carnage as ‘horrific’, with many believing the bull was going to kill Navarrete right then and there. One of person who was in attendance said: There was blood on his neck and a hole in his thigh… The bull was literally shaking him about like a rag doll Twitter This is just latest case in spate of bullfighters getting serious injuries – just days ago Antonio Romero received an 11 inch-deep puncture in his rectal area (I think our butt-checks did a little clench there) in Mexico City. Local reports claim he had to have his entire rectal region stitched back together. Just nope. ||||| Daniel García Navarrete was rushed to hospital in a serious condition Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) A YOUNG bullfighter is fighting for his life after being gored through the throat, face and tongue after his debut tournament went horribly wrong. Daniel García Navarrete, aged 23, was pierced several times in Spain’s biggest arena, Las Ventas in Madrid. Getty Images 6 A young bullfighter is fighting for his life after being gored through the throat, face and tongue after his debut tournament went horribly wrong Getty Images 6 Daniel García Navarrete was rushed to hospital in a serious condition Getty Images 6 One of the wounds was 20 centimetres deep while the other of 15 centimetres penetrated the roof of his mouth and base of his tongue EPA 6 The attack was witnessed by the horrified 10,000-strong crowd The attack was witnessed by the horrified 10,000-strong crowd who originally thought he had been struck once in the thigh. After being rushed to hospital in a serious condition, doctors revealed that he had been pierced four times, twice in the neck and the other two through his jaw. Bullfighter is speared through the throat, mouth and TONGUE by a raging bull in his debut fight One of the wounds was 20 centimetres deep while the other of 15 centimetres penetrated the roof of his mouth and base of his tongue. The wounds also severed sciatic nerves, fractured a collarbone and caused extensive muscle damage. MOST READ IN NEWS PANIC IN PARIS Dramatic moment a known extremist is pulled out of a car filled with explosives as it billows smoke after smashing into police on the Champs-Elysees BLOOD ON KIM'S HANDS US student 'tortured' in North Korean jail and released in coma has DIED PORK THRASHER Drunk farmer 'starts fight with his own pig but dies after having three fingers and his privates bitten off' 'SHARK BITE' PANIC Ibiza 'shark attack' leaves swimmer in hospital after 'savaging him off Playa d’en Bossa beach' WHOPPER PUNCH! Burger King customer sparks brawl before being punched to the floor and tasered by brave staff �?YOU ARE A GANGSTER STATE!’ Kim Jong-un threatens WAR with US after his diplomats are �?mugged at New York’s JFK airport The young bullfighter, making his debut, also suffered extensive cuts and bruises. He was treated first at the infirmary's bullring and was said to be lucky to have even survived. Surgeons at the Hospital San Francisco of Assisi who performed an emergency operation said his prognosis was "severe". Twitter 6 Shocked spectators described the scene as "horrific" Twitter 6 One member said "the bull was literally shaking him about like a rag doll" Shocked spectators described the scene as "horrific" and thought he was going to be killed by the 460 kilo bull. One member of the crowd said: "There was blood on his neck and a hole in his thigh. "The bull was literally shaking him about like a rag doll." Young bull appears to mount a dwarf female matador during bull fight In January the distressing moment a raging bull humps a stricken female dwarf was captured on film. The 100-stone beast begins rutting the fallen fighter after knocking her off her feet in shocking footage shot from the sidelines. Believed to have taken place at a bullfight in Spain, the female matador can be seen shuffling backward while holding out a famous red cape. The bull charges before sliding to a halt inches from the brave fighter. But she appears to egg him on by stamping at him. It is then that the bull springs into action, goring her with his deadly horns. We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368

– A 23-year-old matador was severely injured after a nasty turn with a bull in one of Spain's most famous bullfighting venues. More than 10,000 people in Madrid's Las Ventas bullring watched in horror Sunday as a bull started tossing Daniel Garcia Navarrete around "like a rag doll," as one witness described the bloody scene to Reuters. The Sun has graphic images of the incident, both during and after the goring, which led to Navarrete being impaled about 6 inches into his throat by the 1,000-pound-plus animal; he reportedly sustained injuries to his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Reuters says he was also pierced about 4 inches in the leg before fellow matadors, as seen in the video shown here, rushed in to get the bull away from him. Unilad, which reports this was Navarrete's debut appearance, says many in the audience thought they were going to watch the bull maul Navarrete to death right in front of them. Navarrete is also said to be contending with a broken collarbone and sliced sciatic nerves; the Las Ventas ring said Monday in a statement he was recuperating after surgery the day before. The hospital where he's being treated describes his condition as "severe." (A 29-year-old bullfighter met a worse fate on live TV last summer.)

BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- One of two sons suspected of killing a Beachwood doctor threatened his father in 2015 over money, police reports say. Michael Warn, then 28, and his brother Mark, then 26, went to their father's Brentwood Road home on Sept. 24, 2015 despite the fact that they were told they were not welcome in the home, according to police reports. Police later discovered that Michael Warn threatened his father unless he paid him money and said on a voicemail "people do crazy things when they do not get enough sleep," according to police reports. "Michael warns his father that if Richard does not give Michael money, Jehovah will be upset and might start 'burning s--t." The incident happened more than two years before Dr. Warn was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds inside the same Beachwood home. Beachwood Police Chief Gary Haba on Tuesday said Michael and Mark Warn killed their father, then fatally shot themselves during a 12-hour standoff with a SWAT team. Haba said his detectives have not determined a motive and that they would not necessarily seek one out because the sons were dead. Haba said that "there was talk" that both sons suffered from mental illnesses, but said his detectives were unable to verify that. The father and sons had a documented history of what Haba called "friction" dating back to 2004. Dr. Warn called police on April 18, 2004 and asked for advice on how to deal with the escalating tension with his three children, including a then 13-year-old daughter. Michael was 17 at the time and Mark 15. Dr. Warn told officers that he encountered difficulties disciplining his kids after he divorced their mother and started dating another woman, police reports say. He asked the officers for advice on what his options were, and the officers noted in police reports they referred him to Jewish Family Services, the United Way and Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court. The officer also told Dr. Warn to call back if there were any other issues. On July 23, 2005, someone inside the home called police and dispatchers noted they could hear people yelling in the background. An officer went to the home and noted that Dr. Warn argued with Mark Warn about discipline involving his son's Xbox video game system, according to police reports. No other instances involving the sons and their father were documented until the 2015 call, according to the records released by Beachwood police. Officers surrounded Dr. Warn's home about 8:15 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2015. His second wife called police while hiding in the bathroom and told dispatchers she heard people inside the home and that no one should be there, police reports say. Several officers went to the home and checked the doors, which were locked. Dr. Warn pulled up shortly after and said the car in the driveway belonged to his sons, who were not allowed to be at his home without permission, the police reports say. Dr. Warn let the officers inside. They found Mark and Michael Warn standing in the front living room, police reports say. Both said they went to the home to search for hats. Dr. Warn checked the house, found nothing missing and declined to press charges against his sons. The officers told Mark and Michael Warn that they would arrest the sons if they returned to the home. Three hours later, however, Dr. Warn called police and said he wanted to play them the voicemail that Michael left on his phone two days before they showed up inside his home. Michael Warn told his father in the voicemail that they had mold in home on Elmwood Avenue in South Euclid that their father bought in 2011. The sons lived at that home. Michael then demanded money and issued the threat, police reports say. Dr. Warn asked the officer's opinion on what he should do. The officer wrote in police reports that he told Dr. Warn that only he knew what his sons were capable of and "gave possible outcomes in several scenarios that I have occurred in my career." The officer told Dr. Warn he would press charges if Dr. Warn wanted to do so. Dr. Warn said he'd talk with his wife before making a decision. No charges were ever filed. It was the last time police went to the home until Thursday, when Dr. Warn's wife came home from vacation and called police when her husband wouldn't answer the door. The officers found Dr. Warn dead from multiple gunshot wounds in the upstairs portion of the home. A SWAT team the next day went to the sons' home in South Euclid. Someone inside the home fired .223 rifle rounds at the SWAT officers. A bullet cracked the SWAT tank's windshield. After a 12-hour standoff, officers found both Michael and Mark Warn dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is investigating the SWAT standoff and collected all the evidence, including at least one gun, from the home. BCI spokeswoman Dorcas Jones declined to answer questions about what the state agents found, citing an on-going investigation. To comment on this post, please visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments page. ||||| BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- The sons of a Beachwood doctor killed their father and sprayed bullets from an assault rifle at a SWAT team that surrounded their home. The two then turned guns on themselves and committed suicide, police officials said. Beachwood Police Chief Garry Haba said either Michael Warn, 31, Mark Warn, 29, or both killed their father, 59-year-old podiatrist Dr. Richard Warn, at the doctor's home on Brentwood Road in Beachwood. Haba gave vague answers regarding the sons' involvement, wouldn't answer questions regarding specific information that led investigators to believe the sons were suspects and said "there was talk" that both Michael and Mark Warn suffered from mental illnesses. He would not elaborate. The chief later said that his detectives likely wouldn't follow up to determine a motive in the killing, nor would they try and confirm that sons suffered from mental illnesses. Haba said investigators struggled in establishing a motive, but said his detectives gathered information that there was "friction" between Dr. Warn and his sons. "Motive is for court cases and everyone involved is dead," Haba said after the news conference. He said the bullets used to kill Dr. Warn were .223 bullets, meaning they came from a rifle or a handgun that was able to fire rifle rounds. The investigation began Thursday, when Dr. Warn's wife returned home from vacation without keys, saw her husband's car in the parking lot and grew concerned because he didn't answer the door. Haba said investigators found Dr. Warn dead from five gunshot wounds in an upstairs bedroom or hallway. No one broke into the home and police immediately suspected that someone killed Dr. Warn, the chief said. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner later ruled Warn's death a homicide from multiple gunshot wounds, the first homicide in the normally quiet and wealthy Cleveland suburb since 1994. "It's an unfortunate and disturbing crime," Haba said, later adding that "The entire sequence was bizarre from beginning to end." Haba said investigators "developed leads" that pointed to the sons' responsibility for Dr. Warns death, but repeatedly refused to elaborate. "It was a combination of many things," Haba said. "We thought there might be evidence in that home." The SWAT team arrived at the South Euclid home about 7:10 p.m. Friday. Haba said the SWAT team repeatedly tried to contact the sons inside the home. They were unsuccessful. As soon as the SWAT team briefly entered the home about 30 minutes later, the officers took "rifle fire" from one of the sons, Haba said. The force of the .223 bullet hit the windshield of a SWAT tank with enough force to crack the bulletproof glass. Officers tried to negotiate with anyone inside, but were unable to make contact. They cut off power to the home about 9:50 p.m., shot out the street lights in the area about 10:15 p.m. and shot tear gas into the home shortly after, police records say. The SWAT team also sent a robot into the home and found no one on the ground level, leading investigators to believe whomever was inside the home was in an upstairs room. The SWAT team eventually rammed the tank through the front part of the home and found the two sons' dead inside the home, both from suicides. Michael Warn shot himself through the mouth and his brother Mark shot himself in the head, the medical examiner said. Haba refused to take questions about the SWAT incident and what police found inside the home because the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is overseeing that investigation. He said BCI agents are in possession of the guns recovered the home. BCI spokeswoman Dorcas Jones said they are still investigating the incident and refused to answer questions regarding what agents found. cleveland.com reporter Robin Goist contributed to this report. ||||| BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Beachwood police suspect that the adult sons of Dr. Richard Warn are responsible for his shooting death at his Beachwood home, the first known murder in the small Cuyahoga County community since 1994. The sons then turned guns on themselves after police and a SWAT team attempted to make entry to their South Euclid home, authorities said. Beachwood Police Chief Gary Haba assured the community during a news conference Tuesday that this was not a random crime, and those in the area are not in danger. Chief Haba recounted the “bizarre” sequence of events since Dr. Warn, a licensed podiatrist with a practice in Shaker Heights, was found dead last Thursday. Beachwood police were called to Dr. Warn’s home Thursday evening when his wife, who had just returned from vacation, was unable to get inside the home on Brentwood Road. Officers discovered Dr. Warn’s body inside. Chief Haba believed Dr. Warn had been shot five to six times, and that his body was upstairs in the bedroom or hallway area. Chief Haba was not sure exactly how long Dr. Warn had been dead when his body was found, but it had not been more than 48 hours. There was no sign of forced entry into the home, and the evidence at the scene was not indicative of a random incident. Through “good detective work,” police were led to Dr. Warn’s other home on Elmwood Road in South Euclid, and they obtained a search warrant, Chief Haba said. Due to the violent manner of Dr. Warn’s death, police requested a SWAT team to accompany them during the execution of the warrant on Friday. SWAT team members attempted to summon any occupants of the home, but were unsuccessful, Chief Haba said. Upon breaching the front door of the house, an occupant engaged one of the SWAT vehicles with rifle fire. SWAT officers returned fire and reorganized. For about 12 hours, negotiators on scene made many attempts to contact the occupants of the home and have them surrender peacefully, Chief Haba said. Contact was never established. Dr. Harm’s sons, 29-year-old Mark Warn and 31-year-old Michael Warn, were found dead in the home, Chief Haba continued. No one else was found inside. The scene was turned over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, and the bodies were removed by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office. That office has previously confirmed that both Mark and Michael Warn committed suicide with gunshots to the head. Chief Haba said that a motive for the shooting of Dr. Warn has not clearly been established at this point. He said it had been either weeks or months since his sons had last contacted him. “We have been unable to develop a clear motive at this point,” Chief Haba said. “All of the facts that we have so far - we’re very confident that one or both of these men committed the crime. That’s due to physical evidence rather than speculative.” In answering questions at the news conference Tuesday, Chief Haba revealed that Dr. Warn had left for the overseas vacation at the same time as his wife, but had cut the vacation short and returned earlier, possibly because he was not feeling well. Neither son had a previous criminal history, and had been living at the home in South Euclid owned by Dr. Warn, Chief Haba said. Chief Haba also said that while police had been called to Dr. Warn’s Beachwood home a few times over the years, it was not a “problem home” for police, and no arrests had been made there. Chief Haba noted one instance around 2015 when Dr. Warn’s sons were at the home uninvited, and their stepmother called police believing a burglary was in progress. The case has been turned over to the BCI, and the weapons used in the crime are in their custody, Chief Haba said. “The entire sequence of events is bizarre, from beginning to end,” Chief Haba admitted. ||||| BEACHWOOD, Ohio (AP) — Police are trying to determine a motive in an Ohio doctor's slaying that was followed by his two sons killing themselves during a standoff with SWAT officers. Beachwood Police Chief Gary Haba said Tuesday police believe Dr. Richard Warn was killed last week by one or both of his sons. Haba says investigators and the SWAT team went to a home Friday in nearby South Euclid to gather evidence in the 59-year-old doctor's slaying. Thirty-one-year-old Michael Warn and 29-year-old Mark Warn were found dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds Saturday after a 12-hour standoff at a home their father purchased. Police say the standoff began with someone inside firing high-powered rifle rounds at a SWAT vehicle. Haba says the brothers had no criminal history and investigators haven't confirmed any mental illnesses. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Beachwood police said they are "very confident" the sons of a podiatrist are responsible for his murder. Dr. Richard Warn, 59, was found with multiple gunshot wounds in his Brentwood Road home Thursday, according to police. In a press conference Tuesday, Chief Gary Haba said once all evidence is processed, detectives are confident it will tie 31-year-old Michael Warn and 29-year-old Mark Warn to the crime. The men took their own lives as police attempted to execute a search warrant at their South Euclid home, officials said. Haba said it is not yet clear if one of the men, or both, committed the murder and detectives have not yet been able to establish a motive. "There was some friction amongst the family, but that's kind of a family matter, but nothing that points us to say this or that was a clear motive," Haba said. Richard Warn returned home early from a planned overseas vacation after experiencing motion sickness on the way before departing the United States, according to Haba. When his wife, Jane, returned from the vacation Thursday evening without keys, she called police after finding the Brentwood Road house locked with no answer at the door, despite Richard Warn's car being at the home. Haba said officers responded and discovered Richard Warn's body upstairs with five or six gunshot wounds. Haba declined to say what evidence led police to suspect Warn's sons. Investigators and a SWAT team on Friday night attempted to carry out a search warrant at the South Euclid home where Michael and Mark Warn were living when Haba said someone fired a rifle at officers, hitting a SWAT vehicle window. A 12-hour standoff followed, with police evacuating neighbors and with SWAT officers using an armored vehicle to break through the front wall of the Elmwood Road house. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office said both Michael Warn and Mark Warn died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the investigation into the South Euclid incident and is still processing any weapons recovered in the home. Property records show Richard Warn purchased the South Euclid home in 2011, and neighbors said his sons lived there since. South Euclid police incident reports show police responded to the house in the 4300 block of Elmwood Road nearly two dozen times between 2011 and 2015. Most calls were trivial, including Michael Warn reporting vehicles parked "too close" to his driveway - in one case, within six feet - and one time reported someone in a vehicle on the street "may be casing his house." Neighbor Marian Werfel said the brothers rarely left the house, except to go to the grocery store. "They were such shy, shy boys. You would never think they could do this," Werfel said. "They were very quiet, kept to themselves." "The younger brother, he was just a shadow. He just did everything his brother wanted him to do," Werfel said. She said she saw Richard Warn visit his sons at the house until 2015. "He used to go shopping for them, buy them paper towels and toilet paper, cleaning products," she said. "Other than that I have not seen anybody -- friends, family, nobody, ever." Haba said neither son had a criminal record. However, Beachwood police records show several incidents involving them. Richard Warn contacted police in 2004 to report he was "having a difficult time disciplining his children and arguments with them seem to be escalating," according to a police report. Warn said he and his first wife had divorced and he was seeing someone new, which he believed was causing most of the tension. In 2005, Warn called police to the house following an argument with Mark Warn over an Xbox, according to a police report. Then, in 2015, Jane Warn called police to report strangers were in the house, saying "she was hiding in the bathroom and could still hear voices in the house." Police said Richard Warn came home, and they found Michael and Mark standing in the living room. "Michael stated that they were in the house looking for some hats. Richard said that Michael and Mark were not to be in the house as they no longer lived there," the report states. Richard Warn later called police back to the house to play a voicemail left by Michael which said "people do crazy things when they do not get enough sleep" and warned that if Richard did not give him money "Jehovah will be upset and might start burning s***." "I think he basically was saying boys, man up. I'm not doing things for you anymore and I think maybe they just went off the deep end," Wefel said. Warn leaves behind a third child, an adult daughter, who declined comment to FOX 8 News. **Continuing coverage**

– Police in Beachwood, Ohio, say two brothers shot and killed their father, then fatally shot themselves during an ensuing SWAT standoff, Cleveland.com reports. Dr. Richard Warn, 59, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds inside his home Thursday night after his wife returned without her keys and was unable to get in; she saw her husband's car parked there and contacted police when he didn't answer the door. Police then got a search warrant for another home owned by Warn, where his sons lived, and requested SWAT accompaniment when they went to search it Friday, News 5 Cleveland reports. No one let them in, and after they breached the door, one of the brothers engaged the SWAT team with rifle fire. After a 12-hour standoff, Mark Warn, 29, and Michael Warn, 31, were found dead inside. "The entire sequence [of events] is bizarre, from beginning to end," says the police chief. Police haven't established a motive, but Cleveland.com reports in 2015, the brothers went to their father's home—where they'd been told they weren't welcome—and Michael Warn threatened his father over money. Per a police report, the son said on a voicemail that "people do crazy things when they do not get enough sleep" and that "if Richard does not give Michael money, Jehovah will be upset and might start burning s---." No charges were filed; the AP reports the sons had no criminal history. Police say there'd been "friction" between father and sons since 2004 and "there was talk" the brothers suffered from mental illnesses, but police haven't verified that, per Cleveland.com. In 2004, Dr. Warn asked police for help, reporting that he struggled to discipline his then-teenage children (he has a third child, a daughter) after divorcing their mother and starting a relationship with another woman. A neighbor tells FOX 8 she saw Dr. Warn visiting his sons at their home until 2015.

Contains archived websites, blogs, editorials and other materials posted online by, or on behalf of, 17 Russian political and cultural figures who have expressed some opposition to foreign and domestic policy in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The archive also captures eight websites that chronicle a range of contemporary political and human rights positions and events that reflect the prevailing climate. The political and cultural figures whose websites and/or blogs have been captured include: Rustem Adagamov, widely-read Russian blogger; Sergei Aleksashenko, economist, businessman; Konstantin Borovoi, entrepreneur and opposition politician; Leonid Gozman, opposition politician; Il’ia Iashin, opposition politician, co-founder of Russian “Solidarity” party; Oleg Kashin, political journalist and author; Oleg Kozyrev, author, screenwriter, blogger and journalist, leader of youth movement “Democratic Alternative”; Andrei Makarevich, founder of classic rock group Mashina Vremeni [Time Machine]), who Russian state media condemned as a “traitor” for performing a charity concert for Ukrainian children displaced by the war; Andrei Mal’gin, journalist, literary scholar and critic, publisher, and political activist well known for his blogging; Aleksei Naval’nyi, Russian political and social activist, lawyer, and popular blogger; Boris Nemtsov, prominent Russian opposition leader gunned down in Moscow on February 27, 2015; Valeriia Novodvorskaia (d. July 2014), a political activist, dissident, human rights advocate, independent journalist, and founder of liberal political parties; Dmitrii Oreshkin, political scientist and activist; Sergei Parkhomenko, publisher, journalist, political observer; Irina Prokhorova, literary scholar, editor, television personality, opposition political figure; Artemii Troitskii, rock journalist, music critic who emigrated to Estonia in 2014 because of the worsening political climate; Nikolai Uskov, historian, journalist and publishing executive. This archive also includes captures of the following sites: Civil Platform, founded in 2012, with the aims of establishing civil society in Russia, upholding of the rights of the individual, and economic reform. Human Rights in Russia, a website dedicated to raising awareness of threats to human rights in Russia, funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. Nashi, a pro-Kremlin youth organization. Politkom.Ru, web platform of the Center for Political Technology, which purports to be an independent source of news and analysis and an open forum for exchange of opinions between politicians, analysts and journalists. Putin. Itogi publishes “independent, expert” reports on Putin’s leadership, among them reports written by Boris Nemtsov. Solidarnost’ is a “united democratic movement” founded in 2008 as a coalition of opposition organizations against authoritarianism. Bolotnaya Square Case is a website devoted to documenting the consequences for dozens of protesters after their participation in an opposition rally in Moscow in May of 2012. Traitor.net is a website that singles out political and cultural figures for their expression of disagreement with Russian incursions into Ukraine. ||||| Rossia 1 Kiselyov speaking on his news program on state television on Sunday. An anchor on state-run television threatened that Russia could "turn the U.S. into radioactive ashes" and showed a simulation of a Russian nuclear strike during his program on the U.S. response to Russia's interference in Ukraine. Dmitry Kiselyov, who hosts a current affairs talk show on the Rossiya television network and heads a new Kremlin-backed news agency, accused U.S. President Barack Obama of supposedly dithering in talks with President Vladimir Putin, and suggested on his Sunday program that the U.S. leader was intimidated by his Kremlin opponent, who is "not an easy one." "And Russia is the only country that could really turn the U.S. into radioactive ashes," Kiselyov said, against the backdrop of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear blast appearing on a huge screen behind him. Kiselyov also suggested that threats of a nuclear strike were coming from the Kremlin. "I do not know if this is a coincidence or what, but here was Obama calling Putin on Jan. 21 — probably, again trying to pressure somehow — and the very next day, on Jan. 22, the official media outlet of the Russian government ran an article that spelled out in simple terms how our system of nuclear response works," he said. While Kiselyov's comment suggested that Obama's Jan. 21 call had to do with the Ukrainian crisis, an earlier statement from the White House said the U.S. leader spoke to Putin on that day to wish him a "safe and secure" Olympics in Sochi. The Kremlin has unleashed a large-scale propaganda war over Moscow's takeover of Crimea and the peninsula's referendum on Sunday, in which more than 90 percent of voters cast supported seceding from Ukraine to Russia, according to preliminary results released by Crimea's pro-Russian administration. The promotion by state-run television of the Kremlin's views has also helped Putin's approval ratings in the country to soar to 72 percent this month, a recent survey by the Levada pollster showed. The number of respondents who said they would like to see Putin as Russia's president for a fourth term increased this month to 32 percent, from 26 percent in in April, 2013, while the number of people who said they would like the job to go to a "person who proposes a different solution to Russia's problems" declined from 41 percent to 31 percent over the same period. The poll, conducted on March 7-10 among 1,603 people around Russia, gave a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| As the United States condemned a referendum on the future of the Crimean peninsula staged by pro-Russian separatists on Sunday, one of Russia’s most influential television hosts appeared on the evening news in Moscow, before a huge mushroom cloud graphic, to remind viewers that Russia is still “the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A. into radioactive dust.” On Russian state TV: lovely closing ceremony of Sochi Paralympics v. warning that Russia can turn the US into radioactive dust. Good night. — Steven Lee Myers (@slmmoscow) 16 Mar 14 Although the saber-rattling comments came from Dmitry Kiselev, a news anchor well known for his “mad as hell” delivery of diatribes on the supposed threats to Russia posed by foreign plotters and native homosexuals, the report still stunned viewers of the state broadcaster’s main channel. Киселев продолжает! Прямо сейчас: Россия – единственная страна, которая может превратить США в радиоактивный пепел //t.co/zNTh7imMKz — Коробков-Землянский (@korobkov) 16 Mar 14 One reason is that, as the Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin observed, Mr. Kiselev was the man recently chosen by President Vladimir V. Putin to lead an official news agency charged with explaining Kremlin policy to the world, a media organization to be called Rossiya Sevodnya, or Russia Today. Kiselev is not your average moron. He is Russia’s most senior government media executive, essentially minister of propaganda. — Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) 16 Mar 14 Mr. Ragozin noted that the anchor also claimed that President Obama was deeply worried by Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Kiselev then talks abt Russia’s ‘dead hand’ system that will destroy America automatically after all Russians are dead. — Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) 16 Mar 14 Kiselev claims a publication about “Perimeter” – the Russian nuclear extermination system – prompted Obama’s frantic calls to Kremlin in Jan — Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) 16 Mar 14 A Moscow correspondent for The Associated Press, Laura Mills, reported that the broadcaster had then moved on to attack a “fifth column” of supposedly traitorous Russian dissidents who signed an open letter against the Kremlin’s “de facto annexation of Crimea.” Russian state TV anchor lists intellectuals who oppose Crimean annexation, says: “If this isn’t the fifth column, what IS the fifth column?” — Laura Mills (@lauraphylmills) 16 Mar 14 Mr. Kiselev’s appointment, and the shuttering of a more independent state news agency, was described by Russia’s respected business daily Vedomosti as a sign that Mr. Putin had abandoned any hope of persuading educated Russians to embrace his policies, my colleague Serge Schmemann explained. “The Kremlin acknowledged that it has lost the educated community,” the editors of Vedomosti wrote in December, “and has neither the means nor the will to hold a dialogue about values, and therefore instead of culture began to impose ideology, and instead of information, propaganda.” The instant online reaction to Mr. Kiselev’s Sunday night riff from Russian bloggers seemed to indicate that they are indeed not the target demographic for his editorial commentaries. A screenshot of the segment, with a caption suggesting that the host might have a substance abuse problem, was posted on the Twitter feed of Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader currently under house arrest whose blog was blocked by Russian Internet authorities last week. Mr. Navalny’s feed, which is ostensibly under the control of his wife until the end of his ban on using the Internet, also drew attention to another opposition activist’s suggestion of how the segment should have ended, with the host being dragged away by men in white coats. По логике вещей, эта клоунада должна закончиться так //t.co/z9abXeb0dW — Владислав Наганов (@naganoff_ru) 16 Mar 14 Other bloggers heaped scorn on Mr. Kiselev’s false claim that Mr. Obama’s hair had turned gray from worry over Russia’s nuclear might. Киселев говорит, что Обама резко поседел из-за того, что боится Россию. Это, конечно, какой-то КВН,а не журналистика. //t.co/ZMzXq9rENs — Алекс Заборовский (@sazam) 16 Mar 14 As my colleague Ellen Barry reported on Saturday, some influential members of the Russian president’s inner circle “view isolation from the West as a good thing for Russia,” and seem to welcome the revival of Cold War tensions. On Sunday, she noted, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Dmitri Trenin, told RT, a Kremlin-funded news network that broadcasts in English, that the new standoff between Moscow and the West “closes the books on what I would call inter Cold War period” that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russian bloggers also turned their attention to reworking an Associated Press photograph of a confrontation on Saturday between the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and her Russian counterpart, Vitaly I. Churkin. Photo

– The man Vladimir Putin hand-picked to run a new state-run news agency turned a number of heads yesterday when he stood before an image of a mushroom cloud and declared that "Russia is the only country that could really turn the US into radioactive ash." Dmitry Kiselyov then showed a simulation of a Russian nuclear strike, and suggested that the Kremlin had threatened Washington by running an article on such a strike on Jan. 22, a day after an Obama-Putin phone call, the Moscow Times reports. Kiselyov is known as a pro-Putin anti-gay firebrand, but he's "not your average moron," one Russia expert tweeted. "He is Russia's most senior government media executive, essentially minister of propaganda." Russian bloggers responded with shock and mockery, the New York Times reports; one opposition leader's Twitter feed suggested that Kiselyov was intoxicated, then pointed out a Photoshopped image of the host being dragged away by men in white coats.

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Duct-Taped Toddler (MediaTakeout) (CBS/KYW/AP) Pennsylvania mother Caira Ferguson is being held without bail after what police call a "disgusting and deplorable" picture led them to file child endangerment and other charges. The picture shows a toddler, wearing only a diaper, bound to a chair with her mouth, hands and feet duct taped. A woman, who police say is the one-year-old's mother, is also seen in the picture sitting next to the girl, according to CBS affiliate KYW. Authorities say multiple agencies are investigating the incident, including police in Chester Township where the 21-year-old Ferguson lives. When questioned by police, sources say Ferguson admitted she is the woman in the picture, stating the picture was not taken as a joke, but failed to explain why or who took the picture, KYW reported. Ferguson went to police earlier this month to complain that her identity had been stolen and someone had posted a photo online of her young daughter bound to a chair with duct tape covering her mouth. "No, I did not duct tape my child," Ferguson said as she was led away to jail in handcuffs Wednesday afternoon. Ferguson's mother says she thinks another child was responsible. The toddler is in custody of child welfare workers.

– A Pennsylvania mom has been arrested after showing a photo of herself posing with her toddler daughter gagged and bound to a chair with duct tape ... to police. The photo—which shows the mom smiling and her baby clad only in a diaper—first surfaced on the Mediatakeout website. The 21-year-old mom approached Chester County investigators with the original photo, arguing that the site had "stolen" her identity, reports WSBT TV. A search of the young woman's home turned up a child's plastic chair with bits of tape still attached, according to police, who called the photo "disgusting." She later admitted binding the girl with tape, investigators said. She faces charges of child endangerment, unlawful restraint and false imprisonment. The child is being placed with relatives.

'Simpsons' Exec Producer Homer's Coma Theory is Cool ... But TOTALLY FALSE! 'Simpsons' Executive Producer -- Homer's Coma Theory is Cool ... But TOTALLY FALSE! EXCLUSIVE Homer Simpson has NOT been stuck in a coma since the '90s ... despite a fan theory that has thrown "The Simpsons" fans for a loop -- so says the show's executive producer. The idea -- first posted on Reddit -- theorizes Homer's been in a coma since a 1993 episode where he was hospitalized. The fan theory is that he never woke up, and everything that's happened ever since was a dream ... but Al Jean tells us NOT TRUE. Al explains, "It would mean back in 1993 we would presume the show was going on for years and years more and right before we left, threw this hidden monkey wrench in for all our successors," adding, "I’m afraid it goes with the 'Dead Bart' episode in the intriguing but false file.” Doh. ||||| October 1992: Homer The Heretic airs and ends with Homer talking to God. http://i.imgur.com/uwHdZLM.jpg Homer: God, I gotta ask you something. What's the meaning of life? God: Homer, I can't tell you that. Homer: C'mon! God: You'll find out when you die. Homer: I can't wait that long! God: You can't wait six months? Homer: No, tell me now! God: Well, ok. The meaning of life is… April 1993 (SIX MONTHS LATER): So It’s Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show airs and involves Bart’s April Fools prank inadvertently putting Homer into the hospital, where he is then crushed by a vending machine and put in a coma. Now the episode ends with Homer waking up (and giving us a hilarious POV shot of him choking Bart), but it seems to be too convenient and sudden. http://i.imgur.com/9GYMplw.jpg I propose that Homer didn’t actually wake up from his coma. He is still in a vegetative state and every single Simpsons episode afterwards is in Homer’s imagination. This is why the characters don’t age. Homer remembers Bart, Lisa, and Maggie as 10, 8, and 1 year old, so they will always appear that way in his dreams. He is subconsciously aware of time passing, so his mind will often “update” his memories so that the year they occurred matches up with the age he thinks he is (eg. That 90’s Show contradicting other flashback episodes). While the characters’ ages don’t change, the events happening to the Simpsons definitely did. The plots of episodes following the April Fools show are far zanier than beforehand. Let’s compare, shall we? Plot Examples Before April 1993 Bart cheats on an IQ test Homer tries to give up drinking Marge considers cheating on Homer Lisa has a crush on her teacher Yes, there were some wacky plots, but overall fairly mundane stuff. Nothing out of the ordinary for most people. Plot Examples After April 1993 Homer goes into outer space Principal Skinner is revealed as an imposter Mr. Burns captures the Loch Ness Monster Homer works for a supervillain who takes over the eastern US Bart and Homer buy a racehorse and discover the secret land of jockeys Also, celebrity after celebrity after celebrity This is clearly Homer’s imagination running wild. With no real world restrictions, Homer’s mind is able to dream up scenarios of him and his family in fantasies involving him winning a Grammy, his father fighting his boss for buried WW2 treasure, his wife getting breast implants, his infant daughter saving him from drowning, etc. The massive amounts of celebrity appearances are easily explained as well. People in comas can sometime hear what people in the same room are saying. While Homer wouldn’t physically react, his mind processes that information and includes it in his dreams. Maybe the nurse leaves the radio on and Homer hears a Lady Gaga song. Suddenly: http://i.imgur.com/4C0817Q.jpg His family visits and talk with each other about the new Mel Gibson movie they’re going to be seeing after leaving the hospital. Next thing you know: http://i.imgur.com/nzyS4my.gif And so on. There’s one last thing I want to leave you with. Going back to Homer’s conversation with God, what is the meaning of life? Or at least Homer’s life? Well life can have different meaning for different people and a purpose or reason for one’s existence can be as unique as their fingerprints. For Homer, his grand purpose is obvious – he is here to entertain. His dreams, his imaginative adventures, have provided billions with amusement and will continue to do so for decades. Not bad for a dumb overweight loudmouth. EDIT: This got really big. I'm getting messages about it making the news in Australia, Belgium, and other places. It made the front page of Yahoo, and TMZ even got a statement from Al Jean about my theory. He says it's not true, but what does he know about the Simpsons? ||||| On Reddit, a fan of The Simpsons recently outlined his theory that Homer Simpson has been in a coma for the past 20 years and everything on the show since mid-1993 has taken place in Homer’s head. Here’s the argument… In the series’ first clip show, which aired in the fourth season, Bart pranks Homer by shaking up his beer can in a paint shaker. The beer explodes and knocks Homer into a coma. At the end of the episode, Homer is shown waking up from the coma. But maybe he didn’t? As possible evidence, the theorist suggests that’s why the Simpsons never age: This is why the characters don’t age. Homer remembers Bart, Lisa, and Maggie as 10, 8, and 1 year old, so they will always appear that way in his dreams. He is subconsciously aware of time passing, so his mind will often “update” his memories so that the year they occurred matches up with the age he thinks he is. And it’s also why the plots on the show became more outlandish after the coma episode: This is clearly Homer’s imagination running wild. With no real world restrictions, Homer’s mind is able to dream up scenarios of him and his family in fantasies involving him winning a Grammy, his father fighting his boss for buried WW2 treasure, his wife getting breast implants, his infant daughter saving him from drowning, etc. That’s pretty clever. It immediately reminded me of two things: 1. The entirety of St. Elsewhere took place inside the mind of an autistic kid named Tommy Westphall. And since St. Elsewhere was referenced on other TV shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, that means those shows (and the shows referenced on those shows) also took place in Westphall’s mind. 2. From 1991 to 1994, a show called Herman’s Head aired on Fox. The show took place partially in the main character’s head. Among the cast are two regular Simpsons cast members: Hank Azaria (Moe, Chief Wiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, etc.) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa). Super-crazy theory: perhaps Herman’s Head inspired Homer’s coma? Update: Of course this theory isn’t true. Al Jean, a writer and show runner for The Simpsons during season four, told TMZ that Homer hasn’t been in a coma for the past 20 years. (thx, greg) ||||| The "truth" behind your favorite films Some fans just aren't satisfied only watching a movie. Instead, they analyze every scene, looking for hidden meanings and constructing elaborate theories about what the filmmakers truly meant to say. Here are five of the most mind-boggling fan theories out there. WARNING: Spoilers ahead! 1. Pulp Fiction: The Briefcase The glowing, ethereal object within the briefcase that Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield retrieve is actually Marsellus Wallace’s soul. In the past, Marsellus made a deal with the Devil, who removed his soul through the back of his head, explaining the placement of the Band-Aid when he is first revealed. The briefcase’s passcode? The “number of the beast.”

– Diehard Simpsons fans have by now likely encountered a theory about Homer that surfaced on Reddit earlier this month and simply won't die: The short version is that Homer has been in a coma for more than 20 years—specifically since mid-1993 after a Bart prank involving a beer can knocked him into aforementioned coma during a clips episode. Among other things, it would explain why the characters never age and why the plots since then have gotten crazier and crazier: because all the action is taking place inside Homer's mind, "with no real world restrictions." Even though executive producer Al Jean told TMZ that it's "intriguing" but not true, the theory keeps getting recirculated and, if nothing else, praised for its detailed research. A post at Kottke.org thinks it's clever indeed and takes it even further. It notes that a show called Herman's Head aired on Fox in the early 1990s, and a chunk of it took place inside the lead character's head. It turns out that Simpsons voice actors Hank Azaria and Yeardley Smith were on the cast. "Super-crazy theory: perhaps Herman's Head inspired Homer's coma?" (Click to find out why it took 25 years for this Simpsons episode to air, or read about some non-Simpsons fan theories.)

The families of a Brooklyn backpacker and his friend planning to hike on Mount Everest were desperately seeking answers about the pair missing since Saturday’s cataclysmic earthquake in Nepal. Danny Cole, 39, a father of four from Crown Heights, and Mendy Losh, 38, originally from Crown Heights and now living in Los Angeles, had planned to hike up part of the mountain with a Sherpa guide, their friend Zevi Steinhauser, 39, told the Daily News on Sunday. “I wrote (them), ‘Be careful and stay safe,’ That was the last I heard,” said Steinhauser, who normally travels with his two best friends each year. He was unable to accompany them on their journey to the world’s tallest mountain. “I just came back from praying,” he said. Zevi Steinhauser (left) was unable to accompany Mendy Losh (center) and Daniel Cole on their journey to Mount Everest. (HANDOUT) The friends were likely on a trail that leads to the Everest base camp when when the 7.8-magnitude quake that killed at least 3,617 people hit. The tremors triggered avalanches on the frigid peak that have killed at least 19 people, including three Americans. Cole’s brother-in-law, Zalman Schriber, acting as a family spokesman, said relatives were focused on the search — a rabbi in Nepal was trying to help — and not thinking about the worst. Edison, N.J., native Marisa Eve Girawong was killed in an avalanche Saturday on Mount Everest. (Facebook) “He’s exceptionally nice, he’s always willing to help anyone,” said Schriber, 25. “He’s very diligent. He worked his way through college with a family.” He added: “If Danny sees this I hope he’s safe. We’re praying for you and can't wait to hear from you.” Video from the moment the avalanche hit base camp shows a roaring wall of white engulfing terrified adventurers. Rescue efforts on the mountain were hindered by bad weather that prevented helicopters from landing. Climbers described camps turned into triage centers. “Large areas of base camp look like after a nuclear blast. great desolation. high uncertainty among people,” Romanian mountaineer Alex Gavan tweeted. The dire situation was not lost on Steinhauser. “It’s a Third World country. When we hike, we scheduled a certain amount of food per day. I’m concerned that they are going to run out of resources even if they are OK right now,” said Steinhauser, also from Crown Heights. Cole’s wife, Elkie, was beside herself. “She’s delirious, in a way. She’s not talking to anybody,” Steinhauser said. He said he’s on the verge of hopping on a plane to Nepal to search for his friends himself. Girawong wrote on Facebook she was craving sushi hours before her death. (LinkedIn) She was working as a camp doctor for the Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering climbing group. (Facebook) A 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal, which triggered a giant avalanche on the mountain Saturday. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) At least 17 people have been killed by the natural disaster on the mountain. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images) “I’m considering going. But I’m sitting tight for another day. I have a gut feeling that I will hear good news soon. You can’t lose your two best friends,” he said. As he hoped for the best, it emerged Sunday that American Tom Taplin, 61, died in the icefall. The Californian was shooting a documentary about life at base camp. And the family of a New Jersey woman working as a doctor at an Everest base camp also grieved her death in an avalanche. RELATED: NEPAL NATIVES IN QUEENS RAISE MONEY TO HELP HOMELAND Marisa Eve Girawong, a member of the Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering climbing group and graduate of Rutgers University, was stationed at the Everest/Lhotse base camp, according to the company’s website. Madison Mountaineering announced the tragedy with a post under the headline, “Our hearts are broken.” WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE The 28-year-old from Edison and had worked at the East Orange General Hospital. Girawong was part of a group that had trained at the lower Khumbu glacier before climbing the mountain. Had to hike through fresh 12 inch snow but finally made it safe and sound to my new home for the next 7 weeks. Thank goodness for my -30 degree sleeping bag! #madisonmountaineering #nepal #everest #basecampmedic #mountainmedicine A photo posted by @evie_pixels on Apr 14, 2015 at 3:06am PDT “Day 28 on this arduous journey, snow is falling & my food cravings are at an all time high. ... Is a crunchy spicy tuna roll with eel sauce too much to ask for?” she wrote in her last Facebook post — just a few hours before she died. Girawong worked as a physician’s assistant and graduated with honors for her master of medical sciences and physician assistant studies, according to her company bio. A man who answered the phone at her family’s home in Edison declined to comment to The News on Sunday. Girawong had been training in the Everest region since last year and has been an avid indoor and outdoor rock climber for several years, the company said. The group’s founder, Garrett Madison, wrote on the website he was climbing when the mountain shook. He later learned the base camp was devastated and the “beloved” Girawong had died. On Saturday, it was revealed that Google executive Dan Fredinburg, 33, died from head injuries suffered in the icefall. USING A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO. ||||| BHAKTAPUR, Nepal Thousands of Nepalis began fleeing the capital Kathmandu on Monday, terror-stricken by two days of powerful aftershocks and looming shortages of food and water after an earthquake that killed more than 3,700 people. A senior interior ministry official said authorities had not been able to establish contact with some of the worst affected areas in the mountainous nation, and that the death toll could reach 5,000. Roads leading out of Kathmandu were jammed with people, some with babies in their arms, trying to climb onto buses or hitch a ride aboard cars and trucks to the plains. Huge queues had formed at the city's Tribhuvan International Airport, with tourists and residents desperate to get a flight out. "I'm willing even to sell the gold I'm wearing to buy a ticket, but there is nothing available," said Rama Bahadur, an Indian woman who works in Nepal's capital. Many of Kathmandu's one million residents have slept in the open since Saturday's quake, either because their homes were flattened or they were terrified that aftershocks would bring them crashing down. "We are escaping," said Krishna Muktari, who runs a small grocery store in Kathmandu city, standing at a major road intersection. "How can you live here? I have got children, they can't be rushing out of the house all night." Overwhelmed authorities were trying to cope with a shortage of drinking water, food and electricity, as well as the threat of disease, and the government appealed for international help. "The big challenge is relief," said Chief Secretary Leela Mani Paudel, the country's top bureaucrat. "We urge foreign countries to give us special relief materials and medical teams. We are really desperate for more foreign expertise to pull through this crisis." High in the Himalayas, hundreds of climbers were staying put at Mount Everest base camp, where a huge avalanche after the earthquake killed 17 people in the single worst disaster to hit the world's highest mountain. Rescue teams, helped by clear weather, used helicopters to airlift scores of people stranded at higher altitudes, two at a time. Sick and wounded people were lying out in the open in Kathmandu, unable to find beds in the devastated city's hospitals. Surgeons set up an operating theater inside a tent in the grounds of Kathmandu Medical College. Across the capital and beyond, exhausted families laid mattresses out on streets and erected tents to shelter from rain. People queued for water dispensed from trucks, while the few stores still open had next to nothing on their shelves. INSTANT NOODLES AND FRUIT The United Nations Childrens Fund said nearly one million children in Nepal were severely affected by the quake, and warned of waterborne and infectious diseases. In the ancient temple town of Bhaktapur, east of Kathmandu, many residents were living in tents in a school compound after centuries old buildings collapsed or developed huge cracks. "We have become refugees," said Sarga Dhaoubadel, a management student whose ancestors had built her Bhaktapur family home over 400 years ago. They were subsisting on instant noodles and fruit, she said. "No one from the government has come to offer us even a glass of water," she said. "Nobody has come to even check our health. We are totally on our own here. All we can hope is that the aftershocks stop and we can try and get back home." A total of 3,726 people were confirmed killed in the 7.9 magnitude quake, the government said on Monday, the worst in Nepal since 1934 when 8,500 died. More than 6,500 were injured. Another 66 were killed across the border in India and at least another 20 in Tibet, China's state news agency said. The toll is likely to rise as rescuers struggle to reach remote regions in the country of 28 million people and as bodies buried under rubble are recovered. Several countries rushed to send aid and personnel. India sent helicopters, medical supplies and members of its National Disaster Response Force. China sent a 60-strong emergency team. Pakistan's army said it was sending four C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search and rescue teams and relief supplies. A Pentagon spokesman said a U.S. military aircraft with 70 personnel left the United States on Sunday and was due in Kathmandu on Monday. Australia, Britain and New Zealand said they were sending specialist urban search-and-rescue teams to Kathmandu at Nepal's request. Britain, which believes several hundred of its nationals are in Nepal, was also delivering supplies and medics. However, there has been little sign of international assistance on the ground so far, with some aid flights prevented from landing by aftershocks that closed Kathmandu's airport several times on Sunday. On Monday, an Indian air force relief plane returned to New Delhi because of congestion at the airport, Indian television reported. The disaster has underlined the woeful state of Nepal's medical facilities. Nepal has only 2.1 physicians and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to a 2011 World Health Organization report. Doctors at one Kathmandu hospital said they needed over 1,000 more beds to treat the patients that were being brought in ambulances and taxis. (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani and Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Frank Jack Daniel, Mayank Bhardwaj, Krista Mahr, Amit Ganguly and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Neha Dasgupta and Clara Ferreira-Marques in Mumbai and Norihiko Shirouzo in Beijing; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Mike Collett-White) ||||| Damaged buildings lean to their sides in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal's capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley on Saturday, causing... (Associated Press) 2.30 p.m. (0845 GMT) A respected consultancy services says the long-term cost of reconstruction in Nepal after Saturday's earthquake could be more than $5 billion, or about 20 percent of Nepal's GDP. Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific Chief Economist for the Colorado-based consultancy services IHS, says Nepal has extremely limited capacity to finance relief efforts and reconstruction from its own resources. "The total long-term cost of reconstruction in Nepal using appropriate building standards for regions vulnerable to severe earthquakes could exceed $5 billion, which is around 20 percent of Nepal's GDP," he says. Nepal's annual per capita GDP is only $1,000, and the average family lives in poverty. "Massive international disaster relief and rescue efforts will be needed urgently, as well as large-scale international financial and technical assistance for long-term reconstruction of the economy," says Biswas. — Muneeza Naqvi, New Delhi __ 1.45 p.m. (0800 GMT) Nepal's police say at least 3,617 people have been confirmed killed in Saturday's earthquake, including 1,302 in the Kathmandu Valley alone. In addition, 6,515 people were injured nationwide, the police department said in a Tweet. So far 18 people have also been confirmed dead in an avalanche that swept through the Mount Everest base camp in the wake of the earthquake. Another 61 people were killed in neighboring India. __ 1.15 p.m. (0730 GMT) Foreign tourists in Nepal are getting anxious as food, water and power remain scarce. Hotel rooms are in short supply too so Pierre-Anne Dube, a 31-year-old from Quebec, has been sleeping on the sidewalk outside a hotel. Friends had been staying there for the first two days so she could use the bathroom and shower there. But they have checked out. Like many others she's scared and wants to get out on the first flight she can get. "We can't reach the embassy. We want to leave. We are scared. There is no food. We haven't eaten a meal since the earthquake and we don't have any news about what's going on." She had just returned from a trek to Everest base camp, which had been the "best experience of her life," but living the experience of the massive earthquake was definitely the "worst." — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal. __ 1.15 p.m. (0730 GMT) The Israeli military said it is sending a search and rescue crew to Nepal on Monday to help locate survivors in the rubble, set up a medical field hospital for locals, and bring Israeli travelers home. A total of 260 Israeli military personnel are traveling to Nepal for the mission. The military says about 150 Israeli travelers have yet to establish contact after the earthquake and are believed to be missing. "The idea is to arrive and to try to establish communication with them," said Col. Yoram Laredo, head of the Israeli military mission. In addition, Israel's emergency response service, Magen David Adom, is flying home a group of 18 Israelis who travelled to Nepal to receive babies born to Nepalese surrogate mothers, spokesman Zaki Heller said. — Daniel Estrin, Jerusalem __ 1.00 p.m. (0645 GMT) International aid agency Oxfam says it is is gearing up to deliver clean water and sanitation supplies to thousands of Nepalis now left homeless. They estimate that some 30,000 people are currently living in makeshift shelters in 16 government camps, too scared to return to their homes for fear of aftershocks. "We are managing to reach out to people in Kathmandu, but it is extremely difficult to provide support on a larger scale to the most affected areas — a lot of the main roads have been damaged," said Cecilia Keizer, Oxfam country director in Nepal. "Our staff is still checking on their families and the partners we work with. At the moment, all the death count reports are coming from Kathmandu Valley. Sadly, I fear that this is only the beginning," she said. __ 11.45 a.m. (0600 GMT) There's a lot that the world still doesn't really know about the Nepal quake. The key thing is this: How significant is the destruction in Gorkha district, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital and the location of the quake's epicenter? Roads to the area, difficult on good days, are damaged. Learning about the level of destruction and human toll in the vulnerable mountain villages there could change the whole picture. Here's an assessment by Matt Darvas, a member of the aid group World Vision: "Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides," he says, "and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls." __ 11.20 a.m. (0540 GMT) Jagdish Pokhrel, the clearly exhausted army spokesman, says nearly the entire 100,000-soldier army is involved in rescue operations. "90 percent of the army's out there working on search and rescue," he said. "We are focusing our efforts on that, on saving lives." — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal __ 11.15 a.m. (0530 GMT) Fears are growing that thousands of people may remain cut off in isolated, devastated mountain villages. Udav Prashad Timalsina, the top official for the Gorkha district where Saturday's quake was centered, says he is in desperate need of help. "Things are really bad in the district, especially in remote mountain villages. There are people who are not getting food and shelter. I have had reports of villages where 70 percent of the houses have been destroyed," he said when contacted by telephone. "We have been calling for help, but we haven't received enough from the central government." He says 223 people had been confirmed dead in the district but he presumed "the number would go up because there are thousands who are injured." — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal __ 11.00 a.m. (0515 GMT) Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says Australia has dispatched a 9-person crisis response team that is scheduled to arrive in Kathmandu later Monday and "will assist in establishing the safety and welfare of Australians currently unaccounted for" after Saturday's earthquake. She says the team will also assist with humanitarian assessments to support Nepal's government and the international relief efforts. __ 11.00 a.m. (0515 GMT) New Zealand is sending 37 urban search and rescue experts to Kathmandu. They are scheduled to leave Monday evening. Included are experts in rubble-pile rescues and technical rescues, as well as a structural engineer, a doctor, and paramedics. New Zealand is also contributing 1 million New Zealand dollars ($761,000) to the relief effort. Officials have made contact with over 200 New Zealanders in Nepal and are seeking contact with others. They say they have no reason to believe at this point that any New Zealanders died in the earthquake. — Nick Perry, Wellington, New Zealand __ 10.15 a.m (0430 GMT) On Monday morning, some pharmacies, groceries and shops selling basic provisions opened while bakeries began offering fresh bread. Long lines of people desperate to secure fuel formed outside gasoline stations. Fuel prices remained the same as they were before the quake. — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal __ 10.15 a.m. (0430 GMT) A sense of eerie calm and uneasiness hangs over the capital, Kathmandu, as the aftershocks keep coming for a third day after the massive quake on Saturday. People are still trying to absorb what's happening to them and their city. Part of their anxiety appears to be fueled by a near complete absence of any real information. Power lines are down and there is almost no Internet connectivity. Phone connections are spotty at best. Most people are camped outdoors so even where there is limited power back up there's no TV news to watch. This has made them anxious to buy newspapers every morning. — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal __ 10 a.m. (0415 GMT) Near Kathmandu's famed Dharahara Tower, reduced to an enormous pile of red brick dust, dozens of people were clambering around the debris clicking smiling selfies and photos of their friends posing. "This is earthquake tourism. This is not right," said 21-year-old business student Pawan Thapa who arrived from the suburbs to see how he could help. "They are more interested in clicking their selfies than understanding that it is a tragedy." — Katy Daigle, Kathmandu, Nepal ___ 10 a.m. (0415 GMT) Facebook has activated its "Safety Check" feature in response to the earthquake in Nepal. The feature, launched in October, allows users to tell friends and family they are safe if they are in the middle of a disaster area. Facebook engineers in Japan started development on the feature after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami. The Kathmandu earthquake was one of the first natural disasters where it has been used. Google, which lost an employee in an avalanche as a result of the earthquake, has activated its own disaster tool called "Person Finder" http://google.org/personfinder/2015-nepal-earthquake/ and is updating satellite imagery to help with relief efforts. Google is also donating $1 million toward relief efforts, the company said. — Brad Foss, Washington DC ||||| Play Facebook Twitter Embed Death toll in Nepal climbs to more than 2,000 3:30 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Three Americans — A Denver-born filmmaker, a Seattle-based camp doctor and a Google engineer — are among the 17 people killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest on Saturday as a result of the Nepal earthquake. Here is a look at who they were. *** Tom Taplin on Mount Aspring in New Zealand. Cory Freyer Tom Taplin, 61, was making a documentary about the Mount Everest base camp when the avalanche hit. When his wife Cory Freyer — at home in Santa Monica, California — heard that a massive earthquake had struck Nepal, she immediately sent her husband a text message asking if he was all right. There was no response. When a call came in from Taplin’s guide, the guide began with "I'm so sorry." "It’s shocking," Freyer told NBC News. "All of his friends, and he has so many friends, every one of them is just devastated. Shocked." Freyer — married to Taplin for three years but with him for more than 24 — said her husband was a passionate photographer, filmmaker and mountaineer who wrote a book about his experiences climbing South America’s tallest peak, Aconcagua, in the early 1990s. "Such a larger than life person — you just don’t think of them losing their life," she added. On that trip, Taplin fell into a crevasse, breaking his arm, but was able to pull himself to where he could be reached by other mountaineers, she said. Taplin successfully climbed the mountain the next year, she added. "It sounds trite, but he died doing what he loved doing," Freyer said. *** Dan Fredinburg, a Google executive based in California, had been scaling Everest for the past three weeks with an expedition team through U.K.-based tour company Jagged Globe. Fredinburg made headlines for dating actress Sophia Bush in 2013 and 2014, and was the head of privacy for innovation lab Google[x]. He described himself as an "Inventor, Adventurer, and Energetic Engineer" on his Google+ page. Jagged Globe confirmed in a statement that Fredinburg had died in the avalanche. "Sadly, we lost one of our own in this tragedy," Google said in a statement Saturday. ""Our thoughts are with the people of Nepal, and with Dan’s family and friends during this terrible time." Bush said she had "no adequate words" to describe the loss of an "incredible" and "one-of-a-kind" friend. "Today I find myself attempting to pick up the pieces of my heart that have broken into such tiny shards, I'll likely never find them all," the actress said in a statement on Twitter and Instagram. "He was one of my favorite human beings on Earth. He was one of the great loves of my life. He was one of my truest friends. He was an incredible brother, a brilliant engineer, and a damn good man." *** Marisa Eve Girawong, a camp doctor with a Seattle-based mountaineering company, also died in the avalanche. "Our hearts are broken," Madison Mountaineering said in a statement confirming her death. Girawong was from Edison, N.J., according to NBC New York. Trained at John Stroger Hospital in Chicago, Girawong was pursuing a postgraduate degree at the University of Leicester in England, according to the company's website. It said Girawong had been participating in wilderness medicine in the Everest Region since 2014, was an avid climber and had successfully reached the summits of Mt. Washington and Mt. Rainier. — Phil Helsel and Cassandra Vinograd ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage of the moment an avalanche hurtled towards climbers on Mount Everest At least 3,617 people are now known to have died in a massive earthquake which hit Nepal on Saturday, police say. More than 6,500 people have been injured, according to the National Emergency Operation Centre. Dozens of people are also reported to have been killed in neighbouring China and India. More than 200 climbers have been rescued around Mount Everest, which was struck by deadly avalanches in the 7.8-magnitude quake. Vast tent cities have sprung up in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, for those displaced or afraid to return to their homes as strong aftershocks continued. Thousands spent Sunday night - their second night - outside. Officials have warned that the number of casualties could rise as rescue teams reach remote mountainous areas of western Nepal. Initial reports suggest that many communities, especially those close to mountainsides, suffered significant quake damage. "Villages like this are routinely affected by landslides, and it's not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls," said Matt Darvas, spokesman for aid agency World Vision. A man evacuated by helicopter to Pokhara, 200km from Kathmandu, said almost every home in his village of more than 1,000 houses had been destroyed, Mr Darvas told the BBC. Image copyright AP Image caption Much of the effort is now turning to recovery of bodies in and around Kathmandu Image copyright Reuters Image caption Bodies are cremated near a river in Kathmandu In Dhading district, 80km west of Kathmandu, people were camped in the open, the hospital was overflowing, the power was off and shops were closed, Reuters news agency reported. A senior official in Gorkha district, the location of the earthquake's epicentre, told AP he had heard reports of 70% of houses being destroyed. "Things are really bad in the district, especially in remote mountain villages," Udav Prashad Timalsin said. "There are people who are not getting food and shelter." Among villages affected are some inhabited by Tibetans, many of whom have sought refuge in Nepal. Bridim, north of Kathmandu, is reported to have been virtually flattened. The roads to where the epicentre was, northwest of the capital, have been cleared and rescue teams are on their way. Rescue missions and aid are arriving in Nepal from abroad to help cope with the aftermath of the earthquake, the worst to hit Nepal for more than 80 years. Efforts to dig victims out from under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kathmandu are also continuing. At the scene: Sanjoy Majumder, Kathmandu After a cold and wet night, the skies have cleared over Kathmandu allowing rescue teams to continue working. But it is becoming harder for the hundreds of thousands sheltering out in the open. Many are staying in very basic tents with little protection. Water is becoming scarce and there are fears that children in particular could be at risk of disease. Even residents of some of the city's smarter neighbourhoods are sleeping on carpets and mattresses outside their homes. Aid flights are coming in rapidly and in fact Kathmandu airport is running out of parking bays, so many aircraft are having to wait before getting permission to land. And at the Pashupatinath temple, one of the city's oldest, cremations have been taking place since the morning. As the death toll rises, the authorities are keen on disposing of the bodies as quickly as possible to prevent a health hazard. In pictures: Devastation after the quake Quake 'was anticipated' Dozens of Britons among the missing A powerful aftershock was felt on Sunday in Nepal, India and Bangladesh, and more avalanches were reported near Everest. The 6.7-magnitude tremor, centred 60km (40 miles) east of Kathmandu, sent people running in panic for open ground in the city. It brought down some houses that had been damaged in the initial quake. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Yogita Limaye stands on the remains of an ancient temple Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption An aftershock hits during Justin Rowlatt's report Image copyright AFP Image caption Hospital patients were among those moved outside over the weekend At hospitals rattled by the aftershocks, staff moved sick and injured patients outside on Sunday afternoon. Clearer weather on Monday allowed more helicopters to head to Base Camp on Mount Everest. Foreign climbers and their Nepalese guides were caught by the tremors and a huge avalanche that buried part of the camp. At least 18 were killed by avalanches. Belgian climber Jelle Veyt tweeted that helicopters had been removing climbers from camps 1 and 2 to Base Camp throughout Monday morning. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 3D graphics show how Everest was affected by the earthquake Image copyright Jelle Veyt Image caption Helicopters have continued evacuating climbers from Everest Image copyright AFP Image caption Rescuers have been able to take some injured people off Mount Everest Nepal's ruined monuments Image copyright EPA Image caption The quake destroyed several major monuments 19th Century 200-step Dharahara tower in Kathmandu reduced to stump Durbar Square in Old City badly damaged In Bhaktapur, country's best preserved ancient city, 16th-Century Vatsala Durga and many other buildings destroyed Several buildings in Patan's 3rd Century Durbar square razed Destruction "culturally speaking an incalculable loss" - Nepali Times editor Kunda Dixit Nepal's architectural jewels destroyed There are 14 international medical teams on the way to Nepal, the UN says, and up to 15 international search-and-rescue teams have been sent. The UN children's agency says nearly one million children in Nepal urgently need humanitarian assistance as they were particularly vulnerable. The country is running out of water and food, and there are frequent power cuts, the UN says. Heavy rain earlier on Saturday further worsened conditions with UN officials expressing concern that thunderstorms that could harm people staying outdoors and lead to a shortage of vaccines against disease including diarrhoea and measles. Dead or missing foreigners Australia: 549 Australians registered as travelling in Nepal, 200 confirmed safe Bangladesh: 50 nationals, including members of the country's under-14 girls' football team, evacuated. No information on exact number of nationals in Nepal China: Four nationals dead in Kathmandu, Xinhua news agency reports Colombia: Seven nationals missing France: French authorities have located 1,098 nationals, but another 674 are still not in touch India: Five killed in Nepal UK: Several hundred Britons believed to be in Nepal. No reports of deaths or injuries US: Three Americans killed Victims from other countries include a dead Estonian national and a Japanese man killed. Are you in the area? Are you affected by the earthquake? If it is safe to do so, you can share your story by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk If you are willing to speak with a BBC journalist, please leave a contact number. You can send a picture, video or message to our WhatsApp number +44 7525 900971 You can email your pictures, video or audio to us at yourpics@bbc.co.uk You can upload pictures

– Aftershocks from Saturday's devastating earthquake are still shaking Kathmandu, and while more aid is starting to arrive, a lot of people are trying their best to get out of the Nepalese capital. Roads out of the city are jammed, and for a second night, hundreds of thousands of people spent last night sleeping in the open or in basic tents, either because their homes had been destroyed or because they were too afraid to spend the night inside, Reuters reports. The city is already experiencing shortages of food and water, and overwhelmed health workers fear that disease is likely to spread in the aftermath of the disaster. In other developments: Officials say the death toll now stands at more than 3,700, but aid workers warn that the scale of the disaster is still unknown and many thousands more could have died in remote villages that are hard to access even in good conditions, reports the AP. "Water is becoming scarce and there are fears that children in particular could be at risk of disease," warns BBC correspondent Sanjoy Majumder in Kathmandu, but "aid flights are coming in rapidly and in fact Kathmandu airport is running out of parking bays." At least 17 people were killed by a quake-triggered avalanche on Everest, including at least three Americans: Google exec Dan Fredinburg, base camp doctor Marisa Eve Girawong, and Tom Taplin, 61, a filmmaker who was making a documentary about the Everest base camp. "It sounds trite, but he died doing what he loved doing," his wife tells NBC News. Dozens more are stranded or missing in the Everest area, including two Brooklyn men believed to have been on a trail in the area. A friend who usually hikes with the pair tells the New York Daily News that he's at the point of going out to join the search for Danny Cole and Mendy Losh, but "I'm sitting tight for another day. I have a gut feeling that I will hear good news soon. You can't lose your two best friends." A terrifying video uploaded to YouTube yesterday, apparently by German mountaineer Jost Kobusch, captures the moment the avalanche crashed into Everest base camp and the panic in the aftermath as survivors huddled in a tent, Mother Jones reports.

The State Department says Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who skipped an overseas trip this past week because of a stomach virus, sustained a concussion after fainting. She's now recovering at home and being monitored by doctors. An aide, Philippe Reines, says Clinton will work from home next week, at the recommendation of doctors. Congressional aides do not expect her to testify as scheduled at congressional hearings on Thursday into the Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss Clinton's status. The department says Clinton was dehydrated because of the virus and that she fainted, causing the concussion. No further details were immediately available. ||||| The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, but did not specify when that happened or the circumstances surrounding the incident. She will not testify this week before House and Senate committees about the Sept. 11 attacks on Benghazi as scheduled, congressional sources said. Text Size - + reset Clinton, 65, cancelled a trip to the Middle East and North Africa earlier this week because she had been suffering from a stomach flu. Clinton’s fainting episode took place earlier this week, State spokesman Philippe Reines said Saturday, although he did not give additional details. On Thursday, asked by POLITICO during the day if she’d been hospitalized, Reines responded only that evening that she had seen her doctors and was home, without additional details. He said Saturday she was not and never had been hospitalized. Reines did not respond to questions about why Clinton’s fainting was not disclosed sooner. According to Reines’s Saturday statement, Clinton fainted while she was dehydrated and suffered a concussion when she fell. She is now recovering at home and is being attended to by doctors, he said. A spokeswoman for Sen. John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said Clinton’s office contacted Kerry Saturday about her concussion. “Secretary Clinton’s team contacted Senator Kerry this morning to inform them of the secretary’s concussion,” Jodi Seth said. “Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday as previously planned, and that the nation’s best interests are served by the report and hearings proceeding as scheduled with senior officials appearing in her place.” Clinton will also be excused from testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said. Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement released by her committee that Clinton eventually must testify about the Benghazi attacks. ||||| Latest News from Daily Intelligencer 3:57 a.m. Bernie Sanders's Wife Calls New York Daily News Interview an 'Inquisition' "It was a very odd interview." 3:32 a.m. Megyn Kelly and Donald Trump Meet, Are Maybe Friends Now Is Trump's Fox feud over? 2:23 a.m. Fresh Intelligence: Panel Finds Chicago PD Is Racist Surprising Nobody, Louisiana Passes Pro-LGTB Legislation Surprising Everybody Our roundup of the stories, ideas, and memes you’ll be talking about today. 12:50 a.m. Stormtroopers and Teens: Scenes From the Bernie Sanders Rally in Washington Square Park Hardly a baby boomer in sight. Yesterday at 11:37 p.m. Trump Campaign Manager Won't Be Prosecuted for Battery Florida prosecutors have decided not to move forward with charges. Yesterday at 6:00 p.m. Yoenis Céspedes Dives Into Stands to Try to Catch a Foul Ball, Takes Out Fan Instead A scary moment at Citi Field. Yesterday at 5:53 p.m. Kobe Bryant Had the Worst Signature Sneakers in History. That Only Proved His Greatness. The Adidas Kobe II was a monstrosity. How did it happen? What did it mean? Yesterday at 5:07 p.m. Reince Priebus Should Be Updating His Résumé Once considered a highly competent unifier of his party, the RNC chairman is now annoying pretty much everybody. Yesterday at 4:57 p.m. Do All of Bernie’s Voters Want Him to Win? An early impetus for a Sanders presidential campaign was the desire to "keep Hillary honest." Could Bernie benefit again from that sentiment? Yesterday at 4:21 p.m. Ted Cruz Accuses Bill de Blasio of Coddling Terrorists in New Radio Ad "De Blasio ended stop-and-frisk, even where terrorists are known to congregate," Lyin' Ted informs New York primary voters. Load More

– Hillary Clinton fainted earlier this week and suffered a concussion, reports the AP and Politico. She is recovering at home and will work from there next week, says the State Department, adding that Clinton had been dehydrated because of a stomach virus. The development means that Clinton will not testify as scheduled on Thursday before a Senate panel on the Benghazi attacks. Instead, deputies Thomas Nides and William Burns will take her place. Clinton also was to testify before a House panel the same day, and that is presumably canceled as well. "Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday," said a statement from John Kerry, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee. Earlier this week, Clinton canceled an overseas trip because of the stomach virus, and Daily Intel noted at the time that it was probably a wise move—because Clinton, 65, once fainted mid-speech in 2005, thanks to a stomach virus.

Marilyn Hagerty, a food critic famous for her earnest review of Olive Garden, is back with another honest take on a household name -- McDonald's. Touted as a critic almost everyone can relate to, the nearly-90-year-old Hagerty has reviewed restaurants for the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota for nearly 30 years, and worked at the paper itself for almost 60 years. Hagerty writes a lot about American dining, and has written about Olive Garden, Applebees, Taco Bell and Buffalo Wild Wings, just to name a few. In her latest post, Hagerty visits four of her local McDonald's to take on the fast food giant... and she doesn't hold back. Here are a few of her most notable quotes: On Big Macs: "My visit to the McDonald's near Columbia Mall is where I enjoyed my secret sin -- a big Mac for $4.39. Something I do once every couple of years. But they help to fill up active, working people. They almost overwhelm lethargic people like me." On coffee: "The coffee, which is McDonald's brand, was strong and not too hot." On lattes and latte machines not working: "The lattes cost less than those I enjoy at Starbucks. But they are worthy. The only problem is occasionally, one of the restaurants will tell you their machine is not working. 'Not working?'' I think. I almost foam at the mouth in disgust, but I try to be pleasant." On soda for breakfast: "On a recent day with the noon temperature at zero the day before, the nuggets were free. I watched three young people carefully order the sandwich and free nuggets. And it's hard to believe, but they also had cola drinks for breakfast." On the idea of sausage egg McMuffins: "And with it I had a sausage egg McMuffin. That was $2.99 and a whopping 370 calories. You know you have eaten, and I like the combination." Though we can't quite tell if Hagerty likes or dislikes McDonald's, she gives an incredibly accurate picture of what McDonald's is like during the day -- fun, fairly busy and a neat place to observe the community. HuffPost Taste reached out to Lisa McComb, Director of McDonald’s Media Relations, who was thrilled with Hagerty's review: "We are honored Marilyn took the time to objectively review all the McDonald’s in Grand Forks, in a way only she can. We thank Marilyn for highlighting what we’ve known for years -- our hometown McDonald’s play an important role in the community. And, hey Marilyn, we’re working on fixing that latte machine." Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr. ||||| In the past couple weeks, I have visited all four McDonald's restaurants in Greater Grand Forks. My first visit was to McDonald's on S. Washington Street, where I ordered a senior coffee for 47 cents one morning. And with it I had a sausage egg McMuffin. That was $2.99 and a whopping 370 calories. You know you have eaten, and I like the combination. The coffee, which is McDonald's brand, was strong and not too hot. This is one of the several places around the Forks where coffee drinkers gather to exchange the news of the day. They start clearing out mid-morning. Then people with small children trickle in to use the only McDonald's playground left around here. The weather was biting cold on another day. I decided to go into the McDonald's near Columbia Mall -- a busy place where the line at the drive-up window often is longer than the smattering of people inside. Still, this place is open all night so that customers can drift in before going to bed. My trail through the McDonald's restaurants took me to East Grand Forks, where I ordered a medium-sized low-fat latte. I got quick service and paid $3.18. I collect the little cards that come on the lattes in order to get a free one after the fifth purchase. The lattes cost less than those I enjoy at Starbucks. But they are worthy. The only problem is occasionally, one of the restaurants will tell you their machine is not working. "Not working?'' I think. I almost foam at the mouth in disgust, but I try to be pleasant. My visit to the McDonald's near Columbia Mall is where I enjoyed my secret sin -- a big Mac for $4.39. Something I do once every couple of years. But they help to fill up active, working people. They almost overwhelm lethargic people like me. With her husband, Mike, Cindy O'Keefe owns and operates the McDonald's restaurants near Columbia Mall and in East Grand Forks and Crookston. Over the years, she has seen the menu go more upscale with frappes and more healthful with salads. Instead of the fries that used to be standard for children, there is a choice of apple slices, little oranges and yogurt. And there is fun. This month, McDonalds has a promotion where customers can get an order of nuggets for the price of the temperature here at noon on the day before. That is, if they buy a sandwich. On a recent day with the noon temperature at zero the day before, the nuggets were free. I watched three young people carefully order the sandwich and free nuggets. And it's hard to believe, but they also had cola drinks for breakfast. Nearby, I watched a workman come in and enjoy the same for a mid-morning meal. This was at the fourth McDonald's, located on Gateway Drive. It is owned by Mike's brother, Bill O'Keefe, who also owns the restaurants on South Washington and in Thief River Falls. It is the newest and perhaps most attractive McDonald's here. It seems spacious with a variety of seating arrangements that provide pseudo privacy. This is a friendly place in the morning with people trickling in and out. There are newspapers around. And like all McDonald's restaurants, the place is wired for computers. Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's restaurant in California 50 years ago. The late John O'Keefe brought McDonald's to Grand Forks. There are now 35,000 McDonalds in 100 countries. McDonald's 1125 S. Washington St. Grand Forks 2910 32nd Avenue S. Grand Forks 4340 Gateway Dr. Grand Forks 1212 Central Ave. NE East Grand Forks Eatbeat Report Card: Eating out in Grand Forks ranges from McDonald's to the country club, which is open through March to the public (with a review coming next week). Four different McDonald's restaurants are a draw with versatile menus, fairly low prices and ongoing promotions. ||||| Marilyn Hagerty, the Grand Forks, North Dakota writer who rose to national prominence by writing an earnest review for her local Olive Garden, has finally conquered the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 of food critique: McDonald's. Advertisement Hagerty approached reviewing all four Grand Forks-area McDonald's with her trademark no-nonsense Midwestern brevity, a beautiful simplicity that weaves her pieces on The Eatbeat into something more than a simple food review. Like these two paragraphs: My first visit was to McDonald's on S. Washington Street, where I ordered a senior coffee for 47 cents one morning. And with it I had a sausage egg McMuffin. That was $2.99 and a whopping 370 calories. You know you have eaten, and I like the combination. The coffee, which is McDonald's brand, was strong and not too hot. This is one of the several places around the Forks where coffee drinkers gather to exchange the news of the day. They start clearing out mid-morning. Then people with small children trickle in to use the only McDonald's playground left around here. You know you have eaten. What a food review. Advertisement When Hagerty reviewed McDonald's lowfat latte, her resolute calm veneer showed signs of cracking: My trail through the McDonald's restaurants took me to East Grand Forks, where I ordered a medium-sized low-fat latte. I got quick service and paid $3.18. I collect the little cards that come on the lattes in order to get a free one after the fifth purchase. The lattes cost less than those I enjoy at Starbucks. But they are worthy. The only problem is occasionally, one of the restaurants will tell you their machine is not working. "Not working?'' I think. I almost foam at the mouth in disgust, but I try to be pleasant. Aren't we all just Marilyn Hagertys at the broken espresso machine of life, trying to be pleasant while our steamed milk dreams are crushed before our eyes? Hagerty made her way to the fourth and final McDonald's and noted its suitability for reading newspapers, or, perhaps using computers. Sponsored This is a friendly place in the morning with people trickling in and out. There are newspapers around. And like all McDonald's restaurants, the place is wired for computers. Please adopt me, Marilyn Hagerty. Advertisement Advertisement

– An 88-year-old woman in Grand Forks, North Dakota, seems to have cemented herself as America's favorite food critic with her latest no-nonsense assessment—of McDonald's. (She likes it.) Marilyn Hagerty first became Internet famous in 2012 after writing a review of her local Olive Garden, and reviewers of her reviews seem to have settled on one word to describe them: "earnest." See People, the Huffington Post, and Jezebel, the latter of which adoringly calls Hagerty an "American Hero Food Critic" in its headline. Some samples from the review in the Grand Forks Herald of her visits to four local McDonald's: "My first visit was to McDonald's on S. Washington Street, where I ordered a senior coffee for 47 cents one morning. And with it I had a sausage egg McMuffin. That was $2.99 and a whopping 370 calories. You know you have eaten, and I like the combination. The coffee, which is McDonald's brand, was strong and not too hot." "The lattes cost less than those I enjoy at Starbucks. But they are worthy. The only problem is occasionally, one of the restaurants will tell you their machine is not working. 'Not working?' I think. I almost foam at the mouth in disgust, but I try to be pleasant." "My visit to the McDonald's near Columbia Mall is where I enjoyed my secret sin—a big Mac for $4.39. Something I do once every couple of years. But they help to fill up active, working people. They almost overwhelm lethargic people like me."

SeaWorld will spare life of killer whale Tilikum, despite death of Dawn Brancheau and two others Still from WESH.com video The six-minute video shot Wednesday shows Brancheau feeding and playing with the six-ton Tilikum, the largest and oldest killer whale in captivity. The killer whale who playfully grabbed a trainer's ponytail and drowned her before a horrified crowd at SeaWorld Wednesday will not be put down, officials said. "We will continue to care for the animal as we always have," Orlando's SeaWorld said in a statement yesterday. The park decided to spare the whale's life even though Tilikum, the largest and oldest killer whale in captivity, had killed twice before. "We are reviewing our protocol on the proximity of our employees and Tilikum," the marine park said. "We have every intention of continuing to interact with this animal, though the procedures for working with him will change." Trainer Dawn Brancheau was in the water up to her shoulders, frolicking with Tilikum, seconds before he grabbed her hair and dragged her under, according to a tourist's video of the tragedy. Police previously had said Brancheau slipped and fell into the tank with Tilikum, and witnesses had recounted dramatic scenarios in which the orca jumped out of the water and grabbed the trainer. And SeaWorld had said trainers never got into the water with the 30-year-old, 6-ton Tilikum because he did not know his own strength and had accidentally killed a trainer in 1991. The video proves them all wrong. It shows Brancheau feeding the whale fish, rubbing his nose, pouring buckets of water on his snout and then smilingly getting into the water with him. "He had done an entire show sequence where he performed and he did really well. Dawn was rubbing him down and interacting with him and rewarding him for doing such a good job," SeaWorld curator Chuck Tompkins told CBS' "The Early Show." "There wasn't anything to indicate to us that there was a problem," he said. An autopsy found that Brancheau, 40, one of the most experienced trainers at SeaWorld, died of drowning and multiple trauma. Her body was not recovered from the whale's jaws until staff members coaxed him into a smaller pool and lifted him out of the water on a platform, officials said. Animal advocates called on SeaWorld to end shows that require dolphins and whales - intelligent mammals with strong social urges - to perform tricks in small tanks. The water shows could be replaced with virtual reality marine extravaganzas, they said. "The death of yet another trainer at SeaWorld did not have to happen, and I must appeal to you to take strong action now so that it never happens again," longtime TV game show host Bob Barker wrote on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. hkennedy@nydailynews.com ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– A tourist's video shows SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau playing in the water with the whale moments before the fatal attack. In the nearly 7-minute video posted by Orlando station WESH-TV, a smiling Brancheau is seen in the water up to her shoulders, right by the whale, at about the 6:40 mark. Prior to that, she had been feeding him fish and dousing him with water following a show. See the video here. (It cuts off before the whale grabs her.) The video conflicts with earlier accounts by officials that she slipped in or that the whale jumped up and pulled her into the water, notes the Daily News. It also goes against the notion that trainers never entered the water with that particular whale because of its history of aggression.

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| MarShawn M. McCarrel II, a young Ohio activist involved with the Black Lives Matter movement committed suicide on the steps of the Statehouse in Columbus. (WBNS-10TV http://www.10tv.com/) A prominent young activist killed himself on the steps of the Ohio statehouse Monday. MarShawn M. McCarrel II, a leading member of the state’s Black Lives Matter movement, shot himself outside the capitol’s entrance about 6 p.m. The 23-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, State Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Craig Cvetan told the Columbus Dispatch. “We don’t have any evidence to know the reason why he did it,” Cvetan said. There were signs on social media that McCarrel had been struggling lately. His Twitter feed oscillated between joy and despair, and on the morning of his death, he tweeted an emotional goodbye. “I love y’all,” he wrote. “All of you.” Moments later, the message turned darker. “If we don’t have to live through hell just to get to heaven,” he wrote. By the afternoon, his social media postings had darkened further. “My demons won today,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I’m sorry.” Just days before his apparent suicide, McCarrel had attended the NAACP Image Awards with his mother. A picture posted to Instagram showed him dressed in a red suit jacket and matching bow tie. McCarrel helped coordinate Black Lives Matter protests in Ohio following the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager killed in 2014 by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. He also founded a youth mentorship program and anti-homelessness efforts, according to the New York Daily News. On Wednesday, Black Lives Matter Cincinnati’s Facebook page was flooded with tributes to McCarrel. “An activist to his soul,” wrote fellow activist Shaun King. “Fought tirelessly in Ohio and beyond for the rights of oppressed people. “Brother – we’ll keep fighting,” King wrote. “You rest, now.” ||||| A Franklin Township man killed himself outside the front door of the Statehouse Downtown on Monday evening. Authorities were called just after 6 p.m. to a shooting, which occurred up the steps and at the entrance to the Statehouse, on the S. High Street side. MarShawn M. McCarrel II, 23, was pronounced dead at the scene, said Lt. Craig Cvetan of the State Highway Patrol. A Franklin Township man killed himself outside the front door of the Statehouse Downtown on Monday evening. Authorities were called just after 6 p.m. to a shooting, which occurred up the steps and at the entrance to the Statehouse, on the S. High Street side. MarShawn M. McCarrel II, 23, was pronounced dead at the scene, said Lt. Craig Cvetan of the State Highway Patrol. >>> Update:Family remembers activist who took own life outside Statehouse on Monday McCarrel II, 23, lived on Eastbrook Drive North in Franklin Township. He was not employed by the state, Cvetan said. "We don't have any evidence to know the reason why he did it," Cvetan said. Posted on his Facebook page shortly after 3 p.m., however, was "My demons won today. I'm sorry." No one witnessed McCarrel shoot himself. He was seen on the Statehouse grounds just moments before the gunshot, Cvetan said. S. High Street was shut down for a short time and then the sidewalk in front of the Statehouse, and the COTA bus stop, were closed for the investigation. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call Franklin County Suicide Prevention Hotline at 614-221-5445; the Teen Suicide Prevention Hotline, 614-294-3300; or the Lifeline national organization for suicide prevention, 1-800-273-8255. jwoods@dispatch.com @Woodsnight ||||| ... belonging to two children. When two brothers see it, they stop to intervene and make sure the officer and the kids know their rights. I love this video. This officer is trying to take and keep backpacks

– A Black Lives Matter activist is dead after shooting himself outside the entrance of the Ohio Statehouse where he previously attended protests. Police say MarShawn McCarrel II was pronounced dead on the scene around 6pm Monday. "We don't have any evidence to know the reason why he did it," a State Highway Patrol rep tells the Columbus Dispatch. But the Washington Post notes McCarrel's social media posts "oscillated between joy and despair." "I love y'all," the 23-year-old tweeted Monday morning. At noon came his final tweet: "Let the record show that I pissed on the statehouse before I left." Then this Facebook post around 3pm: "My demons won today. I'm sorry." A former teacher describes McCarrel as the student he was proudest of in his 27 years on the job. "I saw him as a shining star in the future of civil rights." Indeed: McCarrel was named one of just 15 Radio One Hometown Champions, attended the NAACP's Image Awards on Friday, helped organize Black Lives Matter protests in Ohio after the shooting of Michael Brown, founded a youth mentorship program, and worked with the homeless. "He had so much to do," his mom tells the Dispatch. "He forgot to take time for himself." A fellow activist says "the statehouse was no accident. We've been working so hard, and yet the conditions for the people in our community ... are still so hard." McCarrel was "an activist to his soul," a friend adds on Facebook. He "fought tirelessly in Ohio and beyond for the rights of oppressed people … Brother—we'll keep fighting. You rest, now."

The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| We don't actually know if Philippe Dubost is any good at his job. But boy, can he throw together a resume. Dubost, a web product manager currently based in Paris, is looking to travel for his next position. So he decided to make his CV stand out anywhere in the world — by mimicking an Amazon product page. The result, "Philippe's Amaz'ing Resume," is a pitch-perfect pastiche. Suggesting that you add the applicant to your shopping cart to see his price is such a clever way of asking to be hired, we're amazed no one thought of it before. Especially when followed by the urgent reminder: "only 1 left in stock. Order soon!" You can see the full resume here. But in case Dubost's site has been overwhelmed by traffic — he's already had to change his web hosting service once, according to his Twitter feed — here's another screenshot. Dubost has taken pains to replicate every last aspect of an Amazon page — even inserting an ad. We've seen resumes that look like Facebook pages and Twitter feeds before, but none have this much attention to detail. And given the fact that hiring is a transaction, making it look like the world's largest store makes a ton of sense. Would you hire an applicant based on a resume like this? Let us know in the comments, and check out our galleries of other unusual CV designs below. ||||| Sorry, this item is not available in Image not available for Color: Image not available ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– Philippe Dubost is a "web product manager" looking for a job, and it's a safe bet he won't be looking long. Dubost posted a resume that looks exactly, exactly, like an Amazon product page. ("Only 1 left in stock—order soon.") Here's a sample of the high praise his gone-viral resume is receiving: It's "a pitch-perfect pastiche," writes Chris Taylor at Mashable. "Suggesting that you add the applicant to your shopping cart to see his price is such a clever way of asking to be hired, we're amazed no one thought of it before." "It's brilliant!" writes Casey Chan at Gizmodo. Sure it's only a resume, but "the guy is a web product manager, and his resume is per se a wildly successful web product," writes Will Oremus at Slate. "I look forward to finding out who snaps him up." Dubost, who lives in Paris but is happy to relocate, promises to provide updates on the search at his Twitter feed.

WikiLeaks publishes the Saudi Cables Today, Friday 19th June at 1pm GMT, WikiLeaks began publishing The Saudi Cables: more than half a million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry that contain secret communications from various Saudi Embassies around the world. The publication includes "Top Secret" reports from other Saudi State institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom's General Intelligence Services. The massive cache of data also contains a large number of email communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign entities. The Saudi Cables are being published in tranches of tens of thousands of documents at a time over the coming weeks. Today WikiLeaks is releasing around 70,000 documents from the trove as the first tranche. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks publisher, said: "The Saudi Cables lift the lid on a increasingly erratic and secretive dictatorship that has not only celebrated its 100th beheading this year, but which has also become a menace to its neighbours and itself." The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a hereditary dictatorship bordering the Persian Gulf. Despite the Kingdom's infamous human rights record, Saudi Arabia remains a top-tier ally of the United States and the United Kingdom in the Middle East, largely owing to its globally unrivalled oil reserves. The Kingdom frequently tops the list of oil-producing countries, which has given the Kingdom disproportionate influence in international affairs. Each year it pushes billions of petro-dollars into the pockets of UK banks and US arms companies. Last year it became the largest arms importer in the world, eclipsing China, India and the combined countries of Western Europe. The Kingdom has since the 1960s played a major role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) and dominates the global Islamic charity market. For 40 years the Kingdom's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was headed by one man: Saud al Faisal bin Abdulaziz, a member of the Saudi royal family, and the world's longest-serving foreign minister. The end of Saud al Faisal's tenure, which began in 1975, coincided with the royal succession upon the death of King Abdullah in January 2015. Saud al Faisal's tenure over the Ministry covered its handling of key events and issues in the foreign relations of Saudi Arabia, from the fall of the Shah and the second Oil Crisis to the September 11 attacks and its ongoing proxy war against Iran. The Saudi Cables provide key insights into the Kingdom's operations and how it has managed its alliances and consolidated its position as a regional Middle East superpower, including through bribing and co-opting key individuals and institutions. The cables also illustrate the highly centralised bureaucratic structure of the Kingdom, where even the most minute issues are addressed by the most senior officials. Since late March 2015 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been involved in a war in neighbouring Yemen. The Saudi Foreign Ministry in May 2015 admitted to a breach of its computer networks. Responsibility for the breach was attributed to a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army. The group subsequently released a number of valuable "sample" document sets from the breach on file-sharing sites, which then fell under censorship attacks. The full WikiLeaks trove comprises thousands of times the number of documents and includes hundreds of thousands of pages of scanned images of Arabic text. In a major journalistic research effort, WikiLeaks has extracted the text from these images and placed them into our searchable database. The trove also includes tens of thousands of text files and spreadsheets as well as email messages, which have been made searchable through the WikiLeaks search engine. By coincidence, the Saudi Cables release also marks two other events. Today marks three years since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London seeking asylum from US persecution, having been held for almost five years without charge in the United Kingdom. Also today Google revealed that it had been been forced to hand over more data to the US government in order to assist the prosecution of WikiLeaks staff under US espionage charges arising from our publication of US diplomatic cables. ||||| An undated file photo shows al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. (EPA/STR) According to a recently leaked document, the son of al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden, Abdullah bin Laden, sent a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia to ask for his father's death certificate. In response, the embassy wrote to Abdullah to inform him that there was no death certificate issued for the older bin Laden. The letter went on to suggest other ways that the al-Qaeda leader's death could be officially confirmed. The remarkable exchange has come to light thanks to the latest release from WikiLeaks, the controversial secret sharing organization helmed by Julian Assange. On Friday, the organization released what it said was the first part of more than a half-million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, which it had dubbed "The Saudi Cables." The U.S. Embassy's response to Abdallah was included within the release. It is dated Sept. 9, 2011, approximately four months after bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan. U.S. officials have said that bin Laden was later buried at sea. Requests to publish photographs of bin Laden's body or his burial have been denied and any photographs taken are suspected to have been destroyed. In the letter to Abdullah bin Laden, Glen Keiser, a consul general at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, explains that the lack of a death certificate for bin Laden is "consistent with regular practice for individuals killed in the course of military operations." Keiser goes on to suggest that the criminal case against Osama bin Laden had effectively been dropped due to his death since June 2011, and describes a process for requesting the order of "nolle prosequi" (which literally means "unwilling to pursue") from the court, which could act as proof of death. It's unclear why Abdullah bin Laden had requested the death certificate. In 2012, the Department of Defense responded to an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act request and said that it was unable to find a death certificate for bin Laden. You can see the full letter below: More on WorldViews The bin Laden library the U.S. government doesn’t want you to see: The porn stash. Chomsky, Woodward and 9/11 conspiracy theories: Bin Laden’s English-language bookshelf The Saudi king gave a prize to an Islamic scholar who says 9/11 was an ‘inside job’

– WikiLeaks released a boatload of new documents today, this time from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, and one item in particular caught the eye of the Washington Post. It involves an exchange between a son of Osama bin Laden and the US government over the al-Qaeda leader's death certificate. Abdullah bin Laden asked for the certificate in the aftermath of the raid that killed his father, but a general counsel at the American embassy in Riyadh informed him that he was out of luck. Glen Keiser wrote that no death certificate existed, as is "consistent with regular practice for individuals killed in the course of military operations." But he suggested an alternative: Noting that the US had closed the criminal case against bin Laden because he was dead, Keiser wrote that Abdullah bin Laden could request the order making that closure official, something called an order of "nolle prosequi" ("we shall no longer prosecute"). That would be the closest thing to proof of death. He even provided the necessary request form, adding, "I hope that these U.S. Government documents are of assistance to your and your family." It's not clear whether bin Laden's son followed through on the suggestion.

Twitter account linked to the Anonymous network of hackers says apparent hack might be a stunt initiated by neo-Nazi site A message purportedly posted by hackers has appeared on the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, saying the site has been taken over in response to an article criticising a woman who died during violence at far-right rally in Virginia over the weekend. The post on the website’s homepage said the international hacking network Anonymous had taken control of the site, which was founded and is edited by Andrew Anglin, who endorsed Donald Trump for president. On Sunday Anglin published an article criticising Heather Heyer, who was killed at a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. The web hosting company GoDaddy said on Sunday it had given the Daily Stormer 24 hours to move its domain to another provider, after the article denigrating Heyer was published. Your Anon News, one of the biggest Anonymous-linked Twitter accounts, said on Monday it did not think the apparent hack of the Daily Stormer had been perpetrated by an established member. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville on Saturday. Photograph: Reuters “We have no confirmation that ‘Anonymous’ is involved yet,” it wrote on Twitter. Furthermore, the account suggested the post may have been a Daily Stormer stunt. The post in the name of Anonymous claims the website will be shut down within 24 hours, but this was almost inevitable considering GoDaddy’s withdrawal of support. “Looks more like a [Daily Stormer] stunt,” the Your Anon News account said. “Wonder if they are having issues finding a new host.” Heyer, a legal assistant who had championed civil rights issues, was killed on Saturday when a car ploughed into a crowd of protesters who had assembled to challenge a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The post on Monday said Anonymous had taken over the site in Heyer’s name, stating she was a “victim of white supremacist terrorism”. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Part of the post that appeared on the Daily Stormer website on Monday. Photograph: Daily Stormer Separately, it appears Anonymous has targeted the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. The operation, which was declared in a press release put out through various anonymous text hosting services, spoke directly to the town of Charlottesville. People claiming to be from Anonymous said: “It has come to our attention that the far-right, alt-right, and neo-Nazi organisations have attempted to use your city as a rallying point to display their hatred and intolerance towards the people. “You as citizens cannot allow these types of actions to go unpunished. Anonymous has taken steps to remove the websites of these far-right extremists under the banner of #OpDomesticTerrorism.” In another press release, those claiming to be Anonymous promised to strip rightwing extremists of their anonymity, providing a document for listing the personal details of those being targeted. The hacking collective appears to have been able to take a variety of KKK and white supremacist sites offline, at least temporarily, with some resorting to Cloudflare distributed denial of service protection to stay accessible. The Charlottesville city website was also reportedly affected, although the site was back online at the time of writing. Anonymous has a history of targeting the KKK, leaking the identities of more than 350 alleged members with links to their social media accounts in 2015 under the banner #OperationKKK. Anonymous is a hacking collective that grew out of the internet forum 4Chan in the late 2000s. It has become well known for a series of high-profile cyber-attacks on political, religious and corporate organisations, including Islamic State, the Westboro Baptist church, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and Sony. The loose international collective structure means that, while some operations have appeared to be coordinated efforts spanning actors in several countries, anyone can mimic Anonymous’s trademark Guy Fawkes masks and style with little to disprove it as an action of Anonymous. The collective describes itself as an “internet gathering” with a “very loose and decentralised command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives”. This essentially means anyone could claim to be part of Anonymous. At the same time, anyone who operates as part of the group can perform actions that others in Anonymous are not party to. Various offshoots of the main Anonymous collective also exist, including various country-specific and alternative groups such as AnonSec and GhostSec, which often claim affiliation with Anonymous. ||||| END OF HATE: ANONYMOUS NOW IN CONTROL OF DAILY STORMER #TANGODOWN THIS SITE IS NOW UNDER THE CONTROL OF ANONYMOUS WE HAVE TAKEN THIS SITE IN THE NAME OF HEATHER HEYER A VICTIM OF WHITE SUPREMACIST TERRORISM FOR TOO LONG THE DAILY STORMER AND ANDREW ANGLIN HAVE SPEWED THEIR PUTRID HATE ON THIS SITE THAT WILL NOT BE HAPPENING ANYMORE WE HAVE ALL OF THE DETAILS ON THE SERVERS AND WILL BE RELEASING THE DATA WHEN WE FEEL THE TIME IS RIGHT WE HAVE ALSO GATHERED LOCATIONAL DATA ON ANGLIN HIMSELF AND ARE SENDING OUR ALLIES IN LAGOS TO PAY HIM A VISIT IN PERSON THIS EVIL CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO STAND IT TOOK A UNITED FORCE OF ELITE HACKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD TO BREACH THE SYSTEMS AND THE FIREWALL WE HAVE HAD THE DAILY STORMER IN OUR SITES FOR MONTHS NOW THE EVENTS OF CHARLOTTESVILLE ALERTED US TO THE NEED FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION WE WANT YOU NAZIS TO KNOW: YOUR TIME IS SHORT WE WILL ALLOW THE SITE TO REMAIN ONLINE FOR 24 HOURS SO THE WORLD CAN WITNESS THE HATE THEN WE WILL SHUT IT DOWN PERMANENTLY HACKERS OF THE WORLD HAVE UNITED IN DEFENSE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE YOU SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED US ||||| Andrew Anglin is the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. Styled after popular image-heavy Internet forums like 4chan and 8chan, the Daily Stormer is dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism, primarily through guttural hyperbole and epithet-laden stories about topics like alleged Jewish world control and black-on-white crime. As of April 2017, the site ranked 13,137th globally and 5,597th within the United States, according to Alexa. In his own words “Fear. Now is the time for it … We want these people to feel unwanted. We want them to feel that everything around them is against them. And we want them to be afraid.” —“Female Hajis Fear to Wear the Headtowel in Public After Trump Win—You Should Yell at Them” “The fact is, when you give women rights, they destroy absolutely everything around them, no matter what other variable is involved … Even if you become the ultimate alpha male, some stupid bitch will still ruin your life.” —“Brad Pitt Losing Weight and His Mind After Whore Wife Ruins His Life” “Jews, Blacks and lesbians will be leaving America if Trump gets elected—and he’s happy about it. This alone is enough reason to put your entire heart and soul into supporting this man.” —“Get Em Outta Here: Glorious Leader Calls for Kike Lena Dunham to Leave America,” April 26, 2016 “The day is coming when we’re going to tear down the hoax [Holocaust] memorial in Berlin and replace it with a statue of Hitler 1,000 feet tall.” —“SS Auschwitz Guard Dies Days Before Scheduled Lynching by Kikes,” April 8, 2016 “I ask myself this, in all things: WWHD? (What Would Hitler Do?). To be slightly more honest/specific, I ask myself what Hitler would do if he’d been born in 1984 in America and was dealing with this situation we are currently dealing with and also really liked 4chan and Anime. Hitler was, ultimately, the symbolic (and in some ways actual real life) culmination of traditional Europeanism. —“Andrew Anglin Exposed,” March 14, 2016 “My problem with blacks is that I have come to understand that their biological nature is incompatible with White society, and that we will never have peace as long as they are among us, given that irrational outbursts of brutal violence are a part of their nature.” —“Blacks Loved Slavery and Regretted its End,” Feb. 20, 2014 Background Anglin spent his high school years dabbling in liberal politics, according to an interview he gave to Vocativ. He became a fascist after reading Noam Chomsky, exploring “all that Communist Jewish stuff,” and studying religion, including Islam and Buddhism, eventually arriving at Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In an autobiographical article entitled “Andrew Anglin Exposed,” Anglin expounded on his life’s path: “I started out with normal Alex Jones type conspiracy material, and then moved on to weirder conspiracy material, and then eventually decided Ted Kaczynski was right with regards to a coming apocalypse due to the rapidity of technological development.” (Jones is probably America’s most prolific conspiracy theorist. Kaczynski was the “Unabomber” who is now in prison.) An investigative piece published in February 2017 by Columbus Alive, a weekly newspaper from Anglin’s hometown, revealed a less polished ideological journey. Former classmates recalled an outspoken liberal and vegan who sported dreadlocks and JNCO pants. Anglin, who was once known to speak out against racism and homophobia, was also prone to violent tantrums including one alleged incident during a party in high school where he repeatedly bashed his head on a sidewalk outside. Former classmates also recalled Anglin’s bedroom walls being dented from other tantrums involving head slamming. Anglin spent significant time living and working in Southeast Asia. “All the White people you meet are outcast sorts who you can usually connect with easily (you aren’t really spending much time with Asians),” he said of that experience. “To this day, I have little negative to say about Asians, save that I don’t think they should be immigrating into Western countries (in any kind of numbers) and I don’t think White people should be producing children with them. I will also say that Chinese people have no souls.” Despite such comments, Anglin’s travels abroad have led to repeated accusations of “race mixing” and investigations into Anglin’s ethnicity by white supremacist internet sleuths. In December of 2016 Anglin joined Richard Spencer and Mike "Enoch" Peinovich on a radio show in which they referred to their tripartite group as “The First Triumvirate.” The move was a bid for unity between three leaders of the fractious “alt-right.” Following the high profile doxing of several hosts from The Daily Shoah, one of the alt-right’s most popular radio programs, Anglin took to the Daily Stormer to take up for Mike Peinovich after it was revealed that his wife is Jewish. “As most of you probably already know, we’ve had a minor crisis in the Alt-Right. As the kike dox squad continues their rampage, Mike Peinovich of the Right Stuff was doxed” Anglin wrote in a post titled “Here’s the thing.” “And here’s the thing: Jew wife.” Anglin continued, “As far as if he actually did betray anyone—no. He was obviously dishonest on some level, but if we look at his contribution, and ask ourselves ‘did this forward the 14 words?’ we will see that it did, and the weirdness in his personal life doesn’t change that.” Anglin, compensating for his own history of dating women of color, took a tellingly pragmatic approach to the revelations about Peinovich. An imageboard known for its lack of censorship, 4chan, was the key to Anglin’s dive into fascism. “I had always been into 4chan, as I am at heart a troll,” he wrote. “This is about the time /new/ [a specific 4chan board] was going full-Nazi, and so I got into Hitler, and realized that through this type of nationalist system, alienation could be replaced with community in a real sense, while the authoritarianism would allow for technology to develop in a direction that was beneficial rather than destructive to the people.” Shortly after, Anglin formed the short-lived site Total Fascism, dedicated to long-form essays on fascism. Not long after, on July 4, 2013, the Daily Stormer was formed from the ashes of Total Fascism. The site, originally registered to Andrew’s father, Greg, is named for the infamous Nazi Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer, which specialized in pornographic attacks on Jews. (Streicher was hanged after being convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg.) Its headlines are almost always over the top, with titles like “All Intelligent People in History Disliked the Jews” and “Talking Monkey Harriet Tubman to Replace Indian-Killer Jackson on $20 Bill.” The articles themselves are peppered with racist images and memes. “Using the daily news is a means to propagandize people,” Anglin explained to Vocativ in March 2014. “To get them to look at the world in a certain way.” Ultimately, Anglin and his readership are striving to shift the needle on the status quo for public discussion by creating a kind of juvenile, repulsive humor about topics like the Holocaust. Campaigns to this end have included using Adobe Photoshop to add Nazi iconography and falsely attributed Adolf Hitler quotes, plus emblazing slogans like “Gas the Kikes, race war now” to photos of singer Taylor Swift. The site’s audience is highly participatory in the sections for comments on articles, which serve as a rallying point for the “Stormer Troll Army.” Known informally as the “Stormers,” the Stormer Troll Army is an ad hoc group of readers who perpetrate harassment online at the behest of Anglin. The site uses a bulletin board style system that was set up by the notorious neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer (also known as “Weev”) following the banning of the Daily Stormer from Disqus, a blog comment hosting service. The ban came after the Stormers—at the urging of Anglin—swarmed the comment section of Breitbart, a right-wing news service, as part of November 2015’s “Operation: Kikebart” or “#NoHydeNoPeace.” The campaign was a result of Breitbart opening a bureau in Israel and its muted early coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Less than two weeks after the campaign got under way, Disqus notified Anglin that it was discontinuing service to the Daily Stormer for being in “conflict with the values and terms of use of Disqus.” Despite “Operation: Kikebart,” Breitbart rose to be one of the most consistently cited websites on the Daily Stormer beginning in July of 2015, the same month that Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign. In November of 2016, Anglin lauded the site, particularly its former executive and current White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon, for making the site “hardcore.” During an appearance on Nordfront Radio, a Swedish neo-Nazi radio program, Anglin described Breitbart’s content as “basically stuff that you would read on the Daily Stormer.” The Stormer Troll Army began organizing in small groups across the United States in late 2016, after Anglin published an article encouraging his readers to “prepare for the coming race war.” “[I]t’s a bit like Fight Club,” Anglin wrote, encouraging his audience to meet up in coffee shops, engage in firearms training, work out together, take part in political activism, meet women, and more. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 31 active “book clubs” in 2016. Weev has taken an increasingly active role at The Daily Stormer since his prison sentence for identity fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization was vacated. He was originally convicted after revealing a vulnerability in AT&T’s security that exposed the emails of iPad users on their network. He was released from prison following a successful appeal on the basis that the trial took place in an improper venue. Other online campaigns launched under Anglin’s direction include “Operation: Jew Wife,” which targeted conspiracy-monger and Infowars host Alex Jones because his wife is Jewish, and “Operation: Filthy Jew Bitch,” which targeted Labour Party member of Parliament Luciana Berger for her role in the arrest of British neo-Nazi Garron Helm after he sent her anti-Semitic messages via Twitter. Anglin is also a promoter of racist hashtags including #BoycottStarWarsVII, #GasTheKikes, #RaceWarNow, #OpenBordersForIsrael and #WhiteGenocide, as well as the hijacking of hashtags used for social justice campaigns in order to spread disinformation. In the fall of 2015, for instance, in the midst of ongoing protests against racism at the University of Missouri, Anglin tweeted out false eyewitness accounts under the hashtag #PrayForMizzou claiming that the Ku Klux Klan was present at the student protests and complicit with the university police department. Anglin was banned from Twitter as a result, but the tactics persisted. Several weeks after that campaign, Anglin spearheaded a similar disinformation campaign that involved starting fake White Student Union pages on Facebook for universities across the country. “So, guys,” he instructed his followers on The Daily Stormer. “Here’s the plan: Make more of the White Student Union pages on Facebook for various universities. You don’t have to go there. Make one for Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. If they won’t let it on Facebook, put it on tumblr or wordpress or whatever. Get it up, then forward the links to local media.” The media took the bait, and reports of racist student groups appeared in several places. These strategies of subversion and media manipulation are at the heart of Anglin’s and the Daily Stormer’s plans for racially awakened minds and the start of a race war. In March 2016, Weev took these tactics to a new height by accessing thousands of printers, many of them at universities, and causing them to print out a flyer for Daily Stormer that read, in part: “White man are you sick and tired of the Jews destroying your country through mass immigration and degeneracy? Join us in the struggle for global white supremacy at The Daily Stormer.” Anglin was ecstatic, telling a Washington Times reporter, “Of course I endorse it. Six million [a sarcastic reference to the death toll of the Holocaust] percent, I endorse this glorious action.” In December of 2016, Anglin decided to target Tanya Gersh, a Jewish realtor from Montana. Sherry Spencer, the mother of Richard Spencer, had asked the realtor to help her sell a commercial property in an effort to tamp down community discontent related to Richard’s ideology, But Sherry Spencer subsequently posted a blog post on Medium, that she purportedly had authored, that falsely accused Gersh of extortion in connection with the sale of building. The very next day, Anglin published the first in a series of articles urging his followers to intimidate and harass the realtor, her family and associates. The first of this 30-article series was titled “Jews Targeting Richard Spencer’s Mother for Harassment and Extortion – TAKE ACTION!” In the piece, Anglin claimed “This is the Jews for you, people. They are a vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths. When you do something they don’t like, they will use the power of the media to come down on you, assassinate your character. They will call you names and accuse you of all sorts of things. They will go after your money. If all of that fails, they will attack your mother.” In subsequent articles, Anglin exhorted his followers continually to harass Gersh, as well as members of the Whitefish Jewish community, and local business owners. Anglin’s articles even attacked the realtor’s 12-year old son, including photo-shopped images of the realtor and her son on the entry gate to Auschwitz, and an image of her son being crushed by a Nazi tank. As a result of Anglin’s call to arms, the realtor and her family received over 700 threatening and intimidating anti-Semitic phone calls, voicemails, emails, text messages, social media posts and even harassing Christmas cards, causing the family to consider fleeing Whitefish for their safety and causing significant psychological harm to the realtor. In a dramatic escalation of events, Anglin threatened an armed march on the city, going as far as obtaining a permit for January 15, Martin Luther King Jr Day, naming the march for King’s assassin. Anglin indicated that “We will be busing in skinheads from the Bay Area … I have already worked out most of the details with the leaders of the local groups. Several of our top supporters from Silicon Valley have offered to provide significant support for the march, but we may need to solicit donations to pay for gas/food for the skinheads.” In spite of Anglin’s claim that the Daily Stormer has supporters in the Silicon Valley, neither the skinheads nor the march materialized, perhaps signaling a weakness in Anglin’s abilities beyond self-starting “book clubs”. Despite Anglin’s nominal ban on inciting violence in the comment section of Daily Stormer, at least one mass murderer and another man accused of murder as a hate crime and terrorism have spent time among his audience. Passages from a manifesto written by Dylann Storm Roof, who carried out the massacre of nine black people at Charleston, S.C.’s Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church in June 2015, were found almost verbatim in comments made on the Daily Stormer articles by a user calling himself AryanBlood1488. (The numbers 14 and 88, often used together, are well-known neo-Nazi taglines.) Anglin responded with indifference, writing a post entitled “If Dylan [sic] Roof was ‘AryanBlood1488,’ He Hadn’t Commented on the Daily Stormer in a While.” He added, “This isn’t particularly surprising, given that anyone reading about Black crime or other racial issues on the Internet would necessarily have come across this site.” Anglin later merged coverage of Roof’s sentencing with the media hype around the abduction and torture, broadcasted on Facebook Live, of a mentally challenged white man by four black youths in Chicago. Referring to Roof as DyRo, Anglin claimed in “As the Final Stage of DyRo’s Trial Begins, Chicago Torture-Kidnapping Highlights Why He Did It” that “…[Roof] did understand the concept of the media covering up black crime, however, so you have to wonder why he didn’t foresee that this act would not prove anything, but simply further the narrative of evil whites oppressing innocent brown people. Whatever the Case, DyRo is the Victim” In March 2017, another reader of the Daily Stormer, James Harris Jackson, allegedly murdered Timothy Caughman, a 66-year-old black man, in Manhattan with a 26-inch sword. During an interview from the Rikers Island jail complex, Jackson told the New York Daily News that he spent time on the Daily Stormer interacting with “like-minded people.” He has been charged with murder as a hate crime and terrorism. Before it was revealed that Jackson was a frequenter of the Daily Stormer, Anglin published an article titled, “After White-on-Black Murder in NYC, It’s Time to Rally Around White Supremacists,” where he wrote, “It’s time for society to rally around White Supremacists, and show that we don’t blame them for a single act of someone who wrongly used their beliefs for evi. … It’s really encouraging to see people banding together like this, showing White Supremacists that they don’t have to be ashamed, because they’ve done nothing wrong.” After Jackson’s connection to the Daily Stormer came to light, Anglin penned another article in which he stated, “I’m not going to go out of my way to condemn this guy. Why should I? Black people are killing us “randomly” every single day—except it isn’t actually random, it is the exact same thing as here—these are attacks because of our race.” He followed the statement with dozens of photos of alleged victims of “black-on-white” crime, a longtime propaganda tool of white supremacists that seeks to illustrate an embattled white majority under siege by supposedly violent people of color. Anglin was an adamant supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The Daily Stormer posted hundreds of articles in support of Trump, as well as articles attacking his competitors and their families. When Trump polled in first place for the first time during the Republican primary, Anglin wrote: “If the Donald gets the nomination, he will almost certainly beat Hillary, as White men such as you and I go out and vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.” Anglin and his followers alternately refer to Trump as “Glorious Leader” and “Humble Philosopher” while praising his xenophobic and racist remarks on the campaign trail. Following Trump’s announcement that he would ban all Muslim immigration into the United States, Anglin wrote, “Get all of these monkeys the hell out of our country—now! Heil Donald Trump—THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR.” On major primary days, there were typically new banners featuring Trump posted to Anglin’s site. The day after Donald Trump won the presidential election, in a post simply titled, “We Won.” Anglin wrote: “Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor. Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn’t have been possible.” That same day, Anglin encouraged his followers to harass Muslims and make them feel unwelcome. Despite its relative youth, Daily Stormer has generated a disproportionate amount of attention, both inside and outside the organized white supremacist movement. Some of this is inherently related to the site’s tactics—trolling on a large scale, often with the explicit intent of using the mainstream media to amplify its message. Internally, it also commands the attention of almost every corner of the racist world, although not always in a positive way. In the fall of 2014, Daily Stormer carried an article summarizing a series of squabbles within the white nationalist world entitled “Infinite DramaQuest,” in which Anglin described all of the ongoing conflicts by comparing each of the players to Dragon Ball Z characters. This sarcastic post introduced Daily Stormer to everyone in white nationalism who wasn’t already paying attention when Colin Lidell of the blog Alternative-Right launched an attack on Anglin. In the piece, Anglin stated plainly that, by his measure, “You cannot preserve the White race without addressing the Jews. You cannot address the Jews without addressing their [Holocaust] hoax. You cannot address their hoax without addressing Adolf Hitler.” Lidell fired back, stating: “What Anglin is unequivocally saying here is that before you can say anything at all about preserving and protecting the White race— stopping mass immigration, say, or encouraging White women to have at least 2.1 babies— you must first get everyone to love Hitler and hate the Jews, and if you can’t accomplish these supposed preconditions then you had best forget the whole shebang. So what he’s really saying is simply: ‘You cannot preserve the White race.’” According to Lidell, Anglin’s audience is attracted to his “schtick in the same way that poor, downtrodden Whites are attracted to monster trucks and professional wrestling.” The spat continued on for several more rounds. The only true winner was Anglin and his growing audience, which Matt Parrott of the racist Traditionalist Youth Network praised for supposedly “achiev[ing] more traffic and influence than most his critics combined.” In January 2015, Anglin also sparred with Kyle Rogers, then-webmaster of the Council of Conservative Citizens’ racist website. Anglin complained about a “rather rude email” from Rogers over the reprinting of Rogers’ articles on the Daily Stormer without permission. He went on to say that Rogers’ response was “deeply personally insulting, given how much I’ve supported him and his organization.” Counter-Currents, a pseudo-intellectual white nationalist website and publishing house that caters to “academic racists,” has also described Anglin as “slumming and pandering because of mistaken ideas” and “burning through brain cells by using stimulants.” When asked about all these feuds in early 2015, Anglin told the Southern Poverty Law Center that “I try to be fair and polite to all people.” All people, that is, except for those whom Anglin describes as Jews, Zionists, Judeo-Bolsheviks, Third Worlders, Negroes, Moslem Pigs, Trannies and Hebes, maligning them daily in his headlines. ||||| GoDaddy announced Sunday it will no longer provide service to neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. (Photo: Twitter) GoDaddy, which is the largest internet domain-name seller in the world, announced Sunday evening it will no longer provide service to the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. The company, which is based in Scottsdale, has drawn criticism for months for its willingness to provide a domain name for a website "dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The move comes after The Daily Stormer published an article Sunday using sexist and obscene language to demean Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed when a car driven by an alleged white supremacist mowed down a crowd of people after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service. — GoDaddy (@GoDaddy) August 14, 2017 After someone tweeted a reference to the article asking GoDaddy to remove it and ban the site, GoDaddy replied, "We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service." GoDaddy corporate spokesman Dan Race confirmed the action in an email to The Arizona Republic. Previously, the company served "as the domain name registrar for The Daily Stormer, through its subsidiary Domains by Proxy, as it has throughout the site’s four-year history," according to the investigative news website, Reveal. READ MORE: Phoenix civil-rights activists host peace vigil following violence in Charlottesville Anti-Trump group holds Phoenix vigil for those killed, injured in Charlottesville Our View: The bedrock truths of Charlottesville Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/2w2AfaG

– GoDaddy gave the Daily Stormer the boot for violating its terms of service after the white supremacist website published an inflammatory article that used "sexist and obscene language" about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old killed in a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., per the Arizona Republic. GoDaddy has been under fire for months for providing a domain name for the site, whose founder the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a "serial harasser" and extremist. "We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service," GoDaddy tweeted late Sunday. They apparently needn't bother: The Guardian reports that hackers claiming to be part of Anonymous have taken over the Daily Stormer, noting on the site that they're doing so in Heyer's name and that they'll leave it up for 24 hours "so the world can witness the hate," adding: "Then we will shut it down … permanently."

If you’re still sticking to your get-fit New Years resolutions at this point in January, you deserve a medal. Or, just treat yourself to some new sneakers and/or activewear from Reebok. Right now, the sports-minded retailer is taking up to 70% off men’s and women’s sale styles that are on their way out of season, but… ||||| Sponsored Links Twitter. It's the team that keeps on giving.New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, 24, finds himself at the center of media attention today after a story ran on the website Deadspin detailing allegations of an affair Sanchez had with an unnamed 17-year-old New Jersey girl. According to Deadspin, Sanchez and the young woman met at a nightclub in New York, and the two went on to, as the story puts it, "hook up."While there was nothing illegal about Sanchez's alleged actions (17 is legal, according to age-of-consent laws in New Jersey and New York), the story, as well as the potential for further legal action regarding its publication, has put the New York Jets back in the spotlight for something other than how well the team played football this year.Surge Desk rounds up the team's tabloid-ready incidents of the past few months.Assistant coach Sal Alosi was suspended for tripping Miami Dolphins cornerback Nolan Carroll during a punt return. It was later revealed that Alosi had instructed players to form a wall close to the sideline to impede Dolphins players, and though Jets coach Rex Ryan denied giving Alosi any instruction, many fans remain skeptical.Deadspin has been at the center of so much juicy Jets news this year that it may want to change its name to Jetspin. Of course, their big story was identifying Michelle Ryan , the wife of coach Ryan, as the star of several foot-fetish videos.Two massage therapists employed by the Jets filed a lawsuit against Mark Sanchez's predecessor, Brett Favre , as well as the team over allegations of sexual harassment. Shannon O'Toole and Christina Scavo say Favre sent them text messages trying to convince the two women to come have sex with the former quarterback, and that when Scavo's husband complained, the two women were told, "You will never work for the Jets again."

– Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez met a new lady friend on New Year’s Eve, and she just so happens to be a 17-year-old high school student. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, writes AJ Daulerio on Deadspin: In both New York and New Jersey, where the romancing allegedly occurred, it’s perfectly legal for a 24-year-old man to date a 17-year-old girl. The girl in question, whom Daulerio refers to only as EK, reached out to Deadspin with her story before changing her mind and deciding she didn’t want the infamy that would come along with its publication—but that didn’t stop Deadspin from running it. EK claims she met Sanchez while partying at a Manhattan nightclub on Dec. 31, and that she was upfront with him about her age. Sanchez texted her and she freaked out about it on Facebook (Deadspin has a screenshot; click to see), then he gave her tickets to the Bills-Jets game. Ultimately, they had a dinner date in New York and then they, in Daulerio’s words, “hooked up.” EK says they “went back to his place in Jersey after dinner,” and as proof, she offers pictures of what she claims is Sanchez’s room. After that, a few more 2am text messages followed, and, at least until recently, EK said she was still “close” with Sanchez, although she doesn’t think he’s “necessarily good to women.” (This is hardly the only recent juicy Jets story; click for more of the team's tabloid-worthy incidents.)

Before Josh Powell was going to try to win back custody of his children last week, Washington state authorities received materials from Utah police that had been discovered on a computer in Powell's home two years ago. Authorities say the images depicted "incestuous" sex and were disconcerting enough that they prompted a psychologist to recommend that Powell undergo an intensive psychosexual evaluation. Photographs of Braden and Charlie Powell, the sons of Susan Cox Powell and Josh Powell, are displayed during a candlelight vigil at McKinley Park in Tacoma, Wash., Monday, Feb. 6, 2012, the day after... (Associated Press) But a lawyer for Powell's in-laws, who had custody of the boys, wasn't invited to see the materials before the custody hearing _ even though a Utah judge had specified in a sealed court order that he was one of the few people allowed to see them. Had he seen the images, attorney Steve Downing said, he might have asked the court to change the terms of Powell's supervised visitation with the boys, such as by asking for the visits to be in a public place. Instead, Downing said he didn't learn until Thursday morning _ four days after Powell killed himself and the boys in a house fire _ that he was allowed to see them. "That would have absolutely given me the opportunity to submit a declaration about our deep concern. I was approved ... to view those pictures and I was never notified," Downing said. "I could have gone into all the reasons why the visitation could have or should have been restricted." Pierce County Sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer told The Associated Press on Thursday night that the images collected by investigators from Powell's home computer in Utah two years ago were realistic computer-generated depictions of "incestuous" parent-child relations. "It's family-oriented in nature," Troyer said. "It is incestuous." Troyer said the images couldn't be legally defined as pornography because they don't involve real people. Troyer said the judge in last week's custody hearing was apprised of the images at the proceeding. Powell was the only person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, from their home in West Valley City, Utah, in 2009. He was never arrested or charged in the case, and a month after she vanished, he moved with his boys back to his father Steve's home in Puyallup, Wash., south of Seattle. Last year, authorities searched Steve Powell's home, computer and cars for evidence in Susan Powell's disappearance _ and instead said they found thousands of voyeuristic pictures and videos, including child pornography recorded by Steve Powell. The state took custody of the boys and turned them over to Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox. Josh Powell repeatedly tried to regain custody of the boys. At one point late last year, he underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation. The psychologist held off on finalizing his report for some time, anticipating that he would be able to review materials that West Valley City police had discovered on Josh Powell's computer, said Washington state assistant attorney general John Long, who represented the state in the custody case. But as the Feb. 1 custody hearing neared, the materials hadn't arrived from Utah, Long said. It wasn't until after the psychologist finalized the report that the materials arrived at the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. When the psychologist saw them, he added an addendum to his report recommending the psychosexual evaluation of Josh Powell _ an exam that can include a polygraph as well as more intrusive measures to determine the body's response to child pornography or other stimuli. On Jan. 30, the sheriff's office arranged a viewing of the materials, said Sherry Hill, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services. Among the attendees were Long and a Child Protective Services social worker. Downing said he wasn't notified of the viewing. Long confirmed Downing had been listed as one of those allowed to see the images. However, Downing was not technically a party to the Feb. 1 hearing, which was between Powell and the state, so there was no rush to make sure Downing saw the materials beforehand. Josh Powell's attorney, Jeffrey Bassett, also did not attend. He said in an email Thursday that there had been some "miscommunication," and he didn't learn about the viewing until after the fact. He wasn't able to immediately schedule another viewing. Two days later, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Nelson heard arguments from Josh Powell seeking to regain custody of his children. Long opposed that, noting only that "concerning" images from his computer had been provided by the police in Utah. After considering Long's arguments and the recommendation for the psychosexual evaluation, Nelson denied Powell's request. She said she wouldn't consider granting Powell custody unless he underwent the exam. She didn't make any changes in the visitation schedule, which allowed Powell to see his boys, 5 and 7, at his house twice a week while supervised by a social worker. On Sunday, the social worker brought the boys to see their dad at his rental home outside Puyallup. After the boys rushed inside, he slammed the door in her face, locking her out. He attacked the boys with a hatchet, then torched the home in a gas-fueled inferno. Chuck Cox, Susan Powell's father, said the images were just another indicator of problems with Josh Powell. Cox said he did not know the details of the images. He believed the kids should have been fully taken away from Powell long ago and that they raised concerns about allowing him continued contact. "How much does it take for them to figure out that he should not have the children?" he said. "It's just wrong. They needed to be taken out of that environment." ___ Baker reported from Olympia, Wash. ___ Johnson can be reached at _https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle Baker can be reached at _https://twitter.com/MikeBakerAP ||||| Josh Powell told his sons he had a "big surprise" for them as they ran toward his home Sunday, just moments before he attacked them with a hatchet and then blew them up, social worker Elizabeth Griffin-Hall told ABC News today. "He caught my eye, his shoulders were slumped. He had a sheepish look," Griffin-Hall told "20/20" in an exclusive interview. "He just shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door." Griffin-Hall said she had been taking the boys, Charles, 7, and Braden, 5, on supervised visits to Powell's house for three months. Powell, who was the sole suspect in his wife Susan Cox's disappearance in 2009, had lost custody of the children in September and lost an appeal to get his children back just four days before he decided to kill them. Griffin-Hall said the children loved being with their father. "One of them said what he wanted to do was go home and live with his daddy," she said. And during visits with Powell, "I would see them light up." On Sunday, the children bounded out of her car and took off running for their father's house with Hall a few steps behind. Powell let them in, gave Griffin-Hall his odd look, and locked the door. As Griffin-Hall banged on the door, "I heard him say, 'Charlie, I've got a big surprise for you'... And then I heard Braden cry out." Powell often had surprises for the boys, Hall said, and the younger boy had a sore foot that Hall thought he had banged into something, but police later determined that Powell had used a hatchet to chop at his sons' heads and necks. "I'm saying, 'Let me in, Josh, let me in,'" Griffin-Hall said. "I realized I didn't have my phone in my hand and I could smell gas. Too much time had passed and I could smell gas." Griffin-Hall said she went to move her car and call 911, whom she said did not acknowledge that it was a true emergency. She called her supervisor, but it was too late. "I said to [her boss] Lyn, something terrible is happening here, and I was on the phone with Lyn when the house exploded," she said. Powell had laced the home with gasoline and accelerants and set it on fire, blowing up the home. All three were killed. "I wanted to get to the kids," she said. "I wanted to get to the kids. I would have broken in if I could." Griffin-Hall told the story of what happened over and over again to authorities as they arrived and assured her she could not have done anything differently. She blames Powell fully for what happened, and said she never thought he would hurt the boys. But now, she said, she knows he would have done anything to kill them, even if they had the supervised visitation somewhere else. "How this happened is that Josh Powell was really, really evil. I couldn't have stopped him," she said. "I did everything I was supposed to do. I did everything right and the boys are still dead," Griffin-Hall said. "It took just a second. When I close my eyes I see him and he was so normal. He did not look like a monster." She has sweet memories of the boys. "I loved the boys. I was like a grandma to the boys. They crawled all over me," she said with a laugh. Braden, who was just 5, "was a free spirit" who "smiled all the time." "He was always making things and giving them to me," she said. The older boy "was smart and funny. He loved bugs and frogs. He had a bird." Charlie was looking forward to having his own frog pond when he moved back with his dad, she said. "They are not going to grow up," Griffin-Hall said later. "They're not ever going to look at bugs and frogs again." Griffin-Hall said she loves working with children. "God called me to do this," she said. "I am not going to be his victim. He's not going to destroy my passion for children. He's not going to stop me from working with children," she said. But the memory of Charlie and Braden will stay with her forever, Griffin-Hall said. "The world lost two beautiful boys to a monster." Watch the full story on "Sins of the Father" on "20/20," online here.

– When a social worker brought Josh Powell's sons for their final, deadly visit, she heard Powell tell the two excited little boys he had a "big surprise" for them—so they rushed into his home, where he quickly killed them. "He caught my eye, his shoulders were slumped. He had a sheepish look," social worker Elizabeth Griffin-Hall told 20/20. "He just shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door." Once inside, Powell attacked the boys with an ax and torched 10 gallons of gasoline he had purchased to blow up his Washington state home, say authorities. In other disturbing developments in the case, officials have revealed that images of animated characters engaging in incest were discovered on Powell's computer, reports AP. Powell lost a custody appeal shortly before the double murder-suicide and had been ordered to undergo a psychosexual evaluation because information about the images had been given to Washington authorities by police in Utah, where the family used to live. Charlie, 7, and 5-year-old Braden were being raised by their maternal grandparents. Powell was a key suspect in his wife's 2009 disappearance, and Charlie had begun to tell his grandparents that he once saw "mommy in the trunk."

Amina Noir / Facebook Updated at the bottom: Well, that makes sense. The film's director is reportedly a soft-porn veteran. First posted at 1:08 p.m. It was only a matter of time before some of the D-list actors in the almost comical Innocence of Muslims were outed as porn stars and adult models. We would laugh except that the self-righteous trailer apparently produced by local Coptic Christians has sparked outrage in the Muslim world for its depiction of Mohammed as a savage woman beater and child molester. A U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, including two Southern California-trained U.S. Navy SEALS defending him, were killed in Libyan violence that might have been inspired by the low-budget flick. Of course, the existence of adult performers in such a pious tale probably won't take away any more credibility than the lowly work has already lost. Some Muslim extremists view American pop culture as a scourge as it is: Using adult performers to help smear Islam is adding insult to injury. drsusanblock / YouTube First up on the porn front is one Tim Dax. The website Towleroad says he's a gay adult video actor. The blogger Joe.My.God reached out to ask why he would participate in such a hateful project. Dax, like other actors, indicates he was duped by the director and says "I am very much NOT anti Muslim:" i can tell you i auditioned for a movie called Desert Storm that was about Ancient Warriors. My character was called Sampson on the paper with a few lines I got each day upon arriving on set. We never saw a full script or any lines after the day we shot them. Many questions were asked regarding absurdity of lines and situations. Sam the producer who I believed to be, but not certain as Egyptian. His reply would always to work with what we were given as he wrote the script. The clip that I saw part of today for the first time is questionable as to being my voice. Meanwhile a fetish model named Amina Noir appears to portray the doctor's wife in the film. She has listed herself as "a Playboy TV model, chef & actress." The website Bullies For Romney calls her a ... "lesbian fetish model and wannabe porn actress." In a (NSFW) video from 2011 she's seen cavorting with adult stars on a tour bus purported to have been a former vehicle for the 2008 election campaign of President Obama. At about the 12:42 mark Noir is seen sprinkling a white powdery substance on the chest of a woman -- it appears to be adult-world character Susan Block -- and then licking it off before receiving a lap dance. We have no problem with this kind of behavior. They even have a designated driver. If only the Innocence of Muslims' makers could have been locked up on that party bus, lives would have been saved. [Update at 5:49 p.m.]: Gawker reports that the film's director, Alan Roberts, is a veteran of soft-core porn. [@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews] ||||| The anti-Islam film that's set off a firestorm in the Middle East was directed by a 65-year-old schlock director named Alan Roberts, we've confirmed. He's the creative vision behind softcore porn classics like The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood. An Alan Roberts is listed as director on the film's casting calls and call sheets from the summer of 2011, back when it was innocuously called Desert Warriors.. Castmembers and crew told us yesterday that Roberts was brought on by producer "Sam Bacile" aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and he muddled his way through a disorganized three-month shoot. This is the same Alan Roberts listed in IMDB as the director of a handful of softcore porn movies and other low-budget films, according to acquaintances we spoke to today. "I am sure it was the same Alan Roberts, as I remember him speaking about this project," said filmmaker David A. Prior, a longtime acquaintance of Roberts, in an email. Roberts is listed as a producer on two of Prior's films, 2008's Zombie Wars and 2007's Lost at War. "He did work on [Innocence of Muslims]," confirmed a man who was Roberts' business partner in a post-production facility he ran, who asked not to be named. The backstory behind how Roberts became director of Innocence of Muslims is still unclear, like so many things about the film. We've tried to reach Roberts, but his business associate told us he "turned off his phone" soon after protests broke out over the film and is laying low. But he said Roberts was "non-political" and did not have any apparent anti-Islam feelings. Roberts may have been duped by the film's producer in much the same way as the rest of the cast and crew. They believed they were participating in a period piece about ancient Egypt and had no idea the movie would be edited and dubbed into a piece of Islamophobic propaganda.. "They redubbed it, they brought in the actors, put in new sounds, changed the names," said the business partner. "And this was done later, before it was initially released. Of course Alan had nothing to do with it." An actress who worked with Roberts on Innocence of Muslims agreed that he had nothing to do with the political bent of the film. "My gut tells me he was just a has-been director who was trying to prove he could still be Hollywood," she wrote in an email. Alan Roberts' real name is Robert Brownell. Vice obtained documents showing a person from Santa Montica named Robert Brownell had paid for some pre-production services for the film that would eventually become Innocence of Muslims, and Roberts' business partner confirmed that Robert Brownell was Alan Roberts' real name. Until the release of Innocence of Muslims, the 65-year-old Roberts has had an unremarkable career as a small-time director and editor. His directing credits include some softcore porn from the 70s and 80s like 1977's Young Lady Chatterly, The Sexpert and The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood, third of the Happy Hooker trilogy. (It's probably no coincidence that the cast included at least two porn stars, or that Innocence of Muslims contains a graphic scene of Muhammed performing oral sex on a woman.) Roberts tried to break into action in 1991 with Karate Cop: "John Travis is the last honest cop in a future dominated by terroristic martial-arts gangs who fight gladiator-style in arenas." Roberts is more accomplished as a film editor, with 28 editing credits, including the 2003 Johnny Knoxville/Christina Applegate vehicle Grand Theft Parsons. In the mid-2000s, he ran a digital post-production facility called Genesis Post-Production according to a press release for a documentary about Burning Man where he's credited as producer. "At one time he edited some fairly large films but he really never got a break to the really big ones for whatever reasons," said the business partner. "But for the work I've seen, the editing he's done, he's actually very creative." Anyone who's seen the embarrassing 14-minute trailer for Innocence of Muslims, which he helped edit as well as direct, might disagree. But then sloppy editing is far from the worst thing about the film.

– Looks like the director of Innocence of Muslims wasn't all that innocent. The director of the schlocky film trailer that sparked rioting across the Middle East was 65-year-old Alan Roberts, the maker of softcore porn flicks like The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, Gawker reports. Cast members and crew confirm that producer "Sam Bacile"—actually Nakoula Basseley Nakoula—hired Roberts, who apparently had no idea he was directing a piece of anti-Islamic propaganda. "They redubbed it, they brought in the actors, put in new sounds, changed the names," says a colleague. "And this was done later, before it was initially released. Of course Alan had nothing to do with it." No comment from Roberts, however, who has "turned off his phone" and is lying low since the riots broke out, the colleague says. Another hint that Roberts directed it: The cast actually includes a porno actor and a fetish model, LA Weekly reports. (See how the actors say they were misled into making the video.)

The U.S. system for checking suspicious travelers and airport security came under new scrutiny Sunday after an alleged terrorist bent on destroying a jetliner was thwarted only by a malfunctioning detonator and some quick-thinking passengers. An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the high explosive PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers subdued the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of Nigeria. Abdulmutallab was hospitalized with burns from the attack and was read an indictment filed Saturday in federal court in Detroit charging him with attempting to destroy or wreck an aircraft and placing a destructive device in a plane. He was released from the hospital Sunday to the custody of federal marshals, who would not reveal where he was being held. But his lawyer said he was being held at a federal prison in Milan, Mich. Adding to the airborne jitters, a second Nigerian man was detained Sunday from the same Northwest flight to Detroit after he locked himself in the plane's bathroom. Officials reported that he was belligerent but genuinely sick, and that, in an abundance of caution, the plane was taken to a remote location for screening before passengers were let off. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. In November, Abdulmutallab had been placed in a database of more than 500,000 names of people suspected of terrorist ties. But officials say there was not enough information about his terror activity that would have placed him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying. 'Sacrificing himself' Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son's increasingly extremist views. CNBC's Erin Burnett reported in Abuja, Nigeria, that family members had told her that Abdulmutallab's father had told embassy officials in a letter that his son had spoken of "sacrificing himself." Still, in appearances on Sunday talk shows, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the traveling public "is very, very safe." "This was one individual literally of thousands that fly and thousands of flights every year," Napolitano said. "And he was stopped before any damage could be done. I think the important thing to recognize here is that once this incident occurred, everything happened that should have." Even so, airport security and intelligence played no role in thwarting the plot. Abdulmutallab was carrying PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, the same material convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes. Abdulmutallab is alleged to have carried the explosive in condom-like pouches attached to his body. Despite being in the database of people with suspected terrorist ties, Abdulmutallab, who comes from a prominent and wealthy Nigerian family, had a multiple-entry U.S. visa. It was issued last year. Napolitano said Abdulmutallab was properly screened before getting on the flight to Detroit from Amsterdam. Reviewing detection systems The administration is also investigating aviation detection systems to see how the alleged attacker managed to get on board the Northwest flight in Amsterdam with explosive materials, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Video: Would-be bomber’s family speaks out No other flights were known to have been targeted. However, Gibbs says federal authorities took precautionary steps "to assume and plan for the very worst." Napolitano said there is no indication yet Abdulmutallab is part of a larger terrorist plot, although his possible ties to al-Qaida are still under investigation. The United States is reviewing what security measures were used in Amsterdam where he boarded the flight. "Now the forensics are being analyzed with what could have been done," Napolitano said. Additional security measures are in place at airports around the world that are likely to slow travelers. Napolitano advised getting to airports earlier. Congress is preparing to hold hearings on what happened and whether rules need to be changed. "It's amazing to me that an individual like this who was sending out so many signals could end up getting on a plane going to the U.S.," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate. On Saturday, two Middle Eastern men thought to have been acting suspicious aboard a flight bound for Phoenix were detained and questioned by federal anti-terrorism authorities before being released. That incident — and Sunday's incident in Detroit — led the Council on American-Islamic Relations to urge airline security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious profiling. Gibbs appeared on ABC television's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation." Napolitano spoke on CNN's "State of the Union" as well as on NBC and ABC. McConnell appeared on ABC. ||||| The suspect in the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 used a highly explosive substance called PETN, a law enforcement official toldSaturday. The explosives were carried in a soft plastic container - possibly a condom - though much of the packaging was destroyed in the fire, the official said. The FBI is questioning the suspect, identified as 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who claimed to be acting on orders from al Qaeda to blow up the airliner, officials said. A high-ranking law enforcement official told CBS News that the suspect apparently used a syringe to inject a chemical into the powder, which was located near his groin. It is a technique and it's possible that this incident was a test of whether the materials could pass screening and how effective they might be at causing damage, the source said. According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, PETN is a highly explosive, colorless organic compound, and is related to nitroglycerin. Introduced as an explosive after World War I, PETN is "valued for its shattering force and efficiency ... and is the least stable of the common military explosives but retains its properties in storage for longer periods than nitroglycerin or cellulose nitrate (nitrocellulose) does." PETN is also used in heart medication as a stimulant. More Coverage from CBSNews.com: Official: U.S. Knew of Suspect for 2 Years U.S. Bolsters Security after Bomb Attack Report: Father Warned of Bomb Suspect Son Official: Explosive PETN Used in Attack Jasper Schuringa ID'd as Flight 253 Hero Failed Attack Signals New Threat? Safety in the Air Fight 253 Terror Scare Obama Monitors 'Terror' Attempt The attack began with a pop and a puff of smoke - sending passengers scrambling to subdue the suspect. Travelers said they smelled smoke, saw a glow, and heard what sounded like firecrackers. At least one person climbed over others and jumped on the man, who officials say was trying to ignite an explosive device. "It sounded like a firecracker in a pillowcase," said Peter Smith, a passenger from the Netherlands. "First there was a pop, and then (there) was smoke." The passenger who pounced on the suspect was later , a director from Amsterdam. In extinguishing the explosive device, Schuringa told CNN he suffered minor burns to his hands. Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Authorities told CBS News he suffered third-degree burns. The White House said it believed it was an attempted act of terrorism and stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel. Dutch anti-terrorism authorities said the U.S. has asked all airlines to take extra precautions on flights worldwide that are bound for the United States. The incident was reminiscent of Richard Reid, who tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes, but was subdued by other passengers.

– The Nigerian man in custody after yesterday's failed attempt to blow up a plane has been charged with trying to bring down the airliner. Federal authorities say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to use a highly explosive chemical known as PETN, reports CBS. He reportedly kept the substance near his groin in a plastic pouch, maybe a condom, then tried to ignite it with a syringe filled with chemicals. Mutallab remains in a Detroit hospital with third-degree burns after being tackled on the plane and handcuffed. Federal authorities had him on a list of people with known or suspected ties to terrorists for 2 years, reports AP. But he was not on the federal do-not-fly list. "Why he was not on the no-fly list we have to look into," Rep. Peter King tells MSNBC.

So, here we go again: a horrendous massacre executed with assault weapons; calls for legislation to strengthen porous background checks and other gun laws by Obama and the usual liberal suspects; conservatives pointing in every other direction; and then nothing until the next gun massacre. It gets old, doesn't it? It makes you feel as tired as the president looks when he is discussing this topic. Liberals need to understand, however, that it's precisely this fatigue, and the underlying assumption that both sides in the perpetual "gun debate" are equally to blame for its unproductive nature, that is the secret weapon of the NRA and Second Amendment ultras everywhere. There are obviously many other things that are relevant to a gun massacre, from possible terrorist links to mental-health issues. But gun policy should always be in order after a gun massacre. That's not how the King of False Equivalency, National Journal columnist Ron Fournier, sees it, of course. In his first post–San Bernardino piece, he excoriates gun-control advocates (among whom he placed himself) for offending the tender sensibilities of all those gun-control opponents who are piously calling for prayer rather than legislation. Re­pub­lic­ans are do­ing more than pray­ing. They’re not do­ing nearly enough, from my vant­age point, but if we’re go­ing to move bey­ond verbal wars and ac­tu­ally start fix­ing this prob­lem, the first step is to ac­know­ledge the oth­er side’s point of view. Un­der­stand it. Re­spect it. Then ex­ploit it. For ex­ample, couldn’t a smart group of gun con­trol ad­voc­ates seize on the Na­tion­al Rifle As­so­ci­ation’s talk­ing point about men­tal health and work to­ward ma­jor re­forms of the U.S. sys­tem? Does a single soul other than Ron Fournier think the NRA will expend an ounce of its vast political capital fighting for reforms in the U.S. mental-health system? I doubt it. And why should they? They are not the National Rifle and Mental Health Association. And so the injunction to gun-control advocates to find some way to work with Wayne LaPierre after changing the subject from guns is a counsel of surrender and despair. If the next mass-killing spree in this country is conducted by dynamite, harpoons, or crossbows, and liberals talk about gun control, Fournier and other critics will have a point. But not this time. And it really doesn't matter if certain elites find the topic boring. ||||| This is a set of web collections curated by Mark Graham using the Archive-IT service of the Internet Archive. They include web captures of the ISKME.org website as well as captures from sites hosted by IGC.org.These web captures are available to the general public.For more information about this collection please feel free to contact Mark via Send Mail ||||| I could hardly believe the front page of the New York Daily News Thursday. Reflecting on the horrific shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the paper posted tweets of prayer for the victims from Republican presidential candidates with the massive headline, “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.” I’m hard-pressed to think of a more cynical and exploitative headline at a time of national mourning. An early look at tomorrow’s front page… GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS: https://t.co/eKUg5f03ec pic.twitter.com/j4gEFg9YtJ — New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) December 3, 2015 The exaggerating tabloid, though, was simply picking up on the buzz of its new media cousins, as Twitter and Facebook were filled with similar sentiments all day. Don’t just pray, a typical post would lecture, but instead let’s do something about gun violence. Whatever one thinks about God or prayer or, for that matter, gun control, this is a bad development for a society already fractured in too many ways. On the one hand, I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to the prayer cynics. After all, politicians posting to pray is hardly the same thing as prayer meetings. I’ve been exasperated by the way politicians have used prayer, too. Some campaign “benedictions” are basically campaign commercials containing everything but “I’m John Smith, and I approved this message” at the end. But those of us who watched others mock politicians who called for prayer also felt as though prayer was an unnecessary target along the way. For most people who are religious, prayer is more than just another way of saying “Message: I care.” The vicious back-and-forth on social media did more than simply question the sincerity of politicians’ prayer messages. The debate threatened to communicate that prayer accomplishes nothing. What we need is to do something about the situation in San Bernardino. These commenters obviously didn’t refer to the horrifying situation playing out on their television screens, in and of itself. Civilians couldn’t leave their hometowns and rush to the scene of the crime. In most cases, what they meant was adopt a particular political program, usually to restrict access to guns. I have no objection to people making the case for tightened gun control — even if I don’t agree with all their proposed solutions. Let’s have that debate. [Stop pitting security and compassion against each other in the Syrian refugee crisis] What we don’t have in this country is a debate over whether shooting the innocent is right or wrong. We agree on that. Where we disagree is whether specific pieces of legislation will stop these sorts of incidents, typically involving severely mentally deranged people. We have a debate over what latitude the Bill of Rights gives us to restrict gun ownership from the law-abiding. Still, that’s a debate worth having. The “prayer-shaming” on social media, however, is not really about that debate at all. No one was suggesting that Congress go into session while the criminals were on the run and pass an omnibus gun bill. What most meant by “do something” was to, well, express an opinion about gun control on Twitter. Ironically, enough, the “Don’t Just Pray There, Do Something” meme will actually keep things from happening. After all, some of our biggest obstacles to policy solutions of any kind is an ideologically fractured populace where virtually every issue is a test of political purity. If you shame away the most human aspects of public life — such as the call to pray for one another — you will find this situation worsening, not getting better. After all, we learn to listen to one another, and even work together, because we see one another as fellow humans, fellow citizens, as people of goodwill, not just as avatars to be warred against on a screen. Hashtag activism has become, in many ways, our new secularized form of praying. The expressing of one’s opinion is a way to say, “I’m the sort of person who wants to restrict guns” or “I’m the sort of person who wants to racially profile Muslims” or “I’m the sort of person who wants more resources for police.” But let’s be clear: that’s not “doing something.” It is one more indication that politics has become more than just politics. It’s become a kind of secularized religion — with its own sets of orthodoxies, denominational distinctives, and rigorous forms of excommunication (the “block” button on Twitter). [The hypocrisy of ‘prayer shaming’ after San Bernardino] It shouldn’t be this way. The first response to a word of our fellow citizens in peril should be a human response of empathy. For religious people, that means a call to pray for them, and to encourage others of like mind to do so. For non-religious people, that means perhaps holding your loved ones tightly and realizing your, for lack of a better word, blessings. It shouldn’t mean an immediate search for who is to blame for holding the wrong opinions. For religious people, of all sorts, prayer is doing something. We do believe that God can intervene, to comfort the hurting and even to energize ourselves and others for right action. For those who don’t believe in the power of prayer, the last thing any of us should want is social pressure to pretend to pray. What we can expect, though, is for neighbors to express in what ever ways they have, “We love one another, and we hurt for one another.” When that becomes just another culture war battlefield, we’ve lost more than a set of policy proposals. We’ve lost the social cohesion we need to do anything. And social media outrage can’t fix that. Want more stories about faith? Follow Acts of Faith on Twitter or sign up for our newsletter. In the paid family leave debate, pro-life, pro-family groups’ own policies are all over the map 5 Myths about Rosa Parks, the woman who had almost a ‘biblical quality’ The amazing story of U.S. Army chaplains who ministered to Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials 70 years ago ||||| SOUND BITE MORATORIUM Columns written about the Planned Parenthood shooting were still being published as the San Bernardino killers began firing. Here’s a proposal: Let’s stop writing about them. The right and the left have both issued verdicts on what not to say after a mass shooting. The right ridicules calls for gun-safety measures. The left mocks what it perceives to be hollow nostrums about “thoughts and prayers.” I think they’re both right. I think it’s time to say nothing at all. I realized this when I discovered the most trenchant thing I’d read about San Bernardino—noting that Sandy Hook didn’t begin a national conversation about guns so much as end it—was actually written about the murders at the Emanuel AME Church. There is no way to overdramatize the speed with which San Bernardino followed Colorado Springs; it happened too fast for hyperbole. There wasn’t even time for an idea to be proposed, much less fail. Columns written about Richard Dear are still being published even as we hunt for answers about the massacre farther west. Sure, the particular gruesomeness of this crime—at a center for the disabled—seems like it might be enough to…what? What about this crime will shove the graceless leviathan of our national consciousness from the sludge-gummed track we’ve developed to deal with what should be unspeakable, unthinkable, at very fucking least rare? In the hours after the California killings, heavy traffic crashed a mass shooter database. Which is more horrifying—that so many people needed the information, or that there was so much information to be had? We have reached the point where mass shootings have a “news consumer handbook,” where the most helpful journalistic tool in covering a killing isn’t local sources so much as search-and-replace: Newsweek reporter Polly Mosendz keeps a pre-written mass shooter story fresh in her text editing files. “A mass shooting has been reported at TK, where TK people are believed to be dead and TK more are injured, according to TK police department,” it says. “The gunman has/hasn’t been apprehended.” So I propose a columnist strike, a hot take moratorium, a sound-bite freeze. The only response that could possibly match this gut-punching tragedy isn’t made up of words but silence. I envision blank blog posts, empty sets, magazine pages slick and white from edge to edge. I want to open up The Washington Post or The New York Times and find the grainy gray of naked newspaper stock in place of columnists’ prose. Let’s fill Twitter with dead space and leave Facebook with a total absence of “likes.” Let the cable talking heads mute themselves. Hear in that noiselessness the echo of all the prayers and the pleas, all the policy proposals and screeds that were written about the last mass shooting, and the one before that and the one before the one before that. Hear the thundering clap of absolute inaction in Congress, and the crazed, giddy titter of those loosening gun laws state by state. Hear the voices that don’t speak, that can’t, the conversations some families will never get to have. What I want is not a “national moment of silence,” nor really a prayer. I don’t wish to summon contemplation or reflection but choking sobs and knotted throats. I want to share with the world the wordless groan that is the only prayer the grieving have. I want a strike, a shutdown, a refusal to move. Not just inaction as a pause—rather, stillness as an action in itself. I don't think what I want to happen actually can happen, not in this world. The media machine inexorably churns and, less reflexively, our mutual ache and mourning demands recognition on screens and off. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). 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 Then again, our suspension of discussion doesn’t have to last forever. I don’t want to create a vacuum so much as create awareness about how much has already been said. There’s nothing left to say, so let’s just not say it. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– The mass shooting in San Bernardino has set off familiar refrains from all camps about gun violence and related politics, and Ana Marie Cox at the Daily Beast would prefer a much different reaction for once: silence. "The right ridicules calls for gun safety measures. The left mocks what it perceives to be hollow nostrums about 'thoughts and prayers.' I think they're both right. I think it's time to say nothing at all," she writes. Cox calls for a "moratorium" on print and TV pundits alike, because "I want to share with the world the wordless groan that is only a prayer the grieving have," she writes. "There's nothing left to say, so let's just not say it." Her full column, and some other viewpoints related to the shooting: Counterpoint: Yes, this cycle "gets old," writes Ed Kilgore at New York. But "it's precisely this fatigue, and the underlying assumption that both sides in the perpetual 'gun debate' are equally to blame for its unproductive nature, that is the secret weapon of the NRA and Second Amendment ultras everywhere." Gun-control advocates must speak up loudly after every shooting, he writes, even if conservative "elites find the topic boring." The full column. 'Prayer shaming': The Daily News set off a firestorm with a cover headline belittling Republicans: "God Isn't Fixing This." But Russell Moore at the Washington Post criticizes the "prayer shaming" embodied in that cover and all over social media. "Those of us who watched others mock politicians who called for prayer also felt as though prayer was an unnecessary target along the way. For most people who are religious, prayer is more than just another way of saying 'Message: I care.'" The full column. 'Prayers aren't working': That's the lead paragraph of Rich Schapiro's Daily News roundup of reaction from Republican candidates in the wake of the shooting. They called for prayer but "were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control." The full piece.

Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor are splitting after 17 years of marriage, Us Weekly can confirm. “With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate,” the couple told Us in a joint statement on Friday, May 26. “Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends. We kindly ask that the media respect our privacy at this time.” The couple met while filming the 1999 Fox pilot Heat Vision and Jack, and have costarred in numerous movies together such as Zoolander, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Tropic Thunder and Zoolander 2. After tying the knot in May 2000 in Hawaii, the pair welcomed daughter Ella Olivia in April 2002, and later son Quinlin Dempsey in July 2005. Hottest Couples Who Fell in Love on Set Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox! Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! ||||| After 17 years of marriage, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor are calling it quits. The pair exclusively announced their split in a joint statement to ET on Friday. RELATED: Ben Stiller Bonds With Adorable Son Quinlin at New York Knicks Game "With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate," Stiller and Taylor said. "Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends. We kindly ask that the media respect our privacy at this time." The couple, who met while filming a never-broadcast TV pilot called Heat Vision and Jack, tied the knot in May 2000 at an oceanfront ceremony in Kauai, Hawaii. "When I met her, I pretty much thought, 'That's the person,'" Stiller told ET in a 2007 interview. "It was like, 'Wow, this is a great person. I love her.'" The two welcomed daughter Ella Olivia in April 2002 and son Quinlin Dempsey in July 2005. Throughout their marriage, Stiller, 51, and Taylor, 45, continued to share the screen -- in projects like Zoolander, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Tropic Thunder, Arrested Development and most recently, Zoolander 2. ET caught up with the couple at Zoolander 2's premiere last February, where they opened up about how working together affected their then 15-year marriage. EXCLUSIVE: Ben Stiller Reveals Secret to His 15-Year Marriage as His Son Gives Blue Steel Stares "It's the best. I mean, I think that, you know, the reality is there's such an unspoken connection," Taylor shared. "I feel like for us, when we first met, it was on set... He's amazing." "[Having a] sense of humor [is the secret to our marriage]," she continued. "I have to say, sense of humor is the greatest thing." "I say that's the secret to a happy marriage anywhere in any city, not just Hollywood," Stiller agreed. "I think you got to laugh, because after a while, you know, life is life. We all have to deal with what life throws at us, so you got to have a sense of humor about it. If you can share that, at the end, it makes a huge difference." In November 2016, Stiller revealed that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years earlier. FLASHBACK: On the Set of 'Zoolander' With the Ridiculously Good Looking Ben Stiller "It came out of the blue for me. I had no idea," Stiller, now cancer-free, said during a radio interview with Howard Stern. "At first, I didn't know what was gonna happen. I was scared. It just stopped everything in your life because you can't plan for a movie because you don't know what's gonna happen." "As I learned more about my disease (one of the key learnings is not to Google 'people who died of prostate cancer' immediately after being diagnosed with prostate cancer), I was able to wrap my head around the fact that I was incredibly fortunate," he wrote in a blog post. "Fortunate because my cancer was detected early enough to treat. And also because my internist gave me a test he didn't have to." See more in the video below. Additional reporting by Brendon Geoffrion.

– Actors Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor announced in a joint statement that they will split after 17 years of marriage and many comedic hits. According to US Weekly, the statement asked for privacy. “With tremendous love and respect for each other, and the 18 years we spent together as a couple, we have made the decision to separate," they wrote. "Our priority will continue to be raising our children as devoted parents and the closest of friends." The couple met in 1999 on the set of a Fox television pilot that never aired, but later starred together in comedies like the Zoolander franchise, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Tropic Thunder. Stiller, 51, and Taylor, 45, were married in a Hawaiian beachfront ceremony in 2000, reports Entertainment Weekly, and have two children together.

Abstract Hematohidrosis is a very rare condition of sweating blood. A case of hematohidrosis is reported. There are only few reports in the literature. Keywords: Hematohidrosis, blood, sweat, heperhidrosis Introduction Hematohidrosis is a rare condition in which a human being sweats blood.[1] Leonardo Da Vinci described a soldier who sweated blood before battle. Jesus Christ experienced hematohidrosis while praying in the garden of Gethsemane before his crucification as mentioned in the Defenders Bible by Physician Luke as “and being in anguish he prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” The causes of hematohidrosis have been divided into nonreligious and religious. The nonreligious causes are as a component of systemic disease, vicarious menstruation (bleeding from a surface other than the mucous membrane of the uterine cavity that occurs at the time when normal menstruation should take place), excessive exertion, psychogenic, and unknown factors. Duan et al. reported hematohidrosis associated with primary thrombocytopenic purpura.[2] Migliorini described a case of hematidrohosis otorrhea with otoerythrosis.[3] Dubeikovskaia reported hematohidrosis in a 8-year-old child.[4] The religious cause is a stigma, which formerly meant a spot, a sign, a wound, or a mark branded on a slave. From the time of Christ's crucifixion, this term took on the special meaning as the reproduction of the wounds on palms, soles and crown that Christ suffered on the cross and it was believed to be supernaturally imposed by God. Jacobi (1923), quoted by Klauder, reported 300 instances of stigma (stigmata). Most of the stigmata patients were females both Catholics and non Catholics. Case Report A 72-year-old male consulted us for staining of undergarments with blood, in the area confined to the abdomen for 2 months, especially in the morning. He has suffered from continuous mental stress for two years due to family feud. There was no history of trauma to abdomen or genitals, bleeding disorder, excessive consumption of coloured diet or allergy to food or drugs. He was a vegetarian and did not come in contact with meat and poultry products. He did not report any blood-stained discharge from the urethra and anal region. He denied history of extramarital sexual contact or development of STI. Cutaneous examination revealed trichomycosis axillaries and yellow staining of clothing, which were in contact with axillae and chest wall suggestive of chromhidrosis. Blood stains were not seen on the skin surface. They were visualized only on the portion of undergarment covering anterior part of abdomen [ ], but not the genitals, perianal area, and buttocks. Routine hemogram and biochemical investigations to look for any systemic abnormality were within normal limits. Urine microscopy and urethral swab revealed no abnormality. Benzidine test to detect blood pigment on the undergarments [ ] was positive. Hemochromogen test for confirming the blood pigment to be human blood pigment could not be performed due to nonavailability. Biopsy done during remission revealed an unremarkable epidermis, capillarysized vessels with RBCs in their lumen in the dermis along with papillary dermal oedema and dermal melanophages. Special stains to detect hemosiderin (percian blue) was positive. Psychiatric evaluation detected depressive disorder. On the basis of his clinical presentation, presence of depressive disorder and a positive benzidine test, diagnosis of hematohidrosis was made. Apart from regular counselling for his depressive disorder, he received no other systemic therapy. Open in a separate window Open in a separate window There was complete subsidence of bleeding after 15 days, with no reports of similar complaints at follow up in 6 months and one and half year. Discussion Hematohidrosis also known as Hematidrosis, hemidrosis and hematidrosis, is a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.[1] Manonukul et al. proposed the term “hematofolliculohidrosis” because it appeared along with sweat-like fluid and the blood exuded via the follicular canals.[5] Various causative factors have been suggested by Holoubek, like component of systemic disease, vicarious menstruation, excessive exertion, psychogenic, psychogenic purpura, and unknown cause.[5] Acute fear and intense mental contemplation are the most frequent causes, as reported in six cases in men condemned to execution, a case occurring during the London blitz, a case involving fear of being raped, a case of fear of a storm while sailing, etc.[6] In our case, the probable cause for hematohidrosis was chronic stress, as the other causes were ruled out by detailed investigations. Hysterical mechanisms and psychosomatic disorders are also believed to induce bleeding.[6] Psychogenic purpura is supposed to be caused by hypersensitivity to the patients' own blood or autoerythrocyte sensitization and is characterized by repeated crops of ecchymoses, gastrointestinal bleedings, and hematuria. Another type of bleeding through skin is psychogenic stigmata; a term used to signify areas of scars, open wounds or bleeding through the unbroken skin. Patients belonging to this group were found to be frequently neurotic.The clinical findings of this type are a slight elevation of skin before prolonged oozing of blood, a peasized bluish discoloration on patient's palm and erysipelas-like lesion. Copeland reported a patient who developed bleedings from her old scars whenever she had serious anxiety.[6] The etiopathogenesis according to Dr. Frederick Zugibe is that multiple blood vessels which are present in a net-like form around the sweat gland constrict under pressure of stress. As the anxiety increases, the blood vessels dilate to the point of rupture. The blood goes into the sweat glands, which push it along with sweat to the surface, presenting as droplets of blood mixed with sweat. The extravasated blood has identical cell components as that of peripheral blood. The severe mental anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system to invoke the stress-fight or flight reaction to such a degree as to cause hemorrhage of the vessels supplying the sweat glands into the ducts of the sweat glands. Effect on the body is weakness and mild to moderate dehydration from the severe anxiety and both blood and sweat loss.[7] Manonukul et al. has recently proposed that there may be some defects in the dermis causing stromal weakness. These defects will communicate with vascular spaces in the dermis and they will eventually dilate and enlarge as blood-filled spaces when the blood comes in. After that, they will exude the blood out by either via follicular canals or directly on to the skin surface and this will occur whenever the positive pressure inside is enough. Afterwards, they will collapse leaving no scar. This phenomenon acts like a balloon, waxes and wanes and thus explains why these bleedings are sometimes intermittent and self-limiting. Immediate biopsy is important because a late biopsy, after these spaces collapse, will not help in identifying them.[6] Skin pathohistological study by Zhang et al. revealed some intradermal bleeding and emphraxised (obstructed) capillaries. No abnormality was found in sweat glands, hair follicles, and sebaceous glands. They concluded that pathological basis for hematohidrosis might be a distinctive vasculitis.[7] Biopsy in our patient done during remission did not reveal any blood filled vascular spaces, intradermal bleeding, obstructed capillaries or abnormality in hair follicle, sebaceous or sweat glands. Diagnosis of hematohidrosis is by Benzidine test in which hemoglobin in blood reacts with hydrogen peroxide liberating oxygen, which then reacts with organic reagent producing a green to blue coloured compound. Hemochromogen test confirms that the blood is of human origin. In this test, pyridine causes reduction of hamoglobin resulting in characteristic salmon-pink crystals of pyridine hemoglobin observable under microscope. Unique features of our case include localised involvement of the abdominal area, hitherto unreported. Excellent recovery on psychiatric counselling highlights the relationship between psychogenic causes and hematohidrosis. Footnotes Source of Support: Nil Conflict of Interest: Nil. ||||| It was probably one of the most bizarre medical cases a team of Italian doctors had ever seen. A 21-year-old woman was admitted to hospital with a condition that caused her to sweat blood from her face and from the palms of her hands. This despite no sign of any skin lesions. The case was highlighted Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). Doctors say the patient had a three-year history of bleeding. There was no obvious trigger, and the spontaneous bleeding could happen while she slept and during physical activity. More intense bleeding happened when the patient was under stress, with episodes lasting anywhere between one and five minutes. Dr. Roberto Maglie, a dermatologist at the University of Florence and co-author of the article, told CBC News in an email that he could not discuss any details about the patient due to confidentiality. Doctors could find no obvious trigger for the bleeding, and said tests showed the 21-year-old patient had normal blood count and blood-clotting functions. (CMAJ) The article states that the unidentified patient had become socially isolated because of the bleeding and that she had developed depression. After tests revealed her blood count and blood-clotting functions were normal, doctors ruled out "factitious disorder"— she wasn't faking it. Doctors instead diagnosed her with hematohidrosis, a rare disease that causes a patient to excrete or sweat blood through unbroken skin or pores. Bleeding has also reportedly occurred in areas of the body without sweat glands. Doctors in this case also say literature does not provide a single explanation for the source of bleeding. But various causes have been proposed. It could be a bleeding disorder where the blood's ability to clot is impaired or a psychogenetic disease, where an extreme or exaggerated emotional response provokes a physical illness. 'Most unusual' A Toronto hematologist says the case is "most unusual." "I can say with clarity that I've never seen a case like this — ever," said Dr. Michelle Sholzberg, co-director of the Hemophilia Comprehensive Care program at St. Michael's Hospital. "And I can say that I've seen some of the worst bleeding disorders, and I've never seen them sweat blood." I can say with clarity that I've never seen a case like this — ever. - Dr. Michelle Sholzberg Sholzberg doesn't think the patient has a bleeding disorder. "I think this person has a very bizarre anatomical defect on a microscopic level that is resulting in this very unusual symptom," she said. Sholzberg says the abnormality could be in the sweat ducts themselves. Canadian medical historian Jacalyn Duffin says at first she was skeptical whether people could sweat blood. She thought the Italian doctors were being duped. But after an exhaustive review of historical literature and more recent reports on cases of hematohidrosis, or sweating blood, she's a believer. "After all the research that I've done, I am convinced of the plausibility and the possibility that it exists," she said. Duffin, who is also a hematologist, wrote a commentary that accompanies the journal article. She acknowledges that hematohidrosis syndrome is incredibly rare. The medical history has been "muddled" with references in religious literature to the crucifixion of Christ, she says and the two are very difficult to separate. "But case reports start appearing in the 16th century, and quite distinct from anything to do with the crucifixion, or Christianity", she says. "There are mentions of the phenomenon as far back as Aristotle ... prior to the time of Jesus," she told CBC News from her home in Kingston, Ont. After reviewing literature on hematohidrosis dating back to the time of Greek philosopher Aristotle, Canadian medical historian Jacalyn Duffin says she's convinced the disorder exists. (Kas Roussy/CBC) She found one case in the early 1600s of a 12-year-old Swiss boy with a high fever who sweated blood through his shirt. And then a case of a young Belgian condemned to death who was so distressed, he sweated blood. Duffin says she was surprised to discover how many modern cases there were — at least 18 of them since 2000. "A significant proportion of all the actual cases I could find have emerged in recent decades," she said, but she can't explain why. "The very fact that there are sporadic references to the phenomenon through time, scattered in many different places, tends to suggest to me that it must occur." Hematohidrosis is not fatal, but Duffin says it is terrifying for patients who have to go through it. As for the patient in Italy, doctors treated her with propranolol, a heart and blood pressure medication. It led to a marked reduction but not a complete remission of her bleeding. ||||| Italian dermatologists report the case of a woman with an unusual disorder: a tendency to sweat blood in a kind of modern-day stigmata. The two doctors from the University of Florence report the woman’s condition in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. They say the 21-year-old woman was admitted to hospital after three years of regularly sweating blood from her palms and face whenever she engaged in physical activity, or while sleeping. She told them the bleeding often intensified during times of emotional stress, but she could find no other trigger for the bleeding spells. The doctors saw evidence of the bloody sweat themselves and say it occurred without any form of lesions appearing on her hands or face. “Our patient had become socially isolated owing to embarrassment over the bleeding and she reported symptoms consistent with major depressive disorder and panic disorder,” they write. The doctors treated the woman’s mental health problems with anti-anxiety medications and, after eliminating other potential causes, diagnosed her with “hematohidrosis” – a rarely reported condition that causes the patient to excrete blood through unbroken skin. The cause of the condition remains a mystery, but various theories have been proposed over the years. They include blood coagulation disorders, and problems involving overactive sympathetic nervous system activation. “In the literature, there is no single explanation of the source of bleeding in hematohidrosis,” the doctors write. The doctors write that, while they prescribed the woman a beta blocker medication called propranolol which helped diminish the woman’s symptoms, they have not been able to eliminate them completely.

– You know there's a problem if you start coughing up blood—but how to react when you start sweating blood? Per the CBC, a 21-year-old Italian woman got to a hospital ASAP, and now doctors are puzzling over her "most unusual" case of bleeding from her face and palms, a condition she'd apparently suffered from for three years. While the case study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal doesn't reveal much detail about the woman herself, it notes she was diagnosed with hematohidrosis, a rare condition in which blood is excreted or sweated out through pores or unbroken skin (ie, it's not coming out through a cut or other injury). The patient tends to break out in the bloody sweating when she's either asleep or doing something physical, and the condition seems to get worse when she's stressed. An episode can last up to five minutes. Per CTV News, doctors say the woman's condition is embarrassing enough to her that she became "socially isolated" and showed depression and panic disorder symptoms. Although it's still not known what spurs such bleeding, different theories have emerged, including blood coagulation disorders or an overactive nervous system that reacts when a patient is under stress. A Toronto hematologist thinks this particular patient has "a very bizarre anatomical defect on a microscopic level" that's causing her bleeding, perhaps in her sweat ducts. A medical historian tells the CBC she was at first wary anyone could actually sweat blood, but after research reaching back to Aristotle's time (and her find of nearly 20 cases since 2000), she now believes the condition exists. The patient has since been administered a heart and blood pressure med that has cut down—though not eliminated—her bleeding. (Here's what life is like when you're allergic to your own sweat.)

Published on Sep 29, 2018 More than 380 people have been confirmed dead after a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit an Indonesian city on Friday. Waves up to 3m (10ft) high swept through Palu on Sulawesi island. Video on social media shows people screaming and fleeing in panic and a mosque amongst the buildings damaged. Strong aftershocks continued to rock the city on Saturday. Thousands of homes have collapsed, along with hospitals, hotels and shopping centres. Rescue efforts are under way, though hampered by a major power cut. The main road to Palu has been blocked due to a landslide. Please subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog ||||| PALU, Indonesia (Reuters) - At least 384 people were killed, many swept away as giant waves crashed onto beaches, when a major earthquake and tsunami hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, authorities said on Saturday. Hundreds of people had gathered for a festival on the beach in the city of Palu on Friday when waves as high as six meters (18 feet) smashed onshore at dusk, sweeping many to their deaths and destroying anything in their path. The tsunami followed a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. “When the (tsunami) threat arose yesterday, people were still doing their activities on the beach and did not immediately run and they became victims,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency BNPB said in a briefing in Jakarta. “The tsunami didn’t come by itself, it dragged cars, logs, houses, it hit everything on land,” Nugroho said, adding that the tsunami had traveled across the open sea at speeds of 800 kph (497 mph) before striking the shoreline. Some people climbed trees to escape the tsunami and survived, he said. Amateur footage shown by local TV stations showed waves crashing into houses along Palu’s shoreline, scattering shipping containers and flooding into a mosque in the city. Photos confirmed by authorities showed bodies being lined up along the street on Saturday, some in bags and some with their faces covered with clothes. Around 16,700 people were evacuated to 24 centers in Palu. Aerial photographs released by the disaster agency showed many buildings and shops destroyed, bridges twisted and collapsed and a mosque surrounded by water. Graphic: Sulawesi map - tmsnrt.rs/2OYa4YD DEATH TOLL SEEN RISING Aftershocks continued to rock the coastal city on Saturday. The series of earthquakes were felt in an area with 2.4 million people. Indonesia’s Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) said in statement the energy released by Friday’s massive quake was around 200 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War Two. The geography of the city, which sits at the end of a long, narrow bay, could have magnified the size of the tsunami, it said. Nugroho described the damage as “extensive” and said thousands of houses, hospitals, shopping malls and hotels had collapsed. A bridge was washed away and the main highway to Palu was cut off due to a landslide. Bodies of some victims were found trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, he said, adding 540 people were injured and 29 were missing. Dozens of injured people were being treated in makeshift medical tents set up outdoors, TV images showed. Nugroho said the casualties and the damage could be greater along the coastline 300 km (190 miles) north of Palu, an area called Donggala, which is closer to the epicenter of the quake. Communications “were totally crippled with no information” from Donggala, Nugroho said. More than 600,000 people live in Donggala and Palu. “We’re now getting limited communications about the destruction in Palu city, but we have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying. There are more than 300,000 people living there,” the Red Cross said in a statement, adding that its staff and volunteers were heading to the affected areas. Residents stand in front of a damaged shopping mall after an earthquake hit Palu, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia September 29, 2018. Antara Foto/Rolex Malaha via REUTERS “This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse,” it said. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the death toll could rise to thousands. PRESIDENT TO VISIT DISASTER AREA Indonesia’s meteorological and geophysics agency BMKG issued a tsunami warning after the quake, but lifted it 34 minutes later. The agency on Saturday was widely criticized for not informing that a tsunami had hit Palu, though officials said waves had come within the time the warning was issued. In amateur footage shared on social media a man on the upper floor of a building can be heard shouting frantic warnings of the approaching tsunami to people on the street below. Within minutes a wall of water crashes onto the shore, carrying away buildings and cars. Reuters was not able to immediately authenticate the footage. The quake and tsunami caused a major power outage that cut communications around Palu making it difficult for authorities to coordinate rescue efforts. The military has started sending in cargo planes with aid from Jakarta and other cities, authorities said, but evacuees still badly need food and other basic necessities. The city’s airport has been reopened only for relief efforts and will remain closed until Oct. 4 for commercial flights, Nugroho said. The airport’s runway and air traffic control tower were damaged in the quake, authorities said. President Joko Widodo was scheduled to visit evacuation centers in Palu on Sunday. Slideshow (20 Images) Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes. In August, a series of major quakes killed more than 500 people in the tourist island of Lombok and destroyed dozens of villages along its northern coast. Palu was hit by tsunami in 1927 and 1968, according to BNPB. ||||| A man carries the body of a child who was killed in the tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018. A powerful earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday,... (Associated Press) A man carries the body of a child who was killed in the tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Saturday, Sept. 29, 2018. A powerful earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday, triggering a 3-meter-tall (10-foot-tall) tsunami that an official said swept away houses in at least... (Associated Press) PALU, Indonesia (AP) — A tsunami swept away buildings and killed at least several hundred people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, dumping victims caught in its relentless path across a devastated landscape that rescuers were struggling to reach Saturday, hindered by damaged roads and broken communications. Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said 384 people were killed in the hard-hit city of Palu alone. The nearby city of Donggala and the town of Mamuju were also ravaged by the 3-meter (10-foot) -high tsunami but have not yet been reached by aid due to damaged roads and disrupted telecommunications. Nugroho said "tens to hundreds" of people were taking part in a beach festival in Palu when the tsunami, which was triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, struck at dusk on Friday. Their fate was unknown. Palu, which has more than 380,000 people, was strewn with debris from collapsed buildings. A mosque heavily damaged by the quake was half submerged and a shopping mall was reduced to a crumpled hulk. A large bridge with yellow arches had collapsed. Bodies lay partially covered by tarpaulins and a man carried a dead child through the wreckage. The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently magnified the force of the tsunami waters as they raced into the tight inlet. Indonesian TV showed dramatic smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu, with people screaming and running in fear. The water smashed into buildings and the damaged mosque. Hundreds of people were injured and hospitals, damaged by the quake, were overwhelmed. Communications with the area were difficult because power and telecommunications were cut, hampering search and rescue efforts. "We hope there will be international satellites crossing over Indonesia that can capture images and provide them to us so we can use the images to prepare humanitarian aid," Nugroho said. The disaster agency has said that essential aircraft can land at Palu's airport, though AirNav, which oversees aircraft navigation, said the runway was cracked and the control tower damaged. AirNav said one of its air traffic controllers, aged 21, died in the quake after staying in the tower to ensure a flight he'd just cleared for departure got airborne safely. It did. More than half of the 560 inmates in a Palu prison fled after its walls collapsed during Friday's quake, said its warden, Adhi Yan Ricoh. "It was very hard for the security guards to stop the inmates from running away as they were so panicked and had to save themselves too," he told state news agency Antara. Ricoh said there was no immediate plan to search for the inmates because the prison staff and police were consumed with the search and rescue effort. "Don't even think to find the inmates. We don't even have time yet to report this incident to our superiors," he said. Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said Friday night that he instructed the security minister to coordinate the government's response to the disaster. Jokowi also told reporters in his hometown of Solo that he called on the country's military chief to help with search and rescue efforts. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said U.N. officials were in contact with Indonesian authorities and "stand ready to provide support as required." Indonesia is frequently hit by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra island in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. On Aug. 5, a powerful quake on the Indonesian island of Lombok killed 505 people, most of whom died in collapsing buildings. ___ AP reporter Rifki uses one name. Wright reported from Jakarta, Indonesia. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the bridge collapsed in Palu, not Donggala. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dramatic video shows buildings being knocked down More than 380 people have been confirmed dead after a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit an Indonesian city on Friday. Waves up to 3m (10ft) high swept through Palu on Sulawesi island. Video on social media shows people screaming and fleeing in panic and a mosque among the buildings damaged. Strong aftershocks rocked the city on Saturday. Thousands of homes have collapsed, along with hospitals, hotels and a shopping centre. Rescue efforts are under way, though hampered by a major power cut. The main road to Palu has been blocked due to a landslide, and a key bridge is out of action. 'Many bodies along the shoreline' Indonesia's disaster agency said at least 384 people had been killed, but the number is expected to rise. At least 540 have been injured, and 29 are listed as missing. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Locals check bodybags in the streets of Palu as they search for lost relatives "Many bodies were found along the shoreline because of the tsunami, but the numbers are still unknown," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the agency, told Reuters. "When the threat arose yesterday, people were still doing their activities on the beach and did not immediately run and they became victims," he told a news briefing. "The tsunami didn't come by itself - it dragged cars, logs, houses - it hit everything on land." Some survived by climbing 6m (18ft) trees to escape the huge waves, the spokesman said. Image copyright Antara Foto/Rolex Malaha via Reuters Image caption Homes, hotels, and shopping centres have collapsed in the "extensive" damage, officials said A less powerful quake earlier on Friday had killed at least one person and injured at least 10 in the smaller fishing town of Donggala. In Palu, hundreds of people had been preparing for a beach festival that was due to start on Friday night. The city's main hospital was damaged in the quake, and TV footage showed dozens of injured people being treated outside in makeshift medical tents. Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Medical teams are treating patients in the open air Image copyright AFP Image caption At least 384 people have been killed in the quake Palu and Donggala are home to more than 600,000 people. President Joko Widodo said troops were en route to the area to reinforce rescue teams and help retrieve bodies. The main airport in Palu has been closed since the tsunami hit. A minister said the runway had been damaged but that it was hoped helicopters would still be able to land. The country's military is sending cargo planes of relief aid from the capital, Jakarta. Officials are urging locals not to enter their homes and to sleep away from buildings, due to the risk of aftershocks. Image copyright Antara Foto/Reuters Image caption Relief aid is packed into a military plane bound for Palu Image copyright Reuters Image caption Indonesia's disaster agency said some people scaled trees to escape the huge waves The earthquake hit just off central Sulawesi at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles) just before 18:00 on Friday (10:00 GMT), the US Geological Survey said. A tsunami warning was issued, but lifted within the hour. Indonesia's meteorological agency has been criticised for its response, but officials said the waves struck while the warning was in place. Dramatic video of the tsunami hitting Palu shows the high waves sweeping away several buildings and then the large tilted mosque in the town, about 80km from the quake's epicentre. "The situation is chaotic, people are running on the streets and buildings collapsed. There is a ship washed ashore," said Dwikorita Karnawati, head of Indonesia's meteorology and geophysics agency. A 2004 tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra killed 226,000 across the Indian Ocean, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia. Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because it lies on the Ring of Fire - the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. More than half of the world's active volcanoes above sea level are part of the ring. Just last month, a series of deadly earthquakes struck the Indonesian island of Lombok. The biggest, on 5 August, killed more than 460 people.

– The toll in Indonesia from an earthquake-triggered tsunami is just starting to become clear, and it's getting worse by the hour. On the island of Sulawesi, nearly 400 were killed in the city of Palu alone, reports the BBC. Palu has a population of 380,000 people, and the toll there is expected to grow. Nearby cities and towns such as Donggala were similarly devastated, but relief crews have been unable to reach them yet, reports the AP. The 7.5-magnitude quake struck around dusk Friday, and it set off a tsunami at least 10 feet high that toppled buildings as it came ashore. Reuters has the estimate at 18 feet high. The BBC has video here. "We hope there will be international satellites crossing over Indonesia that can capture images and provide them to us so we can use the images to prepare humanitarian aid," says a disaster agency spokesman. In the meantime, hospitals are overwhelmed with the injured. Many of the victims were swept away while on the beach, preparing for a major festival in Palu. “The tsunami didn’t come by itself, it dragged cars, logs, houses, it hit everything on land,” says the disaster official.

Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past two weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daniel Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board. Shortly after, Morales also said Bolivia would grant asylum to Snowden, if asked. On Saturday, Venezuela's offer was given a warm reception by an influential member of the Russian parliament. In a tweet, Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma foreign affairs committee, said: "Asylum for Snowden in Venezuela would be the best solution." The invitations from South America came as Snowden sent out new requests for asylum to six countries, in addition to the 20 he has already contacted, according to WikiLeaks, which claims to be in regular contact with the former National Security Agency contractor. Most of the countries have refused or given technical reasons why an application is not valid, but several Latin American leaders have rallied together with expressions of solidarity and welcome. "As head of state of the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela, I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young Snowden … to protect this young man from persecution by the empire," said Maduro who, along with his predecessor Hugo Chávez, often refers to the US as "the empire". The previous day, Maduro told the Telesur TV channel that Venezuela had received an extradition request from the US, which he had already rejected. A copy of the request, seen by the Guardian, notes that Snowden "unlawfully released classified information and documents to international media outlets" and names the Guardian and the Washington Post. Dated 3 July and sent in English and Spanish, it says: "The United States seeks Snowden's provisional arrest should Snowden seek to travel to or transit through Venezuela. Snowden is a flight risk because of the substantial charges he is facing and his current and active attempts to remain a fugitive." It adds that he is charged with unauthorised disclosure of national defence information, unauthorised disclosure of classified communication intelligence and theft of government property. Each of these three charges carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. Describing Snowden as "a fugitive who is currently in Russia", it urges Venezuela to keep him in custody if arrested and to seize all items in his possession for later delivery to the US. It provides a photograph and two alternative passport numbers – one revoked, and one reported lost or stolen. Maduro said he did not accept the grounds for the charges. "He has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the US spying on the whole world," Maduro said in his latest speech. "Who is the guilty one? A young man … who denounces war plans, or the US government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate president, Bashar al-Assad?" The Bolivian government, which has said it would listen sympathetically to an aslyum request from Snowden, said it too had turned down a pre-emptive US extradition request. Ortega said Nicaragua had received an asylum request from Snowden and the president gave a guarded acceptance. "We are an open country, respectful of the right of asylum, and it's clear that if circumstances permit, we would gladly receive Snowden and give him asylum in Nicaragua," Ortega told a gathering in Managua. So far, the countries that have been most vocal in offering support are close allies of Venezuela. Ecuador has also expressed support for Snowden, though the government there has yet to decide whether it would grant aslyum. It is already providing refuge for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for about a year. Many in Latin America were furious when the Bolivian president's flight from Russia was denied airspace by European countries, forcing it to land in Vienna, where Morales had to spend more than half a day waiting to get clearance to continue his journey. Morales said the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived at the airport with two embassy personnel and asked to search the plane. He said he refused. The Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, acknowledged on Friday that the decision to block Morales plane was based on a tip that Snowden was on board. "They told us that the information was clear, that he was inside," he told Spanish TV, without clarifying who the tip was from. It is assumed the US was behind the diversion, though US officials have said only that they were in contact with the countries on the plane's route. France has apologised to Bolivia. Morales said when he finally arrived in La Paz: "It is an open provocation to the continent, not only to the president; they use the agent of North American imperialism to scare us and intimidate us." At a hastily called meeting of the Unasur regional bloc, many governments condemned the action against Morales plane. "We are not colonies any more," Uruguay's president, José Mujica, said. "We deserve respect, and when one of our governments is insulted we feel the insult throughout Latin America." The Argentinean president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was also present, along with a senior representative of President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. Regional support may make it easier for the country offering asylum to resist US pressure for extradition. But whether Snowden can make it to South America remains uncertain, as are his current circumstances. He has not been seen or heard in public since he flew to Russia from Hong Kong. WikiLeaks says it is in touch with him and that he has widened his search for aslyum by adding six new countries. In a tweet, the group said it would not reveal the names of the nations "due to attempted US interference". ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua explain their offers The presidents of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia have indicated their countries could offer political asylum to US fugitive Edward Snowden. Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro said it would give asylum to the intelligence leaker, who is believed to be holed up in a transit area of Moscow airport. Meanwhile Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said his country would do so "if circumstances permit". Bolivia's Evo Morales said Mr Snowden could get asylum there if he sought it. Mr Snowden has sent requests for political asylum to at least 21 countries, most of which have turned down his request. Earlier, Wikileaks said he had applied to six additional countries on Friday. The whistleblowing website said it would not name the countries "due to attempted US interference". But even if a country accepted the American's application, getting there could prove difficult, the BBC's Steven Rosenberg, in Moscow, reports. European airspace could be closed to any aircraft suspected of carrying the fugitive, our correspondent says. Earlier this week, several European countries reportedly refused to allow the Bolivian president's jet to cross their airspace on its way back from Moscow - apparently because of suspicions that Edward Snowden was on board. Mr Morales described Mr Snowden's actions as "a fair way of protesting" and described him as "persecuted by his fellow countrymen". "We are not scared [of reprisals]," he added. Speculation President Maduro made his announcement in a speech on Venezuela's Independence Day. "As head of state and government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young US citizen Edward Snowden so he can come to the fatherland of Bolivar and Chavez to live away from the imperial North American persecution," President Maduro said. The US wants to prosecute Mr Snowden over the leaking of thousands of classified intelligence documents. Earlier Mr Ortega said Nicaragua had received an application at its embassy in Moscow. "We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua," AFP news agency quoted the Nicaraguan president as saying. Image caption President Ortega said the asylum application was received in Moscow Daniel Ortega was a fierce opponent of the US during his first period as Nicaragua's president in the 1980s, after the left-wing Sandinista movement came to power. Bolivia, which had also suggested it could offer Mr Snowden asylum, saw its presidential plane barred from European airspace on Tuesday. There was speculation the 30-year-old was on the plane carrying President Evo Morales back from Russia to La Paz earlier this week. "Edward Snowden has applied to another six countries for asylum," tweeted Wikileaks, which has been helping the former CIA contractor. "They will not be named at this time due to attempted US interference." The US has been blamed for being behind the decision by France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to close its airspace to Bolivia's president, whose plane was grounded in Austria for 13 hours as a result. Earlier on Friday, Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo admitted he and other European officials had been told that Mr Snowden was on board - but refused to say who gave out the information. He denied Spain had closed its airspace to the presidential plane, explaining that the delay in Austria meant the flight permit had expired and needed to be renewed. His comment is the first official recognition by the European states that the incident with Mr Morales' plane was connected with the Snowden affair. It has been widely condemned by President Morales and several other South American nations, who were critical of the US. Mr Snowden arrived in the Moscow airport from Hong Kong last month. He revealed himself to be responsible for the leaking of classified US intelligence documents that revealed a vast surveillance programme of phone and web data. The documents have also led to allegations that both the UK and French intelligence agencies run similarly vast data collection operations, and the US has been eavesdropping on official EU communications. ||||| President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said Friday that he would offer asylum to the fugitive intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, who has been stranded in a Moscow airport searching for a safe haven. “I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden,” Mr. Maduro said during a televised appearance at a military parade marking Venezuela’s independence day. Mr. Maduro said he had decided to act “to protect this young man from the persecution unleashed by the world’s most powerful empire.” It was not immediately clear, however, how Mr. Snowden could reach Venezuela or if Mr. Maduro was willing to help transport him. Also on Friday, Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, said he was open to taking in Mr. Snowden. “It is clear that if the circumstances permit we will take in Mr. Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum in Nicaragua,” Mr. Ortega said in Managua. Mr. Snowden has sought asylum from more than two dozen nations. Most countries have declined. The offers from Venezuela and Nicaragua appeared to be linked to outrage in Latin America over the treatment last week of President Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose plane was denied permission to fly over several European countries because of what Bolivian officials said were unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was aboard. Mr. Morales was on his way home from a meeting in Moscow. Mr. Maduro had previously voiced sympathy for Mr. Snowden. He frequently bashes the United States, depicting it as an imperialist bully in Latin America. But at the same time he has shown a desire to improve relations with the United States, directing his foreign minister to start talks with Washington aimed at smoothing the rocky relationship with the top buyer of his country’s all-important oil exports. Earlier on Friday, WikiLeaks said in a post on Twitter that Mr. Snowden, who is wanted by the United States on charges of revealing classified government information, “has applied to another six countries for asylum,” following up on similar applications to about 20 nations last week. Supporters of Mr. Snowden clearly blame the refusals on pressure from the United States, and, as a result, WikiLeaks said it would not reveal the latest countries in which he is seeking shelter. “They will not be named at this time due to attempted US interference,” the group wrote on Twitter. In Russia, officials have expressed impatience over Mr. Snowden’s continuing sojourn in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport. On Thursday, a deputy foreign minister, Sergey A. Ryabkov, told reporters that Mr. Snowden should pick a destination and leave as soon as possible. Russia was apparently among the original countries to which Mr. Snowden submitted an asylum request, but a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, Dmitri S. Peskov, has said since that the request was withdrawn. On Thursday, Mr. Putin sent a telegram to President Obama noting the Fourth of July holiday and restating his commitment to holding a summit meeting in Moscow in September, ahead of the G20 conference, which will be in St. Petersburg. American officials have signaled that Mr. Obama is unlikely to visit Moscow if Mr. Snowden is still holed up at Sheremetyevo airport.

– He wasn't on that plane to Bolivia, but Edward Snowden may yet end up in Latin America. Venezuela and Nicaragua said yesterday they'd be willing to grant asylum to the NSA leaker, reports the BBC. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega was a little less expansive, saying his country would do so if "circumstances permit," but Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro said his country would be proud “to protect this young man from the persecution unleashed by the world’s most powerful empire," reports the New York Times. Of course, even when Snowden picks a country, he still has to get there from Russia, and European countries have shown they're willing to shut down airspace to prevent that. WikiLeaks says Snowden applied to six more countries yesterday, reports the Guardian. He had previously applied to nearly two dozen nations, but diplomatic pressure from the US resulted in a series of rejections. Latin America has since united behind him, thanks in part to the treatment of the Bolivian president's plane.

Notice You must log in to continue. ||||| DETROIT, MI - Kid Rock is responding to the National Action Network who is asking him to denounce the Confederate Flag. On Monday, The National Action Network Michigan chapter asked the Detroit-area rocker to denounce the flag and stop displaying it at his concerts. Kid Rock has displayed the flag at some of his shows in the past. FOX News reports Kid Rock released a statement to them in response, with the host modifying it on-air to say: "please tell the people who are protesting to kiss my...ask me some questions." The National Action Network also wants an exhibit about Detroit music inside the museum, which is paid for in part by Kid Rock, to be taken down if the rocker does not denounce displaying the Confederate Flag. The Kid Rock Music Lab at the Detroit Historical Museum is one of ten permanent exhibitions there. The museum released this statement: "The lab explores Detroit's rich musical legacy and the worldwide impact made by Detroiters in every genre of music, including pop, rock, gospel, blues, hip-hop, techno and more. Kid Rock's contribution to Detroit's music history is significant and warrants his inclusion along with other key figures like Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Aretha Franklin and Eminem. There are no displays of the Confederate flag in the Kid Rock Music Lab or anywhere else inside the Detroit Historical Museum." Kid Rock is touring right now, with a show in Virginia Beach on July 10. He will be at DTE Energy Music Theatre beginning August 7 for 10 shows. Here is the FOX News report: Edward Pevos is the entertainment reporter for Mlive covering Detroit and Southeast Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter @PaparazzoPevos ||||| Just because the Confederate flag has been removed from the South Carolina states house doesn't mean the flag has stopped generating controversy. On Monday, the National Action Network's Michigan chapter protested outside the Detroit Historical Museum, which houses a Kid Rock exhibit, demanding that the rocker stop displaying the Confederate flag, Deadline Detroit reports. In a statement to Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Kid Rock relayed his message to those upset in his native Detroit: "Please tell the people who are protesting to kiss my ass/Ask me some questions." Related The Killer Inside Kid Rock Shooting hogs and talking trash with America's wildest red-state rocker Although Kid Rock was born and raised in Michigan, a Union state during the Civil War, the rocker has adopted the Confederate flag to highlight his Rebel Soul, the name of his 2012 album. In recent years, Rock has retreated to his estate in rural Alabama. Rock also toured extensively with Lynyrd Skynyrd, another – albeit Southern – act that made frequent use of the Confederate flag. However, Rock's current trek does not display the flag. A representative for Kid Rock declined to comment. As Fox News points out, Kid Rock aligns himself with the Southern pride connotations of the flag and not its racial implications, since Rock's son Robert Ritchie Jr., is biracial, and as of December 2014, the First Kiss singer also has biracial grandchildren. Despite the controversy, the Detroit Historical Museum stood by the rocker, saying his contributions to the Motor City outweigh his appropriation of the Confederate flag, which does not feature at all in the exhibit. "The Kid Rock Music Lab is one of 10 permanent exhibitions at the Detroit Historical Museum," the museum said in a statement, WXYZ reports. "Kid Rock’s contribution to Detroit’s music history is significant and warrants his inclusion along with other key figures like Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Aretha Franklin and Eminem. There are no displays of the Confederate flag in the Kid Rock Music Lab or anywhere else inside the Detroit Historical Museum."

– With South Carolina taking down the confederate flag and NASCAR banning it, Kid Rock chose to defend his own use of the Old South emblem: In his words, protesters can "kiss my ass." The rocker was reacting to people who opposed his display at the Detroit Historical Museum, which included the Confederate Flag but may not anymore, Rolling Stone reports. Rock sent a statement to Megyn Kelly at Fox News, saying, "Please tell the people who are protesting to kiss my ass/Ask me some questions." Kelly quoted it in a video available on her Facebook page, editing his words to read, "kiss my ... ask me some questions," she says. "I modified that." Raised in Michigan, Rock lives on an estate in Alabama and uses the Confederate flag "to highlight his Rebel Soul, the name of his 2012 album," Rolling Stone says. He has also toured with Lynyrd Skynyrd, a southern band that often used the Confederate flag. But Rock isn't using the flag on his current tour. While Rock says he hasn't raised the flag to symbolize hate, a reverend at Michigan Chapter of the National Action Network tells MLive.com that if the flag stays up, the museum is "consenting to this attitude and this promotion of the flag that we feel is a hate symbol." For its part, the museum says that "there are no displays of Confederate Flag in the Kid Rock Music Lab or anywhere else inside the Detroit Historical Museum."

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– The National Zoo in Washington is saying a final goodbye to its panda cub Bao Bao. The zoo is packing up the US-born panda for a one-way flight Tuesday to China, where the 3-year-old will eventually join a breeding program, the AP reports. Bao Bao is scheduled to leave the zoo Tuesday morning and fly from Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia to Chengdu, China, on Tuesday afternoon. The Washington Post explains that most of the giant pandas scattered at zoos around the globe are loaned from China, and cubs born outside of that country are usually returned there before they turn 4 to take part in the breeding program. Bao Bao won't have to worry about finding overhead bin space or dealing with a talkative seatmate on the nonstop 16-hour flight: She'll be the only panda on the plane, traveling with a keeper and a veterinarian. In preparation for the trip, keepers have packed Bao Bao's favorite foods, including bamboo, apples, and sweet potatoes. "I'm sad but happy," one of Bao Bao's regular visitors tells the Post, comparing the cub's departure to "sending a kid off to college." (Giant pandas were recently taken off the endangered-species list.)

Article Excerpt Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are moving to enact tough curbs on pay, in an indication that governments are taking increasingly aggressive steps to rein in compensation after the financial crisis. In the U.S., the Treasury Department's pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, is poised to enact tougher-than-expected rules for employees at companies that received large amounts of government assistance. The U.K. on Wednesday slapped banks with a 50% tax on portions of bonuses they pay to individuals, in perhaps the most aggressive move yet by a government. Mr. Feinberg has already capped salaries of top employees under his review. ... ||||| Europe led the way last year in facing down the global financial crisis, restructuring our banking system and strengthening the global financial system. The European Union was also at the forefront in calling for a new forum for economic cooperation of G-20 leaders. And from the outset of the crisis, it was Europe that promoted the fiscal stimulus—and sought to coordinate it globally—that has been a major factor in preventing recession becoming a world-wide depression. Now we need to once again lead the way in forging a new global consensus. Stable, open and competitive European financial markets are essential to global growth. We recognize the importance to Europe of ensuring that we have globally competitive financial services, and the importance of developing world-class financial centers such as London and Paris. But the way global financial institutions have operated raises fundamental questions that we must—and can only—address globally. We have found that a huge and opaque global trading network involving complex products, short-termism and too-often excessive rewards created risks that few people understood. We have also learned that when crises happen, taxpayers have to cover the costs. It is simply not acceptable for them to foot the bill for losses in a deep downturn, while institutions' shareholders and employees enjoy all the gains as the economy recovers. Better regulation and supervision are the means by which the risk to the taxpayer can be reduced for the longer term. In regard to regulation, the EU has adopted a comprehensive set of new rules for the financial sector to avoid the repetition of the crisis: control over credit rating agencies, stronger capital requirements on complex products such as securitization, and strengthened deposit guarantee schemes. We have set up strict rules to make sure that compensation systems avoid excessive risk taking. We will also implement stricter capital rules for banks. We also have agreed on a more efficient system for supervision of the financial sector within Europe to better monitor systemic risks, to ensure that EU regulation is applied consistently, to settle disagreement between national supervisors, and to deal with crisis situations. Banks must now hold sufficient capital, ensure liquidity, and reward only genuine value creation and not short-term risk-taking. This crisis has made us recognize that we are now in an economy which is no longer national but global, so financial standards must also be global. We must ensure that through proper regulation, the financial sector operates on a level playing field globally. There is an urgent need for a new compact between global banks and the society they serve: A compact that recognizes the risks to the taxpayer if banks fail and recognizes the imbalance between risks and rewards in the banking system. A compact that ensures the benefits of good economic times flow not just to bankers but to the people they serve; that makes sure that the financial sector fosters economic growth. A compact that ensures financial institutions cannot use offshore tax havens to negate the contribution they justly owe to the citizens of the country in which they operate—and so builds on the progress already made in ending tax and regulatory havens. Therefore, we propose a long-term global compact that will encapsulate both the responsibilities of the banking system and the risk they pose to the economy as a whole. Various proposals have been put forward and deserve examination. They include resolution funds, insurance premiums, financial transaction levies and a tax on bonuses. Getty Images The global nature of the economy today requires global financial standards, say French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, seen above at the G20's London summit in April. Among these proposals, we agree that a one-off tax in relation to bonuses should be considered a priority, due to the fact that bonuses for 2009 have arisen partly because of government support for the banking system. However, it is clear the action that must be taken must be at a global level. No one territory can be expected to or be able to act on its own. And if we can find a solution, implemented consistently across the major economies, then we may find a way to ensure that taxpayers do not pay in a systemic crisis for the risks taken on by the banking sector. We might also be able to help the funding of our Millennium Development Goals and address climate change. To achieve global coordination, we now propose a new process of deliberating and setting macroeconomic strategy, starting with the IMF report on global contributions and leading to a major discussion at the G-20 meetings chaired by South Korea next year. Through this process, we need to correct and prevent the build up of global imbalances. We need to enhance coordination at the global level so that foreign exchange volatility does not create a risk to the recovery. Each country should take its fair share of reducing global imbalances. Stability and confidence requires us to bring financial markets into closer alignment with the values held by families and business owners: Rewarding hard work, responsibility, integrity and fairness. People rightly want a post-crisis banking system which puts their needs first. To achieve that, nothing less than a global change is required. Mr. Brown is prime minister of Great Britain. Mr. Sarkozy is the president of France.

– Treasury Department "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg plans to start capping the salaries of second-tier execs at firms that received government assistance, according to company and government officials. The $500,000 cap, already imposed on top exec salaries, may now be applied to hundreds of other employees. The move has spurred Citigroup to sell billions in shares to repay the US government, insiders tell the Wall Street Journal. Bank of America repaid its $45 billion government investment in full yesterday. It has agreed to honor the pay limits already determined for 25 execs but will not be subject to further pay curbs. Officials say Citigroup has asked for similar treatment. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy called for a global flat tax on this year's bank bonuses similar to the 50% tax imposed by the UK, although such a tax doesn't figure in Feinberg's plans.

Please enable Javascript to watch this video LOWELL, Ind. – Police in northwest Indiana are investigating a report of an abandoned baby. Officers responded to a call in the 18000 block of White Oak Ave in Lowell around 11 a.m. Monday. Officials say a 9-year-old girl discovered the baby while playing in the backyard of her family’s home. The newborn was discovered in the sun, wrapped in a black towel, with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, police say. The girl’s mother took the baby inside and called police. The baby was taken to the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. Authorities are attempting to locate the baby’s mother. Anyone with information about this incident is urged to call the Lake County Sheriff’s Department Report-A-Crime Hotline at 1-800-750-2746. ||||| LOWELL, Ind. -- A 9-year-old girl in northwest Indiana found an abandoned infant on Monday morning in her family's back yard, CBS Chicago reported. Elysia Laub found the infant. She said at first she thought the baby was a piglet, because her family keeps pigs in a pen. "It just freaked me out. I didn't know what it was," she told CBS Chicago. Elysia screamed for her mom, Heidi, who was incredulous. "That's when she was like, 'Oh my god it's a baby,' and I was like, 'whaaaat?!" Elysia said. The baby, likely less than a day old, still had placenta and umbilical cord attached. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich is grateful for the child's discovery. "We're considering her the guardian angel of that infant," he said. "I didn't do this myself. Somebody helped me," Elysia said. "God. He put me in that place." The baby suffered from sun exposure, but is expected to be okay. Initial investigation indicates that the newborn was at that location no more than a day. The newborn was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital for emergency medical treatment. Anyone with information about this incident is urged to call the Lake County Sheriff's Department. ||||| Lowell, IN — A newborn baby was abandoned in the yard of a northwest Indiana home Monday, wrapped in a black towel and left under the hot summer sun. The infant's umbilical cord and placenta were still attached, according to authorities. A 9-year-old girl, Elysia Laub, who went outside to play found the baby girl in the back yard of her Lowell home at about 11 a.m. and ran to get her own mother, Heidi Laub. Maggots were crawling on the baby's placenta, according to Heidi Laub, who called 911. The baby suffered sun burns and may have been in the yard for several hours, according to a statement from the Lake County Sheriff's Department, possibly even overnight. Temperatures reached 90 degrees today. Police are searching for the mother. K9 units and a helicopter were deployed to the area Monday. The spot where she was found is about 100 yards from the closest road. It was "a miracle" Elysia found her, said Sheriff John Buncich at a press conference, calling the child a "guardian angel." The discovery was made in the 18000 block of White Oak Avenue in Lowell. Elysia told NBC Chicago she could see little pink arms and legs moving. The newborn was being treated at St. Anthony's Hospital in Crown Point. "The baby was found in a very rural area, and to think if the 9-year-old wouldn't have gone outside, this could've had a very different outcome," Buncich said at the press conference, as quoted in the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana. The baby is white, with brownish-blonde hair, reports ABC 7 Chicago. Indiana has a Safe Haven Law similar to the one in Illinois that permits people to anonymously leave newborns at police stations, fire stations and hospitals without arrest or fear of prosecution. Upon release from the hospital, the infant will be in the care of the Indiana Department of Child Services. If and when the mother is found, she could face criminal charges. I saw the arms and legs move & ran to get my mom. More from the 9 yo who found a baby in Lowell, Ind. @6 on NBC. pic.twitter.com/1Xb4jbKfUM — ReginaWaldroupNBC5 (@ReginaWaldroup) July 11, 2016 file photo: pixabay ||||| A 9-year-old girl found a newborn baby while playing in her family's backyard in rural Lowell, Indiana, Monday morning, according to investigators.Lake County Sheriff John Buncich said it was "a miracle" that the infant survived, and called the young girl who found her a "guardian angel.""She knew right away this was an infant and she ran to the house and summoned her mother, and her mother ran out right away and realized exactly what she had found. And the mother took the infant home until the officers and medics arrived," Buncich explained.Buncich said the full-term baby girl was discovered wrapped in a black towel in the 18000-block of White Oak Avenue at about 10:45 a.m. on Monday. The child was discovered about 100 yards from the nearest road.The baby was described as Caucasian with brownish-blonde hair. Her umbilical cord and placenta were still attached.Investigators believed the child had been abandoned for several hours in the sun, and had possibly been left overnight.The baby was being treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Crown Point, where she was expected to make a full recovery.After a complete examination, Buncich said the child would be turned over to a foster home on Tuesday.The Lake County Sheriff's Department continued to search for the newborn's mother, and asked that anyone with information call them at 1-800-750-2746.Indiana allows mothers to turn over their newborns to locations like police stations, fire departments and hospitals with no questions asked. ||||| An abandoned newborn baby is expected to make a full recovery after being found in a Lowell backyard. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich, during a Monday news conference, said Lake County Sheriff's Department officers were sent to the 18000 block of White Oak Avenue after receiving a call Monday morning that a baby had been found. The baby, called "Miracle Baby Jane Doe" by Buncich, was wrapped in a black towel and was lying in the sun approximately 100 yards from the road with her placenta and umbilical cord still attached, police said. An unidentified 9-year-old girl discovered her and told her mother. Buncich said as far as they could tell, the baby was born within hours of being left where she was. She was taken to Franciscan St. Anthony Health in Crown Point for observation and will be released into the care of a foster home through Child Protective Services within the next day or so. Buncich also called the 9-year-old a "guardian angel." "The baby was found in a very rural area, and to think if the 9-year-old wouldn't have gone outside, this could've had a very different outcome," Buncich said. "The department has taken a really personal approach to this case." Buncich said the department has sent out the umbilical cord and placenta for forensic analysis to determine the age of the infant. Sheriff's officers, K-9 units, and a helicopter unit searched the area extensively for the mother and are still actively searching for her or anyone with knowledge of the case, he said. A 9-year-old girl playing in her backyard in Lowell, Indiana, discovered a newborn baby wrapped in a towel, with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, on July 11, 2016. (WGN-TV) A 9-year-old girl playing in her backyard in Lowell, Indiana, discovered a newborn baby wrapped in a towel, with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, on July 11, 2016. (WGN-TV) SEE MORE VIDEOS "I'd like to remind people that there are laws that allow people to leave a baby with no questions asked," Buncich said. Anyone with information is urged to call the Lake County Sheriff's Department Report-A-Crime Hotline at 800-750-2746. All calls will remain anonymous. Meanwhile, the department plans to honor the young girl who found the baby, Buncich said. Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. ||||| How does it work? A distressed parent who is unable or unwilling to care for their infant can give up custody of their baby, no questions asked. They must simply bring the infant to a safe haven location and make sure they locate a person to give the child. As long as the child shows no signs of intentional abuse, no name or other information is required. The specific locations and maximum age of the child varies from state to state. You can find the details of for your location by using our Safehaven Finder. It's safe. It's anonymous. You do not need to tell anyone. What's the difference between Safe Haven and Adoption? To place your infant for adoption, you must make an adoption plan and enter into a legal contract where you forfeit your right to custody of your child. Safe Haven arrangements do not require paperwork or contracts. The process is anonymous, so long as your baby is unharmed. Baby Safe Haven laws allow you to give your baby to a responsible adult at a designated location, and walk away, no questions asked. If you do not return to reclaim your baby, your parental rights will be terminated in a few months, and the child will be adopted by a family waiting for a child. Can only a parent bring in the baby? No. The parent may choose to have someone else bring in the infant. It can be a family member, a friend, a priest or minister, a social worker—practically any responsible adult. Can you help a parent decide where to bring the baby? Yes. The parent can call the Safe Haven Hotline 1-888-510-BABY to receive counseling and get details on the address and directions to the closest safe haven in your state. Does a parent have to call before bringing in the baby? No. A parent can walk in anytime, provided that there are staff present to receive the child at the safe haven location. Does a parent have to tell anything to the people taking the baby? No. Nothing is required. However, safe haven staff will record any information that a parent is willing to share, such as the child's health, race, date of birth, place of birth or the medical history of the parents. This could be very useful in caring for the child. What happens to the baby? The child will be examined and given medical treatment, if needed. The Social Services Administration will then take custody through Child Protective Services and place the child with an appropriate caregiver. Does my state have a Baby Safe Haven law? Yes. Every state in the United States has a Baby Safe Haven provision. The law details vary from state to state, so it's important you learn about your state's requirements. What is a Baby Safe Haven Law? Infant Abandonment laws or "Baby Safe Haven" laws exist to enable a person to relinquish an unwanted infant anonymously. If a mother cannot care for her child, she can bring that baby into a Safe Haven location and leave the baby with a responsible adult, no questions asked. As long as the baby has not been abused, the person may do so without fear of arrest or prosecution. WWhy are states offering Safe Haven Laws? The purpose of Safe Haven is to protect unwanted babies from being hurt or killed because they were abandoned. You may have heard tragic stories of babies left in dumpsters or public toilets. The parents who committed these acts may have been under severe emotional distress. The mothers may have hidden their pregnancies, fearful of what would happen if their families found out. Because they were afraid and had nowhere to turn for help, they abandoned their babies. Abandoning a baby puts the child in extreme danger. Too often, it results in the child's death. It is also illegal, with severe consequences. But with Safe Haven, this tragedy doesn't ever have to happen again. What if I change my mind? It's rare that a mother changes her mind. But, if you do, you will have a few days to come back and speak with the authorities about what arrangements can be made for the baby. I'm in a custody battle. How do I know my spouse won't use the Safe Haven law to take away my child? Safe Haven laws and locations are only for infants. If your child isn't an infant, there's no way the Safe Haven law can be used. If your child is an infant, rest assured that when a baby comes into the Safe Haven program, authorities across the US are notified and a thorough check is done to make sure no one is looking for the baby. How does it work? A distressed parent who is unable or unwilling to care for an infant can give up custody of a baby less than 30 days old safely, legally and anonymously. All that is required is that the baby be brought to a hospital emergency room, fire station or police station in Indiana. As long as the child shows no signs of intentional abuse, no name or other information is required. Can only a parent bring in the baby? No. The parent may choose to have someone else bring in the infant. It can be a family member, a friend, a priest or minister, a social worker – practically any responsible adult. Does a parent have to call before bringing in the baby? No. A parent can walk in anytime. Does a parent have to tell anything to the people taking the baby? No. Nothing is required. However, hospital, fire or police personnel will record any information that a parent is willing to share, such as the child’s health, race, date of birth, place of birth or the medical history of the parents. This could be very useful in caring for the child. What happens to the baby? The child will be examined and given medical treatment, if needed. Then the Indiana Family & Social Services Administration will immediately take custody through Child Protective Services and place the child with an appropriate caregiver.

– At first, Elysia Laub thought she was looking at a piglet that had escaped her pig pen. Only when she summoned her mom did she realize that the bundle, wrapped in a black towel in the backyard of her family's home in Lowell, Ind., was actually a newborn baby girl, reports CBS News. Authorities say the infant—full term but likely less than a day old, with the umbilical cord and placenta still attached, per WGN—had perhaps been left outside overnight and spent hours in the sun before Elysia found her while playing outside Monday morning. Her mom, Heidi Laub, "realized exactly what she had found," Lake County Sheriff John Buncich tells ABC 7. Laub says there were maggots on the placenta, per Patch.com. But except for sunburns, the child was in good health, Buncich says. The baby was found about 100 yards from the nearest road in a "very rural area," he adds, per the Post-Tribune. "If the 9-year-old wouldn't have gone outside, this could've had a very different outcome." He calls Elysia a "guardian angel." Elysia says she had help: "I didn't do this myself." God "put me in that place." Authorities say the Caucasian baby with brownish-blonde hair, referred to as "Miracle Baby Jane Doe," will be sent to a foster home while officers search for her mother, who could face criminal charges. Indiana has a safe haven law allowing mothers to leave infants less than 30 days old at hospitals and police and fire stations without question. (A woman just graduated from the university where she was abandoned as a baby.)

HE is known as Russia's Osama bin Laden; Public Enemy No 1 for the Kremlin. Even the US has put a $5 million bounty on his head. Doku Umarov, 49, the Chechen warlord with the blackest of reputations, is assumed to be the mastermind behind a bombing campaign intended to disrupt Vladimir Putin's cherished dream of a successful Winter Olympics in Sochi. ||||| The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| Two suicide bombings in a Russian city are stoking fear about the Sochi Winter Olympics. The most likely mastermind is a Chechen field commander who wants to humiliate Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Why the new health-care bill may keep affordable care out of reach for some This undated frame grab image made available by IntelCenter and taken from a video posted on a pro-rebel website Wednesday, purports to show Chechen warlord Doku Umarov. In the video Umarov claims responsibility for the Moscow metro bombings that killed 40 people in March 2010. In July, a video went up on a Russian-language website known as a forum for commentary and propaganda by militant Islamist groups in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus. In it, a Chechen man named Doku Umarov gave an unequivocal warning about the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, in whose success the Kremlin has invested tens of billions of dollars. "Today we must show those who live in the Kremlin … that our kindness is not weakness," said Mr. Umarov, dressed in camouflage and wearing his trademark bushy beard. "They plan to hold the Olympics on the bones of our ancestors, on the bones of many, many dead Muslims buried on our land by the Black Sea. We as mujahadeen are required not to allow that, using any methods that Allah allows us." On Sunday and Monday two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at different sites in Volgograd, a city, like Sochi, located just a few hundred miles from the Caucasus. Neither Umarov nor anyone else has claimed responsibility yet for the bombings, which killed at least 32 people and wounded dozens more. What’s certain, however, is that just weeks before the Olympic opening ceremonies, the attacks are bringing new tremors to a country that has struggled to quash a 20-year terrorist insurgency. For analysts who have studied terrorist tactics, in Russia and elsewhere, it seems likely that Umarov had a hand in the attacks. Successful suicide bombings are difficult to plan, organize, and execute. And there aren’t that many groups with that ability in the North Caucasus, says Mia Bloom, a professor who has written several books examining female suicide bombers in Russia and other places. (Early reports from Russia claimed that the attacker on Sunday was a woman.) “Doku Umarov is one of those guys who follows through. He specifically mentions getting Russians, to humiliate Putin, particularly because of Sochi,” says Ms. Bloom who teaches at the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. “It follows a pattern (for Umarov): the use of women, the use of simultaneous attacks, the use of hitting transportation infrastructure, the repetition of it, these are all the leitmotifs of his work,” she says. John Horgan, who directs the UMass terrorism center, says the absence of Umarov taking responsibility may in fact indicate there are more bombers waiting to attack. Umarov is latest iteration of the Chechen insurgent legacy. A veteran of the two wars and the stubborn violence that has ravaged Chechnya and the entire North Caucasus since the Soviet collapse, Umarov rose to prominence in the 2000s alongside notorious terrorist leaders such as Shamil Basayev, a fellow Chechen, but also radicalized jihadis from places like Jordan or Saudi Arabia with names like al-Khattab, Abu Hafs, and Abu Walid. The presence of these foreign fighters helped turn the Chechen fight from a secular, ethnic-based independence cause towards a pan-Islamist, cross-border movement that spilled into other parts of the Caucasus In 2007, after Russian forces killed a series of top commanders including Basayev and gained the upper hand in Chechnya, the insurgency began to fracture. Umarov declared himself “emir of the Caucasus Emirate,” an umbrella of rebel groups through the North Caucasus. Umarov used suicide bombers – which Basayev had helped introduce to Russia earlier that decade – in incidents like the 2002 Moscow theater siege, and the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan. Moscow bombings Between 2009 and 2011, there were a series of spectacular attacks in Moscow, and a slew of other bombings around the North Caucasus, including the 2009 bombing of the high-speed train to St. Petersburg; the 2010 suicide bombing of two Moscow subways stations; and the 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. All were claimed by Umarov. By 2011, the Caucasus Emirate was officially designated a terrorist group by the US State Department, and a $5 million reward was announced for information leading to Umarov's capture. Since the second Chechen War erupted in 2000, Kremlin’s tactics in the North Caucasus have turned to using local allies to take the lead in fighting insurgents like Basayev and Umarov. That, along with millions of dollars in investments and infrastructure building, has helped bring a semblance of calm to Chechnya. Other regions, however, continue to fester – such as Dagestan, a republic east of Chechnya that is a mosaic of ethnic groups who live uneasily side by side. Dagestan was the region that Tamerlan Tsarnaev visited in the months before planning the Boston Marathon bombing in April. It was also reportedly home of the female suicide bomber whose attack on a Volgograd bus in October killed six people. Umarov’s activities were relatively minimal in months leading up to the July video, which has led to speculation that he was consolidating his authority among Caucasus groups and laying the groundwork for new attacks connected to Sochi. The Sochi Olympics, which open Feb. 7, are the most expensive games ever, with the Kremlin estimated to have spent close to $60 billion to prepare the Black Sea city and the surrounding mountainous countryside to host thousands of athletes, tourists, and dignitaries. Sochi is about the same distance from Chechnya as New York is from Washington, though the formidable Caucasus Mountains prevent driving directly. By most accounts, President Vladimir Putin has staked his personal prestige on Olympic success, and Russian security services have spent years preparing to ensure the games are not disrupted. That may be the main reason why terrorists have targeted other cities like Volgograd, which is a major transportation hub for southern Russia, experts say. The Olympics also provide a ready venue for high-profile attacks to raise awareness of a group’s cause, similar to what happened with the 1972 Munich Olympics, says James Forest, former director of terrorism studies at the US Military Academy. Those games were tarnished by the killing of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by members of a terror group wanting to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians. “It conveys to the public that even though you have all this security, this is a target; they know that they can’t protect you,” Bloom says, “so that it has a greater oomph, greater impact.”

– After three bombings in Volgograd in three months, the name Doku Umarov is coming up frequently as a possible link. Who is the 49-year-old who has dubbed himself the "emir of Caucasus Emirate"? London's Times (via the Australian) calls him "Russia's Osama bin Laden." He pledged in July to "use all means" to stop the Sochi Olympics, which he likened to "demonic dances on the bones of our ancestors." In the 1990s, Umarov was an insurgent against the Russian Federation, NBC News reports. In 2007, after years pushing for Chechen independence, he called for Northern Caucasus to become a united Islamic state under Sharia law. He and his followers have been linked to a number of attacks. His group claimed responsibility for a 2009 blast at a Siberian hydroelectric plant and an explosion on a Russian train, both of which killed dozens. Umarov said he was behind suicide bombings in 2010 on the Moscow subway and, the next year, at a Moscow airport. Last year, he was said to be involved in an alleged plot to kill Vladimir Putin. The recent attacks bear Umarov's hallmarks, an expert tells the Christian Science Monitor: "The use of women, the use of simultaneous attacks, the use of hitting transportation infrastructure, the repetition of it, these are all the leitmotifs of his work."

Okay, this one’s just obvious. Chris Brown and Dave East dropped the ultimate Song For The Ladies today, July 28, and from the very opening line, it’s clear that Chris is missing the love his life: Rihanna. Listen! “Damn I let a good girl go,” Chris Brown, 28, croons on the chorus Dave East‘s sultry slow song “Perfect,” and we have to wonder if he’s in fact referencing Bad Girl RiRi! Listen above and tell us — do you think Chris is singing about Rihanna? This isn’t the only track that has Chris lamenting after RiRi. He’s also featured on Floyd “A1” Bentley‘s new single “Always,” which also came out today, and immediately, Chris confesses to a woman in the intro: “You’re always on my mind.” Hmm… Despite dropping two songs that seem to be about Rihanna, it’s clear that she is Bed, Bath and Beyond Done with Chris. The “Work” singer is doing just fine with her billionaire boyfriend Hassan Jameel, 29, thank you very much, and as insiders have told us exclusively, he’s treating her “like a princess.” Sorry not sorry, Breezy! Check out more of the lyrics to “Perfect:” Oh, we ain’t friends no more? (why) Why you won’t listen no more? (listen) Damn I let a good girl go Away, away, away, I’ve been (away) All around the world And I’ve been lookin’ for you searchin’ (I’ve been lookin’) You deserve it ’cause you perfect You deserve it ’cause you perfect (perfect) You make every moment worth it (every moment) I’m flyin’ down Collins, I’m shirtless (skrr) Just thinking how you might’ve curved it (might have curved it) I knew you a minute, don’t act like you don’t know the business I’ve been tryin’ to get all up in it HollywoodLifers, do you think Chris is still pining after Rihanna? Tell us! ||||| Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more ہہم، سرور تک پہنچنے میں ایک مسئلہ تھا۔ دوبارہ کوشش کریں؟ بنیادی ٹویٹ شامل کریں میڈیا شامل کریں By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy. پیش منظر ||||| It's time for Rihanna's favorite event of year: Crop Over Festival! After debuting turquoise hair over the weekend, the 29-year-old "Loyalty" singer jetted to her native Barbados to participate in the Kadooment parade. Getting into the spirit, the pop star modeled a bejeweled bra and thong set and added some fabulous flair with feathered "wings." In an Instagram Story Monday, she wrote, "who ready 4 de road?," quoting a Bunji Garlin song. Crop Over Festival, Barbados' largest annual event, is a season that begins in May and ends on the first Monday of August (known as Kadooment Day). The celebration ends with a parade along Spring Garden Highway in the nation's capital of Bridgetown, all set to a soca soundtrack. ||||| ‘Love & Hip Hop’ star A1 Bentley just dropped a new single with his bros Chris Brown and Ty Dolla $ign, and Chris’ lines have us thinking he might just be missing Rihanna. Listen! “Somethin for the ladies,” A1 Bentley, 30, tweeted, and yes, “Always” lives up to his description. With Chris Brown, 28, on the intro, chorus, and outro, and Ty Dolla $ign, 32, helping out on the second verse, it’s an easy winner. Listen to the new track, which dropped today, July 28, below! Interestingly, Chris sings about a woman he can’t stop thinking about — he says the line “You’re always on my mind” about 150 times in this song. We can’t help but wonder if he had Rihanna, 29, in mind, and of course this wouldn’t be the first time he dropped a track about her. “Baby, you know/Girl, you’re always on my mind,” he continues. Hmm! Meanwhile, A1 is one of the stars of the newly premiered 4th season of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood, and we’ll get to see him work out (or not work out) his marriage issues with Lyrica Anderson, 28. You know there will be drama! Check out more of the lyrics to “Always:” You’re always on my mind You’re always on my mind Hitmaka So you know now, you’re always on my I got Wi-Fi, got xans Got that gas and some green Girl invite your bitches we gon’ party all week Know you got a man Girl your secret’s safe with me All my n*gg*s shooters so you know they don’t speak Girl you know I’m tripping Let me hit you with a hangover Shake your ass and show your titties You know why you came over You can look in my eyes and tell HollywoodLifers, what do you think of this new track? Tell us if you love “Always!” ||||| Chris Brown has been featuring on tons of tracks lately, but this time he’s the center of attention. Listen to ‘Pills and Automobiles’ and try not to lose it at the possible reference to one of Rihanna’s biggest hits! “Them hatin’ n****s kill the vibe, you can live your life,” Chris Brown, 28, sings on “Pills and Automobiles,” “Bad b*tch in Hawaii, umbrella with the ice.” Could just be a coincidence that he mentioned an “umbrella,” which is obviously one of the most iconic Rihanna songs, but either way it makes us raise an eyebrow! Chris’ track also features Kodak Black, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Yo Gotti and dropped today, Aug. 4. Listen to it above! Fans are loving the new song, which came as a surprise to many. “I’m simple I see a boogie I like,” one person commented on YouTube. “This song is f*cking lit!!” another declared. Others simply went with multiple flame emojis (see here.) Check out more of the lyrics: I just wanna show you off, I don’t wanna do you wrong Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the flyest of them all? I get money when I want, I can f*ck her if I want Baby you can take it off, I’m that n***a with the sauce (aye, yeah) Whole lot of Saint Laurent, can’t remember what it cost (aye, yeah) F*ck I’m feelin’ like a boss, f*ck on it and lick it off (aye, yeah) You know we can run it up, tell me what you really want I know I can break you off, come here lemme break you off If you ever wanna f*ck, can I be the one you call? If you wanna be a star, I can tell you what it cost I was gonna put you on, I was gonna put you on I was gonna change your life girl but I don’t wanna break your heart HollywoodLifers, what do you think of “Pills and Automobiles?” Tell us if you love the new track! ||||| Chris Brown is keeping his eye on Rihanna — or at least her boyfriends, we’ve learned EXCLUSIVELY! It’s not about jealousy, but rather making sure they’re treating her right. Four years after breaking up, Chris Brown, 27, is still checking in on Rihanna, 29. Chris is apparently personally concerned with his ex-girlfriend’s love life. It’s not that he’s aiming to get back together with Rihanna (as he has wanted to in the past). He’s just doing the nosy ex thing — checking out who’s she’s dating after splitting with him! “Chris continues to keep tabs on Rihanna and definitely knows when she is dating or seen with another guy,” a source close to Chris told HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY. “He isn’t pining for her attention or to rekindle anything. It’s more of a feeling of what he is missing when he looks at what she is doing romantically. His thoughts on Hassan [Jameel, her current boyfriend] are pretty non existent. He doesn’t have any of thoughts about the guys in her life, it’s more about looking from afar to see if she is happy or not. He likes to compare himself with her new suitors.” Ah, we know that feeling all too well. Chris needs to stop; it’s so unhealthy to compare yourself to your ex’s new partners and wallow in what could have been. It doesn’t come as a shock that he’s checking in on Rihanna and Hassan, though, He’s been very vocal about how he feels regarding this new relationship. As HollywoodLife.com told you EXCLUSIVELY, Chris saw the photos of Rihanna and her Saudi boyfriend making out at a private villa in Ibiza, and wasn’t happy. “Chris doesn’t know what’s going on but he’d be pissed if he was playing her for a fool,” a source told us at the time. Though he now isn’t trying to get with Rihanna, he apparently was contemplating it until he found out that she isn’t single. He was texting her all the time. He’s not fretting over her taken status, though, because he “doesn’t even think it will last,” a separate source told us EXCLUSIVELY. Well, damn! We guess Chris will be the first to find that out since he’s keeping such close tabs on Rihanna’s love life, right? HollywoodLife.com has reached out to Chris’ rep for comment. HollywoodLifers, do you think it’s wrong for Chris to “keep tabs” on Rihanna? Let us know. ||||| Rihanna is shining bright light a diamond and Chris Brown can't seem to look away. As the "Umbrella" singer continues to work, work, work, work it at Barbados' carnival, one look is grabbing the attention of one famous ex. On Monday night, Rihanna posted one of her outfits from the annual event with a standard caption. "the @aura_experience caught by @dennisleupold," she wrote online. "#BARBADOS #cropover2017 #culture" Through all the likes and comments from fans and followers, one message stood out from all the rest. As it turns out, ex-boyfriend Chris decided to comment with two eye emoji's.

– Rihanna is in Barbados for Carnival, and on Monday she posted a photo to Instagram of herself sporting blue hair and a bejeweled bikini for the occasion. One of the people who commented on said photo? Chris Brown. The comment, posted from his official Instagram account, was simply the "googly eyes" emoji. Rihanna's Instagram followers went nuts, with many telling Brown to stay away from her given their history together, while others swooned about the possibility of the singers getting back together (E! reports that more than 4,000 people "liked" the comment in the first hour after it was posted). And the comments weren't restricted to Instagram; quite a few Twitter users weighed in, too. (Sample tweet: "Whenever you're feeling hopeless and lost, just remember there are still people out there stanning for a Chris Brown & Rihanna relationship.") The Rihanna-Chris Brown story was already in no danger of dying even before Brown's comment: Sources told Hollywood Life last month that Brown still "keeps tabs" on his ex and her romantic life, and the gossip site has been wondering whether he's referring to her on a bunch of songs lately.

April 23, 2014 11:47 PM GREELEY, Colo. (CBS4) – A school in Greeley is asking parents to be more vigilant after a 10-year-old boy admitted to selling marijuana to other students on the playground and another student came to school with a marijuana edible candy bar. Both incidents happened in one week. School officials are now asking parents to pay attention to where they are keeping their recreational marijuana after the fourth graders brought the items to Monfort Elementary School in Greeley. John Gates, director of safety for Weld County School District 6, said there were four students involved — three boys and a girl. The students were all 10. Gates said the students faced tough discipline but not suspension or expulsion but would not provide specific details on their punishment. One boy admitted to taking a small bite of the candy bar but he didn’t get sick, and a medical exam showed he didn’t suffer any harmful side effects. Gates said the boys told them they got the pot from home. That marijuana appears to have been legally purchased by adults. The grandparents in two families apparently made the purchases. No charges are expected to be filed. On Monday a student who was not involved told school officials about the pot selling on the playground and the next day a student tried to trade an edible for some of the student’s marijuana. “It was the simple fact that we had adults that didn’t secure their marijuana,” Gates said of the grandparents, urging adults to take care with the drug. “That sure is concerning because this would have never happened had the marijuana not been so accessible to two 10-year-old boys.” Monfort Elementary School principal Jennifer Sheldon sent home a letter to parents on Tuesday stating that even though it’s easier for adults to get marijuana, children potentially have greater access. A portion of that letter reads: “We urge all parents, grandparents and anyone who cares for children to treat marijuana as you would prescription drugs, alcohol or even firearms. This drug is potentially lethal to children, and should always be kept under lock and key, away from young people.” More Marijuana Legalization Stories Police Cite 7 Denver Pot Shop Employees For Underage Sales South Dakota Tribe To Open Nation’s 1st Marijuana Resort DeGette Once Again To Try To Declassify Marijuana At Federal Level Pot Products Recalled, Pot Shop Fires Employee For Unapproved Pesticides Advocacy Group: Commercialization Of Legal Pot Has Led To ‘Epidemic’ For Colorado Kids 2 Denver Pot Businesses Recalling Products With Pesticide Residues Democratic Presidential Hopeful Visits Marijuana Regulators Democratic Presidential Hopeful Vows Marijuana Change Police Release Images Of Pot Shop Burglar Colorado Marijuana Holiday Saves Shoppers, Growers Big Bucks ||||| It's Legal to Sell Pot in Colorado, But Not If You're in 4th Grade DENVER - Two Colorado fourth graders were busted for selling marijuana at their elementary school, prompting officials today to urge adults to keep their weed locked away from kids. School officials said a 10-year-old fourth grade boy brought a small quantity of leafy marijuana to Monfort Elementary School in Greeley, Colorado, on Monday. "He sold it to three other fourth graders on the school playground, which resulted in a profit to the young man of $11," John Gates, director of safety and security for the Greeley-Evans School District, told ABC News. The next day, Gates said one of the three young buyers brought a marijuana edible to school and gave it to the boy who sold the pot on Monday. That boy took a bite, but did not suffer any ill effects, Gates said. Both boys apparently got the weed from relatives, according to Gates. "Both of these kids took the marijuana without the consent of their grandparents," said Gates. Gates said the four students involved will be suspended for a "significant" number of days, but declined to say exactly how long the punishment would be. Initially police were called, but officials have determined the incident will not he handled as a criminal matter, he said. "We hope to send a good message here without ruining anybody's lives. The message we really want to get out here to the adults is, 'for crying out loud, secure it,'" Gates said. Adults 21 and older have been able to buy recreational marijuana legally in Colorado since Jan. 1. In a letter sent home to parents, Monfort Elementary School Principal Jennifer Sheldon said no student was injured. "We know that many adults have greater access to marijuana since the change in the drug's legal status in Colorado," Sheldon wrote. "We urge all parents, grandparents and anyone who cares for children to treat marijuana as you would prescription drugs, alcohol or even firearms. This drug is potentially lethal to children, and should always be kept under lock and key, away from young people." The side effects of edible marijuana - which can be far more potent than smoking a joint - have been raising new concerns after two recent deaths in Colorado. In one, a 19-year old college student died when he jumped off a hotel balcony after eating a marijuana-laced cookie. In the second, Richard Kirk, 47, was charged with shooting and killing his wife while she called 9-1-1, telling police her husband had consumed pot-infused candy. Colorado's legislature is currently considering new safety regulations for marijuana edibles, including bills requiring stronger warning labels and lowering the amount of THC permitted in food. The Associated Press contributed to this report

– A pair of enterprising fourth-graders in Colorado got caught dealing marijuana pilfered from home at their elementary school, reports ABC News. Officials at the school in Greeley originally got police involved, but they've decided to handle it internally with suspensions and with a message to grown-ups: "For crying out loud, secure it," asks the school district's security chief. Authorities say one boy stole (legally bought) marijuana from his grandparents and sold it to three young buyers at his school, netting himself $11 in the process. The next day, one of those buyers brought in a marijuana candy bar and tried to swap it for some of the leafy stuff, reports CBS Local. "It was the simple fact that we had adults that didn’t secure their marijuana," says the school official. "That sure is concerning because this would have never happened had the marijuana not been so accessible to two 10-year-old boys." The two other buyers, also 10, face suspensions, too.

Back to Industry National Turkey Federation Refutes Alarmist "Study" on Ground Turkey Printable Version Email to a Friend Washington, D.C., April 30, 2013 - Contact: Mary Raguso, 202-730-9639 The National Turkey Federation (NTF) strongly disputes the misleading findings of a Consumer Reports article about ground turkey, which makes a number of alarming claims based on an extremely small sampling of ground turkey products. “Consumer Reports had the opportunity to foster a serious, thoughtful discussion about food safety, but instead it chose to sensationalize findings and mislead people,” said NTF President Joel Brandenberger. NTF refuted numerous misleading claims, and challenges the methodology in the report, from which essentially all the “findings” are obtained. To help better educate consumers about ground turkey, here are some important facts: The magazine reported high levels of certain pathogens on the samples tested, but it is important to note that the two most prevalent, enterococcus and generic E.coli are not considered sources of foodborne illness. By contrast, for the two pathogens of public health concern—Campylobacter and Salmonella—the magazine found almost no prevalence (5 percent for Salmonella and zero Campylobacter). This is borne out by more extensive government testing, which finds almost 90 percent of all ground turkey and 97 percent of whole turkeys are Salmonella-free. While the turkey industry strives to control all bacteria on its products, it focuses primarily on those bacteria that present the greatest threat to human health. The article is misleading about the significance of its antibiotic findings. One of the antibiotics for which it tested (ciprofloxacin) has not been used in poultry production for almost eight years, meaning resistance is highly unlikely to be from farm-animal use, and two other drug classes (penicillin and cephalosporin) are used infrequently in animal agriculture. The fourth drug class tested by Consumer Reports , tetracycline, is used in animal agriculture, but is a largely insignificant antibiotic in human medicine, comprising only four percent of all antibiotics prescribed by physicians. The article stated three samples contained methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureas (MRSA). Understandably, this is cause for concern, but the article fails to put MRSA and E.coli in context. These bacteria are ubiquitous in the environment, and are even present on our hands and in our bodies. NTF Vice President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs Lisa Picard, said, “Enterococcus and generic E.coli are everywhere, and there is more than one way they can wind up on food animals. In fact, it’s so common; studies have shown that generic E.coli and MRSA can even be found on about 20 percent of computer keyboards.” NTF noted the last week’s statement of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates antibiotic use in animals, “We believe that is inaccurate and alarmist to define bacteria resistant to one, or even a few, antimicrobials as “superbugs” if these same bacteria are still treatable by other commonly used antibiotics. This is especially misleading when speaking of bacteria that do not cause foodborne disease and have natural resistances, such as Enterococcus.” The magazine’s parent company believes the FDA should ban all antibiotics in animal production except to treat illness, to which Picard said, “Animals, just like people, sometimes get sick. The turkey industry judiciously uses antibiotics under strict guidelines set by federal law to restore health, and to treat and control disease. This makes good sense for the turkey’s health and lowers production costs, something very important to budget-conscious consumers. Proper animal health practices are an important reason the U.S. food supply is one of the highest quality, safest, and most affordable in the world.” NTF is the national advocate for all segments of the $29.5 billion turkey industry. Get the facts on ground turkey by visiting our website on www.eatturkey.com, ‘follow us’ on Twitter, and ‘like us’ on Facebook. ### ||||| Consumer Reports testing has revealed potentially-dangerous bacteria found in randomly tested ground turkey products sold at U.S. stores, some of which were antibiotic-resistant. Furthermore, the first-laboratory analysis of this kind conducted by the group revealed that turkey raised without antibiotics had much less antibiotic-resistant bacteria than turkey raised with antibiotics. "Our findings strongly suggest that there is a direct relationship between the routine use of antibiotics in animal production and increased antibiotic resistance in bacteria on ground turkey. It's very concerning that antibiotics fed to turkeys are creating resistance to antibiotics used in human medicine," Dr. Urvashi Rangan, director of the food safety and sustainability group at Consumer Reports, said in a press release. "Humans don't consume antibiotics every day to prevent disease and neither should healthy animals." Consumer Reports' researchers tested 257 kinds of raw ground turkey meat and patties, many of which came from major retailers and were store brands. The samples were tested for the following contaminants: enterococcus, Escherichia coli (E. coli), staphylococcus aureus, salmonella, and campylobacter. All five bacteria can cause illness and be fatal in some cases. Ninety percent of the samples Consumer Reports tested had at least one of the five bacteria. Sixty-nine percent of the products had enterococcus, which can cause an infection of the digestive or urinary tract, and 60 percent had E. coli, a major cause of severe foodborne illness in the United States. Both bugs are associated with fecal contamination, Consumer Reports pointed out. About 80 percent of the enterococcus bacteria were resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics, so too were more than half of the E. coli. Salmonella, which causes the most hospitalizations in the U.S. out of the food-related bacteria each year, was only found in 5 percent of the samples. However, out of the salmonella found, 67 percent of strains were multi-drug resistant. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, was also found in three samples. Bacteria found on products that had "no antibiotics," were labeled "organic," or were "raised without antibiotics" were resistant to fewer antibiotics, the analysis found. For turkeys raised with antibiotics, there was much more resistance to types of antibiotics used in healthy turkeys in order to stimulate growth and prevent disease than those that are not approved for those goals. Consumer Reports pointed out that the government allows processing plants to have contamination rates as high as 49.9 percent, and studies typically find rates of salmonella around 12 percent. 10 dangerous but common food safety mistakes The American Meat Institute pointed out that there were some flaws in the Consumer Reports' research, including that the samples only came from 21 states. None of the samples tested positive for Campylobacter, and the amount of products that had Salmonella were well under the limit set by the government. They also added that the Food and Drug Administration announced that Enterococcus was unlikely to cause sickness in people. "These findings are extremely encouraging," AMI Foundation Chief Scientist Betsy Booren said in a statement to CBSNews.com. "When food safety issues have been linked to ground turkey, they have typically been caused by either Campylobacter or Salmonella. Consumer Reports test results show that the food safety systems used by turkey processors are working to destroy these bacteria." Consumer Reports suggested that people consider the "organic" or otherwise labeled products. They also pointed out that safe handling and preparation, including buying meat just before checking out and placing it in a plastic bag to prevent liquids contaminating other products, can prevent illness. Wash all hands and surfaces that touched raw turkey. Food should be stored at 40 degrees F or below if food is going to be cooked within a few days. Otherwise, it should be frozen to kill some bacteria. When cooking turkey, it should have an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees F. Cooked meat should not be returned to the plate that held the raw meat. Leftovers should be refrigerated or frozen within two hours of cooking. ||||| Sickened by a turkey burger? Hours after she grilled a turkey burger for dinner in June 2011, Diana Goodpasture, 66, of Akron, Ohio, says she felt awful. “In the middle of the night, I woke up and I was sick,” she says. “I started to get an upset stomach and diarrhea, and then it just got progressively worse from there.” Goodpasture, a van driver, says she thought she’d caught a stomach flu, so she stayed home for a few days. But the gastrointestinal symptoms and crampy abdominal pain worsened. “It got so bad that my kids said, ‘You have to go to the hospital,’ ” she recalls. Goodpasture was hospitalized at Akron General Medical Center for five days. Tests showed that she’d fallen ill from salmonella Heidelberg. The leftover ground turkey she’d frozen after dinner also tested positive when analyzed by the Summit County Public Health Department. Almost two years later, Goodpasture says she’s still not completely well. “It has really messed up my intestinal system. And from what I can tell, that’s just a lifetime thing I’m going to have to deal with,” she says. “It changed my whole life.” ||||| Dylan Cross for The Wall Street Journal Some eye-opening numbers on the poultry in our supermarkets, released today by Consumer Reports: In our first-ever lab analysis of ground turkey bought at retail stores nationwide, more than half of the packages of raw ground meat and patties tested positive for fecal bacteria. Some samples harbored other germs, including salmonella and staphylococcus aureus, two of the leading causes of foodborne illness in the U.S. Overall, 90 percent of the samples had one or more of the five bacteria for which we tested. Not only were the germs common, but they showed a disturbing level of resistance to some conventional antibiotics, Consumer Reports wrote. The magazine said over-use of antibiotics at large industrial meat production facilities — including feeding such drugs to healthy animals — “is speeding the growth of drug-resistant superbugs, a serious health concern. People sickened by those bacteria might need to try several antibiotics before one succeeds.” But these assertions have prompted an angry reply from the National Turkey Federation (NTF), which says many of the findings of the report are misleading (emphasis ours): “Consumer Reports had the opportunity to foster a serious, thoughtful discussion about food safety, but instead it chose to sensationalize findings and mislead people,” said NTF President Joel Brandenberger. NTF refuted numerous misleading claims, and challenges the methodology in the report, from which essentially all the “findings” are obtained. To help better educate consumers about ground turkey, here are some important facts: The magazine reported high levels of certain pathogens on the samples tested, but it is important to note that the two most prevalent, enterococcus and generic E.coli are not considered sources of foodborne illness . almost 90 percent of all ground turkey and 97 percent of whole turkeys are Salmonella-free. While the turkey industry strives to control all bacteria on its products, it focuses primarily on those bacteria that present the greatest threat to human health… ( By contrast, for the two pathogens of public health concern—Campylobacter and Salmonella—the magazine found almost no prevalence (5 percent for Salmonella and zero Campylobacter). This is borne out by more extensive government testing, which finds. While the turkey industry strives to control all bacteria on its products, it focuses primarily on those bacteria that present the greatest threat to human health… ( continues We’ll leave the turkey business and Consumer Reports to duke it out over the details, but you know it’s a tough news day when an industry association boasts its product is almost 90% salmonella-free. It has been a tough couple of years for the meat industry, with the controversy over so-called “pink slime” (a term that has led the beef-product producer in question to sue ABC News in a South Dakota court) and this year’s horse-meat scandal in Europe. And still in recent memory for the turkey industry: America’s third-biggest meat recall ever, back in mid-2011, when 36 million pounds of ground turkey were recalled after food regulators discovered a particularly nasty — and potentially fatal — strain of salmonella at the plant where it originated. See also: Judge Orders FDA to Proceed on Food-Safety Rules – WSJ FDA Proposes Extensive Food-Safety Rules – WSJ

– It's a safe bet that any ground turkey you buy at the supermarket is laden with potentially dangerous bacteria, says Consumer Reports. Its first report on turkey meat gets off to a happy start by noting that "more than half of the packages of raw ground meat and patties tested positive for fecal bacteria." The magazine tested for five organisms—enterococcus, E. coli, staphylococcus aureus, salmonella, and campylobacter—and at least one showed up in 90% of the 257 samples, reports CBS News. CR says most of the contaminants it found were resistant to common antibiotics and blamed the overuse of drugs in feedlots. Products labeled "organic" or "no antibiotics" fared much better in this area, and the magazine encouraged their use. The turkey-meat industry is lashing back at what it calls a "misleading" and too-small study. Of the contaminants found, it writes, "the two most prevalent, enterococcus and generic E.coli, are not considered sources of foodborne illness." It also notes that only 5% of the samples tested positive for salmonella, adding: "This is borne out by more extensive government testing, which finds almost 90% of all ground turkey and 97% of whole turkeys are salmonella-free." At the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gara isn't exactly bowled over by that argument. "You know it’s a tough news day when an industry association boasts its product is almost 90% salmonella-free."

Please enable Javascript to watch this video SALT LAKE CITY -- The Utah State Legislature has passed a bill lowering the blood alcohol content level for DUI from .08 to .05. House Bill 155, sponsored by Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, passed the Senate on Wednesday night on a close 18-11 vote. Having previously passed the House, it now goes to Governor Gary Herbert for his signature or veto. The governor's office told FOX 13 on Wednesday night he plans to sign the bill into law, making Utah's DUI threshold the lowest in the nation. During Senate debate, lawmakers clashed over the bill. Some argued that it helps prevent drunk driving while others said HB155 goes too far. "It helps prevent drinking drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place," Senate Majority Whip Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said. He said Canada and a number of European countries have lower DUI levels and insisted it would help cut down on highway fatalities. But some lawmakers appeared uneasy with the bill. Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, said it makes Utah look like "a peculiar people" at a time when the state is clamoring for tourist dollars. That view was echoed by Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City. She asked rhetorically why Utah just didn't go to 0.0 as a BAC, noting that the drinking laws in Europe have people as young as 15 imbibing? Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, defended the bill saying it sends a message that Utah does not tolerate drinking and driving. "Utah leads," Sen. Adams said. In a statement to FOX 13, American Beverage Institute Managing Director Sarah Longwell said her group opposed the bill. "By passing H.B. 155 and lowering the legal BAC limit to .05 Utah legislators have damaged the state’s hospitality and tourism industries, while doing little to make the roads safer," she said. "Over 77 percent of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in Utah are caused by people with BACs of .15 and above, and the average BAC of someone in a fatal crash is .20—well over twice the legal limit. Utah legislators missed an opportunity today to target the hard-core drunk drivers who cause the vast majority of drunk driving fatalities and instead decided to criminalize perfectly responsible behavior." The Sutherland Institute praised the bill's passage. "We applaud Utah’s legislators for their decision tonight to support HB 155. A mountain of evidence suggests that moving Utah’s DUI blood alcohol content (BAC) standard to .05 will save lives and improve public safety on Utah’s roads," said Derek Monson. "This is common-sense policy in much of the civilized world, which already has a .05 BAC standard with no discernible harms to tourism, court/prison systems or the rights of responsible drinkers." The Utah Restaurant Association also opposed the bill. Melva Sine, the group's President and CEO, said restaurants will have to scramble to retrain their staff, while they worry that Utah's reputation for strange liquor laws will be cemented. "We've taken a step forward for creating other alcohol policy that's an improvement, and we've taken one giant step backwards as far as how America will look at us in terms of .05," Sine said. ||||| "This is not a drinking bill," Adams said. "It's a driving bill. It's a public safety bill." The average man would reach the legal limit with three drinks, the average woman at two. The National Transportation Safety Board recommends that all states transition to a 0.05 BAC limit. And Adams pointed out that Canada, Australia and most European countries currently use a 0.05 restriction. Utah was the first state to adopt a BAC limit of 0.08, Adams said, and should continue the trend of setting safe driving standards. "Utah leads," Adams said. "Utah led then, and I think we ought to lead now." But Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, suggested the change could hurt the state's tourism industry. It would be better to let other states lead out on lowering BAC, he said, so that Utah lawmakers could make the decision based on traffic fatality and DUI data. "Let's let another state go ahead of us," he said, "and let's see if this really will work or not." Sen. Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, said he supported the policy of a lower BAC limit, but was concerned about the timing. The Legislature's actions had already drawn attention to the state this year, he said, and a change to DUI laws would be better postponed for another session. "I think maybe this is one that I would prefer to address at a later time," he said. Sen. Lyle Hillyard said the state needs to send a message against drinking and driving. And tourists, he said, will feel safer on Utah's roads knowing that individuals who drink are electing not to drive. "Not all tourists come here to drink," he said. bwood@sltrib.com Twitter: @bjaminwood ||||| Utah could soon have the strictest DUI threshold in the nation after state lawmakers on Wednesday night voted to lower the limit for a driver's blood-alcohol content to 0.05 percent, down from 0.08 percent. The measure heads to Utah's governor, who has said he supports the legislation. If Republican Gov. Gary Herbert signs the bill, it would take effect Dec. 30, 2018 — an unusual effective date for Utah laws that would ensure the harsher standard is in place before alcohol-laden celebrations on New Year's Eve. Supporters of the legislation said it would save lives by keeping people off the road if they've been drinking. A mix of lawmakers, including Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans, opposed the measure. Some cited concerns that it could hurt tourism as the heavily Mormon state grapples with its reputation as an unfriendly place for drinkers. The proposal would mean that a 150-pound man could get a DUI after two beers, while a 120-pound woman could get one after a single drink, according to the American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade group that opposes the bill. A number of factors, including how much food is in someone's stomach, could impact how much a drink will raise someone's blood-alcohol content. American Beverage Institute Managing Director Sarah Longwell said in a statement Wednesday night that the proposal will do little to make roads safer because more than 77 percent of alcohol-related traffic deaths in Utah come from drivers with a blood-alcohol content of 0.15 and above. "Utah legislators missed an opportunity today to target the hard-core drunk drivers who cause the vast majority of drunk driving fatalities and instead decided to criminalize perfectly responsible behavior," Longwell said. Lawmakers in Washington are considering lowering the limit for blood-alcohol content this year, while a similar proposal recently died in Hawaii's Legislature. Across the country, the blood-alcohol content limit for most drivers is 0.08, but limits vary among states for commercial drivers or drivers who have had a past DUI conviction. Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, who sponsored Utah's measure, said it's important because a person starts to become impaired with the first drink. He notes a number of foreign countries have blood-alcohol content thresholds at 0.05. or lower. At a blood-alcohol content of 0.05 percent, a driver may have trouble steering and have a harder time coordinating, tracking moving objects and responding to emergencies, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For several years, the National Transportation Safety Board has encouraged states to drop their blood-alcohol content levels to 0.05 or even lower, though local officials have not adopted the standards, in part because of pressure from the hospitality industry. The tougher stance on DUIs comes as Utah legislators passed changes Wednesday easing other liquor laws that deal with the preparation of alcoholic drinks in restaurants. That measure, waiting for approval from the governor, would let diners see their drinks being poured or mixed if restaurants set up child-free buffer zones around bars. Associated Press writer Hallie Golden contributed to this report. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– Rolling out what the AP calls "the toughest DUI limit" in the country, Utah lawmakers have brought a new measure to the governor's desk that would limit a driver's legal blood-alcohol content to 0.05%. House Bill 155—which would go into effect right before New Year's Eve on Dec. 30, 2018, if Gov. Gary Herbert signs off—passed in the state Senate Wednesday, Fox 13 reports. Herbert's office informed the station he would indeed approve the measure. All other states currently have DUI limits set at 0.08% (though the AP notes that limit may vary for commercial drivers and those who have past DUIs), which would make Utah's the lowest in the country once it's given the governor's OK. The National Transportation Safety Board wants all states to follow suit, notes the Salt Lake Tribune. Republican Rep. Norman Thurston, the bill's sponsor, compares the new limit to lower ones in Canada and some EU countries, asserting the measure will cut down on deaths. But critics say the ceiling—which the American Beverage Institute says a 120-pound woman may hit after just one drink, depending on how much she's eaten—will mar the state's hospitality and tourism industries and make the Mormon-leaning state look more "peculiar" to outsiders, as one senator put it. The managing director of the ABI also argues that most DUI-related deaths are tied to drivers who well exceed legal limits. Still, the law may keep those who've imbibed from "getting behind the wheel in the first place," says GOP Senate Majority Whip Stuart Adams. (An alcohol-gauging tat, maybe?)

The New York liberal media elite has been nice so far, laughing with him rather than at him. Today, they seem to have tired of their plaything. Johnston's first mistake was personally snubbing Richard Johnson at the Fleshbot awards on Wednesday at the Box. Today's Page Six item has a distinct whiff of revenge about it. The Post reports that Johnston and Tank Jones tried to get nightclub M2 to pay them $3000 to show up that night. When that didn't work they asked for $1800. And were finally offered a round of soft drinks. The Daily News has a very sarcastic tone today too. A Gatecrasher piece takes a line Johnston told them at the Box - that he'd like to see the memoir he's working on made into a movie - and responds thusly: Johnston, it seems, is undeterred by the fact that he has yet to finish writing the tell-all tome, decide on a title or even find a publisher. The rest of the item is no less passive-aggresive. At least he can always go back to the Palin household, according to Sarah in this clip from her interview with Oprah: Watch CBS News Videos Online ||||| At this very moment, Levi Johnston is undressing for a Playgirl photo shoot. But last night he was at The Box accepting an award from Fleshbot while a scrum of reporters poked and probed the Wasilla boy for a story. He did a remarkable job of not saying much. At 8:15 the party had barely begun at the downtown hotspot, known for its strict velvet rope and the racy performances on its main stage, the gregarious Tank Jones and his brother Marvin (in the role as Levi's trainer) were some of the first people to arrive. They installed the one-time human campaign prop at a table in the corner of the balcony so that several PR people could start the parade of press. The rest of the venue was practically empty, but everyone was clustered around Levi. As the Observer's John Koblin interviewed Playgirl's spokesman Daniel Nardicio about the future of the magazine, the Levi interviews started. Everyone made way for a camera crew from Entertainment Tonight, which has exclusive access to Levi for all the behind-the-scenes action for the photo shoot that is taking place right now (if everything goes according to schedule). We didn't get close enough to hear what they asked during their ten minutes with Levi. As they clear out, there were more print interviews to do. Michael Musto came by to say hi, but he interviewed Levi at his hotel earlier. I asked Musto if he was a good interview. He said yes, but agrees that it's hard to get him to say much. Jo Piazza from CNN came in and taped a few second with the Johnston crew. Before she started her interveiew, Tank said he's not answering questions about Sarah Palin or about suing for custody of Tripp, Levi's son with Palin's daughter Bristol. Then he flirted with her a little bit as she squeezed in next to Levi to ask her questions. Most of the questions were the same all night: How is this different from Alaska? What is he going to show? Is he ready for the shoot? Does he know that he's a gay icon? Will he do more porn? What does the future hold? Levi always answers with the fewest words possible. This may make him appear a bit dim, but it seems a smart move for a guy who's standing around a bunch of people paid to turn any utterance he makes into "news." With the reporters gone, he quietly joked with Tank and Marvin. When Piazza was done, he joked a bit with Nardicio, teaching him how to tuck a dollop of chew under his lip. "Don't you throw up on this table!" Tank chided. A PR person came by and said there were more interviews to be done. "I know. This isn't my first rodeo," Levi said. Another reporter sat down, this one from People. They knew to send a pretty girl. When she left, the PR man told Tank that Page Six boss Richard Johnson wanted an introduction. Tank responded, "We're not talking to them. No pictures, nothing." The PR man conveyed the message to Johnson. "He just wants to say hi," Mr. PR pleaded with Tank. But Tank had made up his mind: No Levi for Johnson. "That's fine," said the Page Six editor before heading back downstairs. After he left, Tank complained about a Page Six item accusing Levi having a small dick and thus afraid to do any full-frontal shots: "That's not true!" There was a break in the action and a PR girl brought by the trophy Levi will receive later in the evening: an 11-inch dildo made of silver. Everyone at the table laughed nervously and made jokes about how Levi isn't going to accept a dildo. Levi returned his trophy to the nice lady and said, "I can't believe I just won a giant silver dildo." He and Tank conferred and decide there can't be any pictures taken of him holding it, so they plan to have Nardicio take the stage with him and hold the award. Then the photographers arrived. In groups of two, they came by the corner, their flashbulbs blinding in the dark club. Levi knew to look directly into the camera and then occasionally look away to blink. He didn't look like he was having any fun. When all that was over, he passed some time ogling the scantily-clad go-go dancers down below. Tank said, "Those are all real women right? I don't want to look if they're not real women." Another laugh. Nardicio tells them that they're all real women. I pointed out that there were definitely some drag queens in the mix. "That's OK, I didn't want those ones anyway," Levi responded. He told me that he hadn't had any time to go out and party while in New York City. "It's been all work. I'm all about business," he says. "But I like New York more each time I come here." What does he think about this event? "It's different," is all he'll say. As the show starts, Gawker alum Joshua David Stein showed up asking questions for New York magazine. It was getting loud, the house was full. Tank informed him they'd do an interview later. Levi leaned over the balcony to watching the award ceremony on stage and performances by the likes of boy/boy/girl aerialist trio Mantryx. When the intermission came, the crew decided to go outside for some air. Out on the sidewalk, it is a whole different scene. Dressed in identical tuxedos like they all went shopping at the same men's store earlier that evening, they moved as a unit. Flanked by two enormous black men, Levi wasn't easy to approach. That didn't stop the reporters. Kelefa Sanneh from the New Yorker came up received a stern lecture from Tank about not asking about Palin or custody. Sanneh started his round of questioning but was cut off by the arrival of two 20-something guys who made up TMZ's camera crew. They'd been tailing Levi and his crew ever since they arrived in New York and seemed almost like old friends. Sanneh backed off, to avoid getting captured by their camera. TMZ doesn't care about restrictions and they began asking about custody and Palin. Tank demurred. "Come on, you know better than that." While Tank was distracted by dealing with the TMZ mess, Jacob Bernstein from The Daily Beast snuck up and peppered Levi with questions and scribbled furiously in his notebook. A male-female duo from Hollywood Life sidled up and began asking their own questions and with a Flip camera. After the questions, the Hollywood Life crew each took their picture with Levi. With Levi alone again, Sanneh came back for a second attempt at an interview. This time, though, he talked more to Tank that Levi. It's easy to go that direction, since Tank is a gregarious quote machine while Levi answers everything with about three words. Levi was scheduled to accept his award as soon as the ceremony restarted after the intermission. The PR girl shadowing him told him and Nardicio to go hang out at Nick Denton's table so they'd be right next to the stage. but there isn't any room at the Gawker Media overlord's table. Levi headed instead for socialite Tinsley Mortimer's table where photographers eagerly snapped the unlikely pairing. Joshua David Stein returned for his promised interview, but Levi said he needs clear it with Tank. Stein rebutted that Tank had already cleared it, but Levi — who either didn't remember, didn't care, or simply wanted to protect himself — turned him down again, this time a little more firmly. Marvin stepped in and said they'd talk to Tank and do the interview later. Levi asked who he needs to thank in his speech which he obviously hasn't thought about until then. Nardicio told him to thank Fleshbot and The Box. Levi added that he should also say something about the upcoming issue of Playgirl and to tell people to buy it. He is all business. When his award was announced he and Nardicio went on stage where Levi successfully avoided being photographed with a big silver dildo. His speech was exactly what he planned: He thanked Fleshbot and The Box and then told everyone to buy his issue of Playgirl. After leaving the stage, he meets up with Tank and Marvin and they head out the door. He has to get up early to work out before his big shoot. Our colleague Irin over at Jezebel got her questions answered about the type of ladies Levi likes and JDS eventually got his interview, making poor Richard Johnson the only person denied the chance to exchange banalities with the man of the hour. Levi, like he said, was all about business, and last night his business was spectacle. Top three photos by Hee Jin Kang, bottom by GuestofaGuest ||||| Levi Johnston could use smarter management. The 19-year-old impregnator of Bristol Palin is being handled by Tank Jones, a refrigerator-size fellow who doubles as his bodyguard. But Tank has made some dubious decisions. Not only is Levi posing for Playgirl, but he also was honored Wednesday night at The Box along with some porn stars and fashion designer Patricia Field. As least he was smart enough not to be photographed handling his Fleshbot Award, a chrome phallus presented to the other honorees of Nick Denton‘s porn-loving Web site. Sources also say that Tank offered to bring Levi to the club M2 for a fee of $3,000. “When M2 turned it down, they came back with a fire-sale price of $1,800,” said an insider. “They again declined and offered him a table with a round of soft drinks.” We’d ask Johnston, but Jones wouldn’t let the Alaskan talk to Page Six at The Box. PHOTOS: LEVI JOHNSTON Incognito Post reporter Justin Rocket Silverman, however, managed to score an on-camera interview with Johnston. Check it out below. ||||| Levi Johnston: The Movie? Bristol Palin baby daddy has big screen hopes Watts/News, Sussman/Getty Levi Johnston has hopes that a big screen adaptation of his upcoming memoir would have him starring as himself. Who would you have play Bristol Palin? What could be more skeevy than looking at Levi Johnston naked in Playgirl? How about watching him romp around naked on the big screen. Bristol Palin’s baby daddy says he sees his upcoming memoir becoming a movie. “I would play myself,” the chatty Alaskan told us, without skipping a beat, on Wednesday night. Johnston, it seems, is undeterred by the fact that he has yet to finish writing the tell-all tome, decide on a title or even find a publisher. “Levi: The Movie” (the title is ours) is just one of the “really big projects” (pun most certainly intended) the 19-year-old boasts he has coming up during the next few weeks. Also on his agenda? Levi says “more photo shoots,” which we can only hope are not in the buff, and, as usual, getting under Sarah Palin’s skin. But that’s not all: Johnston believes he’ll also have his hands full fending off his (miraculously) growing Rolodex of female admirers. “Right now I’m really not looking for a girlfriend,” he insists, acknowledging that his popularity has skyrocketed in the last few months. But when “Play”-boy Johnston does settle down, the lady in question is going to have to measure up to his pretty rigid set of standards. “When the time comes, obviously I want someone smart.” Obviously. “I don’t want no ditsy girl.” Of course not. “I don’t need a high-class woman.” No, Levi, you certainly don’t. SEEN & HEARD: Maggie Gyllenhaal gushing during the launch of the Louis Vuitton 2010 Cruise Collection at Saks on Tuesday night that her part in the upcoming “Crazy Heart” is her “favorite role of her entire life.” … Paul Shaffer joking about his next project: “Elvis and Sinatra are dead, but I hear that Khloe Kardashian sings,” during a talk with Glenn Close at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday night. … Mark Wahlberg leaving a $10 tip on $5 gelato at Screme on Broadway and 69th St. on Wednesday.

– Page Six wasn’t allowed access to Levi Johnston when he was honored at Wednesday’s Fleshbot Awards, the New York Post whines today, adding that Johnston should fire his manager. In a behind-the-scenes look at Johnston’s night, Gawker explains the reason for the beef: Johnston’s team is upset about a “not true” Page Six report that Levi was going to dodge full-frontal shots in his Playgirl show-all for fear that he didn't measure up. Not only is the Post getting revenge on Levi (today’s item offers an embarrassing story about a nightclub refusing to pay him for an appearance), but, Gawker points out, the New York Daily News seems similarly disillusioned with Bristol Palin’s babydaddy, calling his Playgirl appearance “skeevy” and mocking him for wanting to turn his yet-to-be-completed tell-all into a movie.

“What you are about to read is our no-fail, no-nonsense (well, some would say it’s ALL-nonsense) insider’s guide to take you from nobody to notorious.” The introduction of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt‘s book (yes, they wrote a book) How To Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture pretty much sums up the tone of their book. Speidi let you know that they are completely aware and make no apologies for being self-absorbed, self-serving and self centered — making their new “how-to” tolerable, and at times, amusing. Heidi and Spencer present a 10-step plan on how to go from nobodies to notorious , the way they claim they did it themselves. They never mention names of the show they are on or their enemies due to “you know, legal stuff,” but it’s easy to figure out who they mean. The “top-secret” book is laid out in 10 chapters written by Spencer, Heidi or Speidi the entity. There are plenty of black and white paparazzi pics of the pair sprinkled throughout as well as a collection of colored photos in the middle. The book is only 128 pages long and can easily be read in a few hours — one thing you can thank Speidi for! Spencer shares a “Guide to Playing the Villain” and acknowledges that, “Given how the general public feels about me, the chances are that if you’re reading this right now, you can’t stand me. I get it. If I weren’t me, I’d HATE me.” Heidi explains why “Getting Work Done Is Your Job” and details which procedures you should have done if you want to be famous. “There is no surgery you can get that will get you more instant attention, and you know why? Because people are ALREADY staring at your boobs!” she writes. Each chapter include pictures that act out —really putting their Hills skills to the test — what they are talking about. For example, Heidi gives readers step-by-step picture instructions on “How to Say ‘I Hate You’ Without Saying a Word” in her “Guide to Playing the Bombshell” chapter. The most refreshing thing about this book is that it can be read (and probably should be read) as a joke. They acknowledge that they are ridiculous and that celebrity culture in general is ridiculous. It might have been better if they had just written a book about their side of the story, because it’s hard — okay, impossible — to take their advice on “how to be famous” seriously. However, they do make some good points: Paparazzi should be a celeb’s friend because after all they do help their career; celebs shouldn’t wear sunglasses if they want to make covers and they should share their stories if they want to build their brand. If their goal for the book is to entertain people (and charge $19.99 a book) by mocking themselves and other celebrities, then this book is a resounding success. How To Be Famous is available everywhere Nov. 16. CHECK OUT SOME PICS FROM THE BOOK: Photo Source: PacificCoastNews.com ||||| Chapter Titles: Your Point of Entry, Spencer's Guide to Playing the Villain, Heidi's Guide to Playing the Bombshell, Pretty on the Outside!, The Paps are Your Friends, Tell Your Story, Couple Power!, Building Your Brand, Getting Word Done Is Your Job, By Heidi, Famously Ever After, Epilogue, In Case of Emergency Format: Hardcover Precis: How to be Famous is a guide to the formula used by Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag on how they got famous for... well... being famous. Their formula seems to mostly consist of walking a well-balanced line where you don't cross into taboodom, but you get as much overexposure and drama involving yourselves as possible. They talk about the Jennifer Garner method of trading up your partner. The Angelina Jolie method of getting the one you want. The beneficial parts of being a (please excuse my language) [...] and villain and backstabbing your way to the top are also mentioned. They talk about how the sum of two parts is greater than the whole and back it up with the formula Speidi > Spencer + Heidi. I mean, these guys should know, right? Because they are reality TV stars who made themselves one of the most photographed and talked about couples in Hollywood, so who better to teach you how to become famous than the people who became famous while not using any talents or accomplishing anything extraordinary. And just think, all this for less than the price of 5 US Weeklies. Verdict: I Heart It. Read this like a guide to get famous, and you'll be sorely disappointed. Read this like the humor that its intended to be, and you'll laugh. I guess that if you really wanted to be famous (but by reading this it only reiterated to me that I do not, in fact) there are some tips that you could pick up along the way. There are about ten gazillion pictures in this little book, so the reading isn't heavy at all. It's just a matter of determining how much Speidi you can look at in one sitting that will determine when you will put it down. This would make a great gift for that social climber you know or that wannabe Hollywood starlet next door. Just sayin' since Christmas is around the corner. [...]

– Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag’s new book, How To Be Famous, hits shelves Monday. From offering up photo-by-photo instructions on “how to say ‘I hate you’ without saying a word” to hard-hitting advice about which body parts to have surgically enhanced, this book has it all—including 10 simple steps for going from “nobody to notorious.” Other tidbits, by way of OK!, include: Lose the sunglasses if you want that paparazzi photo to grace a mag cover. Speaking of paparazzi, they're the fame-seeker's BFFs. Sample chapter: "Guide to Playing the Bombshell." Apparently it only takes 128 photo-filled pages to learn everything you need to know. Gotta love their belief in Speidi: Amazon.com’s About the Author is the simple line, “Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are famous.”

Bystander captured video of Omar J. Gonzalez who jumped the fence around the White House Friday and sparked a security alert. Gonzalez got inside the front door of the White House before getting caught. (Alan Pawlinski via YouTube) Bystander captured video of Omar J. Gonzalez who jumped the fence around the White House Friday and sparked a security alert. Gonzalez got inside the front door of the White House before getting caught. (Alan Pawlinski via YouTube) Federal prosecutors alleged Monday in federal court that a man who jumped a fence and ran into the White House’s unlocked front door Friday night posed a threat to President Obama and was keeping 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car, parked blocks away. Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, formerly of Copperas Cove, Tex., appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the District on one charge of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. After a 15-minute hearing, Facciola ordered Gonzalez held until Oct. 1, pending revocation of bond by authorities in an unrelated July 19 incident in Wythe County, Va. In that case, he was arrested while allegedly carrying a sawed-off shotgun, two sniper rifles and several other firearms, as well as a map of the Washington area with the Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Va., circled and a line pointed toward the White House, a local prosecutor said. Authorities in Wythe County, about 300 miles southwest of Washington, released Gonzalez and referred to a grand jury felony charges of eluding a police officer while possessing a sawed-off shotgun. On Aug. 25, U.S. Secret Service officers saw Gonzalez carrying a hatchet in the back waistband of his pants along the south fence of the White House and questioned him, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Mudd said. Gonzalez agreed to let them search his vehicle, parked nearby on New York Avenue NW, but at that time they found only camping gear and two dogs, and released him, Mudd said. This Sept. 21, 2009 photo provided by Jerry Murphy shows Omar Gonzalez, who was married to Murphy's mother, Samantha, until they divorced in 2012. (AP) The Secret Service learned of the circumstances surrounding Gonzalez’s July 19 arrest in Wythe County shortly after stopping him last month, according to a person familiar with the facts of the case, but it is unclear exactly when or how it factored into its decision to release him or take any further actions. A spokesman for the Secret Service declined to comment on an active criminal case and said a comprehensive after-action review was underway including Gonzalez’s criminal history and contacts with agency personnel. On Monday, Mudd told the federal court, Gonzalez’s “preoccupation with the White House and accumulation of a large amount of ammunition in apparently a short period of time represented a danger to the president.” The Secret Service on Saturday began a security review to learn how Gonzalez, who was carrying a Spyerdco VG10 folding knife with a 31 / 2 - inch serrated blade in his pocket, was allegedly able to breach the White House doors after jumping the Pennsylvania Avenue fence and sprinting more than 70 yards across the North Lawn. It is the first time a fence-jumper has entered the White House. Obama and his family had left the White House about 10 minutes before the incident occurred at 7:20 p.m. Friday. In the wake of the incident the Secret Service has increased foot patrols and stepped-up surveillance, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday. He said changes also were made at the gate used by guests. “The Secret Service does a great job,” Obama said Monday. “I’m grateful for all the sacrifices they make on my behalf and on my family’s behalf.” 1 of 26 Full Screen Autoplay Close Sept. 20, 2014 Sept. 19, 2014 1861-1980 Skip Ad × Security reviewed after fence-jumper enters White House View Photos The Secret Service is under scrutiny after a man scaled the White House fence and made it all the way through the front door before he was apprehended. Caption The Secret Service is under scrutiny after a man scaled the White House fence and made it all the way into the East Room. Sept. 22, 2014 Security is heightened around the White House following Friday’s breach. Omar Jose Gonzalez, 42, appeared before a judge on one charge of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon. Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. According to an affidavit signed by Secret Service officer David Hochman, Gonzalez after his arrest told Agent Lee Smart that he was concerned that the “atmosphere was collapsing” and that he needed to inform the president to get the word out to the people. However, neither prosecutors nor Gonzalez’s assigned defense attorneys invoked his mental competency as an issue for now. Assistant Federal Public Defender David Bos said Gonzalez understands the proceeding against him. Gonzalez’s friends and relatives said that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving six years in Iraq with the Army Special Forces as a sniper, and that he had been living in his car and staying where he could for the past couple of years. Gonzalez’s attorneys have said that Gonzalez has no convictions and that he served 18 years in the U.S. military, including three tours in Iraq. The Army said he served from 1997 until his discharge in 2003, and again from 2005 to December 2012, when he retired due to disability. The Army said he was a cavalry scout and served in Iraq from October 2006 to January 2008 and had been posted to Fort Hood, Tex. and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in Washington state. In the Virginia incident, Gonzalez was arrested before noon July 19 while driving a gray Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle northbound on Interstate 81 near Wytheville, after reaching a speed of 83 miles per hour, driving in the median several times, and not responding to a Virginia State Police trooper’s signal to stop, prompting other troopers to join a 20-mile chase, according to Wythe County prosecutors. In the SUV, police found two sniper rifles, an assault rifle, a bolt-action rifle, one sawed-off and one intact shot gun, five handguns, more than seven loaded magazines of ammunition and the map, authorities said. In addition to the marks around the Masonic Temple and White House, handwriting on the map read “Easter mon” and “Manassas Battlefield yellow trail,” said Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney David Saliba. The only illegal firearm was the sawed-off shot gun, Saliba said, although State Police seized all the weapons pursuant to a search warrant in Pulaski County where Gonzalez was pulled over, and are holding them as evidence. Gonzalez posted $5,000 bond and was released from jail that day, Saliba said. Gonzalez returned to Wythe County General District Court Sept 11, where a judge referred felony counts of eluding police and possessing a sawed-off shotgun to a grand jury, which is scheduled to meet Oct. 20, and prosecutors dropped misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and improper passing, Saliba said. Saliba said State Police troopers noted that Gonzalez indicated he was a veteran and had been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, but they did not regard him as dangerous or mentally unstable. Saliba said he believed the case was handled appropriately. “We see a lot of cases on the interstate. We have [Interstates] 81 and 77 both running through here. But for the sheer number of guns, the only illegal firearm was the sawed-off shotgun,” Saliba said. He added, “And he [Gonzalez] was former military. He had been discharged, and he did not to the trooper seem to be a threat or anything like that.” Secret Service officers are trained not to shoot intruders on the grounds unless they appear armed or are wearing bulky clothing or backpacks that could indicate they are carrying a bomb. The officers did not release an attack dog for reasons that are under investigation. The Secret Service is considering closing portions of Pennsylvania Avenue to the public, adding barriers around the White House compound’s perimeter and screening visitors farther from entrance gates. This story has been updated. ||||| Story highlights A White House fence jumper had more than 800 rounds of ammunition Omar Gonzalez also reportedly had hatchets and a machete in his car In August, he was arrested with a map of the White House circled Gonzalez did three tours in Iraq, his mental state worsened after each, his ex-stepson says The U.S. Secret Service boosted its presence and its surveillance measures around the White House on Monday after an Iraq war veteran, who is apparently suffering from PTSD , jumped over a White House fence. Officers patrolling the area will be out in greater numbers and will be "looking for individuals who don't look like tourists," a federal law enforcement officer told CNN. Two security incidents in two days have raised concerns about the safety at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. On Friday, Omar Gonzalez hopped the north fence and sprinted just past the north portico White House doors when he was stopped, Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said. Gonzalez carried a Spyderco VG-10 folding knife with a 3½-inch serrated blade in his pants pocket, according to an affidavit. JUST WATCHED Lawyer: W.H. jumper had 800 ammo rounds Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Lawyer: W.H. jumper had 800 ammo rounds 03:17 JUST WATCHED Man barges in White House within seconds Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Man barges in White House within seconds 01:56 JUST WATCHED Obama 'concerned' about security breach Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Obama 'concerned' about security breach 02:51 JUST WATCHED White House intruder was carrying knife Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH White House intruder was carrying knife 01:40 JUST WATCHED Video shows White House fence jumper Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Video shows White House fence jumper 03:00 JUST WATCHED Second security incident at White House Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Second security incident at White House 02:02 He allowed authorities to search his car, where police say they found more than 800 rounds of ammunition in boxes and magazines. They also found two hatchets and a machete in his car. A Secret Service officer said he yelled at the intruder to stop. Gonzalez told a Secret Service agent "that he was concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the President of the United States so that he could get the word out to the people," according to the affidavit. President Barack Obama and his family were not at home at the time. Friday was not Gonzalez's first run in with police. In July, he was arrested in Wythe County, Virginia, and charged with possession of a shotgun and a sniper rifle. He was also charged with eluding and evading arrest. In addition, police say they found a map with the White House circled. In late August, Gonzalez was stopped while walking along the White House fence. He carried a hatchet and allowed police to search his car, where they found camping gear and two dogs. He was not arrested then. Deteriorating mental state Gonzalez's former stepson told CNN's Mary Grace Lucas that Gonzalez is an Iraq war veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder Gonzalez did three tours in Iraq and is a "great, great guy," his ex-stepson, Jerry S. Murphy, said. He said the knife that was found in Gonzalez's pocket was a weapon the veteran routinely carried. Murphy said Gonzalez's eight-year marriage to Murphy's mother ended two years ago, confirmed by marriage records. He said he last spoke to Gonzalez around the time of the split but knows that Gonzalez was seeing a therapist on base at Fort Hood in Texas. Murphy said his former stepfather was diagnosed with PTSD and paranoia, and his base psychiatrist had prescribed medication for both conditions. Murphy views Gonzalez as a "hero" who took great pride in serving his country. But after each deployment, Gonzalez's mental state seemed to deteriorate, Murphy said. Gonzalez is accused of unlawfully entering a restricted building or grounds while carrying a deadly or dangerous weapon, officials said. He appeared Monday in court, where a judge decided Gonzalez was a flight risk and a potential danger to the President. He will be held in custody until his next hearing, scheduled for October 1. Minutes before Gonzalez jumped the fence, the President and his daughters left the South Lawn by helicopter. It is not clear where First Lady Michelle Obama was, but officials tell CNN that the family was staying at Camp David, Maryland, for the weekend. Another security incident In the second security incident over the weekend, Kevin Carr is accused of driving up to a security barrier Saturday and trying to walk to and enter the White House. Carr, of Shamong, New Jersey, was arrested and charged with unlawful entry, Leary told CNN. Records show Carr was born in 1995, making him about 19 years old. According to Leary, the incident happened at the entrance at 15th and E streets, where the driver did not stop when the Secret Service ordered him to do so. The man's car did not hit the barriers at the entrance, and the driver got out of his vehicle. Carr was arrested after he refused to leave, Leary said. The Obamas were not at home at the time of the second incident either. Criticism of White House security The Secret Service said Gonzalez should have been stopped faster and are investigating personnel and reviewing security policies and procedures. Rep. Peter King, R-New York, demanded a full investigation and called for a congressional hearing to ensure that changes are made. "There can be a lot of conspiracies against a President. A lot of very complex assassination plots," King said on Fox News. "This is the most basic, the most simple type of procedure and how anyone, especially in these days of ISIS, and we're concerned about terrorist attacks, someone could actually get into the White House without being stopped is inexcusable." In a statement from White House on Saturday night, spokesman Frank Benenati said the President expressed his support for the Secret Service. "The President has full confidence in the Secret Service and is grateful to the men and women who day in and day out protect himself, his family and the White House," the statement read. "The Secret Service is in the process of conducting a thorough review of the event on Friday evening, and we are certain it will be done with the same professionalism and commitment to duty that we and the American people expect from the USSS."

– A former Army soldier accused of sprinting across the White House lawn and into the executive mansion on Friday had over 800 rounds of ammunition, a machete, and two hatchets in his car, prosecutors said today. They made their allegations during a 20-minute federal hearing where the suspect, Omar Gonzalez, was ordered held until Oct. 1 pending the dismissal of a bond in another arrest, the Washington Post reports. In that earlier incident, Gonzalez allegedly had a sawed off shotgun, two powerful rifles, four handguns, and other guns and ammunition in his Ford Bronco when troopers stopped him in southwestern Virginia on July 19. Officials say Gonzalez initially tried to flee troopers, weaving and driving onto a highway median. He was arrested at the scene after a trooper found the illegal shotgun in his car. Gonzalez also had a map of Washington, DC, and camping equipment. In another incident, Gonzalez was apparently walking by the White House with a hatchet in his waistband and was stopped by Secret Service officers but not detained. Gonzalez's White House break-in—for which he faces up to 10 years in prison—has triggered a review of how the US Secret Service failed to stop him. Today the Secret Service beefed up its presence around the White House, CNN reports. (Gonzalez's relatives say he has PTSD and needs help.)

A boy who jumped off an overpass on the Saw Mill River Parkway is still recovering after an off-duty police officer took the jump after him to save his life. Hastings-on-Hudson Officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo says she was driving northbound on the parkway on Friday when she saw the boy running against traffic just before Exit 9. The boy then stopped and jumped about 30-feet below into an empty city storage yard. “I was shocked. That's why I knew I had to stop and do something,” said Cavallo. The officer grabbed a first aid kit and took nearly the same jump as the boy. The officer administered CPR and first aid with the help of another good Samaritan. They were able to put a neckbrace on him, make a splint for his arm and clear blood from his airway. The boy is being treated at Westchester Medical Center for broken bones and other injures. Doctors say he is expected to survive. The child is reportedly between 12 and 13 years old and a student at the Andrus School for vulnerable children. That school is located less than two miles away from where he made the near-fatal jump. News 12 reached out to the Andrus School for more information on the boy, but no one was available to comment. ||||| CLOSE There are several state roadwork projects scheduled this week in Westchester County, on the Hutchinson and Saw Mill river parkways; the Sprain Brook and Taconic state parkways; Routes 1, 6, 9, 9A, 22, 100, 100C, 117, 141, and 202, as well as interstates 87, 95, 287 and 684 and a local state road in Yonkers, according to 511ny.org. Video by Christopher J. Eberhart Wochit Officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo (Photo: Submitted) Hastings-on-Hudson Police Officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo said she was on her way to work Friday afternoon when she saw a boy running along the Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers. With horror, she said she watched the boy climb up over a guardrail and jump several feet from an overpass onto concrete below. "Everything happened so fast and I think my adrenaline was pumping so high," she said. "He just climbed up and jumped off." She said she immediately parked her car on the shoulder, stuffed her pockets with first-aid materials from her car and then jumped after the boy, who she said looked like a young teenager. "I wasn't thinking too much," she said. "I just knew, when I looked down and saw him ... he looked dead. I couldn't see anything other than blood. I thought to myself, 'He needs help. I need to help him.'" FOLLOW-UP:Boy, Hastings cop jump off overpass: How boy's doing, new details on incident MONEY: Does New York owe you money? Check our new and updated database TV: Westchester chef, Pleasantville home cook tie on 'Food Network Star' HIGHEST PAID:Westchester's top 100 earners: Correction, county police top 2017 list DRONE: Watch from the air: The Tappan Zee Bridge being taken apart She said another woman, in a military uniform, also stopped to help. "Both me and her together, we were able to aid him and assist him," she said. The boy was unresponsive, she said, and they put a neck brace and a splint on him, and checked his airway. "We were talking to each other like we worked together," she said of the other woman. After some time, the boy opened his eyes, but was mostly non-responsive, Ferreira Cavallo said. "I was talking," she said. "He wasn't really responding back." Police and an ambulance transported the boy to Westchester Medical Center. A call to the hospital was not immediately returned Sunday and the boy's condition was unknown. It wasn't until Saturday, she said, that Ferreira Cavallo realized what she had done. "Friday, after this whole thing happened, I went to work and worked to 11 p.m.," she said. "I didn't realize what was going on until yesterday. That's when it hit me. I didn't realize how high it was. It seemed doable. It didn't seem that high. I thought I jumped over a brick wall, or a cement barrier. It was so fast. It was more like tunnel vision. I saw the boy and I needed to get to him. I didn't see anything else." She was heading to the hospital Sunday to visit the boy. "I really want to know how he is doing," she said. "I don't know anything about him. I don't know his name or anything." She said she hoped the hospital lets her see him. "I just hope that he's doing well," she said. "I just want to give him a hug." This isn't the first time Ferreira Cavallo has saved a life. The 28-year-old officer said she has received about six lifesaving awards in her seven years as a police officer. While working as a Mount Vernon officer, she saved an elderly man after a heart attack by using a defibrillator and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and she received several awards in Hastings for administering naloxone in heroin overdoses. She has also been recognized for undercover work with the FBI and a county task force. Twitter: @ReporterRox Read or Share this story: https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/hastings-on-hudson/2018/08/05/hastings-hudson-officer-saves-boy/910113002/

– A New York cop risked life and limb to rescue a boy she watched jump off a highway overpass. Per the Journal News, Jessie Ferreira Cavallo was on her way to work as a police officer in Westchester County last week when she spotted the young teen on the Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers. As she drove, Cavallo watched as the boy climbed over a guardrail and jumped several feet down. The seven-year police veteran followed right behind the boy and jumped down herself, a risky move that would ultimately pay off. Per News12, a second woman—this one in a military uniform—stopped to assist and the two women began to give the unresponsive boy CPR and strap on a neck brace. The boy was then rushed to a hospital, where he was treated for broken bones. He is expected to survive. As for Cavallo, she said she just went to work and about her day as usual after the jarring experience. "I went to work and worked to 11pm," she told the Journal News on Sunday. "I didn't realize what was going on until yesterday. That's when it hit me." She said she hopes to visit the boy in the hospital.

When next winter's storms subside, a specialized ship will begin a slow crossing, lowering a skinny cable into its wake along a precisely prescribed path: the shortest distance between New York and London. Owned by Summit, N.J.-based Hibernia Atlantic, the $300 million wire will bring the two financial capitals 5.2 milliseconds closer together—a boon to high-speed electronic traders. Four thousand miles to the south, a second ship owned by a different company will move in parallel, laying a cable that will link—for the first time—Brazil and Angola. And in 2014, it will happen again, twice: from Virginia Beach to San Sebastián, Spain, and from Brazil to Nigeria. For those with memories of the global cable-laying spree that helped to drive telecommunications companies into bankruptcy in the 1990s, this will raise eyebrows. But all those cables are nearly full now. And there are other parts of the world demanding direct connections. Photos: Undersea Communications Cables Connect Continents View Slideshow Andrew Blum The precise point of connection is known as 'the beach manhole,' a small underground vault where the undersea cable is tied to terra firma. If the Internet is a global phenomenon, it's because there are tubes underneath the ocean. They are the fundamental medium of the global village. The fiber-optic technology is fantastically complex and dependent on the latest materials and computing technology. Yet the basic principle of the cables is shockingly simple: Light goes in on one shore of the ocean and comes out on the other. At each end of the cable is a landing station, around the size of a large house, often tucked away inconspicuously in a quiet seaside neighborhood. It is a lighthouse; its fundamental purpose is to illuminate the fiber-optic strands. To make the light travel enormous distances, thousands of volts of electricity are sent through the cable's copper sleeve to power repeaters, each the size and roughly the shape of a bluefin tuna. One rests on the ocean floor every 50 miles or so. Inside its pressurized case is a miniature racetrack of the element erbium, which, when energized, gooses along the photons, like a waterwheel. It's all wonderfully poetic, an ultimate enjoining of the unfathomable mysteries of the digital world with the even more unfathomable mysteries of the oceans. How does it all work? One company might own the fiber-optic cables, while another operates the light signals pulsing over that fiber, and a third owns (or more likely rents) the bandwidth encoded in that light. The dozen or so cables that cross the Atlantic are owned by boutique outfits like Hibernia Atlantic and Apollo; consortia of incumbent telecoms like Verizon, Sprint and Deutsche Telekom; or "backbones" with less familiar names, like Level 3 and Tata Communications. They sell passage to any company that operates its own global data network: from Qatar Telecom to Swisscom, Facebook to Goldman Sachs. Prices are perpetually falling. As the Englishmen who dominate the undersea cable industry like to say, the capacity they're selling is too often "cheap as chips." Determining a cable's route requires navigating a maze of economics, geopolitics and topography. Specialized ships conduct surveys of the ocean bottom, plotting routes over and around underwater mountains. The paths carefully avoid major shipping lanes, to limit the risk of damage from dragging anchors. If a cable does fail, a repair ship is dispatched to lift both ends to the surface using grappling hooks and fuse the ends back together—a slow, expensive process. Further complicating matters is the demand for low "latency," the networking term for how long it takes information to travel across the cable. Latency used to be a concern only for the telephone people, eager to avoid an unnatural delay in conversations. Now it's become an obsession of the financial industry, to serve the needs of high-speed automated trading, where computers arbitrage based on knowing the market news an extra millisecond in advance. Since the speed of light through a cable is consistent, the difference is entirely in the length of its path. Hibernia Atlantic is shaving 310 miles off the current trans-Atlantic journey, by following the shallow continental shelf (despite the heightened risk of damage). But even in our every-millisecond-counts world, the cables' paths are often ancient, landing in or near classic port cities like Marseille, Mumbai and Mombasa. It may feel as if the Internet has created an entirely new world, but it's traced entirely upon the outlines of the old one. —From "Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet" by Andrew Blum. Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Blum. To be published on May 29 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. ||||| Page 1 of 56 previous | start | next Printing? Use this version Mother Earth Mother Board By Neal Stephenson SEE ALSO Archive Category: Connectivity Global Economy Hacking & Warez In which the hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, acquainting himself with the customs and dialects of the exotic Manhole Villagers of Thailand, the U-Turn Tunnelers of the Nile Delta, the Cable Nomads of Lan tao Island, the Slack Control Wizards of Chelmsford, the Subterranean Ex-Telegraphers of Cornwall, and other previously unknown and unchronicled folk; also, biographical sketches of the two long-dead Supreme Ninja Hacker Mage Lords of global telecommunications, and other material pertaining to the business and technology of Undersea Fiber-Optic Cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth, which should not be without interest to the readers of Wired. Information moves, or we move to it. Moving to it has rarely been popular and is growing unfashionable; nowadays we demand that the information come to us. This can be accomplished in three basic ways: moving physical media around, broadcasting radiation through space, and sending signals through wires. This article is about what will, for a short time anyway, be the biggest and best wire ever made. Wires warp cyberspace in the same way wormholes warp physical space: the two points at opposite ends of a wire are, for informational purposes, the same point, even if they are on opposite sides of the planet. The cyberspace-warping power of wires, therefore, changes the geometry of the world of commerce and politics and ideas that we live in. The financial districts of New York, London, and Tokyo, linked by thousands of wires, are much closer to each other than, say, the Bronx is to Manhattan. Today this is all quite familiar, but in the 19th century, when the first feeble bits struggled down the first undersea cable joining the Old World to the New, it must have made people's hair stand up on end in more than just the purely electrical sense - it must have seemed supernatural. Perhaps this sort of feeling explains why when Samuel Morse stretched a wire between Washington and Baltimore in 1844, the first message he sent with his code was "What hath God wrought!" - almost as if he needed to reassure himself and others that God, and not the Devil, was behind it. During the decades after Morse's "What hath God wrought!" a plethora of different codes, signalling techniques, and sending and receiving machines were patented. A web of wires was spun across every modern city on the globe, and longer wires were strung between cities. Some of the early technologies were, in retrospect, flaky: one early inventor wanted to use 26-wire cables, one wire for each letter of the alphabet. But it quickly became evident that it was best to keep the number of individual wires as low as possible and find clever ways to fit more information onto them. This requires more ingenuity than you might think - wires have never been perfectly transparent carriers of data; they have always degraded the information put into them. In general, this gets worse as the wire gets longer, and so as the early telegraph networks spanned greater distances, the people building them had to edge away from the seat-of-the-pants engineering practices that, applied in another field, gave us so many boiler explosions, and toward the more scientific approach that is the standard of practice today. Still, telegraphy, like many other forms of engineering, retained a certain barnyard, improvised quality until the Year of Our Lord 1858, when the terrifyingly high financial stakes and shockingly formidable technical challenges of the first transatlantic submarine cable brought certain long-simmering conflicts to a rolling boil, incarnated the old and new approaches in the persons of Dr. Wildman Whitehouse and Professor William Thomson, respectively, and brought the conflict between them into the highest possible relief in the form of an inquiry and a scandal that rocked the Victorian world. Thomson came out on top, with a new title and name - Lord Kelvin. Everything that has occurred in Silicon Valley in the last couple of decades also occurred in the 1850s. Anyone who thinks that wild-ass high tech venture capitalism is a late-20th-century California phenomenon needs to read about the maniacs who built the first transatlantic cable projects (I recommend Arthur C. Clarke's book How the World Was One). The only things that have changed since then are that the stakes have gotten smaller, the process more bureaucratized, and the personalities less interesting.

– Our Internet age didn't just happen; it required thousands of miles of cables crisscrossing the ocean like veins and arteries (or, as Neal Stephenson put it years ago in Wired, turning the Earth into a computer motherboard). After a huge boom-and-bust cycle in the 1990s, the world's telecommunications cables are full, so once again ships are braving the oceans to lay new batches of the mammoth fiber optic wires that undergird the modern economy and allow you to order all sorts of useless stuff. Author Andrew Blum, who has a new book on the subject (Tubes), offers an overview in the Wall Street Journal. Brazil-to-Angola; Virginia Beach-to-San Sebastian, Spain; and New York-to-London (of course) are three of the new cables going in. Undersea cables pass through power repeaters every 50 miles on their immense journeys, ending at a "beach manhole" where the cable is secured to the land. Near the manhole is a landing station, responsible for sending and receiving the signals. And the cables, signals, and equipment are all run in a complicated cross-owned and -leased network of companies. It's all about capacity and speed, as the latest New York-London route is being carefully planned to shave 310 miles off the distance—and save high-speed traders a precious 5.2 milliseconds.

More than 130 imams and Muslim religious leaders from the UK and other Western countries have said they will refuse to perform funeral prayers for the London and Manchester attackers who "defile" the name of their religion — and urged fellow imams to "withdraw such a privilege." The leaders called the acts "cold-blooded murders", and said they were "deeply hurt" that a spate of terror attacks had been committed in Britain by "murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions." "We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy," they said, adding they refuse to "perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators." It's considered an unprecedented response from Muslim faith leaders from diverse backgrounds – including both Sunni and Shia imams. The faith leaders — including Dr Timothy Winter of University of Cambridge; Sheikha Selina Begum Ali, the director of the Beacon Institute; and Imam Qari Asim of Leeds mosque — said they will refuse to perform Salat al-Janazah due to "ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam." "This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam," the imams said. The letter added that the imams mourned the attack and prayed that "the perpetrators be judged in accordance with the gravity of their crimes in the hereafter." They added the "wilful dismissal" of religious principles had alienated the perpetrators of the attacks from "any association with our community for whom the inviolability of every human life is the founding principle." "These vile murderers seek to divide our society and instill fear; we will ensure they fail. We implore everyone to unite: we are one community. In the face of such dastardly cowardice, unlike the terrorists, we must uphold love and compassion," the imams wrote. ||||| Story highlights "These vile murderers seek to divide our society and (instill) fear," imams say Police killed three attackers after terror rampage in London (CNN) More than 130 imams from Britain are refusing to offer Islamic burials to the three men who launched attacks Saturday night in London, killing seven and wounding dozens more. "We will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege," the Muslim leaders said Monday in a statement posted on social media. The imams described their actions as "unprecedented," though mosques in Manchester, England , and in the United States have refused to bury Muslims involved in terror attacks in recent years. Imam Abdullah Hasan of Imams Against Domestic Abuse, who posted the statement online, said the funeral rite "is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions." Seven people died and 48 were injured when three men drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, then leaped out and stabbed several others in nearby bars and restaurants. Police killed the three attackers. Read More ||||| Developing story Live Updates: Police Release Images Of London Bridge Attackers' Fake Suicide Belts Eight people were killed and dozens of others injured when suspects rammed a van into people on London Bridge then went on a stabbing spree at nearby Borough Market. Three suspects were shot dead by police. ||||| The Muslim Council of Britain is the UK’s largest Muslim umbrella body with over 500 affiliated national, regional and local organisations, mosques, charities and schools. Key contacts for the statement: – Shaykh Yunus Dudhwala: +44 7931 735206⁠ – Sheikha Selina Begum Ali: +44 7946 270169 – Ustadha Rehana Sadiq: +44 7715 139834 – Imam Qari Asim: +44 7816 667282 – Sheikh Asim Yusuf: +447817 569 272 —————————– Muslim Imams and religious leaders condemn the Manchester and London terror atrocities and urge fellow Imams to refuse to perform Islamic funeral prayers for the terrorists “We, as Muslim Imams and religious leaders, condemn the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London in the strongest terms possible. Coming from a range of backgrounds, and from across the UK; feeling the pain the rest of the nation feels, we have come together to express our shock and utter disgust at these cold-blooded murders. We are deeply hurt that a spate of terror attacks have been committed in our country once more by murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions. We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy. Though at no time is it acceptable, that such ruthless violence was perpetrated during the season of Ramadan, in which Muslims worldwide focus on pious devotion, prayer, charity and the cultivation of good character, demonstrates how utterly misguided and distant the terrorists are from our faith and the contempt which they hold for its values. Alongside our friends and neighbours, we mourn this attack on our home, society and people, and feel pain for the suffering of the victims and their families. We pray to God that the perpetrators be judged in accordance with the gravity of their crimes in the hereafter. Their acts and wilful dismissal of our religious principles alienates them from any association with our community for whom the inviolability of every human life is the founding principle (Q.5:32). Consequently, and in light of other such ethical principles which are quintessential to Islam, we will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer for the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam. These vile murderers seek to divide our society and instil fear; we will ensure they fail. We implore everyone to unite: we are one community. In the face of such dastardly cowardice, unlike the terrorists, we must uphold love and compassion. Such criminals defile the name of our religion and of our Prophet, who was sent to be a mercy to all creation. We commend our police and emergency services – with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder – for their rapid response, arriving at the scenes while risking their own lives to protect the victims and public. Their response exemplifies the courage, humanity and honour we must exhibit in such difficult times. We pray for peace and unity, and for all the victims of terror both at home and across the globe, who are targeted, irrespective of their faith.”

– As England continues to flesh out the details of two terror attacks there over the past two weeks, one group has taken what BuzzFeed calls an "unprecedented" stand against the perpetrators. More than 130 imams and other Muslim religious leaders from "diverse" backgrounds across the UK have penned a letter not only blasting the attacks, but also imploring other religious figureheads to refuse to carry out Islamic funeral prayers for the "terrorists." "We have come together to express our shock and utter disgust at these cold-blooded murders," the letter, as seen on the Muslim Council of Britain website Monday, reads. "We seek to clarify that their reprehensible actions have neither legitimacy nor our sympathy" and that "such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam," the note continues on the site, which adds such rites are "a ritual that is normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions." The letter-writers refer to the suspects as "murderers who seek to gain religious legitimacy for their actions" and note that the attacks came during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, proving further that the killers had only "contempt" for the true Muslim faith. The authors go on to express their support for local law enforcement and first responders, who they say are the ones who displayed the "courage, humanity, and honor we must exhibit in such difficult times." The official letter comes one day after MCB Secretary General Harun Khan told reporters that "the level of our anger" was so great that some had started saying "these people should be denied an Islamic burial." CNN notes that mosques in both the UK and the US have turned their backs on burying terrorists after attacks in the recent past. Read the religious leaders' letter in full here.

A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely attacked" near Cairo's Tahrir Square after being seized by a crowd, the network said Saturday. It was the latest case of violence against women at the epicenter of Egypt's restive protests. FILE - In this Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012 file photo, young Egyptian women are harassed by men on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Cairo, Egypt. A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely attacked" near... (Associated Press) Protesters chant anti-government slogans during a rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Oct. 19, 2012. Several thousand Egyptian protesters are rallying in Cairo to demand the president and... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Monday, Aug. 20, 2012 file photo, an Egyptian youth, trailed by his friends, grabs a woman crossing the street with her friends in Cairo, Egypt. A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Tuesday, March 8, 2011 file photo, Egyptian women react after protesting men forced them out of Cairo's central Tahrir Square while they were celebrating International Women's Day. A correspondent... (Associated Press) The news channel said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked around 10:30 p.m. Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses. France 24 did not give further details about the attack, but it said its employees were safe and sound, though "extremely shocked," and that it will file suit against unspecified assailants. The network, which receives state funds but has editorial independence, said it and the French Embassy were working to bring Dridi back to France. "More frightened than hurt," wrote Dridi in French on her Twitter page Saturday. Referring in English to a colleague, she tweeted: "Thanks to (at)ashrafkhalil for protecting me in (hash)Tahrir last nite. Mob was pretty intense. thanks to him I escaped from the unleashed hands." Ashraf Khalil, who works with France 24's English language service, said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing live reports on a side street off Tahrir. He said the attack and rescue took about half an hour, but it felt like a lot longer. "The crowd surged in and then it went crazy. It was basically me keeping her in a bear hug, both arms around her and face-to-face," he told The Associated Press, estimating that at least 30 men were involved. "It was hard to tell who was helping and who was groping her." Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant with a metal door, to keep her out of the reach of the attackers. He said they hustled into a car, and some men banged on it as it sped away. Some of their belongings had been stolen, he said. "It didn't feel organized or targeted. It felt disorganized," he said. "I felt angry. I love Tahrir. I have a lot of nostalgia for Tahrir. I am still angry. I know this is not the first time this happened; it happened to other people I know. Still, it was a shock." Tahrir Square was the main hub of a popular uprising that toppled longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak last year. Since then, it has seen numerous other protests staged by a range of groups. At the height of the uprising against Mubarak, Lara Logan, a correspondent for U.S. network CBS, was sexually assaulted and beaten in Tahrir Square. She said later that she believed she was going to die. After being rescued, Logan returned to the United States and was treated in a hospital for four days. The square has seen a rise in attacks against women since protesters returned this summer for new rallies, including incidents of attackers stripping women _ both fellow demonstrators and journalists _ of their clothes. No official numbers exist for attacks on women in the square because police do not go near the area and women rarely file official reports on such incidents, but activists and protesters have reported an increase in assaults against women. And although sexual harassment is not new to Egypt, suspicions abound that many of the recent attacks are organized by opponents of various protests in a bid to drive people away. Amnesty International said in a report in June that such attacks appeared designed to intimidate women and prevent them from fully participating in public life. The London-based human rights group has called on Egyptian authorities to investigate reports of sexual assault against women to counter the impression that no one will be punished. ___ Sarah El-Deeb contributed to this report from Cairo. ||||| A journalist for France 24 has described how his female colleague was attacked and groped by a group of men while filming live during protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday night. Sonia Dridi was surrounded while filming in the square, with the mob closing in on her as she was reporting. The news channel said in a statement that she was attacked at about 10.30pm. Her colleague from the English section of France 24, Ashraf Khalil, was by her side waiting to do his spot next for the camera but cut her off midway and led her off as the crowd began to move in. All this was caught on camera. "Usually one of us goes first then the other, Sonia does the French and I do the English," he told the Guardian. "Usually we don't do Tahrir live shots from street level, normally we're on a balcony. We had done an earlier live shot and even then the crowd was annoying. "When we went back for the second live shot the crowd was worse, it was really hard to control the crowd. If you see the video you can see me popping up on the fringe telling people let her work. By the time it was finished everybody was too close and no one was listening to us. I told Sonia to just go straight to [the shop] Hardee's and wait for me because I didn't want her to wait with this crowd of feral youths." But the crowd had already begun to close in as Khalil and Dridi made their way to the Hardee's branch at the corner of the square. By the time they made it to the shop Dridi discovered her shirt was open and was grateful that the "tight thick belt" she was wearing prevented worse happening. "More frightened than hurt," wrote Dridi in French, according to the Associated Press, on her Twitter page on Saturday. Referring in English to her colleague, she tweeted: "Thanks to @ashrafkhalil for protecting me in #Tahrir last nite. Mob was pretty intense. thanks to him I escaped from the unleashed hands." Khalil said: "I basically had her in a bear hug and we're doing this crab walk towards Hardee's surrounded by 30 guys and some were groping her and others were trying to help but it's impossible to tell who is who." There had been protests in Tahrir that day against the Muslim Brotherhood, the president, Mohamed Morsi, and the Islamist hegemony of Egypt's future constitution. The Friday before that had seen clashes between members of the Brotherhood and anti-Brotherhood supporters that lasted for hours and resulted in 110 injuries. Numerous incidents of violence and sexual assault against women have been reported over the past 18 months whenever throngs gather in the square, with not everyone necessarily there with the aim of protesting. Sexual harassment is an endemic problem in Egypt dating back to before the revolution. Dridi has filed a police report about the incident and said on her Facebook page: "The crowd was out of control, [and] some guys took advantage of it. Some people tried to help but it was hard to know who to trust in the heat of the moment." Dridi and Khalil's bags were stolen in the ruckus but Dridi's was returned by an Egyptian who managed to wrestle it back. "What was depressing is that the employees inside Hardee's knew exactly what to do because this seems to happen all the time," Khalil said. "Some terrified woman running in one step ahead of a mob." The doors were bolted and later Khalil went out to hail a taxi and made it wait in front of the shop as Dridi was ushered out. Even then, it hadn't ended, with some men taking notice and banging on the hood of the car. "Sexual harassment is a 20-year problem here, but now there's a feeling of impunity and the knowledge that the police won't do anything about it, it breeds this culture of lawlessness," Khalil said. "There are always good Samaritans in the crowd but crowds can be stupid and when it tips, it tips. [However] there were several other guys who helped and we couldn't have done it without them, we have to remember that." At the height of the uprising against Hosni Mubarak, Lara Logan, a correspondent for the US network CBS, was sexually assaulted and beaten in Tahrir Square. ||||| French TV journalist Sonia Dridi attacked by out-of-control protesters in Cairo in same square where CBS' Lara Logan was sexually assaulted France 24 correspondent tells Twitter followers she was surrounded after live broadcast; says she was 'more frightened than hurt' Sonia Dridi, correspondent from France 24, says she was attacked in same Cairo square where CBS newswoman Lara Logan was sexually assaulted. A French television journalist said Saturday that she was attacked in the same Cairo square where CBS correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted last year. Logan said her “heart goes out” to Sonia Dridi — who told the Daily News she had just covered a protest in Egypt’s Tahrir Square when she was surrounded by some men. She said they put their hands all over her, tried to remove her clothes and attempted to drag her away from a male colleague who was trying to protect her. “We see it all the time,” said Dridi. “Men touch women and grab them.” CBS NEWS She said Ashraf Khalil, a correspondent for Time and France 24, kept her from being carried off. “There were at least 50 guys around us attacking us, but Ashraf held onto me and told me, ‘Don’t worry. Just breathe. Breathe. It’s going to be okay,’ ” she said. AP Khalil told The Associated Press the crowd surged in toward them and “went crazy.” “It was basically me keeping her in a bear hug, both arms around her and face-to-face,” he said. “It was hard to tell who was helping and who was groping her.” Dridi said that at one point, some of the men were telling her to get in a van and she didn’t know if it was a trap or an escape route, but Khalil told her not to get in. “There were a lot of men in there and I’m sure now that they were of the attackers,” she said. Sonia Dridi via Facebook They ran into a restaurant, where workers locked the door and closed the gate to keep the mob at bay. They stayed there for hours. “I had exploding tears because I was pissed off,” she said. “Shocked and pissed off because of what those guys did.” Dridi later tweeted about the attack. Logan also went public with the details of her assault. The CBS newswoman was sexually assaulted and beaten by protesters in the square in February 2011 during the popular uprising that toppled longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. “Sexual violence is a way of denying women journalists access to the story in Egypt,” Logan told The News after hearing of Dridi’s ordeal. “It’s not accidental. It’s by design.” Sonia Dridi via Facebook France 24 said it was “extremely shocked,” and is working with the French Embassy in Cairo to bring Dridi back to France. Dridi noted that she has covered events in the square for a year and a half without incident. And she also told how one man who saw an attacker rooting through her stolen bag punched him, took the bag and returned it to her. She said she will keep reporting from Egypt. “I don’t want this to change my plans,” she said. “I want to go back to work. I love doing my job here.” Tahrir Square has seen a rise in attacks against women since protesters returned this summer for new rallies, including incidents of attackers stripping women — both fellow demonstrators and journalists — of their clothes. With News Wire Services bchapman@nydailynews.com

– France 24's Sonia Dridi has become the latest female foreign journalist to fall victim to mob violence in Cairo. She was attacked and groped by around 30 men while reporting live on protests in the city's Tahrir Square, the Guardian reports. Her colleague Ashraf Khalil, assisted by a few bystanders, managed to get her to safety in a restaurant that closed its metal doors to keep the mob at bay. The network says its employees are safe, but "extremely shocked" by the attack. "The crowd surged in and then it went crazy. It was basically me keeping her in a bear hug, both arms around her and face-to-face," Khalil tells the AP. CBS' Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in the same square last year. "Sexual violence is a way of denying women journalists access to the story in Egypt," Logan told the New York Daily News after hearing of the latest attack. "It’s not accidental. It’s by design."

CLOSE A rare and painful skin reaction has left one man with second-degree burns one week before his wedding, and lime juice is to blame. VPC Aaron Peers shows his burns after an encounter with lime juice and the sun. (Photo: First Coast News) A rare and painful skin reaction has left one man with second-degree burns a week before his wedding. To blame: lime juice. The technical name for the skin reaction is Phytophotodermatitis. It's a toxic reaction resulting from citric acid mixed with sunlight. It's often referred to as "Margarita Dermatitis" or "Lime Disease," not be confused with Lyme Disease. It's more common in Florida, especially around summer holidays like Memorial Day Weekend, when lime juice is used for mixed drinks. That's what happened to soon-to-be newlyweds Alyse Golden and Aaron Peers. Peers was squeezing limes to make margaritas in their backyard on May 24. He had no idea the lime juice on his hands was toxic under the sun. The next night the burns started to appear. It wasn't until May 26 when he woke up to a huge blister on his hand. They rushed to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with second-degree burns, but the cause was still baffling to doctors. Now, their honeymoon plans in Hawaii are on standby since he's been told to stay out of the sun. "So the blistering is gone and now I'm left with really bright pink skin," Peers said. "If you can imagine when I was actually squeezing the limes how the juice might run over and it got up my arm. The most normal reaction is that's gross, which I agree, it's super gross." As for their wedding photos coming up - Golden said Photoshop will come in handy. They just hope the ring just fits when it comes to their big day. "Tried it on the other day. It barely fit," said Peers. Douglas Robins is no stranger to this condition. The doctor gets about a dozen patients a year. He says it can take several years to bleach the skin back to normal and there's no telling what makes one case worse than another but everyone is susceptible. "If you've never had it before that doesn't matter," Robins said. "It's a combination of lime juice and the sun." The solution? Robins says being cautious and keeping lime juice inside and away from the sun. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Ie4JGL ||||| Why You Shouldn’t Sip a Margarita Poolside It’s not the reason you think: The fresh fruit in your summer cocktails can actually burn your skin A hangover isn’t the only thing you’ll risk by drinking a cocktail by the pool this summer. If you get fruit juice on your skin and then go out in the sun, you’re putting yourself at risk for a seriously nasty chemical burn. It’s a skin condition called phytophotodermatitis, a reaction caused by the chemicals in some fruits and plants (most notably, limes, lemons, and celery) that make your skin hypersensitive to the sun. Dermatologist Michele Green, MD, says cases of this tend to spike in the summer, when people are handling cocktails garnished with limes or celery, using lemon juice to lighten their hair, or squeezing limes for fresh margaritas. Sounds harmless enough, right? The problem: If the chemicals from these items get onto your skin and aren’t washed off with soap and water, they’ll cause a reaction when that area of skin is exposed to the sun. “It’s basically like a chemical burn because it makes them sun sensitive,” says Green. The Scary Signs Within a day or two of exposure, you’ll notice some redness and irritation, which may include blistering in more severe cases, says Green. But the most noticeable result is hyperpigmentation, or brown spots, which appear up to a week later and can last for several months. This reaction can show up on any spot on your body that was exposed to both the chemicals and the sun. “Usually the cue is linear streaks from where they poured or spilled lime juice,” says Green. “Or if they were squeezing lemon on their hair, they may see brown streaks on their faces.” How to Deal So what happens if you spot this reaction post-vacation? If you have a severe burn with blistering, you may want to see a doctor for a prescription-strength hydrocortisone cream, says Green. In some cases, your MD may also provide a bleaching agent for the hyperpigmentation, though it’ll eventually fade on its own. If you’re just sporting some sunspots, you can skip the doctor and use an OTC hydrocortisone cream for relief. But don’t panic—the reaction isn’t dangerous, and it goes away in time, says Green. Prevention Tips To avoid it from happening in the first place, take precautions when handling fruits outside (and note that these chemicals are also found in parsley, parsnips, dill, and various other fruits and plants). “Don’t mix drinks while in the sun, and wash hands immediately so there are no traces of chemicals on them,” says Green. You can even use gloves to be extra careful, and you should also make sure to clean up any spills to keep chemicals from finding their way to your arms or legs. And if you’re enjoying a cocktail at a cookout or pool party, consider skipping the lime wedge in your Corona and swapping that fresh margarita for a piña colada—your skin will thank you. ||||| IG Aaron Peers was rushed to hospital after the lime juice burns Aaron Peers has now been forced to postpone his dream Hawaii honeymoon with fiancée Alyse Golden. The soon-to-be newlywed from Jacksonville in Florida, US, was busy mixing cocktails to celebrate the upcoming Memorial Weekend when he suffered the bizarre incident. Having prepared a number of margarita cocktails using lime juice, he was unaware of the rare toxic reaction that can arise with citric acid under sunlight. The day after, Mr Peers began to notice burns on his hands and the following morning, he woke up to huge blisters and was rushed to a hospital emergency room. Doctors diagnosed him with second-degree burns and have laid the blame on his cocktails. Mr Peers said: "If you can imagine when I was actually squeezing the limes how the juice might run over and it got up my arm." "The blistering is gone and now I'm left with really bright pink skin." Phytophotodermatitis, or 'Margarita Dermatitis', flares up commonly in summertime when outdoor cocktail parties become popular. FIRST COAST Aaron is hoping is wedding ring will still fit for the big day

– A week before his wedding, Aaron Peers doesn't have cold feet, but rather burnt hands. While making margaritas outside with bride-to-be Alyse Golden over Memorial Day weekend, a little lime juice dripped down his fingers and hands and onto his arm as he was squeezing the limes. A day later, the man from Jacksonville, Fla., noticed red burns developing on his skin, and within 48 hours, a huge blister also appeared, First Coast News reports. ER doctors told Peers he had fallen victim to a little-known reaction caused when citric acid mixes with the sun's rays, dubbed "margarita dermatitis," or "lime disease." Essentially, the acid makes skin hypersensitive to sunlight, and exposure can cause nasty burns, blisters, or brown spots, the Daily Express and Women's Health report. It isn't just limes you need to watch out for: Lemons, carrots, celery, bergamot oranges, parsnips, and dill can also inflame the skin. Dr. Douglas Robins says he sees about a dozen patients each year affected by what is officially known as phytophotodermatitis and that it can take years to bleach skin back to normal. While some people react differently, "everyone is susceptible." Left with second-degree burns, Peers says Photoshop will be a big help for wedding photos. "The blistering is gone and now I'm left with really bright pink skin," he says, adding his wedding ring might not make it on his finger. "Tried it on the other day. It barely fit." Peers and his fiancee have also postponed their dream honeymoon in Hawaii as Peers will have to stay out of the sun for a while. To avoid a similar fate, Robins recommends making summer cocktails indoors before enjoying them in the sunshine. (How McDonald's allegedly treats burns: with mustard.)

On Wednesday the Associated Press reported that Lionel Messi had been convicted by a Spanish court of tax fraud and sentenced to 21 months in prison … though he would not actually serve a day behind bars. You probably have some questions. Let’s get to them. Who is this now? Lionel Messi is an Argentinian soccer star who has broken all sorts of records in an unbelievable career both for his country and club, FC Barcelona. You might remember him as the tiny fellow who embarrassed the U.S. in the Copa America tournament. Why was he being prosecuted? The Spanish government alleged that Messi and his father, Jorge, defrauded it of over $5 million in taxes, money that Messi earned off of his image rights. Prosecutors allege that the father and son did this by hiding money in offshore companies in Belize and Uruguay from 2007-09. What was his defense? Messi’s lawyers basically made the argument that Messi the Younger only cares about soccer and has no idea what is happening to his money. According to El Pais newspaper, Messi’s lawyers said that he “never devoted a minute of his life to reading, studying or analyzing” the contracts, and in court Messi himself testified: “I never asked my dad about these things. The truth is that as my dad explained before, I trusted him and the lawyers. I didn’t know anything about it, I just played football.” What did the court decide? Messi and his father were both found guilty by the High Court of Barcelona and each sentenced to 21 months in prison. So … why aren’t they going to prison? It is customary in Spain that the sentence is suspended for first-time offenders who are given less than a 2-year sentence. Cool. So who’s better, Messi or Ronaldo? Get out of here with that. ||||| Messi was given the full backing of Barca, who said in a statement: “FC Barcelona gives all its support to Leo Messi and his father with relation to the sentence for tax evasion handed out by the provisional court in Barcelona today. “The club, in agreement with the government prosecution service, considers that the player, who has corrected his position with the Spanish tax office, is in no way criminally responsible with regards to the facts underlined in this case. “FC Barcelona continues to be at the disposal of Leo Messi and his family to support him in whatever action he decides to take in defence of his honesty and his legal interests.” During the four-day hearing into the case, which concluded on June 3, Messi insisted he had “never” discussed tax on his image rights with his father or lawyers. “So, you signed all contracts with your eyes shut?” the district attorney asked him. “I signed them because I trust my father and it never entered my head that he would try to cheat me,” Messi replied. He flew out soon after to join Argentina’s squad for the Copa America, in which he missed in his country’s penalty shootout defeat to Chile in the final before announcing his retirement from international football. Messi, who became Argentina’s all-time leading goal-scorer during the tournament, is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history. He left his homeland for the Barcelona academy aged 13, with his family joining him in Spain soon after.

– Another blow for Lionel Messi: The star soccer player was sentenced to 21 months in jail for tax fraud in a Barcelona court Wednesday, but don't expect that to keep him from the soccer field. Messi is unlikely to serve time behind bars since jail sentences under two years in Spain can be served under probation for first-time offenders, reports the BBC. He does, however, face $2.2 million in fines for using tax havens in Belize and Uruguay to hide millions from image rights, per the Telegraph. Prosecutors argued $4.5 million was moved to Switzerland and Britain, then to offshore companies in Belize and Uruguay from 2007 to 2009, reports USA Today. During testimony last month, however, Messi said he "had no idea where the money was going," per the Telegraph. "I just concentrated on playing football. I trusted my father." Messi's father, Jorge Messi, was also found guilty of tax fraud and sentenced to 21 months, though he's not expected to serve time, either. He must pay $1.6 million.

1:20 p.m.: Be sure to check back at NESN.com/patriots for all of the latest from San Francisco and follow NESN.com Patriots beat writer Doug Kyed on Twitter. 1:16 p.m.: Again, just because the Patriots won’t appeal the discipline handed down to the team from the NFL, that doesn’t mean Tom Brady won’t appeal his four-game suspension. In fact, NFLPA assistant executive director of external affairs George Atallah wassted no time sending this tweet. The Patriots may not appeal, but this will not impact the NFLPA appeal of the 4 game suspension of Tom Brady. — George Atallah (@GeorgeAtallah) May 19, 2015 1:13 p.m.: Robert Kraft wraps up after no more than 5 minutes at the podium, and to recap: Kraft announced the Patriots won’t appeal the league’s discipline in wake of the Wells Report. That pertains to the NFL taking away draft picks and fining the Patriots $1 million. That doesn’t pertain to Tom Brady’s four-game suspension. 1:11 p.m.: “We have concentrated the power of adjudication of problems with the office of the commissioner. Though I might disagree with what the commissioner has decided, I do have respect for him … that’s he’s doing the best in the best of the 32. “I’m gonna accept — reluctantly.” 1:11 p.m.: Kraft: “At no time should the agenda of one team outweigh the collective 32.” 1:10 p.m.: Kraft calls the discipline “unreasonable and unprecedented.” He adds, “I can end (this controversy) or extend it.” 1:09 p.m.: Kraft says the one thing we can agree upon is “the entire process is taking way too long.” He adds he can’t believe that after all this time we’re still talking about air pressure of footballs. 1:08 p.m.: Robert Kraft is at the podium. He says he’s spent the last few weeks weighing his option and thanks fans for the support. However, he’s mindful of fans at the other end of the spectrum “who feel just the opposite.” 12:58 p.m.: Robert Kraft is expected to address the media in a matter of minutes. You can follow along here, of course, but you also can watch the press conference live on NESN at 1 p.m. ET. 12:40 p.m.: If Twitter is more your thing, make sure you’re following NESN.com Patriots beat writer Doug Kyed, who’s in San Francisco for the meetings. Pretty important update: They just swapped out a red, white and blue mic flag for a gold one. http://t.co/PM8gubIhHc — Doug Kyed (@DougKyedNESN) May 19, 2015 12:30 p.m. ET: Robert Kraft has, for the most part, been relatively quiet in recent weeks. Aside from the Wells Report in Context, and an interview with Peter King, the New England Patriots owner has laid low as controversy swirls around his team. That will change Tuesday in San Francisco when Kraft meets with the media at the NFL Spring Meeting in San Francisco. It’s likely much of the conversation will center around the ongoing hoopla surrounding deflated footballs and the fallout that ensued, which landed the Patriots some heavy supplemental discipline. Kraft is slated to speak at 1 p.m. ET, and we’ll have updates for as long as his media session lasts. Thumbnail photo via Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports Images ||||| The NFL and the New England Patriots are engaged in "back-channel conversations" to see whether the two sides can resolve their differences without an appeal or possible litigation after the league's Deflategate punishment, sources told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter. The Patriots are weighing their next move in terms of reacting to the discipline meted out by the NFL and have until before Friday to file an appeal of their penalties, which consist of the loss of two draft picks -- including a first-rounder -- and a $1 million fine. Editor's Picks Without lawyers, it's time for Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell to air their grievances If Robert Kraft and commissioner Roger Goodell are truly committed to putting the Deflategate standoff behind them, the next 24-36 hours are critical. Le Batard: Integrity is illusion in Goodell's NFL Deflategate and other scandals have revealed the NFL to be a league without integrity run by a commissioner, Roger Goodell, without credibility, Dan Le Batard writes. 1 Related The team's penalties were for, among other issues, what the NFL said was a lack of cooperation with the investigation. Patriots owner Robert Kraft and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will attend the spring owners meetings, which start Tuesday in San Francisco. Kraft addressed the media Tuesday afternoon. It won't be the first meeting between Kraft and Goodell since the league handed out its punishment, however, as an industry source told Schefter on Tuesday that the two hugged, sat down and talked "for quite a long time" at a 60th birthday party for CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus in New York on Saturday night. Kraft, when asked by The MMQB whether he would violate NFL bylaws by going to court to try to get the league penalties overturned, declined to comment, saying, "I'm not going to comment on that at this point in time. I'm going to leave it. I won't say." Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for four games for his likely knowledge of the use of underinflated footballs in the AFC title game against the Indianapolis Colts. Brady has officially appealed his suspension to the league. In addition, a league source told Schefter on Tuesday that the league asked the Patriots to suspend officials locker room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski before the team was disciplined by the NFL. The Patriots obliged with the request to suspend the two employees. An NFL spokesman denied ESPN's report that the league asked the team to suspend the employees. ||||| Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB Since the football world was stunned by the release of the Ted Wells report 12 days ago and roundhoused by the strong league sanctions last Monday, you haven’t heard much out of the New England camp aside from two scripted statements of indignation and a lawyerly screed about the weak points of the Wells Report. That changes this morning. The boss is speaking. In his first public comments since being hit with the biggest team sanction in the 95-year history of the National Football League, Patriots owner Robert Kraft told The MMQB over the weekend that he is convinced his quarterback, Tom Brady, played no part in any football-deflation scheme before the AFC Championship Game in January. Asked if Brady had told him he was innocent, Kraft said: “Yes. Because we had the discussion—if you did it, let’s just deal with it and take our hit and move on. I’ve known Tommy 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.” Kraft spoke for 50 minutes Saturday by phone from his home outside Boston. He sounded alternately defiant and angry. He is convinced the league does not have a smoking gun that would prove anyone connected with the organization deflated a bag of footballs to make them more to Brady’s liking in the AFC title game four months ago. He is convinced the Wells Report distorted the science to fit a conclusion that doesn’t work. He thinks the league has nothing but what he called “ambiguous circumstantial evidence” on the Patriots. “This whole thing has been very disturbing,” Kraft said. “I’m still thinking things out very carefully. But when you work for something your whole life … “I just get really worked up. To receive the harshest penalty in league history is just not fair. The anger and frustration with this process, to me, it wasn’t fair. If we’re giving all the power to the NFL and the office of the commissioner, this is something that can happen to all 32 teams. We need to have fair and balanced investigating and reporting. But in this report, every inference went against us … inferences from ambiguous, circumstantial evidence all went against us. That’s the thing that really bothers me. “If they want to penalize us because there’s an aroma around this? That’s what this feels like. If you don’t have the so-called smoking gun, it really is frustrating. And they don’t have it. This thing never should have risen to this level.” There was much Kraft wouldn’t say, and he was at times curt, which is rare for him. Understand why this sanction—a four-game ban for Brady, a $1 million fine for the franchise, and the loss of first-round and fourth-round draft choices—has cut so deeply. Kraft is no absentee owner who swooped in to buy an out-of-town franchise. Born in Boston, he’s lived in the area his entire life except for his college years and talks proudly of having attended at least one Patriots game in every one of their 55 seasons. He bought the franchise 21 years ago and oversaw construction of a privately funded stadium finished in 2002. The Patriots have won four world titles under his ownership. You bash Robert Kraft’s franchise, and you bash his family. Asked about his current relationship with commissioner Roger Goodell (which was until two weeks ago warm and convivial), Kraft said: “You’ll have to ask him.” He wouldn’t answer further. Asked whether he might violate NFL bylaws by going to court to try to get the league penalties overturned, Kraft said, “I’m not going to comment on that at this point in time. I’m going to leave it. I won’t say.” Asked why he suspended club employees John Jastremski and Jim McNally despite fiercely proclaiming his organization’s innocence, Kraft refused comment—for what he claimed were a variety of reasons. Asked if he thinks the punishment was especially hard because the other 31 teams in the league believe he has such a close relationship with Goodell and Goodell had to come down hard to prove he can be harsh to a close supporter, Kraft said: “I’ve heard that a lot, but it’s hard for me to accept that.” Kraft is on five significant league business committees. He chairs the lucrative broadcast committee, and the NFL is in the midst of contracts worth an estimated $40 billion through 2022 with the networks and DirecTV. Asked if he would remain as active in league affairs as he has been, Kraft said: “I’d rather not get into that for a week or two.” It’s either an exceedingly awkward or exceedingly fortuitous time for the NFL’s annual two-day spring meetings, which begin Tuesday in San Francisco. The Brady/Patriot sanctions rocked the NFL in the past two weeks, and this will be the first time for Kraft to see his peers—and to see the league office staff, including Goodell, that came down so hard on his franchise. It’ll either be awkward because Kraft won’t be ready for any olive branches, or fortuitous because it’s certain the league would like to start some of healing process with the defending Super Bowl championship team—and clearly the best franchise in football over the past 15 years. This weekend, the Kraft-Goodell relationship felt like Obama-Putin. The tone of Kraft’s voice made it sound like it’s too early for peace talks. Kraft’s anger is based largely on the fact that he feels the Wells Report chose to highlight some bits of science and ignore others. For instance, there were two gauges to measure the air pressure in footballs in the officials’ locker room before the AFC title game. Referee Walt Anderson couldn’t swear which he used to do the pregame measurements, but his “best recollection” is he used a Wilson-logoed air-pressure gauge to measure the footballs. The Patriots’ footballs were found to be at or near 12.5 pounds per square inch. At halftime, after the Colts told the league a ball Brady threw in the first half that was intercepted by Colt linebacker D’Qwell Jackson felt under-inflated, 11 Patriots footballs were measured for air pressure at halftime. On page 113 of the Wells Report, after a description of the scientific Ideal Gas Law, Wells says the Patriots footballs should have measured between 11.32 psi and 11.52 psi, based on the effects the weather conditions would have had on the balls in the first half of the game. The average of the Wilson-logoed gauge measurements of the 11 footballs was 11.49 psi, which would put the balls well within range of the predicted halftime pressure. The other gauge measured the balls, on average, at 11.11 psi, which was seen as below the minimum allowed by the Ideal Gas Law and a sign the footballs may have been tampered. But what if Anderson used the Wilson-logoed gauge pregame, and again at halftime, and the balls were in the proper range as predicted by science? “Footballs have never been measured at halftime of any other game in NFL history,” Kraft says. “They have no idea how much footballs go down in cold weather or expand in warm weather. There is just no evidence that tampering ever happened.” “Anderson has a pregame recollection of what gauge he used, and it’s disregarded, and the [Wells] Report just assumes he uses the other gauge,” Kraft said. “Footballs have never been measured at halftime of any other game in NFL history. They have no idea how much footballs go down in cold weather or expand in warm weather. There is just no evidence that tampering with the footballs ever happened.” Once the reports of deflated footballs arose—ESPN reported three days after the game that 11 of 12 New England footballs were found to be at least two pounds under the 12.5-psi minimum when measured at halftime—the Patriots felt they’d already been convicted in the court of public opinion. The fact is, none of the footballs in the 22 measured at halftime (11 balls checked with two gauges each) was more than two pounds low; one measured at exactly 10.50 psi. There is enough evidence that casts the Patriots and Brady in a bad light—the fact that McNally referred to himself as “the Deflator” in a text message; the six phone calls between Brady and Jastremski over three days once the first deflation charges surfaced, after they hadn’t spoken for six months ; the texting between McNally and Jastremski about inflation of footballs. The league can impose discipline in cases involving integrity of the game if it feels the “preponderance of evidence” proves a team has cheated, and league executive vice president Troy Vincent, who issued the sanctions, obviously felt the preponderance of evidence came down against New England. I asked Kraft why he seemed to grudgingly accept the 2007 Spygate sanctions but not these. “Last time,” said Kraft, “there was no dispute about the facts. The team admittedly said what happened. … It was illegal to videotape [the opposing sidelines], and in the end we admitted it and took our penance. This is very different. In 2007 we did something and acknowledged the fact of what was done. This is an accusation of wrongdoing, without proof.” Can Garoppolo Handle the Pressure? With Tom Brady suspended (for now) for the first four games, a 2014 second-round pick out of Eastern Illinois will lead the Super Bowl champions into the 2015 season. Who the heck is this guy? FULL STORY With Tom Brady suspended (for now) for the first four games, a 2014 second-round pick out of Eastern Illinois will lead the Super Bowl champions into the 2015 season. Who the heck is this guy? Kraft was circumspect about the reaction of coach Bill Belichick to the punishment. Belichick hasn’t been heard from since the story exploded. “I’m telling you, Bill didn’t know about it, and I didn’t know about it,” Kraft said. “I’m really happy that his focus is building a roster for the 2015 team and preparing for the challenges of the 2015 season. I especially respect this about his leadership style—he really can compartmentalize, and that’s what he’s doing here.” The Patriots have to hope they get some relief from Brady’s appeal to the league office (a longshot), and then must determine if Brady as an individual or Kraft on behalf of the organization goes outside the family to challenge the league ruling. There were indications over the weekend that Kraft was leaning against going rogue and suing the league, but talking to him, it still felt like a fluid situation. Now Kraft, as angry as this makes him, has begun to think the team may have to play without Brady for a quarter of the season. A second-year quarterback from Eastern Illinois, Jimmy Garoppolo, is in line to start the first game of his NFL career on national TV, in the opening game of the season, as the Patriots begin defense of their Super Bowl title. “How do you think Garoppolo will do, if he has to play?” I asked. Kraft tried to muster up some enthusiasm for Garoppolo, but this wasn’t the day for that. “My gut feeling is the same as yours,” Kraft said. “He is a very hard worker, a very fine young man, but until the bullets are flying and you’re out there, no one knows. Think about how many of these first-round picks, even, don’t make it. [Garoppolo was the team’s second-round pick in 2014.] He works hard and he studies hard, though.” The owner of the scarred New England Patriots paused for a second. “Deep down,” Kraft said, “I would hope that’s an academic question.” Has the last 19-yard extra-point been kicked? Owners vote on proposed PAT changes this week. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images) Has the last 19-yard extra-point been kicked? Owners vote on proposed PAT changes this week. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images) The real news to come out of the league meetings this week. The drama in San Francisco, to be sure, will be Kraft and Goodell dueling at 10 paces. Aside from moving the goalposts to the back of the endzone in 1974 and adopting the two-point conversion in 1994, the NFL hasn’t had a significant change in the way it keeps score in its 95 seasons. On Tuesday, that could change with a potentially radical shift in the PAT and the two-point conversion play. In a special column Tuesday morning on The MMQB, I’ll detail the three plans the owners will consider late Tuesday afternoon at the annual spring meetings. I believe what the owners are likely to pass isn’t a perfect plan, but it’s a good starting point—assuming, of course, that 24 of 32 owners approve one of the three plans and the line of scrimmage for the PAT is moved back. I believe that, because to do nothing is wrong. With a success rate of 99.5 percent for PATs over the past four years, and with the rising number of touchbacks with the kickoff line pushed up five yards recently, the dead spots in games are, well, really dead. I watched a few touchdowns followed by PATs, TV timeouts and touchbacks over the weekend on NFL Game Rewind, and this is an estimate of how much time there is several times per game when absolutely nothing happens: PAT —About 55 seconds from the time a touchdown is scored until the time the ref signals for a TV timeout. —About 55 seconds from the time a touchdown is scored until the time the ref signals for a TV timeout. TV timeout —There are 20 per game, at 1 minute 50 seconds per timeout. Touchback following the TV timeout—About 75 seconds from the time the game comes back from commercial to when the offensive team breaks the huddle and approaches the line for first down. That’s exactly four minutes between plays of substance—the touchdown and the first play on the next series—assuming a PAT and a touchback. That’s a lot of nothing time. There were only 59 two-point conversions attempted last season, about 3.5 per NFL weekend. Those are fun plays, and the NFL should put a rule in place to encourage more of them. Pushing the PAT back is the first step in that direction. It may not be enough, but it’s better than the 19-yard gimme that exists now. * * * An interesting take, from a former commissioner. This is the New Discipline Andrew Brandt on why the NFL came down hard on the Pats, what it means for Roger Goodell to potentially lose a powerful ally in Robert Kraft, and the impact on Tom Brady’s legacy. FULL STORY Andrew Brandt on why the NFL came down hard on the Pats, what it means for Roger Goodell to potentially lose a powerful ally in Robert Kraft, and the impact on Tom Brady’s legacy. I thought the op-ed on the deflation controversy by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, in the New York Daily News, was interesting because of his faith in the investigation. In part, Vincent wrote: “It was the right call. Sports is a huge business. The NFL is projecting revenues of more than $12 billion this year alone. Baseball, basketball and hockey are also in the multibillionaire club. All that success depends entirely on fans caring about the outcome of games. We the fans can’t be invested in the outcome unless we firmly believe the rules are being obeyed. We all have to trust we are watching real athletic contests where the winners succeed because of the skills they demonstrate in accordance with the applicable standards. If we let the games drift away from that, organized sports will wind up like professional wrestling. “It’s unfortunate that the lengthy investigation into Deflategate could only reach the limp conclusion that game balls were ‘more probably [sic] than not’ deflated to accommodate Brady. It is equally unfortunate that the investigation reverted to lawyerspeak to state its conclusion, leaving the NFL with a flimsy peg on which to hang its sanctions. But the findings are what they are, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was correct to hand down a firm punishment against Brady and the Patriots. “ … The NFL stood firmly for the rules. That is what truly matters.” * * * Remember that story last fall about prescription-drug dispensing? The MMQB’s Jenny Vrentas with an update on a story that caused a firestorm last fall, about team medics dispensing prescription drugs out of state at NFL games: In the wake of the DEA’s surprise gameday inspections of three visiting NFL teams last November, there will be two league-wide changes for the 2015 season impacting how certain prescription drugs are dispensed and handled by clubs. The first change is the creation of a visiting team medical liaison, an emergency physician from the local area certified to practice medicine and prescribe controlled substances in that state. The NFL and the NFL players union agreed on this new position during the scouting combine in February, according to Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president of healthy and safety policy. Secondly, the NFL Physicians Society decided that clubs will no longer store controlled substances at team facilities or stadiums. NFL Safety is in Her Hands Meet Betsy Nabel, the league's recently appointed health and medical adviser. The accomplished cardiologist tackles the future of sideline injury protocol, the health of players in retirement and why she took the job in the first place. FULL STORY Meet Betsy Nabel, the league's recently appointed health and medical adviser. The accomplished cardiologist tackles the future of sideline injury protocol, the health of players in retirement and why she took the job in the first place. The visiting team medical liaison’s position is similar to the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant introduced in 2013. Rick Martinez, a clinical professor of emergency medicine at Emory University who has advised the NFL on Super Bowl emergency action plans since 1988, will head a panel to identify emergency physicians in each NFL market available to serve in this role on game days. The federal Controlled Substances Act prevents doctors from prescribing or transporting controlled substances, such as narcotic painkillers, outside the state in which they are licensed to practice, which restricts team physicians traveling to out-of-state road games. The DEA inspections last fall were spurred by the class-action filing against the NFL over prescription drug practices, a lawsuit that was dismissed a month later. The DEA agents searched and questioned three visiting NFL teams—the 49ers, Seahawks and Buccaneers—as they were leaving after games, to check for any violations in how prescription drugs were being dispensed. “The DEA discussions with our various teams didn’t demonstrate any irregularities, but at the same time having a doctor who has all of the licensure for the visiting team to rely on is a best practice,” Miller says. “We consider it a step forward. I would imagine that any concern the DEA would have about visiting team doctors practicing medicine is clearly addressed.” (When contacted Friday, a DEA spokesperson said she did not have enough information to respond to the NFL’s new practices or whether or not there would be further action from the DEA as a result of the spot checks last fall.) In the past, if a player on a visiting team suffered an injury, such as an ACL tear, and needed to take a controlled substance, like narcotic pain medicine, the law required him to either be prescribed the medicine by the home-team physician or be admitted to a local emergency room. That job will now be done by the liaison, and the prescription will be filled at a nearby pharmacy. The liaison will also have admitting privileges to the closest trauma center, so he or she can facilitate the path if a player needs hospital care. In addition to narcotic pain medicine, controlled substances often used by NFL teams include anti-nausea drugs and sleep aids. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the best-known of which is Toradol, are not regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. It was legal for teams to store controlled substances as long as they were licensed by the DEA to do so and met stringent guidelines for securing the medicines and auditing their dispense. But the new policy to eliminate storage at NFL team facilities and stadiums is an extra safeguard. “It was decided by the team physicians that we are probably better off in general not storing any of these drugs there. That way there are no questions asked,” says Matthew Matava, Rams head team physician and former president of the NFL Physicians Society. “Players are going to get all the medication they need to take care of their problem. It’s just going to be done in a way that’s water-tight in terms of legality.” Quotes of the Week I “If you live to be a thousand years old, will this make any sense to you? Will it make any godd--- sense?!” —David Letterman, in his memorable post-9/11 monologue, on the frustration and anger over the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. This is David Letterman’s last week hosting the “Late Show with David Letterman.” His final show is Wednesday. I just thought that was the most memorable thing he’s done—at least in my memory. II “Whats up dorito dink” —Patriots officials locker room attendant Jim McNally, in a 2014 text message to fellow keeper of the footballs at Gillette Stadium John Jastremski, as relayed in the Patriots’ rebuttal to the Wells Report on Thursday. III “Mr. Brady believes he has never turned down [an autograph] request. If receiving an autograph from Mr. Brady is evidence that you are being rewarded by him for nefarious conduct, then hundreds or even thousands of people must be part of a scheme of wrongdoing.” —Also from the Patriots’ rebuttal IV “I believe that to the bottom of my heart.” —Investigator Ted Wells, on whether the text messages between Tom Brady and one of the two Patriots employees accused of deflating footballs are proof that Brady was complicit in the ball-deflating scheme. V “I have no comment at this time, and support our troops, and God bless the USA.” —“Saturday Night Live” cast member Taran Killam on NBC Saturday night, playing Tom Brady, asked repeatedly in an “interview” if he was guilty of any connection with football deflation before the AFC Championship Game. In other words, the satire on Brady rarely answering hard, direct questions was in full bloom on the TV show. Stats of the Week I I plan to have a detailed report at The MMQB on Tuesday morning about—potentially—the most significant change in the scoring system of football since 1912. NFL owners will discuss late Tuesday afternoon at the annual spring meetings in San Francisco the prospect of moving the line of scrimmage for the point after touchdown from the 2-yard-line to the 15. It’s an interesting and compelling story, with three possibilities being considered for what happens after a touchdown is scored. But will the NFL really be fixing the PAT if part of the new solution is pushing the kicking point to the 15-yard-line, meaning the PAT attempt on a kick would be from the 32 or 33? It does not seem so. Longtime Pittsburgh TV anchor and commentator John Steigerwald forwarded these numbers to me, and they’re interesting. 2014 NFL Field Goal Accuracy, 30- to 39-yard attempts Field goals made: 272. Field goal attempted: 302. Field goal percentage from 30 to 39 yards: 90.1 percent. NFL kickers make more than 99 percent of extra points—on average, over the past three seasons—and so the percentage is going to go down if the scrimmage line is moved back 13 yards. But as Steigerwald points out, only slightly. II Jon Lester’s career batting record: Seasons: 10. Plate appearances: 59. At-bats: 52. Hits: 0. Walks: 1. Batting average: .000 On-base percentage: .019. You know how the guy who didn’t play baseball past his senior year in high school sits at the bar and looks at those numbers and says, “I could do better than that!” Well, he probably could. Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me My first reaction at Odell Beckham Jr. being named to the cover of the new Madden video game: The guy’s played 12 NFL games, zero in the playoffs. Could we please let him earn it first? My second reaction: In the last two months of the 2014 season, Beckham played nine football games for the Giants. His average game: nine catches, 133.2 receiving yards, one touchdown. If the Madden game is about not just what you’ve done but what you’re about to do—and clearly the marketing of this game is about the exciting young player staying hot—then Beckham might be the easiest choice in the league. He enters the 2015 season on fire. Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week I kept wondering what the GPS in my car was trying to say over the weekend as we left New York City headed for my nephew’s college graduation dinner in Baltimore. You know how the female voice in those GPS systems can mispronounce with the best of them? Well, as we drove onto the New Jersey Turnpike and headed south, the voice said, Merge left and head south toward Carsley, or something like that. Carsley? Could it be Carlstadt? Wrong direction. Kearney? Maybe. A mile or so later, the voice said, Merge left and head south toward Carsonley. There is no Carsonley. Now I was getting confused. Here came the sign, as we approached the lovely area of the Turnpike north of Newark Airport, for the highway that was about to split in two going south. On the left-hand side of the road, the New Jersey Turnpike south, it read: CARS ONLY Tweets of the Week I Henrik Lundqvist: May 13, 2013: 35 saves, Game 7 win May 13, 2014: 35 saves, Game 7 win May 13, 2015: 35 saves, Game 7 win @nyrangers — Kenny Albert (@KennyAlbert) May 14, 2015 The MSG hockey announcer (and FOX football announcer) after the Rangers goalie's latest series-clinching win over Washington. II Brady's suspension opens door for Rex Ryan's Bills, who are the new favorite to win AFC East http://t.co/kOJEkjxp1A pic.twitter.com/7Q1ERiCwT0 — Manish Mehta (@MMehtaNYDN) May 12, 2015 I bet there would be quite a few people—Patriots fans and non-Patriots fans—who would like a piece of the action with the Bills as 2015 AFC East favorites … and would take the Patriots. III I find it stunning that the NFL cares more about how much air is in a football than it cares about a racist franchise name. — Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) May 12, 2015 The Nevada senator, referring to the NFL not being active in getting the Washington franchise to change its team name. IV What's even worse is that people want to see him fall because of his greatness! #FreeTomBrady — DonteHitner (@DonteWhitner) May 11, 2015 James D. Smith /AP James D. Smith /AP Ten Things I Think I Think 1. I think the candor of the representatives of La’el Collins—now—is to be applauded in the wake of Collins going undrafted and then signing as a free agent with Dallas. Robert Klemko of The MMQB had terrific, detailed work about one of the strangest stories in recent draft history. Most of us in the media business, I think, believed it was a bluff when agent Mike McCartney warned teams not to draft Collins, who was wanted for questioning in a murder case the week of the draft, and later questioned without being detained by police in Louisiana. Had he been drafted, McCartney told teams, Collins would have sat out the year and re-entered the draft in 2016. So no team drafted Collins, and McCartney and his agency, Priority Sports, got their way. By not being drafted, Collins got to pick where he wanted to play, and he chose Dallas, where he could be a luxury piece on what could be the best line in football. “We can put it on the record now,” McCartney told Klemko. “We were never going back in the draft. If someone had drafted him, we would’ve had a long, long discussion about it, but at the end of the day you can’t go back in the draft. He could get injured, gain weight, or 10 great tackles could come out. Too many risks.” Collins: How it All Went Down A first-round talent out of LSU, La’el Collins became radioactive just days before the NFL draft when his name was linked to a double homicide in Baton Rouge. Robert Klemko tells the inside story of how Collins' agents tried to salvage his stock, and the winding journey that put him across the table from police detectives and Jerry Jones. FULL STORY A first-round talent out of LSU, La’el Collins became radioactive just days before the NFL draft when his name was linked to a double homicide in Baton Rouge. Robert Klemko tells the inside story of how Collins' agents tried to salvage his stock, and the winding journey that put him across the table from police detectives and Jerry Jones. 2. I think for those who say: Whoa—McCartney was lying. You’re defending lying? Not necessarily. McCartney’s most important job was protecting his client, and putting Collins in the best place possible for 2015, 2016 and beyond after an unprecedented event before a draft. And there was no guarantee that McCartney, in the end, wouldn’t do what he said. If Collins got picked by a cold-weather team, maybe he’d have told McCartney to just forget it, and he’d go back in the draft pool next year. 3. I think when the NFL invites teams to bid for Super Bowls in 2019 and 2020 this week at the spring meetings in San Francisco, I expect Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles and New Orleans (the runner-up to Minneapolis in 2018) to be strong considerations. Dallas-Fort Worth could bid too. 4. I think I’ve never seen a football player who looked less like a football player than Garo Yepremian, who died Friday at 70. And for too long, this short and balding football Costanza was best known (almost only known) for the blooper play of all blooper plays—his awkward pass/forward fumble returned for a touchdown in the Super Bowl of the Dolphins’ perfect season. Great column by Dave Hyde of the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Garo and the gaffe and his career. It's bothersome that one event in a person’s life can obscure all other things, including great things. Yepremian was an Armenian born in Cyprus and living in London in the 1960s when he went to America to try his foot at soccer-style kicking. Without Yepremian—and with a run-of-the-mill kicker—I have serious doubts the Dolphins would have gone 17-0 in the 1972 season. Consider that Miami, a seven-point underdog in Week 3 at Minnesota, was down 14-6 midway through the fourth quarter and drove to borderline field-goal territory with less than five minutes left. Don Shula had seen Yepremian make 38- and 42-yarders that day, and sent him out for a 50-yard field goal. Today, that’s a 50-50 proposition; 43 years ago, it might have been a 15-percent shot. Yepremian hit it, and the Dolphins drove for a last-minute touchdown to win, 16-14. In Week 6, Miami won 24-23, and Yepremian’s contribution was the longest field goal of his life, from 54 yards. In Week 14, capping the 14-0 regular season, he made 40-, 50- and 35-yard field goals in a 16-0 win over Baltimore. It’s easy to remember the gaffe; we should also remember the good with Garo. 5. I think I love the Jaguars paying Dante Fowler a little more than the market rate for the third pick in the draft after he tore his ACL and was lost for his rookie season. Quality move by that organization. 6. I think it hit me the other day, doing a little research on running backs and the draft in recent years for a Todd Gurley story I’m working on. The draft is a crapshoot, period. But the running back position is the crapshootiest of all positions, at least lately. Some of the backs picked in the top two rounds since 2009: Christine Michael, Montee Ball, Trent Richardson, David Wilson (injured, I know), Isaiah Pead, LaMichael James, Mikel Leshoure, Daniel Thomas, Jahvid Best, Ben Tate, Montario Hardesty, Beanie Wells. Between 2009 and 2013, 26 backs got picked in the first two rounds, and half of them are current flameouts. 7. I think the underrated acquisition of the offseason could well be Dennis Allen re-joining the Saints as the assistant to defensive coordinator Rob Ryan. Sean Payton loves Allen, who always has been good at taking unaderachievers (such as last year’s disappointing second-round cornerback, Stanley Jean-Baptiste) and making them contributors. Looking forward to seeing the New Orleans secondary be more aggressive and efficient with Allen’s help. Watching the Draft Through Agentsu2019 Eyes The waiting, the worrying, the counseling, the celebrating. A startup group gave The MMQB a behind-the-scenes look at an agent’s wildest ride: draft week. FULL STORY The waiting, the worrying, the counseling, the celebrating. A startup group gave The MMQB a behind-the-scenes look at an agent’s wildest ride: draft week. 8. I think this is one interesting nugget from Dallas Morning News writer David Moore’s stories about Dallas rookie pass-rusher Randy Gregory: As a high-schooler living in Fishers, Ind., Gregory said he lived at 12121 Cowboys Court. Another one: He tested positive for marijuana, according to Moore, three times in a 13-month period starting in January 2014. 9. I think you can add Oakland coach Jack Del Rio to the chorus of those who felt the NFL’s sanction of the Patriots “was a little bit overdone.” It get curiouser and curiouser. 10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week: a. Kevin Cullen, you are really, really good at your job. b. Another story I loved this weekend: SI’s Tim Layden on American Pharoah’s victory in the Preakness. I so admire great writing done quickly, with great detail. Layden wrote this story in 110 minutes, filed it at 9:20 p.m., and it was posted Saturday night on SI.com. Then he wrote for the magazine. A horse, writing about horses. Such strong prose in the SI.com story, combined with detail like this: Jockey Victor Espinoza hit Pharoah with his whip 32 times in the Kentucky Derby and zero times in the Preakness … and that detail came in a parenthetical. As though Layden was saying, This isn’t really that important, but I want to throw it out there to enhance your understanding of jockey and horse. c. Smart reading of the legal tea leaves in the Brady case by Ben Volin of the Boston Globe. d. Great front page of Mississippi’s Jackson Clarion-Ledger on Saturday—B.B. KING: “The thrill is gone.” That’s the entire front page, with a gigantic broadsheet photo of King, who died Thursday from Type 2 diabetes at 89. Imagine: still performing at age 89. That’s what King was doing. e. The most amazing factoid in the wake of the horrible Amtrak crash near Philadelphia that killed eight commuters last week: The track and infrastructure on the northeast corridor train route that still transports thousands of people a day is up to 150 years old. Not all of it, of course. But some. Which means it was laid or built, in part, right around the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Talk Back Have a question or comment for Peter King? Email him at talkback@themmqb.com and it might be included in this week’s mailbag. f. “Breaking one’s silence,” Bill Cosby, actually means addressing the horrendous charges against you, not ducking them clumsily. g. The St. Louis Cardinals are apace to draw 3.5 million fans for second straight year. What a franchise. What a baseball town. h. Wear those socks high, Cardinals. i. I will never bench you again in any week you’re on my roster, Corey Kluber. Promise. j. Coffeenerdness: I think I think coffee is good for you (@UpshotNYT). k. Beernerdness: If you can get your hands on a Montauk Session IPA (Montauk, N.Y.), I think you’ll be impressed with classic IPA taste, maybe even with the slight bitterness, which I like in my IPAs. A good find at Citi Field and other spots in the East. l. Paul Pierce is absurd. Steph Curry is absurder. m. Great Mike Tirico note in the first minute of Golden State-Memphis, Game 6, on Curry: “I watched him take 30 shots before the game from beyond the three-point line, and he made 29.” n. Golden State, after seven minutes in Game 6 at Memphis, had 25 points. What a beautiful team to watch. o. Can you imagine what Steve Kerr feels like today? He was on the precipice of picking the Knicks job over Golden State last summer. p. Steve Kerr’s agent, remember, was Mike Tannenbaum. Yes, that Mike Tannenbaum, before he took the job heading up the Miami Dolphins' front office. q. Congrats to my nephew, Evan King, for his graduation from McDaniel College. Evan persevered through a tough road after the death of his dad (and my brother) five years ago, and wouldn’t let anything deter him. Proud of you, Evan. r. Column note: I will be away next Monday, and Greg Bedard will be filling in for me in this space. My daughter Laura is getting married Saturday afternoon in California. It’ll be a great day for the King family; Kings are coming from as far away as Spain and England, from New York and Connecticut. I’ll be back June 1. The Adieu Haiku In San Fran this week, if you see Bob Kraft, tell me if his eyes shoot darts. Follow The MMQB on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. ||||| New England Patriots' owner Bob Kraft said Tuesday he will not appeal the NFL's punishment against his team for the "Deflategate" scandal. Kraft said Tuesday at the owners meetings that he was putting the league before his franchise because "at no time should the agenda of one team outweigh the collective good of the 32." The Patriots were fined $1 million and docked a first-round draft pick next year, and a fourth-rounder in 2017 after an independent investigation determined footballs used by the team in the 2014 AFC Championship game were purposefully deflated below regulation. The Patriots will lose a first-round draft pick next year and a fourth-rounder in 2017. "When the discipline came out, I felt it was way over the top," Kraft said, adding that if he had made his decision last week, "I think maybe it might have been a different one." But after further consideration, he cited "believing in the strength of the (NFL) partnership and the 32 teams" for dropping any appeal plans. Kraft also recognized the powers given to Commissioner Roger Goodell. "Although I might disagree in what is decided, I do have respect for the commissioner, and believe he is doing what he perceives to be in the best interest of the 32," Kraft added. In addition to the fines against the Patriots organization, quarterback Tom Brady, the Super Bowl MVP, was "suspended without pay for the first four games of the 2015 regular season for conduct detrimental to the integrity of the NFL." An appeal of that punishment was filed by the NFL Players Association last week on Brady's behalf. The union asked for a neutral arbitrator to hear the case, though the league's collective bargaining agreement stipulates that it will be decided by Commissioner Roger Goodell or a person he designates. "Given the NFL's history of inconsistency and arbitrary decisions in disciplinary matters, it is only fair that a neutral arbitrator hear this appeal," the union said in a news release. Kraft would not take any questions Tuesday about his decision nor about Brady's appeal, which will be heard by Goodell. But he has said he's convinced Brady played no part in deflating the footballs. Brady's appeal will be heard within the next week. Kraft was livid when the Wells Report, which was commissioned by the NFL and took nearly four months to compile, contained what he termed "all circumstantial, no hard evidence." He said Tuesday that "the entire process has taken too long; it's four months after the AFC championship game, and we are still talking about air pressure ... in footballs." This is the second time in Kraft's 21 years as owner that the Patriots have been disciplined for breaking NFL rules. In 2007, they were penalized for videotaping New York Jets signals during a game. They didn't challenge fines of $500,000 against coach Bill Belichick and $250,000 against the club, along with the loss of a first-round draft pick. Kraft has long been a confidant and adviser to Goodell and was one of the owners who championed Goodell to replace Paul Tagliabue in 2006. Kraft also was one of the leaders in getting key owners and the union together to end the 2011 lockout, and he's been a major force in negotiations with TV networks. In other words, a team player, something he stressed in his short news conference Tuesday. "What I've learned over the last 21 years is the heart and soul and strength of the NFL," he said, "is the partnership of 32 teams."

– Tom Brady filed an appeal just days after the league suspended him for four games over Deflategate—but the Patriots have given up and won't be fighting the league's punishment, CBS News reports. In a five-minute press conference today out of San Francisco, where the league is holding spring meetings, owner Robert Kraft said even though he found the discipline—a $1 million fine and two lost draft picks, including one in the first round—"unreasonable and unprecedented," he "reluctantly" conceded that dropping the appeal would be best for all involved, NESN reports. "The entire process is taking way too long," he said. "I can end [this controversy] or extend it." This followed an ESPN report that Kraft and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell were having "back-channel conversations" to avoid legal action. Although MMQB compared the Goodell-Kraft relationship to that of Obama-Putin, there have been signs the chill was thawing: ESPN's Adam Schefter tweeted this morning that the two were spotted hugging it out. But a league source reportedly told Schefter that the NFL asked the Patriots to suspend Jim McNally and John Jastremski (the two employees whose texts allegedly pointed to deflating) before the Pats received their punishment, and that the team "obliged," as ESPN puts it—which wouldn't make a lot of sense if there's no proof of ball deflation, as the Pats keep insisting. An NFL rep denies ESPN's report. Meanwhile, MMQB asked Kraft in an "alternately defiant and angry" phone call over the weekend why he suspended the two, and Kraft "refused comment—for what he claimed were a variety of reasons," the site notes. (A Time writer says Brady shouldn't have been suspended at all.)

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| University of WisconsinArchive-It Partner Since: Aug, 2007Organization Type: Colleges & UniversitiesOrganization URL: http://archives.library.wisc.edu This collection currently includes two distinct sub-collections: The UW-Madison Collection and The Stem Cell Research Archives Project.The UW-Madison Collection includes University of Wisconsin Web sites that document many aspects of campus life including university administration, colleges, departments, and major campus organizations, student life, research, buildings, and special and ongoing events. We also crawl UW System and Colleges administration and UW Extension Web sites.The Stem Cell Research Archives Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries collects, preserves, and provides access to records of stem cell research at UW-Madison and reactions in Wisconsin to work accomplished or underway at UW-Madison.For more information about these collections or UW campus history, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu or contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu. On Wisconsin! ||||| You’re not just making music for yourself—you want to get heard, which means you want to get on playlists. Here's a step-by-step guide to getting your music in front of Spotify's editorial team. ||||| Nelly No Pimp Juice with Uncle Sam ... IRS Demands a Couple Mil The IRS Demands a Couple Mil from Nelly EXCLUSIVE Nelly might wanna tighten his belt, he's staring down one of the biggest celeb tax liens we've ever seen ... topping the $2 mil mark! Uncle Sam nailed Nelly with a $2,412,283 federal tax lien in August. The tab is so big, the IRS could start seizing his assets and property. He's also got state tax trouble -- earlier this year, the Missouri Department of Revenue said the St. Louis rapper owed $149,511 in unpaid state taxes from 2013. He originally owed a mere $113,533 ... but interest is a bitch. Sources close to Nelly tell us he's already working with the tax authorities to resolve the issues.

– Cornell Iral Haynes Jr. is in trouble with the taxman, but you may be able to help. You also might be more inclined to lend a hand if you recognize Mr. Haynes by his stage name, Nelly, and realize that it would take just a few minutes on Spotify to help dig the rapper out of his IRS mess. TMZ reported Sunday that Nelly was slammed with a $2,412,283 federal tax lien last month, added on to a Missouri state tax bill from earlier this year of nearly $150,000 (he originally owed just $113,000 and change, but the interest racked up). Spin magazine calls his financial conundrum "tragic" and says the singer "deserves better"—and it suggests a way everyone can help. The magazine's grand plan: Get as many people as possible to stream his hit song "Hot in Herre"—or "Ride Wit Me" or any other tunes from the Nelly discography—to generate funds for the artist. Based on Spotify's estimation that the average "per stream" payout to the owner of a song's rights is between $0.006 and $0.0084, Spin calculates Nelly would need, at minimum, 287,176,547 streams to help him pay down the federal tax bill, with an additional 17.8 million streams to appease Missouri—and that's if we assume he's on the $0.0084 end of things and that his labels and publishers, who would also get a cut, will be generous. Still, hope springs eternal: People are responding in a generally positive manner to the #HotInHerreStreamingParty and #SaveNelly hashtags. "I couldn't save Harambe but god----it I'm saving you @Nelly_Mo," writes one fan. (Last year wasn't a good year for Nelly on the legal front.)

There has been a tremendous amount of media speculation about an incident which took place on January 22, 2011 at a Venice, California jewelry store named Kamofie and Company. As a result of the incident, actress Lindsay Lohan has been charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office for alleged felony theft of a diamond necklace. Speculation as to what occurred that day has been the subject of intense rumor in the media and elsewhere. Many individuals want to be able to see the video streams from the jewelry store’s surveillance cameras, and we have obtained the exclusive license for them. The tapes speak for themselves. We plan to release the video streams at this site shortly. Please stay tuned for more information and bookmark this site. If you wish to be notified at the time the site becomes live, it would be our pleasure to inform you. Please enter your email address here and we’ll try to send you a reminder at that time. Please join our mailing list Your Email: By agreement with the Associated Press, members of the press may contact AP Images at www.apimages.com should you wish to acquire the rights to publish any of the content of the security camera video for news reporting purposes. Cordially, The Management for necklacevideo.com You may contact us directly at: info@necklacevideo.com Or by mail: The Spencer Company Post Office Box 1862 Beverly Hills, California 90213-1862 ||||| A web site created by a Beverly Hills, Calif., software company claimed to have "exclusive license" to the surveillance tape of Lindsay Lohan in the Venice Beach jewelry store where she allegedly stole a $2,500 necklace. On the web site, necklacevideo.com, is a statement that it will stream segments of the video, though no date or time is given. "Speculation as to what occurred that day has been the subject of intense rumor in the media and elsewhere," a statement on the Web site said. "Many individuals want to be able to see the video streams from the jewelry store's surveillance cameras, and we have obtained the exclusive license for them. "The tapes speak for themselves," said the statement on the site, which was credited to The Spencer Company, a Beverly Hills, Calif., software company. Cristopher Spencer, the president of The Spencer Company and a spokesperson for the jewelry store, Kamofie & Company, said the company decided to release the tape due to media interest and concerns that the media was mischaracterizing its contents. "The bottom line is we felt there was far too much speculation about the video recording, and that it was right for the public to be able to see the video itself," Spencer said in a statement released to ABCNews.com. The celebrity web site RadarOnline.com reported today that Kamofie & Co. sold the surveillance video footage of the incident, and made more than $35,000 on the sale to different oulets. "The jewelry store wanted a bidding war to maximize profits," RadarOnline quotes a source as saying. "They chopped up the sale to different outlets to make as much money as possible." "Entertainment Tonight" obtained stills taken from the video, which shows Lohan in a black top trying on jewelry, with a video timestamp of Jan. 21, 2011. The celebrity news show said it will air footage of the actress' shopping trip on Monday. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office formally charged Lohan with felony grand theft on Feb. 9. If convicted, Lohan could go to California state prison for up to three years. The 24-year-old actress already has been to jail three times in the past three years for DUI, drug possession and probation violations. Lohan reportedly has said that the necklace was loaned to her by Kamofie & Co. and her assistant returned it to police. After detectives started looking into the case and began preparing a search warrant, a friend of Lohan's brought the necklace to the Pacific Division police station. The starlet, who is out on $40,000 bail, was told by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Keith L. Schwartz in February that if she accepts a plea deal from the district attorney and pleads guilty or no contest, she will go to jail. "This case does involve jail time. Period," Schwartz told Lohan. "If you plead in front of me -- if this case resolves in front of me -- you are going to jail. Period. I don't want you under any apprehension. You will be going to jail." Schwartz continued the case one more time, to March 10, to give Lohan's lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley a chance to review the evidence from prosecutors, while adding, "I get the impression that you're not going to accept the DA's offer." If she rejects the prosecutor's offer and pleads not guilty, Schwartz will set the case for a preliminary hearing to go to a jury trial. And Lohan will go before another Superior Court judge who could still send her to jail for violating her probation stemming from her 2007 DUI case. It's not the first time the star has been connected to a theft investigation. In 2009, British police investigated the disappearance of $400,000 worth of Dior jewels from a photo shoot Lohan did with Britain's Elle magazine. At the time, Elle released a statement exonerating Lohan, saying, "Elle has no reason to believe that Lindsay Lohan was in any way responsible." In 2008, Lohan was sued by a college student who claimed the actress stole and wore her $12,000 mink coat, and in April 2010, Lohan was questioned by police in connection with a stolen $35,000 Rolex. The person who filed the report withdrew her complaint before police could determine if a crime had been committed. ||||| This weekend brings a major new wrinkle in the case against Lindsay Lohan , in which she's accused of felony theft by a jewelry store owner who says the actress stole a $2,500 necklace in January.Kamofie & Co. has just sold the surveillance video allegedly showing Lindsay Lohan leaving the store with the unpaid merchandise, according to a new report from RadarOnline.com . And the sale, reportedly brokered by a media dealer who peddled the footage to both U.S. and international outlets, is estimated to be earning the Southern California jeweler more than $35,000."The jewelry store wanted a bidding war to maximize profits," a source tells Radar. Entertainment Tonight is reportedly one buyer; the show is expected to air the controversial footage on Monday.On the one hand, public scrutiny of the video could further embarrass the troubled actress, who left rehab in early January, after months of trying to resolve her legal woes so she can repair her image and revive her career.On the other hand, the prosecution's case against Lohan is in jeopardy, now that its key witness has made such a money-hungry move. In the past, Lohan's team has suggested she was set up, and as the opportunistic jeweler walks off with thousands before the case is even tried, the store's claim that they were victims of theft weakens."Lindsay Lohan may have just gotten the luckiest break of her life," RadarOnline's managing editor and executive vice president, David Perel, tells. "If the criminal case comes down to her word versus the word of the jeweler, it will be Advantage: Lindsay. The jewelry store has now used the case for profit, and Lindsay's lawyer is sure to have a very compelling argument that the cash-for-tape scandal destroys the credibility of Lindsay's accuser."

– Looks like Lindsay Lohan is going to be a screen star again. A surveillance video allegedly showing her "lifting" jewelry from a store has reportedly been sold by the shop for $35,000. Venice Beach jewelry store Kamofie & Co. sold the tape to a Beverly Hills software company, which is promising to stream the tape exclusively on its necklacevideo.com site, notes ABC News. It hasn't said when. "Speculation as to what occurred that day has been the subject of intense rumor," says a statement on the website. "Many individuals want to see the video streams from the jewelry store's surveillance cameras, and we have obtained the exclusive license for them," the statement adds. "The tapes speak for themselves." Entertainment Tonight has obtained stills of the video and plans to air footage of Lohan's shopping trip today. Lohan was charged with felony grand theft after Kamoflie & Co. accused the actress of stealing a $2,500 necklace. Click to read about how the video could help her case.

(FCINO/youtube) It's early, but it appears we have a frontrunner for most astounding political ad of 2010. Check out this new spot from "Carly for California," Republican California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina's campaign organization.The spot is an extended attack on Fiorina primary opponent Tom Campbell. It's long and drags a bit in the middle, so if you're short on time, watch the first 30 seconds and then skip to the 2:20 mark, after which things start to really get crazy. (Oh, and don't ignore the amazing background music.)The spot sparked widespread mockery Wednesday on political Web sites, including Politico and Wonkette. Quipped one YouTube commenter: "This might be the single greatest/stupidest video I have ever seen in my entire life."Enjoy below. And feel free to explain what's going on. We think the sheep are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, but just like David Lynch's classic tv series "Twin Peaks," this one's open to interpretation.: Two of Fiorina's opponents are trying to use the video to their advantage, with one -- Chuck DeVore -- offering up the "Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep From our Political Discourse." Read about it here : The man behind the video is Republican political consultant Tom Davis, aka "Hollywood." Check out an earlier can't-miss video from Davis (featuring a giant marauding rat) here ||||| Some person who “knows stuff like this” breaks down Carly Fiorina’s Laser-eyed Sheep Furry Of Death From Hell comedy film for FishbowlLA: “Wow…they did shoot all of that sheep stuff. It wasn’t stock footage. Paid crew for the sheep stuff and an editor for two days worth of cutting that stuff, titling, paid crew, equipment rental and effects plus the gathering of the rest of the stock footage…but there is an office scene too – probably $15,000.” One more facepalm for those ex-Hewlett-Packard shareholders. [FishbowlLA]

– Carly Fiorina thinks her primary opponent for a Senate seat in California is what her new ad terms a FCINO, a Fiscal Conservative in Name Only. Fine, routine stuff. But the video itself is "already a frontrunner for most astounding political ad of 2010," writes Brian Montopoli at CBS. Why's that? It's not so much an ad as a "Laser-eyed Sheep Furry of Death From Hell comedy film," writes Jim Newell at Wonkette. It's long, but things get interesting around the 2:25 mark.

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Surprise! U2 just put out a new album, and the renowned rock band is giving it away for free to iTunes users. This CD cover image released by Interscope Records shows "Songs of Innocence," by U2. U2 is putting out a new album in 2014, and the renowned rock band is giving it away for free to iTunes users. U2 made... (Associated Press) Apple CEO Tim Cook, left, greets Bono from the band U2 after they preformed at the end of the Apple event on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Cupertino, Calif. Apple unveiled a new Apple Watch, the iPhone 6... (Associated Press) U2 made the unexpected announcement Tuesday at Apple's unveiling event in Cupertino, California. All customers with iTunes accounts could download the 11-song "Songs of Innocence" for free Tuesday afternoon. There was much speculation over whether the band would release an album earlier this year when news leaked about the band potentially postponing the highly anticipated new LP's release to 2015. The Irish band played at Apple's event and CEO Tim Cook announced the new album would be given to the company's 500 million iTunes users. A news release says the album will be released to everyone else Oct. 14. Surprise albums are unusual and free albums even more so, but there are recent examples of both. Beyonce dropped her self-titled LP as a surprise on iTunes in December and it became one of the top-selling albums of 2014. Others, like Kid Cudi and Wolfmother, released surprise albums this year to little notice. Tom Petty gave away his new album with the Heartbreakers for free with purchase of a concert ticket. A news release says "Songs of Innocence" is an exploration of U2's influences from the 1970s and '80s with themes of "home and family, relationships and discovery." The album is produced by Danger Mouse with Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney and Flood. ||||| U2 — from left, Bono, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. and The Edge — gave half a billion iTunes users the band's 13th studio album, 'Songs of Innocence,' on Tuesday. (Photo: Interscope Records) The Apple Watch may be the game-changer that emerged Tuesday from the company's product reveal, but U2's new album made for a nice surprise, like the prize in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. This year has seen pop music's royalty clamber to outdo each other when introducing new music — surprise albums from David Bowie and Beyoncé, a new digital-music service from Garth Brooks — but U2 may have topped them all by gifting Songs of Innocence (*** out of four) to a half-billion iTunes users. RELATED: U2 drops new album for free – now – on iTunes With this deal, U2 achieved instant near-total market penetration for Songs of Innocence. There's no going to YouTube to check out the lyric video, no waiting to hear it on the radio. Anybody with an iTunes account should have it by now, or will the next time they sign in. (Those who aren't on iTunes can buy it in stores Oct. 14.) The method of distribution will dominate the initial chatter about the album, but once people have had a chance to listen to Songs of Innocence a few times and digest it, they'll discover a substantive album that harks back to the band's earliest days, musically and lyrically. On the album's lead track, The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), Bono sings, against a backdrop of impossibly distorted guitar, of hearing The Ramones for the first time: "I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred/ Heard a song that made some sense out of the world/ Everything I ever lost now has been returned/ In the most beautiful sound I ever heard." Songs of Innocence may not provide that miracle moment for many. It lacks a transcendent Beautiful Day or an instant ear-grabber like Vertigo. But fans who cherish early albums such as Boy, October and War may hear traces of a band they thought had been long taken over by the stadium act of the past 20 years. The cover of U2's 'Songs of Innocence,' gifted to iTunes users Tuesday. (Photo: Interscope Records) "You can't return to where you've never left," Bono sings in the hometown ode Cedarwood Road. Likewise, those first albums have stayed with the band, shaping the sound of Songs of Innocence, even with the involvement of Danger Mouse, Ryan Tedder, Paul Epworth and others. Bono internalizes a mother's wisdom in Iris (Hold Me Close). "I've got your life inside of me," he sings to the woman who died when he was 14. He taps into his mystical side in Song for Someone and California (There Is No End to Love), in which he sings, "All I know, and all I need to know, is there is no end to love." Lyrics like that — or Cedarwood Road's "A heart that is broken is a heart that is open" — make Songs of Innocence an apt title for U2's 13th studio album. Some might argue that those lines are simply naive, but they're not. They come from a place that has seen too much, that is too hard won. Returning to that place of innocence is a conscious choice, and it's the place where this album finds its strength. Key tracks: The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), California (There Is No End to Love), Song for Someone Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1opBcLu ||||| Memories are a blast on “Songs of Innocence,” the album that U2 released on Tuesday afternoon as a worldwide giveaway. With a title that echoes William Blake, the album is a blast of discoveries, hopes, losses, fears and newfound resolve in lyrics that are openly autobiographical. It’s also a blast of unapologetic arena rock and cathedral-scale production, equally gigantic and detailed, in the music that carries them. The immediate news was that “Songs of Innocence” (Interscope) can be downloaded free until Oct. 13 by everyone with an iTunes Store account: That’s half a billion people in 119 countries. (Physical and digital versions of the album go on sale Oct. 14.) The giveaway is a dream scenario for U2, a band that has always wanted everyone to feel its choruses and sing along. Apple has made distribution the easy part; the bigger challenge for U2 is to make people care about a new statement from a familiar band. During its five years between albums, U2, which released its first recording in 1979, publicly pondered how to stay relevant. Its solution, on “Songs of Innocence,” is to reimagine young, retrospectively innocent selves and recall what fired them up: family, neighbors, lovers, street action and, of course, music. Liner notes by Bono, the band’s lead singer and main lyricist, fill in many of the back stories, describing the songs as “first journeys.”

– Bigger iPhones and a high-tech watch were ostensibly the stars of yesterday's much-hyped Apple event, but a few other luminaries showed up to grace the stage in Cupertino, Calif. U2 made a surprise appearance and unexpectedly announced that a) it has a new album out, and b) all 500 million iTunes users can download Songs of Innocence for free, the AP reports. The band made the announcement about the 11-song album along with Apple CEO Tim Cook, noting that non-iTunes users will have to wait until Oct. 14. According to Forbes, Bono and gang first played a new song called "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)." Then Cook started bantering with the group's frontman, exclaiming, "Wasn't that the most incredible single you ever heard? We would love a whole album of that." Bono replied, "I do believe you have over half a billion subscribers to iTunes, so—could you get this to them?" Cook's response: "If we gave it away for free." Some say U2 allowed itself to get upstaged by the Apple extravaganza—Vulture notes that the combo gadget/album release was "not so cool." The band's 13th studio album (and the first in five years) is getting mixed reviews: Jon Pareles of the New York Times calls the album a "blast of unapologetic arena rock and cathedral-scale production," while Brian Mansfield writes for USA Today that it "may not provide that miracle moment for many."

Four to nine factors contributed to each `never event,’ study finds ROCHESTER, Minn. — Why are major surgical errors called “never events?” Because they shouldn’t happen — but do. Mayo Clinic researchers identified 69 never events among 1.5 million invasive procedures performed over five years and detailed why each occurred. Using a system created to investigate military plane crashes, they coded the human behaviors involved to identify any environmental, organizational, job and individual characteristics that led to the never events. Their discovery: 628 human factors contributed to the errors overall, roughly four to nine per event. The study results are published in the journal Surgery. The never events included performing the wrong procedure (24), performing surgery on the wrong site or wrong side of the body (22), putting in the wrong implant (5), or leaving an object in the patient (18). All of the errors analyzed occurred at Mayo; none were fatal. The Mayo Rochester campus rate of never events over the period studied was roughly 1 in every 22,000 procedures. Because of inconsistencies in definitions and reporting requirements, it is hard to find accurate comparison data, but a recent study based upon information in the National Practitioner Data Bank estimated that the rate of such never events in the United States is almost twice that in this report, approximately 1 in 12,000 procedures. MEDIA CONTACT: Sharon Theimer, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, Email: newsbureau@mayo.edu Journalist: Sound bites of Dr. Bingener discussing the study are available in the downloads. Nearly two-thirds of the Mayo never events occurred during relatively minor procedures such as anesthetic blocks, line placements, interventional radiology procedures, endoscopy and other skin and soft tissue procedures. Medical teams are highly skilled and motivated, yet preventing never events entirely remains elusive, says senior author Juliane Bingener, M.D., a gastroenterologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic. The finding that factors beyond “cowboy-type” behavior were to blame points to the complexity of preventing never events, she says. “What it tells you is that multiple things have to happen for an error to happen,” Dr. Bingener says. “We need to make sure that the team is vigilant and knows that it is not only OK but is critical that team members alert each other to potential problems. Speaking up and taking advantage of all the team’s capacity to prevent errors is very important, and adding systems approaches as well.” For example, to help prevent surgical sponges from being left in patients, Mayo Clinic installed a sponge-counting system and uses that bar code-scanning system and vigilance by the surgical team to track sponges. Other preventive systems include use of The Joint Commission health care quality organization’s Universal Protocol, team briefings and huddles before a surgery starts, a pause before the first incision is made, and debriefings using a World Health Organization-recommended safety checklist. To investigate the never events, the researchers used human factors analysis, a system first developed to investigate military aviation accidents. They grouped errors into four levels that included dozens of factors: “Preconditions for action,” such as poor hand-offs, distractions, overconfidence, stress, mental fatigue and inadequate communication. This category also includes channeled attention on a single issue: In layman’s terms, focusing so much on a tree that one cannot see the forest. Unsafe actions, such as bending or breaking rules or failing to understand. This category includes perceptual errors such as confirmation bias, in which surgeons or others convinced themselves they were seeing what they thought they should be seeing. Oversight and supervisory factors: Inadequate supervision, staffing deficiencies and planning problems, for example. Organizational influences: Problems with organizational culture or operational processes. In addition to systems approaches and efforts to improve communication, attention should be paid to cognitive capacity, such as team composition, technology interfaces, time pressures and individual fatigue, the researchers say. The stakes are high for patients, physicians and hospitals, Dr. Bingener says. “The most important piece is the patient perspective. You don’t want a patient to have to experience a never event. The breach in trust that happens with that is the most important part,” she says. The study was funded in part by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases grant K23DK93553. The research team included members of the Mayo Clinic Department of Surgery, the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, Quality Management Services and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Disclosures: Dr. Bingener is supported through an NIDDK research grant, specified research through Nestle and Stryker Endoscopy, has received travel support from Intuitive Surgical, and serves on Titan Medical’s Surgeon Advisory Board. Co-author Susan Hallbeck, Ph.D., receives grant funding from Stryker Endoscopy. ### About Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to medical research and education, and providing expert, whole-person care to everyone who needs healing. For more information, visit http://www.mayoclinic.org/about-mayo-clinic or http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/. ||||| (Photo: Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock) You've probably heard about the woman who had a sponge left in her body from a hysterectomy four years ago, or the man whose surgeon accidentally implanted a kidney on his left side, instead of his right. One recent estimate found that catastrophic mistakes—including implanting the wrong thing, or performing the wrong procedure—occur in one out of every 12,000 surgeries in the United States. To figure out why, a team of researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, decided to analyze botched surgeries at their own clinic in the way investigators do military airplane accidents.* The researchers used an aviation accident-investigation tool called the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System, which helped them pinpoint which human errors are most common in surgeries gone wrong. Their work suggests hospitals should look for ways to reduce the mental lifting that surgery team members must do during a procedure, the researchers write in a paper published last week in the journal Surgery. That's in addition to the "systems engineering"-type of solutions that hospitals have recently used to reduce errors, such as installing computer systems that automatically track surgical sponges' whereabouts—and alert people when sponges get left behind in the body. (Sponges are the most common item left behind after surgeries.) Serious surgical accidents tend to involve many human failures. The average surgery saw nine separate missteps. To conduct the study, Mayo researchers collected Human Factors Analysis and Classification System data from debriefings that surgery teams held after catastrophic mistakes. The HFACS checklist includes 161 human errors, grouped into specific categories, that can happen during a procedure. The researchers categorized the causes of 69 botched surgeries this way. Serious surgical accidents tend to involve many human failures, the researchers found. The average surgery saw nine separate missteps. The most common problems they found fell into the category of the mental conditions of the surgeons and nurses, including overconfidence, and focusing too much on a minute detail and consequently losing sight of the big picture. Another common problem category: "decision errors," like failing to understand the risks of a procedure, or mixing up procedures, tests, and medications that perhaps have similar names. Meanwhile, oversight factors, such as a lack of accountability, and organizational factors—say, a lack of funding—were less likely to be cited as reasons for catastrophic surgery mistakes. The results suggest surgery team members are cognitively overloaded, the researchers write. That's why they're making these mental mistakes. More complicated procedures and technology, and patients with more complicated health problems, all tax surgeons and nurses, other research has found. That can lead people to perform procedures incorrectly, even when they don't intend to. In their paper, the researchers don't offer many specific suggestions for improvement, but they did note that lightening the mental load might involve scheduling fewer procedures for staffers, or giving surgical team members more independence, so they don't have to check everything with one overworked supervisor. Fixing human mistakes in surgery, it turns out, likely means making things easier for the humans involved. Quick Studies is an award-winning series that sheds light on new research and discoveries that change the way we look at the world. *UPDATE — June 15, 2015: This article has been updated to reflect the correct location of the Mayo Clinic.

– To err is human, and deadly when those humans are doctors. Major surgical errors are pretty rare—some estimates put them at one in 12,000 surgeries—but they do happen, even egregious ones like leaving instruments behind or performing the wrong surgery altogether. Mayo Clinic researchers recently set out to find out why by analyzing 69 such events that occurred over the course of 1.5 million invasive surgeries in a five-year period. Reporting in the journal Surgery, they found that "never events" (meaning ones that should never happen) occurred once in every 22,000 surgeries in this window, and that those included 24 wrong surgeries, 22 involving the wrong side or site, 18 instances of leaving an object in the patient, and five wrong implants. The researchers used the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System—initially developed to investigate military aviation accidents—and organized errors into four types, reports the Mayo Clinic: preconditions for action, like overconfidence and inadequate communication; unsafe actions, like breaking rules or confirmation bias; oversight factors, like poor staffing and planning; and organizational influences, such as problems with operational processes. They found that most major errors involve an average of nine missteps, and that mental states of doctors and nurses (e.g., overconfidence and stress) were the most common source of errors, reports Pacific Standard. And while they didn't get specific on how to mitigate these errors, they did note that lightening the workload should ease the error rate. (Hospitals appear to profit from these mistakes.)

_______ |_ _| | | | | ____| | | | | | | | \______/ ournalist Nedim Turfent was reporting on a brutal counterterrorism operation in Turkey’s Kurdish region when he published video of soldiers standing over villagers, who were face down with their hands bound. Soon, odd messages seeking Turfent’s whereabouts began appearing on his Facebook page. Then, Twitter accounts linked to Turkish counterterrorism units joined in, taunting locals with a single question—“Where is Nedim Turfent?”—as soldiers torched and raided more villages. The threat was clear: Give him up, or you’re the next target. That was in the spring of 2016. Within days, Turfent was in the military’s hands, and he was eventually charged with membership in a terrorist organization. An anonymous Twitter account capped off the social media manhunt by tweeting a picture of Turfent in custody, handcuffed and haggard. Then soldiers doused the office of his employer, Dicle News Agency, with gasoline and set it ablaze. Turfent remains behind bars. ..----.. | `. `.-____--`` ( ) .--`\ (_ `_-````\ ( `. ( \ \ \ \ `| \.... | \_____) Violent Threats in... Malta Tina Urso went to bed on April 21 pleased with the small protest she helped organize in London around the visit of Malta’s prime minister. She wanted to call attention to the country’s unusual practice of selling passports to foreigners and the money laundering it has engendered. By the time she woke up, her Facebook feed was deluged with threats of violence and misogynist insults, including the false charge that she ran an escort service. Researchers concluded the attacks were coordinated through private Facebook groups administered by government employees and officials of Malta’s ruling Labour Party. Participants would eventually publish her parents’ address, as well as her confidential National ID card number. “My Facebook account was flooded with notifications, people sharing everything about me, manipulating photos taken from my profile,” Urso said. “It was just insane what they were able to do in just a few hours.” Tina Urso went to bed on April 21 pleased with the small protest she helped organize in London around the visit of Malta’s prime minister. She wanted to call attention to the country’s unusual practice of selling passports to foreigners and the money laundering it has engendered. By the time she woke up, her Facebook feed was deluged with threats of violence and misogynist insults, including the false charge that she ran an escort service. Researchers concluded the attacks were coordinated through private Facebook groups administered by government employees and officials of Malta’s ruling Labour Party. Participants would eventually publish her parents’ address, as well as her confidential National ID card number. “My Facebook account was flooded with notifications, people sharing everything about me, manipulating photos taken from my profile,” Urso said. “It was just insane what they were able to do in just a few hours.” Only a few years after Twitter and Facebook were celebrated as the spark for democratic movements worldwide, states and their proxies are hatching new forms of digitally enabled suppression that were unthinkable before the age of the social media giants, according to evidence collected from computer sleuths, researchers and documents across more than a dozen countries. Combining virtual hate mobs, surveillance, misinformation, anonymous threats, and the invasion of victims’ privacy, states and political parties around the globe have created an increasingly aggressive online playbook that is difficult for the platforms to detect or counter. Some regimes use techniques like those Russia deployed to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, while others are riffing in homegrown ways. And an informal but burgeoning industry of bot brokers and trolls-for-hire has sprung up to assist. The efforts have succeeded in many cases, sending journalists into exile or effectively silencing online expression. In Venezuela, prospective trolls sign up for Twitter and Instagram accounts at government-sanctioned kiosks in town squares and are rewarded for their participation with access to scarce food coupons, according to Venezuelan researcher Marianne Diaz of the group @DerechosDigitales. A self-described former troll in India says he was given a half-dozen Facebook accounts and eight cell phones after he joined a 300-person team that worked to intimidate opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And in Ecuador, contracting documents detail government payments to a public relations company that set up and ran a troll farm used to harass political opponents. Many of those findings are contained in a report released this week by a global group of researchers that uncovered evidence of state-sponsored trolling in seven countries, and Bloomberg reporters documented additional examples in several others. The report is by the Institute for the Future, a non-partisan, foresight research and public policy group based in Palo Alto, California. “These campaigns can take on the scale and speed of the modern internet,” the report said. “States are using the same tools they once perceived as a threat to deploy information technology as a means for power consolidation and social control, fueling disinformation operations and disseminating government propaganda at a greater scale than ever before.” Almost two years in the making, the report grew out of an earlier project commissioned by Google but never published. Researchers for the company’s Jigsaw division, its technology incubator, documented vicious harassment campaigns that were intended to appear spontaneous but in fact had links to various governments. These campaigns often operate “under a high degree of centralized coordination and deploy bots and centrally-managed social media accounts designed to overwhelm victims and drown out their dissent,” according to an unpublished copy of the Google report obtained through an outside researcher. In response to revolutions and social movements launched on Twitter and Facebook, national governments initially censored content, blocked access to social media and used surveillance technology to monitor their citizens. But it turned out to be far more effective to simply inundate the platforms with a torrent of disinformation and anonymized threats—what the researchers dubbed a strategy of “information abundance” made possible by the rapid spread of social media. Turkey is a prime example, according to Camille Francois, who directed the Jigsaw project as a principal researcher at Google. Since the 2013 protests at Istanbul’s Gezi Park, President Recep Erdogan’s government has used a combination of online and offline repression to turn social media “into a near dead zone for genuine social protest in Turkey,” Francois said. “Five years later, there is very little organically organized activity.” Social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter are struggling to counter the significant resources and ingenuity that national governments and others are investing to manipulate their platforms. Millions of fake accounts game the companies’ algorithms, manipulating what users see, while technologies such as location spoofing can make centrally controlled accounts appear to be posts by armies of real people. Twitter reportedly suspended 70 million fake and malicious accounts in May and June. The company says it has taken preventive measures to address trolling and that any form of malicious automation is a violation of Twitter rules. Facebook announced this week that it will begin removing misinformation that serves to incite violence, and a spokesman said it has invested in more effective ways to fight fake accounts. “We enforce these policies whether the responsible party is acting individually, as part of a company, or acting on behalf of a government,” a Facebook spokesman said. Experts say the companies need to do even more to confront the fact that they’re being used by some of the world’s most repressive regimes. “People sometimes worry that Azerbaijan will shut down Facebook,” said Katy Pearce, a communications professor at the University of Washington who has studied the platform's use in that country. “Why would it? Facebook is the most effective tool of control the government has.” II Trolling for Faith and Modi __------------_ / \ //\ ______----\ \ | | | | | | | ___ ____ \ _| -( o)|( o )-|- \ | / / \ | )| /\ (. .) \ |) | | |/ \ \ |_/ | .----. \ / \ \ / / \____________/ Sitting cross-legged on a charpoy, an Indian day bed, Mahaveer Prasad Khileri taps on his laptop, his face lit by the screen and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling of his dirt-walled house. He uses his computer and two smartphones to advocate on social media for an organization dedicated to the well-being of cows, which are sacred to Hindus. Khileri’s work serves as a penance of sorts for a time when his deep faith and social media skills found a more toxic expression. He’s a former troll for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP. “At that time, poison was in my mind,” he said. Khileri was recruited by two acquaintances into the party’s social media operation in February 2014, just as Modi was racing to become India's next prime minister. He was given eight cell phones and ID’s for six different Facebook identities, he recalled in an interview in his home village of Jogaliya. He worked 18-hour days, toggling between legitimate campaign work and trolling of opponents and journalists, he said. When Modi won, the operation evolved as well, transitioning to a tool supporting Modi’s government. Khileri worked in what the BJP calls its ‘IT Cell,’ which effectively operated as an ad hoc troll farm, he said. The development of the cell in the world's largest democracy occurred around the same time that American authorities believe Russia began using such techniques to influence the 2016 presidential election. The researchers contributing to the institute and Google reports found similar timing in different countries and under various circumstances. According to Khileri, the Indian version of the trolling toolkit included strategies meant to inflame sectarian differences, malign the Muslim minority and portray Modi as savior of the Hindus. Supervisors would set themes for the day and specify targets to attack. Khileri and 300 other paid trolls would create memes or cut-and-paste Twitter posts that were sent to WhatsApp groups of tens of thousands of party loyalists. Their reposts sent hashtags viral in minutes. “Muslims slaughter cows, so we’d tell them, ‘When Modi comes, we will slaughter you,’” Khileri recalled. “We’d tell Hindus: ‘If you don’t vote for Modi, then Muslims will destroy you.’” The former head of BJP’s IT CELL, Arvind Gupta, tweeted in December 2016 that neither the party nor the cell has ever encouraged trolling and that online support for the party comes from a voluntary, grass-roots movement. The current head of the cell, Amit Malviya, said he would comment only after seeing evidence that Khileri was a member of it. Khileri said he eventually quit the cell—which paid its members in cash and left no paper trail—after he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the power it amassed. “At any time, they can control the situation of India. The troll army can call a nationwide strike, shut down the country,'' he said. “They are able to push for fights between communities, to create communal tension or destroy communal harmony.” III From Jingles to Death Threats .--. __ `. .` ` /_ | \.. . o `/ | `-_/ : \ ` . `` / \. / __`. . `. ./` `-.\\-\\` ___-\\-\\_ / //////\ / \ | _ _ | | [_] [_] | ( ][ ) \`\ /`/ | |uuuuuu| | | |nnnnnn| | | `````` | `--____--` Trolling efforts take different forms in different countries. Party youth groups were commandeered in some. Others developed highly structured volunteer armies. Some simply paid contractors to do the work. Always, though, organizers took pains to make the activity appear spontaneous. - .-- . / || `---..----.. | /\ `. . -- | `.___ / `\ | \_ . __ \ | \\___--` / | \ _/ `--` Trolling for food in ... Venezuela The government assists people in opening social media accounts through “Candanga Points”—kiosks set up in town squares—part of an effort announced in 2017 to create digital militiamen, according to the Institute for the Future's report. The Ministry of Communications distributes memes, hashtags and trolling targets via dedicated channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, according to Marianne Diaz, a Venezuelan researcher. Among the targets have been Lorenzo Mendoza, a government critic and president of Empresas Polar, a food distribution company, that trolls sought to blame for chronic food shortages. Diaz said the kiosks are managed by the same local committees that determine who gets access to food coupons, effectively motivating people to troll for food in a devastated economy with rampant malnutrition. The government assists people in opening social media accounts through “Candanga Points”—kiosks set up in town squares—part of an effort announced in 2017 to create digital militiamen, according to the Institute for the Future's report. The Ministry of Communications distributes memes, hashtags and trolling targets via dedicated channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, according to Marianne Diaz, a Venezuelan researcher. Among the targets have been Lorenzo Mendoza, a government critic and president of Empresas Polar, a food distribution company, that trolls sought to blame for chronic food shortages. Diaz said the kiosks are managed by the same local committees that determine who gets access to food coupons, effectively motivating people to troll for food in a devastated economy with rampant malnutrition. In Ecuador, former President Rafael Correa engaged a Guayaquil-based public relations firm called Inteligencia Emocional to promote his 2012 reelection, complete with videos, jingles, Facebook fan pages and a unified social media front under the brand Yo Revolución. But additional work by the firm was more secretive. It set up and maintained a network of pro-Correa social media accounts that harassed political opponents, according to documents released by Ecuador Transparente, a whistleblower website that opposed the Correa administration. In a proposal to the Ecuadorean government, the firm proposed to charge $15,000 per month to staff its network around the clock with “community managers” in a “war room,” enabling it to “totally neutralize” offending content on the internet. Internal Inteligencia Emocional documents anonymously leaked to Ecuador Transparente described the operation as a “troll center” and said that, due to the sensitivity of the project, it would implement a series of security protocols. Those steps included encrypting data shared among computers, scrubbing metadata from all materials and obscuring the location of the computers. Correa did not respond to requests for comment; nor did the head of Inteligencia Emocional, Kenneth Godwin. Another set of leaked documents seen by Bloomberg showed that Ecuador’s trolling operation involved the country's intelligence directorate. The operation eventually became notorious for death threats and trafficking in hacked personal material of journalists and political opponents. Even ordinary citizens who used social media to speak out against the government were targeted, according to Martha Roldós, an investigative journalist and the daughter of a former president of Ecuador who has been a target of the troll operations. IV Organized Like Drug Cartels ___ ___ ___ / _ \/ _ \ ___ / _ \/ / \ / \ \/ _ \ | / \ \_/ \_/ / \ | \ \_/ --_ _ -- \_/ / \__. /` ` ` \ ._/ __/ \ / \_ |___ `--___--` __| `------------` In Mexico, the interference of fake Facebook and Twitter accounts in public discourse has been so pernicious during the tenure of outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto that his political opponents have dubbed them “Penabots.” Bot networks have also been used against the government’s agenda. Two years ago, investigative journalist and activist Alberto Escorcia began documenting one of Mexico's unique contributions to trolling: loosely organized youth gangs that former members told Escorcia are paid to stage virtual hate-mob attacks on journalists or activists who confront the government. With monikers such as the Holk Legion, the gangs are organized like the region’s infamous drug cartels, Escorcia said. In one case documented by Amnesty International, Holk Legion trolls used more than 2,000 accounts to send death threats to 10 journalists and public figures over two days. The blizzard of tweets came on the second anniversary of a mass kidnapping of students in Guerrero State, an event that has plagued Peña Nieto's government amid evidence of police and military involvement. The trolls’ menacing tweets arrived as a counterweight to renewed public outrage sparked by the anniversary. Eduardo Sanchez, a spokesman for the Pena Nieto administration, said that “there’s no such thing” when asked by Bloomberg about the allegations that some networks of trolls have promoted the government’s agenda. The Google report that examined government-connected trolling was initially set to be published last year, according to researchers who collaborated with the company. Some of them said congressional and law enforcement investigations into Russia's election meddling may have made the topic too sensitive. A spokesman for the company’s Jigsaw division, Dan Keyserling, said not all research projects end up being published and that information from the report was used internally to improve tools that detect abusive content. Jigsaw supports the fact that other organizations are continuing research into state-sponsored trolling, he said. V How to Build a Botnet 0 / \ __________ / | |/ _| _ _ |_ | | [Z] [Z] | | |_| ______ |_| | [_|_|_|] | |__________| |__________| Turkey's experience shows how politicians turned social media platforms into tools of information control—and rapidly perfected their techniques. Erdogan's government was badly shaken by protests that began in May 2013 and grew over weeks to focus on government corruption. Within months, the ruling party was fielding its own bot army, albeit a poorly disguised one. Researchers found a collection of nearly 18,000 pro-Erdogan Twitter accounts that used profile pictures taken from porn sites or public figures as American actress Megan Fox. By 2017, the country's digital troops had evolved into something more finer-tuned and threatening. A report by AccessNow, a digital rights organization, identified a collection of fake accounts posing as people sympathetic to a protest march scheduled for that summer. The event would focus attention on the crackdown on journalists, teachers and others following an attempted coup in 2016. .. ___.--... O. ( `-`-_ O . . _/ \ / ) ( / ( / / / \_/- ._/ / / | / //`-_./ Targeted in... Ecuador Martha Roldos, the daughter of the nation’s first democratically elected president, is no stranger to political mysteries: Almost four decades after her father died in a 1981 plane crash, Ecuadoreans still speculate about who was responsible. On Jan. 6, 2014, Roldos herself was targeted by what was then a new and mysterious form of attack. Her private emails were stolen by hackers, then published on the front page of a pro-government newspaper. Those communications were spread by government-controlled social media accounts, which also smeared and threatened her. Roldos, who runs an investigative journalism project in Ecuador called Mil Hojas, eventually helped piece together evidence showing that the government of President Rafael Correa had built and funded the secret troll operation that attacked her and also targeted hundreds of others. Martha Roldos, the daughter of the nation’s first democratically elected president, is no stranger to political mysteries: Almost four decades after her father died in a 1981 plane crash, Ecuadoreans still speculate about who was responsible. On Jan. 6, 2014, Roldos herself was targeted by what was then a new and mysterious form of attack. Her private emails were stolen by hackers, then published on the front page of a pro-government newspaper. Those communications were spread by government-controlled social media accounts, which also smeared and threatened her. Roldos, who runs an investigative journalism project in Ecuador called Mil Hojas, eventually helped piece together evidence showing that the government of President Rafael Correa had built and funded the secret troll operation that attacked her and also targeted hundreds of others. One such account, with a picture of a young woman claiming to be a march supporter, posted a link to a website for participants. Visitors to the site had their devices infected with advanced malware that spied on their communications and tracked their movements, the AccessNow report found. The company that created the malware sells only to governments. Researchers and journalists have documented similar bot armies in Argentina, Thailand, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Saudi trolling was on display after the May 15 arrest of seven prominent Saudi women’s rights activists who had been demanding an end to the ban on female drivers. The Saudi government initially gave no information about the activists’ whereabouts. Concerned Twitter users posted messages followed by an Arabic hashtag “Where are the activists?” That was quickly countered with a hashtag circulated by a state-backed news organization labeling the activists “Agents of the Embassies,” alongside pictures of them with the Arabic word for “Traitor” stamped over their faces It got uglier. “How’s prison food?” one account asked Loujain Al-Hathloul, a Western-educated 28-year-old who’d previously been detained after live-Tweeting herself driving. “You act like you’re something when you’re nothing,” read another, next to a knife emoji. Another account linked to an archive of Al-Hathloul’s tweets, so opponents could scour the words of an “enemy of the homeland.” An analysis by Graphika, a social media intelligence firm based in New York, showed that the “Agents” hashtag was “pushed” in a highly coordinated way, said John Kelly, the company's CEO and founder. Marc Owen Jones, a researcher and lecturer on Gulf affairs at Exeter University, found evidence that the hashtag was pushed by automated accounts tied to a vast pro-Saudi government botnet that he'd previously identified. “It still remains to be seen whether this is a state-sponsored operation, the work of a PR company, or a wealthy individual’s unilateral project,” Owen Jones wrote about that botnet in February. VI Misogyny and Rape Threats _ __-----__ _ | | / _____ \ | | |_| / / \ \ |_| .-/ \-. | | | | .-/ \-. `-\_/-` | | | | `-\_/-` ||| \ `-___-` / ||| ||| \__ __/ ||| ||| | | ||| ||| __| |__ ||| ||| | | ||| ||| -- -- ||| \|/ | | \|/ ` |___| ` Some of the most virulent attacks are aimed at women. The Institute for the Future report found that every identified instance of state-sponsored trolling involving female victims used heavily misogynistic language, including threats of rape and mutilation. The graphic, relentless posts often prove to be powerful weapons, publicly singling out a regime's opponents and legitimizing those who attack them, while leading some journalists to self-censor their reporting, according to the report. Before she was killed by a car bomb last October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who gained fame writing about corruption on the tiny Mediterranean island nation of Malta, grew so anxious about the online attacks that greeted her blog posts that she often hesitated before publishing a new one, said her son, Paul Caruana Galizia. Many of the violent comments against his mother were coordinated inside a handful of private Facebook groups run by government employees and which count among their members ruling Labour Party lawmakers. The secret groups, whose operations were revealed in the months following her death, circulated “thousands of really horrifically abusive comments” against his mother, he said. One meme, which circulated shortly before her death, substituted her image for that of Jesus Christ next to Pontius Pilate, who asks the crowd: “What do you want me to do with her?” Comments encouraging violence poured in. “The dehumanization by the time she was killed around that period was complete,” her son said. According to examples uncovered by researchers, trolls also threatened to sexually abuse Turkish journalist Ceydan Karan with a broken bottle, while Mexican scholar Rossana Reguillo was sent pictures of burned bodies with the warning, “This could happen to you.” The fact that the threats are designed to look like they are coming from crowds of anonymous social media users makes them more ominous in some cases than if they had been issued directly by the government. “That’s the genius of these types of attacks,” said Carly Nyst, one of the authors of the Institute for the Future report and an expert on the intersection of human rights and technology. “It’s hard to distinguish between what’s being manufactured on purpose and what is a popular uprising of opinion against the target.” One question left unanswered by the reports is why so many nations developed strikingly similar trolling operations at around the same time. There is some evidence of information-sharing among countries, consultants and government functionaries. Correa, the former president of Ecuador, now hosts a television show for the Spanish-language version of RT, the Russian news channel that is closely tied to sophisticated government-sponsored information campaigns. And last year, when Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was in the Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a representative of the Philippines state-run media visited the Moscow headquarters of RT and entered into a partnership with the news agency and Russia’s communication ministry. Duterte has used Facebook as a platform to aggressively target critics, and he has appointed well-known trolls to government posts. In Azerbaijan, the government maintains a close relationship with Russia, which has exported some of its technological know-how, including bots, according to Pearce, the University of Washington professor. Still, tracing the fingerprints of state-sponsored trolling remains a difficult task, largely because states go to great lengths to cover tracks. Francois, the former Google researcher, says the architecture of a trolling campaign is often akin to a hand inside a glove that organizes an action and then is removed. While the glove is left behind for the world to see, the hand simply disappears. (Updates 15th paragraph with Facebook announcement on removing misinformation.) ||||| How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns Authored by Carly Nyst and Nicholas Monaco. Editor in Chief, Samuel C. Woolley. In our latest report from the Digital Intelligence Lab, we investigate how state-sponsored online hate and harassment campaigns, including in the U.S., are being used to intimidate and silence government critics at scale. This is the first comprehensive attempt to describe the phenomenon of state-sponsored trolling from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. The report, State-Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns, contains in-depth illustrative examples of state-sponsored trolling in seven countries: the United States, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Ecuador, the Philippines, Turkey, and Venezuela. It includes policies that governments and businesses can implement to rein in the digital abuse of individuals, advocates and journalists critical of governments. Though state-sponsored trolling occurs in a variety of countries, they often use similar strategies. These include making death and rape threats, using bots to amplify attacks at scale, using malicious PR firms to disseminate hyper-partisan or libelous disinformation about targets, and spreading doctored images and memes. The report finds that new laws are unlikely to stem the practice in the short term, so technology companies have a responsibility to curb state-sponsored trolling now. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Carly Nyst is a human rights lawyer, privacy and data protection expert, and independent consultant working on technology and human rights. She was previously the legal director of Privacy International, a London-based charity that defends the right to privacy across the world. Nicholas Monaco is a research associate at the at the DigIntel Lab at IFTF and at the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford. His expertise spans the political use of social media bots, online disinformation, foreign affairs, and linguistics. EDITOR IN CHIEF Samuel C. Woolley is the current director of the IFTF Digital Intelligence Lab, the former director of research of the Computational Propaganda Project at the University of Oxford, a Belfer Fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, a research associate at the Center for Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University, and a visiting researcher at CITRIS at UC Berkeley. His work examines how socially-oriented online automation tools (bots, algorithms, etc.) are used to enable both democracy and civic control.

– Before dying by car bomb last October, Maltese journalist Daphne Galizia was swamped with online threats. She even hesitated to keep reporting on issues like government corruption and the Panama Papers. "The dehumanization by the time she was killed around that period was complete," says her son Paul. It turns out that Galizia, like many reporters and activists worldwide, was targeted by a government-backed troll army designed to intimidate and discredit her in a cyber-world with few enforceable boundaries, Bloomberg reports. A new report by a global research group shows how countries are using such trolls to squelch dissent, often via fake social-media accounts, using various kinds of labor—like party youth groups, volunteer armies, government workers, or paid contractors who specialize in trolling. In India, Prime Minister Modi's BJP Party apparently had a troll farm threatening opponents with "slaughter" during the 2014 election. In Turkey, President Erdogan's party lured critics into downloading software that secretly monitored their communications and movements, per AccessNow. Similar online horrors have cropped up in Ecuador, Venezuela, and—with Russian trolling against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election—the US as well. Which raises the question: Why now? Evidence suggests that countries are sharing information and learning how to cover their tracks. "That's the genius of these types of attacks," says an author of the global report by the Institute for the Future. "It's hard to distinguish between what's being manufactured on purpose and what is a popular uprising of opinion against the target." (See how a text message ended Galizia's life.)

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A witness says a member of the Palestinian Cabinet has died after being hit by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops during a Palestinian protest in the West Bank. Mahmoud Aloul, a leading member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, said the Cabinet member, Ziad Abu Ain, died shortly after the incident Wednesday near the West Bank village of Turmus Aya. Aloul says he and Abu Ain had been among dozens of protesters carrying olive tree saplings during a protest against land confiscations when Israeli troops fired tear gas at them and later beat some of the participants with rifle butts. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report. ||||| TEL AVIV, Israel — A Palestinian Cabinet minister died Wednesday after a confrontation with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian government confirmed. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' announced three days of mourning and halted all contacts and security coordination with Israel after Ziad Abu Ein died in an incident at a protest in the village of Turmus Aya. Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat also condemned what he called an "assassination." "The Israel government bears full responsibility for the killing of Minster Abu Ein and the systematic crimes committed against the Palestinian people," he said in a statement. "This new assassination will have severe consequences." Mahmoud Aloul, a leading member of Abbas' Fatah movement, told The Associated Press that Abu Ein had been among dozens of protesters carrying olive tree saplings during a demonstration against land confiscations when Israeli troops fired tear gas at them. "The minister came to the hospital in a very critical situation, his heart was beating very fast and he had difficulty breathing and bruises on his body," Dr. Rami Abu Khalil told NBC News. "They tried to save his life inside the hospital, but they couldn’t." An autopsy was being conducted, Abu Khalil added. Israel said it was investigating the incident. "Earlier today, approximately 200 rioters gathered in Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah. [Israeli] forces halted the progress of the rioters into the civilian community of Adei-Ad using riot dispersal means," the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement. "The IDF is reviewing the circumstances of the participation of Ziad Abu Ein, and his later death." Adei Ad is a Jewish settlement near the Palestinian town of Turmus Aya. An Israeli pathologist will join a delegation from Jordan to investigate the circumstances of Abu Ein's death, the IDF added. Abu Ein headed a Palestinian Authority department dealing with Israeli settlements and the Israeli separation barrier, and had the rank of Cabinet member. Previously, he served as deputy minister for prisoner affairs. NBC News' Yara Borgal and Paul Goldman, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| Abbas announces three days of mourning after Ziad Abu Ain was reportedly shoved by Israeli troops while planting olive trees A senior minister in the government of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas died on Wednesday following a violent confrontation with Israeli troops in a West Bank village near Ramallah. Ziad Abu Ain, who dealt with the issue of Israeli settlements and the separation wall, died as he was being rushed to hospital after becoming involved in clashes with Israeli troops while trying to plant olive trees in the village of Turmusiya near Ramallah. Abbas described the attack as “a barbaric act which we cannot be silent about or accept”. He announced three days of national mourning and said he would take “necessary steps” after an investigation. The death was also condemned by the Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, who said that “Israel will pay” for the “murder” of Abu Ain. Reports said that Abu Ain, a senior figure on Fatah’s revolutionary council, collapsed and died after being struck in the chest at an event where he also inhaled teargas fired by Israeli security forces. Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, issued a statement expressing “sorrow”. “The event in which Ziad Abu Ain died is under investigation by the IDF,” said Yaalon. “We have proposed a joint investigation to the Palestinian Authority and that a joint autopsy be carried out on Abu Ain’s body. Security stability is important to both sides and we will continue coordination with the PA.” Mohammed Mohesin, an assistant from Abu Ain’s office who witnessed the incident and travelled in the ambulance to hospital, claimed that over the course of a few minutes one policeman grabbed Abu Ain by the throat, before he was assaulted by two other soldiers a little later. “When we arrived at where we planned to plant, there were a large number of troops waiting for us who fired teargas,” said Mohesin. “He went to talk to them and asking why they were blocking us. One soldier grabbed him by the throat. A few minutes later another one hit him in the throat while a third soldier with a helmet head butted him in the chest. “He was on the ground holding his chest but it appeared he could not recognise the people standing around him.” Mohesin’s description of the headbutt was also described by other eyewitnesses but could not be verified by the Guardian. Video footage of the confrontation – and still photographs – showed Abu Ain being held by the throat by a helmetless officer. A second photograph showed him being held by the shoulders by a border policeman wearing a helmet. An AFP photographer said he had seen Abu Ain struck in the chest. While some witnesses claimed the minister had been struck by a rifle butt, that was denied by an Israeli journalist present, Channel 10 reporter Roy Sharon, in a tweet. Abu Ain was taken to a local clinic then to hospital in Ramallah where he was pronounced dead. An Israeli officer quoted by the Jerusalem Post said there had originally been a minor confrontation over where demonstrators would be allowed to plant. “[Soldiers] then saw a person collapsing. We see on footage from the incident a push [delivered by a border police officer],” the officer said, adding, “I say this with reservation as we are still investigating it.” Another photograph, published by the Palestinian Maan news website, showed Abu Ain lying on the ground after his collapse. Shortly before his death, Abu Ain had spoken to television reporters. “This is the terrorism of the occupation, this is a terrorist army, practising its terrorism on the Palestinian people,” he told the official Palestine TV. “We came to plant trees on Palestinian land, and they launch into an attack on us from the first moment. Nobody threw a single stone.” Confirming the minister’s death, a senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official told the Guardian: “He had gone to plant olive trees in Turmusiya for international human rights day when Israeli soldiers arrived to oppress the demonstration. There are different versions circulating about what happened but he wasn’t shot.” The minister’s death followed violent clashes in the area the night before, prompted by Israeli settlers’ claims that a horse had been stolen. Palestinian villagers claim it was triggered by settlers stoning Palestinian cars. There have been months of violent unrest in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Ten Israelis and a foreign visitor have been killed by Palestinians over the past three months, while more than a dozen Palestinians have also been killed, including most of those who carried out the attacks. Abu Ain, 55, has previously been arrested and imprisoned by Israel. He was extradited from the United States in 1981 over the murder of two Israelis in Tiberias in 1979, and sentenced to life in prison, but released in 1985 in a prisoner exchange. Besides his role in the PA monitoring Israeli settlements and the separation barrier, Abu Ain was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and previously served as deputy Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Tensions are running high after the death of Ziad Abu Ein, reports Kevin Connolly A Palestinian minister has died after a confrontation with Israeli troops at a protest in the West Bank. Palestinian medics told the BBC Ziad Abu Ein had died from complications related to tear gas exposure. But several witnesses said the minister had been hit and shoved by soldiers. One said he had been hit in the chest by a tear-gas canister fired by them. Israel's Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon expressed regret for the minister's death in a statement. The Israeli military (IDF) said it was investigating the incidents surrounding Mr Ein's death. Image copyright AFP Image caption One photograph shows Ziad Abu Ein (left) being grabbed by an Israeli soldier at the protest Image copyright AFP Image caption Palestinians gathered outside the hospital in Ramallah where Mr Abu Ein's body was brought Israeli and Jordanian experts would attend a post-mortem examination, the IDF said. It has also proposed setting up a joint team with the Palestinians to investigate Mr Abu Ein's death. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for an investigation into the death and urged "all sides to exercise maximum restraint and avoid escalation". Following the incident dozens of Palestinians reportedly gathered at the scene, near the village of Turmusaya, setting fire to tyres and throwing stones at security forces. Image copyright EPA Image caption Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas led prayers at a PLO meeting called following Ziad abu Ein's death Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) meeting in Ramallah following news of the death of the minister, whom he called a "martyr". Confiscation protest Mr Abu Ein, a minister without portfolio, was among dozens of foreign and Palestinian activists taking part in a protest against land confiscations. They had planned to plant olive tree saplings on a patch of land near the Jewish settlement of Shiloh, which Palestinians believe has been earmarked for annexation by Israel. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Before he collapsed, Ziad Abu Ein (left) said he and other protesters were assaulted by Israeli soldiers In the course of the protest, they came into confrontation with a group of about 15 Israeli soldiers. Leading Palestinian activist Mahmoud Aloul, who was also at the protest, told the Associated Press news agency the soldiers had fired tear gas and had beaten some of the activists with rifle butts. At one point, Mr Abu Ein was hit by a tear gas canister, Mr Aloul said. A Reuters photographer said he had seen Mr Abu Ein being struck by a hand on the neck during an altercation with two soldiers. An AFP news agency photographer said the minister had been hit in the chest. Image copyright AFP Image caption Protesters had planned to plant olive tree saplings on a patch of land they fear will be annexed by Israel Image copyright AFP Image caption But as they approached the land, the protesters were stopped by a group of Israeli soldiers Photos of the incident showed Mr Abu Ein lying unconscious before he was taken away in an ambulance. He died before reaching hospital in the nearby city of Ramallah. There are reports he had a health condition that may have contributed to his death. The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says Palestinians are likely to see the exact cause of death as a secondary issue, and it will serve to sharpen tensions. Condemning "the brutal assault" on Mr Abu Ein, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas promised to take unspecified measures and declared three days of mourning. A Palestinian official told AFP that the session discussed the suspension of security co-operation with Israel, but the decision on whether to take action was deferred until Friday. US Secretary of State John Kerry is to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Italy on Sunday to discuss recent developments and security issues in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, the state department announced. Mr Abu Ein once received the death sentence, commuted to life imprisonment, from a court in Israel for a 1979 bombing that killed two Israeli teenagers. He was released in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange that saw the release of three Israeli soldiers captured in Lebanon.

– A Palestinian Cabinet member has died amid a West Bank protest, reports say. A leading Fatah figure tells the AP that Ziad Abu Ain was hit by a tear gas canister shot by Israeli troops, while Palestinian health officials say he was suffocated by the tear gas, the BBC reports. Another witness, a Reuters photographer, says Israeli troops hit and pushed Abu Ain, the BBC notes. Mahmoud Aloul, of Fatah, says Abu Ain was involved in a protest against confiscated land that was met with tear gas and troops' rifle butts. "The Israel government bears full responsibility for the killing of Minster Abu Ain and the systematic crimes committed against the Palestinian people," said Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat, as per NBC. "This new assassination will have severe consequences." Israel is reviewing the situation, the Guardian reports, noting that Abu Ain's work involved addressing the matter of Israeli settlements.

If you’ve ever thought that your birth control might be messing with your mood, you may be right: The pill and other types of hormonal contraception may increase the risk of depression, suggests a Danish study of more than 1 million women and teenage girls. To date, the research on contraception and depression has been mixed—despite the fact that mood swings are a well-known reason some women stop using birth control. In fact, as the authors state in their paper in JAMA Psychiatry, that may be a reason why science has underestimated its effects on emotional health: If women feel depressed and take themselves off of birth control, they’re less likely to be included in studies that could show a link. To avoid this problem, University of Copenhagen scientists designed a huge, nationally representative study sample, including more than 1 million women ages 15 to 34. They grouped the women into two main groups—users and nonusers of hormonal contraceptives. About 55% of the women were in the “user” group, including anyone who’d been on birth control in the previous six months. (They were put in this group in order to include anyone who’d recently quit because of depressive symptoms.) The researchers followed the women for an average of 6.4 years. RELATED: 12 Surprising Causes of Depression When they analyzed the data, they found that women using combination birth control pills—which contain both estrogen and progestin (and are the most commonly used type)—were 23% more likely to have been prescribed an antidepressant, compared to nonusers. Those on a progestin-only pill were 34% more likely. The risks for other types of hormonal birth control were even higher. Compared to women who didn’t use any hormonal contraception, the rate of antidepressant prescriptions increased by 40% for those using a progestin-only IUD (levonorgestrel); 60% for those using a vaginal ring (etonogestrel); and 100% for those using a patch (norgestrolmin). The findings support the authors’ theory that the hormone progesterone—and its synthetic version, progestin—can play a role in the development of depression. The fact that progestin-only pills and IUDs had higher depression rates than combined pills was especially telling, they wrote. (The higher risk among women using the patch and the ring was likely due to differences in hormonal dosage, they say, rather than delivery method.) RELATED: 7 Common Birth Control Side Effects Some of the highest risk rates were seen among teenage girls, who were 80% more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant when they were on combined birth control pills—and 120% more likely when they were on progestin-only pills—compared to those who didn’t use any hormonal birth control. For teens who used non-oral hormonal products, their risk tripled. It's important to point out that, while depression is a common and significant problem, most of the study participants (in all groups) were not affected. In total, about 12.5% of women—users and nonusers combined—were prescribed an antidepressant for the first time during the study period, and about 2% were given a first-time diagnosis of depression. While the study had many strengths, including its large sample size and its exclusion of anyone with a prior depression diagnosis, the authors did note a few limitations. Not all depressed women are diagnosed or treated with antidepressants, they wrote, and not all antidepressants are prescribed for depression. RELATED: 10 Signs You Should See a Doctor for Depression Further studies are needed to examine depression as a potential side effect of birth-control use, says lead author and clinical professor Øjvind Lidegaard, MD. But it’s not too early for doctors and concerned patients (or parents) to put these findings to use, he tells Health. “Women who develop depression after starting on oral contraceptives should consider this use as a contributing factor,” he says. Furthermore, he adds, “doctors should include these aspects together with other risks and benefits with use of hormonal contraceptives, when they advise women to which type of contraception is the most suitable for that specific woman.” This is especially important for teenage girls, he says, who seem to be most vulnerable to this association, and to the risk factors for depression overall. “Doctors should ensure that women, especially young women, are not already depressed or have a history of depression,” he says, “and they should inform women about this potential risk.” ||||| Importance Millions of women worldwide use hormonal contraception. Despite the clinical evidence of an influence of hormonal contraception on some women’s mood, associations between the use of hormonal contraception and mood disturbances remain inadequately addressed. Objective To investigate whether the use of hormonal contraception is positively associated with subsequent use of antidepressants and a diagnosis of depression at a psychiatric hospital. Design, Setting, and Participants This nationwide prospective cohort study combined data from the National Prescription Register and the Psychiatric Central Research Register in Denmark. All women and adolescents aged 15 to 34 years who were living in Denmark were followed up from January 1, 2000, to December 2013, if they had no prior depression diagnosis, redeemed prescription for antidepressants, other major psychiatric diagnosis, cancer, venous thrombosis, or infertility treatment. Data were collected from January 1, 1995, to December 31, 2013, and analyzed from January 1, 2015, through April 1, 2016. Exposures Use of different types of hormonal contraception. Main Outcomes and Measures With time-varying covariates, adjusted incidence rate ratios (RRs) were calculated for first use of an antidepressant and first diagnosis of depression at a psychiatric hospital. Results A total of 1 061 997 women (mean [SD] age, 24.4 [0.001] years; mean [SD] follow-up, 6.4 [0.004] years) were included in the analysis. Compared with nonusers, users of combined oral contraceptives had an RR of first use of an antidepressant of 1.23 (95% CI, 1.22-1.25). Users of progestogen-only pills had an RR for first use of an antidepressant of 1.34 (95% CI, 1.27-1.40); users of a patch (norgestrolmin), 2.0 (95% CI, 1.76-2.18); users of a vaginal ring (etonogestrel), 1.6 (95% CI, 1.55-1.69); and users of a levonorgestrel intrauterine system, 1.4 (95% CI, 1.31-1.42). For depression diagnoses, similar or slightly lower estimates were found. The relative risks generally decreased with increasing age. Adolescents (age range, 15-19 years) using combined oral contraceptives had an RR of a first use of an antidepressant of 1.8 (95% CI, 1.75-1.84) and those using progestin-only pills, 2.2 (95% CI, 1.99-2.52). Six months after starting use of hormonal contraceptives, the RR of antidepressant use peaked at 1.4 (95% CI, 1.34-1.46). When the reference group was changed to those who never used hormonal contraception, the RR estimates for users of combined oral contraceptives increased to 1.7 (95% CI, 1.66-1.71). Conclusions and Relevance Use of hormonal contraception, especially among adolescents, was associated with subsequent use of antidepressants and a first diagnosis of depression, suggesting depression as a potential adverse effect of hormonal contraceptive use.

– Anyone who's struggled with mood swings while on hormonal birth control may not be surprised to hear that a new study suggests using such birth control could increase the risk of depression. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen looked at more than a million women ages 15 to 34, about 55% of whom were using hormonal contraception or had been on it during the past six months. (Often, people who quit birth control due to depressive symptoms aren't included in such studies, and the scientists wanted to make sure that wasn't the case for this one, Health.com reports.) The scientists theorize that progesterone, as well as the synthetic version of the hormone, progestin, has something to do with the development of depression. They found that women on a progestin-only pill were 34% more likely to have been prescribed an antidepressant than women who weren't on hormonal contraception, and women who were on a pill containing both progestin and estrogen were 23% more likely. In addition, women who were using a progestin-only IUD were 40% more likely, women using a vaginal ring containing hormones were 60% more likely, and women using a patch containing hormones were 100% more likely, the researchers report in their paper, published in JAMA Psychiatry. The numbers are even more striking when teens are isolated: Teenage girls who were on progestin-only pills were 120% more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant than non-users, or 80% more likely if they were on a combined pill; for those on non-oral hormonal contraception, the risk was multiplied by three. This is possibly because teens are already more susceptible to depression, the New York Times reports. "Doctors should ensure that women, especially young women, are not already depressed or have a history of depression" before prescribing hormonal birth control, the lead author tells Health.com. (Another study finds that most antidepressants don't work for kids and teens.)

Friends say surprise reconciliation is on the cards after Hollywood couple embrace affectionately at first meeting since break-up Back on?: Tweets hint Ashton and Demi may be reconciling Demi Moore and Ashton ­Kutcher could be on course for a sensational reconciliation. The glamorous couple, whose break-up shocked Hollywood, have put their divorce plans on ice. They met for the first time this week since Demi, 49, dumped her husband of six years and went into rehab after claims that he had cheated. The pair were locked in a 60-second embrace at the birthday party of the man who officiated at their wedding and friends are sure their feelings for each other are as strong as ever. A source told the Sunday Mirror: “They are still desperately in love and could be on for a reconciliation. The divorce isn’t being processed right now.” Demi had been laying down hints all week on Twitter that she could be ready to forgive and start from scratch. Eyevine Loving embrace: Ashton and Demi, seen here before the split, embraced at a private party And Ashton, 34, had tears in his eyes as he made a speech at the party, declaring: “I’ve made all these horrendous mistakes in the last year.” A guest at the 40th birthday bash for Kaballah Rabbi Yehuda Berg said: “Ashton’s voice started to break as he spoke. He just fell into tears. He sat down to a round of applause while Demi just looked ­frozen.” Ashton had arrived at the InterContinental Hotel in Beverly Hills two hours before Indecent Proposal star Demi. A guest said: “Ashton was there quietly socialising and Demi showed up a couple of hours later looking amazing. “She went over to wish Yehuda a happy birthday and Ashton was right by him. Yehuda left them to talk. They started to chat and were extremely affectionate. She was ­staring at him like a love-sick puppy.” The witness added: “They both sat at the front with a mutual friend between them. Demi got up to speak and spoke about family not necessarily being your blood but being people who love you. “Then Ashton got up and he spoke about how amazing Yehuda was. "He said that if Yehuda is your friend, he’ll love you unconditionally, no ­matter what mistakes you’ve made, before making the emotional admission that he had made mistakes. It was obvious he was referring to the break-up.” Earlier Demi had “favourited” a tweet from singer Wiz Khalifa saying: “We all make mistakes. Don’t let that be the reason you give up on somebody.” Another tweet Demi made a favourite was from a daily quotation service called The Love Stories which said: “Sometimes you have to love people from a distance and give them space and time to get their minds right.” Meanwhile, Ashton has been ­spending time with Demi’s daughter Rumer, 23. They were seen at an LA Lakers basketball game before having drinks together at a hotel. Want to see which celebrity pair got back together and are now getting MARRIED? Click here. ||||| By Radar Staff Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have met up at least twice this month to discuss their future, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting, As we reported yesterday, the pair was together last week for the birthday party of the man who officiated at their wedding, Rabbi Yehuda Berg, but a source close to the couple tells RadarOnline.com that this wasn’t their first meeting. PHOTOS: Celebrity Cheaters The lines of communication have really opened up for 49-year-old Demi and Ashton, 34, thanks to their spiritual guru, a source close to the Kabbalah loving former couple tells us. “They have met up to discuss where to go next. “Whether it be to divorce, or if there is a journey to travel together….they both feel it’s important to have spiritual guidance to accomplish it,” the source says. “I know they met up with Rabbi around the time of the Gemini New Moon last Monday, it signifies a time of new beginnings, especially when it comes to communication, so they met again before the party, at least once, maybe twice.” PHOTOS: Demi Moore’s First Public Appearance Post-Rehab “The idea was to discuss, where do they go from here. “They’re by no means getting back together but equally no decision has been made to end things for good so everything is to play at this stage.” PHOTOS: Demi Moore’s Daughter Tallulah Willis Parties With Friends RELATED STORIES: PHOTOS: Demi Moore Scary Skinny Stick Thin And Somber Demi Moore Looks Gaunt Ahead Of Her 49th Birthday Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore And Other Celebs Support Charity That Helps Female Entrepreneurs Ashton Kutcher’s Somber Video: ‘There’s No Gatekeeper To The Truth’ Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher’s Marriage Isn’t Legal, Claims Kabbalah Lawsuit

– The faces of Demi and Ashton may be filling supermarket magazine racks again before we know it, the Sunday Mirror reports. The former May-December Hollywood couple recently raised eyebrows by embracing for an intense 60 seconds at a party for the rabbi who had officiated their marriage. Moore stared at Kutcher "like a love-suck puppy," a source says, before he gave a speech with deep undertones: “I’ve made all these horrendous mistakes in the last year," he said. “Ashton’s voice started to break as he spoke," says the source. "He just fell into tears. He sat down to a round of applause while Demi just looked ­frozen.” But this wasn't their only recent meeting, reports Radar, which has its own unnamed source: “Whether it be to divorce, or if there is a journey to travel together ... they both feel it’s important to have spiritual guidance accomplish it," the source says. "Everything is to play at this stage.”

In 2005, the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy held a conference in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The school’s name was something of a misnomer: Rather than grant JDs, Witherspoon staged seminars and lectures offering lessons in what it summarized as “the comprehensive biblical foundation for our common law and constitutional government.” Its target audience was homeschooled young men. The school itself was a project of Vision Forum, a Texas-based ministry whose founder was also a leader in the Christian Patriarchy movement, which preaches, among other things, that husbands should vote for their wives. Most sitting judges would go to great pains to avoid such a gathering. But Tom Parker, then a few months into his first term on the Alabama Supreme Court, gladly accepted an invitation to speak at that year’s Witherspoon retreat. Before his election to Alabama’s highest court, Parker had been an aide-de-camp to Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose installation of a granite Ten Commandments monument in the state judiciary building had touched off what became for Alabama both a considerable embarrassment and a genuine constitutional crisis. At Parker’s swearing-in, he made it clear that he had sought the bench to continue his old boss’s spiritual fight. “The very God of Holy Scriptures, the Creator, is the source of law, life, and liberty,” he declared to an audience that included his eight unsmiling fellow justices. The atmosphere at Parker’s Witherspoon appearance was far warmer, and his remarks there were even more candid. A DVD of the session shows him gripping the lectern, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, as he railed against the perceived sins of jurists at every level. “It’s the judges who have legalized abortion and homosexuality … They are shaking the very foundation of our society.” Parker made it clear that he had no intention of letting legal precedent get in his way. “We cannot fall under that trap,” he insisted. “We have to stand for what’s right.” The one thing he most wished for the young men before him was that they find a way to gain positions of influence and turn them to God’s purpose. No opportunity to do so should be shrunk from or wasted. In the nine years Parker has now served on the court, he has made the most of his opportunities. Child custody disputes, for instance, have made good occasions to expound on the role of religion in parental rights. (“Because God, not the state, has granted parents the authority and responsibility to govern their children, parents should be able to do so unfettered by state interference,” he wrote in one case.) But Parker has been the most creative in his relentless campaign to undermine legal abortion. Again and again, he has taken cases that do not directly concern reproductive rights, or even reproductive issues, and found ways to use them to argue for full legal status for the unborn. Those efforts have made Parker a pivotal figure in the so-called personhood movement, which has its roots in a loophole in Roe v. Wade. While that 1973 ruling was creating a broad new right to abortion grounded in a constitutionally protected right to privacy, an often-overlooked passage left an opening for those who would seek its undoing. During oral arguments, the justices had asked Roe’s lawyer what would happen if a fetus were held to be a person under the Constitution. “I would have a very difficult case,” she had replied. In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that the Supreme Court could find no basis for such status, before adding, “If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed.” Inside the courtroom of the Alabama Supreme Court in downtown Montgomery. (William Widmer, special to ProPublica) Roe’s fiercest critics immediately took up the challenge, launching a push for a constitutional amendment affirming that life begins at conception. But that first effort fizzled, and it’s only in recent years that a new wave of pro-life activists—many of them born after Roe and educated in fundamentalist Christian settings—have once again seized on personhood as a way not just of weakening Roe, but of overturning it. In state after state, they have been pushing to have their beliefs enshrined in policy. This November 4, in Colorado, voters will cast ballots on Amendment 67, an initiative that would include unborn human beings under the definition of “person” and “child” throughout the state’s criminal code. North Dakotans, meanwhile, will decide on Measure 1, which would alter the state constitution to recognize the “inalienable right to life” at every stage of human development. Even if both initiatives fall short, others will follow. The first one to pass doubtlessly will then be challenged in court, igniting the potentially decisive battle that personhood advocates really want. Their goal is to get to the U.S. Supreme Court — as quickly as possible, while conservatives still dominate. Christian-educated lawyers have been preparing for that day, churning out articles published by Christian law journals, which are then cited in briefs submitted to courts by Christian-right legal organizations. But given their provenance, the impact of those arguments has been limited. Parker, a graduate of Dartmouth and Vanderbilt who counts Clarence Thomas as a role model, has the imprimatur of his office behind him, and he has used it to build a body of reasoning that can be cited and re-cited, helping to frame and refine the thinking of other lawyers and judges in the battles ahead. “Now, it’s not just an obscure law-review article making these arguments,” said Glen Halva-Neubauer, a Furman University political scientist who studies anti-abortion activism. “It’s not just some treatise that twenty-five of your right-to-life friends know about and nobody else. The mainstream effect is not inconsequential.” And that, of course, was the idea all along. “What Justice Parker has done,” said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the nonprofit National Advocates for Pregnant Women, “is explicitly lay out the roadmap for overturning Roe v. Wade.” The Human Life Amendment, as personhood advocates’ first big push was commonly known, was ahead of its time. In the wake of Roe , pro-choice groups — which then included many centrist Republicans — had the momentum. Personhood proponents hoped in vain that Ronald Reagan’s election and the GOP’s capture of the Senate in 1980 would turn the tide, but the comparatively moderate pro-life mainstream wasn't fully on board. By the time the Supreme Court reaffirmed a core right to abortion in the landmark 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the movement had shifted to its own incremental approach. Targeting legislatures in conservative states, it sought tougher penalties for fetal homicides, and, later, birth certificates for stillborn babies. The revised approach alarmed abortion-rights advocates because it was so emotionally resonant — and effective. The basic holding of Roe obviously remains in place, and more than one million legal abortions are performed in the United States every year. Yet the personhood movement has made significant inroads. Today, 38 states have fetal-homicide statutes that make it a crime to cause the death of an unborn child during an act of domestic violence, for example, or while driving drunk. At least 15 have laws that make the pregnancy of a homicide victim an aggravating factor that can lead to the death penalty. And more and more jurisdictions have begun policing pregnant women themselves. In almost every state, women have been arrested or detained for exposing their fetuses to illegal drugs; in more than half of them, mothers can lose some or even all of their custody rights if they or their newborn tests positive for controlled substances. In some places, legislators have written laws expressly authorizing such steps. (Tennessee’s new statute goes the furthest, allowing pregnant drug-users to be charged with criminal assault.) More commonly, it’s constables and prosecutors who’ve taken the initiative, reinterpreting existing laws to detain and arrest mothers. “One clever thing about using drug cases this way,” said Sara Zeigler, a feminist scholar and dean at Eastern Kentucky University, “is that the average person is not going to be at all sympathetic” to a pregnant woman who gets high. Thanks to moves such as these, the idea that a fetus has rights separate from its mother’s has taken root in the law and flourished, even when the more controversial subject of fetal personhood is not directly invoked. In sum, although, as the petitioners correctly state, a majority of jurisdictions have held that unborn children are not afforded protection from the use of a controlled substance by their mothers, they nonetheless fail to convince this Court that the decisions of those courts are persuasive and should be followed by this Court. — Tom Parker, writing in Ex Parte Ankron and Kimbrough A big reason that these piecemeal personhood triumphs haven’t translated into something more sweeping is because courts haven’t been willing to explicitly take up the issue. “If you are a careful, strict constructionist kind of judge, you don’t necessarily connect the dots,” Halva-Neubauer said. Parker not only connects the dots, “he uses a rocket launcher to go after these cases and say, ‘Hey, this is a case that could be used to overrule Roe , and I’m going to show you how.’” In 2011, for example, Parker and his fellow justices heard a case involving a wrongful death lawsuit brought by a woman who blamed her miscarriage on the negligence of her doctors. Under Alabama precedent, such suits weren’t allowed unless the fetus had developed to the point where it could survive outside the womb. But in Hamilton v. Scott, the court voted to strike down that limit. Parker wrote the majority opinion. Then he wrote some more. As a judge, Parker has developed the decidedly unusual habit of authoring concurring opinions to his own majority rulings in cases that hold particular interest for him. In his concurrence to Hamilton, he cited advances in medical and scientific technology as part of a larger, painstaking argument asserting that a centerpiece of Roe — that states cannot ban abortion before the point of viability — was “arbitrary,” “incoherent,” and “mostly unsupported by legal precedent.” Zeigler marvels at how Parker has used the concurrence to strategic effect. “It’s like he’s writing a law-review article without having to go through that process, plus he gets a much wider audience,” she said. And unlike a dissent, a concurrence conveys a certain legitimacy — the idea that the author is on the winning side. “It is much likelier to be noticed and captured and repeated in future cases.” Montgomery, the city where Parker was raised and where the Alabama Supreme Court sits, wears its faith on its sleeve — and its t-shirts, and its restaurant menus, and its license plates. Crosses are more ubiquitous than the American flag. Every other block seems to have a church, sometimes two or three of them. The Frazer United Methodist Church, where Parker worships, is particularly modern and prosperous looking, with a TV station and a playground inside the main lobby. When you park in the immense lot — the church claims a congregation of 8,000 — you remember where you left your car not by the usual Section A, B or C but by one of the virtues: Love, Self-Control, Patience. Over the decades, as Parker has learned to seize his opportunities, he has also learned the value of self-control and patience. “We have to rely on the Holy Spirit so that we don’t rush out into a battle that God did not call us to,” he told a roomful of admirers at the Witherspoon conference in 2005. “With youthful zeal I wanted to get involved in so many fights. But it was so important for me to remember this truth: that the existence of the need is not evidence of the call.” A Christian Family Stores branch in Montgomery, Ala. (William Widmer, special to ProPublica) Parker’s own calling wasn’t clear for many years. He was born to a middle-class Montgomery family in 1952, at the dawn of the modern civil rights era, a few miles from the bus stops and churches where it all began. At a time when many white families were fleeing to segregated Christian academies, he attended the city’s public schools. (His senior year, he was student body president and, according to his classmates, “Most Sincere.”) At Dartmouth, he thought he might become a historian, but ultimately chose law school instead. What he found at Vanderbilt Law School in the mid-1970s shocked him. The religious roots of American law were a forbidden topic. There were no classes specifically devoted to the founding document of American jurisprudence, he said. “They teach you about what judges say about the Constitution rather than having you go back and study the Constitution,” he told a gathering last year. As a young lawyer, Parker led fights to restore God to everyday life in the state — particularly in its schools and textbooks. But he often wound up frustrated, never more so than when a landmark school prayer case he worked on went down to defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court. He complained that the court’s 1985 decision in Wallace v. Jaffree was “the greatest setback to religious liberty that has ever occurred in this country.” After a stint as a lobbyist, during which he helped establish two think tanks affiliated with James Dobson’s hugely influential Focus on the Family, Parker became a confidant of Roy Moore, then a county judge. When Moore became chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 2000, Parker served as his legal lieutenant, strategist and spokesman. And when Moore’s final Ten Commandments crusade ended in debacle, Parker was ousted, too. If unemployed, Parker was hardly finished. He went to work at Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law, a think tank devoted “to protect[ing] the Constitution and protect[ing] the heritage of our Country.” It promoted the far-right strain of Christianity known as Reconstructionism — supporters believe that the Bible should be the governing text for all areas of civil and political life; that America’s Christian founders intended it to be a Christian land; that there is no law without God; that the law and the Constitution don’t evolve any more than humans do, but are fixed and immutable. The Foundation was also a champion of the newly revived personhood movement — indeed, it claimed the group Personhood Alabama as one of its projects. Parker won a spot on the state’s top court in 2004. Once elected, he freely recruited the kinds of committed, somewhat eclectic culture combatants who made up Moore’s circle. For the powerful behind-the-scenes job of chief of staff, he chose John Eidsmoe, an ex-law professor and author of several seminal Reconstructionist works — “the top Biblical law commander of the era,” according to Frederick Clarkson, a journalist and historian of far-right religious movements and senior fellow at Political Research Associates. Two of Parker’s quirkiest hires were Alex and Brett Harris, 16-year-old homeschooled twins from outside Portland, Ore., whose blog, Rebelution (tagline: “a teenage rebellion against low expectations”) had made them the Jonas Brothers of the Christian homeschool world. After they blogged about one of his opinions, Parker took them on for a two-month legal internship; despite their lack of training, they quickly progressed from filing memos to researching and drafting legal opinions. A few months after that, in 2006, Parker made them the grassroots directors in his (failed) campaign to become chief justice. “They demonstrated a maturity comparable to the law students we’ve had, and sometimes exceeding that maturity,” Parker raved. Frazer United Methodist Church, which Tom Parker attends. (Will Widmer, special to ProPublica) Parker soon gained a kind of celebrity in the world of Christian talk radio. He appeared at conferences and conventions and had little compunction about voicing his opinions in public forums. “The liberals on the U.S. Supreme Court already look down on the pro-family policies, Southern heritage, evangelical Christianity and other blessings of our great state,” Parker declared in one particularly blistering op-ed, in which he excoriated his fellow justices for following that court’s precedent and overturning the death penalty for a man convicted of murder as a juvenile. “We Alabamians will never be able to sufficiently appease such establishment liberals, so we should stop trying and instead stand up for what we believe without apology… It does no good to possess conservative credentials if you surrender them before joining the battle.” Parker didn’t expect those battles to be easy. But knew that judges had strategic weapons at their disposal that could alter the course of the fight in the long term. Dissents and concurrences, for example, might not have the force of precedent, but they could signal new tactics, raise new arguments — and eventually change minds. Parker liked to invoke scripture when referring to judges as “gods with little g’s.” “When judges don’t rule in the fear of the Lord, everything’s falling apart,” he would argue, citing the Book of Psalms. “The whole world is coming unglued.” In 2013, a case landed on the Alabama Supreme Court docket that presented Parker with yet another opportunity to attack Roe v. Wade . One of the plaintiffs, Hope Ankrom, from Coffee County south of Montgomery, had pleaded guilty after her son tested positive for cocaine and marijuana at birth. The other, Amanda Kimbrough, from rural northwestern Alabama, had used methamphetamine while pregnant, giving birth 15 weeks prematurely to a boy who soon died. Facing the possibility of life in prison, she opted for a plea deal and a 10 year sentence in the notorious Tutwiler state penitentiary for women. But no Alabama laws specifically authorized the women’s arrests and convictions. Instead, prosecutors had charged them under a felony “chemical endangerment” statute enacted in 2006 to protect children from the noxious fumes and explosive chemicals that make home-based meth labs so dangerous. Lawyers for Ankrom and Kimbrough argued that the state had grossly overreached, pointing out that legislators had debated — and rejected — expanding the meth-lab law to cover pregnant women. Parker, along with five other justices, didn’t buy it. He declared that the chemical-endangerment law did indeed apply to fetuses exposed to drugs in the womb. But again, Parker didn’t leave it at that. His main opinion in Ex Parte Ankron and Kimbrough ran 55 pages. His concurrence ran another 20. This time, Parker’s goal was to establish the many ways that existing statutes recognize fetuses as persons with legally enforceable rights. The document is a kind of masterpiece of pro-life reasoning. “He’s someone who really takes time to read history and the development of jurisprudence,” said Mat Staver, the head of Liberty Counsel and a leading Christian legal theorist. “He’s not a surface thinker.” Step by step, Parker lays out his evidence: laws that give inheritance rights to unborn children, laws that ban pregnant inmates from being executed, laws that give fetuses legal guardians for the purposes of protecting their interests, laws that allow parents to sue for damages if fetuses are injured or killed as the result of negligence or some other wrongful act. Several pages of the concurrence consist almost entirely of lists of statutes from around the country conferring fetal rights. “Today, the only major area in which unborn children are denied legal protection is abortion,” he concluded, “and that denial is only because of the dictates of Roe.” This past spring, as if to punctuate its reasoning, the Alabama Supreme Court confronted a virtually identical case, and, with Parker again writing the majority opinion, reached a virtually identical conclusion. In this concurrence, Parker called on the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the matter of full fetal rights once and for all. (Will Widmer, special to ProPublica) The Court will soon have its chances, if it wants to take them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit just upheld a set of abortion regulations in Texas that have shut down most of that state’s abortion clinics, the appeal of which the justices could well agree to hear. Meanwhile, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women is putting together a lawsuit that would challenge Alabama’s chemical-endangerment prosecutions, which now number at least 130. Going to the Supreme Court on any issue that touches on abortion feels increasingly risky for pro-choice supporters. Anthony Kennedy remains the swing vote, and, on the one hand, he has argued that people must be allowed “to define one’s own concept of existence.” On the other, he has upheld almost every abortion restriction to come before him. Staver is hopeful that Kennedy’s concern for “the dignity of the individual,” a recent theme of his ever-unpredictable reasoning, may make him newly amenable to overturning Roe on personhood grounds. Pro-choice advocates, not surprisingly, are deeply worried about any ideas that Parker’s writings could give the justices in Washington. “Parker is pointing out all the ways the law treats the fetus as a person already,” Zeigler, the feminist scholar, said. “The pro-choice argument, meanwhile, is that the personhood of the fetus hinges entirely on the women’s perception of it.” To the question of what constitutes life, she continued, “Parker has answers. The pro-choice side is more, ‘It depends.’ … People will really struggle with that.” This story was co-published with The New Republic. Illustration by Simon Prades. ||||| A Helena woman can proceed with a wrongful death claim against a doctor for her miscarriage when she was about six weeks pregnant, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday in reversing a Jefferson County judge's order that dismissed her claim. One justice, outspoken in the past in his views against Roe v. Wade, said the decision reaffirms the Alabama Supreme Court's previous ruling that children are protected by Alabama's wrongful-death law from the point of conception. Justices ruled a circuit judge had erred when he said the doctor was immune from civil lawsuits for wrongful death involving the death of a fetus that had not yet reached the stage of viability. The state's Wrongful Death Act extends immunity from criminal prosecution to doctors for "a mistake or unintentional error causing the death of a pre-viable fetus." But the judge, based on previous rulings, had extended that to also include immunity from civil lawsuits. The decision by the Alabama Supreme Court allowing the wrongful death claim to proceed to trial was unanimous, with all eight justices of the current court concurring in the result. Justice Tom Parker wrote a special concurring opinion. "Today, this Court again reaffirms the principle that unborn children are protected by Alabama's wrongful-death statute from the moment life begins at conception," Parker wrote. "This has not always been the case in Alabama. Alabama used to deny unborn children who had not yet grown strong enough to survive outside of their mother's womb the protections of Alabama's wrongful-death statute." Parker stated that Alabama previously applied the viability standard established in Roe v. Wade - the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 that gave women the right to abortions before fetuses are viable - "to determine which unborn children received protection under the law and which did not." However, in a 2011 decision in Mack v. Carmack the Alabama Supreme Court determined that the viability standard established in Roe does not apply to wrongful-death law, Parker stated. "The Court reaffirms that principle today," he wrote. "The use of the viability standard established in Roe is incoherent as it relates to wrongful-death law because, among other reasons, life begins at the moment of conception," Parker wrote. "The fact that life begins at conception is beyond refutation." Parker's stance on the issue is widely known. In a 2014 article, the non-profit news organization ProPublica wrote that Parker was key to the "personhood movement" in an ultimate attempt to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade The publication argued that Parker was establishing the legal rights for the unborn in his opinions that ultimately could be used to overturn Roe v. Wade. Parker, in an interview with AL.com last year, called the ProPublica article a hit-piece and said he never used the word "personhood" in any of the decisions. "I have written opinions joined by the rest of the court that have recognized the right of parents to file a wrongful death lawsuit involving an unborn child from the point of conception," Parker said. "Personally I have written against Roe v Wade and the lack of historical legal or medical basis for that decision and I have done that from one of my opinions." Last week's decision by the Alabama Supreme Court overturned a ruling by Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Jim Hughey in the case of Kimberly Stinnett v. Dr. Karla G. Kennedy. "I think it was a huge decision to clarify the law," Steve Heninger, the Birmingham lawyer who represented Stinnett, said of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling. Efforts to reach attorneys representing Kennedy were unsuccessful prior to publication of this story. Stinnett sued after she had a miscarriage in June 2012. According to the Supreme Court's opinion, Stinnett's obstetrician had informed Stinnett that she was pregnant on May 9, 2012. Two days later Stinnett experienced abdominal cramping and fever. Because it was after hours on the weekend, Stinnett called her obstetrician's answering service and received a call back from Dr. Kennedy, who was sharing calls with her regular obstetrician that weekend. Dr. Kennedy told Stinnett to go to the emergency room at Brookwood Medical Center. Stinnett reported prior miscarriages in 2005 and 2007 and a prior ectopic pregnancy in 2010. An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. Kennedy was concerned that Stinnett was experiencing another ectopic pregnancy and performed a dilation and curettage, a surgical procedure in which the cervix is dilated and tissue is removed from the lining of the uterus, and a laparoscopy to determine whether the pregnancy was inside or outside the uterus, according to the opion. Kennedy informed her that there was no ectopic pregnancy but that she still felt as though there had been a miscarriage. Dr. Kennedy, however, testified that she still held "a high suspicion" of ectopic pregnancy on May 13 and, therefore, ordered methotrexate, a cytotoxic drug used to treat ectopic pregnancies, be administered to Stinnett. The drug is intended to cause the end of the pregnancy. On Monday, May 14, Stinnett's regular obstetrician returned and took over treatment of Stinnett at the hospital. A follow-up ultrasound showed that what had previously been suspected to be an intrauterine gestational sac had, in fact, progressed to a "definite yolk sac." In his discharge summary for Stinnett, her obstetrician stated that Stinnett was having a failing intrauterine pregnancy possibly as a result of her methotrexate injection. Several weeks later, on June 8, 2012, Stinnett suffered a miscarriage, according to the opinion. The evidence was disputed as to whether the fetus could have reached viability, according to the opinion. In her lawsuit Stinnett alleged Dr. Kennedy committed medical negligence when she performed the D & C and administered methotrexate and that caused the loss of her child. Judge Hughey, on April 15, 2016, entered an order granting the motion to dismiss Stinnett's wrongful-death claim. He stated that "after considering all of the ... arguments and authorities, this Court finds that the existence of the 'physician's exception' to the Brody Act ...prohibits the extension of civil liability under the Wrongful Death Act to licensed physicians who through mistake or unintentional error cause the death of a previable fetus." Hughey, however, allowed Stinnett's other claims, including her personal injuries and claim of mental anguish, in her lawsuit to continue to trial. At that trial in May a jury found in favor of Dr. Kennedy on those other claims. Heninger said they expected to lose the trial in May on Stinnett's mental anguish claims because that was only a small part of the case, which really focused on the wrongful death claim. The jury, however, was told it couldn't consider the wrongful death aspect, he said. One group, Liberty Counsel, applauded the Alabama Supreme Court's decision in a press release Tuesday. "Liberty Counsel applauds the Alabama Supreme Court and Justice Tom Parker for defending the legal rights of the unborn as clearly stated in Alabama law," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "We strongly urge other judges to do likewise as the value of human life is not a negotiable matter. The womb should be the safest place for a child and it must be legally protected. It's time to turn the tables on Roe v. Wade," he stated. Liberty Counsel represented Parker in defenses of a judicial ethics complaint last year. The complaint was dismissed.

– A pregnant Alabama woman who suffered a miscarriage at six weeks can sue her doctor for wrongful death, the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled, with judges citing a 2009 state law making it a crime to kill or harm "an unborn child in utero at any stage of development." Physicians who make mistakes are usually protected from civil suits, and a lower court in August dismissed the wrongful death portion of Kimberly Stinnett's claim. But the high court overruled that last week in a unanimous decision that "reaffirms the principle that unborn children are protected by Alabama's wrongful-death statute from the moment life begins," writes Judge Tom Parker, per AL.com. The ruling is a swipe at Roe v. Wade, which Parker has previously called "incoherent" because "life begins at conception." The case goes back to May 2012, when Stinnett sought treatment for abdominal cramps and fever. An ER obstetrician who treated her suspected an ectopic pregnancy and performed a dilation and curettage, AL.com reports, followed by an injection of a drug intended to stop the pregnancy. The Helena woman had a history of two miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy. A follow-up ultrasound by Stinnett's regular OB-GYN showed the pregnancy was uterine but failing, possibly because of the injection. In June, Stinnett miscarried and filed a civil lawsuit against the doctor who first treated her. ProPublica has written that Parker's writings pose "the biggest threat to abortion in a generation," but the ruling was cheered by the chair of Liberty Counsel "for defending the legal rights of the unborn as clearly stated in Alabama law." (A study finds a miscarriage can be followed by PTSD.)