sexuality. Founded in 1910, the Boy Scouts has about 2.7 million youth members and more than 1 million adult volunteers. The organization believes that homosexuality is incompatible with membership or leadership positions. A board member of the Ohio River Valley Council has now resigned to protest Tyrrell’s ouster.

The Augusta National Golf Club and the Boy Scouts have one thing in common — they are both private organizations that practice freedom of association.

Does the First Amendment protect the freedom of association?

The First Amendment reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress ofwas likely to constitute an effective restraint on its members’ freedom of association.

Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to the preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.

In a later case that directly relates to the woman recently dismissed from her leadership position in the Boy Scouts, the Supreme Court ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000) that the Boy Scouts could revoke the membership of a former Eagle Scout and assistant scoutmaster (James Dale) when it found out that Dale was a homosexual and a gay-rights activist. To force the Boy Scouts to do otherwise abridged the organization’s right to freedom of association. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the majority opinion,

Applying New Jersey’s


One of the most popular comic books during the horror boom of the 1970s was The Tomb of Dracula, which from issue #7 on was written by Marv Wolfman, with art throughout its run by Gene Colan, both grandmasters of the field. Focusing on Marvel’s version of Bram Stoker’s creation (itself inspired by the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler), Tomb of Dracula had as its heroes a collection of vampire hunters, some of whom were members of the Harker and van Helsing family from Stoker’s novel, as well as (among others) a reluctant vampire named Hannibal King and an African-American vampire hunter who simply went by the name Blade.

In 1998, a feature film starring Blade was released, only loosely based on the comic. It was only Marvel’ssecond actual theatrical release (after Howard the Duck in 1986, also a product of the 1970s comics market), and first success, as the film was a huge international hit, spawning two sequels in 2002 and 2004.

In the comics, Blade was one of a team, who hunted vampires because one killed his mother. He favored knives made of teak (hence the name “Blade”) and also was immune to vampire bites. Preferring to work alone, he did find himself allying with other vampire hunters on a regular basis, even befriending King, despite his being a vampire. (King only drank from blood banks and never took a human life.)

New Line picked up the rights to do a Blade movie in the early 1990s, originally conceived as a vehicle for LL Cool


J. David S. Goyer was hired to write the movie, and he moved away from the studio’s notion of a spoof film, preferring to play it straight. Goyer’s wishlist for casting included Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, and Wesley Snipes, with the latter actually being cast. Snipes, a big comics fan—and also a martial artist, so he could do most of the combat scenes himself—took to the role quickly and enthusiastically.

The film version of Blade differed in several respects from the comics version. He was a “daywalker,” a person whose mother was turned while pregnant with him, so he’s an odd halfbreed vampire. He subsists on blood and heals quickly, but he ages normally and can walk in daylight safely. The obsession with hunting vampires remains from the comics,but only select other elements from the comics show up: Deacon Frost in the first movie (as in the comics, it’s Frost who killed Blade’s mother); King and Dracula in the third. However, the huge success of the movies led to the comics character being altered somewhat to more closely hew to Snipes’s version.

Snipes also was a producer of Blade and its two sequels, with Goyer writing all three, and sitting in the director’s chair for the third. Behind-the-scenes difficulties plagued Blade Trinity—Snipes clashed with director Goyer throughout filming, Snipes was under criminal investigation for his security firm the Royal Guard of Amen-Ra, and then in 2006 he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for failure to pay his income taxes—which kept there from being a fourth film. However,


there was a short-lived TV series in 2006 that aired on Spike in the U.S., based on the films, with Kirk “Sticky Fingas” Jones in the title role. As of 2011, the rights have reverted to Marvel Studios, but nothing has been announced with regard to working Blade into the MCU.

“These people are our food, not our allies”

Blade

Written by David S. Goyer

Directed by Stephen Norrington

Produced by Robert Engelman, Wesley Snipes, & Peter Frankfurt

Original release date: August 21, 1998

A young woman brings her date to a rave in an underground club in Los Angeles. It turns out to be a vampire club, and the sprinklers spray out blood (there’s a big sign behind the DJ that reads “BLOODBATH”). Blade, a vampire hunter, shows up and, despite there being onlyone of him and at least a hundred of them, he kills tons of vampires, though most just run away, no doubt frightened by his reputation.

The club is owned by Deacon Frost, and the rave is being supervised by his right hand, Quinn. Blade uses his garlic-filled silver stakes to pin Quinn’s shoulders to the wall and also cuts off one of his hands, then sets him on fire.

The cops arrive, and Blade beats a hasty retreat. He later goes to the hospital to finish off Quinn—who, despite being crispy fried, reawakens in the morgue. He kills a coroner and bites a hematologist. Blade rescues the latter, Dr. Karen Jenson, and brings her to the warehouse headquarters from which Blade and his weaponsmith Whistler are waging their war


beheads Quinn.)

Jenson offers to cure him, but he needs the gifts his daywalker status gives him to continue his fight, so instead she creates a better serum for him. The next time we see him, he’s taking on vampires in Russia…

“In the end, B, you’re just too human”

Blade II

Written by David S. Goyer

Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Produced by Patrick Palmer, Wesley Snipes, & Peter Frankfurt

Original release date: March 22, 2002

It turns out that Whistler didn’t kill himself when Blade left him with a weapon. Instead, he was kidnapped by the vampire leadership, on the orders of Damaskinos. They tortured him for information, but he never gave anything up. They also kept moving him around, but Blade finally finds him in Eastern Europe and brings him home, curing himson. Nyssa is appalled to realize that her own father sent her and her team on a mission that got most of them killed based on a lie. Whistler is appalled to realize that Scud—whom he was just starting to like—was a mole from Damaskinos all along, as was Reinhardt.

Blade and Whistler are taken back to Damaskinos’s headquarters. Damaskinos still needs to breed vulnerability to sunlight out of his Reapers, and he sees Blade as the key. However, Nomak tracked the team and attacks, taking out his father’s troops all by his lonesome. Whistler uses the distraction to escape and free Blade. This time, Blade regains his strength by diving into the pool of blood that Damaskinos uses, and then beats up a ton of vampires all by


his lonesome, ending with cutting Reinhardt from stern to stem.

Damaskinos tries to convince Nomak to rule by his side, but Nomak isn’t having any of that, and kills his old man, then Nyssa—wracked by guilt and anger—lets him infect her. Blade shows up, and he and Nomak fight to the death, with Blade finally winning by stabbing him in the side. Nyssa’s final wish is to die as a vampire rather than a Reaper, so Blade takes her outside to watch the sun rise.

“You might wanna consider blinking once in a while”

Blade Trinity

Written and directed by David S. Goyer

Produced by Wesley Snipes, David S. Goyer, Lynn Harris, & Peter Frankfurt

Original release date: December 8, 2004

A group of vampires led by Danica Talos travel to Iraq and unearth theearlier in the movie, pooh-poohing the whole notion of vampires while condemning Blade’s vigilantism). Said shrink has Blade committed, with the chief’s support, to the FBI’s annoyance. However, both shrink and chief are familiars to Talos, and she and her gang come in posing as staff from a mental institution.

Blade is rescued by two people, one of whom is Whistler’s daughter. Abby was conceived during a one-night stand after Whistler’s family was killed. Abby tracked her father down and started hunting vampires on her own. She’s gathered a team called the Nightstalkers, which also includes Hannibal King—a former vampire who was cured—and it’s the two of them who rescue Blade.

They bring Blade to their HQ to meet the rest of the team: Hedges, who makes the gadgets, Sommerfield,


nor Dominic Purcell’s utter inability to show depth and nuance as Drake serve the films well. At least they have secondary villains to pick up the slack, from Donal Logue’s batshit crazy Quinn in the first film to the always-brilliant Ron Perlman as Reinhardt in the second movie to Parker Posey vamping it up (sorry…) as Talos in Trinity.

It’s fun to watch these movies two decades later and remember who all was in them. Besides Logue (currently Bullock in Gotham), Perlman (later starring as Hellboy), and Posey (soon to be in Superman Returns), you’ve got Udo Kier (who starred in several vampire films of the 1960s and 1970s) and Judson Scott (Joachim from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) in Blade; Danny John-Jules (Cat from Red Dwarf),Topless woman takes on open-carry supporters in Austin

A topless protester held a counter demonstration at the Texas state capitol building, where open carry advocated were gathered on Friday, March 11, 2016. A topless protester held a counter demonstration at the Texas state capitol building, where open carry advocated were gathered on Friday, March 11, 2016. Photo: Samantha Ketterer | Houston Chronicle Photo: Samantha Ketterer | Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 36 Caption Close Topless woman takes on open-carry supporters in Austin 1 / 36 Back to Gallery

AUSTIN — Never let it be said that Austin can't get weird, especially for a presidential visit.

As a small group of Texans who support the open-carry of guns made their way through downtown Austin Friday, they were confronted by a topless


Black Sunday: The NFL plays on after JFK's assassination

Forty years ago this weekend, as America grieved for President John F. Kennedy, stunned NFL players were told to take the field.

In honor of Sports Illustrated's 60th anniversary, SI.com is republishing 60 of the best stories to appear in the magazine. Today's selection is "Black Sunday, by Charles P. Pierce, which ran in the Nov. 24, 2003 issue. It was later included in the 2004 edition of Best American Sports Writing.

The ice spread out of a brilliantly blue Southern sky. It suffused the air. You took it in with every breath, and it got into your blood and spread to your deepest places. It made the world fragile, and you with it, until it seemed that you might shatter atthe slightest sound, and all the world shatter around you. On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, there were things that the United States believed about itself, and those things were solid and basic and seemed as permanent as granite. By midday, as the ice spread through them, those fundamental things became delicate and crystalline. Anything loud seemed dangerous.

Cheering was loud. There had been cheering in Dallas, along the streets and on either side of that long, slow--too damned slow--turn from Houston down onto Elm Street past the book warehouse. Some of the cheering was so loud that the gunfire drowned in it. After that, for the next three days, the country breathed shallowly. It spoke to itself only in chapel whispers. Football, by contrast, is loud, and


therefore it seemed a perilous thing.

On that Friday at noon, the Washington Redskins were beginning an ordinary practice in the middle of a season that was going nowhere. They'd lost seven games in a row. Their game that weekend was in Philadelphia, against the Eagles, who were even more woeful than the Redskins. Philadelphia was in a long slide in which it would lose eight of its last nine games and finish 2-10-2, slightly worse than Washington's 3-11.

Amid this hopeless flotsam, the Redskins' Bobby Mitchell was having a good season. He was on his way to 69 catches and seven touchdowns. In Philadelphia, Tommy McDonald would end 1963 with 41 catches and eight touchdowns, but neither man had any illusions about his team. "We were pretty terrible," recallsMcDonald. "It wasn't the best year, anyway, before all this happened."

The players heard the news, like the country did, in a thousand ways. Raymond Berry and the Baltimore Colts heard it on their airplane, at 30,000 feet, on their way to Los Angeles for a game with the Rams. Sam Huff, the New York Giants linebacker who'd campaigned for John F. Kennedy in 1960 before the pivotal primary in Huff's home state, West Virginia, heard it on his car radio in the middle of the Triborough Bridge. McDonald found out after practice.

In Washington, coach Bill McPeak called the Redskins together in the middle of the field outside D.C. Stadium. Mitchell was baffled. McPeak, an unemotional organization man, told everyone to take a knee and pray because the president


was dead.

"The first thing I thought was, God, Mr. Marshall died," Mitchell says, referring to Redskins president George Preston Marshall. His teammates sank to the ground around him, and then he knew. "It never occurred to me," Mitchell says. "I mean, that somebody would shoot the president of the United States? It took me a couple of seconds to realize that was what he meant."

Mitchell had gone to Washington in 1962, two years after the Kennedy Administration began. He'd become close friends with Robert Kennedy, the president's brother and the attorney general, and had met President Kennedy several times, once at a state dinner at the White House. Mitchell had even gone to Robert Kennedy's home in Virginia to play touch football with that boisterous and ever-expanding family.Now, as he fell to his knees on the hardening earth of autumn, Mitchell thought mostly about his friend.

"I was frozen there for a minute because I'd really fallen in love with Bobby," Mitchell says. "My thoughts turned to him, and I thought, Damn, this is going to kill Bobby."

The Redskins practiced anyway, and it was terrible, and McPeak finally gave up and sent the team home. The streets of Washington were a shadow play. Cars disappeared almost entirely. Black crape began to appear in shop windows. Mitchell saw people on the sidewalk, still and weeping, as though they were afraid to move. He felt cold and numb too. He felt close to breaking.

"It was just silence," he says. "That's what I remember. Even the playgrounds were empty


and quiet. I felt, I don't know, slow, somehow, and like everything had slowed down around me."

On the way home through the stunned and silent streets, the last thing Mitchell thought about was the game in Philadelphia two days later. It had been a forgettable piece of business anyway, and now it seemed unspeakable. Why did we even practice? he wondered. He was home that evening, glued to his television like the rest of his frozen and fragile country, when Air Force One came back from Dallas.

AP Photo

Football was what they played on the New Frontier. Oh, they paid the usual obeisance to baseball, the ritual national pastime. But football ran deep in the Kennedy family mystique. All four Kennedy brothers had played the game at Harvard. Johnwas a halfback undersized even by the standards of the Ivy League in the 1930s, but young Edward once scored a touchdown in the Yale game. Football was an integral part of Joseph Kennedy's grand plan--a demonstration of muscular Americanism that would help break down the prejudices his children would face for being rich, Irish and Catholic.

"Politics is like football," JFK once noted. "If you see daylight, go through the hole." And photographs of John Kennedy hauling in passes from his brothers helped camouflage his myriad health problems, some of which have only recently come to light.

Moreover, the touch football games at the compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., were part of the glamour of the Kennedy White House, as much as Jacqueline Kennedy's horses and the iconic PT-109


tie clips. There was a tyranny of the new at work, stretching from outer space to Southeast Asia. Football was a part of all that.

By 1963 Pete Rozelle and his National Football League already were well on their way to developing a new national pastime, changing the way Americans watched their sports, much as the Kennedy campaign had changed the way Americans elected their presidents. Both were perfect creatures of television, a medium just then coming into the fullness of its power. Rozelle tailored his games to TV the way that Kennedy tailored his press conferences to it. Both the NFL and the Kennedy Administration were pure products of the brawling, confident America that had been built by the generation that had fought World War II.

The year hadnot been the easiest for Rozelle. In April he'd indefinitely suspended two star players, Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions and Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers, for gambling on their teams' games, and a bidding war for college players still raged because the renegade American Football League had stubbornly refused to fold. But on Nov. 22 Rozelle was confronted with a decision that seemed to render all the others he'd made that year trivial.

There was no blueprint for what to do on the weekend that a president is being buried on national television. In Wisconsin more than 100 high school basketball games were played on the night of the assassination. Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore ran all weekend, and games were played in both the NBA


and the NHL. In college football Nebraska and Oklahoma played each other, but all four games in the Big Ten were rescheduled, and Iowa and Notre Dame canceled their game. The AFL wiped out its entire slate of games, but Rozelle had made Sunday afternoons the property of the NFL, and because of that he was on the hook.

He called his college friend Pierre Salinger, who was Kennedy's press secretary. Speaking from the Honolulu airport, shell-shocked by the events of the day, Salinger gave Rozelle what amounted to the dead president's permission to play. "Football," Rozelle said in making the announcement, "was Mr. Kennedy's game."

The reaction very nearly undid Rozelle. At least two owners called and begged him to reconsider. Cleveland's Art Modell wound up paying for extrasecurity to guard the Dallas Cowboys, who were in town that weekend to play the Browns. In Philadelphia, Eagles owner Frank McNamee announced that he would miss his first game in 15 years and Mayor James H.J. Tate, who'd shared a platform at Independence Hall with President Kennedy a year earlier on July 4, tried to get a court to stop the Eagles-Redskins game.

It also became clear that Rozelle's golden touch with the media had deserted him. He was barbecued for going ahead with the schedule. In the New York Herald-Tribune, Red Smith all but called Rozelle a heartless mercenary, and Melvin Durslag of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called the games that weekend "a sick joke." In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sandy Grady wrote, "I am ashamed of


this fatuous dreamland."

Perhaps the most significant thing of all was that players around the league began to rebel, in their hearts if not on the field. "Nobody wanted to play," says McDonald. "There wasn't anything you could do about it, but there was no way anybody wanted to go out and play a game that weekend. I'm a guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and I couldn't stop crying.

"It was bad enough playing, but that weekend, to be playing the Redskins, from Washington, where the president lived, that was just another reason to be upset."

Bobby Mitchell was in the prime of his Hall of Fame career in 1963.

AP Photo

For his part, Mitchell felt strange leaving Washington. "Everywhere you looked, down along the street, people would juststart crying," he says. "It didn't seem like the time to leave." The Redskins drove the three hours to Philadelphia and checked into their hotel. Across town, at the Sheraton on Chestnut Street, where the Eagles always stayed before home games, the team was falling apart.

The Eagles had decided to collect money for the family of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippitt, who'd been shot to death on Friday afternoon, allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald. A team meeting, which also reportedly dealt with the Eagles' feelings about playing the game the next day, ended with a fistfight between defensive back Ben Scotti and defensive lineman John Mellekas. The two went behind closed doors to finish it, and both wound up in the hospital that night, Scotti with a broken hand


and Mellekas with severe facial cuts. In his room, McDonald watched TV and never heard a thing.

That Sunday dawned cold and surreal. In their hotels, caught up in what became the first national news miniseries of the television age, the template for CNN and Fox and for the Watergate hearings and the O.J. trial and everything that came after, the players were drowning in the coverage, and how strangely that strangest of Sundays began depended vitally on where you were playing that weekend.

Kickoff was at 1 p.m. Eastern standard time. Some players around the league were at stadiums and some were in their hotels, but wherever they were, many of them were watching television at 12:21 p.m. EST when the Dallas police were transferring Oswald to the countyjail and Jack Ruby gunned him down. "That was the last thing that weekend that I couldn't believe," says McDonald.

Then people showed up to watch football. That was the remarkable thing. There were 60,671 fans at Franklin Field to see the Eagles and the Redskins play a game that didn't matter on a weekend on which almost everything else seemed to matter. There was no pregame hoo-ha; Rozelle, at least, had drawn the line at that. There were no player introductions. The Eagles and the Redskins simply walked out to midfield and joined hands. A bugler blew Taps, which nearly finished McDonald on the spot. Then the whole stadium sang the national anthem a cappella.

After that the stadium was as silent as a football stadium can be, as


if tearing themselves away from the extended obsequies on television had used all the energy the fans had left. McDonald was bawling when he went back to receive the opening kickoff, and Mitchell noticed that even his coaches' words seemed hollow. "Before the game there was a lot of what you could tell was false chatter," Mitchell says. "Coaches are always over there saying, 'Grr, let's go get 'em.' And me, I gave them a weak yell."

He made plays. So did McDonald. They each caught four passes in the game. Once, while running down the sideline for a pass, Mitchell felt the game dissolve around him. "I was there, looking up, concentrating on the ball spiraling in the air, like you're supposed to, and then I started thinkingout there in slow motion."

It wasn't a day for coming from behind. It looked for a long while as though Washington was on its way to its first shutout since 1958. However, playing with a stiff wind behind them in the fourth quarter, the Eagles mustered 10 points, highlighted by a 25-yard touchdown pass from Sonny Jurgensen to Timmy Brown. But on Philadelphia's final drive McDonald let a pass go through his hands, and Mike Clark missed a 16-yard field goal that would have tied the game. The Redskins won 13-10.

Out in the players' parking lot, Eagles backup quarterback King Hill discovered that all the windows in his car had been shattered. The car had Texas plates.

Pete Rozelle's otherwise strong tenure as NFL commissioner would always be marred


by his decision to play games that weekend.

AP Photo

That night, when he got home, Mitchell was struck for the last time that weekend by how quiet the streets of Washington had become. It was the strangest game any of the players had ever played and, in some ways, the most dangerous. Football is best (and most safely) played with heedless emotion, and everyone on the field seemed to be holding back. They played like men who had become aware of some unfamiliar fragility deep in themselves--far beneath muscle and bone, ligament and tendon, where they hadn't noticed any before.

Bobby Mitchell avoided Bobby Kennedy for as long as he could. Finally, about a month after the Philadelphia game, somebody from the Justice Department called Mitchell and told him thatKennedy wanted him to help dedicate the John F. Kennedy Playground on Seventh Street in the Washington ghetto. Mitchell went, distractedly driving slowly around the block, again and again, until he realized what he was doing. He was looking at all the rooftops for someone with a gun.

At the playground Mitchell took a spot in the back of the crowd, hoping that Kennedy wouldn't see him. "I was afraid," he admits. "I didn't know what I'd say to him." Kennedy spotted him, though, and brought him up to the front of the crowd, near where they had already turned the cold earth for the groundbreaking.

Kennedy was gaunt, almost lifeless in the face. He gripped Mitchell as if with iron talons. "I don't think I can do this," he


said, and he couldn't. His hands were shaking too hard to work the shovel. He handed it to Mitchell so they held it together.

He's older now, telling his story in the lobby of the Willard, a great old history-laden pile on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the White House. Abraham Lincoln was taken there when he was smuggled into Washington before his first inauguration, and it was the Willard's lobby that reputedly inspired the word lobbying when people gathered there to ply and beg and otherwise try to sublet President Ulysses S. Grant.

History has more or less passed judgment on those three frozen days in November. Later in his life Rozelle wrote that the worst decision he ever made was to play the games that weekend. And historySo many of the bands we have been touching base with through A Blaze Ansuz has been on the intersections of neofolk with a huge range of genres, drawing lines of traditional music through metal, industrial, chamber, music, ambient. Twilight Fauna was this perfect synthesis, drawing on the same redneck Appalachian twang that we know from Panopticon and bringing in traditional folk from the mountain as a starting point. And Paul Ravenwood, the original solo artist behind Twilight Fauna (it’s now a two-piece), has a story that is told through his music, generations of his family coming from that same mountain. And this is the fundamental core of the folk music, traditions handed down in rural areas as ways of knowing your own history, the type of storytelling


universal public funding since 2009, influenza vaccine coverage among healthy children aged 5--8 years was estimated to be 17.1%, and 12.8% among those aged 8--17 years for the 2012--2013 influenza season \[[@CR6]\]. Influenza vaccine coverage also varies by rural/urban residence: in Alberta for the 2010--2011 season, vaccine coverage was lower among rural than urban residents, including among children of all ages \[[@CR7]\]. One strategy for increasing vaccine coverage among school-aged children is for them to be immunized at school \[[@CR8]\]. Parental consent and child assent is required for children to be immunized at school. In Canada, although all provinces and territories deliver other vaccines to children at school \[[@CR9]\], influenza vaccine is not usually delivered by this strategy except in a few rural remote areas. Given rural/urban differenceswith child-centred horrors (It, Stranger Things), violent action movies (remember Kick-Ass?), serious trauma dramas (such as Room, whose star Jacob Tremblay is one of the trio in Good Boys), and now, junior raunch comedies. In Good Boys, our potty-mouthed sixth-graders naively encounter grownup stuff such as drugs, violence, online porn and sex toys. Are they swearing like troopers for comic effect, or is this just what it is like to be a 12-year-old now?

By coincidence, we have another movie out this week with the opposite predicament. Dora and the Lost City of Gold updates the kids’ TV cartoon into a live-action Tomb Raider/Spy Kids-style adventure, with its sunny, curious heroine now high-school age (played by 18-year-old Isabela Moner). Despite being a good five years older than the boys


The “fact” that San Francisco was completely destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 1906 is widely known, of course — but less well known is the actual fact that it was the subsequent fire, raging for three days, that did almost all of the damage.

I stumbled across a little piece of this history several years ago when I rented an apartment on 20th street, in between the Mission District and Noe Valley neighborhoods. As I walked up to Dolores Park and down to the Mission along my new street, I started to notice something odd about the buildings on one side… and also started to wonder about the fact that the fire hydrant at the top of the hill was painted bright gold! After a bit of researchI discovered what makes this street unique in San Francisco, and the historical link to the great fire that burned it to the ground.

The miraculous golden fire hydrant, at the highest corner of Dolores Park! (the plaque was added after I moved out of the neighborhood.)

A dramatic panorama of San Francisco after the fire.

photographs of the Mission District’s Valencia Street — before and after.

Representative buildings from the north “burned” side of 20th street. These date from the 1920s and 30s.

The old survivors, all dating from before 1906, all standing on the south side of the street. This is as close as San Francisco gets to ancient history!

View from Dolores Park back towards the city — the 1906 refugees from the fire could see the entire panorama of destruction


from here. Today it’s referred to as “Dolores Beach”!

The Fire raged for three days, April 18-20, and was deliberately & intentionally stopped across Dolores street from Mission Dolores by an ecumenical mass of 300 men who refilled their water wagons 10 times, pushing them south on Dolores then right onto steep 20th st.,then feathered the hand brake to roll back down to spray on the east side of Dolores across from “The Mish” as my then 21 year old grandfather Walter B. Smith called it. He & his brothers Arthur & Orde & their father Dr. Thomas Orde Lees Smith fought the fire hand to hand until it was stopped at that line of Dolores. The statue at Dolores & Market st. mentions it, I think.

On my wayInternational rankings of Peru

The following are international rankings of :

Economics

 A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy: Globalization Index, ranked 50 out of 62 countries.
 Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal: Index of Economic Freedom, ranked 55 out of 157 countries.
 United Nations: Human Development Index, ranked 87 out of 177 countries
 World Economic Forum: Global Competitiveness Report Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012, ranked 67 out of 142 countries.

Globalization

2010 KOF Index of Globalization ranked 61

Politics

 Reporters without borders: 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index, ranked 115 out of 179 countries
 Transparency International: 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranked 80 out of 182 countries

References

*
Peru


a baby so she was extremely busy so kept herself to herself which I don't blame her. It seemed that either her or her husband's parents were helping out with the running of the B&B especially in the morning with breakfast.

------------Breakfast...------------

Breakfast was lovely. There was a choice of a full English breakfast or a smoothie. At first this puzzled me because I thought well a smoothie is a drink not a breakfast but it did fill me up as toast was also brought to the table as well as tea or coffee. There was also fruit juices and cereal to choose from which were self-serve at the back of the breakfast room.

It was less than a five minute walk to the beach and to the few shops anda record album and illustrated book that came out before I was born. Back in 1972, celebrities of the era including Alan Alda, Rosey Grier, Cicely Tyson, Carol Channing, Michael Jackson, Shirley Jones, Jack Cassidy, and Diana Ross sang the songs and narrated the stories.

The concept of the album was to encourage gender neutrality. The narrative of the record praised values like tolerance, uniqueness, and taking pride in individuality and your own identity. One of the main messages of the record was that boys and girls can do anything. That was how I grew up: free to be me. I always loved music and I usually have music playing in the background; sometimes only in my imagination – in my head. In every situation I star in imaginary


of his deceased wife. She's beautiful and damned determined to throw herself into his life in hopes they can reform an old friendship, but Spike won't hear of it, and Ciara refuses to give up.

Author Bio:
Bella Jewel is an Aussie girl through and through. She spent her life in Western Australia, growing up in many different areas of the state. She now currently lives in Perth with her husband, children and mass amounts of pets. She's crazy, fun, outgoing and friendly. Writing is her passion, she started at the young age of 18 but finally got the courage up to publish, and her first novel Hell's Knights will be released in August 2013.

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I'm at a loss for words right now. WOW! Review to follow.
I justhere is Drudge. Matt Drudge's Drudge Report isn't the elephant in the room, it's the Sun in the old-school linkblog solar system. The Drudge Report has been a massive traffic driver for years, and continues to be. And it looks like it was written by hand in 1996, which, perhaps, it was. Let's apply a new-web technique to make the point. The Drudge Report, as seen in 2001 and 2014.

More pictures, otherwise the same.

How big is Drudge for political sites? Over the course of the year, links from Google to the Post's politics coverage have accounted for 5.5 percent of all incoming links. Drudge accounted for 4.1 percent.

But it isn't only Drudge. Lucianne Goldberg has run Lucianne.com since 1998, she told the Post in an email this week.


Epicor and RheinBrücke join forces with SmartWorld to deliver Epicor ERP solutions to businesses in Dubai South

12 June, 2017

Sabby Gill, Executive Vice President, International, Epicor Software.

Epicor Software Corporation, a global provider of industry specific enterprise software to promote business growth, has announced that its international partner, RheinBrücke, has signed a partnership agreement with SmartWorld, a regional smart services provider, to deliver Epicor solutions and services to businesses in Dubai South. Dubai South ― the rebranded Dubai World Central ― is an emerging 145 square kilometre city situated within the Emirate of Dubai. Launched as a government of Dubai project in 2006, it will ultimately sustain a population of one million and create 500,000 new jobs.

The collaboration between Epicor, RheinBrücke and SmartWorld will provide businesses in Dubai South withMONTAUK, N.Y. -- Authorities say a Long Island woman who was struck and killed in a hit-and-run accident is the third member of her family to die in a pedestrian accident in the past two years.

Suffolk County police told CBS New York officers responding to a 911 call early Monday morning found 54-year-old Pauline Aluska, of Lindenhurst, on a highway. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The driver fled.

"If you have a heart, have a soul, turn yourself in," Aluska's brother, Kenneth, remarked on CBS New York.

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Police have been poring over surveillance video and intend to release more information soon on the vehicle involved, CBS New York says.

Police tell the station she was hit a block from


where her brother, 61-year-old John Aluska, was killed in September 2015 in a hit-and-run accident. The driver in that accident hasn't been found.

This past Mother's Day, the wife of the siblings' brother, Kenny, was killed in Lindenhurst when a car struck her moments after she pushed her 16-year-old daughter out of the way.The Nature of Information

Latest News

The latest gathering of the Sterling Ranch Pioneers, our first 100 home owners, was held at the Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms. The afternoon featured a presentation on the collaboration between Sterling Ranch and the Denver Botanic Gardens to determine sustainable landscape plans for communal areas in the community, and tips for our residents on environmentally conscious and water-wise plantings for their own home landscaping. After lunch, the Pioneers were treated to guided tours of Chatfield Farms.


Past Event

Book Talk with YPFP DC: Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities

Hosted by Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, along with the Aspen Institute's ANDE and Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities provides reflections on social entrepreneurship from visionaries, practitioners, and theorists. The contributors to this book address the clear need for further examination of social entrepreneurship. The book aims to clarify and illustrate the concept of social entrepreneurship. In addition, the book examines challenges, obstacles, and opportunities in the field and lends new insight to the phenomenon, history, and methodologies of social entrepreneurship.While people started sharing unconfirmed reports about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's death news on social media platform after Vice Director of Hong King Satellite TV claimed that the North Korean supreme leader is dead, Korean Peninsula expert and chairman of the board of The World and Northeast Asia Peace Forum expressed that he believes the news may not be fake.

The expert Jang Sung Min revealed that he believes North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un has passed away.

As reported by Kuki News, Korean Peninsula expert Jang Sung Min, who is the chairman of the board of WNPF quoted a source revealing that Kim Jong Un is currently in very serious condition. While explaining the situation, he said:

Kim Jong Un's health condition is very serious, and just this


Un's death news

A few days ago, CNN reported that the supreme leader of North Korea was in a critical condition following cardiovascular surgery and the administration has been watching his situation closely. Later, when Kim Jong Un did not appear at his late grandfather Kim Il Sung's birthday, it gained overwhelming attention all around the world.

Meanwhile, South Korea media "accidentally" leaked a pre-release saying Kim Jong-un is dead, despite any confirmation from North Korea officials.

It was also reported by Reuters on Friday that China has sent a team of doctors to North Korea to help determine Kim Jong Un's health status. Later Newsweek reported that a senior Pentagon official not authorized to speak on the record revealed that

While the U.S. continues to monitor reports surrounding the health ofWASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy grew 3% in the fourth quarter, faster than originally reported, mainly because of increased commercial construction, higher consumer spending and lower imports, the government said Wednesday.

The Commerce Department initially estimated the U.S. expanded at a 2.8% pace in the final three months of 2011. It’s still the fastest rate of growth in a year and a half.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted GDP growth would be revised down to 2.7% from an initial reading of 2.8%.

Much of the fourth quarter’s growth stemmed from an unexpectedly large buildup in inventories. The government trimmed its initial estimate of a $56 billion increase in inventories to $54.3 billion.

Economists expect companies to cut back on inventories in the first three months of 2012. As a result,


of any member which is also an insurance company:
(1) between or among members;
(2) between or among members and associated persons....
Following Bryant's termination in 1992, he sued American Express, alleging disability discrimination. Bryant and American Express settled the discrimination claim and executed a mutual release in June 1995. Bryant retained his Career Distributor's Retirement Plan (CDRP) following *484 the suit and settlement. In March 1996 American Express notified Bryant it was reducing his CDRP account because Bryant had competed with American Express following his termination in violation of the CDRP agreement. In June 1996 Bryant sued American Express, alleging conversion of his CDRP account, breach of the settlement agreement, and breach of fiduciary duty. On December 20, 1996, Bryant amended his petition to claim in addition that American Expressid. at 69 (Comment 3 from Clyde Dinkins, private citizen) (Aug.

13, 2012) (supporting the rule as “long overdue”). In support of its critical comment, PhRMA

submitted the declaration of economic consultant Thomas R. Varner (“Varner Decl.”), who was

retained by PhRMA. See generally Varner Decl., JA at 38–68. After the close of the comment

period on October 25, 2012, 78 Fed. Reg. at 68,706; JA at 8, PhRMA met with Commissioners

on the FTC on four different occasions to discuss the proposed rule. See JA at 71 (Summary of

Communications: Apr. 18, 2013 meeting between PhRMA and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez

and FTC staff); JA at 70 (Summary of Communications: Apr. 3, 2013 meeting between PhRMA

and FTC Commissioner Joshua D. Wright and his advisers); JA at 75 (Summary of

Communications: Mar. 13, 2013 meeting between


HSR reportability of

exclusive patent licenses in the pharmaceutical industry.”).

                                                  13
         Third, according to the FTC, transfers of exclusive patent rights in the pharmaceutical

industry operate differently as compared to other industries. 78 Fed. Reg. at 68,708; JA at 10.

As explained in the Final Rule, a licensor typically grants exclusive patent rights to a licensee in

exchange for the requisite resources and funding to complete the FDA approval process, whereas

in other industries, the saleAn EU taskforce responsible for tackling disinformation has revealed a self-styled “news magazine for the European parliament” is copying half of its articles directly from the Kremlin-funded news channel RT.

EP Today, whose readers include senior MEPs, the European commissioner for digital economy and society, Mariya Gabriel, and European ambassadors to the EU, is said to be dominated by articles from the Russian outlet.

The taskforce concluded in its report that the site, which has 145,000 Facebook fans and publishes about 25 articles a day, is a “lobbying platform, presented as a serious news outlet, whose target audience are EU decision-makers”.

It also found the online magazine, whose followers on Twitter include the European Conservatives and Reformists political group, of which Conservative MEPs are members, used the name of the European


                  OF WEST VIRGINIA

Claimant Below, Petitioner

vs.)   No. 14-0691	 (BOR Appeal No. 2049203)
                   (Claim No. 2012022141)

WEST VIRGINIA DIVISION OF JUVENILE SERVICES –

GENE SPADARO CENTER,

Employer Below, Respondent

                             MEMORANDUM DECISION
       Petitioner Debra Boley, by John Shumate Jr., her attorney, appeals the decision of the
West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Board of Review. The West Virginia Division of
Juvenile Services – Gene Spadaro Center,Boley can be placed at maximum medical improvement.

        The Office of Judges dismissed the October 24, 2013, claims administrator’s decision,
which was appealed by Ms. Boley, as moot in light of the claims administrator’s November 4,
2013, decision. In its Order affirming the November, 2013, claims administrator’s decision, the
Office of Judges held that Ms. Boley is no longer eligible to receive temporary total disability
benefits because she has reached maximum medical improvement. The Board of Review
affirmed the reasoning and conclusions of the Office of Judges in its decision dated June 24,
2014. On appeal, Ms. Boley asserts that the evidence of record demonstrates that she is entitled
to additional temporary total disability benefits.

        West Virginia Code § 23-4-7a (2005)


states that temporary total disability benefits are
not payable after a claimant has reached maximum medical improvement, is released to return to
work, or actually returns to work, whichever occurs first. As was noted by the Office of Judges,
Dr. Mukkamala determined that Ms. Boley had reached maximum medical improvement on
August 26, 2013, and therefore she is ineligible to receive additional temporary total disability
benefits pursuant to the provisions of West Virginia Code § 23-4-7a. Moreover, this Court notes
that Dr. Petersen was unwilling to agree with Dr. Mukkamala’s conclusion that Ms. Boley has
reached maximum medical improvement based in part upon her opinion that a cervical spine
MRI is needed. However, in his independent medical evaluation report, Dr. Mukkamala noted
that a cervical spine MRI was performed in March of 2012 with normal results.

 The Controversy of Valladolid (TV movie)

The Controversy of Valladolid (1992) is a TV movie directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe , which is a fictionalized narrative of the real Controversy of Valladolid.

Synopsis

At the xvi th century , sixty years after the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus , and reign over the Spanish Charles V convenes a meeting under the papal legate , to discuss the fundamental question of the Indian natives, whose she colonized the territories in America , do they have a soul (are they men)? The answer must stem from the cessation or otherwise of the slavery of which they are the victims.

The controversy will confront the conservative point of view [ref. necessary] of canon Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and the humanist [ref. necessary] of the Dominican


Getty Images

With cornerback Fabian Moreau and safety Montae Nicholson unable to play this week because of injuries, Washington moved the defensive backs to injured reserve.

They filled the roster spots by signing free agent safety Kenny Ladler and promoting receiver Jester Weah from the practice squad.

Ladler was with the team during the 2018 offseason and played five games for the team last season. He has appeared in 10 career games with Washington, the Giants and the Bills.

Ladler has 13 career tackles.

He originally entered the NFL out of Vanderbilt in 2014, signing with the Bills as an undrafted free agent.

Weah is the nephew of former soccer star and Liberian president George Weah. He has never appeared in an NFL game.

Weah, a two-year starter for the University of Pittsburgh, signed withmorphologies in the human host and express different antigens as a function of their localization in the organism of the infected host. The morphological and antigenic differences of these parasites during their life cycle in man enable at least four distinct stages d development to be defined.
The very first stage of development of the parasite in man corresponds to the sporozoite form introduced into the blood of the host by bites of insect vectors of the parasite. The second stage corresponds to the passage of the parasite into the liver and to the infection of the hepatic cells in which the parasites develop to form the hepatic schizonts which, when they are mature (for example in the case of P. falciparum on the 6th day after penetration of


going about things in the right manner.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Claire Rafferty was on target at Arsenal and looks to be an excellent signing for WSL newcomers West Ham. Photograph: Avril Husband/West Ham United via Getty Images

4) Berger’s brilliance for Blues

Last November Ann-Katrin Berger, the Birmingham City goalkeeper, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She went through treatment and was back on the pitch two months later, her standards as high as ever. At the end of the season she was named the joint WSL players’ player of the year, along with Manchester City’s Jill Scott. She is an absolute inspiration and her heroics in goal have helped her team to a perfect start to the season: three games, three goals, three clean sheets, and nine points. Blues lost their
437 Pa. 219 (1970)
Commonwealth
v.
Hosendorf, Appellant.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Submitted November 24, 1969.
March 20, 1970.
Before BELL, C.J., JONES, COHEN, EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS and POMEROY, JJ.
*220 John F.X. Fenerty, for appellant.
Martin H. Belsky and James D. Crawford, Assistant District Attorneys, Richard A. Sprague, First Assistant District Attorney, and Arlen Specter, District Attorney, for Commonwealth, appellee.
OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE O'BRIEN, March 20, 1970:
Appellant, John Hosendorf, was convicted of burglary in 1958. In 1968, he brought post-conviction proceedings, maintaining that his sentence was actually five to ten years rather than the five to twenty years asserted by the Commonwealth authorities. The hearing court denied relief and the Superior Court affirmed per curiam, 214 Pa. Superior Ct. 525, 257 A. 2d 281 (1969), Judge HOFFMAN filing a dissenting opinion, joined by Judge SPAULDING. We


These Night Life WebSites are based upon developing a program approach to community relations.

An Inter - City Cultural Communications WebSite program between the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los
Angeles, Miami, Miami Beach, New York City, Toronto, Washington DC, and Ithaca, New York. To, in fact, promote The City of
Ithaca, New York as " The Cultural Magnet Destination City of The Tri State Region.overthrow of the elected Ukrainian
president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored regime change,
it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed.
Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened.

The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian forces
or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought down
the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian government
also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.

They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according to
OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June,
including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after
the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal
the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast,


The latest global market-share estimates for smartphones are out. And come to expect from these regular exercises in mobile OS number-crunching, the news is bright for Apple and Google, but a bit bleak for Nokia, Research in Motion (RIM), and Microsoft. Research firm Canalys released its final smart phone market estimates for the second quarter of 2011, which show that Google's Android mobile operating system now has nearly half of the worldwide smartphone market 48 percent, to be exact. Of the 56 countries Canalys tracks, Android leads in 35 of them.Nearly 52 million Android-based smartphones shipped in Q2, a staggering 379-percent increase over a year ago. Android has been the top platform by shipments since the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Canalys.Apple's iOS platform had a stellarits Windows Phone handsets to launch soon to regain market share.While Nokia plans to launch a Windows Phone before the end of the year, it will be some time before the Finnish company offers a range of Windows handsets to (hopefully) boost sales volumes. Microsoft waits for Nokia's first Windows phones, and it also sees its global market share slipping too. Canalys reports that fewer than 1.5 million Microsoft-based smart phones shipped during the second quarter, giving Redmond just 1 percent of the global market down 52 percent from a year ago.RIM, meanwhile, fared poorly in North America, where its market share fell to 12 percent, down from 33 percent from a year ago. However, the BlackBerry-maker's global shipments grew 11 percent, and it remained the top vendor


(CNN) -- Schools of robotic fish could one day map the ocean floor, detect pollution or inspect and survey submerged boats or oil and gas pipelines, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say.

MIT researcher Pablo Valdivia Alvarado works in his lab on a robotic fish he co-created.

MIT engineers are showing off the latest generation of so-called robofish 15 years after they built the first one. The latest incarnation is sleeker, more streamlined and capable of mimicking the movements of a real fish.

And it's capable of exploring underwater terrain submersibles can't, said Pablo Valdivia Alvarado, a mechanical engineer at the school.

"Some of our sponsors were thinking of using them for inspection and surveillance," Alvarado said. "Since these prototypes are very cheap, the idea was to build hundreds --200, 500 -- and then just release them in a bay or at a port, and they would be roaming around taking measurements."

MIT researchers built their first robotic fish, "Robotuna," in 1994. But Robotuna has gone the way of the dinosaur. Alvarado said the new generation -- modeled after bass and trout -- cost only a few hundred dollars and have only 10 parts instead of the thousands used in Robotuna.

At five to 18 inches, the new fish is much smaller than Robotuna and built from a single, soft polymer. And unlike Robotuna, the fish is able to be released in the oceans.

"Most of the brains, the electronics, are embedded inside," said Alvarado, who designed the robofish with fellow MIT engineer Kamal Youcef-Toumi. "We have built prototypes with


presented. We can then ask by what means these systems are acquired, given the data of experience. Similarly, the study of human behavior can hardly be undertaken in a serious way unless we are in a position to ask how what a person does is related to what he knows, believes, and expects. Only when we have formulated some tentative hypotheses as to what is learned can we undertake a serious study of human learning; only when we have formulated some tentative hypotheses as to what has been learned – what is known and believed – can we turn in a serious way to the investigation of behavior. In the case of language, we can present some tentative but rather detailed and complex formulations of what is known,unacceptable to the empiricist temper. But the astonishing success of mathematical physics carried the day against these common-sense objections, and the prestige of the new physics was so high that the speculative psychology of the Enlightenment took for granted the necessity of working within the Newtonian framework, rather than on the Newtonian analogy – a very different matter. The occult force of gravity was accepted as an obvious element of the physical world, requiring no explanation, and it became inconceivable that one might have to postulate entirely new principles of functioning and organization outside the framework of what soon became the new "common sense." Partly for this reason, the search for an analogous scientific psychology that would explore the principles of mind, whatever they might be, was not


a noun phrase.

---|---

b. |

wh-inversion: place the marked noun phrase at the beginning of the sentence.

---|---

c. |

auxiliary attraction: move a part of the verbal auxiliary or the copula to the second position in the sentence.

---|---

d. |

phonological interpretation: replace the marked noun phrase by an appropriate interrogative form.22

---|---

All four of these processes apply nonvacuously in the case of 41b and 41c. Sentence 41b, for example, is formed by applying wh-placement to the noun phrase "someone" in "John expected someone to meet Tom." Application of the process of wh-inversion (42b) gives "wh-someone John expected to meet Tom." The process of auxiliary attraction (42c) gives "wh-someone did John expect to meet Tom." Finally, the process of phonological interpretation (42d) gives 41b. Sentence 41d illustrates the fact that these processes can extract athe term "musical," which would be used metaphorically to refer to a sensual element. To explain this asymmetry, he observes that every mode of artistic expression makes use of a certain medium and that the medium of poetry – language – is unique in that language, as an expression of the human mind rather than a product of nature, is boundless in scope and is constructed on the basis of a recursive principle that permits each creation to serve as the basis for a new creative act. Hence the central position among the arts of the art forms whose medium is language.

The belief that language, with its inherent creative aspect, is a unique human possession did not go unchallenged, of course. One expositor of Cartesian philosophy, Antoine Le


operations that relate them. Among these formal structures are those of syntax, namely, deep and surface structures; and also the phonetic and semantic representations, which we take to be certain formal objects related to syntactic structures by certain well-defined operations. This process of abstraction is in no way illegitimate, but one must understand that it expresses a point of view, a hypothesis about the nature of mind, that is not a priori obvious. It expresses the working hypothesis that we can proceed with the study of "knowledge of language" – what is often called "linguistic competence" – in abstraction from the problems of how language is used. The working hypothesis is justified by the success that is achieved when it is adopted. A great deal has been learnedapplying now to objects rather than qualia. Thus two objects match "if and only if they are not noticeably different on direct comparison."7 Gruebleen has the curious property that if an object A is examined before t and an object B is examined after t, and both are found to be grue (or both bleen), then we know that they will not match. But there is no t such that given two objects, one examined before t and one after t, and both found to be green (or blue), we can predict that they will not match. They may not match, but then they also may match, if both are green (or blue). In fact, it is undoubtedly a general property of natural languages that they are "English-like"


that languages contain rules of abbreviations. Hence, he concludes, the only innate conditions that must be postulated are those that apply to all reasonable "computing systems," and no Behaviorist should feel any surprise at this.

Each of the three conclusions, however, is vitiated by a false assumption. First, it is obvious that there are many different phrase-structure grammars consistent with the assumption that one of the categories is that of proper names. In fact, there is much dispute at the moment about the general properties of the underlying base system for natural languages; the dispute is not in the least resolved by the existence of proper names as a primitive category in many languages.8

As to the second point, it is simply untrue that all measures of complexity and speedPosts tagged "Business Disputes"

On behalf of The Kruckemeyer Law Firm posted in business disputes on Friday, January 18, 2019.

When the term "intellectual property" gets thrown out, most in Houston might automatically assume it to refer to high-tech information valued only by providers in technology related sectors. In reality, however, the phrase is much more far-reaching. The World Intellectual Property Organization defines IP as "creations of the mind." Beyond inventions, this can include trademarks, patents and copyrighted materials. Designs and logos also fall into this category. Even something as simple as a geographical indicator that ties a reputation to a certain area (e.g., "Made in the U.S.A") can also be considered IP.

The use of the Internet or this form for communication with the firm or any individual member of


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More news from court

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC had told the jury that Ali planned a "deadly terror attack at the very heart of this country's democracy by killing a police officer, a member of the military or even a Parliamentarian".

He said: "Chillingly, but for the interception of the defendant by police, he would have carried out yet another murderous terror attack in Westminster."

The court had heard how Ali's family in Edmonton, north London, reported him missing in June 2011 after he disappeared without warning.

The moment Khalid Ali was detained in Whitehall, London on April 27 last year (Image: Metropolitan Police/PA Wire)

He resurfaced at the British Consulate in Turkey more than five years later, claiming he had lost his passport.

In November 2016, the loyal Taliban and al Qaidafollower was stopped at Heathrow Airport , interviewed by police and his fingerprints and DNA samples were taken.

He told officers he had been involved in a Road to Hope convoy to Palestine in 2010 and claimed to have gone to Pakistan, after he was put under pressure to marry a "gold-digger".

He also claimed MI5 had tried to recruit him as a "James Bond"-type spy before he left the UK.

Khalid Ali detained in Whitehall (Image: PA)

In late 2016, Ali's DNA and fingerprints were shared with the FBI agents and 42 prints linked him to the IEDs in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, he had resolved to carry out an attack on Westminster to "send a message" to British authorities, jurors were told.

On March 18 last year, he carried out reconnaissance under the cover


of a Stand Up To Racism march, which took him past Downing Street and the Cenotaph.

On April 22 last year, he was caught on CCTV walking past the MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, as well as Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall.

Just after midnight on April 27, his mother called police, saying she had found four knives in her son's bedroom and she was scared he was going to kill the family.

The jury, who deliberated over three days, heard Ali had bought the blades two days before at The Mighty Pound in Ealing and had been seen by surveillance officers to throw away the packaging.

After leaving his mother's home, Ali went to Ealing where he set about rearming himself with an 8in chef's knife and two3.4in paring blades from Wilko, purchasing other kitchen utensils including a potato masher as cover.

He also bought a rucksack with a Union Jack and London logo on it, before travelling by Tube to carry out his attack, which came just four weeks after the Westminster Bridge killings.

He deliberately dropped his mobile phone into the Thames, but it was later recovered by police divers.

When armed police moved in to arrest Ali, the knives were seized from his jacket pockets and the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms.

In police interview, Ali said he wanted to deliver a "message" to British authorities, but claimed the knives were for protection.

When asked if he had returned for jihad, he replied: "Jihad is what we do. We are Mujahideen."

He admitted involvement in IEDs in Afghanistan,


even bragging he detonated more than 300 devices, although he later backtracked.

Giving evidence, Ali went on to claim he had been held captive by the Taliban and forced to make bombs.

On why he was armed on the day of his arrest, he said: "I had the knives ready to kill, but only in self-defence."

Two of the knives that were retrieved from Khalid Ali when he was detained in Whitehall (Image: PA)

Following his conviction, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon said: "This case demonstrates how close the UK counter-terrorism network works with partners and allies to bring to justice those seeking to harm others across the world.

"He is an incredibly dangerous individual who had returned from a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan with a determination to kill, we believe, police,the military or Parliamentarians in the UK."

He said there was a "time lag" between the FBI linking Ali to the Taliban bombs and his arrest because "due legal process" needed to be followed to collect the evidence from abroad.

He defended the decision not to move in before Ali was armed and within metres of the Houses of Parliament, saying police and security services were "managing any potential risk he posed and he was arrested at the most appropriate time".

Ali gave no reaction in the dock as he was convicted.

Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC remanded him in custody to be sentenced on July 20.


Increased service to Chile

In April 2014, WWL added a new monthly port call to San Antonio, Chile.

As part of an effort to further meet the needs of customers, the new call will offer a regular service from Europe and North America to South America’s West Coast.

Ports of call will include: Bremerhaven, Zeebrugge, Southampton and Santander in Europe; Baltimore, Galveston and Veracruz in North America; Cartagena, Manzanillo, Guayaquil, Callao, Angamos and San Antonio in South America.Get Even More GQ This Month

My Father and Me: A Spy Story

It was just a favor to dear old dad. But the next thing Nathan Nicholson knew, he was jet-setting around the world under cover and selling state secrets to the Russians. You know what they say: Like father, like spy

On a Saturday morning in the summer of 2006, as the sun climbed over the farmlands of northwest Oregon, Nathan Nicholson drove from his apartment in Eugene to a federal prison two hours away in Sheridan to visit his father, Harold "James" Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer to be convicted of spying.

The visit was a fortnightly ritual for Nathan, one that had punctuated the last decade of his life, from adolescence to the threshold of manhood. Sitting behind


the wheel of his blue Chevy Cavalier, he glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. His face was boyish, handsome, with blue eyes and blond hair mowed down to a crew cut. As he sped along Pacific Highway West, which cuts a near-straight path through lush green flat country, he had occasion to reflect upon a lost dream.

In the mirror, Nathan would have liked to see the man he'd always aspired to become: a confident Army Ranger—the spitting image of his father, Jim Nicholson, decades before. Instead, Nathan saw a 22-year-old Army washout, a young man who had failed Ranger training and had left the military without ever having stepped onto a battlefield. While his friends were fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sending back pictures of themselvesin tanks and Humvees, Nathan was studying drafting at a community college and working at a Pizza Hut. There was an ignominy in this contrast, this chasm between what Nathan could have been and what he had become. The only escape from it was the fantasy world of video games in which Nathan immersed himself, sometimes in the company of cousins who lived nearby, sometimes alone. In this world, Nathan could be a hero, vanquishing digital enemies with deft toggles of a joystick and rapid clicks of a mouse.

In a jail cell at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Jim Nicholson groomed himself in front of a mirror, as he did every other Saturday in anticipation of his son's visit. As a star agent for the CIA, he


had once donned suits and worn a Rolex. Now his wardrobe consisted of prison fatigues that draped his six-foot-tall frame with indignity. Such was the price of betraying one's country: ten years of life taken away, thirteen more to go. The time in prison had aged him. At 55, his beard was flecked with gray, which he took care to mask—especially before meeting his son—with the help of an old toothbrush and shoe polish. In the grand scheme of things, it would prove to be a minor deception whose only aim was to preserve, in Nathan's eyes, his image as a debonair father, international man of mystery.

Jim Nicholson was one of 2,000 convicts at Sheridan, a minimum-to-medium security prison that could pass for a sternly fortified boarding school.Outside the low-slung buildings, inmates grow rows of lettuce and tend rosebushes. Inside, the visiting room looks like a Greyhound bus terminal, with rows of blue plastic chairs and flat fluorescent lights. Vending machines hum on one side, behind a line that prisoners aren't allowed to cross. On his visits, Nathan would walk over that line to get things for his dad: a Twix bar, a hamburger. There were other favors, too: buying Christmas presents for his dad's old friends, sending Nicholson a P. G. Wodehouse novel. But none of these would compare to the task his father had in mind today.

Father and son sat shoulder to shoulder, and the conversation inevitably turned to a familiar topic: the family's financial troubles. Nathan still owed eight grand on his


Cavalier. His sister, Star, shouldered $50,000 in student loans, and Jeremiah—the oldest of Nicholson's three kids—was $25,000 in debt. As they spoke, Nicholson leaned into his son. He said he'd thought of a way to help the family from prison. It involved contacting his "old friends"—the Russians—who owed him some money. His plan would require Nathan to do something that was dangerous but not illegal. Would he be willing?

Nathan looked into his father's eyes. Though his words sounded like a casual suggestion, they were as forceful as any command.

···

From the very beginning of his twenty-six-year tenure at the CIA, Jim Nicholson had been a star operative. Long and fit, with a handsome bearded face, he fancied himself an American James Bond, dressing in expensive tailored suits and gaininga reputation as a risk taker. At his first posting, in Manila, he showed a relentless drive and appetite for adventure, earning the nickname Batman for his successful work alongside a young officer nicknamed Robin. "They were the hot-ticket young case officers," Norbert Garrett, the former station chief in Manila, told GQ in a 1998 feature story. "Good-looking and able and aggressive and energetic. You could never give them too much to do."

After Manila, Nicholson was stationed in Bangkok, where in the early 80s he was frequently dispatched across the border into Cambodia to spy on the Vietnamese. He rose rapidly through the ranks of the agency, bolstered by a remarkable ability to recruit foreign agents, and in 1990, at the young age of 39, he was made


station chief in Bucharest, Romania. But the relentless drive that had propelled Nicholson upward was laying waste to his personal life. His wife, Laurie, alleged that he'd had affairs in nearly every posting. The marriage, weakened by years of strife, crumbled in 1992. Nicholson later won custody of the kids and took them to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia—his next assignment—where he served as deputy station chief. It was there, in the summer of 1994, that Nicholson "crossed over" and started a clandestine relationship with the Russian spy service, the SVR.

His decision to betray his country, by Nicholson's own account, was triggered by some combination of greed, ego, desperation, and anger at his agency bosses. The CIA had recently turned down his request for a year's extension in Kuala Lumpur,where he would have had free housing, a swimming pool, and a maid. The mortgage he'd have to shell out on his return to the United States, combined with alimony payments, meant that the cushy expat life he'd been living was over. "He felt that not being given the extension was a major slight," said Tom Connolly, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case along with his colleague, Rob Chesnut.

Nicholson systematically started supplying the Russians with information shortly after arriving at his new post: instructor at the CIA's training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia, known in U.S. intelligence circles as "the Farm." The leaks included the bios of more than 300 CIA trainees, many of whom were preparing to work on covert missions overseas under diplomatic cover.


It was a betrayal for which the United States would pay a price for decades to come. "There are CIA officers who cannot be posted overseas in hostile environments even today because Nicholson gave up these people's identities," Michael Rochford, a former chief of the FBI's counterespionage section, told me.

In October 1995, Nicholson failed a routine polygraph test, raising the first red flags about his conduct. In 1996, the FBI began reviewing his financial records. Oblivious to the ongoing investigation, Nicholson adorned his office at Langley with every plaque and award he had won. He put up a poster-sized picture of himself on the wall. "He thought he was gorgeous," Kathleen Hunt, a former CIA agent who worked for Nicholson, told me. "He'd go to a tanning salon.He always dressed nicely. He never had a hair out of place." Nicholson made no secret of the fact that he was unhappy about being at headquarters. "He viewed himself as a field guy," Hunt said. "He would frequently mention that it was very expensive to live in the United States compared to living abroad."

In the fall of 1996, as Nicholson was boarding a plane for a trip to South Africa and Rome on a counterterrorism assignment, FBI agents surrounded him on the tarmac. In the months prior, investigators had gathered stacks of evidence against him, including proof that he had been photographing classified materials under the cover of his desk. At Dulles airport in Washington, Nicholson was carrying in his hand luggage ten rolls of film and


a diskette containing U.S. government secrets that he planned to deliver to the SVR. After over two years working with the Russians, meeting with agents in New Delhi, Jakarta, Zurich, and Singapore, Nicholson had sold classified information for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In court, Nicholson was hardly contrite. At his sentencing in June 1997, he told the judge that he had done it for his children, to compensate "for the long hours at work and for failing to keep my marriage together." But while it was true that he had spent some of the money on the kids, including $12,000 that he'd given to Jeremiah to buy a new car, he'd also spent lavishly on beach vacations with his Thai girlfriend and put a large chunk of cashinto a Swiss bank account.

Nathan Nicholson

During debriefing sessions with federal officials, Nicholson complained about the length of his sentence. He didn't think his leaks had put any lives in danger. Besides, in his experience, everyone in the field already knew who was a spy or a double agent. Rather than lock him up, he felt the CIA should have turned him against the Russians. They were wasting his talent.

In Sheridan, Nicholson quickly set about cultivating an aura of respectability. He became a prominent figure in the prison ministry, leading prayers and Bible studies. In the spring of 2000, he became friends with a new inmate named Phil Quackenbush, who had robbed banks in Las Vegas—never with a weapon—to fuel a cocaine addiction. "I saw the man cry over


his children," Quackenbush told me.

In church gatherings, Nicholson wore the serene, cerebral air of a man on a spiritual quest. He helped write morality plays for the prison's holiday production. Using a typewriter borrowed from the prison secretary, Nicholson spent months authoring what he told Quackenbush were his memoirs. He penned a book about etiquette that he hoped to publish, each page containing a little blurb on the appropriate etiquette for a particular setting. "I asked him, 'Jim, what are you, a fucking doctor of etiquette?' " Quackenbush told me. "And he told me about parties he'd been to, parties for presidents and kings—how he had to infiltrate them. He had to become an expert in etiquette because of his job. He prided himself on his education, hisexperience as a CIA agent, his pay grade."

In conversations with Quackenbush, he spoke bitterly about the government. He was angry at how the CIA had changed in his last years at the agency. "When we got a new warden, he explained how the guy was just a puppet of the bureaucracy," Quackenbush said.

Sitting in prison, Nicholson's bitterness grew. He would show the government that he wasn't just another federal inmate rotting away in a jail cell. All he needed was an accomplice, someone he could control. He needed his younger son, Nathaniel.

···

Nathan was 12 when his father was hauled away to prison. To Nathan, his father's crime would forever remain a television news story hovering on the edge of emotional reality, a speck of dust easily washed away


by innocent tears. He would always remember Nicholson as Pa, the man who'd cheered for him at Little League baseball games, helped Nathan's brother, Jeremiah, with Boy Scout activities, and took Nathan's sister, Star, horseback riding.

After Nicholson's arrest, the three kids spent some time in the care of their nomadic mother, Laurie, at one point having to live out of a car for two weeks. Eventually they moved in with Nicholson's parents, Marvin and Betty, at their home in Eugene. The kids would come to see Nicholson in prison every other Saturday; Marvin and Betty visited on the alternate Saturdays.

A shy teenager given to blushing easily, Nathan made few friends. His favorite pastime was playing Nintendo games. After finishing high school in 2002, Nathan enrolled at Oregon StateUniversity but dropped out after a semester, hoping to become a Ranger like his father.

In 2003, after basic training, Nathan was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but didn't make it through the Ranger initiation. Instead he became a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. There, while making a routine jump, his dream of a military career collapsed. He fractured two bones above his tailbone and injured his shinbones.

"After the injury, my world came to a halt," he later wrote. "I found myself in a severe state of depression.... I felt that I had lost my value to my company." Depressed, he went home to visit his mother in Corvallis, only to get into a heated argument with her husband, Bill. The fight got so ugly that as Nathan


was leaving, his mother told him that it might be best if he did not come back. "I took her word to mean that she didn't want me to come back from my deployment alive," he wrote. "This turned my depressed state into a suicidal state."

Returning to the military base that night, Nathan was moments away from slitting his wrists when his father called from prison. He hadn't heard from his dad in months. God asked me to call you, the father said. I am very proud of you, and I love you very much. When the call ended, Nathan sought counseling. "I dropped the knife and immediately called the sergeant for help," he wrote.

Nathan owed his father his life. So on that summer day in 2006, whenhis dad laid out his plan in Sheridan's visiting room, Nathan nodded in assent, with the guards looking on.

Since all Nicholson's correspondence was monitored by the CIA, Nathan would be his courier. Nicholson had already devised a plan for sneaking messages out of Sheridan: Nathan would buy snacks from the vending machines and put them along with brown paper napkins on a seat next to Nicholson. His father would pile up the wrappings on the seat, carefully dropping a few balled-up pieces of paper among them. Nathan would then take the pile to the men's room, retrieve the note, tuck it into his shoe, and toss the rest.

Over the next few visits, the two rehearsed, Nathan sneaking past the guards with note after note. For proof of identity,


the father-son team got their picture taken together in the visiting room's designated photo area, standing in front of a picture of Oregon's Mount Hood. Nicholson also gave Nathan a letter of introduction. In twelve short weeks, Nicholson had trained his son in the art of spycraft.

···

On October 13, 2006, Nathan drove ten hours south through the night to San Francisco, stopping at a rest area to shave and put on a suit. In the morning, he arrived at the Russian consulate, a six-storied brick building with a Russian flag fluttering above. Twelve years earlier in Kuala Lumpur, his father had walked into a building bearing the same flag to volunteer his services to the SVR. Nathan's visit, however, was brief. The head of security, Mikhail Gorbunov, ledhim to a soundproof room, took his notes, and gave him forms to fill out, telling him to come back in two weeks. Nathan left dejected, but Nicholson encouraged him to return to the embassy as instructed.

When he did, the about-face was stunning. The big Russian greeted Nathan as one of his own, hugging him and apologizing for his standoffish behavior. He asked how Nathan's father and siblings were doing; then—just for security purposes—he requested that Nathan draw a sketch of Sheridan's visiting room. Nathan obliged. Smiling, Gorbunov handed him an envelope with $5,000 in $100 bills. And that was it. Gorbunov told Nathan that it was not safe to meet in the United States. For the next meeting, in December, he should visit the Russian consulate in


Mexico City.

On the drive back to Eugene the following day, Nathan felt as if he had a purpose for the first time in years. He got a phone call from his old man. Like all Nicholson's phone calls, it was recorded.

"Well, is everything working okay over there?... Are the tires holding up and everything?"

"Oh, yeah, oh yeah, everything's working all right," Nathan said, sounding like a man in total control.

···

What did the Russians want with a man like Jim Nicholson after a decade of imprisonment? While the CIA won't comment on the case, I spoke with the FBI's Robert Anderson, Jr. who supervised the Portland investigation from Washington. In part, he told me, the Russians were hoping to identify any missteps in their handling of Nicholson. He describedwanted to show that the U.S. government couldn't control him in jail, that he was still valued by the SVR, that he could still hurt the U.S. in a vengeful way and get some capital out of it," Rochford told me. He looked into the distance, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head. "To use your son in that way is just unbelievable."

···

In December 2006, Nathan flew to Mexico City. It was his first opportunity to experience the international life of intrigue his father had always told him about. But as he walked out of the airport terminal, he was consumed with the task on hand.

As instructed, he took a cab from his hotel to the consulate, a white building with tall arches and columns, where he met


his new handler, a graying Russian named Vasily Fedotov. Short and stocky, Fedotov had retired from the Soviet clandestine service in the '90s after a long career that included a short stint at the Soviet embassy in D.C. in 1986 as head of counterintelligence. But the SVR had activated him now to handle the Nicholsons.

Fedotov led Nathan to a room that appeared soundproof, where he sat down to study Nicholson's notes. Fedotov told Nathan to tell his father that he had received Nicholson's letters (What letters? Nathan thought), then asked the boy to convey a series of questions to his father. They were all related to Nicholson's capture. Who had interrogated him? When did he suspect he was under surveillance? Nathan jotted down the questions in a notebook.Fedotov watched him scribble, then made a suggestion. Better to use code, he said.

Nathan ignored the advice, writing "cause and effect" above the questions as a reminder that they were about the circumstances leading to his dad's arrest.

Fedotov asked Nathan about his cover for traveling to Mexico. When Nathan explained that he planned to say that he was interested in Mexico City's architecture, Fedotov suggested he pick up some brochures from the city's architecture school. Nathan nodded but had no intention of following through.

Fedotov handed Nathan a brown paper bag with $10,000, then looked at a calendar. He told Nathan to return to Mexico City for another meeting during his next break from college, in the summer of 2007. The transaction had been a breeze. Nathan had more


money in his pocket than he knew what to do with. He could have blown some of it on a late night out in Mexico City. Maybe woo a girl like his father had. Instead, he spent his remaining days holed up in his hotel room, playing games on his PlayStation and listening to his iPod, venturing out once to buy a sombrero and other knickknacks for his cousin.

Nathan didn't truly enjoy his success until returning to Sheridan, where he basked in his father's praise. Nicholson told his son that he had outperformed even his trainees at the Farm. Nathan relayed Fedotov's questions, having copied them from the notebook onto his arm and hand. Over the next few weeks, Nicholson wrote down his answers on paper notes, detailingthe circumstances of his 1996 arrest. He may have been followed from Malaysia to Singapore.... A contact he'd met with in Singapore may have been "tainted."... This person was "someone off the screen" and not a Russian intelligence officer....

Though he knew he shouldn't, Nathan read the messages. His father had provided specifics: the name of the polygraph examiner on his case, the existence of secret tunnels running between two countries. Suddenly this all felt very real. Just as Nathan was starting to worry, his father reached out. In letters from prison, he exhorted Nathan with praise, quoting lines from scripture: "Before you were born I set you apart and anointed you as my spokesman to the world." Unbeknownst to Nathan, he had become an animated character in a


game whose controls lay in his father's hands.

···

The FBI won't disclose how it got tipped off to Nicholson and his son, but agents began investigating shortly after Nathan's second trip to Mexico. The investigation was led by FBI Portland's Jared Garth, a fast-talking native New Yorker who worked alongside special agents Scott Jensen and John Cooney. With court permission, the officials put Nathan under surveillance.

On December 5, 2007, the FBI installed an electronic tracker on Nathan's car. Three days later, when the agents got in to work, they discovered that the vehicle was parked at the Portland airport. Jensen described it as an "oh shit moment": Losing Nathan's trail—especially if he didn't plan on coming back to the U.S.—would be a blow to the investigation. Searching through phonerecords, agents found a call Nathan had made to his girlfriend at three in the morning, telling her good-bye from the airport. Jensen drove out to the airport with another agent, and the two went from one ticket counter to the next to find out Nathan's airline, eventually learning that he had taken a Continental flight bound for Lima, Peru, connecting through Houston.

While the FBI was playing catch-up, Nathan was in Lima, trading state secrets for $10,000. His father had sent him, along with the details of an escape plan he wanted Nathan to convey verbally. It involved landing a helicopter on FCI Sheridan's helipad, airlifting Nicholson out of the prison complex, and dropping him off the coast of Oregon, where a waiting submarine was to take him


away. To ensure that he was correctly identified during this getaway, Nicholson had tattooed his blood type, "O+", on his arm. Fedotov laughed at the delusional proposal. If the Russians acted upon it, he remarked, it "could start a war."

Moreover, Fedotov was not happy that Nathan had failed to follow the instructions he'd given him in Mexico City. Nathan was supposed to have confirmed his plans for Lima by leaving a message in a Mexican account that Fedotov had set up. He never did. Fedotov told him not to make the same mistake before traveling for his next meeting, in Nicosia, Cyprus. He also gave Nathan instructions on a secret signal and pass phrase to use there.

When Nathan returned to the States, landing in Houston before his flightaccount, Jonemurr2@yahoo.com.mx, that Nathan was to use to confirm the meeting in Cyprus.

It was all there: espionage in plain sight. But Garth and Cooney weren't sure the cryptic notes would hold up in court. The customs agents let Nathan go, and the agents brought their evidence to two assistant U.S. attorneys in Portland, Pamala Holsinger and Ethan Knight, who decided to proceed with a criminal case. "The question was, is this meeting in Cyprus going to happen? Should we wait until that time?" Garth said. They decided to wait and see.

···

Nathan was now under constant surveillance. The FBI bugged his apartment, recorded his phone calls, and photographed him. Peering into his world, the feds saw a man with one foot firmly planted in adolescence. He lived with his


girlfriend and regularly worked out on a Bowflex machine to counter his all-pizza diet. When he wasn't playing video games, he spent hours watching Kung Pow movies—martial-arts spoofs. A rare break in routine came when he attended an anime convention in Portland; he drew a tattoo and wore red contacts to look like a cartoon character.

Agents noted that Nathan was accommodating to a fault, forever anxious to please others. In calls recorded by the FBI, he offered his brother pointers on ercising. He comforted his sister after a breakup, assuring her that the right guy would come along. When Nathan's girlfriend's sister needed her roof fid, he spent hours on her rooftop laying shingles. On the weekends, Nathan attended sermons at the Door Christian Fellowship church, until hehad a falling out with the pastor, who Nathan felt had made an insulting remark about Nathan's father.

At a generation's distance from the Cold War, Nathan seemed oblivious to the significance of his actions. But he had been jolted by the search at Houston airport, and now the thought of going to prison flitted through his mind like a troubling shadow. Worried about being monitored, he stuck a tape across his attic door so that he would know if anybody entered his apartment. His father had warned him about surveillance and taught him to use reflections in storefront windows to see if anybody might be following him.

Meanwhile, agents continued to monitor the Mexican Yahoo account that Fedotov had instructed Nathan to use. In May, they saw a message


sent from the account, matching the instructions that Nathan had written down in his notebook. The subject line of the message was "Hola Nancy." In part, the message read: "It looks like I will still be able to go on that vacation!" The weekend after Thanksgiving, the FBI sent an agent into the Sheridan visiting room to eavesdrop on Nathan and his dad. The Cyprus meeting was on.

···

For once Nathan did exactly as Fedotov had instructed: On the evening of December 10, he walked from the Hilton Hotel in downtown Nicosia to a TGI Friday's, wearing a baseball cap. He waited there on the sidewalk, holding a backpack in his right hand, chewing gum, and glancing at his watch as cars drove past. At 7 p.m., Fedotov arrived,wearing a black coat and his trademark sunglasses. "Do you know the way to the post office?" he asked with a smile.

"It should be around here somewhere," Nathan answered dutifully.

The Russian led Nathan to a dark blue sedan parked nearby, and together they drove twenty minutes to an underground parking area.

In the darkness, Nathan gave Fedotov a six-page letter his dad had mailed him from prison. It contained Nicholson's health information and details about Jeremiah's posting at the Tyndall Air Force base, where he worked on electronic warfare. Nicholson, it seemed, was offering the SVR not only his own services but the possibility of recruiting Jeremiah, his more accomplished son.

Nathan did not bring any handwritten notes to Cyprus. At the end of the meeting, Fedotov spelled out when


and where they were to meet next: on the evening of December 16 a year later, outside a subway station in Bratislava, Slovakia. Fedotov gave Nathan $12,000 in $100 bills and wished him merry Christmas.

It was past midnight on December 15 when Nathan flew back to Portland. Snow was falling, whitening the streets under the streetlights. By the time Nathan got back to his apartment, dawn was only an hour or so away. The neighborhood was blanketed in a hushed silence. Tossing his backpack on the floor, he sank into a slumber.

Then came a loud knocking.

Half asleep, Nathan opened the door to agents Garth and Cooney. He calmly offered the agents a drink; they declined. When they reviewed his background information, telling him that they knew he hadno criminal record, he volunteered that he'd once been issued a $500 citation from the U.S. Park Service for chipping bark off a tree. He lied about his travels, saying that he had been meeting with "battle buddies" from his time in the military. Cooney, a square-shouldered agent with a piercing gaze and a calm air, finally told him that his account of his overseas trips did not match what the FBI had learned.

After a moment's silence, Nathan said he hadn't done anything illegal. But the confidence with which he'd been delivering his rehearsed answers was gone. In a gentle tone, Cooney offered Nathan what he described as a mulligan—a do-over tee shot in golf.

Nathan took it.

Over the next several hours, he narrated the details of his life


as a spy messenger. When Garth informed him that he may have violated a law that forbids acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, Nathan remarked that he'd never heard of such a violation. Garth said he knew it was not a well-known law. "It's a little bit like when you were cited for chipping bark off a tree," Garth told him.

At Sheridan, Nicholson was far more reticent in his interview with Jensen, who began the conversation by laying down a postcard on the table that said Greetings from Cyprus. "I told him that Nathan would never have taken on this assignment on his own, and that he should cowboy up and do the right thing on behalf of his son," Jensen said. "He essentially said,well, he was aware that his boy had done some traveling, but just to go see some battle buddies. He played Mickey the Dunce the whole time."

Searching Nathan's apartment, agents retrieved the notebook the FBI had copied at the Houston airport. But Nathan had torn out any incriminating pages, realizing, belatedly, that their contents might pose a risk. He had, however, written down the location of the next meeting in Bratislava, attempting to disguise its significance by writing the name of his sister-in-law, Anastasia, above the meeting location. Try as he might, Nathan was no spy.

The FBI's questioning left Nathan with a strange sense of relief, even though he didn't know how the future would unfold. After two years of keeping a secret from his family and friends,


he was finally free to share it. He called his sister, Star, to apologize. When he explained what he'd been up to, her first response was an incredulous "Dude?!" He told her he wouldn't be able to buy her a Christmas present: The FBI had taken his money. But he did not think he was going to prison, and thankfully the FBI hadn't taken away his Wii.

On January 29, 2009, an indictment was unsealed in the U.S. District Court of Oregon, charging father and son with acting as agents of a foreign power and laundering money. The FBI's Garth and others led Nathan out from his apartment in handcuffs and booked him into the local county jail. Ever since he had learned that his father had been putin solitary confinement at Sheridan, he had taken to sleeping on the floor to punish himself. Although his father had engineered the plot, he told investigators, he felt responsible for it.

On December 7, 2010, Nathan was sentenced to five years of probation. The judge ordered him to volunteer 100 hours of service to the Veterans Administration. On January18, 2011, Nicholson was marched into the courtroom in shackles. Sitting in the front row, Nathan leaned his head on a family member's shoulder and wept. Nicholson, in his way, finally took responsibility for corrupting his son. "Your honor, in my life I have been through several coups, I have been through a revolution, and I have been through a war," Nicholson said, reading from a statement. But the worst day


of his life, he said, "was the day I learned that my young son had been arrested and charged with acts for which I am responsible." He said he had turned to the Russian Federation to help his family but had realized in the past two years of solitude that "all my children ever really needed from me was my love."

Judge Brown was unmoved, noting that not once had Nicholson asked the forgiveness of the United States. She sentenced him to eight additional years in prison; he is now scheduled to be released in 2024, from a federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. The Bureau of Prisons declined my request to interview Nicholson, citing security concerns. Nathan, too, declined to speak.

Jeremiah was the only child willing to comment. "Myfather is a very charismatic and likable man," Jeremiah wrote to me in an e-mail. "Perhaps it was because our father had been imprisoned for the better part of my brother's life and he wanted to feel a connection to him, something that he may have felt he lost being separated from him for so long. I honestly don't know."

It's unclear if Nicholson failed entirely in his plot. Officials believe that Nicholson may have sent letters to the Russians before Nathan's involvement, and his cellmate, Quackenbush, told me about an inch-thick sheaf of "memoirs" that Nicholson had him mail to his parents, Marvin and Betty, after Quackenbush's release from county jail in 2002. That package may have been intended for the Russians.

On a windy February evening, I drove