Datasets:

autoevaluate

/

autoeval-eval-multi_news-default-e22c67-2252871794

like 0

Follow

Evaluation on the Hub 34

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones explains why the attack is like a "motorway jam", alongside expert David Emm from Kaspersky Lab The internet around the world has been slowed down in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyber-attack of its kind in history. A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks affecting the wider internet. Experts worry that the row could escalate to affect banking and email systems. Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks. Spamhaus, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a non-profit organisation that aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content. To do this, the group maintains a number of blocklists - a database of servers known to be being used for malicious purposes. Recently, Spamhaus blocked servers maintained by Cyberbunker, a Dutch web host that states it will host anything with the exception of child pornography or terrorism-related material. Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who claims to be a spokesman for Cyberbunker, said, in a message, that Spamhaus was abusing its position, and should not be allowed to decide "what goes and does not go on the internet". Spamhaus has alleged that Cyberbunker, in cooperation with "criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia, is behind the attack. Cyberbunker has not responded to the BBC's request for comment. 'Immense job' Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus, told the BBC the scale of the attack was unprecedented. "We've been under this cyber-attack for well over a week. 'Decapitating the internet' Image caption The DNS ensures that you are sent to the correct site when you enter a web address Writing exactly one year ago for the BBC, Prof Alan Woodward predicted the inherent weaknesses in the web's domain name system. He wrote: "It is essentially the phone book for the internet. If you could prevent access to the phone book then you would effectively render the web useless." Read Prof Woodward's full article "But we're up - they haven't been able to knock us down. Our engineers are doing an immense job in keeping it up - this sort of attack would take down pretty much anything else." Mr Linford told the BBC that the attack was being investigated by five different national cyber-police-forces around the world. He claimed he was unable to disclose more details because the forces were concerned that they too may suffer attacks on their own infrastructure. The attackers have used a tactic known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which floods the intended target with large amounts of traffic in an attempt to render it unreachable. In this case, Spamhaus's Domain Name System (DNS) servers were targeted - the infrastructure that joins domain names, such as bbc.co.uk, the website's numerical internet protocol address. Mr Linford said the attack's power would be strong enough to take down government internet infrastructure. "If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly," he said. "They would be completely off the internet." He added: "These attacks are peaking at 300 Gbps (gigabits per second). "Normally when there are attacks against major banks, we're talking about 50 Gbps" Clogged-up motorway The knock-on effect is hurting internet services globally, said Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey. "If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps," he told the BBC. "With this attack, there's so much traffic it's clogging up the motorway itself." Arbor Networks, a firm which specialises in protecting against DDoS attacks, also said it was the biggest such attack they had seen. "The largest DDoS attack that we have witnessed prior to this was in 2010, which was 100 Gbps. Obviously the jump from 100 to 300 is pretty massive," said Dan Holden, the company's director of security research. "There's certainly possibility for some collateral damage to other services along the way, depending on what that infrastructure looks like." Spamhaus said it was able to cope as it has highly distributed infrastructure in a number of countries. The group is supported by many of the world's largest internet companies who rely on it to filter unwanted material. Mr Linford told the BBC that several companies, such as Google, had made their resources available to help "absorb all of this traffic". The attacks typically happened in intermittent bursts of high activity. "They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down," Mr Linford said. "Spamhaus has more than 80 servers around the world. We've built the biggest DNS server around." ||||| When Spamhaus requested aid from CloudFlare, the attackers began to focus their digital ire on the companies that provide data connections for both Spamhaus and CloudFlare. Questioned about the attacks, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, an Internet activist who said he was a spokesman for the attackers, said in an online message that, “We are aware that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks the world had publicly seen.” Mr. Kamphuis said Cyberbunker was retaliating against Spamhaus for “abusing their influence.” “Nobody ever deputized Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet,” Mr. Kamphuis said. “They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam.” A typical denial-of-service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet. “The No. 1 rule of the Internet is that it has to work,” said Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who years ago pointed out the inherent vulnerabilities of the Domain Name System. “You can’t stop a DNS flood by shutting down those servers because those machines have to be open and public by default. The only way to deal with this problem is to find the people doing it and arrest them.” The heart of the problem, according to several Internet engineers, is that many large Internet service providers have not set up their networks to make sure that traffic leaving their networks is actually coming from their own users. The potential security flaw has long been known by Internet security specialists, but it has only recently been exploited in a way that threatens the Internet infrastructure. An engineer at one of the largest Internet communications firms said the attacks in recent days have been as many as five times larger than what was seen recently in attacks against major American banks. He said the attacks were not large enough to saturate the company’s largest routers, but they had overwhelmed important equipment.

– If the Internet seems a little slow to you lately, that's because it's in the midst of what is being called the biggest cyberattack of all time, reports the BBC. The fight is between a spam-fighting group, Spamhaus, and a web-hosting company, Cyberbunker, but it has grown to the point that it's affecting the entire Internet and its infrastructure. Millions of users are experiencing delays while trying to reach websites or while using services like Netflix, and experts fear that if the attacks continue to grow in power, people may not be able to access things like email or online banking. It all started when Spamhaus, which publishes a blacklist that email providers use to weed out spam, put Cyberbunker on its list of spammers. Cyberbunker retaliated, but its attack on Spamhaus ended up having a much larger impact. One architect at a digital content provider likened it to, as the New York Times puts it, using a machine gun in an effort to assassinate one person. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks "are essentially like nuclear bombs" that exploit the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), says an exec at a group that tried to defend against the attacks and ended up becoming a target. "It's so easy to cause so much damage." And, notes the architect, this is "the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet." Cyberbunker says Spamhaus is a vigilante group "abusing [its] influence," but the architect notes that Cyberbunker is "just mad" that it got caught spamming. One security researcher says the only way to stop the attack is to arrest the people responsible. Five cyber-police forces around the globe are investigating.

Halle to Gabriel You're Trying to Make Our Daughter White! Halle Berry to Gabriel Aubry -- You're Trying to Make Our Kid White! EXCLUSIVE just tookto court ... claiming he's trying to make their 6-year-old daughter white.Halle was furious Gabriel was straightening Nahla's naturally-curly hair, lightening it with highlights and she is convinced it's because he does not want the girl to appear to be African American.Halle didn't show in court Monday morning, but her lawyer Steve Kolodny did, along with Gabriel and after a lot of arguing the judge ruled NEITHER Halle nor Gabriel could change Nahla's look from its natural state.So the judge is allowing Nahla's hair to grow back naturally.Score one for Berry. ||||| A lot of mothers don't want just anyone touching their kids' hair. And when it comes to Halle Berry, that includes her kid's father. Attorneys for the Oscar winner and her ex, model Gabriel Aubry, were in court Monday morning to settle a disagreement over their 6-year-old daughter Nahla's hair, E! News confirms. Apparently Berry objected to Aubry to having the child's hair straightened and highlighted when she's in his care, charging that the French-Canadian model, who is white, was trying to make Nahla appear less African-American. (Berry herself is the daughter of a white mother and a black father.) ||||| Halle Berry has reportedly made a move aimed at decreasing her child-support payments to ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry, the father of her daughter Nahla, and motivating him to get a job. The "X-Men: Days of Future Past" actress is claiming that her ex has been living entirely off her $16,000-a-month child-support payments and has asked a judge to reduce her obligation to just over $3,000 a month, according to TMZ, which cited confidential court documents. The Oscar winner is alleging that the French model has stopped working, despite being capable of getting a job, and is abusing the system by living off the payments meant to support their 6-year-old daughter. The parents have joint custody. Aubry, 39, and Berry, 48, dated for two years before Nahla was born in 2008. They broke up in 2010 and have been embroiled in a custody dispute since then. In 2012, a judge blocked Berry from moving Nahla to France with her and Olivier Martinez, who would become her third husband in July 2013. (Berry and Martinez welcomed their first child together, son Maceo, in October 2013.) The former couple reached a settlement in May that outlined the nearly $200,000 a year the "Extant" star would pay in child support, in addition to paying for Nahla's tuition until she turns 19 or graduates from high school. She and Aubry must split her healthcare expenses. Photos The extreme things celebrities do to be good parents: the good, the bad and the ugly. By Nardine Saad, Los Angeles Times Berry's attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment. I'd consider sitting pretty for $16,000 a month. Follow me on Twitter @NardineSaad. ||||| Their 6-year-old's hair is the latest point of contention in Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry's contentious shared custody arrangement. The Oscar-winning actress took ex-boyfriend Aubry, the father of her daughter Nahla, back to court Monday because he allegedly had the child's hair straightened and colored, TMZ and E! News reported. Though Berry didn't appear in court, her attorney accused the French-Canadian model of straightening Nahla's curly mane and lightening it with highlights in an attempt to make her appear less African American, the reports said. The "X-Men: Days of Future Past" star, now married to French actor Olivier Martinez, had lawyer Steve Kolodny appear in court to argue her case, TMZ said, and a judge decided that neither parent could alter Nahla's hair color or texture and ruled that her hair be allowed grow back naturally. Berry, 48, and Aubry, 39, who dated for two years before splitting in 2010, have joint custody of Nahla and have been embroiled in bitter court and physical battles over her care since then. In November 2012, Aubry was arrested after getting into a fistfight with Berry's then-fiance, Martinez, and just last month, Berry reportedly moved to reduce her child-support payments to the unemployed model from $16,000 a month to less than $4,000 to motivate him to get a job. Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubrey in 2009 Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images Gabriel Aubry and Halle Berry arrive at the 2009 Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 22, 2009 in West Hollywood. They're no longer a couple but they have a child together, Nahla. Gabriel Aubry and Halle Berry arrive at the 2009 Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 22, 2009 in West Hollywood. They're no longer a couple but they have a child together, Nahla. (Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images) Back in 2011, at the height of their custudy dispute, the mixed-race actress told Ebony magazine (via E!) that she wanted her daughter to choose how she's identified but considered Nahla to be black. Aubry is white. "I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her. That's how I identified myself," Berry said at the time. "But I feel like she's black. I'm black and I'm her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory." The actress was referring to the controversial legal and sociological notion of the "one-drop rule," pre-dating the civil rights movement, by which any person with even "one drop" of blood from a black ancestor was deemed to be black. "If you're of multiple races, you have a different challenge, a unique challenge of embracing all of who you are but still finding a way to identify yourself, and I think that's often hard for us to do," she continued. "I identify as a black woman, but I've always had to embrace my mother and the white side of who I am too. "By choosing, I've often [wondered], 'Well, would that make her feel like I'm invalidating her by choosing to identify more with the black side of myself?'" Berry's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more celebrity news, follow me on Twitter @NardineSaad.

– Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry have long stood as models of how not to treat the person with whom you're co-parenting a child (see: brawl, citizen's arrest, insane child support), but they've taken their bickering over daughter Nahla to a new low: As TMZ reports, Berry hauled Aubry back into court on Monday, and the subject of contention was Nahla's hair, which Berry claims Aubry has been straightening and lightening in an apparent attempt to make the 6-year-old look less African American. (Aubry is white and Berry is biracial, notes E! Online). The judge ruled that neither parent can alter Nahla's hair. Berry identifies both herself and her daughter as black, notes the LA Times, saying in a 2011 interview that "I feel like she's black. I'm black and I'm her mother." Berry last month sought to reduce her child support payments to Aubry, adds the Times; she currently pays $16,000 a month and reportedly wants it cut to less than $4,000 to prompt the unemployed model to get a job.

Drugs, partying, fights and immense pain. According to friend Max Lomas, those were all constants in Bobbi Kristina Brown s young life in the weeks before it was brutally cut short. Lomas, who lived off and on with Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston s daughter and boyfriend Nick Gordon, is opening up for the first time about what he says life was like for Brown in the days leading up to him finding her floating unconscious in her bathtub on Jan. 31, 2015. “We were all pretty bad into drugs,” Lomas, 27, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s issue, describing his, Brown, and Gordon’s life together at a townhouse in Roswell, Georgia, following Houston’s death. Max Lomas, a longtime friend and housemate of Bobbi Kristina is speaking out for the first time about finding her unconscious Turgeon-Winslow/Splash News Online; Scott Kirkland/PictureGroup Like Gordon, Lomas says he was taken in by Houston as a troubled teen. At the time, he and Brown were romantically involved, but that ended when he went to jail in 2011 on a probation violation. “[Whitney] loved that we were dating and always wanted me to protect Krissy,” says Lomas, who was still incarcerated at the time of Houston’s death. After his release, he says Gordon, 26, and Brown, 22, began dating. “Their relationship was bipolar,” says Lomas. “[They had] extreme highs and lows and would fight, mostly about jealousy.” Two weeks before Brown’s incident, “we all decided that we were going to get off drugs, live healthier lifestyles. We all went to the gym together,” he says. “But it didn’t work out. We started using again.” For more of Max Lomas’ shocking, tragic memories of life with Bobbi Kristina Brown and Nick Gordon, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on stands Friday Jaycee Dugard on the cover of PEOPLE RELATED VIDEO: Nick Gordon Is ‘Devastated’ Over Bobbi Kristina Brown’s Death: ‘He Really Did Love Her Very Much,’ Says a Source Lomas says that at one point, Gordon became abusive towards Brown, which Gordon’s lawyers have vehemently denied, contesting all of Lomas’ claims and calling him “a drug addict” in a recent statement made to PEOPLE. Brown’s family, including Bobby Brown, filed a $40 million civil suit against Gordon, who during an interview with Dr. Phil in April, admitted to using drugs, but insisted he was never abusive. “[Bobby] hurt his own daughter, not me,” said Gordon. “I was the one there for her while she was dealing with him not being there.” Not long after the group’s failed attempt at sobriety, Lomas says he called Brown’s aunt Pat Houston. “They were planning an intervention and taking her to L.A.,” he recalls, which Bobby Brown also claims was the case in his memoir Every Little Step. But that intervention never happened. Splash News Online Lomas, who now says he’s sober, still doesn’t know what exactly happened to Brown the night he pulled her limp body from the ice cold water in her bathroom. “When you are living that kind of lifestyle, it’s hard to remember each day,” he says. “They all kind of blended together.” But now, “I’m able to process things.” No longer friends with Gordon, Lomas says he remembers Brown, who died last July after spending months in a coma, for her spirit. “If she was alive, I know she would be living in LA and pursuing her music career and doing all the things she wanted to do. She had such a beautiful heart.” ||||| The friend who discovered Bobbi Kristina Brown in her bathtub has died of an apparent drug overdose. Max Lomas was discovered unconscious in a friend’s bathroom with a syringe near his body after his pal grew concerned when he didn’t come out for a long time, TMZ reported Friday. Lomas was reportedly rushed to a nearby Mississippi hospital, where he later passed away. Lomas was the one who pulled Brown out of the bathtub and administered CPR with her partner, Nick Gordon, until help arrived. No charges were ever filed against Lomas, though Brown’s family won a $36 million wrongful death civil suit against Gordon for her death. Brown was in a coma for six months before dying in hospice care at age 22 on July 26, 2015. Page Six has reached out to Lomas’ attorney for comment.

– The friend who found Bobbi Kristina Brown face-down in a bathtub after an overdose has suffered a similar death himself, reports TMZ. Max Lomas was found unresponsive on the floor of a friend's bathroom in Mississippi with a syringe nearby and died at the hospital, according to the website. Lomas played no small role in the case of Brown, the daughter of Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. He was the one who actually pulled the 22-year-old from the tub and helped administer CPR until help arrived, notes Page Six. "We were all bad into drugs," Lomas told People in 2016, referring to himself, Brown, and her boyfriend, Nick Gordon. No charges were ever filed after Brown's death in 2015.

Weight Watchers International Inc. reported a loss in the holiday quarter and said members continue to leave as the weight-loss company sheds more ground to apps and other gadgets that track calories. Chief Executive James Chambers said on Thursday that the company now expects its strategy to turn around the business—which it started last year—to take longer than expected because of a challenging start to 2015. As a result, the company disclosed plans to cut $100 million more in costs this year and forecast profit falling... ||||| Almost 60 million fitness trackers will be in use by 2018, tripling the number of the devices used this year, says a new research report from Juniper Research. The firm says fitness trackers like the Fitbit Charge and the Jawbone UP24 will triple to about 57 million in use in the wild worldwide by 2018, up from just 19 million this year. Juniper analysts expect fitness to remain the dominant segment in wearable devices until that time, pushed ahead by new fitness use cases, new biometrics measurements, and lower prices. But from now until 2018, the smartwatch category will be gaining steam and by 2018 will take over as the most-worn wearable device. This movement will begin in earnest with the launch of Apple’s long awaited Watch, which is expected to show up on the market in the first half of 2015. Apple reportedly expects to sell 15 million of the devices in the first year. If this happens, smartwatch sales would overwhelm fitness tracker sales far sooner that 2018, as Juniper predicts. Juniper believes that there are basically two types of fitness trackers — less expensive ones like the $13 Xiaomi MiBand, which will compete mainly on price, and more complex devices, such as the Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, and Samsung Gear Fit, which will offer additional features beyond fitness, such as notifications and music control. Fitbit will remain the leading player for fitness tracking, Juniper says, although its decision not to integrate with Apple Health may harm its market share in the short term. More capable devices will compete with smart watches, especially those that offer similar notification functions, like the MetaWatch M1 and Martian Notifier, Juniper believes. “However, more aesthetically minded consumers will still choose watches, as fitness-focused devices will prioritize function over form,” Juniper notes in a report. ||||| Weight Watchers shares dropped the most since their market debut more than 13 years ago, after the dieting company’s earnings forecast fell well short of analysts’ expectations. The company has faced declining subscriptions and revenue as consumers migrate to digital methods for counting calories and keeping in shape. Weight Watchers International Inc. on Thursday reported that quarterly revenue had declined for the eighth straight period. The stock fell 35 percent to $11.33 on Friday in New York, the biggest drop since the company’s initial public offering in November 2001. The shares had posted a 78 percent decline over the past three years through Thursday. Weight Watchers said Thursday that it would seek to cut $100 million in costs and that Lesya Lysyj, its president of North America operations, would leave the company. The company forecast earnings of 40 cents to 70 cents a share for this year, missing the $1.43 average of seven analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The costs associated with a plan to “resize” aren’t reflected in the guidance, the company said. Weight Watchers has attempted to remake its image this year with a new ad campaign and redesigned magazine introduced in January. “They’re struggling to keep pace,” said RJ Hottovy, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. “Its changes in marketing, product and technology haven’t connected with consumers.” ‘Disappointed’ Chief Executive Officer Jim Chambers said the company’s turnaround would take longer than expected. “I am disappointed that we are not yet where we hoped to be and our turnaround will take longer than anticipated,” Chambers said Thursday on a conference call. Founded in 1961, Weight Watchers has built a system of dieting programs, food products and support centers for people seeking to slim down. Meanwhile, with consumers paying more attention to how many calories they are burning from exercise or everyday activities, fitness gadgets have surged in popularity, with 51.2 million American adults using applications to track their health, according to Nielsen. That is making it harder for Weight Watchers to justify subscriptions starting at $20 a month, since activity trackers can be paired with free mobile apps that make it easy to analyze caloric input and output. ‘Get Modern’ “Weight Watchers really has to change what they’re offering -- they have to get modern,” said Meredith Adler, an analyst at Barclays. “People are just more digital now than they ever were.” New York-based Weight Watchers has embraced activity trackers. Subscribers can use FitBit, Jawbone and the company’s own ActiveLink gadget to track diets and exercise. On the call, Chambers acknowledged that the company still had work to do to remake its image and offerings. “I think you will see the Weight Watchers brand showing up differently going forward,” he said. Weight Watchers’ membership declined 15 percent in the past quarter, to 2.51 million active subscribers. While profit, excluding some charges, matched analysts’ average estimate for 7 cents a share, revenue fell short of projections. Revenue declined 10 percent to $327.8 million in the fourth quarter, compared to an average analyst estimate of $334.3 million, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Last month, Weight Watchers was among the most-shorted stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Threat Downplayed As CEO two years ago, David Kirchhoff said he didn’t see wearable devices -- along with social media and other technologies -- as a threat. Instead, they presented a chance for the company to enhance its methods, counseling and business model, he said on an earnings conference call in February 2013. Three months later, on another call, Kirchhoff’s tone began to change: “In this cash-strapped environment, the sudden proliferation in popularity of free alternative offerings has created a surge of trial in these apps. The resulting impact is contributing to a challenging recruitment environment, similar to what we saw back in 2000 with the low-carb diet fad.” In November, the battle appeared all but lost. “Frankly, we were slow to innovate and add value to our products,” Weight Watchers Chief Financial Officer Nicholas Hotchkin said at an investor conference on Nov. 11. “We were particularly susceptible to the proliferation of free apps and activity monitors.” Corporate Deals The company’s best bet is to focus on providing weight-loss programs for corporations and health plans, which have been seeking ways to keep employees healthy and insurance costs low, according to Hottovy. This week, Weight Watchers announced a new partnership with health-care company Humana Inc. to offer diet programs at discounted rates on certain health insurance plans. “The largest growth opportunity for this company is partnering with corporations and health plans,” Hottovy said. “That’s where they’ll really have a more comprehensive offering. That’s something Weight Watchers can provide that calorie counting apps maybe can’t.”

– The booming fitness-tracker trend is making it easier for people to track their activity and therefore lose weight, which is essentially what Weight Watchers has been trying to do since 1961. The company has encouraged subscribers to use devices like Fitbit and Jawbone—and even has its own ActiveLink device. But while use of such devices soar (VentureBeat in November pointed to research that estimated 19 million trackers were in use in 2014, with that number slated to triple by 2018), Weight Watchers' membership keeps falling. It sank 15% in Q4 to a hair over 2.5 million subscribers, who pay a minimum of $20 for the service; Bloomberg points out that once a user invests in a tracker, the associated tracking apps are free. In early 2013, Weight Watchers didn't seem concerned by wearable devices. It acknowledged a challenge "similar to what we saw back in 2000 with the low-carb diet fad" a few months later. Now it's taking a hit: Revenue slid 10% to $327.8 million in the fourth quarter, and as of yesterday its share price had declined 78% over three years. It expects profit of 40 cents to 70 cents per share in 2015, while analysts had estimated profit of $1.43 per share, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company has announced a deal with Humana to bring discounted diet programs to certain health insurance plans, which an analyst suggests is the company's best option, but it will also undergo cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, to save $100 million. North American President Lesya Lysyj has already been let go.

Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| It was a black-and-white photograph in a newspaper. It showed a small boy, locked in a caged bed in a residential institution. His hands clutched what appeared to be chicken wire containing him, and his expression was agonised. There would be no Lumos – the charity dedicated to closing child institutions and so-called orphanages – if there hadn’t first been this picture. I knew the immediate shameful impulse to turn away, to hide the page, not to look. I could try to justify that impulse by saying that I was pregnant at the time, feeling vulnerable and hormonal. The sad truth remains that my instinctive reaction to that picture could stand as a metaphor for the attitude that has enabled the unjustifiable incarceration of 8 million children around this world to take place with little outrage or comment. Ashamed of that reflexive refusal to look, I forced myself to turn back to the picture and read the article. It told of a nightmarish institution where children as young as six were caged most of the day and night. I ripped the article out, and the following day I began writing letters to everybody I could think of with influence in the matter. These efforts led quickly to the establishment of Lumos, named for the spell I created in Harry Potter to bring light to some dark and frightening places. Part of our work in Lumos is to shed light on the lives of those millions of children separated from their families for reasons of poverty, disability and discrimination. The shocking truth is that the vast majority of these children have parents that could care for them. They are not orphans. Most are placed in institutions by families who are too poor to provide for them, or because of a lack of local education and health facilities, especially for children with special needs. The minority who do not have parents, or for whom staying at home is not in their best interests, are often placed in institutions because there is no alternative. The idea of any child being taken from their family and locked away, all too often in atrocious conditions, is particularly poignant at this time of year. For children in institutions, life too often resembles the darkest of Grimms’ fairytales. Georgette Mulheir, CEO of Lumos, tells how one Christmas she took sweets to the 270 children in a particular institution. What she discovered there was nightmarish. It was minus 25 outside, the heating was broken, children lay shivering in their beds, dressed in all their clothes, wrapped in threadbare blankets. Again and again, when I quote the statistics to people who are not familiar with the field – 8 million children separated from their families worldwide – they are aghast and disbelieving. “How could that happen,” they ask, “without the whole world knowing?” The answer is really quite simple: who is easier to silence than a child? Especially a child with mental or physical disabilities, who is taken away from a family that has been convinced that it is for the best, or whose only alternative is watching that child starve. There is now a wealth of scientific proof that institutions cause children measurable and sometimes irreparable harm. Institutionalised children are far less likely to be educated and to be physically or mentally well. Malnutrition is all too common. They are many more times likely to be abused or trafficked. The effects on infants are particularly chronic, with many failing to thrive, or dying. The impact of not having the love and attention of a dedicated carer is profound. It can cause stunting, developmental delays and psychological trauma. I have seen babies who have learned not to cry because nobody comes. I have met children so desperate for affection that they will crawl into any stranger’s lap. Damage is done very early, and it is lasting. Cut off from society, institutionalised children return to the world with their chances of a happy, healthy life greatly impaired, often unable to find employment, excluded from the community and more likely to enter into a lifetime of poverty and dependency. A crucial point is that these dire effects apply to children from all kinds of institutions, including those that are well resourced. The solution is not pretty murals, or comfier beds, or teddy bears. The solution is no institutions. The good news is that this is an entirely solvable problem. Based on the successes already achieved in several countries, Lumos estimates that the institutionalisation of children can be eradicated globally by 2050 – in our lifetime. Where there is investment in inclusive education and health, where vulnerable families receive support for poverty, employment and social and medical problems; where there are fostering, adoption or other family-based care alternatives for children who cannot be with their parents; and where the culture of institutionalisation is replaced by one that prioritises keeping families together, children can thrive within their own families and communities. International donors play a vital role in this regard. The issues they choose to fund, and the principles they promote, greatly influence what support is available to children and families. Ending the practice of keeping children in institutions isn’t just a moral imperative: it makes excellent economic sense. It is far more cost-effective to support a child in a family than in an institution – and this also reduces long-term costs, since these children are far less likely to become dependent in adulthood. We know our model works. Since Lumos began working in Moldova in 2007, there has been a 70% reduction in the number of children in institutions nationally, despite chronic political instability and Moldova’s standing as the poorest country in Europe. In the Czech Republic, while the numbers of children being admitted into institutions has dropped by 16% nationally in the past year, in Lumos’s demonstration area they have achieved a 75% fall in admissions. It is eminently possible that by 2020 there will be no more children in institutions in the Czech Republic. Since Lumos began working in Bulgaria, the number of children in institutions has reduced by 54%. New admissions to institutions in Bulgaria have fallen by 34%, and the number of foster carers has increased by 440%, from 357 to more than 1600, providing the much-needed family environments for children who would otherwise be in institutions. This is a critical time for getting children out of institutions. The commitments made by the EU, the US and the Global Alliance for Children – a grouping of public and private aid donors, and NGOs, of which Lumos is a key member – have set an important precedent for other donors. There is now a critical mass of expertise and evidence on which we can all build. Many millions of people around the world want to see an end to the harmful and unnecessary practice of institutionalisation. Everyone has a role to play in that regard, which is precisely the idea behind the social media campaign #letstalklumos launched last month. Keeping this issue alive and creating awareness is a vital part of changing the future for these children. I recently committed to becoming president of Lumos for life. It is my dream that, within my lifetime, the very concept of taking a child away from its family and locking it away will seem to belong to a cruel, fictional world. • JK Rowling recently launched the awareness campaign #Letstalklumos (wearelumos.org/letstalklumos) © JK Rowling, founder and president of Lumos

– JK Rowling makes the case today that millions of kids around the world are living in appalling conditions—the stuff of Grimms' fairytales—in institutions that are supposed to be caring for them. Rowling wants to change that, not by improving these orphanages with "pretty murals" or teddy bears, but by eliminating them altogether, she writes in the Guardian. The big challenge is providing support for often-poor families who think they have no choice but to place their child in such an institution. If a child's biological family isn't up to the task, then foster families can step in. But Rowling argues that institutions are absolutely the wrong answer. Rowling has started a charity called Lumos (yes, after one of her Harry Potter spells), and writes that it has made genuine progress in reducing new placements in countries such as Bulgaria, Moldova, and the Czech Republic. She wants to raise awareness and donations with campaigns like this one. "I recently committed to becoming president of Lumos for life," writes Rowling. "It is my dream that, within my lifetime, the very concept of taking a child away from its family and locking it away will seem to belong to a cruel, fictional world." Click for her full column.

The Lady Gaga residency is upon us. Or, rather, it will be in late 2018. Lady Gaga to open residency at The Park Theater in late-2018 (John Katsilometes/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Lady Gaga performs during her "Joanne" world tour at Rogers Arena on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation) Lady Gaga performs during her "Joanne" world tour at Rogers Arena on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation) Lady Gaga attends a news conference for "Gaga: Five Foot Two" on Day 2 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, in Toronto. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) The Lady Gaga residency is upon us. Or, rather, it will be in late 2018. Rumored for about a year and a half, Gaga is set to announce a series of 36 shows at The Park Theater at Monte Carlo. Those familiar with the terms of her agreement say the run launches in the fourth quarter of next year, running for one year, through 2019 and might extend into 2020. Gaga is to earn approximately $400,000 per performance. A source familiar with her contract says online reports of her signing a deal worth $100 million for 60 shows are “way, way, way, off.” Gaga is currently cast as Ally, opposite Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine, in the remake of “A Star is Born.” The film’s premiere has been moved up from September 28 to May 18 (she tweeted Tuesday that despite online reports, she is using her stage name and not her born name, Stefani Germanotta, in the film’s credits). The adjusted time line allows the stage and recording superstar time to assemble and rehearse her production show. The Park Theater opened last December with The Pretenders and Stevie Nicks. Cher, Bruno Mars and Ricky Martin are among the resident headliners in the venue, which can seat up to 6,300. Gaga played T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night, and also played the venue in August. A “pop-up” show on her “Bud Lite Dive Bar Tour” she had planned in Downtown Las Vegas days before the T-Mobile show was canceled (she stated she needed to rehearse for her world tour instead). Gaga was also forced to call off her six-week European leg of her “Joanne World Tour” in September, but has been in peak form since returning from her health struggles. Gaga was in the audience Friday night at Lionel Richie’s show at Axis theater at Planet Hollywood and has frequently teased about a series of shows in Las Vegas. “I’m excited someday to do that,” she told Mix 94.1-FM morning show hosts Mercedes Martinez and JC Fernandez in January, days before her Super Bowl LI halftime show performance. “I love Las Vegas and the people there, and I love show business. I’m a real old-fashioned girl.” Contact John Katsilometes at [email protected]. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram. ||||| Lady Gaga is set to kick off a residency in Las Vegas at the MGM Park Theater. The deal closed over the weekend and will bring the pop star to the city starting in late 2018. According to a source, Gaga will perform 74 dates with the possibility of a longer run. The deal is said to be potentially valued at nearly $100 million, with the pop star clearing a million-plus dollars per show to lock in $75 million over two years. Comparatively, Britney Spears’ two-year re-up at Planet Hollywood was in the range of $30 million. That show, “Piece of Me,” has grossed more than $135 million since Dec. 2013. Gaga’s last touring run, of 37 shows, saw an average box office gross of $2.5 million, according to concert industry trade Pollstar. The deal was negotiated by CAA’s Christian Carino and attorney Kenny Meiselas of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks with Sonya Guardo. Additional headliners at the MGM’s 5,200-seat Park Theater include Bruno Mars and Cher, both of whom are scheduled for multiple shows at the top of the year. An announcement of the residency was posted on Gaga’s social media channels, along with photos of the deal being signed and a toast with Bill Hornbuckle, president of MGM Resorts International (bottom left), as well as with Chris Baldizan SVP of entertainment booking and development MGM Resorts and Richard Sturm, president and COO of sports and entertainment (top right). ||||| The rumors are true! I will have my own residency at MGM’s Park Theater. Get ready for a brand new show!! It’s been my lifelong dream to be a Las Vegas girl, I’m so overjoyed! LOVE YOU LITTLE MONSTERS WE DID IT, MEET ME IN Las Vegas!! # LasVegasGoesGagapic.twitter.com/UhPdW5wgXu

– Lady Gaga is following in the footsteps of Britney Spears, Celine Dion, and Cher. The singer is the latest to secure a Las Vegas residency, and will be belting out tunes at the 5,200-seat MGM Park Theater at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino beginning in late 2018. She'll be making a ton of money, but exactly how much is unclear. A source tells Variety Gaga will take home more than $1 million for each of at least 74 performances over two years, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal has her doing 36 shows for $400,000 apiece. "It's been my lifelong dream to be a Las Vegas girl, I'm so overjoyed!," the singer tweeted Tuesday.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked Taylor Swift after the candidate the singer backed in the Tennessee Senate race lost. "Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff," Ingraham tweeted, referring to one of Swift's top hits. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. Marsha Blackburn Marsha BlackburnTennessee New Members 2019 McConnell reelected as leader, Thune promoted to whip Rick Scott appears with GOP senators, ignores voter fraud question as recount continues MORE (R) beat out former Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) for Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerGOP senators open door to tougher response on Saudi Arabia New book about White House stirs controversy GOP senator calls book labeling him among Trump's enemies 'pretty warped' MORE's (R-Tenn.) seat, likely destroying Democrats' chances of taking the Senate. Swift posted Tuesday that she voted for Bredesen and endorsed him last month. It was a rare political stance for the singer. "As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn," Swift wrote. "I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper James (Jim) Hayes Shofner Cooper16 Dems sign letter opposing Pelosi as Speaker Divided Congress to clash over Space Force, nuclear arsenal Laura Ingraham mocks Taylor Swift after Blackburn victory: '#Shakeitoff' MORE for House of Representatives."

– Taylor Swift came off the political bench last month to get behind the Democrat running for Senate in her home state of Tennessee, and with Phil Bredesen's loss Tuesday night to Marsha Blackburn there's no shortage of conservatives trolling Swift—and you'd be safe to cue a zillion references to bad blood. Chief among them was Fox commentator Laura Ingraham, reports the Hill, who tweeted "Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff." It was a popular theme, notes the Tennessean, as former congressman Joe Walsh can't stop, won't stop urging Swift to "Shake it off, shake it off." Bredesen didn't seem to mind the pop star's thumbs up, fruitless though it may have been, tagging her in a tweet earlier Tuesday urging Tennesseans to vote.

S.F. plane crash: Third victim dies Chaos at scene: SFPD confirms fire truck hit earlier victim Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Image 1 of 3 The wrecked fuselage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 sits in a storage area at San Francisco International Airport. The wrecked fuselage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 sits in a storage area at San Francisco International Airport. Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images Image 2 of 3 Dr. Margaret Knudson, San Francisco General Hospital chief of surgery, announces Friday's death. Dr. Margaret Knudson, San Francisco General Hospital chief of surgery, announces Friday's death. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 3 of 3 Dr. Geoffrey Manley, San Francisco General Hospital chief of neurosurgery, listens to the update on the third crash victim, a girl under 18. Dr. Geoffrey Manley, San Francisco General Hospital chief of neurosurgery, listens to the update on the third crash victim, a girl under 18. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle S.F. plane crash: Third victim dies 1 / 3 Back to Gallery A third passenger on the Asiana Airlines jet that crashed at San Francisco International Airport died Friday, the same day police confirmed that another girl killed during the disaster had been run over by a fire truck. The latest victim, who was described only as a girl under age 18, died Friday morning at San Francisco General Hospital of injuries she suffered when the Boeing 777 crashed last Saturday, said Dr. Margaret Knudson, the hospital's chief of surgery. The girl, whose name and age were not released, had been in critical condition since the airplane clipped a seawall, spun off the runway and burst into flames. Hospital officials said the girl's family had requested that no further information about her be revealed. The Chinese consul in San Francisco confirmed that she was a Chinese national. Earlier Friday, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr confirmed that Ye Meng Yuan, 16, of China had been run over by firefighters trying to douse the flames engulfing Asiana Flight 214. However, he said, it still isn't clear whether Ye was already dead when she was hit. Her body was found amid foam that firefighters had sprayed on the burning airplane, Suhr said. "We know for sure she was at least run over one time, but at the time she was under foam, so nobody could have seen her," Suhr said. "And the question is whether or not she was still alive at the time." Ye's body was found near Flight 214's left wing, not far from one of the inflatable slides that several passengers used to escape from the plane. Ye, however, was sitting in the back of the plane, near where the tail broke off on landing, and would have been able to get out that way. One of the unanswered questions about her death is how she ended up by the wing. Spraying foam Police investigators said Friday that an airport fire rig that ran over Ye apparently hit her after all the passengers had been evacuated. The rig was spraying foam on the fire and was repositioning to get a better angle when Ye was struck, they said. "It wasn't going that fast," said Officer Gordon Shyy, a police spokesman. "When the firefighters repositioning the truck stopped, they realized there was a deceased person on the ground. She was lying down, covered in foam. They marked it, continued on to fighting the fire and notified the command chain there was a deceased person there." San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault, whose office performed an autopsy, said Ye had suffered extensive crushing injuries, but does not appear to have been thrown from the airplane at the time of the crash. His investigators have not determined what killed her. Also killed in the crash was Ye's friend Wang Lin Jia, 16. Both girls had flown to the United States from Shanghai planning to visit Stanford University and attend a three-week summer camp at a Christian school in Southern California. Wang, who is also believed to have been sitting at the rear of the plane, was found near the seawall that Flight 214 struck at 11:27 a.m. Saturday as it attempted to land at well below its target speed. Third fatality The girl who died Friday was one of 31 children and 36 adults who were treated at San Francisco General. They were among 180 passengers and six flight attendants who were hurt in the crash. Six patients remain at San Francisco General. Two adults are in critical condition with spinal cord and abdominal injuries, internal bleeding, road rash and fractures, hospital officials said. The details emerged as National Transportation Safety Board workers began cutting up the hulk of the aircraft so they could take it to a hangar for storage. At 5:05 p.m. Friday, airport officials reopened the runway, 28L, on which Flight 214 had tried to land. ||||| The tail of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, is seen in front of a span of the Bay Bridge on a tarmac at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Wednesday, July... (Associated Press) Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board speaks in front of a photograph of the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, at San Francisco International... (Associated Press) The tail of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, is seen on a tarmac at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Wednesday, July 10, 2013. Investigators are struggling... (Associated Press) Crew members from Asiana Flight 214, which crashed while landing Saturday in San Francisco, pose before members of press upon arrival at the Incheon Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Thursday, July 11,... (Associated Press) The wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 sits on a tarmac at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Thursday, July 11, 2013. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from Shanghai and Seoul crash-landed July... (Associated Press) Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board speaks in front of a photograph of some seats of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, at San Francisco International... (Associated Press) A group of people stand in front of the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, as buses that were reported to be carrying passengers and family members are parked next... (Associated Press) South Korean students pay a silent tribute to the two Chinese victims who died in a Asiana Airlines plane crash in San Francisco, in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 11, 2013. The flight came to a tragic... (Associated Press) Crew members from Asiana Flight 214, which crashed while landing Saturday in San Francisco arrive back at the Incheon Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Thursday, July 11, 2013. Two passengers were killed... (Associated Press) Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board speaks in front of a photograph of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, at San Francisco International Airport, at a... (Associated Press) Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board speaks in front of a photograph of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, at San Francisco International Airport, at a... (Associated Press) This image released by the National Transportation Safety Board, on Thursday, July 11, 2013, shows the charred remains of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco. The Asiana flight crashed upon landing... (Associated Press) CORRECTS STYLE OF NAME SPELLING OF A FLIGHT ATTENDANT - Kim Yun-ju, a flight attendant who was working onboard Asiana Airlines Flight 214 when it crashed while landing in San Francisco cries after arriving... (Associated Press) CORRECTS STYLE OF NAME SPELLING OF A FLIGHT ATTENDANT - Kim Yun-ju, a flight attendant onboard Asiana Airlines flight 214 when it crash-landed at San Francisco airport, cries as she is greeted by Park... (Associated Press) The wreckage of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, is seen on a tarmac in front of the San Francisco skyline at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, Wednesday,... (Associated Press) A group of people stand in front of the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214, which crashed on Saturday, July 6, 2013, as one of three buses that were reported to be carrying passengers and family members are... (Associated Press)

– The death toll in the San Francisco plane crash has risen to three, with another passenger dying due to injuries in San Francisco General Hospital today, the AP reports. The hospital's chief of surgery says the victim was a female child, but her identity and age have been withheld at the request of her family. The girl had been in a critical condition since arriving at the hospital. Two adults injured in the crash remain in critical condition, and four others, including another minor, are also still in hospital, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

A trip to the casino cage started in a panic for Jacob Brundage. The professional poker player’s black tote, filled with $7,000 in cash and playing chips, was missing. “I started freaking out, shouting ‘no way, no way,’” recalled the 39-year-old Lakeland, Florida, man in town for the World Series of Poker. That’s when Brundage realized the money-filled bag was left in the back seat of a minivan he requested through Uber around 9 p.m. June 1, when he caught a ride from The Venetian to the Rio. Brundage frantically grabbed his smartphone and used an in-app option that allows riders to directly call their drivers through a masked number. The driver, who declined an interview, picked up the phone but couldn’t hear Brundage. He hung up. Brundage tried again and again, with no success. Frustrated, Brundage said he stepped outside the casino to get some air when he came across a group of Uber employees who were promoting the service at the Rio. Brundage explained his dilemma, and the Uber team immediately started tracking down the driver and the lost bag. More than an hour passed before Brundage’s phone finally rang. On the other end, the driver explained that his cellphone battery died. “I told him that I would give him $200 if he came back with my bag,” Brundage said. The driver agreed to circle back to the Rio within 20 minutes. During the wait, Brundage said he listened to Christian music on his phone and retraced the night’s events, starting when he cashed out at The Venetian. Uncharacteristically, he forgot to put the cash-filled tote into a larger backpack to ensure it wouldn’t be forgotten. When he got into the backseat of the minivan, Brundage set the money bag to his left. Rather than engaging the driver with small talk, Brundage said he spent most of the ride on the phone with a friend he met at a Las Vegas church. “Honestly, I was distracted,” Brundage said. Brundage isn’t alone. Uber had 168 reported incidents of keys, wallets and bags that were left behind in vehicles across Las Vegas since September, said Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozco. “People lose things in their Uber all the time,” Cheska Orozco said. “But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” The driver finally pulled up to the front of the Rio and opened the minivan’s doors. The bag was exactly where Brundage left it. When he recovered the cash, Brundage said he felt like he won an emotional jackpot. As promised, he handed $200 to the driver and kicked in another $100 to the Uber team members for helping out. “It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed.” Contact Art Marroquin at [email protected] or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter. ||||| LAS VEGAS (AP) — A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Florida, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/1RZJRBK) that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from The Venetian to the Rio. Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. Uber spokeswoman Maui Cheska Orozo says this is likely the most expensive item ever left in an Uber car in Las Vegas. ___ Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com

– A World Series of Poker player says he hit an "emotional jackpot" thanks to an Uber driver who returned his $7,000 ante. Jacob Brundage, of Lakeland, Fla., told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he lost a tote filled with cash and playing chips June 1. The 39-year-old says he realized the bag was in an Uber car that he rode from the Venetian to the Rio, reports the AP. "People lose things in their Uber all the time," says an Uber rep. "But this has to be the most valuable thing that someone lost in one of our cars in Las Vegas.” Brundage failed to reach the driver through the app and enlisted a group of waiting Uber drivers to help. The driver, who wants to remain anonymous, called Brundage and returned the bag. Brundage gave him $200 as a reward. "It felt like a miracle, and I was very relieved,” Brundage said. “This man’s honesty and integrity made me feel very blessed."

MOSCOW | MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian spy Anna Chapman posed in the Russian version of Maxim magazine in the most provocative photographs yet to appear of the secret agent who was deported from the United States in July. A photograph on www.maximonline.ru shows red-haired Chapman dressed in nylon and lace and posing with a handgun. "Anna Chapman has done more to excite Russian patriotism than the Russian soccer team," wrote Maxim. Nine other spies were deported from the United States with her. The Kremlin has seized on the Cold War aspects of the case to try to boost the prestige of its intelligence services and avert what has widely been seen as a major disgrace for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor to the KGB. Although celebrated by the Kremlin and Russian media, the Russian spy ring was reported to have failed to secure any major intelligence before their arrests in the United States. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded the group of spies the country's highest state honors on Monday. The photographs and an interview with Chapman will be in the next issue of Maxim, which has included Chapman in its list of Russia's 100 sexiest women. The 10 Russians, accused of being sleeper agents, were swapped with four imprisoned Russians who were accused of having traded secrets with the West. (Writing by Thomas Grove, Editing by Steve Addison)

– This generation's wanna-be Mata Hari appears in all her blazing hotness in Russian Maxim in what officials hope might be a morale-booster for their spooks. "Anna Chapman has done more to excite Russian patriotism than the Russian soccer team," the mag sniggers about the nearly-total-boob-baring shot of the pistol-packing spy deported from New York. The bodacious former spy has fast become the poster babe of the seductive spy operation the Russians wish they had, Reuters notes. Though loudly hailed by the Kremlin and Russian press, the years-long spy operation in the US including Chapman and nine compatriots is widely considered an embarrassing flop.

A woman is escorted by officers near the Bronx Lebanon Hospital in New York after a gunman opened fire there on Friday, June 30, 2017. The gunman, identified as Dr. Henry Bello who used to work at the... (Associated Press) NEW YORK (AP) — A doctor who appears to have been the target of a former physician who started shooting at a hospital, killing one person and injuring six, said he has no idea why he would have been singled out. Dr. Kamran Ahmed told the New York Post he wasn't the only one Dr. Henry Bello had a problem with. However, "he never argued with me," Ahmed said. "I don't know why he put my name." A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Bello arrived at Bronx Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx on Friday with an assault rifle, which was bought in upstate New York about a week earlier, hidden under his lab coat and asked for a doctor he blamed for his having to resign, but the doctor wasn't there at the time. The law enforcement official wasn't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Ahmed, who specializes in the early detection and treatment of dementia, said Bello "had a problem with almost everybody, so I'm not the only one. That's why they fired him, because so many people complained." Authorities said Bello went to the 16th and 17th floors and started shooting anyway, killing Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, who, like him, was a family medicine doctor. Hospital officials said that Tam normally worked in one of the hospital's satellite clinics and was covering a shift in the main hospital as a favor to someone else. "It makes you think that anything can happen to anybody," said Tam's neighbor Alena Khaim, who saw Tam's sister outside the home Friday night overcome with grief, shaking and unable to walk. "She was such a sweet girl. You would never think something like that would happen, but it happened." Before the shooting, Bello sent an email to the Daily News, blaming colleagues he said forced him to resign two years earlier. "This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine," the email said. "First, I was told it was because I always kept to myself. Then it was because of an altercation with a nurse." Bello's former co-workers described a man who was aggressive, loud and threatening. Bello had warned his former colleagues when he was forced out in 2015 that he would return someday to kill them. "All the time he was a problem," said Dr. David Lazala, who trained Bello. When Bello was forced out in 2015, he sent Lazala an email blaming him for the dismissal. Bello died from a self-inflicted gunshot. The six injured people were hospitalized. Detectives searched the Bronx home where Bello was most recently living and found the box where the gun came from. They later determined it was bought at a gun shop in Schenectady on June 20. ___ This story has been corrected to show Bello had an assault rifle, not an automatic weapon. ||||| The doctor who dodged death at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx — at the hands of an assault weapon-toting, crazed former colleague — was shocked to be singled out by the killer. “I was surprised,” Kamran Ahmed told The Post. “Why me?” Ahmed, 48, said he had worked with shooter Henry Bello, 45, but that he wasn’t the only one Bello had a problem with. “He started working there a couple of months after I was hired,” Ahmed said at his Bath Beach apartment Saturday night. “He is not only after me, he is after a lot of people. He had a problem with almost everybody, so I’m not the only one. That’s why they fired him, because so many people complained. “The strange thing was that he was nice with me,” added Ahmed, who specializes in the early detection and treatment of dementia. “He never argued with me. I don’t know why he put my name.” Bello was forced to resign from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in 2015 amid a sexual harassment scandal. He had vowed to return to the facility to kill Ahmed — even leaving a series of email, text and phone threats — and tried to make good Friday on his chilling pledge. By luck, Ahmed was not working Friday. Instead, Bello, dressed in a white medical coat to conceal an AM-15 rifle, spotted Dr. Roger Green on the 16th floor. “Why didn’t you help me out when I was in trouble?” Bello demanded of Green as he pulled his AM-15 assault rifle from its hiding spot and took aim. “Gun! Gun! Gun!” Green yelled as he fled, raising the first warnings of an active shooter inside the hospital. Bello then made his way to the 17th floor, where he randomly killed Dr. Tracy Tam , 32, briefly set fire to the nurse’s station and eventually committed suicide. Along the way, he murdered Tam and shot six others. Ahmed, a resident in family medicine and a father of three, claimed he only talked professionally with Bello while the two worked together. “I didn’t see him since he got fired. He was fine with me, but he had many arguments,” he said. He praised Tam as “excellent. Everybody loved her. She loved to teach us. I feel so sorry about her. She was there to cover one of the attending. She was in outpatient usually. Unfortunately she was the victim.” A day after the rampage, Ahmed went to a staff meeting with a hospital official, he said. “Everybody was there and we prayed [and] hugged each other to support each other.” He plans to see Bello’s other victims tomorrow. “I heard they are getting better. But one is still critically ill,” Ahmed noted.

– A doctor who appears to have been the target of a former physician who started shooting at a hospital, killing one person and injuring six, says he has no idea why he would have been singled out. Dr. Kamran Ahmed tells the New York Post he wasn't the only one Dr. Henry Bello had a problem with. However, "he never argued with me," Ahmed says. "I don't know why he put my name." A law enforcement official tells the AP that Bello arrived at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in the Bronx on Friday with an assault rifle, which was bought in upstate New York about a week earlier, hidden under his lab coat and asked for a doctor he blamed for his having to resign (presumably Ahmed), but the doctor wasn't there at the time. Authorities say Bello went to the 16th and 17th floors and started shooting anyway, killing Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, who, like him, was a family medicine doctor. Hospital officials say that Tam normally worked in one of the hospital's satellite clinics and was covering a shift in the main hospital as a favor to someone else. Before the shooting, Bello sent an email to the Daily News, blaming colleagues he said forced him to resign two years earlier. "This hospital terminated my road to a licensure to practice medicine," the email said. Bello's former co-workers described a man who was aggressive, loud, and threatening. Bello had warned his former colleagues when he was forced out in 2015 that he would return someday to kill them. Ahmed says Bello "had a problem with almost everybody" and "that's why they fired him, because so many people complained." Bello died from a self-inflicted gunshot. The six injured people were hospitalized.

In Choa Saidan Shah miners dig coal with crude pick axes and load it onto donkeys to be transported to the surface earning a team of 4 workers around $10 to be split between them. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was built sort of like a biplane but probably did not fly as well, if at all. Scientists on Tuesday described a fossil of a strange dinosaur that lived in China 125 million years ago which was covered in feathers, looked like it had two sets of wings and may have been able to glide. The meat-eating creature, called Changyuraptor yangi, had exceptionally long tail feathers, the longest feathers of any dinosaur, at one foot in length (30 cm). It had feather-covered forelimbs akin to wings as well as legs covered in feathers in a way that gave the appearance of a second set of wings. Changyuraptor is not considered a bird but rather a very bird-like dinosaur. It illustrates that it is not always easy to tell what is and is not a bird. It measured a bit more than 4 feet long (1.3 meters) and weighed roughly 9 pounds (4 kg). If a person saw Changyuraptor, the reaction likely would be: "Hey! That is a weird-looking bird," according to paleontologist Alan Turner of Stony Brook University in New York, one of the researchers. "So, think a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail," Turner added. Scientists have identified a handful of these 'four-winged' dinosaurs, known as microraptorines. Changyuraptor is the largest. Birds arose from small, feathered dinosaurs. Crow-sized Archaeopteryx, which lived about 150 million years ago, is considered the earliest known bird. But many dinosaurs before and after that had feathers and other bird-like characteristics. "Changyuraptor is very, very similar to Archaeopteryx and other primitive birds. So are many other dinosaurs like Anchiornis and Pedopenna. But they have some traits that birds lack, and lack some traits that birds have," Turner added. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County paleontologist Luis Chiappe, who led the study, said Changyuraptor lived in a forested environment in a temperate climate, hunting birds, mammals, small reptiles and fish. "Animals like Changyuraptor were probably not engaged in powered flight like modern birds. However, Changyuraptor and dinosaurs like it could flap their wings and certainly had large feathered surfaces on both their forelimbs and hind limbs," Turner said. "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way. The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly," Turner added. If Changyuraptor were able to become airborne, its long tail feathers may have helped reduce descent speed and enabled safe landings. "This helps explain how animals like Changyuraptor could engage in some form of aerial locomotion - flight, gliding, and/or controlled descents - despite their size," Turner added. In birds today, feathers can serve multiple functions beyond flight, including display, species recognition and mating rituals. Turner said Changyuraptor's feathers also may have served multiple purposes. China has become a treasure trove for feathered dinosaur fossils. Changyuraptor was unearthed in Liaoning Province in northeastern China. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. (Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by James Dalgleish) ||||| The largest "four-winged" dinosaur known has been found, and this predator has the longest feathers yet outside of birds, researchers say. This new finding yields insights on how dinosaurs may have flown, the scientists added. The 125-million-year-old feathered dinosaur, named Changyuraptor yangi, sported feathers over its body, including its arms and legs, which made it look as if it had two pairs of wings. Its fossil was unearthed in 2012 in Liaoning province in northeastern China, which has been the center of a surge of discoveries of feathered dinosaurs over the last decade. "The vast majority of feathered dinosaurs in Liaoning are collected by farmers who live there," said study author Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist and director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The newfound dinosaur is a microraptorine, a group of predatory, feathered dinosaurs related to Velociraptor and other well-known raptor dinosaurs. Analysis of the microscopic structure of this fossil's bones reveal it was a fully grown adult — a younger specimen's bones would have signs they were still developing. "Microraptorines are thought to be very close cousins of birds, sharing a common raptor ancestor," Chiappe told Live Science. "It's not known yet whether a four-wing body is something unique to microraptorines, or something the common ancestor of birds and microraptorines had, that was later lost in the bird lineage." [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils] The researchers estimate 4-foot-long (1.2 meter) Changyuraptor weighed about 9 lbs. (4 kilograms), making it the largest four-winged dinosaur found yet, and at least 60 percent larger than the largest microraptorine specimen found previously, Chiappe said. When Changyuraptor was alive, the area in which it lived "was a broad peninsula or wedge into the ocean, with volcanoes," Chiappe said. - Charles Choi, Live Science This is a condensed version of a report from LiveScience. Read the full report. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

– Take the velociraptors made famous by Jurassic Park, make them a bit smaller, add feathers, then change the limbs to wings and you will have something resembling a newly discovered dinosaur species found in China. Researchers say Changyuraptor yangi, a carnivore that lived around 125 million years ago, has the longest feathers ever found outside birds, to which it is very closely related. It's a lot bigger than any other "four-winged" dinosaur species known, reports NBC News. Researchers compare the creature, which was around 4 feet long and weighed about 9 pounds, to "a mid-sized turkey with a very long tail" and say that while it probably couldn't fly the way modern birds do, it could flap its wings and the feathers would have helped it land safely despite its size. "So this does raise the possibility they could glide or 'fly' in a primitive sort of way," a paleontologist tells Reuters. "The way I like to think of it is: if you pushed them out of a tree, they'd fall pretty slowly." (Another newly discovered dinosaur had bony "wings" on its head.)

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Suspected kidnapper and murderer Ariel Castro was indicted again today on hundreds of new criminal charges, but without Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty calling for the death penalty. The 977-count indictment (read the full text of the charges in the document viewer below) adds charges for crimes that prosecutors contend Castro committed against Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight toward the end of a decade-long imprisonment in Castro's Seymour Avenue home. A previous 329-count indictment only extended from August 2002, the year prosecutors claim Knight was abducted, until February 2007. Prosecutors have accused Castro, 52, of kidnapping the women and raping them repeatedly in his home, where he sometimes kept them chained and rarely allowed them to leave the house. The new indictment includes 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 counts of rape, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, six counts of felonious assault, three counts of child endangerment and one count of possessing criminal tools. It also includes two counts of aggravated murder, which were among those charges carried over from the previous indictment, stemming from claims that Castro beat and tortured one of the women into miscarrying a child. "Today's indictment moves us closer to resolution of this gruesome case," McGinty stated in a written release. "Our investigation continues, as does our preparation for trial." Under Ohio law, McGinty can seek the death penalty for aggravated murder if it is coupled with a kidnapping charge. In 1996, the Ohio legislature passed a law that allows for an aggravated murder charge in cases where a pregnancy is unlawfully terminated. A capital review committee within McGinty's office met Thursday to discuss whether to pursue the death penalty against Castro. While such a specification is not included in today's indictment, prosecutors could seek to add it later, McGinty spokesman Joe Frolik said. Castro's attorneys Craig Weintraub and Jaye Schlachet issued a written statement expressing pleasure "that we were able to convince the prosecutor's office to not seek and obtain the death penalty in this new indictment." They stated further, "It is our hope that we can continue to work toward a resolution of this matter so that the women do not have to endure additional trauma." Weintraub elaborated during a phone interview that he and Schlachet submitted mitigating material to the capital review committee that, among other things, raised concerns about subjecting the three women to a trial and disclosing "the private nature of what occurred." Weintraub has said some of the charges against Castro cannot be refuted and that if the death penalty is not sought, a plea deal could be worked out. The prosecutor's office stated today that the capital review committee has not completed its evaluation. Death penalty experts believe McGinty would have a difficult time convincing a jury to sentence Castro to death for various reasons, including the ongoing debate over when life begins and whether killing a fetus is tantamount to murder. They also believe proving aggravated murder may be difficult without sufficient physical evidence to support testimony from the women. Another obstacle for McGinty could be the willingness of the three women to take the stand and expose themselves to potentially harsh cross-examination by Castro's defense lawyers, who are duty bound to represent their client to the fullest extent. "Do these young women want to testify? Can they testify," Case Western Reserve University senior law instructor Michael Benza asked rhetorically during a recent interview. Included in the evidence collected by the FBI is a diary that was kept by one of the women. Rob Glickman, a former judge and assistant prosecutor in Cuyahoga County, said McGinty and his advisers likely made their decision not to seek the death penalty based on the strength of the facts in the case and the willingness of the victims to go to trial. "I'm sure they made that decision in consultation with the victims," he said. Glickman said that given the extent of the charges against Castro, McGinty should have no problem convincing a judge to give Castro enough consecutive sentences for his crimes to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. A judge could also impose life without parole if prosecutors are able to prove aggravated murder, said Steve Dever, a former assistant county prosecutor under three previous administrations. Dever said it's not overkill to charge Castro with so many counts because it's McGinty's obligation to give the court a full accounting of what happened. "This is a crime that spanned over a considerable period of time," he said. As for the multiple kidnapping counts, Dever said, a prosecutor can make such a charge in connection with an individual criminal act, such as a rape, that required the restraint of one's liberty to carry out. Barry, DeJesus and Knight emerged from a decade of captivity on May 4 after Berry, with the help of neighbors, escaped with her 6-year-old daughter through the front door of Castro's home while he was away. Police responded to find DeJesus and Knight also in the house. All three had gone missing in the same area of west Cleveland about a decade ago and were largely presumed dead. Their seemingly miraculous rescue captivated the world, and national media outlets are still angling for what they hope is the first interview with the traumatized women. The women recently released a short youtube video during which they thanked supporters and conveyed an image of recovery. A fund set up on behalf of the women has received more than $1 million from 9,200 donors, with some of the money already being provided to the women and their families. Bruce Hennes, a spokesman for the women, declined to comment on today's news. Castro, who is being held in Cuyahoga County Jail, has appeared in court for pre-trial hearings, always with shackles on his wrists and ankles and with his head bowed. Judge Michael Russo recently ruled that Casto was competent to stand trial, based on a court-ordered evaluation and a stipulation by Castro's attorneys. Knight was 21 when she went missing in August of 2002. Berry was 16 when she disappeared in April 2003, while DeJesus was 14 when she failed to arrive home from Wilbur Wright school in April 2004. The trial is still scheduled to begin Aug. 5. ||||| A grand jury has issued a fresh indictment charging Ariel Castro with 977 counts relating to allegations that he held three women captive for about a decade in his Cleveland home, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office said Friday. The new indictment -- which adds 648 counts to the 329 on which he was indicted last month -- encompasses all the years of the women's captivity, whereas the previous indictment covered only the first four and a half years, the prosecutor's office said. Authorities said Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Georgina "Gina" DeJesus separately in a two-year period starting in 2002. The women, as well as Berry's 6-year-old daughter, who authorities say was fathered by Castro, were freed in May after one of the women shouted for help while Castro was away from his 1,400-square-foot home. Among the charges are two counts of aggravated murder, in which Castro is accused of intentionally causing the termination of a pregnancy. JUST WATCHED Cleveland kidnap victims: Thank you Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Cleveland kidnap victims: Thank you 01:50 Castro also faces 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 counts of rape, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, six counts of felonious assault, three counts of child endangerment and one count of possessing criminal tools. He will be arraigned July 17.

– Accused kidnapper Ariel Castro has had 648 new counts added to his indictment, bringing the grand total to 977. To break it down, the entire indictment is 576 pages, and includes: 512 counts of kidnapping, 446 counts of rape, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, six counts of felonious assault, three counts of child endangerment, two counts of aggravated murder (he is accused of unlawfully terminating the pregnancy of one of his captives), and one count of possessing criminal tools, the AP reports. The reason for all the new charges is that his previous indictment only covered the first four-and-a-half years that the three women were allegedly imprisoned in his house. The new indictment covers the entire period, reports CNN. Despite the added heft to the charges, prosecutors are still not seeking the death penalty—though the aggravated murder charges plus the kidnapping charges would allow them to under Ohio law, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. A spokesperson for the County Prosecutor says they still may. But by not seeking the death penalty, a plea deal could be worked out, which would spare the three women the emotional turmoil of going through a trial.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A white South Carolina police officer who claimed he killed a black man in self-defense has been fired and faces murder charges after a bystander's video recorded him firing eight shots at the man's back as he ran away. The city's mayor also said he's ordered body cameras to be worn by every single officer on the force. In this April 4, 2015, frame from video provided by attorney L. Chris Stewart representing the family of Walter Lamer Scott, city patrolman Michael Thomas Slager checks Scott's pulse in North Charleston,... (Associated Press) In this April 4, 2015, frame from video provided by Attorney L. Chris Stewart representing the family of Walter Lamer Scott, Scott runs away from city patrolman Michael Thomas Slager, right, in North... (Associated Press) A man holds a sign during a protest for the shooting death of Walter Scott at city hall in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, April 8, 2015. Scott was killed by a North Charleston police officer after... (Associated Press) In this undated photo provided by the North Charleston Police Department shows City Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager. Slager has been charged with murder in the shooting death of a black motorist after... (Associated Press) This photo provided by the Charleston County, S.C., Sheriff's Office shows Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager on Tuesday, April 7, 2015. Slager has been charged with murder in the shooting death of a black... (Associated Press) Rodney Scott, left, and his brother, Anthony Scott, appear at a news conference in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, April 7, 2015. The brother of the two men, Walter Lamer Scott, was shot and killed by a... (Associated Press) In this April 4, 2015 photo, investigators collect evidence at the scene following an officer involved shooting in North Charleston, S.C. City Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager was charged with murder Tuesday,... (Associated Press) Rev. Arthur Prioleau holds a sign during a protest in the shooting death of Walter Scott at city hall in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, April 8, 2015. Scott was killed by a North Charleston police... (Associated Press) The officer, Michael Thomas Slager, has been fired, but the town will continue to pay for his health insurance because his wife is eight-month's pregnant, said North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, who called it a tragedy for two families. Police Chief Eddie Diggers said he was "sickened" by what he saw on the video, but his explanations were repeatedly interrupted by shouts of "no justice, no peace!" and other hard questions that he said he couldn't answer. The mayor then took back the podium and threatened to close the news conference. Protests began within hours of the murder charge against Slager, which was announced Tuesday, the same day the video was released to the media. About 75 people gathered outside City Hall in North Charleston, led by a Black Lives Matter, a group formed after the fatal shooting of another black man in Ferguson, Missouri. "Eight shots in the back!" local organizer Muhiydin D'Baha hollered through a bullhorn, and the crowd yelled "In the back!" in response. The video recorded by an unidentified bystander shows North Charleston Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager dropping his stun gun, pulling out his handgun and firing at Walter Lamer Scott from a distance as he runs away. The 50-year-old man falls after the eighth shot, fired after a brief pause. The dead man's father, Walter Scott Sr. said Wednesday that the officer "looked like he was trying to kill a deer running through the woods." He also told NBC's "Today Show" that his son may have tried to flee because he owed child support and didn't want to go back to jail. The video is "the most horrible thing I've ever seen," said Judy Scott, the slain man's mother, on ABC's "Good Morning America." "I almost couldn't look at it to see my son running defenselessly, being shot. It just tore my heart to pieces," she said. The bystander is assisting investigators after providing the video to Scott's family and lawyers. Deflecting many of the questions from a hostile audience at Wednesday's news conference, Summey said state investigators have the case. Police initially released a statement that promised a full investigation but relied largely on the officer's description of the confrontation, which began with a traffic stop Saturday as Slager pulled Scott over for a faulty brake light. Slager's then-attorney David Aylor released another statement Monday saying the officer felt threatened and fired because Scott was trying to grab his stun gun. Aylor dropped Slager as a client after the video surfaced, and the officer, a five-year veteran with the North Charleston police, appeared without a lawyer at his first appearance Tuesday. He was denied bond and could face 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murder. The shooting comes amid a plunge in trust between law enforcement and minorities after the officer-involved killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York. Nationwide protests intensified after grand juries declined to indict the officers in both cases. "We have to take a stand on stuff like this ... we can't just shake our heads at our computer screens," said Lance Braye, 23, who helped organize Wednesday's demonstration. Scott's family and their attorney, L. Chris Stewart, appealed to keep the protests peaceful, saying the swift murder charge shows that the justice system is working so far in this case. But Stewart said the video alone forced authorities to act decisively. "What if there was no video? What if there was no witness, or hero as I call him, to come forward?" asked Stewart, adding that the family plans to sue the police. The video, shot over a chain link fence and through some trees, begins after Scott has left his car. Slager follows him, reaching at the man with an object that appears to be a stun gun. As Scott pulls away, the object falls to the ground and Slager pulls out his handgun as Scott runs away. The final shot sends Scott falling face-down about 30 feet away. Slager then slowly walks toward him and orders Scott to put his hands behind his back, but the man doesn't move, so he pulls Scott's arms back and cuffs his hands. The officer then walks briskly back to where he fired the shots, speaking into his radio. He picks up the same object that fell to the ground before and returns to Scott's prone body, dropping the object near Scott's feet as another officer enters the scene. Scott had four children, was engaged and had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Coast Guard. There were no violent offenses on his record, Stewart said. He also speculated that Scott may have tried to run because he owed child support, which can lead to jail time in South Carolina until it is paid. The FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division are investigating as well. Proving that an officer willfully deprived an individual of his or her civil rights has historically been a tall burden for federal prosecutors, particularly when an officer uses force during a rapidly unfolding physical confrontation in which split-second decisions are made. The Justice Department spent months investigating the Ferguson shooting before declining to prosecute Officer Darren Wilson in that case. But it's easier to make cases against officers who use force as an act of retribution or who can make no reasonable claim that their life was in jeopardy when they took action. North Charleston is South Carolina's third-largest city, and its population is about half black. Its economy slumped after the Charleston Naval Base on the city's waterfront closed in the mid-1990s, but the city has bounced back with a huge investment by Boeing, which now employs about 7,500 people in the state and builds 787 aircraft in city. Braye accused North Charleston police of habitually harass blacks for minor offenses. He hopes the video will help people understand that some officers will lie to save themselves when they do wrong. "This needs to be the last case," Braye said. "All you have to do is look at the story that was told before the video came out." _____ Smith reported from Charleston, South Carolina. Contributors include Tom Foreman Jr. in Charlotte, North Carolina and Eric Tucker in Washington. ||||| North Charleston has struggled since its inception with mistrust and tension between citizens and police as it tries to find a delicate balance between public safety and civil rights in a community beset with violent crime. Wednesday's developments City buys 150 body cameras in addition to 101 state-funded cameras already ordered. Mayor vows to start community discussion this spring about police policies as federal civil-rights probe continues. 200 people attend peaceful protest as some block traffic near City Hall for 15 minutes. Man who filmed shooting tells NBC News that Slager and Scott were struggling on ground before video started. Coroner confirms all of Scott's five bullet wounds hit him from behind. Police say Slager was carrying a .45-caliber Glock 21 and a Taser X26. Agencies release radio communications but hold on to dashboard video that could show traffic stop. Slager placed in protective custody at Charleston County jail. Solicitor Scarlett Wilson announces plans to pursue indictment in May, saying she would hold “accountable those who harm others unlawfully, regardless of profession.” High-powered Charleston attorney Andy Savage files court papers to represent Slager. The Rev. Al Sharpton says that he will visit North Charleston “very soon” and that shooting demands police reform because community “can't rely on citizens with video cameras to make sure justice is served.” S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson calls this “a difficult and emotional time for our state” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says shooting was “deeply troubling on many fronts.” The state’s third-largest city has pockets of deep, entrenched poverty and neighborhoods where gunfire has been a familiar visitor in the night. But attempts to quell the crime, which for three years landed North Charleston among the nation’s most dangerous cities, brought about cries of racial profiling and unfair treatment of minorities — particularly of young, black men. Read more: For complete coverage of the Walter Scott shooting, go to postandcourier.com/Walter-Scott. Years-long efforts to bridge that divide and smooth relations with the community took a deep hit this week with the arrest of Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, accused of gunning down an apparently unarmed, fleeing black man after a traffic stop. Slager, who is white, is charged with murder in 50-year-old Walter L. Scott’s death. A protest outside City Hall remained peaceful Wednesday morning, but demonstrators drowned out Mayor Keith Summey during an afternoon news conference with chants demanding justice and questioning the city’s struggle to hire minority police officers. The department is about 18 percent black in a city that is 45 percent black. While the FBI has opened a civil rights probe into the shooting, Summey vowed to discuss with residents whether the city’s policing tactics and policies should be changed. He also announced that the city Wednesday bought 150 body-worn cameras in light of Scott’s death that will complement the 101 cameras it had already ordered through a state grant. He didn’t say when the city would get the shipment of 251 cameras that will outfit every uniformed patrol officer. State Rep. David Mack, a North Charleston Democrat who is black, was a speaker a few years ago in classes on cultural sensitivity that were mandated for all new officers. It was a program designed to help them better understand policing from the perspective of those they serve. Mack thought the classes made a difference, but a video of Scott’s shooting that emerged Tuesday shows that the Police Department still has its issues, he said. “It’s an ongoing battle,” he said. “I think we have made progress, but this incident ... wounded the community tremendously.” The footage, which was shot by a passerby, spread rapidly worldwide after The Post and Courier first broke the news of the evidence that contradicted Slager’s account. Though it showed the officer shooting Scott in the back, it left some questions unanswered and sparked speculation of what happened. A spokesman from the State Law Enforcement Division, which is tasked with an independent investigation, said he couldn’t answer those questions because the probe wasn’t finished. SLED has dashboard camera footage from Slager’s car, which could explain why Scott’s Mercedes-Benz was pulled over but would not show anything about the shooting, the spokesman, Thom Berry, said. Berry did not respond Wednesday to a request for the video. Police Chief Eddie Driggers also wouldn’t clarify whether the video showed Slager picking up his Taser X26 and dropping it near Scott’s body. The officer has said that Scott had taken the device from him and tried to use it. Driggers also was uncertain whether his officers performed CPR on Scott. “I’m going to be totally honest with you,” he said of the footage, “I was sickened by what I saw.” After Scott is buried, the city’s mayor said he would open up police procedures for a discussion, a process he said Driggers had been working on for two years. “We will be ... looking for ways to develop a closer relationship with the individual communities,” Summey said. “We will look at ways to enhance the quality of service we provide to our citizens, and by that, I mean all our citizens.” But if history is any guide, the road to restoring trust could be an arduous path. That problem was clear during the news conference when residents interrupted Summey several times with chants. “How are you the mayor?” one man yelled. “Nobody respects you.” The conference was punctuated with chants of “the mayor gotta go” and “no justice, no peace.” Some people in the crowd were familiar with the sentiment. A difficult history Old-timers in the Police Department used to share stories of bare-knuckled brawls as outnumbered officers waded into packed and unruly roadhouses to restore order in the days after the city formed in 1975. Outmanned and hemmed in, they found it safer to subdue and ask questions later. It was a question of survival, they said. The department has come a long way since those days and is now a nationally accredited institution, priding itself on professional rules and policies that have withstood expert scrutiny. But questions have lingered through the years about the methods employed by the rank-and-file to keep the peace — particularly in regard to using deadly force against black residents. “We want the world to understand that this is not an isolated incident,” protester Muhiyidin d’Baha said at the demonstration Wednesday morning in front of City Hall. “This has been a reality that has been in the North Charleston Police Department for many, many years.” In October 2000, for example, protesters took to the streets after the police shooting death of Edward Snowden in a Dorchester Road video store. Snowden, a black man who was being attacked by four white men, was shot by police after they arrived and found him holding a gun. Police were cleared of wrongdoing, though the city later settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Snowden’s family for about $70,000. Racial tensions rose again after the November 2003 fatal shooting of Asberry Wylder, a black shoplifting suspect with a history of mental illness. Police shot Wylder after he plunged a knife into an officer’s protective vest during a confrontation outside a Rivers Avenue supermarket. Some witnesses said Wylder was beaten and shot a second time after he was handcuffed on the ground. The state’s probe found nothing to indicate that the police acted improperly, but that conclusion won little acceptance in the black community. Tensions continued to simmer as the pressure to drive down crime intensified when the city racked up 55 killings between the start of 2006 and the end of 2007. That led to Washington-based CQ Press ranking North Charleston among the Top 10 most-dangerous cities in the nation. Desperate to shake the distinction, city officials enacted a policy of aggressive patrolling: incessant stops of motorists for minor violations, seemingly random interviews with residents and a virtual police occupation of neighborhoods in the days just after violence occurred. The idea was to create constant contact with residents of the most troubled areas in the city, tamping down the opportunities for crime while establishing sources to help investigators solve cases. The strategy seemed to work. By 2010, the number of people slain had fallen to five, and the city tumbled off the upper reaches of the infamous list of perilous places to live. Striking a balance Critics, however, insisted that those gains had come with a steep cost to civil liberties, particularly for black residents who constituted the majority of those subjected to stops and field questioning. Between 2008 and early 2012, 120 complaints were lodged against the Police Department, with the majority of the complaints coming from blacks. Then-Police Chief Jon Zumalt tried numerous approaches to easing the tensions on this front, from the cultural sensitivity classes that Mack participated in to a program called “Sell the Stop” in which officers were trained to politely explain to residents the necessity of pulling them over. But the drumbeat of criticism continued through Zumalt’s tenure. Like the chief who took over for him, Zumalt said in an interview Wednesday that he was sickened by what he saw on the video of Scott’s death, which he called “heartbreaking.” Balancing public safety with the need to preserve civil rights is perhaps the most challenging part of police work these days, he said, and one that he confronted during his time here. He tried to involve community members and activists such as James Johnson, a local National Action Network president, in the process to help increase understanding of policing and strengthen bonds with citizens, he said. “You have to reduce violence and keep the community safe, but you have to do it in such a way that you don’t alienate the people you are serving,” Zumalt said. “That is the core and the most difficult thing to achieve in policing today.” The Scott shooting “is going to damage that relationship and make it even more difficult to achieve that balance,” Zumalt said. When Driggers, a veteran law enforcement officer and former police chaplain, took over after Zumalt’s retirement in early 2013, Summey said his Christian approach to policing was what the city needed. The soft-spoken chief, who has a penchant for meeting detractors with hugs, set out to win over critics and invite them into his office to share their views. He visited crime scenes, oversaw an effort to place officers in every school and started a Powder Puff football program to give teen girls something positive to do. But Johnson, the activist whom Driggers’ predecessor once tried to work with, said the chief had not thoroughly addressed allegations of racial profiling or dealt with a perception that the city’s officers “will stop you, lock you up and shoot you.” “Driggers really just took up where Zumalt left off; he may just be doing it in a different way,” Johnson said Wednesday. “What his department needs is to be rebuilt from the bottom to the top. That’s how he’s going to get that confidence from the community.” It remains to be seen how much goodwill and patience Driggers’ efforts will earn the city in the wake of the shooting. The chief’s voice has quivered this week, and he occasionally appeared on the verge of tears as he addressed local and national news media. He often drew on his faith. “I have been praying for peace, peace for this family and peace for this community,” he said Wednesday after he and the mayor visited with Scott’s loved ones. “I will continue to stand on that as I strive to protect and serve.” People in the neighborhoods he serves, though, are clearly shocked. And angry. About 200 protesters amassed Wednesday morning in front of City Hall, the first organized rally since the video came to light. Members of Black Lives Matter Charleston, a grassroots group that formed after police-involved deaths in Missouri and New York, had figured that the day might come when the national conversation on the use of deadly force hit home. Signs thrust into the air were emblazoned with messages of “back turned, don’t shoot” and “stop racist police terror.” “I’m here on behalf of every father in this country, in this nation, that’s saying I’m tired of seeing this weekly, daily,” protester Calvin Bennett said. “The good cops know the bad cops. If you’re a good cop, do something about that.” The rally ended with protesters blocking nearby Mall Drive for 15 minutes. Some angry motorists yelled at them from their cars. But one got out to hug and link arms with the demonstrators. Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon, himself a former North Charleston police chief, said the delicate balance between civil rights and public safety is made even more difficult against the backdrop of Ferguson, Mo., and in the age of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. But in regard to the investigation in North Charleston, Cannon said, the process has shown to be valid. “It’s working here,” he said, “and it’s not working to satisfy anyone in particular. It’s working to satisfy justice.” 'A miracle' Some local community members have lauded Summey and Driggers for acting so quickly to fire Slager and condemn his actions when the video of the killing surfaced. Both of them also attended the protest Wednesday. Summey said the city offered a consolation to the officer’s wife, who is in her eighth month of pregnancy, by continuing to pay for her health insurance. Bill Saunders, a longtime civil rights activist who spent years documenting alleged police abuses as head of the North Charleston-based Committee on Better Racial Assurance, said he was stunned by the pair’s swift condemnation and pledge to seek justice. Saunders once had so little faith in the police that he issued an alert to young black men in 2006, warning them not to drive at night lest they encounter an officer. “What happened right now with this police officer being charged, it really is a miracle,” he said. “And I think one of the most impressive things to come out of this all is the position the mayor and chief of police have taken.” David J. Thomas, a professor and former police officer who serves as a senior research fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Police Foundation, said the public is generally willing to accept that police are human beings and subject to flaws. If goodwill exists between the chief and his community, they are more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt going forward. If not, tensions could continue to build, he said, and the city runs the risk of attracting people from outside the area who could ramp up the volume and intensity of the demonstrations. To stop that before it happens, observers and residents said prosecutors must also vigorously pursue the murder charge that Slager faces. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson vowed to pursue a grand jury indictment, likely next month, and let the public know about every court date. 'Moment like this' But investigators also must answer lingering questions. They must determine what Clarence Habersham, the first backup officer to show up at the shooting scene, saw when he got there. Slager had chased Scott to the secluded area near Remount Road and Rivers Avenue after he said he stopped Scott for a broken brake light about 9:30 a.m. Saturday. A young man who happened to be there started filming, and he told NBC News on Wednesday night that the pair were locked in a struggle on the ground. “They were down on the floor before I started recording,” Feidin Santana of Hanahan told NBC News. “The police had control of ... Scott. Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser. You can hear the sound of the Taser ... before I started recording.” The video does not show if Scott ever gained control of the Taser, but he appeared to slap something from the officer’s hands. Slager, who said he felt threatened because Scott had taken the device, fired eight .45-caliber bullets from his Glock 21. Five of them plunged into Scott’s body. In Slager’s radio communications that local and state agencies released Wednesday after the newspaper pointed out that they were public record, the officer said that Scott had been shot in the chest and the buttocks. All the bullets, though, hit Scott from behind, Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten said in a statement. The video showed the officer jogging back to an object that had fallen to the ground during the struggle. Slager dropped it near the body, but the footage also showed him later picking up something and attaching it to his duty belt. Habersham, a black officer, was standing near Slager. In protests Wednesday, residents cried out for the police chief to answer their questions about the video, and they balked when the city’s mayor asked for quiet so he could answer journalists’ questions. “Our community member died,” they chanted, “not the media’s.” Ed McClain, a retired pastor who has lived in North Charleston for all of his 75 years, was in the crowd. He had been encouraged by progress in the relationship between the police and the community. Getting body cameras would be another step in the right direction, he said. “But then there’s a moment like this,” McClain said, “when the trust is torn away.” William Pugh, a junior at Academic Magnet High School, said it’s impossible to live in a world where people don’t feel safe, and Scott’s killing makes it difficult to see the police in a good light as protectors of the community. “Being an African American young man, I cannot even describe what it’s like to know that events like this happen,” he said. “We have to change the system. We have to do something. And we have to stop letting these events happen.” Christina Elmore, Brenda Rindge and Melissa Boughton contributed to this report. Reach Andrew Knapp at 937-5414 or twitter.com/offlede. ||||| The Scott family told NBC News that they were expecting a visit from the mayor, the police chief and a chaplain on Wednesday morning. The confrontation occurred around 9:30 a.m. ET on Saturday after Slager pulled over Scott’s car because of a broken taillight. The video, which was first obtained by The New York Times, picks up after the stop. Slager is seen shooting at Scott eight times as he runs away in a vacant lot. Scott drops to the ground after the last shot and Slager walks over calmly and is shown handcuffing Scott’s arms behind his back. Other police officers and later EMS tried to administer CPR but Scott died at the scene, according to an incident report. The video provided to The New York Times does not show those efforts. The officer said the suspect took his Taser and that he feared for his life. "Shots fired. Subject is down. He grabbed my Taser," Slager says in a call to dispatchers. The video doesn't show Scott taking Slager's stun gun. But officials say Scott was hit with the officer's Taser because one of its projectiles was still attached to him. The Justice Department and the South Carolina Office of the FBI are also reviewing the incident, which comes on the heels of other police-related deaths involving unarmed black males in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Cleveland and New York's Staten Island. Slager was arrested less than an hour after the video, taken by a bystander, was provided to city and police officials. Attorney L. Chris Stewart, who is representing the Scott family, said the victim may have tried to run from the officer because he owed child support, which can get someone sent to jail in South Carolina until they pay it back. There were no violent offenses on his record, the attorney added. In his interview with TODAY, Walter Scott Sr. also suggested that his son ran because he owed child support. “I believe that he didn’t want to go to jail again,” he said. “He just ran away.” At a Tuesday news conference, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said the decision to charge the officer came after viewing the footage. Having to charge an officer is "not something that we like to hear or like to say but it goes to say how we work as a community: When you're wrong, you're wrong and if you make a bad decision, don't care if you're behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision," Summey said. Slager has been with the department for at least five years, officials said. North Charleston Police Chief Eddie Driggers called the incident a "tragic day" for many, but said the shooting shouldn't reflect on the department's 343 officers. "It is not reflective of the entire police department and the city of North Charleston," Driggers said. "One does not totally throw a blanket across the many, and I think that's true in life, so it is a tragic event." South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley added that the shooting, as it appears, is unacceptable. "I assure all South Carolinians that the criminal judicial process will proceed fully," she said in a statement. "This is a sad time for everyone in South Carolina, and I urge everyone to work together to help our community heal." At a news conference in front of the Scotts' Charleston home, his family remembered the father of four and Coast Guard veteran as a proud member of the community and said he “would never” have fought an officer over a Taser. “Out of my brothers, he was the most outgoing out of all of us,” Anthony Scott said. “He knew everybody. … He was well-known in the community everywhere. He was just an outgoing type of person, and loving and kind.” Anthony Scott said they were disturbed by initial reports that Slager said his brother grabbed the stun gun. “I think through the process, we have received the truth. We can’t get my brother back, and my family is in deep mourning for that,” Anthony Scott added. “But through the process, justice has been served. I don't think all police officers are bad cops, but there are some bad ones out there." Lawyers for the family said they are looking into filing a civil lawsuit against police. Attorney Stewart said the video will play key evidence. "For the first time in a long time, an officer is going to be charged," Stewart told reporters. "What happened today doesn’t happen all the time," he added. "What if there wasn't no video, what if there was no witness ... then this (murder charge against the officer) wouldn't have happened." The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| SEE YA David Aylor on his ex-client who’s been charged with murder after he was recorded shooting Walter Scott eight times in the back. The lawyer who first represented Michael Slager, the North Charleston police officer charged with murdering Walter Scott on Saturday, said he dropped his client soon after a video emerged showing Slager shooting Scott eight times as he ran away. Charleston attorney David Aylor told The Daily Beast that he took on Slager as a client on Saturday, the day of the shooting, and removed himself as counsel on Tuesday afternoon. Aylor said he wouldn't go into detail about his brief representation of Slager thanks to attorney-client privilege but he spoke generally about the situation. The following has been lightly edited for clarity. You were quoted as Officer Slager's attorney in the aftermath of this high-profile shooting but before the video came out. Now you're not his attorney anymore. What happened? I can't specifically state what is the reason why or what isn't the reason why I'm no longer his lawyer. All I can say is that the same day of the discovery of the video that was disclosed publicly, I withdrew as counsel immediately. Whatever factors people want to take from that and conclusions they want to make, they have the right to do that. But I can't confirm from an attorney-client standpoint what the reason is. When you were representing Slager, you said, “I believe once the community hears all the facts of this shooting, they’ll have a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding this investigation.” That was my belief at the time, that's why I made that statement. Now that the video is out, it seems the community has a much better understanding about what actually happened, and not necessarily in the officer's favor. What's your take on that new information? I think that there's been a release of information that was not public information at the time, or not discovered at the time at least to any knowledge of mine or anyone else publicly— at least the video. I can't comment on the specifics of what I think the video says. I'm not going to analyze the video, but again ... the video came out and within the hours of the video coming out, I withdrew my representation of the client. How did you come across the video? I can't say where I saw it first. I first became aware of it via the media. In fact, a reporter sent it to me via e-mail. These days, more and more people are carrying video recording devices on their phones and it's hard to not know if everything we do isn't being captured somehow. How do you, as an attorney, know to trust what you're saying about a client is true—and what do you do if you find out information that seems to refute it after you've made a statement? I'm not going to speak specifically to this case, but generally speaking as an attorney, when you're looking at a case you have to look at a number of different factors. One part is when you have a high-profile case, on behalf of your client and at the time due to their encouragement or what they're directing you to do, you make public statements based on the information you have. It's common in any type of case when you're a defense attorney that any kind of information that you're provided is limited throughout as far as what information you're given from your client compared to when you actually get to discovery or the evidence, moving all the way to the point of more additional evidence or witnesses coming out as the case progresses. So I think with any case it's always a changing situation, or it can be. Do you know whether Officer Slager knew someone was taping the incident? I can't say what my client did and didn't tell me, but I can tell you that I was not aware of the video, and I'm still not aware of who filmed the video, where the video came from, how the video got disclosed and who it was disclosed to first. As far as whether it was disclosed to authorities first or whether it went straight to the media, I don't even know the answer to that question now. Any other thoughts on this situation as his former attorney?

– With protests gaining steam, the city of North Charleston is trying to stay aggressive in its reaction to a white police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed black man: Officer Michael Slager, who already has been charged with murder, has been fired from the force, the mayor said today. Mayor Keith Summey also announced that every police officer in the city will wear body cameras from now on, reports the Post and Courier. "I have watched the video and was sickened by what I saw," said Police Chief Eddie Diggers of footage of the shooting taken by a bystander. As he spoke at a press conference, the AP reports that protesters interrupted him with chants of "no justice, no peace." "It looked like he was trying to kill a deer or something, running through the woods," Walter Scott Sr., father of the slain Walter Scott, tells NBC. Though Slager has been fired, the city will continue to pay his health insurance for a while because his wife is eight months' pregnant. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast reports that the attorney who initially represented Slager dropped him as a client as soon as video emerged of the shooting—but he's leaving it for others to connect the dots. "I can't specifically state what is the reason why or what isn't the reason why I'm no longer his lawyer," says David Aylor. "All I can say is that the same day of the discovery of the video that was disclosed publicly, I withdrew as counsel immediately."

An elderly Treasure Coast man is behind bars accused of murdering his ill, 78-year-old wife because he didn't have money for her medication. Related Photos William J. Hager, 86, charged with first degree premeditated murder. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office Related Photos William Hager, 86, killed Carolyn F. Hager, 78, his wife, in Port St. Lucie. William Hager, 86, was arrested Monday night and charged with premeditated, first-degree murder. Neighbor Sandy Ford said Carolyn F. and William Hager seemed like sweet people. "Tragic! I mean I came home yesterday and I couldn't believe it. In disbelief they seemed like such a nice couple, down the earth, seemed to be happy, so it was quite a shock," said Ford. Download app: iOS | Android According to an arrest affidavit, St Lucie County Sheriff's deputies were called to the 7800 block of Meadowlark Lane near Port St. Lucie at approximately 12:50 p.m. on May 16 for an alleged verbal dispute. The report stated that when deputies arrived on scene, Hager was on the phone and invited the deputies inside. Once the deputies were inside, he told them, "I have bad news. I shot my wife at 7:30 this morning. I want to apologize I didn't call earlier. I wanted to tell my kids what happened first." Deputies found his wife inside a bedroom, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Hager told deputies he had been thinking about killing his wife for several days because she was in pain. He said his wife has told him in the past that she wanted to die, but has never asked him to specifically kill her. “Obviously based on our conversation it was very personal to Mr. Hager. He felt that he was at a point that this was his only course of action," said Chief Deputy Garry Wilson. Hager was booked into the St. Lucie County Jail without bond. ||||| An 86-year-old Port St. Lucie man said he killed his wife while she slept because she was in poor health and he could no longer afford her medications, according to an arrest affidavit. William J. Hager said he had been thinking about killing his wife Carolyn for several days because she was in pain, the arrest report said. After Hager shot his wife, he went to his kitchen and drank coffee, called his daughters and later dialed 911, the affidavit said. “I want to apologize I didn’t call earlier, I wanted to tell my kids what happened first,” detectives quoted him as saying. The shooting happened around 7:30 Monday morning at 7865 Meadowlark Ln. in Port St. Lucie. At a Tuesday afternoon news conference the sheriff’s office said Carolyn Hager had been ill and suffering for around 15 years. Carolyn's neighbor says she knew behind Carolyn's beautiful art and garden work there was a woman in physical agony. ”I saw her outside and she said I haven't been feeling very well at all, I've been in excruciating pain with my back. And that's about all she said," said Sandy Ford, neighbor. That was a few days ago. Deputies say Carolyn was suffering from severe arthritis and other health issues. They will not release which medications Carolyn was on because of HIPPA confidentiality. "I don't understand it. Because my feeling in life is there's always a way. You just have to find it," said Ford. Records show the Hagers filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Staff at the Hands of St. Lucie County clinic say this is a tragic situation. They help people whose insurance won't cover necessary medications. "These stories you hear from quite many people, that they actually decide whether they are going to pay the electric bill this month or buy the drug that may be keeping them alive," said Andrew Passeri, Executive Director at Hands of St. Lucie County. It's unclear if Hager shared his financial situation with his family. Detectives say his daughters live out of state and will be in Florida later this week. "It's hard to comprehend, in a nice beautiful neighborhood like this you wouldn't expect anything like that from such sweet people," added Ford. The department says William took a job at Sears for a while to try and help pay for the medication. The sheriff's office said there are always options for people in a similar situation. Anyone with a crisis on the Treasure Coast or in Palm Beach County can call 2-1-1 to talk to a helpline representative who can refer them to community resources. Hager was transported to the St. Lucie County Jail and faces a charge of first-degree murder. Sign up for Breaking News emails Follow WPTV on Facebook and Twitter Follow @WPTV Download the WPTV app: ||||| (CNN) A man in Florida told police he killed his wife because she was in poor health and they could no longer afford the medications necessary for her care, according to an arrest affidavit from the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office. Police said William J. Hager, 86, told them on Monday that in the past his ill wife had told him she wanted to die, but she didn't specifically ask him to kill her. The shooting took place at their home in Port St. Lucie, which is north of West Palm Beach. The husband said he shot 78-year-old Carolyn Hager in the head while she slept, according to the arrest affidavit. Hager then drank coffee and called his children before contacting authorities, officials said. Officers were dispatched to their home about 1 p.m. Hager led them to a bedroom where his wife's body was covered in a blanket, the affidavit said. "I want to apologize I didn't call earlier. I wanted to tell my kids what happened first," a deputy quoted Hager as saying. Read More

– William Hager watched his 78-year-old wife, Carolyn, suffer from medical problems, including arthritis, for 15 years. But when the couple could no longer afford her medication, an ominous idea popped into his head, per CNN. Authorities say Hager, 86, called police around 1pm Monday, allegedly telling responding deputies, "I have bad news. I shot my wife at 7:30 this morning. I want to apologize I didn't call earlier. I wanted to tell my kids what happened first," reports WPBF. He said he shot his wife in the head as she slept because she previously said she wanted to die, was in pain, and couldn't afford medication, per an affidavit. "He felt that he was at a point that this was his only course of action," says the chief deputy in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Hager was booked in St. Lucie County Jail and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. A neighbor tells WPTV that Carolyn Hager had complained about "excruciating" back pain a few days earlier, but "they seemed like such a nice couple … so it was quite a shock." Another neighbor says she faced a similar situation when her husband couldn't afford his medication and asked her to shoot him, but she couldn't. "He suffered so badly and there's nothing you can do," she says, noting prescription medications should be more affordable. The Hagers filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and William took a job at Sears to help pay for Carolyn's medications; it isn't clear if he knew a local clinic helps people pay for medications not covered by insurance.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters Tuesday night that if the Justice Department does not appoint a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election, it will indicate that FBI Director James Comey’s sudden termination was “part of a cover up.” “Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?” he asked. Schumer says he questions both the timing of Comey’s firing as well as the reason given by the Justice Department—the mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails last summer and fall. “Why now? Why did it happen today?” Schumer asked, noting that if the Clinton missteps were the true reason, the Trump administration could have dismissed him in January. The leader of the Senate Democrats also expressed fears that the decision would create a chilling effect for next FBI director, who could fear getting fired if they “run afoul of the administration.” He also questioned why Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who publicly recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation in March, “played a role in firing the man leading it.” Schumer called the decision part of a “deeply troubling pattern,” noting the recent firings of two other top officials involved in investigating the Trump administration: U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara and Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Schumer was one of a small handful of officials Trump called personally earlier on Tuesday to give a heads up about Comey’s firing. “I told him, ‘Mr. President, with all due respect, you are making a big, big mistake,'” Schumer said. “He didn’t really answer.” Like many of his Democratic colleagues, Schumer is now demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation Comey was leading at the time of his termination. “The only way the American people can have faith in this investigation going forward is to have a fearless, independent special prosector,” he said. ||||| Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey , sweeping away the man who is responsible for the bureau's investigation into whether members of his campaign team colluded with Russia in its interference in last year's election. The bombshell announcement that sent shock and surprise ricocheting through Washington ends the career of the man who was once seen as the unimpeachable and nonpartisan ideal of how a law enforcement officer should behave. But Comey saw his reputation tarnished when he was dragged into the toxic politics of the 2016 campaign. The Trump administration attributed Comey's dismissal to his handling of the investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's email server, but Democrats ridiculed that notion, raising parallels to Watergate-era firings and suggested Comey was getting too close to the White House with the Russia probe. In any case, senior White House officials appeared to have badly misjudged the impact of Trump's sudden move. A source with knowledge of discussions inside the White House told CNN's Dana Bash that the thinking was that because Democrats were saying precisely what Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a letter explaining the grounds for Comey's dismissal, there would be no backlash. What was not thought through, apparently, was an explanation of why Comey was fired now, at a time when critics would immediately conclude it was because of the Russia probe. In recent days, Comey again came under fire for his handling of the investigation into Clinton's private email server. Many Democrats believe that his announcement that he was reopening the probe 11 days before the election cost the former secretary of state the presidency. Trump referred to Democrats' criticism of Comey Wednesday morning, tweeting, "The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017 Comey learned of his dismissal from televisions tuned to the news, as he was addressing the workforce at the FBI office in Los Angeles, law enforcement sources said. The source said he made a joke about it to lighten the mood and called his office to get confirmation. Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone was among those who recommended to the President that he fire Comey, according to a source familiar with the conversation. Stone, who also is being scrutinized by the FBI as part of its Russia investigation, spoke to Trump after Comey appeared at a hearing last week on Capitol Hill, according to the source. Trump immediately disputed that Stone was involved: "The Roger Stone report on @CNN is false - Fake News. Have not spoken to Roger in a long time - had nothing to do with my decision." The Roger Stone report on @CNN is false - Fake News. Have not spoken to Roger in a long time - had nothing to do with my decision. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017 Stone said he was not the source behind the reporting but added that he supported the firing of Comey "100%." A White House spokesperson reached out to CNN to reiterate the President's tweet that he has not spoken to Stone in a "long time," adding, "The President has not spoken to Roger Stone in many months and any reports suggesting otherwise are categorically untrue." The letters In a signed letter released by the White House, Trump informed Comey that he was "hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately," explaining that he reached the conclusion that Comey is "not able to effectively lead the bureau." "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump told Comey in the letter. "I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors." White House press secretary Sean Spicer, sandwiched in the dark between a gaggle of reporters and a large shrub on the White House driveway, described Trump's decision as arriving only after a long memo from the deputy attorney general, which Spicer said was delivered Tuesday, detailing Comey's shortcomings on investigating Clinton's emails. But multiple White House officials said Trump had been considering firing Comey for at least a week before he made Tuesday's decision. Indeed, Trump revealed his anger in a string of late-night messages on Twitter May 2, exactly a week before his final decision was made public. At the center of Rosenstein's rationale for recommending Comey's firing was the director's handling of the investigation into Clinton's private server, namely his decision to recommend no charges be filed and the news conference he held to explain his reasoning. JUST WATCHED Senator calls Comey firing 'shocking' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Senator calls Comey firing 'shocking' 01:03 Rosenstein accused Comey of attempting to "usurp the attorney general's authority" by publicly announcing why he felt the case should be closed without prosecution. "Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation," Rosenstein argued in his memo. "We should reject the departure and return to the traditions (of the bureau)," Rosenstein said. "The way the director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them." Congressional reaction But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump on the telephone that he had made a terrible mistake. "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the President?" Schumer asked. And in a sign of possible trouble for the administration, Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who is leading a Senate intelligence committee probe into alleged Russian influence on the election, expressed disquiet at the firing of Comey, which he described as a "loss for the bureau and the nation. "I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee," Burr said. As Democrats renewed their demands for a special counsel, arguing that the Trump Justice Department could not be trusted to oversee the case, Republicans insisted that one was not needed. "I think Rod Rosenstein, the new deputy attorney general, is competent to lead that effort," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the GOP leadership. But Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee said that though Rosenstein's rationale for removing Comey was sound, it, would "raise questions." Sen. John McCain added: "While the President has the legal authority to remove the director of the FBI, I am disappointed in the President's decision to remove James Comey from office." The Arizona senator renewed his request for a special congressional committee to review the Russia allegations. 'Absurd' CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was not buying the idea that Comey was sacked over the Clinton investigation, saying it was "absurd." Toobin branded the move a "grotesque abuse of power by the President of the United States." "This is not something that is within the American political tradition," Toobin said, comparing the sacking of Comey to President Richard Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal. "This is not normal. This is not politics as usual," said Toobin, though he added that Trump did have the legal authority to fire an FBI director. The White House, however, said that the impetus for the firing of Comey came from Rosenstein, noting that he was a career prosecutor who served under President Barack Obama as the US Attorney for Maryland, and was confirmed in his new job on April 25. A senior administration official said that Rosenstein assessed the situation upon taking office and concluded the FBI director had lost his confidence. He sent his recommendation to Sessions -- who has recused himself from the Russia investigation since he was a Trump adviser and campaign surrogate -- who forwarded it to Trump, who accepted it on Tuesday. JUST WATCHED Toobin: Trump admin going to put a stooge in Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Toobin: Trump admin going to put a stooge in 01:26 Team Clinton reaction Former Clinton campaign officials accused Trump of using the furor over Comey's handling of the email server as a ruse to get out from under the Russia investigation. "I was as frustrated, concerned and disappointed as anyone with Director Comey's handling of the email investigation, but President Trump just fired the man investigating how Russia meddled in our election and whether members of his campaign were involved, an investigation President Trump called a "charade" only 24 hours ago," said Clinton's former campaign manager, Robby Mook. "It's equally concerning that our attorney general, who lied about his own meetings with the Russians, approved Director Comey's firing," he said. One Trump loyalist, who worked on the campaign and the transition, gave his reaction to CNN's Jim Sciutto. "I firmly believe the Russia angle is fake news. But this gives me pause," the person said. Senior Justice Department and FBI officials said they were unaware of the Comey decision until the announcement. Officials who spoke to CNN said they were shocked by the development. Comey's term was due to run until 2023. The decade-long tenure was introduced to shield FBI directors from being drawn into politics, but the position is still subject to dismissal at the pleasure of the President. Comey's last appearance on Capitol Hill last week exacerbated doubts about his position. Just before news of his dismissal broke, his office issued a statement aiming to clear up his testimony that former Clinton aide Huma Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband's laptop. The note, signed by Gregory Brower, assistant director of the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs, clarified that the "hundreds and thousands of emails" that Comey said were 'forwarded" from Abedin to her husband's email "included emails transferred via backups as well as manual forwarding." The White House said it would immediately launch the search for a new FBI director. Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is now the acting FBI director, according to a message sent to employees by Sessions. Comey was appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. In so doing, he elevated a Republican law enforcement veteran who had been critical of the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush to the top domestic investigative and surveillance organization, among the most powerful posts in the world. In the decades since former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the controversial director who brought the FBI into the modern era, law enforcement has avoided the appearance of influencing politics the way Hoover did. But Comey's decision to thrust himself repeatedly into the 2016 election put him at odds with the FBI's general decision to stay away from the political spotlight. Comey made the decision in July to go public with his recommendation that the Justice Department not pursue any charges against Clinton or her former staffers over her email practices as secretary of state. However, he also took the opportunity to rebuke Clinton at length as being "extremely careless" with sensitive information. Then-candidate Trump had talked up the investigation until this point, at which time he and his campaign derided Comey for the "political" decision. Just days away from the election, Comey jumped into the race again. He informed Congress, via letter, that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Clinton. The decision was made because of its investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is married to Clinton confidant Huma Abedin. Comey followed up days later with another letter, informing Congress that the FBI didn't find anything and continued to believe Clinton's practices did not merit the pursuance of any criminal charges. After Clinton's loss, former President Bill Clinton blamed Comey for it, as have many Clinton staffers, at least in part. Last week, Hillary Clinton herself told CNN's Christiane Amanpour: "I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off." After taking office, Trump met with Comey at the White House. He offered a cryptic remark to the FBI chief. "Oh, here's Jim," Trump said in January. "He's become more famous than me." ||||| Calls to appoint an independent prosecutor have simmered for months, but until now, they had been voiced almost entirely by Democrats. Mr. Comey’s firing upended the politics of the investigation, and even Republicans were joining the call for independent inquiries. Read more » Subpoenas are issued in Flynn case In a sign of the F.B.I.’s intense interest in Mr. Trump’s advisers, a grand jury in Virginia recently issued subpoenas for records related to the former White House national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, according to an official familiar with the case. Mr. Flynn is being investigated for his financial ties to Russia and Turkey. Grand jury subpoenas are a routine part of federal investigations and are not a sign that charges are imminent. And it was not clear whether the subpoenas, first reported by CNN, were related to Mr. Comey’s firing. — Matt Apuzzo Trump to meet Russian foreign minister In an instance of bizarre timing and optics, the White House announced late Tuesday night that Mr. Trump will meet in the Oval Office with Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Wednesday morning. McCabe is acting director Image Andrew G. McCabe at a press conference in 2015. Mr. McCabe became the acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey was fired. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images At 7:57 p.m., F.B.I. employees received an email from Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially announcing their new boss. “The president of the United States has exercised his lawful authority to remove James B. Comey Jr. as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the email read. “By operation of law and effective immediately, deputy director Andrew McCabe assumed the position of acting director of the F.B.I. As you well know, the F.B.I. is an exceptional law enforcement and intelligence agency. It is made so by you, the devoted men and women who work tirelessly to keep our country safe. Thank you for your steadfast dedication and commitment during this time of transition.” — Rebecca R. Ruiz ||||| “It is essential that we find new leadership for the F.B.I. that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote, a remark that particularly upset agents who saw it as an insult to them. The White House has not said what precipitated the firing, a significant question because the Justice Department’s stated reasons were well known even when Mr. Trump decided in January to keep Mr. Comey on the job. Mr. Trump watched last week as Mr. Comey testified on Capitol Hill, offering his first public explanation of his handling of the Clinton email case. There, Mr. Comey said that he had no regrets about his decisions but that he felt “mildly nauseous” that his actions might have tipped the election to Mr. Trump. The Clinton controversy centers on a news conference Mr. Comey held last July, when he broke with longstanding tradition and policies by publicly discussing the Clinton case and chastising Mrs. Clinton’s “careless” handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign’s final days, Mr. Comey announced that the F.B.I. was reopening the investigation, a move that earned him widespread criticism. At the time, though, Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Mr. Sessions, praised Mr. Comey for actions that are now at the heart of the F.B.I. director’s firing. Mr. Trump “saw an opening” to fire Mr. Comey after the testimony, a White House official said. Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, argued against it, delaying — but not overruling — the decision. Mr. Trump received the documents from the Justice Department on Tuesday. Aides also compiled a stack of news clips criticizing Mr. Comey. Mr. Comey’s firing came hours after the F.B.I. corrected his testimony last week about how classified information ended up on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony D. Weiner.

– James Comey has been fired as FBI director by President Trump, the AP reports. ABC News tweeted a copy of the White House statement on the matter, which says that Trump acted "based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Trump says the move will mark "a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement." Senior government officials tell the New York Times that Sessions was given the job of coming up with a reason to fire Comey last week. Democratic leaders point out that Sessions had recused himself from the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign—an investigation Comey was leading, the New York Daily News reports. Rosenstein says Comey was fired for his handling of the Clinton email situation, saying he "cannot defend" Comey's behavior, the Times reports. Both Sessions and Trump had previously praised Comey's actions leading up to the election. According to Talking Points Memo, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer wonders if the Russia investigation was "getting too close to home" for Trump and calls for a special prosecutor to continue the investigation. CNN has a copy of Trump's termination letter to Comey, in which Trump says he "greatly appreciate[s]" Comey assuring him, "on three separate occasions," that he is not under investigation, but nonetheless he does not believe Comey can effectively lead the FBI. Comey, who was only three years into a 10-year term, learned of his firing from television reports, which began airing on screens behind him as he spoke to FBI employees in LA. The letter was subsequently delivered to FBI headquarters.

“They can put it out a week ahead of time because he’s not gonna challenge it,” said Jen Moreno, a staff attorney for the University of California Berkeley’s Death Penalty Clinic who specializes in lethal injection challenges. “They’re getting away with things that they probably wouldn’t get away with if he wasn’t a volunteer.” Normally, such a protocol could trigger a years-long court battle. But since Dozier has “volunteered” to give up his appeals and face the execution chamber, in death penalty parlance, the fight over Dozier’s future is almost at an end. Not only has fentanyl never been used in a U.S. execution, but Nevada also hasn’t executed an inmate in a dozen years. On Tuesday, just one week and a day before Dozier’s planned execution, Nevada unveiled its new, three-drug execution regimen. That protocol will include doses of midazolam, a controversial sedative deployed in several botched executions, fentanyl, and the paralytic drug cisatracurium. Here’s what is: The inmate, convicted murderer Scott Dozier, wants to die. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the state of Nevada wants to execute Dozier on Wednesday using fentanyl — the synthetic opioid best known for helping to push the nationwide opioid epidemic out of control. A death penalty state is slugging it out with civil rights lawyers over the planned execution of a death row inmate. That’s not so unusual. Read more A death penalty state is slugging it out with civil rights lawyers over the planned execution of a death row inmate. That’s not so unusual. Here’s what is: The inmate, convicted murderer Scott Dozier, wants to die. And if that wasn’t bizarre enough, the state of Nevada wants to execute Dozier on Wednesday using fentanyl — the synthetic opioid best known for helping to push the nationwide opioid epidemic out of control. Not only has fentanyl never been used in a U.S. execution, but Nevada also hasn’t executed an inmate in a dozen years. On Tuesday, just one week and a day before Dozier’s planned execution, Nevada unveiled its new, three-drug execution regimen. That protocol will include doses of midazolam, a controversial sedative deployed in several botched executions, fentanyl, and the paralytic drug cisatracurium. Normally, such a protocol could trigger a years-long court battle. But since Dozier has “volunteered” to give up his appeals and face the execution chamber, in death penalty parlance, the fight over Dozier’s future is almost at an end. “They can put it out a week ahead of time because he’s not gonna challenge it,” said Jen Moreno, a staff attorney for the University of California Berkeley’s Death Penalty Clinic who specializes in lethal injection challenges. “They’re getting away with things that they probably wouldn’t get away with if he wasn’t a volunteer.” Read more: Death penalty states are looking for new ways to execute people So far, the Nevada Department of Corrections has released a one-page press release and an execution manual with several redacted sections. Brooke Santina, a Nevada Department of Corrections spokesperson, told VICE News that agency protocol only requires them to release that information seven days prior to an execution. “We are following our protocol exactly,” she said. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has already launched into litigation over the new execution plan. In papers filed Tuesday, the organization asked the state to turn over records explaining how and why it acquired the new execution drugs, and more details about how, exactly, Dozier’s execution will play out. “Without this information being public, there’s no oversight as to how the execution will occur,” Lauren Kaufman, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Nevada, said Wednesday, shortly after a judge ordered the Nevada Department of Corrections to hand over some of those records. “Who is taking charge of this really most consequential action?” Read more: Some of the most important details of Arkansas' execution spree will remain secret Nevada opted to use fentanyl in Dozier’s execution amid a national shortage of lethal injection drugs. Because drug manufacturers and distributors are increasingly reluctant to let their wares be used in lethal injections, states have been forced to rewrite decades-old protocols, rely on untested drugs, and fight courtroom battles over their new execution plans. In March, Oklahoma announced that its lack of lethal injection drugs left it with no choice but to change its preferred method of execution to “nitrogen hypoxia,” which involves depriving prisoners of oxygen and has never been used in any state- or nation-sanctioned execution. As Fordham University professor Deborah Denno wrote in a 2014 article, “Reliance on drugs may end up accomplishing what countless legal challenges could not: drug shortages have devastated this country’s execution process to an unparalleled degree.” Originally, Nevada also planned to put Dozier to death in November, using diazepam — a drug better known by its brand name Valium — in place of the midazolam. But Clark County District Judge Jennifer Togliatti halted Dozier’s execution and ordered Nevada to drop cisatracurium from its execution protocol, ruling that the regimen could unconstitutionally mask signs of Dozier’s suffering if the diazepam and fentanyl were poorly administered. Dozier was convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon in 2007, after authorities found two dismembered bodies. He has said that he hates life in prison. “I’ve got a surplus of time on my hands and a catastrophic dearth of intelligence, hilarity, and awesomeness,” Dozier told a VICE music editor in a fan letter in 2013. Still, Dozier’s willingness to drop his appeals doesn’t mean that lawyers won’t go to court over his case. “It doesn’t relieve the lawyer or the judicial system of their obligation to examine the legal issues in the case,” explained Sean O’Brien, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law who’s argued several capital punishment cases. “Just because he wants to be executed, doesn’t mean the state gets to execute him in a cruel and unusual manner. No one is allowed to pick that.” By the time the Nevada Supreme Court overturned Togliatti’s order in May, over procedural issues, Nevada’s supply of diazepam had expired. Midazolam, the state’s replacement, was first used in an execution in Florida in 2013. Its popularity in lethal injections has only grown over recent years, despite being used in botched executions in Alabama, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma. “We’ve kind of moved into the realm of human experimentation with executions,” O’Brien said. The ACLU of Nevada isn’t seeking to delay Dozier’s execution. “At this point, Mr. Dozier is really the only person who is going to be able to halt his own execution,” Kaufman explained. “So if he were to change his mind, then absolutely he would be able to stop it.” If the execution goes on as planned, Dozier will become the first person to die in Nevada’s new execution chamber. It cost about $860,000 to construct. Tune in to VICE News Tonight on HBO on July 10 to hear an exclusive interview with Scott Dozier as he faces execution by an experimental drug cocktail including fentanyl. Cover image: Nevada death row inmate Scott Dozier appears in a Las Vegas court via video on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017. (Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal) ||||| Questions raised about whether the state’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the drug, which is at the heart of the US opioid epidemic Nevada plans to carry out the first execution using fentanyl, a drug at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, on Wednesday. The state intends to use a synthetic opioid – involved in more than 20,000 overdose deaths in 2016 alone – to kill Scott Dozier, a double murderer, after finding it difficult to obtain other drugs for Nevada’s first execution in 12 years because of opposition from pharmaceutical manufacturers. But questions have been raised about whether Nevada’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the fentanyl, and whether the multibillion dollar distribution company that provided the drug ignored evidence it was to be used in an execution. Pills that kill: why are thousands dying from fentanyl abuse? Read more Fentanyl has moved to the centre of the opioid epidemic as a powerful and dangerous illicit powder, one hundred times more potent than morphine and frequently mixed with heroin or pressed into fake prescription pills. But it is also sold as a prescription painkiller, including a version for injection which can kill in higher dosages. “Using fentanyl in an execution is particularly strange and confusing because of its place in the opioid epidemic,” said the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, Amy Rose. “But on top of that it’s never been used in an execution before. It’s extremely experimental. There is a very real risk of a botched execution.” Dozier will be injected with fentanyl and two other drugs. One of them is a sedative, midazolam, involved in a number of executions where the condemned man has been seen convulsing, gasping and in evident pain before death. “It has been at the centre of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used,” said Maya Foa, the director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve. “Now it’s being used with fentanyl. This is an entirely novel protocol across the United States.” Foa said that states are usually obliged by the appeals process to subject the planned method of execution to legal scrutiny, particularly when a new drug protocol is being used. But Dozier has waved appeals and said he wants to die so the combination of medicines to be used to kill him has not been examined in court. Death penalty states have been forced to find different cocktails of drugs for executions in the face of opposition from manufacturers to having their medicines used in lethal injections . That has led states to try whatever mix of drugs they can buy, often in secrecy. The Nevada authorities refused to make public how they obtained the fentanyl and other drugs, but last week the ACLU won a court ruling forcing the department of corrections to hand over invoices. They show that it placed multiple small orders over a number of months, sometimes just one day after the previous order. It is not clear if this was an attempt to avoid drawing the attention a single large order of fentanyl would bring. Opioid crisis: lawmakers accuse drug executives of fueling epidemic Read more The drugs were ordered from one of the US’s largest pharmaceutical distribution companies, Cardinal Health, which is among wholesalers facing a barrage of lawsuits accusing them of profiteering from the opioid epidemic by delivering vast quantities of prescription painkillers to small pharmacies and ignoring evidence they were being used by people addicted to the drugs. Rose said the rights group is examining why the distributor delivered the drug to the Nevada prison authorities even after it was publicly known they intended to use fentanyl to kill Dozier. “It’s concerning that Cardinal Health would sell it to the department of corrections if it knew the drugs would be used in executions,” she said. Rose said the ACLU is seeking more documentation to see if the Nevada authorities “lied to Cardinal in any way”. Last year, Cardinal Health paid a $44m fine for failing to adhere to regulations intended to prevent opioids falling into the hands of those addicted to the drugs. The company was not immediately available for comment. The ACLU has also raised questions about the legality of the state’s actions in buying the drugs. The law allows only those doctors and medical institutions with a Drug Enforcement Administration-issued licence to obtain and administer scheduled medicines. Rose said it appears that the fentanyl was bought by one arm of the prison authorities with the necessary licence but then passed on to the execution site where there is no such authority to handle what is supposed to be a tightly controlled drug. “The DEA licence they used to obtain these drugs is the regular department of corrections hospital clinic in Las Vegas. But the department of corrections doesn’t have a licence to administer the drugs at the execution,” she said.

– Critics are warning about the "very real risk of a botched execution" in what is to be the first US case of capital punishment using fentanyl. With manufacturers unwilling to sell any drugs to be used in executions, Nevada's Department of Corrections quietly purchased small doses of fentanyl from Cardinal Health over several months and plans to use the prescription painkiller in combination with paralytic drug cisatracurium and sedative midazolam in the state's first execution in 12 years, scheduled for Wednesday, per the Guardian and Vice. Critics, however, are putting up a fuss, and not only due to the secretive way officials went about acquiring the drug. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid well known for its role in the opioid epidemic, has "never been used in an execution before. It's extremely experimental," as Amy Rose of the American Civil Liberties Union puts it. Especially concerning is the fact that the fentanyl will be mixed with midazolam, which "has been at the center of executions that have gone visibly wrong in every single state in which it has been used," says Maya Foa of anti-death penalty group Reprieve. She tells the Guardian execution strategies are normally reviewed by courts through inmate appeals. Not so in this case, as double murderer Scott Dozier—convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 and first-degree murder in 2007—accepts his fate and says he wants to die. It's unclear if there's enough opposition to stave off the execution, though the ACLU is looking into the legality of how Nevada obtained the fentanyl. But if it goes ahead, Gov. Brian Sandoval "is in danger of creating the very black market he is trying to eliminate," pharmaceutical expert Donald Downing argues at the Reno Gazette Journal.

Andrew Gillum addresses his supporters after winning the Democrat primary for governor on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon) (Associated Press) Andrew Gillum addresses his supporters after winning the Democrat primary for governor on Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon) (Associated Press) TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) — A liberal Florida Democrat pulled off an upset victory while President Donald Trump's favored candidate cruised to an easy win Tuesday, setting up a fierce showdown for the governor's mansion in the nation's largest political battleground. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, an unabashed progressive, won the Democratic primary, moving him a step away from becoming the state's first black governor. He'll face off against Trump-backed Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis gave Trump credit for his victory, saying that with one supportive tweet, the president "kind of put me on the map." Gillum is his party's third black gubernatorial nominee this year, along with Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Ben Jealous in Maryland. The results immediately transformed the Florida race into one of the most closely watched gubernatorial campaigns in the country. Gillum's primary victory could help Democrats boost enthusiasm among minorities who often don't vote in large numbers in years when a presidential candidate isn't on the ballot. Meanwhile, DeSantis will test Trump's grip on a crucial state he won in 2016 and wants to keep in his column in 2020. DeSantis was one of several Republicans running in contests Tuesday in Florida and Arizona — another closely watched political battleground — who hoped that cozying up to the president would be rewarded by voters. Trump has thrust himself into the forefront of the midterm campaign in hopes of motivating his supporters and offsetting Democratic enthusiasm. In Arizona, primary contests were shadowed by the death of Sen. John McCain. Though McCain was a towering figure who was elected to the Senate by Arizonans six times, the three Republican candidates running to replace his retiring seat-mate, Sen. Jeff Flake — including establishment favorite Rep. Martha McSally — aligned themselves more with the president than the longtime senator. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey planned to name a replacement to fill McCain's seat after his funeral. Polls closed in Arizona at the end of a day that began with delayed openings at dozens of polling locations in the state's largest county. Leaders in Maricopa County rejected calls to try to keep polls open later, saying it may confuse voters and delay returns. No problems were reported elsewhere in the state. Elsewhere Tuesday, GOP voters in reliably Republican Oklahoma backed mortgage company owner Kevin Stitt in a runoff for the gubernatorial nomination. Stitt won in part by criticizing his opponent as insufficiently supportive of Trump. Trump surprised Florida Republicans late last year with his endorsement of DeSantis, and frequently tweeted about the lawmaker, one of his staunchest supporters in Washington. His backing helped push DeSantis past Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who has held elected office in Florida since 1996, quickly built up establishment support and raised millions of dollars. Gillum came from behind in a crowded and diverse Democratic field. Former Rep. Gwen Graham, whose father, Bob Graham, served as governor, had hoped to position herself to become the state's first female governor. Gillum, a favorite of progressives, spent the least of the five major Democratic candidates and had the smallest television presence. He often said he was the only candidate in the race who wasn't a millionaire or billionaire, and won the endorsement of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. At a victory party in Tallahassee, Gillum thanked supporters who "took hold of our vision and our mission and our plan for a state that makes room for all of us, not just the well-heeled and the well-connected, but all of us." The winner of the Florida governor's race will give his or her party an advantage in a key political battleground heading into the 2020 presidential campaign. Florida Gov. Rick Scott is vacating the governor's mansion to run for Senate. He easily won his primary, setting up a showdown with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson that is expected to be one of the nation's most competitive races. Democrats also eyed pickup opportunities in Florida as they try to flip control of the U.S. House. One of their best chances is in South Florida, where Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring in a district that should favor Democrats. Donna Shalala, who served as President Bill Clinton's Health and Human Services secretary, claimed the Democratic nomination in Ros-Lehtinen's district. The contests in both Florida and Arizona were being closely watched for signs of how the political battlegrounds might tilt in the 2020 presidential election. McCain's death has highlighted anew the shift in the Republican Party since he captured the GOP nomination for president in 2008. With his consistently conservative voting record, Arizonans elected McCain to the Senate six times, including in 2016. But his more moderate stance on immigration and his deciding vote last year against Trump's efforts to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law turned off many GOP voters. A CNN survey in June found that 67 percent of Democrats had a favorable opinion of McCain, while just 33 percent of Republicans did. Among those on the Arizona ballot was former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who tried unsuccessfully to unseat McCain in 2016. When McCain's family said last week that he was discontinuing medical treatment, Ward speculated in a later-deleted Facebook post that the announcement was intended to hurt her campaign for Flake's seat. Ward apologized Monday, saying she was bemoaning media coverage rather than the family's announcement. "I do understand how many could have misconstrued my comments as insensitive, and for this I apologize," Ward said. Also running for the Senate nomination was former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the controversial immigration hardliner. Trump spared Arpaio a possible jail sentence last year by pardoning his federal conviction stemming from immigration patrols. McSally, a fighter pilot turned congresswoman in the McCain mold, was hoping Ward and Arpaio split Arizona's anti-establishment vote. The winner of the GOP primary is likely to face Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who had only token primary opposition. Sinema announced that she was pausing her campaign Wednesday and Thursday, when McCain's body will lie in Arizona's Capitol. Sinema's and McSally's Senate runs also have created House openings in Arizona, a fast-growing and increasingly diverse state where Democrats are eager to gain a foothold. McSally's district in particular is expected to be one of the most competitive House races in November's general election. ___ Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Joe Reedy in Tallahassee, Florida, Nicholas Riccardi in Phoenix, Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City, AP polling editor Emily Swanson in Washington, Kelli Kennedy in Miami and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale contributed to this report. ___ On Twitter, follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Brendan Farrington at http://twitter.com/bsfarrington ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Andrew Gillum has become the first African-American nominee for Florida governor, pulling off an upset win over favorite Gwen Graham and two big-spending businessmen in a crowded Democratic primary field. The Tallahassee mayor will face Jacksonville congressman Ron DeSantis, who easily defeated state agriculture commissioner Adam Putnam thanks to the backing of President Donald Trump. “We’re going to bring this thing home,” Gillum told his election night gathering in Tallahassee. “As the mayor of Florida’s capital city, I humbly accept the Democratic nomination.” Gillum never led in any public polling, but was showing signs of gaining momentum in the final weeks. He benefited from being chosen by the progressive wing of the party’s most generous benefactors ― including billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros ― as well as from a barrage of negative ads against Graham by billionaire Jeff Greene. Greene wound up finishing fourth in the five-way pack, but he spent $10 million on ads attacking Graham ― more than she spent on television on her own behalf. Liberal outside groups, meanwhile, coalesced around Gillum and served as his turnout operation, particularly in urban areas with large concentrations of younger and minority voters. Gillum, 39, had difficulty raising money for his campaign after the revelation that the FBI was investigating Tallahassee city government. He says he heard he is not a target of the probe, but one of his closest friends and a former political ally has been the subject of federal subpoenas examining a restaurant he developed in part using city money. Gillum wound up raising the least money of the five candidates ― $8.4 million between his campaign and a political committee under his control. In contrast, Greene raised $43 million, $40 million from himself. And Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine, who started airing TV ads 10 months ago and led the race for several months, raised a total of $41 million, of which $29.5 million was his own cash. But throughout the race, Gillum’s embrace of progressive ideals such as Medicare for all and his engaging public speaking style made him a favorite of the party’s most liberal activists. In the final weeks, he was endorsed by Vermont senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who campaigned with Gillum in the closing days of the race. Gillum cut his teeth on political activism as a student government leader at Florida A&M University just a few blocks from Florida’s Capitol, where he led protests against Gov. Jeb Bush’s plan to revamp the state’s affirmative action programs. He went to work for People for the American Way before running for a seat on the Tallahassee City Commission in 2003. He became the city’s mayor in 2014. Christopher Aluka Berry/Reuters Andrew Gillum addresses the audience at the Netroots Nation annual conference for political progressives in Atlanta on Aug. 10, 2017. The Florida gubernatorial race will now become a referendum on Trump’s presidency, with Gillum painting DeSantis as a Trump clone and DeSantis hoping to bring out as many Trump voters as he can in November. Trump has spent winter weekends and holidays at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach for years and considers himself a part-time resident of the state. It is unclear how frequently, if at all, he will campaign for DeSantis in the two months leading up to the Nov. 6 general election. Whether Republicans retain control of Congress could determine the survival of the Trump presidency, and his political advisers may choose to focus his time on House and Senate seats. Trump campaigned with DeSantis only once during the primary, at a rally in Tampa in July, and sent out a handful of supportive statements on Twitter, including the message “VOTE FOR RON” in all capitals late Monday. But in a GOP primary electorate bearing little resemblance to the one that supported former Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Sen. Connie Mack, Trump’s seal of approval allowed DeSantis to overcome enormous disadvantages in cash and traditional support. The state Republican establishment was solidly behind Putnam even before he announced his candidacy. From a cattle ranching and citrus family in the heart of the state, Putnam had been grooming himself for this run from the time he graduated college. He won a state legislative seat at age 22, then moved to Congress four years later, returning to Florida in 2010 to run for state agriculture commissioner. He served two terms, coinciding with Rick Scott’s years as governor, and had appeared the heir apparent to the job as Scott leaves because of term limits. DeSantis, in contrast, entered politics just six years ago, when he ran for Congress from the wealthy suburbs of Jacksonville, his hometown, after serving as a Navy prosecutor. His deployment to Iraq during President George W. Bush’s “troop surge” there was a highlight of his biography on the campaign trail. Despite the populist, pro-Trump rhetoric he has delivered for years from the Fox TV studio near the U.S. Capitol, DeSantis graduated from Yale and received a law degree from Harvard. Carlos Barria/Reuters President Donald Trump talks with Ron DeSantis during a Make America Great Again Rally at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, Florida, on July 31, 2018. And while Putnam also praised Trump repeatedly on the campaign trail, his standing with Trump likely was irreparably damaged in October 2016 after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape that featured Trump bragging that his celebrity enabled him to grab women by the genitals. Putnam criticized Trump for the remarks, while DeSantis did not. DeSantis leaned on Trump’s approval heavily, mentioning it often in stump speeches and in TV ads. He even produced an ad using his young children as props, dressing up his infant in a “Make America Great Again” onesie. Yet while DeSantis’ love for and from Trump clearly helped him against Putnam in the Republican primary, it may wind up hurting him in the November election against Gillum. Trump is not popular with many independents and even some moderate Republicans. Democrat Margaret Good defeated the son of sitting Republican congressman Vern Buchanan in a special election for a state House seat in Sarasota earlier this year, even though the district leans solidly Republican. Florida Democrats have not won a governor’s race since 1994, when Lawton Chiles won a second term by defeating Republican Jeb Bush. The party has come within a single percentage point in both 2010 and 2014, losing both times to Scott. ||||| President Trump’s favored candidate, GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis, defeated state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday after riding the wave of the president's enthusiastic endorsement to victory. Meanwhile, the Bernie Sanders-backed Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum pulled off a major upset in defeating a half a dozen rivals, including former Rep. Gwen Graham, in the Democratic primary. DeSantis and Gillum will face each other in November's general election. If he triumphs, Gillum would be the state's first black governor. During a celebration event in Orlando, DeSantis thanked the president for "viewing me as somebody who could be a great leader for Florida." "Our victory is a good victory, anyways," DeSantis said, complimenting Putnam on a hard-fought race. "But man, to beat someone of his caliber is a big, big deal." The president repeatedly had implored voters to support DeSantis over Putnam. Trump offered his congratulations on Twitter. "Such a fantastic win for Ron DeSantis and the people of the Great State of Florida," Trump tweeted. "Ron will be a fantastic Governor. On to November!" Appearing on the "Ingraham Angle" later, DeSantis downplayed the notion that his win was due to the president's backing, and touted his record on combatting environmental problems, illegal immigration, and education reform. "We've been talking about these key issues time and time again and we're going to continue to do that and spread the message far and wide," he said. Gillum, Tallahassee’s progressive mayor backed by the Democratic-socialist Sanders, shocked observers with his win, as Graham, the daughter of former Florida Governor and Sen. Bob Graham, led in pre-election polls. "I'm truly honored to represent people across the state as the Democratic nominee -- and I promise to stand up for everyday Floridians and the issues that matter most," Gillum tweeted after his win. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist star running for New York's 14th district, praised Gillum for staking out liberal positions by supporting Medicare for all, legalizing marijuana and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “The progressive movement is transforming the country - and he proved that again tonight,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. In the state's closely-watched Senate contest, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday easily won the GOP nomination. He faced a challenge from perennial candidate Roque De La Fuente. "Congratulations to Governor Rick Scott of Florida on his conclusive Republican Primary Win," Trump, who encouraged Scott to run, tweeted. "He will be a great Senator!" Scott, who is term-limited as governor, is set to face incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in what surely will be one of the most closely watched Senate races in November. Nelson ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. But much of the attention in the run-up to Tuesday's vote had been on the contentious Republican gubernatorial primary between DeSantis and Putnam. During a Fox News-sponsored debate in June, DeSantis played up Trump’s backing of his campaign, expressing doubt that Putnam adequately supported Trump. “I am proud to have the endorsement of President Trump in this race,” DeSantis said. DeSantis, 39, is an Iraq War veteran and decorated military lawyer who has served in the U.S. House since 2013. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Putnam, 44, also played up his support for Trump, but emphasized, “I am focused on Florida.” As for the Senate race, Republicans are hoping Scott could flip the seat in a battle with Nelson, one of the Democratic Party’s most vulnerable incumbents. Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in Florida in the 2016 presidential race by less than 2 percentage points. It was a good night for incumbents in House races in Florida, as Republican Carlos Curbelo and Democrat Stephanie Murphy were among those who beat back primary challengers. National Democrats have eyed Curbelo's 26th congressional district as a potential pickup target, in large part because it voted heavily for Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But with almost all precincts reporting, approximately 2,500 more people had turned out to vote in the GOP primary than in the Democratic primary. Curbelo garnered 84 percent of the vote against primary opponent Souraya Faas, who described Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as "heroes" and claimed chemical attacks in Syria's civil war were "staged." In November, Curbelo will face Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former associate dean at the Florida International University Medical School and Democratic candidate for state Senate. Murphy, who unseated GOP incumbent John Mica in 2016, easily defeated a primary challenge in the 7th District from Chardo Richardson, who was backed by Ocasio-Cortez. She will face Florida state Rep. Mike Miller in November's general election. Fox News’ Samuel Chamberlain, Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Mike Arroyo and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

– Andrew Gillum pulled off an upset victory in Florida on Tuesday to become the state's first black nominee for governor, the AP reports. The Bernie Sanders-backed liberal Democrat, currently the mayor of Tallahassee, will run against President Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis, Fox News reports, results that the AP says "immediately transformed the Florida race into one of the most closely watched gubernatorial campaigns in the country." The Huffington Post says the November election will be "a referendum" on the president. Trump congratulated DeSantis on Twitter after his win. More from the primaries in Florida and Arizona, both closely watched political battleground states, plus a runoff election in Oklahoma on Tuesday: Florida Senate race: Current Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is term-limited in that role, won the GOP nomination and will run against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and is seen as vulnerable.

“This is definitely No. 1 for me as far as surprise factor,” Trooper Miguel Rincon said. (Source: Arizona Department of Public Safety) A state trooper said he just happened to be in the right place at the right time Saturday, Nov. 14 when an expectant mother was about to give birth on the side of the road. A car pulled up behind Trooper Miguel Rincon on State Route 80 outside Bisbee and a woman ran up to him saying that she was rushing her granddaughter to the hospital. Courtney Benavidez said she called her grandmother for a ride to the hospital after her water broke. Adrian Borquez, her husband, was in Phoenix for the night because no one expected a baby for another two weeks. But that expectation changed once Benavidez climbed in her grandmother’s car on the way to the hospital. Baby Carter was on his way regardless of the setting. “I just knew there was no stopping him coming,” Benavidez said. “So he made his debut and came on the side of the road.” Rincon said he left the traffic stop he was tending to at the time and ran to his car to call for medics and grab some gloves and blankets. By the time he returned to the car, Rincon found Benavidez already holding her newborn. “Everything happened so quickly that there wasn’t really time to think about much,” he said. So quickly, in fact, that Borquez said it helped the family decide on a middle name for their son. Down to two options, Mom and Dad decided on “Jet” because of Carter’s speedy arrival. “I think Jet was very appropriate,” joked Benavidez. Rincon wrapped the baby boy in blankets and cared for him and his mother until medics arrived on scene. Both are doing fine and were discharged the next day from Canyon Vista Medical Center in Sierra Vista. A certified peace officer with DPS since 2008, Rincon said this is his best experience since joining the force. “You’re always thinking criminal activity,” he said. “This is definitely No. 1 for me as far as surprise factor.” Copyright 2015 Tucson News Now. All rights reserved. ||||| TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona highway trooper getting ready to cite a speeding driver instead wound up helping a woman in another car who delivered a baby boy on the side of the road. This photo taken Saturday, Nov. 14, 2015 and provided by Courtney Benavidez, Benavidez takes a selfie while holding her newborn after giving birth in a car on the side of the road near Bisbee, Ariz. Benavidez’... (Associated Press) In this photo provided by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Trooper Miguel Rincon, left, holding Benavidez's newborn son Carter Jett, poses for a photo with Courtney Benavidez and her husband,... (Associated Press) Trooper Miguel Rincon was conducting a traffic stop Saturday on a highway near the southern Arizona town of Bisbee when a car pulled up behind him. The driver told Rincon that her granddaughter was about to give birth and that they needed an ambulance. But the baby couldn't wait. Courtney Benavidez gave birth in the car. The baby was out before Rincon even had time to run over to her. He let the speeding driver go. Benavidez named the boy Carter Jett, a reference to how quickly he was born. She was in labor for only about an hour and a half. He grandmother was driving her to the hospital, but Benavidez couldn't make it. The women pulled over when they saw the trooper's patrol car. "I was just in shock, and I couldn't believe it," Benavidez told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think I went pale." Rincon, a seven-year veteran with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, said he stayed calm and handed Benavidez a blanket for the baby. An ambulance arrived and took mom and infant to the hospital. They were released the next day and are in good health. "I'm just absolutely thankful and blessed because things could have gone down south very quickly, and I'm just thankful that everything turned out OK," Benavidez said. Rincon said he doesn't have medical training to deliver a baby, but his instincts kicked in as he ran to get a blanket for the newborn. "The only training I can say is I do have three kids of my own, so that kind of makes me a little familiar with the process," he said. Benavidez, a third-grade teacher, said she was shocked by how quickly things moved. Her 4-year-old daughter was born after 12 hours of labor, and she wasn't expecting such a speedy delivery. "It's very surreal how it happened, but I'm so thankful that everything turned out OK and we're all OK," she said.

– Miguel Rincon was trying to settle up a speeding violation Saturday on a highway outside Bisbee, Ariz., when things went in a totally unexpected direction. A car pulled up behind him, and the driver told Rincon that her granddaughter was about to give birth, the AP reports. But Courtney Benavidez couldn't wait for an ambulance—that baby was coming right there in her car. Rincon alerted medics and rushed back to his patrol car to get gloves and blankets, per KSAZ. But by the time he returned to the pregnant mom, she was no longer pregnant. Little Carter Jett—so named for his super-speedy entrance—had arrived. "I just knew there was no stopping him coming," Benavidez tells Tucson News Now, explaining that her husband was out of town because the baby wasn't due for another two weeks. "He made his debut … on the side of the road." As for Rincon, he tells the AP he's had no official training in birthing babies, but "I do have three kids of my own, so that kind of makes me a little familiar with the process." He also let the speeding driver go. (At least she knew the baby was on its way—this Massachusetts woman had no clue.)

Imagine for a moment that all of the nation's fast-food establishments--all the striped awnings and golden arches, the drive-thru windows, the beckoning dollar deals and wafting odor of French fries--were to vanish overnight. Would the number of our kids who carry an unhealthful amount of extra weight plummet? The answer is very likely no, says a study published Thursday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Because if you shut off the supply of 24-ounce fountain drinks, bacon cheeseburgers, fried chicken and stuffed tacos, the children who frequently eat at fast-food restaurants will go home and do what they generally do when not eating at a fast-food restaurant: They'll snarf cookies and chips, chug sugar-sweetened soda from a bottle, and heat up frozen pizzas. In a new study, researchers from the University of North Carolina led by nutrition professor Barry Popkin have found that even when they are not eating at fast-food restaurants, children who frequent them tend to eat food that would probably make many of them overweight or obese anyway. The authors of the latest research combed through a national database of Americans' health and nutrition behaviors and grouped 4,466 American kids--from ages 2 to 18--according to what they ate when they were not eating food purchased at a fast-food restaurant. RELATED: Foods that affect your risk of cancer Participants were designated "Western diet" consumers if their consumption from non-fast-food sources was relatively high in saturated fats and added sugars. Those classified as following a "prudent diet" ate more fruits and vegetables, leaner proteins and less added sugar and saturated fat. After doing so, they went back to the children's detailed food consumption records and categorized them as nonconsumers of fast food (those whose food tracking records indicated no calories consumed from a restaurant or eating establishment without servers), low consumers (whose food tracking records indicated that no more than 30% of their calories came from such an establishment), and high consumers (for whom more than 30% of calories consumed came from a fast-food restaurant). The result: Those who followed the Western dietary pattern when not dining at fast-food restaurants--even those who were considered "nonconsumers" of fast food--had the highest rates of being overweight or obese. Those who followed a "prudent diet" when not dining on fast food--even those who were considered high consumers of fast food--were significantly less likely to be overweight or obese. On average, low consumers of fast food were 1.5 times as likely to follow a Western diet pattern of consumption than people who were considered nonconsumers of fast food. High consumers of fast food were 2.2 times as likely to do so. "Our findings suggest that the location where foods are obtained may not be as important as the nutritional quality of the foods consumed," the authors wrote. They also suggest that "the effect of public health efforts targeted at fast food restaurants may also be overestimated, such that these efforts may be necessary but not sufficient to reduce child obesity if the remainder of the diet is not addressed." The study was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the authors--Jennifer M. Poti, Kiyah J. Duffy and Popkin--declared they had no financial conflicts of interest with respect to the article. ||||| Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina has found that fast food isn’t necessarily the cause of childhood obesity – it’s a symptom. The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, said poor dietary habits that obese children learn at home are the main cause of their weight problems. “This is really what is driving children’s obesity,” said study author Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Eating fast foods is just one behavior that results from those bad habits. Just because children who eat more fast food are the most likely to become obese does not prove that calories from fast foods bear the brunt of the blame.” In the study, researchers looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected between 2007 and 2010. The team analyzed dietary intake in nearly 4,500 children between 2 years and 18 years old. The children were categorized as being non-consumers of fast food, low consumers (less than or equal to 30 percent of calories from fast food) or high consumers (more than 30 percent of calories from fast food). The researchers discovered that fast food is only a small portion of a larger dietary pattern established by children’s parents and caregivers. The obese children’s diet often includes too few fruits and vegetables and too much processed food and overly-sweet beverages. This unhealthy diet pattern is often reinforced in the meals students are offered as school lunches. “The study presented strong evidence that the children’s diet beyond fast- food consumption is more strongly linked to poor nutrition and obesity,” said study author Jennifer Poti, doctoral candidate in UNC’s Department of Nutrition. “While reducing fast-food intake is important, the rest of a child’s diet should not be overlooked.” Popkin noted that a better understanding of the patterns behind childhood obesity is important in the attempt to foster healthier habits, such as the reduction of sugary drink consumption and the greater inclusion of fresh vegetables and fruits. “Children who rely on fast foods may tend to have parents who do not have the means, desire or time to purchase or prepare healthy foods at home,” Popkin said. “This is really what is driving children’s obesity and what needs to be addressed in any solution.” Another study published this week from University of Illinois researchers found three main predictors for preschool obesity risk: a lack of adequate sleep, having parents with high body mass index (BMI) and having their eating habits restricted for weight control purposes. Published in the journal Childhood Obesity, the study included data from a survey sent to over 300 children and their parents living in east-central Illinois. The study’s conclusion was based on the first round of data collected when the youngsters were two years old. “What’s exciting here is that these risk factors are malleable and provide a road map for developing interventions that can lead to a possible reduction in children’s weight status,” said study author Brent McBride, director of the university’s Child Development Laboratory. “We should focus on convincing parents to improve their own health status, to change the food environment of the home so that healthy foods are readily available and unhealthy foods are not, and to encourage an early bedtime.”

– Fast food isn't making your kids fat—not really. What's truly behind the trend of childhood obesity are the sodas, frozen pizzas, and cookies consumed at home, school, and whenever kids aren't in a McDonald's or Burger King booth—a "Western diet" high in saturated fats and added sugars, according to a new study. Researchers looked at the eating habits of 4,466 American kids, aged 2 to 18, and grouped them based on what they ate when they weren't eating fast food. What they found: Those with the highest rates of being overweight or obese ate a Western diet—even if they ate no fast food; on the flip side, those who were high fast-food consumers but otherwise ate a "prudent" diet were much less likely to be overweight or obese, the Los Angeles Times reports. The more often a child ate at fast food spots, however, the more likely he or she was to follow a similar diet at home. But "just because children who eat more fast food are the most likely to become obese does not prove that calories from fast foods bear the brunt of the blame," one author says, per Red Orbit. In fact, health campaigns targeting fast-food restaurants may be "overestimated" in that they are "not sufficient to reduce child obesity if the remainder of the diet is not addressed."

Only about 2 percent of commercials featuring men showed them doing domestic tasks. In a phone interview, Arlie Hochschild, the author of The Outsourced Self and the foundational feminist text on women and housework, The Second Shift, makes the argument that a women’s desire for a clean home has deeper origins than just marketing. Cleaning, Hoschild says, is not simply physical work. It’s emotional work. “Letting the house go is in a way letting something deeper go. … You get a sense of safety in an orderly home,” Hochschild says. But assuming both parties care about creating a sense of safety in the home, why does it fall to women? I suspect that women are more driven to keep a clean house because they know they—before their male partners—will be judged for having a dirty one. When I lived with two female roommates, I was much more of a slob. None of us was particularly responsible for the emotional tone of that apartment—no single one of us was more likely to be shunned for the state of our bathroom. But when I got married, the dust bunnies hopping across our floor started seeming like a personal affront. Although it was my husband’s father coming over, I was the one who insisted we clean. I was worried I would be judged for the beef jerky wrappers (on both aesthetic and gustatory grounds), despite the fact that my father-in-law has never once made a peep about the state of our abode. Somewhere lodged within me was the message that it was my responsibility. Unfortunately, the notion that women will be the first to be judged for a messy home and the first to be commended for an orderly one isn’t much of an incentive for men to pick up a mop. In the instances in which men actually do the majority of the housework in their partnership, women are still the ones getting credit. David Michael Perez, the publisher and editor of Kindling Quarterly, says that though he does more decorating and cleaning than his spouse does, “often when people say ‘your house is nice,’ it’s directed more at my wife.” If they’re not even going to be rewarded for it, why bother at all? With all these obstacles to real gender parity of chores, what’s a working woman to do? Philosophy professor Alexandra Bradner suggests on the Atlantic’s website that couples sit down with a list of questions like, “Do I do half of the laundry and half of the dishes every day?” to figure out where they’re slacking off in comparison to their mate. This sounds exhausting and impractical. If I do one load of laundry, it’s easier for me to do the second rather than wait for my husband to mosey over. (Bradner also says that when men do traditionally female chores, they’re enacting “‘small instances of gender heroism,’ or ‘SIGH’s”—which, barf.) I’m much more inclined to take the advice of Jenny Anderson, the co-author of It’s Not You, It’s the Dishes, which applies economic theory to household tasks. A lot of women shoo their husbands away from cleaning because they know the men will do a sub-par job of scrubbing the sink. Anderson says you should divide up tasks according to the economic theory of comparative advantage. Let’s say a woman is twice as good as her husband at doing the laundry, but only 20 percent better than her husband at doing the dishes. In that couple, the husband should always do the dishes. What’s more, he’ll get better at it through repetition. Another solution is for women to lower their filth thresholds. Did I really need to clean up the house for my father-in-law? Would he have cared if there were a few glasses sitting out on the kitchen table? Probably not. But it’s harder to stomach this fix once you have children, when the threat of a Fisher Price plastic hell-scape is perpetually around the corner. One of the women I interviewed for this piece, who doesn’t want to publicly shame her husband, said that when she came home after a weekday night out, it was so messy that it looked like she had 40 kids instead of two. If she had left the living room like that, it wouldn’t have been very good hygiene modeling for her kids (and, at some point, might get social services called). One last suggestion comes from Magary, who so emphatically declared that cleaning sucks: make cleaning more fun. He says that when the Swiffer first came on the market, it was sort of enticing. (Swiffer reps said they had no information to share with me about men and cleaning.) “We like gadgets and stuff,” Magary explains. “If there was some new electronic hovering Apple product that cleaned the bathroom, I’d try it.” Are you listening out there in Cupertino? You have a huge, untapped market on your hands for toilet-scrubbing iPods. I bet my husband would buy one. ||||| Photo: Roadside Attractions Jessica Grose has an interesting piece for The New Republic observing — and also decrying — that husbands may be catching up with childcare and even cooking, but still do way less housework than women. (“When it comes to housecleaning,” she writes, “my basically modern, egalitarian marriage starts looking more like the backdrop to an Updike short story.”) Grose casts around for explanations, but does not consider a possibility that probably explains a big part of the gap: Women in general just have higher standards of cleanliness than men do. People who care a lot about neater homes spend more time cleaning them because that makes them happy. And while I agree in general that domestic life requires more gender equality, the housework problem has a partial solution that’s simpler and more elegant: Do less of it. Viewing housework inequality as entirely a phenomenon of exploitative men free-riding off of female domestic labor makes sense only if you think men derive equal enjoyment from a cleaner and neater home. If that were the case, men who lived by themselves, or with other men, would have to keep their own homes tidy until they could conscript a wife or girlfriend to do their cleaning. Does anybody think that’s true? In college, I lived in a group house with newspapers for carpeting and pizza boxes stacked to the ceiling. My brother’s three-dude college apartment was so filthy it was condemned by the Ann Arbor board of health. It had a spilled milkshake on the floor that stayed there all year, forming a permanent, unearthly silver blob that became an object of curiosity. (To be clear, this was my brother, not me — I was content with the pizza box tower, but if it was my floor, I’d have cleaned up the milkshake.) My post-college group house was vastly neater than my college home, yet still messy enough that my girlfriend refused to set foot in it, insisting we spend all our domestic time at her place. We’re now married, which seems like the proper place to note that the mental image you have probably formed of my domestic habits is not accurate. Mainly because I work at home, and her in the office, I handle more than half the parental responsibilities. I buy all the groceries, cook dinner every night, get the kids ready for school, and walk them in the morning. We split bedtime. If one of them gets sick, my wife still heads to work, and it’s up to me to take care of them. When the kids were born, we got a housekeeper once a week. Obviously, that’s a luxury many people can’t afford. I mention it because, when Grose bemoans “the drudgery of vacuuming day in and day out,” I think, Really? Day in and day out? We pretty much figure the weekly vacuuming we pay for takes care of our vacuuming needs. The cover of New York, featuring Lisa Miller’s story on feminist housewives, has an image of a mom holding a duster. We don’t dust. Ever. The assumption of much of the feminist commentary surrounding household chores assumes that there is a correct level of cleanliness in a heterosexual relationship, and that level is determined by the female. I think a little cultural relativism would improve the debate. The tidiness level of a home is a matter of simple preference with no right or wrong (except perhaps when you reach the antagonizing-municipal-authorities extremes of my brother’s pad.) My wife and I happily learned to converge on each other’s level of tidiness. We settled — fairly, I think — on a home that’s neater than I’d prefer to keep it, but less neat than she would. She does a little more housecleaning than I do. But it’s not that much more than the time I spend doing the man-work of trash-clearing, lightbulb-replacing, heavy-object-hauling, and screw-turning. The tricky thing in allocating the responsibilities between partners is that not all “work” can be equated. This neat chart from Pew Research has been making the rounds: Photo: Pew Research All these things are not the same. Marching the kids through their morning checklist and getting them out the door is stressful work, where every morning feels like I’m trying to pass a bill through the Senate and my kids are Mitch McConnell. Walking them to school is nice. Reading Harry Potter to my daughter, or wrestling on the carpet with my son, is incredibly fun. All those things are “childcare.” Sometimes on weekdays, I have a sick kid on the sofa while I work in the room next door. Look — according to that chart, I performed nine hours of child care and nine hours of paid work! (Okay, eight — we took some story-time breaks.) Housecleaning is all drudgery and zero fun. But while some of it (like laundry) is necessary, other parts are purely discretionary. I like having magazines strewn across the coffee table. My wife doesn’t. I won’t protest when she stacks them up somewhere, but when she does it, I don’t regard it as her participation in the shared household duties. She handles our household finances, which is a gigantic contribution, out of all proportion to the hours it consumes owing to its stressfulness. Cooking lies in between, though it depends on the person. I don’t like cooking, especially — if I could magically conjure the meals instead of prepare them, I would. But it does come with the satisfaction of watching your family enjoy the meal, except that sometimes it comes with the frustration of your spouse coming home late and making it cold, or your kid announcing they won’t try it and marching to the pantry to make a peanut-butter sandwich. A Pew-style chart of my household would show that I do both more paid work and more childcare than my wife — mainly because I don’t commute. But that would present an inaccurately slanted picture of our relative contributions. Having more time around the kids while she slogs through the Red Line is a perk I enjoy, not a cost I’m bearing. For differing reasons, both feminists and anti-feminists have sandblasted away the distinction between different kinds of work, but the distinction matters. I think Grose’s general point, about the unequal demands faced by women, stands. But the specific indictment about housework doesn’t seem quite as solid. Feminists want women to work like men do, right? Why not try living like men, too? Put down the duster. It’ll be okay.

– The world is becoming more egalitarian, with men doing a much larger share of things like cooking and childcare these days. "It’s seen as socially admirable and masculine for a man to be on diaper duty or to sous-vide a steak," writes Jessica Grose, whose own husband handles half the midnight baby feedings. "But there are no closet organizing tips in the pages of Esquire, no dishwasher detergent ads in the pages of GQ," and her husband hasn't scoured a single toilet during their six-year relationship. Cleaning, she writes for the New Republic, is the "final feminist frontier." She shares a few theories as to why (cleaning just isn't fun, laundry detergent is still marketed as a women's product) but ultimately posits that society's instinct is to blame the mess on the woman. "Unfortunately, the notion that women will be the first to be judged for a messy home and the first to be commended for an orderly one isn’t much of an incentive for men to pick up a mop," she writes. But in New York, Jonathan Chait sees something else at work: Women simply have higher cleanliness standards. The underlying assumption is "that there is a correct level of cleanliness in a heterosexual relationship, and that level is determined by the female. I think a little cultural relativism would improve the debate. My wife and I ... settled—fairly, I think—on a home that’s neater than I’d prefer to keep it, but less neat than she would." Click for Grose's full column or Chait's response.

Justin Bieber First Class POTTY MOUTH Angers Passengers Justin Bieber -- First Class Potty Mouth Angers Passengers EXCLUSIVE fielded an unusual request from a passenger on an international flight -- and it went something like this: shut your expletive-filled pie hole! Please.It all happened during the Biebs' return from a Down Under promotional tour. Sources on the 12-hour Air New Zealand flight last weekend ... tell us JB was surrounded by his entourage in first class when things started getting out of hand.We're told 18-year-old Justin and his posse were blurting out cuss words -- including some 4-letter selections -- and getting so loud ... a female passenger finally stepped to Bieber.We're told the woman ... a mother of 2 ... walked over and asked Justin to "stop yelling curse words and using that kind of language on a plane. It's not appropriate."A source close to Justin tells us he was completely embarrassed, quickly apologized to the woman -- and then busted out an a cappella version of "Boyfriend."The last part didn't happen ... but would've been awesome. ||||| Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard: Justin Bieber Is Not the Best Neighbor A quick look at Twitter will point you to millions of people who would love to live near Justin Bieber Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard are not in that group.While promoting their new movie Hit & Run during an appearance on The View Thursday, the couple talked about living near the teen pop star, who they said is renting the house behind theirs.Parenthood star Shepard said he originally had "Bieber fever" after seeing the singer's documentary, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, directed by his friend Jon. M. Chu. And then Biebs moved in next door."The music and the parties and the paparazzi, I mean, it's like living in Lebanon now," the actor said."In his defense, I will say we don't know the exact house the music is coming from," Bell diplomatically said. "We just know since he moved in, the music has been blaring."

– Justin Bieber may be an international pop star, but he’s also a teenage boy—and lately, he’s been proving it. On a recent international flight, Biebs and his entourage reportedly started cussing, loudly, in first class. A mom of two (who should probably now be your hero) approached the group and, a source tells TMZ, asked Justin to “stop yelling curse words and using that kind of language on a plane. It’s not appropriate.” An embarrassed Bieber apologized, a friend says. But apparently he’s just as loud at home: On The View yesterday, celebrity couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard revealed that Justin recently moved into a house behind them, People reports. "The music and the parties and the paparazzi, I mean, it's like living in Lebanon now," Shepard said. Bell added, "In his defense, I will say we don't know the exact house the music is coming from. We just know since he moved in, the music has been blaring."

Rehabilitation of a trail in Grand Canyon National Park by NPS and American Conservation Experience personnel was funded in part by entrance fees. NPS Photo News Release Date: October 24, 2017 Contact: NPS Office of Communications, 202-208-6843 Public invited to provide comments on proposed peak season fee increases at 17 highly visited parks WASHINGTON – As part of its commitment to improve the visitor experience and ensure America’s national parks are protected in perpetuity, the National Park Service (NPS) is considering increases to fees at highly visited national parks during peak visitor seasons. Proposed peak season entrance fees and revised fees for road-based commercial tours would generate badly needed revenue for improvements to the aging infrastructure of national parks. This includes roads, bridges, campgrounds, waterlines, bathrooms, and other visitor services. “The infrastructure of our national parks is aging and in need of renovation and restoration,” said U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. “Targeted fee increases at some of our most-visited parks will help ensure that they are protected and preserved in perpetuity and that visitors enjoy a world-class experience that mirrors the amazing destinations they are visiting. We need to have the vision to look at the future of our parks and take action in order to ensure that our grandkids' grandkids will have the same if not better experience than we have today. Shoring up our parks' aging infrastructure will do that.” Under the proposal, peak-season entrance fees would be established at 17 national parks. The peak season for each park would be defined as its busiest contiguous five-month period of visitation. The proposed new fee structure would be implemented at Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Denali, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Olympic, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion National Parks with peak season starting on May 1, 2018; in Acadia, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and Shenandoah National Parks with peak season starting on June 1, 2018; and in Joshua Tree National Park as soon as practicable in 2018. A public comment period on the peak-season entrance fee proposal will be open from October 24, 2017 to November 23, 2017, on the NPS Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website https://parkplanning.nps.gov/proposedpeakseasonfeerates. Written comments can be sent to 1849 C Street, NW, Mail Stop: 2346 Washington, DC 20240. If implemented, estimates suggest that the peak-season price structure could increase national park revenue by $70 million per year. That is a 34 percent increase over the $200 million collected in Fiscal Year 2016. Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, 80% of an entrance fee remains in the park where it is collected. The other 20% is spent on projects in other national parks. During the peak season at each park, the entrance fee would be $70 per private, non-commercial vehicle, $50 per motorcycle, and $30 per person on bike or foot. A park-specific annual pass for any of the 17 parks would be available for $75. The cost of the annual America the Beautiful- The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass, which provides entrance to all federal lands, including parks for a one-year period, would remain $80. Entrance fees are not charged to visitors under 16 years of age or holders of Senior, Military, Access, Volunteer, or Every Kid in a Park (EKIP) passes. The majority of national parks will remain free to enter; only 118 of 417 park sites charge an entrance fee, and the current proposal only raises fees at 17 fee-charging parks The National Park Service is also proposing entry and permit fee adjustments for commercial tour operators. The proposal would increase entry fees for commercial operators and standardize commercial use authorization (CUA) requirements for road-based commercial tours, including application and management fees. All CUA fees stay within the collecting park and would fund rehabilitation projects for buildings, facilities, parking lots, roads, and wayside exhibits that would enhance the visitor experience. The fees will also cover the administrative costs of receiving, reviewing, and processing CUA applications and required reports. In addition, the proposal would include a peak-season commercial entry fee structure for the 17 national parks referenced above. All proposed fee adjustments for commercial operators would go into effect following an 18-month implementation window. Information and a forum for public comments regarding commercial permit requirements and fees is available October 24, 2017 to November 23, 2017 on the NPS Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commercialtourrequirements. Written comments can be sent to National Park Service, Recreation Fee Program, 1849 C Street, NW, Mail Stop: 2346 Washington, DC 20240. www.nps.gov About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 417 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at www.nps.gov, on Facebook www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice, Twitter www.twitter.com/natlparkservice, and YouTube www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice. ||||| Visitor fees to America’s most popular national parks, including Yosemite and Joshua Tree, could more than double to $70 during five peak months under a proposal unveiled Tuesday. The plan was announced by the U.S. Department of Interior, which said the increase was needed to pay for “improvements to the aging infrastructure of national parks.” Fees would rise during “peak season,” defined as the busiest five-month period of visitation at each park, the National Park Service said in a news release. The plan would increase fees at each of the following national parks: Acadia Arches Bryce Canyon Canyonlands Denali Glacier Grand Canyon Grand Teton Joshua Tree National Park Mount Rainier Olympic Rocky Mountain Sequoia & Kings Canyon Shenandoah National Park Yellowstone Yosemite Zion Those parks currently charge $25 to $30 for a private noncommercial vehicle entry. The new fees would be $70 for a private noncommercial vehicle pass, $50 for a motorcycle, and $30 for a pedestrian or cyclist. An annual pass at any of the 17 parks would be $75. The $80 annual America the Beautiful pass that allows entrance to all federal recreation lands would not be affected. “The infrastructure of our national parks is aging and in need of renovation and restoration,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in the release. “Targeted fee increases at some of our most-visited parks will help ensure that they are protected and preserved in perpetuity and that visitors enjoy a world-class experience that mirrors the amazing destinations they are visiting.” The increased fees would bring in $70 million in new national park revenue, a 34 percent increase over 2016, the release stated. A 30-day period during which public comment is invited opened Tuesday. The link the National Park Service provided for people to comment appeared broken Tuesday evening. Comments can also be sent in writing to 1849 C Street, NW, Mail Stop: 2346 Washington, DC 20240. ||||| (CNN) — The National Park Service proposes more than doubling the entrance fees at 17 popular national parks, including Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone, to help pay for infrastructure improvements. Under the agency's proposal, the entrance fee for a private vehicle would jump to $70 during peak season, from its current rate of $25 to $30. The cost for a motorcycle entering the park could increase to $50, from the current fee of $15 to $25. The cost for people entering the park on foot or on bike could go to $30, up from the current rate of $10 to $15. The cost of the annual pass, which permits entrance into all federal lands and parks, would remain at $80. The proposal would affect the following 17 national parks during the 2018 peak season: Arches Bryce Canyon Canyonlands Denali Glacier Grand Canyon Grand Teton Olympic Sequoia & Kings Canyon Yellowstone Yosemite Zion Acadia Mount Rainier Rocky Mountain Shenandoah Joshua Tree Peak pricing would affect each park's busiest five months for visitors. The National Park Service said the increase would help pay for badly needed improvements, including to roads, bridges, campgrounds, waterlines, bathrooms and other visitor services at the parks. The fee hikes could also boost national park revenue by $70 million per year, it said. "The infrastructure of our national parks is aging and in need of renovation and restoration," Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in a statement. Of the 417 national park sites, 118 charge an entrance fee. The proposal was blasted by the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan advocacy group. "We should not increase fees to such a degree as to make these places -- protected for all Americans to experience -- unaffordable for some families to visit," the group's president and CEO Theresa Pierno said in a statement. "The solution to our parks' repair needs cannot and should not be largely shouldered by its visitors." l e v a r t "The administration just proposed a major cut to the National Park Service budget even as parks struggle with billions of dollars in needed repairs," Pierno said. "If the administration wants to support national parks, it needs to walk the walk and work with Congress to address the maintenance backlog." On the National Park Service's Facebook page, some commented that the proposal was reasonable since it was going to improve and maintain the parks. Others lamented that it would price working class people out of making trips that they had saved up for. Entrance fees at several national parks, including Mount Rainer, Grand Teton and Yellowstone, went up in 2015 to their current price. Those fee increases didn't seem to deter visitors. In 2016, National Park Services received a record-breaking 331 million visits, which marked a 7.7% increase over 2015. It was the park service's third consecutive all-time attendance record. Most popular National Parks in 2016 (59 total) Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- 11,312,786 million visitors Grand Canyon National Park -- 5,969,811 Yosemite National Park -- 5,028,868 Rocky Mountain National Park -- 4,517,585 Zion National Park -- 4,295,127 Yellowstone National Park -- 4,257,177 Olympic National Park -- 3,390,221 Acadia National Park -- 3,303,393 Grand Teton National Park -- 3,270,076

– With the Trump administration planning to slash the National Park Service's budget, a new proposal could see entrance fees for 17 of the most-visited national parks in the country more than double during peak months. In an effort to boost revenue to pay "for improvements to the aging infrastructure of national parks," the Department of Interior has proposed increasing entrance fees from $25 to $30 for a private non-commercial vehicle to $70 during the busiest five-month period at parks including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, Glacier, Denali, and Mount Rainier, reports KTLA. Pedestrians would be charged $30, up from $10 to $15, increasing revenue by an estimated $70 million per year, according to a release. Under the proposal, which would be instituted beginning in 2018, an annual park pass would cost $75, while a pass permitting entry to all US national parks would remain at its current $80 fee. The park service is accepting public comments on the proposal until Nov. 23 but has already come under fire. Noting the Trump administration "just proposed a major cut to the National Park Service budget," the president of the National Parks Conservation Association says administration officials must "work with Congress to address the maintenance backlog." The costs of repairs to a park "cannot and should not be largely shouldered by its visitors," she adds in a statement, per CNN, expressing concern that the change would make parks "unaffordable."

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images Construction continues on the One57 luxury condominium building in Manhattan on Jan. 7, 2013 Think you’re spoiling your child? Think again. A CCTV story is making international headlines after a New York City real estate agent revealed that a Chinese mother purchased a $6.5 million apartment for her toddler. Sotheby’s senior vice president Kevin Brown told China’s CCTV that he showed apartments all over Manhattan to the buyer, who is remaining anonymous: And she said, well, her daughter was going to go to Columbia, or NYU, or maybe Harvard, and so she needed to be in the center of the city and that was why she was picking this one particular apartment. So I said: ‘Oh, how old is your daughter?’ And she said: ‘Well, she’s 2’. And I was just shocked. The woman ended up buying in the luxury Manhattan building One57. The 90-story building, which is still unfinished, was designed by a Pritzker Prize–winning architect and will have a library with a pool table and 7.3-m aquarium, a private concert hall and a “pet washroom” along with an enviable location on 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. (MORE: Report: China Buys 25% of the World’s Luxury Goods) While some may scoff at the over-the-top purchase, the anonymous mother could be a very savvy real estate investor. According to Brown, less than two years after her purchase at One57, the condo’s value has already shot up to $8.9 million. In China, the purchase has tongues wagging about where the money could have come from. According to the Telegraph, comments left on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, suggested that the woman must have been related to a corrupt government official. In a country where income inequality is widening and anger at the extravagant ways of Communist Party officials is growing, the country’s new President Xi Jinping has made combating corruption and official abuse of power a priority. MORE: China’s First Lady Sparks Fashion Frenzy MORE: Dumpling Diplomacy: The U.S. Treasury Secretary’s Beijing Lunch Enchants China

– We get it, parents. You want the best for your kid. Sometimes, that means feeding them nutritious food, reading to them, and being there for them. And sometimes, it means buying them a $6.5 million high-rise apartment in a city on the other side of the planet. That's what one Chinese mother did recently, a top New York City real estate executive told a Chinese TV station, in a story spotted by Time. When he asked her why she was apartment-shopping, "She said, well, her daughter was going to go to Columbia, or NYU, or maybe Harvard, and so she needed to be in the center of the city," says the agent. "So I said, 'Oh, how old is your daughter?' And she said, 'Well, she's 2.'" The move might actually be financially savvy—the apartment's value is already up to $8.9 million—although someone should really tell her that Harvard is in Boston. Chinese social media is already abuzz with speculation that the anonymous buyer might be tied to a corrupt government official.

The DSM-5 was officially released today. We will be covering it in the weeks to come here on the blog and over at Psych Central Professional in a series of upcoming articles detailing the major changes. In the meantime, here is an overview of the big changes. We sat in on a conference call that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had in order to introduce the new version of the diagnostic reference manual used primarily by clinicians in the U.S. to diagnose mental disorders. It is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is now in its fifth major revision (DSM-5). James Scully, Jr., MD, CEO of the APA, kicked off the call by remarking that the DSM-5 will be a “critical guidebook for clinicians” — a theme echoed by the other speakers on the call. Why has it taken on such a large “role [both] in society as well as medicine?” he asked. Dr. Scully believes it’s because of the prevalence of mental disorders in general, touching most people’s lives (or someone we know). The APA has published three separate drafts of the manual on their website, and in doing so received over 13,000 comments from 2010 – 2012, as well as thousands of emails and letters. Every single comment was read and evaluated. This was an unprecedented scale of openness and transparency never before seen in the revision of a diagnostic manual. “The manual is first and foremost a guidebook for clinicians,” reiterated David Kupfer, M.D., DSM-5 task force chair, who walked us through the major changes detailed below. 1. Three major sections of the DSM-5 I. Introduction and clear information on how to use the DSM. II. Provides information and categorical diagnoses. III. Section III provides self-assessment tools, as well as categories that require more research. 2. Section II – Disorders Organization of chapters is designed to demonstrate how disorders are related to one another. Throughout the entire manual, disorders are framed in age, gender, developmental characteristics. Multi-axial system has been eliminated. “Removes artificial distinctions” between medical and mental disorders. DSM-5 has approximately the same number of conditions as DSM-IV. 3. The Big Changes in Specific Disorders Autism There is now a single condition called autism spectrum disorder, which incorporates 4 previous separate disorders. As the APA states: ASD now encompasses the previous DSM-IV autistic disorder (autism), Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. ASD is characterized by 1) deficits in social communication and social interaction and 2) restricted repetitive behaviors, interests, and activities (RRBs). Because both components are required for diagnosis of ASD, social communication disorder is diagnosed if no RRBs are present. Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder Childhood bipolar disorder has a new name — “intended to address issues of over-diagnosis and over-treatment of bipolar disorder in children.” This can be diagnosed in children up to age 18 years who exhibit persistent irritability and frequent episodes of extreme behavioral dyscontrol (e.g., they are out of control). ADHD Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been modified somewhat, especially to emphasize that this disorder can continue into adulthood. The one “big” change (if you can call it that) is that you can be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult if you meet one less symptom than if you are a child. While that weakens the criteria marginally for adults, the criteria are also strengthened at the same time. For instance, the cross-situational requirement has been strengthened to “several” symptoms in each setting (you can’t be diagnosed with ADHD if it only happens in one setting, such as at work). The criteria were also relaxed a bit as the symptoms now have to had appeared before age 12, instead of before age 7. Bereavement Exclusion Removal In the DSM-IV, if you were grieving the loss of a loved one, technically you couldn’t be diagnosed with major depression disorder in the first 2 months of your grief. (I’m not sure where this arbitrary 2 month figure came from, because it certainly reflects no reality or research.). This exclusion was removed in the DSM-5. Here are the reasons they gave: The first is to remove the implication that bereavement typically lasts only 2 months when both physicians and grief counselors recognize that the duration is more commonly 1–2 years. Second, bereavement is recognized as a severe psychosocial stressor that can precipitate a major depressive episode in a vulnerable individual, generally beginning soon after the loss. When major depressive disorder occurs in the context of bereavement, it adds an additional risk for suffering, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal ideation, poorer somatic health, worse interpersonal and work functioning, and an increased risk for persistent complex bereavement disorder, which is now described with explicit criteria in Conditions for Further Study in DSM-5 Section III. Third, bereavement-related major depression is most likely to occur in individuals with past personal and family histories of major depressive episodes. It is genetically influenced and is associated with similar personality characteristics, patterns of comorbidity, and risks of chronicity and/or recurrence as non–bereavement-related major depressive episodes. Finally, the depressive symptoms associated with bereavement-related depression respond to the same psychosocial and medication treatments as non–bereavement-related depression. In the criteria for major depressive disorder, a detailed footnote has replaced the more simplistic DSM-IV exclusion to aid clinicians in making the critical distinction between the symptoms characteristic of bereavement and those of a major depressive episode. PTSD More attention is now paid to behavioral symptoms that accompany PTSD in the DSM-5. It now includes four primary major symptom clusters: Reexperiencing Arousal Avoidance Persistent negative alterations in cognitions and mood “Posttraumatic stress disorder is now developmentally sensitive in that diagnostic thresholds have been lowered for children and adolescents. Furthermore, separate criteria have been added for children age 6 years or younger with this disorder.” Major and Mild Neurocognitive Disorder Major Neurocognitive Disorder now subsumes dementia and the amenstic disorder. But a new disorder, Mild Neurocognitive Disorder, was also added. “There was concern we may have added a disorder that wasn’t ‘important’ enough.” “The impact of the decline was noticeable, but clinicians lacked a diagnosis to give patients,” noted Dr. Kupfer. There were two reasons for this change: “(1) Opportunity for early detection. The earlier the better for patients with these symptoms. (2) It also encourages an early effective treatment plan, ” before dementia sets in. Other New & Notable Disorders Both binge eating disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder and now official, “real” diagnoses in the DSM-5 (they were not prior to this, although still commonly diagnosed by clinicians). Hoarding disorder is also now recognized as a real disorder, separate from OCD, “which reflects persistent difficulty dis-carding or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items and distress associated with discarding them. Hoarding disorder may have unique neurobiological correlates, is associated with significant impairment, and may respond to clinical intervention.” Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President-Elect of the APA reminded us that the DSM-5 is not a pop-psychology book intended for consumers: “[It is] a guide, an aide to assist clinicians to … help facilitate treatment.” The APA also noted that a large number of sessions — 21 — will be dedicated to the DSM-5 this weekend at the APA’s annual meeting. Commenting on the swirling controversy regarding the DSM-5, that perhaps the diagnostic system isn’t good enough, Dr. Lieberman said, “It can’t create the knowledge, it reflects the current state of our knowledge.” “We can’t keep waiting for such breakthroughs,” (in reference to biomarkers and laboratory tests). “Clinicians and patients need the DSM-5 now. Critics have accused the DSM-5 of lowering diagnostic thresholds across the board, making it far easier for a person to be diagnosed with a mental disorder. Lieberman disagrees, however: “How [the DSM-5] is applied reflects critical practice… it’s not necessarily because of the criteria [themselves]. It’s because of the way the criteria are applied.” Want to learn more about the specific changes in the DSM-5? Stay updated by visiting our DSM-5 Resource Guide. ||||| The creators of the D.S.M. in the 1960s and ’70s “were real heroes at the time,” said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the Broad Institute and a former director at the National Institute of Mental Health. “They chose a model in which all psychiatric illnesses were represented as categories discontinuous with ‘normal.’ But this is totally wrong in a way they couldn’t have imagined. So in fact what they produced was an absolute scientific nightmare. Many people who get one diagnosis get five diagnoses, but they don’t have five diseases — they have one underlying condition.” Dr. Hyman, Dr. Insel and other experts said they hoped that the science of psychiatry would follow the direction of cancer research, which is moving from classifying tumors by where they occur in the body to characterizing them by their genetic and molecular signatures. About two years ago, to spur a move in that direction, Dr. Insel started a federal project called Research Domain Criteria, or RDoC, which he highlighted in a blog post last week. Dr. Insel said in the blog that the National Institute of Mental Health would be “reorienting its research away from D.S.M. categories” because “patients with mental disorders deserve better.” His commentary has created ripples throughout the mental health community. Dr. Insel said in the interview that his motivation was not to disparage the D.S.M. as a clinical tool, but to encourage researchers and especially outside reviewers who screen proposals for financing from his agency to disregard its categories and investigate the biological underpinnings of disorders instead. He said he had heard from scientists whose proposals to study processes common to depression, schizophrenia and psychosis were rejected by grant reviewers because they cut across D.S.M. disease categories. “They didn’t get it,” Dr. Insel said of the reviewers. “What we’re trying to do with RDoC is say actually this is a fresh way to think about it.” He added that he hoped researchers would also participate in projects funded through the Obama administration’s new brain initiative. Dr. Michael First, a psychiatry professor at Columbia who edited the last edition of the manual, said, “RDoC is clearly the way of the future,” although it would take years to get results that could apply to patients. In the meantime, he said, “RDoC can’t do what the D.S.M. does. The D.S.M. is what clinicians use. Patients will always come into offices with symptoms.” For at least a decade, Dr. First and others said, patients will continue to be diagnosed with D.S.M. categories as a guide, and insurance companies will reimburse with such diagnoses in mind. ||||| The controversial revision to psychiatrists' "bible" of diagnostic criteria has finally arrived. The American Psychiatric Association released its fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or dubbed simply as the "DSM-5." The manual's release was coincided with the APA's annual meeting that kicked off May 18 in San Francisco. The first major revision to the manual in almost two decades, the new DSM has been met by controversy since reports of proposed changes started to crop up last March. Revisions to be announced soon to D.S.M. Doctors often utilize the DSM to diagnose mental health disorders in patients that meet a specific set of criteria. Among the major changes that garnered the most controversy was dropping Asperger's syndrome, child disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD), and included them under the blanket diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. Revisions were also made to diagnostic criteria for mental health disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder and depressive disorders. For example, in the last version of the manual, the 1994 DSM-IV, there was was an exclusion criterion for a major depressive episode that was applied to people with symptoms of depression lasting less than 2 months following the death of a loved one. The DSM-5 removed this after the APA realized since the last version that grief can last up to two years, and bereavement can be a severe psychological stressor that triggers depression, rather than an exception. Besides worrying some mental health advocates over concerns changes in their diagnosis would affect their abilities to get treatment for state funding, the manual's release also pitted the government's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA), NIMH director Thomas Insel wrote in a statement in early May that the NIMH felt the proposed definitions for psychiatric disorders were too broad and ignore smaller disorders that were lumped in with a larger diagnosis. "The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever," he wrote. The government agency said it would use a different classification system, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project, instead for its studies. The NIH and APA released a joint statement on May 13, saying that "patients, families, and insurers can be confident that effective treatments are available and that the DSM is the key resource for delivering the best available care." But, the statement also said, "The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has not changed its position on DSM-5." A petition was also started by doctors to protest the new DSM. "Psychiatrist's bible" changes: Doctor talks controversy One vocal critic, Dr. Allen Frances, who co-authored the DSM-IV, told CBS This Morning on Thursday that we are over-treating people in this country who are "basically well" and are "shamefully neglecting" people with mental disorders who are really sick, including one million people in prison with psychiatric disorders. The new manual, he said, is too loose for its diagnoses. He said the average diagnosis is being given by a primary care doctor in a seven minute visit. "People who are basically normal are getting all kinds of medicine that they don't need that makes them worse and it is a terrible drain on the economy," Frances said. "I'm very curious to see what happens because as you know there's kind of this tension between the DSM and some of the new NIMH initiatives," Dr. James Murrough, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, told CBSNews.com Murrough was not involved in the new DSM, but will be presenting research at the APA meeting this weekend. He said by now, some psychiatrists had hoped the new DSM would contain more information about scientific tests or scans for psychologists or psychiatrists to help aid their diagnoses. But, he added the new version doesn't appear to look very different from the last one. "I think everyone is kind of disappointed that we don't have that yet," he said. More information about the DSM-5 can be found on the APA's website. ||||| Psychiatry tops all other disciplines of medicine in captivating and confusing the public. It captivates because of the storied disturbances in human thought, emotion and behavior that psychiatrists describe. It confuses because, to the natural question, "What exactly are these disturbances?" psychiatrists today just provide a list of diagnoses, as if naming disorders explains them. Ellen Weinstein The most enduring feature of Freudianism was its claim that important facts about a patient's mental life are buried in the "unconscious." Jerome Groopman, in his informative 2007 book "How Doctors Think," confesses that "trying to assess how psychiatrists think was beyond my abilities." If this gifted physician finds psychiatry mystifying, how can we expect ordinary people who are seeking help to form suitable judgments? Things will not improve with the American Psychiatric Association's release this week of the fifth edition of its famed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Like its predecessors, the massive new volume will shape what psychiatrists say and do with their patients. It is thus a perfect moment to consider how the DSM came about in the first place—and why this new edition will do nothing to clear up the public's growing confusion. From about 1940 to 1970, Sigmund Freud's theoretical concepts of mental life and its disorders dominated American psychiatry. The most enduring, problematic feature of Freudianism was its claim that the important facts about our mental life are disguised, buried in the "unconscious," stifled by convention and conformity. Only a Freudian analyst instructed in the supposedly universal conflicts of human sexuality and domestic life (the Oedipal complex, etc.) could decode and disentangle them. By knowing these secrets, the analyst could derive—from the disguises "manifest" in dreams, slips of the tongue, symptoms and behaviors—the "latent" truth provoking the different mental disorders. Freud and his followers played down efforts at gathering such information as a patient's family background, educational and occupational course, intelligence, temperament, habits, medical condition and conscious assumptions. These factors were said to lack psychological depth. In the 1960s, the authority of the Freudians began to wane in America, partly because their ineffectiveness with serious mental disorders became evident and partly because their treatments were costly, in both time and money. At the same time, the field began to make real progress with the discovery of medications, such as lithium, that were effective against specific and severe mental disorders. New psychological treatments such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy also emerged and helped patients by addressing their conscious attitudes rather than conjectures about their unconscious minds. Still, among many psychiatrists, the notion persisted that the true causes of mental disorders were unconscious. This belief opened the doors of psychiatry in the 1970s to many wild and conflicting suppositions about mental illnesses. Psychiatrists began acting like Sherlock Holmes, looking for various "dogs that didn't bark" to explain their patients' problems. This brought us fiascoes such as the multiple-personality craze and "repressed memories" of child abuse. Grotesque therapeutic programs—"encounter groups," the use of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, primal-scream therapy—also found their day, in the name of bringing "the hidden" to consciousness for treatment. Ultimately, the profession could not tolerate the mounting turmoil. In 1980, the APA proposed simply setting aside the chaos of claims about the causes and mechanisms of mental disorders, including those of the Freudians. Were there not aspects of mental illnesses that everyone in the profession could recognize and agree upon? With its third edition (DSM-III), the manual (which had existed since 1952) underwent a transformation. Its editors focused on codifying symptoms that seemed to distinguish one mental disorder from another. If psychiatrists would use these criteria consistently, they suggested, then perhaps researchers would be able to explain and differentiate disorders in terms of psychobiology. This prescription for diagnostic peacemaking radically changed the psychiatric scene. No longer was it an unruly market of claims, counterclaims and "orientations." Psychiatric practices became centered on using the manual to identify disorders, much as a naturalist uses a field guide to identify birds or trees. The treatments derived from these diagnoses had no particular theory behind them. They were efforts, mostly pharmacological and rule-of-thumb, to provide relief from symptoms. Psychiatric thinking about patients and their disorders withered. Today the public complains that psychiatrists seem ready to call every state of mental distress an illness. They see that any restless boy can receive a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, that troubled veterans—whether exposed to combat or not—are routinely said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that enormous numbers of discouraged, demoralized people are labeled victims of depression and have medications pressed upon them. The public is not far wrong. A recent nationwide diagnostic census based on DSM claimed that the majority of Americans have or have had a mental disorder. As a result, an appalling number of young adults in schools and colleges are on one form or another of psychiatric medication. The problem, though, is not only that psychiatrists have gone too far in naming mental states—they surely have—but that they have gone on too long with their field-guide checklists. They seem unable to do better. DSM-5 will be more of the same—a way to "know of" disorders without "knowing about" them, to draw a distinction made by William James. With its new manual, the APA might instead have started taking steps toward a system of classification that, as in medicine, organizes disorders according to what we know about their natures and causes. Such knowledge, rather than checklists of symptoms, would then direct treatment and research. Psychiatrists know, for instance, that depression and anxiety can derive from a number of different sources: cerebral diseases such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; alcoholism or drug addiction; experiences of loss, deprivation or trauma; and, more generally, a vulnerable temperament, characterized by introversion, shyness and emotional intensity. Deciding which of these sources, alone or in combination, applies to a particular patient requires hours of evaluation. Prescribing an appropriate treatment involves not checking symptoms but determining who the patient is and what he or she has experienced and done. DSM-5 displays none of this thinking. It remains a field guide organized by symptoms, clustered in categories that can expand without limit. Official, APA-approved psychiatry seems to lack the will to change. It justifies its stagnation not only by reminding its members of the chaos of the 1970s but by claiming that the U.S. health system would not pay psychiatrists if they tried to know their patients the way that they could and should. DSM-5 is a missed opportunity to advance the discipline, instruct the public and encourage financial support for needed psychiatric services. Its editors seem willing to waste another decade before dispersing the mysteries of psychiatry and bringing practitioners and patients together in understanding what they are doing and why. —Dr. McHugh is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. A version of this article appeared May 18, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Manual Run Amok.

– A new edition of the manual doctors use to diagnose mental illness, the DSM, has just been released by the American Psychiatric Association—but it has already been stirring up controversy for months, reports CBS. Most critically, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health has spoken out against DSM-5, saying its definitions are too broad and lack scientific validity, the New York Times reports. "As long as the research community takes the DSM to be a bible, we’ll never make progress," he said. "People think that everything has to match DSM criteria, but you know what? Biology never read that book." Among other changes, the new DSM-5 has encompassed four previously separate disorders under the blanket "autism spectrum disorder." Another change: previously, those grieving for a lost love one couldn't be diagnosed with depression within two months of the death. Now bereavement is actually classed as a trigger. (PsychCentral has a thorough rundown of all the changes.) John Hopkins psychiatry professor Paul McHugh has also criticized the new manual in the Washington Post, saying it encourages doctors to rely on check-lists rather than getting to know their patients. "DSM-5 will be more of the same—a way to 'know of' disorders without 'knowing about' them," he writes.

Federal authorities have determined how 13 bald eagles found dead on the Eastern Shore have died, but will only say publicly that they have ruled out natural causes. The focus of the investigation is now on prosecuting anyone responsible for the deaths — Maryland's largest single die off of the eagles in at least three decades. Ruling out disease, which the eagles could have caught from chickens at the numerous poultry farms that dot the area or from migrating birds, was an important step in the case, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Catherine Hibbard said. Hibbard said in an email that while investigators have determined how the eagles died they won't release more information — including about any suspects — for fear of compromising the investigation. The birds were found in February by a man roaming farm fields near Federalsburg looking for deer antlers. Maryland Natural Resources Police are working with federal authorities on the case and a $25,000 reward has been offered for information that leads to a conviction. The birds showed no signs of trauma, indicating that they might have fallen prey to illness or poison. [email protected] twitter.com/iduncan ||||| The 13 bald eagles that were found dead last month on Maryland's Eastern Shore didn't die of natural causes, wildlife officials said Thursday, and authorities are offering a $25,000 reward to help find whoever killed them. The birds showed no signs of trauma when they were found Feb. 20 on a farm and in the woods in the town of Federalsburg in what Maryland Natural Resources police said was the biggest die-off of bald eagles in the state in 30 years. Investigators initially speculated that they might have eaten poisoned animal carcasses put out to control rodents, but the owner of the farm told NBC Washington at the time that he didn't use poison. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday that necropsies had also ruled out diseases, such as avian influenza, a major threat in the region because of its many poultry farms and migratory birds. "Our investigation is now focused on human causes," said Catherine J. Hibbard, a spokeswoman for the agency, who said she couldn't release any more information to protect the investigation. Bald eagles were removed from the endangered species list in 2007, but they're still listed as "protected," and killing one is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. The Fish and Wildlife Service and Maryland Natural Resources police said a $25,000 reward has been posted for information leading to the conviction of the suspected wildlife offenders.

– A bald eagle mass murder? The US Fish and Wildlife Service says it has tested 13 bald eagles found dead near a Maryland farm last month and concluded that they were killed by humans, NBC News reports. An agency spokeswoman tells the Baltimore Sun that avian influenza and other diseases were ruled out in the state's biggest die-off of the birds in at least 30 years, and the investigation is now focused on "human causes" and bringing the offenders to justice. The birds showed no sign of trauma and the Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman says investigators know how they died, but that information will not be released to avoid compromising the investigation. Bald eagles are a protected species and the reward leading to the culprits in this case has been raised to $25,000.

PLACENTIA – A 31-year-old teacher died after she apparently hanged herself and was found by several students Monday morning inside an El Dorado High School classroom. Jillian Jacobson, a photography teacher from Anaheim, was found by several students after another teacher opened her locked classroom around 8:40 a.m., police said. Students initially tried to go inside but found the door was locked, “and that’s not normal for that hour of the day,” Placentia police Lt. Eric Point said. Authorities said the students went to an adjacent classroom and found another teacher, who unlocked the door, and then found Jacobson hanging from the ceiling inside. The teacher removed Jacobson and set her body on the floor, which is where she was when emergency officials arrived. “When police and fire arrived, the teacher was in cardiac arrest,” Point said. “After several minutes, she was declared deceased at the scene.” Jacobson possibly died before paramedics arrived, but every effort was made to try to revive her, Point said. Investigators suspect Jacobson hanged herself in the classroom. A suicide note was not found, Point said. Students and teachers in tears Some students left the campus starting around 10 a.m., and the entire student body – about 1,900 students – was released an hour later. Leo Amaya, 16, of Placentia said he was in Jacobson’s class his freshman year. Now a junior, Amaya remembered her as an upbeat teacher who loved to have her photography class outdoors. He, like many others, was stunned by her death. “If you take into account how everyone reacted by crying and being upset, you’ll see how everyone was completely surprised that it was her,” he said. “She gave no signs of being depressed or sad.” Holly, a sophomore who did not disclose her last name, said she planned to take Jacobson’s class next year. “I was in the class next door when I saw her students run out of the room with pale faces,” she said. “Then teachers were running, then firefighters.” Students initially were asked to stay in their respective classrooms and eventually were gathered in the gym and told by teachers that “she took her life, but didn’t say how,” Holly said. Freshman students Tessa Hoover and Maddie Bell were in the classroom next door to Jacobson’s when a couple of students stormed into their digital media arts class and ran straight to their teacher. “We didn’t know what was happening. Our teacher ran out of our class, then into the room next door,” Hoover said. “Then she started screaming.” “Right away we knew something really horrible had happened,” she added. Their teacher returned and locked the door, but didn’t explain what happened, they said. A few minutes later all the students in the digital media arts class were ushered into the gym, where they learned about the apparent suicide. “It was completely shocking,” Hoover said. Several students on campus said Jacobson’s father committed suicide and that she constantly advised her students against taking their own life. Grief counselors were made available for students and teachers, and school was expected to resume with a normal schedule Tuesday, according to Candy Plahy, the assistant superintendent of educational services at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. “Often, having students return to their normal daily routines is the best way to help them cope,” she said. “Going back to school will help restore normalcy.” Plahy said the “handful” of students who found Jacobson were immediately taken to crisis counselors. It’s unclear whether any of those students will return to classes Tuesday. History of death at El Dorado High This is not the first time death has plagued the El Dorado High School campus. Just last year, a student died after being struck by a van, and another teacher died on campus in 2009. Logan Wells was 16 years old when he was struck and killed by an SUV while riding his skateboard just before 5 a.m. March 23, 2014, near Bastanchury Road and Secretariat Way. He died several hours later at a hospital. Katie Wells, Logan’s mother, tweeted shortly before 1:30 p.m. Monday: “I'm so sad today. Mrs. J was amazing to our family after Logan passed and one of his fav teachers RIP.” Coach Terry Conley died Nov. 29, 2009, of a heart attack at age 60 while exercising in the El Dorado High School weight room. He coached football, basketball, baseball, wrestling and soccer at the school for nearly four decades before his death. “My thoughts and prayers are with the El Dorado High School community today,” Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang said in a statement Monday. “I stand ready to support the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District in any way I can to address the needs of their students.” Colleagues remember Patricia Gibbs, an instructional aide at El Dorado, said she knew Jacobson as a popular, friendly teacher. “She was always in a great mood, very happy,” she said. Gibbs said Jacobson not only taught students how to take pictures, but also about the history of photography, including how to work with old-fashioned film cameras. Jacobson enjoyed covering her classroom walls with her students’ photos. She also posted on her walls notes from students thanking her for teaching them photography, Gibbs said. “She was loved by everyone,” Gibbs said. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video A 31-year-old female teacher was declared dead after students found her hanging inside a high school classroom in Placentia, authorities said Monday. Jillian Rose Jacobson, 31, of Anaheim, died at El Dorado High School, at 1651 Valencia Ave. (map) in the Orange County city of Placentia. Police and firefighters were called the campus at 8:40 a.m., and when they arrived, the female adult teacher was found in full cardiac arrest, Placentia Police Department Lt. Eric Point said. CPR was performed but was unsuccessful and the teacher was declared dead at the scene. There was no indication of foul play, according to police. Students found the woman hanging inside the classroom, and school staff brought her down to the ground, Point said. Jacobson was a photography teacher who had been at the school about 10 years, Point said. Her husband had been notified of her death, he said. The door was locked when students arrived for their first-period class, and after another teacher came to let them in, the teens discovered their teacher, the lieutenant said. An initial investigation indicated the teacher had hanged herself, according to Point. No note was left and detectives were not sure why she had committed suicide. Jacobson was a popular teacher who had close friends among the faculty, Point said. Some students on campus were distraught. “We lost a very important faculty member,” one student told KTLA. “She was the greatest teacher that was here. She was an amazing teacher. It was a terrible thing that happened today.” The student said Jacobson had always said suicide was not an answer. Others students said they believed the teacher had been battling personal issues. "She was also happy and full of life during class," said student Maya Shepherd. An autopsy was expected to take place later in the week, according to a press release on the Orange County coroner's website. She was found in Room 902, the coroner's post stated. The post originally stated she died at 12:45 a.m., but it was later changed to 7 a.m. The original figure may have been a "placeholder time," Supervising Deputy Coroner Allison O’Neal said. Investigators estimate that Jacobson died about 7 a.m. based on an initial investigation, O'Neal said Monday afternoon. There was an “emergency medical situation” involving a teacher at the school, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Kevin Lee said earlier Monday. Students were safe and officials were working to release students early, Lee said. Counselors were at the school and met with the students who found Jacobson, police said. Classes were expected to resume Tuesday. A candlelight vigil was planned for 7 p.m. Monday at the school, according to a Facebook event post. Jacobson's death marked the second time in a year that the news spotlight focused on the Placentia campus amid a tragedy. Last March, students and staff grieved for a 16-old-student named Logan Wells, who was fatally struck by an SUV while riding his skateboard. KTLA's Jennifer Thang and Mark Mester contributed to this article. Students leaving El Dorado High School early after teacher reportedly found hanging in classroom. @KTLA http://t.co/ruuujZU3xm— mark mester (@mester_mark) March 02, 2015 Send up prayers for El Dorado high school, and for their beloved teacher 💛 — ashley gahagan (@agahagan7) March 2, 2015 More videos: ||||| Paul Bonello, who arrived to pick up his daughter, said the campus had had its share of sorrow in the last year. A 16-year-old junior was killed last March when he was hit by a vehicle while skateboarding.

– The door was locked around 8:40am yesterday when a few students arrived at Jillian Jacobson's photography classroom at El Dorado High School in Placentia, Calif. "That's not normal for that hour of the day," a police lieutenant explains to the Orange County Register. The students found another teacher to open the door and were met with a horrific scene: Jacobson, 31, hanged from the ceiling. A student in the other teacher's class says they could hear "screaming, crying," and their teacher yelling, "Oh my God, oh my God!" after the door was opened. That teacher and Jacobson's students lowered Jacobson to the floor, and paramedics tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles Times reports. Jacobson was a popular teacher—and her own father had committed suicide, according to several students who say it was not uncommon for Jacobson to speak out against such an action, advising students that "suicide was not the answer," as KTLA puts it. No suicide note was found, but the preliminary investigation indicates she did take her own life, the lieutenant says. "She gave no signs of being depressed or sad," says one of her former students. Another student at the school, one of many who mourned Jacobson on Twitter, said she remembered the teacher often "really brightened up everyone's day." But others say she was struggling with "personal issues." The students who found Jacobson were taken to crisis counselors immediately, and grief counselors were made available at the school.

(CNN) A strong wintry storm still was dumping snow Friday in far northern New England after creating traffic havoc that claimed at least eight lives across the country's eastern half and knocked out power for tens of thousands of people. A mix of rain, snow and ice that initially hit the Midwest caused headaches from the South to the Northeast, leaving up to a foot of snow in some parts of the latter and widespread freezing rain and ice accumulations elsewhere. Conditions prompted school closures, hours-long delays for commuters and hundreds of flight cancellations. Pedestrians push through a wintry mix of snow and ice Thursday in New York. About 200,000 customers in four states were without power at 6 p.m. ET Friday, according to Poweroutage.us, in part due to freezing rain. The snow in the Northeast was expected to end Saturday morning, though gusty winds and coastal flooding will continue, the National Weather Service said . Another cold front will drop additional snowfall from the Great Lakes to the New England interior through Sunday. Weather-related deaths The wintry weather contributed to traffic crashes that killed people in several states, authorities said. A 60-year-old woman died Thursday in Miami County, Indiana, after she lost control of her vehicle and crashed in slick road conditions, the state's police said. One person was also killed Thursday in Canton, Ohio, and another in Maryland, police said. In Mississippi, a tour bus crashed Wednesday , killing two people and wounding several others. The bus, carrying 46 people, was traveling from Huntsville, Alabama, to Tunica, Mississippi, Sgt. Joseph Miller of the Mississippi Highway Patrol said. The other occupants were taken to area hospitals with various injuries, Miller said. The cause of the crash was weather-related. Arkansas Highway Patrol reported two separate incidents in which three people were killed after drivers lost control of cars on icy roads. Traffic nightmare, airport delays in New York area For hours Thursday, crashes left drivers stuck on the George Washington Bridge, which connects Upper Manhattan and northern New Jersey. New Jersey State Police responded to 555 motor vehicle crashes and helped 1,027 motorists, the agency said. "If you don't have to go out, please stay home so road crews can treat the roads," police said. "If you have to go out, please drive slowly and allow for more time to get where you are going." The storm generally snarled traffic Thursday evening in the New York City area, with about 6 inches of snow accumulating around Central Park and in Newark, New Jersey, the National Weather Service said. More than 8,200 flight delays and 1,900-plus cancellations were reported Thursday in the United States, flight-tracking site FlightAware.com reported. Newark Liberty International appeared the most affected, with more than 470 cancellations and more than 340 delays for flights to or from that site. Scores of would-be passengers stood in line for hours Thursday night and Friday morning at a Newark airport terminal, waiting to adjust travel arrangements, traveler Pankaj Trivedi said. "Bring more staff to help. There are many seniors & kids," Trivedi posted on Twitter, along with pictures of the lines. at Newark airport Hundreds of passengers standing in queue for the last 7 hours waiting for their turn to cancel/renew tickets. Flights were cancelled by bad weather. There are 4 staff members to attend. Bring more staff to help. There are many seniors & kids #unitedAIRLINES pic.twitter.com/VMO234kih9 — PANKAJ TRIVEDI (@PankajTri29) November 16, 2018 US flight delays (5,597) and cancellations (717) were fewer by Friday evening, according to FlightAware.com. The weather forced long waits Thursday night at Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal. The terminal, near Times Square, was packed with commuters waiting for buses that struggled to access the site. Ajoy Singha said it took him four hours to get from Manhattan to his home across the Hudson River in Jersey City, starting with a lengthy wait at the bus terminal. He ended up abandoning the terminal to take a PATH train and an Uber ride home, he said. For those requesting to use videos in news sites, here is the unedited full length video. Feel free to use it with credit. #NewYorkSnow pic.twitter.com/VvyITfrSXx — Ajoy Singha (@AjoySingha) November 16, 2018 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the strength of the snowstorm took the city by surprise. "We're going to be more conservative going forward, but the real key here is, had we had better (forecast) information, we would have told people to stay home and cleared the roads," de Blasio told NY1 on Friday morning. "But in the end, there's also going to be times when Mother Nature is just stronger than us, and sometimes we're going to be playing catchup. And this was certainly one of those times." New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday the storm was a "regional nightmare," and state Department of Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti offered "our apologies to all of our New Jerseyans who last night experienced a really rough commute home." "We got behind the storm. I realize that," she said. Students forced to wait in schools In Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, some school buses couldn't get students all the way home Thursday because of road closures and "unsafe travel conditions." Drivers were forced to take them back to schools in the Elizabeth Area School District , where they were kept in a "shelter-like environment" until parents could pick them up. The schools operated on a two-hour delay Friday, the district said. ||||| Visitors walk through the 9/11 Memorial in New York during a snowfall, Thursday Nov. 15, 2018. One of the first big storms of the season moved across the eastern half of the country Thursday, causing... (Associated Press) Visitors walk through the 9/11 Memorial in New York during a snowfall, Thursday Nov. 15, 2018. One of the first big storms of the season moved across the eastern half of the country Thursday, causing deadly traffic crashes and closing schools. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) (Associated Press) TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The first snowfall of the season lingered Friday in the Northeast as thousands of exhausted commuters pointed their fingers at politicians and meteorologists for leaving them creeping along highways or stuck in mass transit hubs because of a storm that left seven dead as it moved through the Midwest and South. Some students in West Orange, New Jersey, were forced to sleep at their schools after their buses turned back, while others were taken to a diner to eat because snow-covered roads were clogged with traffic Thursday. "Students are safe in their schools with teachers and staff. They have eaten dinner and are preparing to get some rest," a district alert said. They were not alone in finding the ride home difficult. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tweeted it took him nearly six hours to travel a distance that normally would take 45 minutes. Bridges and major roads in the New York metropolitan area reopened Friday after many closures caused by crashes during Thursday's storm. Some drivers woke up in their cars Friday morning after being stuck overnight on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. Accidents on the George Washington Bridge halted traffic on the crossing and led to backups in New York and New Jersey. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he understands why people are frustrated that city officials were caught off guard by a snowstorm that stranded some New Yorkers in their cars for hours. De Blasio said on New York 1 Friday that the city "will do a full review of what happened here." A mayoral spokesman said the early storm meant that Metropolitan Transportation Authority didn't have snow chains on its buses. He said many of them had to pull over, "further clogging streets." New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who tweeted the storm was worse than forecast, was slated to hold a briefing Friday. NJ Transit bus passengers were told to expect substantial delays and cancellations Friday because many drivers, who inched their vehicles in the snow and ice, worked past their normal schedules and federal law mandated a rest period for them. The delays for buses caused a logjam of commuters Thursday, forcing officials to close the doors at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal. The wintry weather caused a traffic nightmare on a 30-mile stretch of Interstate 78 in Pennsylvania, with numerous vehicles stuck for several hours from the Lehigh Valley to the New Jersey state line. Police sometimes drove on the opposite side of highway, honking their horns to wake up drivers who had fallen asleep. About 105,000 homes and businesses were without power Friday in Pennsylvania, mostly in the western part of the state. Some areas of Massachusetts received more than nine inches of snow in the storm, which turned to rain overnight to complicate the morning commute. The towns of Topsfield, Carlisle and Billerica, northwest of Boston, were among the towns that got more than nine inches of snow, the National Weather Service said. Boston got less than three inches. State police said a stretch of the Massachusetts Turnpike east was closed Friday morning after several tractor-trailer crashes. Many schools in northern New England were delayed or closed after the region saw anywhere from four to eight inches of snow. Interstate speeds in New Hampshire and Maine were lowered to 45 mph. Schools were closed or were opening with delays in upstate New York, including in the Albany and Syracuse areas. ___ Associated Press writers Karen Matthews in New York, Bob Salsberg in Boston, Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this story.

– The first snowfall of the season lingered Friday in the Northeast as thousands of exhausted commuters pointed their fingers at politicians and meteorologists for leaving them creeping along highways or stuck in mass transit hubs because of a surprise storm, per the AP. The storm left seven dead as it moved through the Midwest and South. Some students in West Orange, New Jersey, were forced to sleep at their schools after their buses turned back, while others were taken to a diner to eat because snow-covered roads were clogged with traffic Thursday. In fact, State Police in New Jersey responded to 555 vehicle crashes and aided 1,027 motorists, reports CNN. Bridges and major roads in the New York metropolitan area reopened Friday after many closures caused by crashes during Thursday's storm. Some drivers woke up in their cars Friday morning after being stuck overnight on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. Accidents on the George Washington Bridge halted traffic on the crossing and led to backups in New York and New Jersey. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he understands people are frustrated that city officials were caught off guard by the storm and promised "a full review of what happened here." A mayoral spokesman said the early storm meant that Metropolitan Transportation Authority didn't have snow chains on its buses. He said many of them had to pull over, "further clogging streets." The delays for buses created a logjam, forcing officials to close the doors Thursday at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal. (The opposite coast is reeling, too. Read the latest on the California fires here.)

The sister of the Redding-area woman who vanished three weeks ago only to be found early Thanksgiving morning on the side of a road in Yolo County says the family is elated and relieved that Sherri Papini has been reunited with them. “This has been the most amazing Thanksgiving that our family could ever ask for,” Sheila Koester said Friday in a phone interview with The Sacramento Bee. “We’re all very, very, very excited, very, very relieved and just very thankful for getting our Sherri back.” Koester declined to say whether Sherri Papini, 34, has seen her two young children or if she’s made it back the rural home she shares with her husband, Keith, in Mountain Gate, Shasta County, a mile from where she disappeared after going for a jog on Nov. 2. “What I can say is that her and Keith have been reunited,” Koester said. “And that they are very happy to be together and they're very thankful for everyone for allowing them to have their privacy and allowing them to recover from their situation that all of us have been in.” Never miss a local story. Sign up today for a free 30 day free trial of unlimited digital access. SUBSCRIBE NOW Papini was found around 4:30 a.m. Thursday after she flagged down a driver on Interstate 5 in Yolo County, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Thursday in a news conference. Investigators say Papini was bound with restraints when she was let out of a sport-utility vehicle near a freeway interchange in the town of Yolo. They say she was able to flag down a motorist on the freeway near County Road 17. “CHP is on scene and advised that she is chained to something,” a radio dispatcher told a responding officer Thursday in an audio clip obtained by The Sacramento Bee. “CHP is advising that she is heavily battered.” Authorities are searching for two women armed with a handgun. SHARE COPY LINK Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko says he is "ecstatic" to report that Sherri Papini has been located and reunited with her husband and family on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 24, 2016. "Sherri is now safe," he said, after being taken capti Randall BentonThe Sacramento Bee Papini’s husband, Keith, reported Sherri Papini missing on Nov. 2 after she didn’t pick up her two young children from day care that afternoon, something her family members say was completely out of character for the devoted mom. Bosenko said at a Thursday news conference that Papini was injured during her abduction, but did not provide details on the extent of her injuries. She was treated at a hospital in the Sacramento area and released. Koester said she’s met with her sister, but she declined to provide details about her condition. The sheriff said police are looking for two Hispanic women driving a dark-colored SUV in connection with the abduction, based on Papini’s description. Authorities have no other information about the captors, including other details of their appearance or clothing. On Friday, Koester expressed gratitude to investigators, search teams and media outlets for keeping Papini’s story alive. Koester said she’s hopeful her sister’s abductors will be found. She also thanked the motorist, who hasn’t yet been identified by detectives, who stopped for Papini on the side of the road. “We appreciate that person stopping and helping her,” she said. One woman posted on social media after Papini was found to say she saw her on the side of the road and called 911, but didn’t stop. “I couldn’t stop in time to help you this morning but I did pull over and report to police that I saw you by the road and was certain you needed help,” said Alison Sutton, who posted on a Facebook page dedicated to finding Papini. “I am thankful that someone else was able to pull over safely to help you and that you are safe. God bless you and your family.” “Thank you very much for alerting the police,” replied Rod Rodriguez III, who says he’s Sherri’s father-in-law. “We greatly appreciate your assistance.” “I don’t know that my call helped her,” she wrote in a follow-up post. “I am very thankful she is safe and back with her family. This is truly a Thanksgiving to remember.” Rodriguez didn’t returned a phone message left Friday at his home near Redding. Sutton couldn’t be reached for comment. The Sacramento Bee on Friday morning requested 911 tapes and dispatch logs from the California Highway Patrol and the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office, but the agencies haven’t provided them. Bosenko, meanwhile, appeared Friday on “Good Morning America,” but he didn’t offer new details about the case. Like Koester, he said Papini was overjoyed to be reunited with her family. “Of course, she was very emotional to be released and hear her husband’s voice and then a few hours later to be reunited with him,” he told the news program. With little new information being released Friday, various online sleuths have been trying to find out what might have motivated two women to abduct Papini and then let her go. Before Papini reappeared, investigators said they had spoken with her friends and acquaintances, as well as “people Sherri has had past relationships with” to try to find her. Investigators said they had gone out of state tracking down leads. Detectives have authored close to 20 search warrants – some of which are sealed – and they said they’re examining cellphone records, bank accounts, email and social media profiles. Investigators have declined to discuss what prompted them to file the search warrants or why detectives have traveled out of state. Bosenko said Friday he had no new information to release. ||||| The sister of a Northern California mother who was held captive for three weeks spoke to the media Friday, but gave very little information as to what happened to her sister or how she was doing. Sheila Koester opened the news conference by telling reporters that she was six months pregnant and asked them to be aware of her emotions. She went on to thank many organizations who helped in the search for her sister, Sherri Papini. Advertisement "We are overwhelmed with joy over how supportive everyone has been to bring us together as a family again," Koester said. "Everyone's tireless efforts has made our family whole this Thanksgiving. We cannot thank you enough." After Koester made her statement, she opened it up for reporter questions, which included asking about her 34-year-old sister's physical and emotional state, as well as details about the case. Koester gave very little information about what Papini went through since she went missing on Nov. 2 or how she is doing. "She has been through a very traumatic event and needs time with her family," Koester said. "I don't have any details into the case, I just know that getting her face out there was the best thing we could do." When asked about the sisters' reunion, Koester only said, "It was a very joyous reunion, and we were just very, very excited to see each other." Koester was asked how she and the family handled Papini going missing for three weeks, but gave very little insight into how the family coped with her disappearance. "It's been a range of emotions -- sadness, anger," Koester said. "Right now, it's just joy, lots and lots of joy." -- WHAT HAPPENED TO SHERRI PAPINI? Sherri Papini, who was found alive Thanksgiving morning near Interstate 5 in Yolo County, was "very emotional" after a passing driver came upon her, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Friday. Investigators are searching for two armed Hispanic women driving a dark-colored SUV whom detectives believe abducted Papini on Nov. 2 while she was out for a jog near her home the Shasta County town of Mountain Gate, Bosenko said. In an interview Friday on "Good Morning America," Bosenko called it very rare for her to be released. Papini was found Thursday bound by restraints near I-5 and County Road 17 but was able to flag down a driver, who called authorities and connected the mother of two with her husband, Keith, by cellphone, Bosenko said. "She was very emotional to be released and hear her husband's voice and then a few hours later to be reunited with him," Bosenko said. Papini was treated at a hospital for unspecified injuries and released. Officials said they were not aware of a motive for the kidnapping. Investigators have spoken with Papini but hoped to get more information soon in the effort to uncover what happened over the last three weeks, Bosenko said. It was not clear if she knew the women she said abducted her, police said. "Obviously she was emotional and quite upset, but elated to be freed, and so we were able to get some information from her," Bosenko said. "Then, in the days following this, we will be following up with her." Family members previously called her a "super mom" who would never abandon her family. Her husband reported her missing when she failed to pick up their two young children from day care. Her cellphone and headphones were found near where she was last seen. "She could drop her phone, but she would never in a million years not pick up our children at the time that she normally would have," Keith Papini told "Good Morning America" before his wife was found. Her husband was cleared as a suspect after passing a polygraph test. Before she was found, he said he was "getting very angry and frustrated" and "scared for my wife." Police had received more than 400 tips in the case, but Papini's release was not the result of a $100,000 reward that was offered, Bosenko said. "It shows what a community can do when it works together to get the word out," he said. Phone numbers for Papini and some of her family rang through Friday, and the Shasta County sheriff's office did not immediately respond to calls, messages and emails seeking comment. The Associated Press contributed to this report. AlertMe

– The family of the missing California woman found alive on Thanksgiving has a lot of thanks to give. "We are overwhelmed with joy over how supportive everyone has been to bring us together as a family again," Sherri Papini's sister told reporters Friday, per KCRA. "Everyone's tireless efforts has made our family whole this Thanksgiving. We cannot thank you enough." Papini, a mother of two young children, disappeared after going for a jog Nov. 2. Police say she was kidnapped and was reunited with her family Thursday after her captors dumped her near Interstate 5 in Yolo County, where she was able to flag down a passing car. Papini had been chained and beaten by her captors, according to police audio obtained by the Sacramento Bee. The California Highway Patrol "is on scene and advised that she is chained to something," a radio dispatcher told a responding officer. "CHP is advising that she is heavily battered." Police say they are searching for two armed Hispanic woman in a dark-colored SUV. A motorist who called police after seeing Papini by the roadside tells the New York Daily News that the woman she glimpsed in the dark appeared terrified and was waving a piece of fabric up and down. "I realized if she was that close to getting hit—willing to be that close to freeway traffic—she must really need help," the driver says.

Background The natural progression of chronic disease involves periods of apparent remission interspersed by exacerbations and, in the year leading to death, multiple hospitalisations.1 Some indicators of poor prognosis can suggest a patient is nearing the end of life,2 and have been found useful for initiating discussions with families regarding pre-emptive care planning.1 Yet there is uncertainty of the time, frequency and duration of the next episode of decompensation as well as the ultimate prognosis causing doubts about whether to continue active management. Further, while the majority of people want to die at home, most will die in hospital.3–8 Patients nearing the end of life are high-level users of ambulance services,9 emergency services,2 ,10 hospital wards11 or intensive care units and many die in hospital.12 Significant numbers of patients with cancer or other terminal illnesses are suitable for palliative care but often are readmitted to acute hospitals multiple times with lengths of stay of just under a week.10 ,13 ,14 While there are accepted policies for de-escalating treatment in terminally ill patients,2 ,15–17 there are also inherent and societal pressures on medicine to continue utilising technological advances to prolong life even in plainly futile situations.15 The implications of a decision to administer or withhold aggressive treatment for terminal patients are enormous for clinicians, patients and their families, for the health system and for society as a whole. It can be difficult to reach a decision that balances the rights of patients to die with dignity18 ,19 and the expectations of families about satisfactory end-of-life care,20 ,21 while considering the limitations of health resources where opportunity costs cannot be disregarded.22–24 Delaying unavoidable death contributes to unsustainable and escalating healthcare costs, despite aggressive and expensive interventions. These interventions may not influence patient outcome; often do not improve the patient's quality of life; may compromise bereavement outcomes for families; and cause frustration for health professionals.20 ,25–29 This highlights the importance of developing more accurate ways of identifying patients near the end of life, involving both the patients and their carers in those discussions and then making more appropriate management plans. For about two decades many acute hospitals have adopted rapid response systems to identify and manage seriously ill patients.25 ,30–32 They were initially developed to recognise at-risk patients early as a basis for triggering a rapid response to improve patient outcomes. In doing so, the system also identifies patients at the end of life who are predictably deteriorating. Up to one-third of all of rapid response team (RRT) calls have been related to end-of-life issues.33 ,34 This emphasises the failure of current hospital systems to recognise patients at the end of life. Often it is the patient and carers who initiate this conversation.25 ,35 Clinical decision aids are widely used to involve patients in informed treatment decisions that incorporate their personal preferences and values.36 Sensitive clinical decision rules have been used to discontinue futile resuscitation on patients who experience a cardiac arrest.37 However, we have not found a fit-for-purpose screening checklist or clinical decision tool for objective identification of end of life within days, weeks or months to minimise inappropriate treatment at hospital admission.29 There is a need to recognise patients at the end of life while at the same time acknowledging uncertainty around the exact time and circumstances when death will occur.38 The aims of the CrisTAL checklist are to assist clinicians to recognise these patients and to change the culture of the hospital to one where end of life is openly discussed and dealt with more appropriately.39 Rationale Accordingly, there is a need to collate evidence to assist clinicians, carers and families in decision-making about the most sustainable model for appropriate and best quality care in the last few months of life. The specific objectives of this research are to: review literature to obtain definitions for dying patient and end of life; review existing literature regarding screening tools for the prediction of death in hospitalised patients; propose a checklist for screening of hospitalised patients at-risk of dying in the short to medium term. Two common and important situations where patients at the end of life can potentially be identified are on admission to the emergency department (ED); and when a patient deteriorates and becomes the subject of a RRT call. This paper reports on the development of a clinical decision aid for use in both circumstances: CrisTAL (Criteria for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care). It summarises the information available in the literature to construct the domains for such a screening instrument based on patient data items routinely available at the point of care. The tool is intended to offer a starting point to begin discussions with the patient and relatives about priorities and preferences on type and place for end-of-life care.39 ,40 It also may identify elderly who will benefit from alternative care pathways instead of hospitalisation.5 ,41 The routine use of such a tool may also change the culture of the organisation to one which is more aware of patients who may be at the end of life and one where different management pathways are considered earlier. The tool is not meant to dictate whether or not a patient receives life sustaining therapy or is the subject or a do-not-resuscitate order. However, it may provide an objective assessment to inform and support that decision, made jointly by patients, their family and the treating team. Methods We undertook a narrative literature search in PubMed, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar for published and unpublished papers about explicit and practical definitions of ‘end of life’ and for tools or screening instruments to predict death. The search strategy included the following terms: (End of life, terminal, dying, inappropriate resuscitation, do-not-resuscitate, cardiopulmonary resuscitation order, limitations of treatment, discontinuation of care, futility, advanced directive) and (hospital, acute care facility, palliative care, ED) and (Screening tool, decision aid, algorithm, predictive, predictor of death). This was supplemented with manual searches through the reference lists of eligible papers. The variables and thresholds explored for the screening tool were adopted from existing scales and published findings that demonstrated their association with either in-hospital or 30-day mortality or survival to 12 weeks.42–47 Based on the practicalities of applying the tool as decision-making support at the point of care, we used four criteria to decide whether the existing instrument was helpful for the purpose of objectively diagnosing dying and whether to discard items: ready availability in medical records,42 ,43 need for clinical judgement, use of value judgment and self-sufficiency of indicators. This review was followed by consultation with two doctors and three ICU nurses with intensive care qualifications and experience in end-of-life care, about the feasibility of acquiring or documenting these data items in routine care. Results We found 112 relevant articles dealing with the definition of dying, determination of severity of deterioration, prediction of in-hospital death, preferred place of death and options for alternative end-of-life care. Among these, we identified 18 instruments and their variants validated in different settings. Below is a summary of the operational definitions and commonly used or cited tools to predict death in hospital. Operational definitions Nine working definitions of end of life were found to assist in limiting the number of items for a screening tool to a manageable set (table 1). These were mostly impractical in their requirement of clinicians’ subjective assessment; or confined to patients imminently dying within hours; and of limited use for elderly patients with chronic disease, nearing end of life within days or weeks. Table 1 Definitions of end of life and their suitability for routine use in screening We defined inappropriateness of admission to hospital for patients at the end of life as those ‘admissions when the resources of the hospital will not have any significant impact on the clinical prognosis of the elderly patient with multiple life-threatening comorbidities’. As pragmatic definitions of ‘dying patients’ were not prevalent in the literature, we searched for a suitable proxy measure that could be drawn from studies examining predictors of poor survival. These are abundant and cover both subjective and objective parameters anticipating death. Subjective variables and their utility in predicting short-term to medium-term mortality Of the instruments developed in the past 30 years for prognostication of death after admission, many still require value judgements and unstructured subjective assessments, which renders them less reassuring and hence less useful as a tool for deciding at the time whether to admit a patient. Performance Status Scales designed as early as 1949 by Karnofsky53 ,54 and The World Health Organisation (ECOG PS) in 1982 are simple and popular instruments for determining appropriate intensity of care for patients. They have undergone adaptations over time55 where completion still involved major value judgements, which makes them impractical and unreliable for a standardised prognosis (table 2). Table 2 Existing scales or screening tools to predict risk of death and their domains Various indices have been designed to identify illness severity and risk of death after admission (table 2). Some reliably capture the level of quality of life in terminal patients but do not focus on objective signs;54 some use nursing assessment of organic and psychosocial aspects;56 others suggest a checklist that combines objective (eg, semiconsciousness) and subjective items (eg, ‘irreversible deterioration’).51 Some emphasise application of survival prediction for in hospital-based palliative care services with high prognostic accuracy (85.6%) in estimating death within 3 days of admission to a palliative care facility, but only 54% and 57.6% accuracy in predicting death within 4–30 days and by 6 months.57 A global assessment of frailty using a subjective score between 1 (very fit) and 7 (severely frail) had good predictive validity for death within 18 months58 but required clinical and value judgements, and did not incorporate the impact of underlying conditions, hence reducing its ease of use for routine care by less experienced personnel. Clinician perception about risk of death has been found to be reasonably accurate in particular for patients with advanced chronic heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as an adjuvant in the decision to more efficiently target palliative services and end-of-life care planning.59 Finally, the global self-rated question designed to assess patient perception of their own health in comparison with other people their age, not intended as a prognostic tool but since the early 1980s has been associated with predicting long-term mortality in the elderly,60 independently of ‘objective health status’ and across ethnic groups. The self-rated health question is now better understood,60–62 and has been validated as a screening tool for vulnerable people at higher risk of death in community.63 Its influence on imminent risk of death at hospital admission is not known and we will include it in our screening tool. Objective variables and their utility in predicting short-term mortality Several factors have been found to have an impact on the risk of death after hospital admission, including age 65 years and above,42 ,63 ,85 ,86 multiple comorbidities,18 multiorgan failure,44 physiological data from laboratory test results64 ,76 and type of service and urgency of admission.43 We propose a combined algorithm quantifying the aggregate risk estimation of some previously developed instruments to take us closer to a more accurate definition of dying. An historical exploration of 18 of these estimates has shed more light on the influence of these factors. The diagnosis of advanced cancer has probably attracted the most attention for predicting prognosis and appropriate care. From a review of 24 studies and 18 prognostic indicators, there was general agreement that anorexia and weight loss showed the most significant association with poor survival, followed by cognitive impairment, dyspnoea and dysphagia.83 While several of these studies were conducted in small convenience samples, some with doubtful statistical methods,42 clinicians would agree that these are largely symptoms of imminent death. Uncertainty of what constitutes dying in the short term has led to the development of practical prediction tools to assist in treatment decision-making, guide family consultations, and minimise unnecessary expense to the health system (table 2). Prognostic scales and indices Performance Status Tools have been well received and modifications tested in various settings. Table 2 summarises scales found a predicting outcome and time to death/discharge, some of which have been validated in similar or divergent populations and others have led to refinements and developments of further tools.72 many are cancer-specific scales, thus have limited value for wider use in ED.82 For instance the PaP score is good at reducing the prognostic uncertainty of death within 1 month of admission to palliative care services.76 However, it is only validated for patients with cancer and it can yield significant differences between the prediction of registered nurses and doctors.76 ,77 ,87 The Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), was designed to estimate 1–10-year mortality in longitudinal studies and is not validated as prognostic indicator for short-term outcomes in cancer or other conditions.88 The Elixhauser Comorbidity Index is a complex tool74 which uses administrative databases to estimate increased risk of in-hospital death or prolonged hospital stay.68 but clinicians may not find it user-friendly because it relies on administrative data and requires calculations. Further, the authors recommended a combination with other influential factors for a more accurate prediction of death in hospital.18 The Acute Physiology and Chronic Disease Evaluation (APACHE II) tool and its variants APACHE-L, APACHE III and APACHE IV and the Simplified Acute Physiology Score, SAPS II were designed to measure the severity of disease for adult patients and are all used to predict in-hospital death and risk-adjusted length of stay in intensive care units.65–67 ,70 ,89 The scores indicate the risk of death in patient groups rather than individual prognosis.90 Moreover, the APACHE instruments are heavily dependent on laboratory-based data not generally available in all EDs in Australia. Multiple attempts have been made to enhance objective early warning scores (EWS) for identification of critical illness and deterioration on admission and in intensive care. Improvement in serial EWS within 4 h of presentation to hospital predicts improved clinical outcomes75 ,79 ,84 ,91 ,92 hence EWS has been deemed as a potential triage tool in the ED for acute medical patients.75 ,79 ,81 ,84 ,93 While the developers of some EWS have emphasised that they did not intend them as predictors of patient outcome,94 experience has shown that these scores are being used in practice to predict death. Accordingly, we chose to include these in the construction of algorithms defining the diagnosis of dying. In 2012, the Rothman Index was found to be a strong predictor of both in-hospital mortality, hospital readmission and post-discharge mortality at 2 days, 30 days and 1 year.44 ,56 Unfortunately the Rothman Index relies on comprehensive collection of nursing or doctors’ assessments, not part of routine care in outpatients or ED in most hospitals. Development of CriSTAL To be considered useful on admission at ED or during an RRT attendance, the screening tool items should meet the following criteria: easily collected in routine practice,42 or readily available in electronic or paper medical records; does not require specialist clinical judgement; is sufficient to independently predict death in specific conditions; and with two exceptions, does not employ a value judgment. None of the 18 published predictive tools met the four criteria; five met three criteria but four of these instruments involved clinical judgements and one involved value judgment; nine tools met two criteria and four tools only met one criterion. Figure 1 shows the distribution of criteria to justify the need for a fresh tool that met the four criteria. Figure 1 Outcome of the literature review. In the absence of a comprehensive instrument combining acute and chronic predictors to increase certainty of diagnosis of imminent death or death within weeks or months, this review gathered recognised predictors of death for elderly patients with complex health profiles from existing prognostic tools to create a new screening instrument. We anticipated that incorporating objective variables would enhance certainty of the screening tool and could assist in the decision to appropriately generate do-not-resuscitate orders25 and consider alternative end-of-life care orders. The variables and values proposed for the CriSTAL screening tool were adopted from existing scales and from published research findings demonstrating their association with either in-hospital or 30-day mortality or survival to 12 weeks.42–45 ,56 ,76 Old age and RRT criteria are priorities on the checklist. Supplementation with a quantifiable level of severity based on EWS75 ,79 ,84 ,91; history of repeat hospitalisations with or without admissions to ICU95; emergency admission96; at least one of the predefined advanced comorbidities from the evidence-based list;35 an objective measurement of frailty;85 documentation of nursing home placement;33 ,46 evidence of cognitive impairment;25 ,42 ,63 ,73 ,83 and readily available test results: proteinuria and if ECG confirms abnormalities.97 Table 3 shows our resulting 29-item screening tool, named CriSTAL, to denote our intention to introduce transparency in the identification of the dying patient and enable objective clinician decisions about prognosis and justification for administering or de-escalating aggressive treatments. Table 3 Proposed components of the Criteria for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care tool to identify end-of-life status before hospital admission A slight modification is proposed for the use of the tool following a RRT attendance (table 4). This might encourage reassessment of the need for continuing hospitalisation in an acute care facility and discussion about the need for limitations of treatment if death is imminent. Table 4 Proposed components of the Criteria for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care tool to identify end-of-life status after a rapid response call where a do-not-resuscitate order is not in place Discussion How would CriSTAL be used in practice? It may characterise ‘appropriateness of admission’ and appropriateness of subsequent treatment for patients at the end of life in a way that can be applicable to a wide variety of terminal health conditions. It could be used as a platform for beginning discussions with patients and their carers. It may also add more certainty identifying the irrevocably dying patient with chronic comorbidities and prevent further futile treatments to prolong life. We have omitted indicators of system failures or nursing staff workloads such as TISS or NEMS90 that may potentially influence risk of death, as these did not fulfil our inclusion criteria of being routinely available The Scottish health system implemented a national action plan for care at the end of life deriving from the realisation that 30% of all hospital bed-days were accounted for by multiple admissions of people in the final year of life.41 The ‘Dying well’ premise in Scotland is that alternative care is integral to continuity of care outside the hospital. The strategy includes among others, early identification of care needs for any terminal illness, holistic assessment and involvement of patients and families in the coordination of alternative care.2 Inspired by this development, our definition of inappropriate hospital admission is linked to the more objective scoring factors of the CriSTAL tool, whose accuracy is to be validated to more precisely establish the main determinants of death in the short term. Our review indicated that old age42 ,63 ,85 ,86 and concurrent illnesses18 ,25 ,42 ,46 ,63 ,101 were the strongest predictors of death in and outside intensive care.45 ,104 Strengths of this developmental work are the evidence-base source of variables in the tool and the extensive range of predictors covering demographic, physiological and diagnostic prediction measures. A limitation of this research is that the item selection was based on a narrative review with focused set of search terms. This may have led to overlook of some articles that would have been captured in a systematic and broader search strategy. However, the comprehensive search for tools and the breadth of instruments found using this approach provided a sufficiently large number of items to start the discussion on possible amalgamation of variables from existing instruments to meet our targeted need. Other researchers among the readership may choose to expand the search or enhance the tool. In fact, a limitation of CriSTAL's development at this stage is its length for routine administration, and the number of potential predictors which may lead to model ‘overfitting’. The testing of too many variables is known to reduce the generalisability of the predictive model.105 By retrospective testing and future prospective validation we hope to reduce the total number of items without sacrificing predictive accuracy or generalisability. Initially, CriSTAL's 29 subitems will be tested in a retrospective data review using a case–control study design where cases are all deaths reported from the RRT attendances system in a teaching hospital during 2012–2013. Controls will be age-sex-ward matched records of patients admitted in the same period with an RRT call but did not die before or within 3 months of discharge. Sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values will be calculated from logistic regression models of matched cases and controls. This retrospective validation has been endorsed by the South Western Sydney Local Health District Ethics Committee. The next step after retrospective testing will be the prospective administration of the validated tool as part of the admissions procedure in emergency and after the RRT calls on general wards. The accuracy of models with different number of variables will be determined using the area under the receiver-operating characteristics (AUROC) curve.106 Minimum accuracy will be defined as area under the ROC curve >80%, and variables not contributing significantly to the model will be dropped from the instrument. Survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression will investigate the most significant predictors of imminent death. A 5% chance of survival to hospital discharge among those predicted to die will be chosen as the maximum error allowed for the tool to be considered useful. While it is acknowledged that predictions based on population subgroups are not meant to be used for individuals,107 the calculated risk can be used as a reference to inform the decision by the individual under the clinician's guidance, on whether or not to continue aggressive treatment, given the odds of dying based on the well-established predictors. Careful use of the CriSTAL tool care for decision-making would involve alignment with quality of care principles and patient values and preferences, and should not be driven by hospital financial pressures or need to meet health system performance indicators.24 Finally, it is important to recognise that the use of a screening tool for identifying patients who have a high probability of dying within 3 months can only provide an indication of those who with a low probability of survival and will not be a signal of absolute certainty.50 Testing its appropriateness, reliability and predictive value in different patient subpopulations will help reduce this uncertainty but its predictive value may vary in different settings and for different timeframes and this needs to be ascertained. Further, its values after an RRT response will need to be assessed in relation to its value at the time of admission for patients when trialled. As emphasised before, testing in different settings could yield different predictive performance depending on the patient profile and possibly the influence of factors not accounted for in the tool. Readers and researchers are encouraged to train and validate the CriSTAL tool in their facility to generate the most valid and relevant set of variables for their subpopulations. Conclusions and recommendations This tool does not intend to preclude access to healthcare for the terminal elderly, but to provide an objective assessment and definition of the dying patient as a starting point for honest communication with patients and families,3 about recognising that dying is part of the life cycle. Dignified withdrawal of intensive and inappropriate treatment29 ,52 and triage into alternative care in non-acute facilities10 ,38 is an area where there is still ample room for improvement.1 ,29 ,39 Standard guidelines for alternative end-of-life care are not yet broadly adopted in Australia and discussions with policy-makers need to continue.2 However, increasing evidence of alternative out-of-hospital care acceptable to clinicians108 and others are known to include sedation to minimise distress, pain management,109 spiritual support,41 music therapy and home-based palliative care.110 If proven accurate in the prediction of short-term death, a reduced version of CriSTAL could be proposed for routine use at hospital admission. We acknowledge that the Australian health system may not yet be equipped to respond to the demand for alternative healthcare facilities for the dying.111 However, it is hoped that using such predictive tools may encourage more appropriate services for managing patients at the end of life. Training for nurses and doctors in the use of the screening tool and in approaching patients and families with concrete information about inevitability of death and lack of benefit of further intensive treatment are paramount.27 ,112 They will be better equipped to communicate the responsible decision to suspend efforts and handle potential requests for futile treatment.41 ,49 Automation of CriSTAL and its scoring would facilitate use at time of admission and production of instant or retrospective locally relevant profiles of patients imminently dying. Potential uses include as a clinical support tool for decision-making on triage to appropriate end–of-life care facilities; to prevent death in some cases; and to examine variation in risk-of-death levels, differences in admission practices, and inform triage policies across hospitals,43 as a first step into cost-effectiveness and patient satisfaction studies. ||||| Researchers at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia, insist that the checklist does not intend to withhold treatment but said it intends to stop “intrusive, expensive and ultimately pointless medical procedures”. The programme, dubbed CriSTAL (Criteria for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate alternative care), will be trialled in Sydney A&Es later this year to identify patients deemed likely to die within three months of going into hospital. Among the points listed as risk factors is low blood pressure, a weak pulse, history of disease, dementia, repeat hospitalisation, weakness, heart failures and sudden weight loss. Dr Magnolia Cardona-Morrell, who led the research at the university’s Simpson Centre for Health Services Research, said: “Most terminally ill people want to die at home, but in fact three quarters end up dying in acute hospitals, often after intrusive, expensive and ultimately pointless medical procedures. The study's authors claim the list would improve care by enabling doctors to be honest about patients' chances with families and giving them greater choice “Current acute hospital systems often fail to recognise or cater to the needs of people for whom death is imminent and unavoidable. They are geared for aggressive treatment and emergency resuscitation, not peaceful, harm-free transitions. “Elderly people who are dying need to be protected from heroic but intrusive live-saving hospital interventions that often only prolong suffering rather than enhance quality of remaining life.” The checklist is only meant to be used for patients aged 65 or over and a number of factors must combine for death to be considered “unavoidable”. A spokesperson for the University of New South Wales said CriSTAL had been compiled using an “extensive review of the strengths and weaknesses of medical literature that attempts to diagnose dying”. Most of the existing tools were found to rely on clinical judgment, subjective assessments and value judgments. A paper describing the assessment procedure has been published in the BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care journal. In it, Dr Cardona-Morrell and Ken Hillman, a professor of intensive care, argue that a balance must be struck between limited health resources, families’ expectations and the dignity of the patient. CrisTAL is being trialled in selected hospital emergency departments in Sydney this year. The programme includes communication training for medical staff, so they can sensitively discuss with dying patients and their carers the limitations of medical treatment and their choices. Dr Cardona-Morrell said medicine “cannot work miracles” against old age and multiple chronic conditions in elderly patients. Her co-author Professor Hillman believes the management of elderly patients at the end of their lives is “one of the greatest challenges facing health care”. “Most patients and their carers do not wish to be admitted to a hospital at the end of their life and this is a major contributor to the unsustainable costs of health care,” he said. No such list exists in Britain but the director of Age UK said the move would be welcomed on the condition that discussions with relatives were handled “compassionately”. “The best time to begin discussing end of life issues and an older person’s wishes is well in advance, when they are fit and well, but we acknowledge that this isn't always possible,” Caroline Abrahams added. “The ability to accurately identify people entering hospital who are nearing the end of their lives ought to help ensure they receive high quality care, appropriate to their needs, so we welcome this development. "However, in practice, access to good end of life care services remains extremely variable and discussions with older people and their families about this most difficult of subjects are not always handled sensitively and well.” ||||| □ Being admitted via emergency this hospitalisation 96 (associated with 25% mortality within 1 year) □ OR Meets 2 or more of the following deterioration criteria on admission 30 32 98 □ 1. Decreased LOC: Glasgow Coma Score change >2 or AVPU=P or U □ 2. Systolic blood pressure <90 mm Hg □ 3. Respiratory rate <5 or >30 □ 4. Pulse rate <40 or >140 □ 5. Need for oxygen therapy or known oxygen saturation <90% 33 □ 6. Hypoglycaemia: BGL 99 □ 7. Repeat or prolonged seizures 99 □ 8. Low urinary output (<15 mL/h or <0.5 mL/kg/h) 100 □ OR MEW or SEWS score >4 46 79 AND OTHER RISK FACTORS /PREDICTORS OF SHORT-MEDIUM-TERM DEATH □ Personal history of active disease (at least one of): 18 25 42 46 63 101 102 □ Advanced malignancy □ Chronic kidney disease □ Chronic heart failure □ Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease □ New cerebrovascular disease □ Myocardial infarction □ Moderate/severe liver disease □ Evidence of cognitive impairment (eg, long term mental disorders, dementia, behavioural alterations or disability from stroke) 25 42 63 73 83 □ Previous hospitalisation in past year 10 □ Repeat ICU admission at previous hospitalisation 95 (associated with a fourfold increase in mortality) □ Evidence of frailty: 2 or more of these: 42 46 63 85 89 98 □ Unintentional or unexplained weight loss (10 lbs in past year) 18 83 85 □ Self-reported exhaustion (felt that everything was an effort or felt could not get going at least 3 days in the past week) 85 □ Weakness (low grip strength for writing or handling small objects, difficulty or inability to lift heavy objects >=4.5Kg) 63 □ Slow walking speed (walks 4.5 m in > 7 s) □ Inability for physical activity or new inability to stand 46 98 □ Nursing home resident/in supported accommodation 33 46 □ Proteinuria on a spot urine sample: positive marker for chronic kidney disease & predictor of mortality: >30 mg albumin/g creatinine 56 103 ||||| A test to determine if elderly patients will die within 30 days of being admitted to hospital has been developed by doctors to give them the chance to go home or say goodbye to loved ones. Health experts say the checklist will prevent futile and expensive medical treatments which merely prolong suffering. The screening test looks at 29 indicators of health, including age, frailty, illness, mental impairment, previous emergency admissions and heart rate and produces a percentage chance of death within one month and 12 weeks. Researchers say the aim of Critera for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care, or CriSTAL for short, is to kick-start frank discussions about end of life care, and minimise the risk of invasive ineffective treatment. “Delaying unavoidable death contributes to unsustainable and escalating healthcare costs, despite aggressive and expensive interventions,” said lead author Dr Magnolia Cardona-Morrel, a researcher at the University of New South Wales. “These interventions may not influence patient outcome; often do not improve the patient’s quality of life; may compromise bereavement outcomes for families; and cause frustration for health professionals.” Earlier this week Professor Sir Mike Richards, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals for the Care Quality Commission, warned that dying patients are receiving wide variations in care because of hospital failure to replace the Liverpool Care Pathway. The controversial end-of-life plan was scrapped after a review of the regime found that hospital staff wrongly interpreted its guidance for care of the dying, leading to patients being drugged and deprived of fluids in their last weeks of life. The Health Select Committee is currently examining palliative and end of life care in the wake of the LCP controversy. However the new test aims to provide a ‘starting point’ for ‘honest communication with patients and families about recognising that dying is part of the life cycle’ Researchers looked at 112 peer-reviewed studies to find out which tests and questions were the best predictors of death. They claim the test will help doctors and nurses who are often under great pressure from family members and society to prolong the life of patients at all costs. “While there are accepted policies for de-escalating treatment in terminally ill patients, there are also inherent and societal pressures on medicine to continue utilising technological advances to prolong life even in plainly futile situations,” said Dr Cardona-Morrel. “Training for nurses and doctors in the use of the screening tool and in approaching patients and families with concrete information about inevitability of death and lack of benefit of further intensive treatment are paramount.” Most patients end up dying in hospital, even though that is not their stated preference, when asked. Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said:“The best time to begin discussing end of life issues and an older person’s wishes, is well in advance, when they are fit and well, but we acknowledge that this isn’t always possible. “The ability to accurately identify people entering hospital who are nearing the end of their lives ought to help ensure they receive high quality care, appropriate to their needs, so we welcome this development. However, in practice, access to good end of life care services remains extremely variable and discussions with older people and their families about this most difficult of subjects are not always handled sensitively and well. “So as well as improved analysis and triage of people’s needs, better training and support for medical staff in speaking compassionately with older people and their families about end of life care is also required. “ By giving families and patients some options about the preferred place of death, the test could also help terminally ill elderly people choose to go home, the authors said. The checklist is yet to be tested but the researchers hope it will eventually be used for all hospital admissions. The research was published in the BMJ Open publication Supportive & Palliative Care. ||||| A test devised by Sydney researchers to determine the likelihood of a patient's death within the next 30 days will be trialled in local hospitals from March. The Criteria for Screening and Triaging to Appropriate aLternative care, or CriSTAL, developed by University of New South Wales researcher Magnolia Cardona-Morrel, would take into account 29 different criteria to assess whether it was worthwhile carrying out life-saving treatments and procedures. Careful criteria: The CriSTAL test is designed to help terminally ill and elderly patients choose whether to undergo further treatment. Photo: Greg Newington Dr Cardona-Morrel said the test was designed to help doctors begin a conversation with terminally ill patients, particularly elderly patients, as to whether they would like to continue to receive treatment and where they would prefer to die. "The test is easy to administer and the [answers] are readily available in the patient's clinical records and it can be completed in five or 10 minutes," she said. "The score by no means decides the treatment." She said the aim of CriSTAL was to stop the common practice of terminally ill patients being put through unnecessary treatments and surgery in an attempt to save their lives. "Doctors are keeping people alive because they can," Dr Cardona-Morrel said. "Hospitals are full of elderly people living longer because technology allows it. A lot of them would like to die at home." Advertisement Dr Cardona-Morrel said the results of the test were designed as a tool for doctors to use in discussing the available options with patients. "When a patient is diagnosed with a terminal illness their first question is always, 'Doctor, how long do I have left?," she said. "Doctors see their role as to protect their patients so they don't like to give them sad or bad news." The test, which was presented at a medical conference in the US recently, has been welcomed by medical professionals around the world. "I had lots of nurses and doctors standing there saying, 'We have been waiting for a tool like this for years, when can we start using it?'" she said. "To me that is an indication there is a need out there." Once the score is determined the doctor could have a transparent conversation with the patient about their wishes. She said once the score is determined the doctor could have a "transparent conversation" with the patient about their wishes and give them all the options available, including palliative care at home, or in a hospice. The test is undergoing retrospective testing, looking at patients who have died and seeing if it would have been able to calculate the time they had left, before it is introduced into hospitals. Dr Cardona-Morrel said the test was already being used in some Irish and US hospitals, and she hoped it would be in use in Australian hospitals by the end of the year. Even though the test has not been designed for general practitioners to use, Dr Cardona-Morrel said she hoped it would encourage them to keep an eye out for the signs of a terminally ill patient and begin discussions about advanced care directives before the patient became too unwell. The full list of criteria can be found in the paper by Dr Cardona-Morrell and Ken Hillman in the British Medical Journal.

– Seniors had better brace themselves: Some US hospitals are now administering the "death test," which estimates an elderly patient's chance of dying over the next 30 days. Invented in Australia, the test weighs 29 different criteria—including blood pressure, respiratory rate, and medical history—to determine whether hospitalization is worthwhile or the patient should return home or go to a hospice, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The idea is to prevent needless and expensive procedures while allowing patients to spend their last days with loved ones. "Most terminally ill people want to die at home, but in fact three quarters end up dying in acute hospitals, often after intrusive, expensive, and ultimately pointless medical procedures," says study author Magnolia Cardona-Morrell, the Independent reports. The test also aims to take pressure off doctors and nurses to prolong patients' lives "at all costs," the Telegraph reports. "I had lots of nurses and doctors standing there saying, 'We have been waiting for a tool like this for years, when can we start using it?'" says Cardona-Morrell, whose work was presented recently at a US medical conference. "To me that is an indication there is a need out there." She says the test takes just five or 10 minutes, and helps doctors have a more "transparent" conversation with patients. Called CriSTAL, it's now being tested to see if it would have predicted the future of patients who have since died. Then it may be used in more hospitals. (In related news, a study says those who feel younger than their age will live longer.)

Robert De Niro plays a widowed retiree named Frank in Everybody's Fine. And although Frank's not supposed to be a very sophisticated man, it requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have to put up with his level of unworldliness. For one thing, he shows up at the doorsteps of his four adult children, who are scattered across America, without calling ahead, expecting each to be home. What, it would kill him to pick up a phone? The guy spent a working lifetime manufacturing the protective coating that insulates telephone wire, fer chrissakes. The contradiction counts as galumphing irony in this calculatedly soppy, seasonally phony Americanized remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 Stanno Tutti Bene — which was bittersweet in the Italian original with Marcello Mastroianni as the poignant papa. Then there's this: Frank, who hasn't seen his brood since the death of their mother a few months earlier, travels from kid to kid (each son or daughter secretly unhappy, lying to their pop, and not fine at all in his or her own way) by bus and train, toting a sad rolling carry-on bag. Thing is, Frank is the only American born in the age of Samsonite who doesn't know that rolling bags actually roll, don't you know, on little wheels that work quite well when the collapsible handle is extended and pulled. So until one of his kids clues him in, he lifts, carries, and schleps like a grandpa from the old country. Well. The sight of the world-famous Robert De Niro, a powerful actor revered for playing tough guys who can smash Samsonite with their bare hands, pretending not to know how to pull a handle is so embarrassing that the ick ought to obscure the rest of the movie's falsehoods. Yet, as written and directed by British director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) with guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil, the movie introduces offspring who are correspondingly awful, including Kate Beckinsale as a tense, rich ad exec in Chicago, Sam Rockwell as a drippy musician in Denver, and Drew Barrymore as an alleged dancer in Las Vegas. As for the artist son in New York City, jeez, he's nowhere to be found. Naturally, poor shnooky Frank just waits like a lox on the stoop of the kid's scary, downtown-y, artisty, and vagranty tenement building. At least he might have spent the time more profitably learning how to get his wheels rolling. D See all of this week's reviews ||||| Film Reviews Everybody's Fine -- Film Review "Everybody's Fine" Bottom Line: A thoroughly fake movie with trite characters that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness. There isn't much that's fine in "Everybody's Fine," an embarrassing misfire for Kirk Jones, who once gave us the exhilarating comedy "Waking Ned Devine," and Miramax, a storied company now reduced to little more than a film library. Despite a cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment, the production did attract a substantial cast headed by Robert De Niro. It's not going to help, though, when Miramax releases the film Dec. 4.Sometimes a filmmaker and a project just don't make any sense, and "Fine" is a case in point. The film is ostensibly a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film "Stanno Tutti Bene." That bittersweet Italian dramedy has been totally Americanized, which is fine, only wouldn't you want an American director aboard to supervise? Jones, who is British and has never made an American film, not only is the director here, he is the writer. His shaky footing on American soil and with American culture is painfully evident.The movie glides along a surface of complete inauthenticity. Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting. It's a no-go almost from the start.De Niro plays Frank, a man who has been rough on his kids, demanding their success as payment for his hard work supporting them through their formative years. Now he wonders why no one in his scattered family wants to visit him after their mother died. She was always the buffer, but now she's gone.True to his fashion, he ignores his doctor's advice to take things easy because of a lung condition and hits the road, traveling by bus or train -- he hates airplanes -- to visit his two sons and two daughters unannounced. Apparently, sneak attacks are the best approach with this family.You can pretty much guess that when his wife told him the kids were just fine all those years, she wasn't being frank. Indeed, the first son he visits, a painter in New York, has disappeared.So he drops in on one of his daughters (Kate Beckinsale), who lives with her husband and son in a tony Chicago neighborhood. She can't wait to get rid of him, but it's clear -- like everything in this movie, perhaps too clear -- that something is seriously amiss.En route to visit a second son, the long-distance telephone wires buzz with the siblings' urgent calls that alert one another to Dad's sneak visits and let you know the New York son is in deep trouble in Mexico.The second son (Sam Rockwell) doesn't quite have the job Frank expected. Later, Drew Barrymore, the other daughter, seems happy as a dancer in Las Vegas shows, but signals are everywhere that this too is a false front.What Jones intends here is a puzzle: Everything is so utterly predictable and the false fronts so obvious, was he really counting on audiences being surprised? Or, more likely, does he mean for you to watch how De Niro reacts to an entire family basically lying to their dad?There is no web of complexity or societal mischief for the protagonist to penetrate. He merely observes a dance of deceit, responds politely, but when his health finally and inevitably breaks down, he is in a position to demand the truth.What he "learns" is what has been apparent from the start. He pushed too hard as a father and, to protect him against disappointment, his children put on a show and play the happy family.What a long way to go for such a banal payoff. And the route is made longer by characters and situations that are equal parts bland and extraneous. Henry Braham's cinematography and Andrew Jackness' production design create eye-catching landscapes across America for Frank to wander through, but they feel alarmingly empty.

– Critics are divided on Everybody’s Fine: Some think the family drama is okay because of Robert De Niro, and others think it’s awful despite him. What they’re saying: It’s “a thoroughly fake movie that is about, of all things, the need for truthfulness,” writes Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter. “Characters have no depth, and all emotions get ladled on via a syrupy score and De Niro's strenuous acting.” Rooting for these characters “requires saintly moviegoing patience I clearly don't have,” says Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, adding that the script was written “under guidance, apparently, from Dr. Phil.” De Niro is “very good,” says Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, but the film doesn’t trust its audience, and the ending is “pure sap.” It “may well be fine, but it could have been a lot better.” You may feel as if you’ve “been run over by the pathos van,” because the movie borders on “emotional fraud.” But it’s such a relief to see De Niro "in a project that does not stink” that Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune liked it anyway.

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today released the following statement on the Syrian regime’s complaint to the United Nations regarding Senator McCain’s visit with Syrian rebels last year: “It is a sad but unsurprising truth that the Assad regime is less concerned with its massacre of more than 200,000 men, women and children than it is my visit with those brave Syrians fighting for their freedom and dignity. The fact that the international community has done virtually nothing to bring down this terrible regime despite its atrocities is a stain on our collective moral conscience.” ### ||||| U.S. Senator John McCain tweeted his pride at winning a diplomatic “superfecta” Monday night, after Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. lashed out at him for violating the country’s sovereignty after McCain visited rebel-held territory in 2013. A delighted McCain grouped the Syrian complaint with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s March 2014 decision to put him on a sanctions list as occasions when he had upset powers to which he was opposed. The other two occasions were former Cuban President Fidel Castro’s September 2014 tirade, in which he accused McCain of creating the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) together with the Israeli secret service agency Mossad, and the time, he claimed to Fox News, when ISIS declared him as their No. 1 enemy. The Syrian complaint was made on Monday, when envoy Bashar Ja’afari asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the U.N.’s 15-member Security Council in a letter to take “the necessary measures against their nationals who enter Syrian territory illegally,” according to Reuters. Ja’afari also lambasted French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith for entering Syria without a visa. The Arizona Senator fired back at Damascus and accused Bashar Assad’s government of massacring its own people. “It is a sad but unsurprising truth that the Assad regime is less concerned with its massacre of more than 200,000 men, women and children than it is my visit with those brave Syrians fighting for their freedom and dignity,” said McCain in a statement.

– John McCain has put together quite the résumé for himself lately, and it includes the wrath of Vladimir Putin, ISIS, Fidel Castro, and now the regime of Bashar al-Assad. McCain added those latest bragging rights after Bashar Ja'afari, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, yesterday asked the Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "take the necessary measures against their nationals who enter Syrian territory illegally," Time reports. Although Ja'afari blasted "certain journalists and prominent figures" for this infraction, he specifically singled out the Arizona senator's entry into the country's rebel-held territory in June 2013, Reuters reports. McCain took the opportunity yesterday to cheerfully tweet that "Today I hit the Superfecta! First I was sanctioned by Vladimir Putin, then #ISIS called me 'enemy #1.'" His elation spread into a second tweet, which read "Next Fidel Castro said I created #ISIS w/ #Israel's Mossad and today Assad regime tried to sanction me @UN for visit to #Syrian rebels." He elaborated in a more somber statement yesterday: "It is a sad but unsurprising truth that the Assad regime is less concerned with its massacre of more than 200,000 men, women, and children than it is my visit with those brave Syrians fighting for their freedom and dignity." (Is McCain trying to add Obama to his list?)

By Lucy Morgan, Times Senior Correspondent In Print: Thursday, July 26, 2012 TALLAHASSEE — In a wide-ranging deposition that spanned two days in late May, former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer denounced some party officials as liars and "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies'' as he described turmoil in the months before his resignation. Greer said some GOP leaders were meeting to discuss ways they could suppress black votes while others were constantly scheming against each other. He blamed criminal fraud charges filed against him in 2010 on legislative leaders and other party officials who he says orchestrated an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the statewide grand jury to avoid paying him money he was due. His statements were in response to questions from lawyers for the party, Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Sen. John Thrasher. Greer has filed a lawsuit against the party and the two officials in an attempt to collect $130,000 he was promised in a written agreement shortly before he resigned. The lawsuit, pending in Leon County, is unlikely to be resolved until after a criminal trial scheduled for mid November. Copies of the 630-page deposition and other documents were released by statewide prosecutors Wednesday. Greer's testimony offers a window into the level of animosity that exists between Greer and the party he once ran. • Greer said "the party was in turmoil" as officials wanted to get rid of him and former Gov. Charlie Crist because they disagreed with some of Crist's decisions, including the appointment of a liberal African-American judge to the Florida Supreme Court, Crist's endorsement of John McCain for president in 2008 and the hug Crist gave President Barack Obama in 2009. "My phone lit up with people wanting me to censure the governor,'' Greer said. "The tea party came into existence. There was a feeling within the party that the tea party was just a bunch of whack-a-dos." • After the party's budget and audit committee started asking questions about House and Senate spending, including legislators who used party credit cards for personal expenses, Greer said he wanted to open the books and credit card records, but party officials and legislative leaders vetoed the idea. • Greer said he warned others at the party that the budget committee was made up of "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies'' who were trying to take over because of continuing disagreements with Crist and legislative leaders. House and Senate leaders insisted that no one at the party could control their campaign finances. "We eat what we kill,'' Greer said the leaders told him. "Legislative leaders were using their party credit cards like drunken sailors and they made it clear to me I was not to interfere with their spending,'' Greer said. Thrasher, who succeeded Greer as party chairman, called Greer's suggestion of voter suppression and other accusations "absurd, absolutely absurd'' and said Greer is making "baseless accusations on other people in an effort to divert attention from himself.'' Thrasher said party officials had no choice but to get rid of Greer once they discovered he had secretly created a company that was getting money from the party. Many of the questions posed to Greer were about his creation of Victory Strategies LLC, a company that collected almost $200,000 from the party while he was running it. The criminal charges stem from that contract. Greer's animosity was evident on almost every page of the deposition as he described the inner workings of a party that has controlled Florida since 1998. On voter suppression, Greer said he had just completed a December 2009 meeting with party general counsel Jason Gonzalez, political consultant Jim Rimes and Eric Eikenberg, Crist's chief of staff, when questions arose about fundraising. "I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days,'' he said. Rimes said he recalls no discussion of suppressing votes at any meeting. Eikenberg did not return phone calls. Greer said party officials were questioning spending on fundraising trips to New York, Yankees games, limos, expensive cigars and other items when Gonzalez asked him if he had any ownership in Victory Strategies. Greer said he initially denied owning any interest in the company but later admitted it when he and Gonzalez were alone. Gonzalez told state investigators that Greer did not own up to his involvement in the business and threatened to sue anyone who made the accusation. A number of other party officials told state investigators they were unaware of Greer's involvement in the company. Contacted this week, Gonzalez said he could not publicly discuss the case. Asked about his failure to tell other officials, Greer said they didn't ask. Asked if he told party finance chairman John Rood, a Jacksonville businessman, Greer said Rood was "basically useless as finance chairman.'' By late December 2009, Greer found himself under pressure to resign. He said he agreed to leave for the "betterment of the party'' and in January 2010 signed a severance agreement that was to pay him the rest of his $130,000 for the year. Greer said he got concerned when Haridopolos and Thrasher, who had both signed the agreement, began to publicly deny knowledge of it. Haridopolos later admitted signing it, insisting he had not read it. "Around the party most people considered President Haridopolos to be not the brightest person, but I would assume he would have read the agreement before he signed it,'' Greer said. Greer had good words only for House Speaker Dean Cannon, saying the Orlando Republican tried to get others to live up to the severance agreement and promised to help him find a lobbying job and clients. After others at the party refused to honor the severance agreement, Greer said Cannon and Haridopolos contacted his friend Jim Stelling to say that political consultants Pat Bainter and Marc Reicheldfer were going to pay Greer $200,000. Despite promises of payment and a request from Bainter for information on where to wire the money, none was ever paid, Greer said. After he left the party, Greer said he heard that Thrasher was telling people they were going to have him arrested. A short time later, Greer was indicted by a statewide grand jury on charges of money laundering and fraud. The charges and the party's failure to pay him have ruined his life, Greer said. "They took everything I worked for my whole life,'' he added. Now his family is on food stamps, some of his possessions have been repossessed and his children watched their father being arrested. "Any good thing I did at the Republican Party has been destroyed by these people,'' he said. "I want my life back. I want them to say they are sorry for what they did to me.'' ||||| In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations. That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies'' in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote. In the deposition, released to the press yesterday, Greer mentioned a December 2009 meeting with party officials. "I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,'' he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He also said party officials discussed how “minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party," according to the AP.

– Liberals have been accusing recent GOP-led voter ID laws of aiming to disenfranchise minorities, who tend to vote Democrat. Now former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer is saying on record that, yes, those laws are actually about stopping black people from voting, reports Salon, picking up on a story in the Tampa Bay Times. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” Greer said, recalling a 2009 meeting with party officials. Greer also said the party's budget committee had been taken over by "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies." Greer is hardly without an axe to grind, though. His statements came from a 630-page deposition made in May as part of his trial on corruption charges. Greer paid a company he owned nearly $200,000 from GOP coffers while he was the chairman, although he contends it was authorized and made for services rendered. Florida state Sen. John Thrasher, who succeeded Greer as party chairman, called Greer's comments about voter suppression "baseless accusations on other people in an effort to divert attention from himself.''

LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — The latest on the shooting at a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater (times are local): Police tape surrounds the Grand Theatre following a deadly shooting Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Brad Kemp/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press) Theater goer Jacob Broussard said he was standing in line to go inside the Grand Theatre when a shooting occurred and police responded to the scene Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Leslie Westbrook/The... (Associated Press) Police surround the Grand Theatre following a deadly shooting Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Brad Kemp/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press) Lafayette Police Department and Louisiana State Police units block an entrance road following a shooting at The Grand Theatre in Lafayette, La., Thursday, July 23, 2015. (Paul Kieu/The Daily Advertiser... (Associated Press) Law enforcement and other emergency personnel respond to the scene of a shooting at the Grand Theatre on Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Leslie Westbrook/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press) An officer walks with people near the scene of a shooting at the Grand Theatre on Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Leslie Westbrook/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press) An officer stands guard near the scene of a deadly shooting at the Grand Theatre on Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette, La. (Leslie Westbrook/The Advocate via AP) (Associated Press) 10 a.m. The wife and other family members of the Louisiana theater gunman asked for a temporary protective order in 2008 against the man. Court documents seeking the order said John Houser, "exhibited extreme erratic behavior and has made ominous as well as disturbing statements." The documents said even though he lived in Phenix City, Alabama, he had come to Carroll County, Georgia, where they lived and "perpetrated various acts of family violence." Houser "has a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder" the filing said. The filing says Houser's wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, "has become so worried about the defendant's volatile mental state that she has removed all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence." The protection order was at least temporarily granted. She filed for divorce in March. ___ 9 a.m. The father of a woman in the theater at the time of the shooting says his daughter was sitting with a friend in the same row as the shooter. "They heard a couple of pops and didn't know what it was," Randall Mann said. "And then they saw the muzzle flashes, and that's when they knew what was going on. She hit the floor immediately." Randall Mann said his daughter Emily and her friend escaped uninjured. "She's traumatized," he said. The gunman killed two woman and wounded nine other people before he killed himself Thursday night. ___ 8:35 a.m. Police and court records show the Louisiana movie theater gunman has been arrested and ticketed for several offenses in the past, ranging from arson to speeding. Police officials said at a news conference Friday that 59-year-old John Russel Houser's arrests date 10 to 15 years ago or more. Those include charges of arson and selling alcohol to a minor. He had been married once in the past but was not currently married. In Alabama, records show Houser had four speeding tickets and one no-seatbelt ticket between 1981 and 2003. Alabama court records show Houser filed a small claims court lawsuit in 2004 claiming he was injured when he donated plasma at a Phenix City donation center. He asked for $1,800 to pay his emergency room bill and for a narcotics prescription. The case was settled, according to court records. ___ 8:30 a.m. A 19-year-old college student who was watching a movie in a theater across the hall from the shooting says he heard three loud pops before the lights came on. Jacob Broussard said Friday that he didn't initially know there was a shooting, but as he was evacuating the theater, he saw a woman who had been shot in the leg. Authorities say a gunman stood up about 20 minutes into the movie and started firing, killing two women and wounding nine others. Broussard, a student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says he felt lucky. His father, Shannon Broussard, described gratitude for a teacher who apparently pulled the fire alarm to alert theatergoers that they needed to evacuate the building. ___ 8:10 a.m. The two victims who were killed when a gunman opened fire in a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater have been identified as 33-year-old Jillian Johnson and 21-year-old Mayci Breaux. The gunman, who authorities identified as 59-year-old John Russel Houser, killed himself after trying to flee the scene. Nine others were wounded in the Thursday night shooting that happened during a showing of the comedy "Trainwreck." ___ 7:20 a.m. Authorities are describing the gunman in the movie theater shooting as a 59-year-old man who previously lived in Alabama but is "kind of a drifter" who had been in the Lafayette area since early July. Police said Friday that the gunman fired a handgun 13 times inside the theater, killing two people and wounding at least nine others before fatally shooting himself. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said the gunman parked his car near the theater's exit door and was intent on escaping, but couldn't because police arrived so quickly. Authorities have not determined a motive. They searched a motel room he had been staying in and found wigs and other disguises. ___ 5:15 a.m. About a dozen law enforcement personnel were gathered at a Motel 6 in Lafayette early Friday as authorities investigate a shooting at movie theater that killed three people, including the gunman. Louisiana State Police spokesman Maj. Doug Cain said the theater investigation led them to a room at the Motel 6. Cain said authorities were investigating whether the shooter had stayed there. He said the bomb squad swept the room before going in as a precaution. About a dozen police personnel could be seen outside the motel. At one point, an officer carried out a cardboard box from the room and other officers could be seen knocking on neighboring doors. ___ 3:50 a.m. The White House says President Barack Obama has been briefed on the shooting at a Louisiana movie theater that left three people dead, including the gunman. Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One on Thursday by Lisa Monaco, his homeland security adviser, while on his way to Africa for a two-nation visit. Obama asked his team to keep him updated on the investigation and the status of those wounded in the shooting. He also offered his thoughts and prayers to the community of Lafayette, Louisiana, where the movie theater is located, and to the families of those who were killed. ___ 3:30 a.m. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft told reporters that nine people in total were wounded in the shooting. He said at least one of those was in critical condition and being operated on at an area hospital. "At this point we have three dead, nine wounded and of the three dead one is definitely the shooter," he said. ___ 2:30 a.m. Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft told reporters that based on the investigation so far, they believe the shooter stood up in the theater, started shooting, and then as people started fleeing, he began to leave as well. But, investigators believe, he spotted two police officers, who had been out in the parking lot when the shooting happened. The shooter then turned around against the crowd before firing a single shot. "It looks like he spotted the officers coming in and he turned around and he went against the crowd, and he fired a single gunshot," he said. "He was seated in the theater just like everybody else." "The information we have at this time indicates that he was by himself, sat by himself and the first two people he shot were sitting right in front of him," Craft said. ___ 1:10 a.m. Police say they are checking out suspicious packages inside the Lafayette movie theater where a gunman opened fire Thursday. Sgt. Brooks David of the Louisiana State Police said a dog alerted to a backpack and other small items in the theater. Three people were killed, including the gunman, and seven injured in the shooting. ||||| There are on the Patch.com story from Dec 3, 2012, titled Cumming Man Found Murdered in His Deer Processing Business. In it, Patch.com reports that: A 60-year-old Cumming man was found murdered Sunday night in his deer processing business in Hancock County, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation . Join the discussion below, or Read more at Patch.com. ||||| ELECTRONIC TRAIL The Lafayette theater shooter was a frequent online commenter, with numerous posts on immigration, free speech, and his fears about America’s future. The man named by police as the shooter inside a Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater appears to have been a Tea Party sympathizer with strong views on race, immigration, and the future of America. John Russell Houser, most recently of Phenix City, Alabama, was a frequent poster in online forums on those topics. He appears to have gone by the nickname Rusty Houser—a name tied to him by an email address listed on a LinkedIn page of the man wanted in the shooting. Some news reports identify Houser spelling Russell as Russel. On his LinkedIn page, however, Houser identifies past self-employment as “John Russell Houser.” A Tea Party Nation page was registered to that name in 2013. He said he was from Phenix, Alabama, but does not appear to have been very active on the site. On PoliticalForum.com, a user identifying as Rusty Houser boasted about posting with his real name and that he “say(s) what he thinks.” In another foreboding post on the site in 2013, he welcomed a newcomer to the forum: “Jump in the deep end, I don’t think we have that long.” A Debate Politics page registered to Rusty Houser lists his political viewings as “very conservative.” Among his interests, Houser lists the Greek nationalist party Golden Dawn. It also identifies him as having a hometown of Phenix City, Alabama—and having a JD and CPA certification, just like on the John Russell Houser LinkedIn profile. Houser’s posts on the site were made in early 2014. In one about Golden Dawn, he called the group “a legitimate effort to solve problems.” “The leaders of the group are in fact leaders,” he wrote. “Intelligent, well spoken, and exercising good faith.” "Type in WHITE POWER GROUPS and you get mag articles about their never ending claims of racism, and no information of how to find White power groups you might want to join," he continued. A poster responded: “Evidently you’re from Alabama. You don’t need the Internet to find a white power group. Just stick a sheet over your head and run around in traffic. Somethings bound to hit you.” In multiple posts, Houser seemed obsessed with comparing America to Iran. On January 18, 2014, he posted a screed about censorship in response to a thread on coverage of Chris Christie’s scandals versus those of President Obama. “The US heavily censors. Why wouldn’t they twist. You say there is no censorship?” he wrote. ”Tell me how I can read any of the 30 newspapers printed in Iran. How to find White rights groups on the internet. What your computer gives you when you type AMERICA CENSORS INTERNET, or censors anything.” Another post on that site echoes distrust of mainstream media. Houser implied that he hopes young people “will not watch any source of ‘news.’” Yet Houser appeared on a local TV show many times in the early 1990s. He boasted on LinkedIn that he “Invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it.” The host told NBC News on Friday morning that Houser was a “radical guy.” “He was on from time to time because he was a very radical person with radical views,” Calvin Floyd said. Floyd answered “no” when asked if he was surprised that Houser is accused of shooting up the Louisiana movie theater. “The association I had with him was for entertainment,” he said. “He was very entertaining. He made for good TV and when it was over, you would leave shaking your head.” On a forum about car parts, Houser described himself as “not brainwashed.” Other details of Houser's past also raise eyebrows. Authorities say he was arrested for arson in Columbus, Georgia, but don't have an exact date. The arson charge meant that Houser was denied a concealed carry permit in 2006. His violent streak continued when he was evicted from his home in 2014. Russell County, Georgia, Sheriff Heath Taylor said that Houser then damaged the Phenix City home, and disconnected the gas line to the fireplace. On a Topix thread, a Rusty Houser commented on an article about a Georgia farm hiring foreigners: “The more hard working people with family values we have, the better. What we need to worry about is those who WILL NOT WORK and have no concept of family. They may largely be identified by race also.” Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the smartest, sharpest takes from The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from The Daily Beast and across the Web By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason He was obsessed with the idea that his rights to free speech were being censored, posting about that on multiple Topix forums. He also lamented the death of a man in the deer-processing business. “Most people over 50 in certain businesses are just as their parents were, rock solid morally,” he wrote. “I am also sorry for what is to come for the other very few moral souls left in the entire US.” It quickly got dark. “I am not sorry for the 90% immoral population which will be meeting the same fate. Filth is rampant. That none have stood against it causes me to take rest in the worse than MAD MAX near future which approaches,” he said.

– The wife of Louisiana shooter John Russel Houser sought a protective order against him in 2008 after he "exhibited extreme erratic behavior" and "made ominous as well as disturbing statements," according to court documents cited by the AP. The filing for the order, which was at least temporarily granted, says that his wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, had "become so worried about the defendant's volatile mental state that she … removed all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence." The papers also noted John Houser had "a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder." It wasn't just his wife, who filed for divorce in March, who was concerned. Other family members also joined the court filing, saying that Houser had traveled from Phenix City, Ala., to where they lived in Carroll County, Ga., and "perpetrated various acts of family violence." Meanwhile, using info found on a LinkedIn page that appears to be that of the shooter, the Daily Beast tracked down several online forums and websites where Houser allegedly expressed "strong views on race, immigration, and the future of America," all under the names "John Russell Houser" ("Russell" spelled slightly differently than what's been reported in the media) and "Rusty Houser." "I am also sorry for what is to come for the other very few moral souls left in the entire US," he reportedly wrote in one forum lamenting the murder of a man in the deer-processing business. "I am not sorry for the 90% immoral population which will be meeting the same fate. Filth is rampant. That none have stood against it causes me to take rest in the worse than MAD MAX near future which approaches."

"Live, from New York, it's Dennis Rodman." Saturday Night Live doesn't often do that well with sports heroes in the hosting gig, so why not a cameo from the antithesis of sports heroes? During a sort of rambling, pieced together sketch mocking Kim Jong-un (played in the sketch by Bobby Moynihan), former NBA star and current best friend of the North Korean dictator, Dennis Rodman, came to... well, we're not really sure what he came to do. See below. I'm not really sure what the point of Rodman's appearance is. Is he satirizing his recent standing as a buddy of North Korea's Supreme Leader, pointing out that he's paid to hang out with a dictator? What's the joke here? I wonder if he's in on the joke or not, to be honest. Anyway, he gets a reaction from the crowd and gets to deliver the "Live, from New York, it's Saturday night!" line. A very baffling appearance, to say the least. SNL continued on a sports theme a little bit later, with host Melissa McCarthy taking on a more violent version of Rutgers coach Mike Rice. This, however, will be the one that everyone is talking about tomorrow morning, I reckon. ||||| She sang, she danced, she fell, she picked up a punch bowl and drank from it. Melissa McCarthy pulled off stellar physical comedy in hosting "Saturday Night Live" a second time. The "Mike & Molly" star is a natural for "SNL" because she loves performing. She goes all out to get laughs, not worrying about political correctness. She stoops to conquer, if that's what it takes, and viewers appreciate the no-holds-barred approach. She had a string of funny sketches that any "SNL" host would envy. In a nod to the Rutgers scandal, she was a bullying basketball coach who threw a toaster at a player. She was a fair contestant who promoted her honey-baked ham by dancing with men dressed as pigs. She was a shameless loan applicant who wanted money to eat pizza. She was a socially inept date who drank from a punch bowl. She spoofed Vanna White by playing a daft letter-turner on a game show. McCarthy was a bad singer who had the take-anyone judges on "The Voice" fighting over her, and "SNL" took some well-aimed jabs at the fellow NBC show. Even the bits without McCarthy seemed better than usual. "SNL" opened with a topical sketch ridiculing North Korean leader Jim Jong-Un (Bobby Moynihan), who talked about his sexual prowess. "Weekend Update" loaded up on guests: Bar Mitzvah Boy (Melissa Bayer), Charles Barkley (Kenan Thompson) and Drunk Uncle (Moynihan again). Drunk Uncle had help from "Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage. But it was McCarthy's show. She fell in her monologue, by design, because of bad shoes. But she soared once again as host because her brand of physical comedy never goes out of style. ||||| All of the elements for a truly terrific "SNL" were there -- great host, spirited audience, refreshed cast -- but it wasn't a terrific "SNL." It was a good show, fueled mostly by the physical efforts of host Melissa McCarthy, but, overall, the material wasn't there. The thing about McCarthy is that not everything has to involve her falling down or saying weird things -- she can play subversive, too (as we saw at times during the "Outside the Lines" sketch). The first time McCarthy hosted, it was the "McCarthy and Wiig" show, playing off the success of "Bridesmaids." Thankfully (for the sake of being too obvious), there was no cameo from Kristen Wiig, which left McCarthy open to do different types of sketches. It's just a shame that, for the most part, the writers didn't take full advantage of that. Here is your SNL Scorecard: Sketch of the Night "Outside the Lines" (Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader, Tim Robinson, Bobby Moynihan, Jay Pharoah, Cecily Strong) Mike Rice, until recently, was the head coach for Rutger's men's basketball team. He lost that job after a video surfaced of Rice abusing players physically and verbally. It's a quite disturbing video, and "SNL" was wise to directly lampoon Rice, but instead, put McCarthy in a character who is "worse" than Rice: Not only did Shelia Kelly throw basketballs at players, as Rice was wont to due, Shelia Kelly will throw toasters and drive over players with a golf cart. This was by far the best use of McCarthy during the show. Score: 8.5 The Good "Bathroom Businessman" (Kenan Thompson, Nasim Pedrad) Admittedly, I was initially rolling my eyes during "Bathroom Businessman," thinking, Oh, wonderful, here's a lazy commercial parody for a computer in a bathroom stall that ends with a poop joke. Lovely. Then, the rug was pulled out from underneath the segment, transforming the entire message into a plea to stop working on your electronic equipment from the bathroom because it's disgusting. "Brought to you by Decency." Score: 7.8 "Weekend Update" (Seth Meyers, Vanessa Bayer, Keenan Thompson, Bobby Moynihan, Peter Dinklage) It's always nice seeing Peter Dinklage pop up somewhere, but that was a waste of a Peter Dinklage appearance. Put it this way: If someone had told me that Dinklage was going to be on the show last night, "appearing for the last two minutes of Drunk Uncle" would have been low on my wish list for him. Alas. Regardless: Hey, Peter Dinklage! Seth Meyers seemed refreshed and extremely sharp (perhaps rumors of getting your own late night talk show will do such things). I may be in the minority, but I love Vanessa Bayer's Jacob -- yes, she somehow does look like a 13-year-old boy. And Kenan Thompson's Charles Barkley was, like always, OK. Score: 7.0 "Ham Bake-off" (Melisa McCarthy, Jason Sudeikis, Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, Nasim Pedrad, Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan) The best part about McCarthy's "Ham Bakeoff" dance routine was that the word "ham" being relentlessly repeated over and over during the performance. In the end, this was certainly fine, but not quite as special as it seemed like it was going to be on first viewing -- meaning that McCarthy really sells this one. (Not online due to song rights issues.) Score: 7.0 "Melissa McCarthy Monologue" (Melissa McCarthy, Taran Killam) It's hard to do something "different" during the monologue. Melissa McCarthy struggling to get down the stairs in her new high heels, coupled with her purposely lame jokes, was certainly different. Score: 6.8 "Pizza Business" (Melissa McCarthy, Jason Sudeikis) This one grew on me. To be fair, it aired right after "Million Dollar Wheel" and I was still annoyed -- but, by the end of the sketch, I'd invest in a leftover pizza eater myself. Also of note, if this is Jason Sudeikis' last season, I will miss him playing the "normal" character. Somehow he still makes it funny. Score: 6.5 "Art of the Encounter" (Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan, Tim Robinson) Well, this was certainly weird -- and certainly fit the bill for a "10 to 1" sketch. I think that my favorite part was that it was set in the 1990s, even though there really was no reason for it to be set in the 1990s. And I do like it when Cecily Strong plays "weird," something she's been doing more of lately, instead of just relying on "funny accents." Score: 6.0 The Bad "The Voice" (Taran Killam, Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Jay Pharoah, Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson) I feel "SNL" has really wanted to do a sketch based on "The Voice" -- other than that quick hit they did during Adam Levine's monologue -- for some time. (It's been killed at dress rehearsal in the past.) Of course, it appears that they didn't really know quite what to do in that sketch. Regardless, Bill Hader's Levine is fantastic -- not fantastic enough to carry an entire sketch, but it's fantastic. Score: 4.5 "Cold Open: C-Span North Korea" (Bobby Moynihan, Dennis Rodman) OK, enough is enough with this sketch. Who is it that just loves this sketch so much that it just keeps on opening "SNL" and killing all momentum right off the bat? Seriously? Oh, what a change up, instead of Fred Armisen speaking gibberish underneath a translator, this time it's Bobby Moynihan Kim Jong Un. I'm sure these will continue because someone obviously loves them, but they have more than run their course. And, no, in 2013 a Dennis Rodman cameo isn't edgy or the least bit interesting. Score: 2.5 The Ugly "Million Dollar Wheel" (Melissa McCarthy, Bill Hader, Nasim Pedrad, Fred Armisen, Tim Robinson) And, in direct comparison with "Outside the Lines," this was the worst use of McCarthy during the show. I kept waiting and waiting for the punchline. But, no, McCarthy's character really was just dumb and didn't know where the "D's" were. Score: 2.0 Average Score for this Show: 5.86 Mike Ryan is senior writer for Huffington Post Entertainment. You can contact him directly on Twitter. Click below for this week's "SNL," Not Ready For Primetime Podcast featuring Mike Ryan and Hitfix's Ryan McGee. Follow Mike Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mikeryan

– Melissa McCarthy stormed Saturday Night Live a second time last night, falling down (literally and intentionally) in her opening monologue before proceeding to lead a hysterical tour de force in "stellar physical comedy," writes Hal Boedeker at the Orlando Sentinel. Perhaps most notably, McCarthy ripped on disgraced Rutgers coach Mike Rice, taking a turn as a neurotically violent women's basketball coach who threatens her players with flying toasters and golf carts. Added bonus to a solid show: Dennis Rodman dropped by the Cold Open, which featured Bobby Moynihan as Rodman's BFF, Kim Jong Un. "I wonder if he's in on the joke or not, to be honest," muses Steve Lepore at SBNation. Over at the Huffington Post, Mike Ryan has his SNL scorecard.

By Phil Williams Chief Investigative Reporter NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Are leaders of a for-profit public school trying to hide the fact their students are failing? That's the question that some are asking tonight as a result of an email uncovered by NewsChannel 5 Investigates. At the center of the controversy is the Tennessee Virtual Academy -- a for-profit, online public school that Republican lawmakers touted as a way to improve education in Tennessee. Two years ago, state lawmakers voted to let K12 Inc. open the school, using millions of taxpayer dollars. But, now, those lawmakers are concerned about standardized test results that put it among the worst schools in the state. In fact, the email suggests that even school leaders are becoming increasingly concerned by how their students' grades may look to parents and the public. "That is not something I would ever be told in my school -- I mean, it's just not acceptable," said state Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat who is also a career teacher. "Quite honestly, I was horrified." The email -- labeled "important -- was written in December by the Tennessee Virtual Academy's vice principal to middle school teachers. "After ... looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays," the email begins. Among the changes: Each teacher "needs to take out the October and September progress [reports]; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress." "Does it talk about we need to make changes in curriculum? Does it talk about we need to make changes in our teaching strategy? No," Rep. Johnson observed. "Those changes we need to make are deleting grades from the computer system." "And that's cheating in your mind?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked. "In my mind, sure. I mean, yes." The email adds, "This cannot be late!" "To come in and say 'everybody who made failing grades the first two months, we need to delete those grades,' to me that's a huge issue," Johnson added. And the suggestions from K12 leaders don't end there. In traditional classrooms, if students score a 60 on one test and a 90 on a second test, they're stuck with a 75 average. But the email suggests that teachers erase the bad grades, leaving students with just the good grades. The email continues, "If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out." Read the TNVA email, response "This doesn't say give them a second chance," we noted. "No, it does not," the lawmaker agreed. "It just says take that out. To me, this appears like it's grade fixing." K12 officials refused to sit down to answer our questions, but the Tennessee Virtual Academy's principal said in an email that the goal was to "more accurately recognize students' current progress." "By going back into our school's electronic grading system and recording students' most recent progress score (instead of taking the average throughout the semester) we could more accurately recognize students' current progress in their individualized learning program," principal Josh Williams said in the statement. "This also helped differentiate those and identify those who needed instructional intervention and remediation." Williams compared K12's grade deletions to the "common practice in traditional schools" of allowing "make-up tests, alternative assessments and extra credit opportunities." Yet, the internal email also suggests that Virtual Academy teachers had already attempted those sorts of efforts to boost student grades. "In early December, all teachers gave their students an opportunity to improve their grades by giving additional assignments," it says. "Yet, we are still seeing failing grades." As to K12's explanation, Mitchell Johnson, interim director of the Tennessee Education Association, questioned how deleting data helps K12 to better understand students' needs. "They're probably changing the grades to make themselves look better," he speculated. It's a practice that the TEA official suggested would not sit well with privatization advocates if they saw a "delete it" email from a traditional public school. "I think that they would be incensed, and I'm hoping that the reformers will be as incensed about what has happened here -- as they would be if it had happened within a public school setting," he added. In the email, teachers were also told that their main focus is on reading and math -- and that they are not as concerned about students making F's in history and science. But the principal of the Tennessee Virtual Academy noted that, ultimately, the school's success or failure will be judged based on the standardized tests that students take at the end of the year -- not on individual grades. Because of concerns about the Tennessee Virtual Academy's performance, Gov. Bill Haslam has proposed legislation that would cap the number of students who could enroll at 5,000. It's at about 3,200 right now. There is also a bill up in a House subcommittee Tuesday that would essentially shut it down. E-mail: [email protected] ||||| Humphrey on the Hill Tom Humphrey's blog on politics and legislative news in Tennessee NASHVILLE — A House committee killed legislation that would have closed Union County-based Tennessee Virtual Academy on Tuesday after one Knoxville legislator effectively blocked another from talking to the committee about allegations that the for-profit school altered the bad grades of some students. Instead, the House Education Subcommittee approved a bill pushed by Gov. Bill Haslam's administration that puts some new restrictions on virtual schools, but only after eliminating — with the governor's approval — a proposed 5,000-student enrollment cap that was originally part of House Bill 151. Democratic Rep. Mike Stewart of Nashville sponsored the bill (HB728) that would have effectively repealed the law passed in 2011 that allowed for-profit virtual schools to operate in Tennessee. The 2011 bill was sponsored by Rep. Harry Brooks, R-Knoxville, who is now chairman of the House Education Committee and sponsor of the Haslam administration bill changing some rules for running virtual schools. Stewart told the committee that Tennessee Virtual Academy, part of a system of virtual schools operated around the nation by K12 Inc., has proved itself in a year of operation a "bad idea" for both its students, who have had low scores in testing, and for taxpayers. "The only people that are benefiting are in K12, a Virginia corporation that is rising statewide to siphon off millions of dollars every year ... for enormous profits," said Stewart, adding that K12 CEO Ronald Packard was paid $3.9 million last year and $5 million the year before. Rep. Roger Kane, R-Knoxville, told Stewart his talk of Packard's salary was a "red herring" and otherwise criticized the Nashville lawmaker's statements — drawing applause from perhaps 25 Virtual Academy teachers, students and parents of students in the audience. One Virtual Academy teacher, Summer Shelton of Knoxville, told the panel she had taught in Knox County and elsewhere — including Europe — and considered the academy as having "the most dynamic curriculum" and the best overall, especially beneficial to children with special problems, such as feeling stressed in regular schools. Legislative staff found that Tennessee Virtual Academy is receiving $7.5 million in state funding this year. Stewart told the committee that the company receives $5,300 per student "essential to turn on a website" and has refused to give any information on how much it spends — which he estimated at $1,000 to $2,000 per student. He challenged K12 to provide the information, though there was no response during the session. After the meeting, Ken Meyer, director of government relations for K12, told reporters that Stewart's figures are wrong and K12 has lost money in its first year of operation. Actually, he said the Tennessee operation gets $4,700 per student, gives Union County about $300 in accordance with its contract, and thus receives only about $4,400 per student. Meyer said the company's costs are about $6,600 per student, adding he was going by memory and would give more precise figures later. Stewart also cited an email sent to Virtual Academy teachers in December that says they should "take out the October and September progress (reports); delete it so that all that is showing is November progress reports." He distributed the email, which was provided by Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, to him and to WTVF-TV in Nashville, which aired a report on the matter Monday evening. Johnson, a Knox County schoolteacher, said she had been given the email by a Virtual Academy teacher. Stewart asked that Johnson be allowed to speak to the committee. Brooks objected, saying the email had nothing to do with the Stewart bill under discussion. The committee chairman made a motion to end all discussion and proceed immediately to a vote on the bill. Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis, presiding at the subcommittee meeting, promptly declared Brooks' motion approved by voice vote, then immediately called for a vote on the bill. It was declared defeated on voice vote. Afterward, Johnson and Shelton spent several minutes discussing the email, which Shelton said had been misunderstood. She said the school had a new "grade book" for teachers to report student progress. Some teachers were averaging grades while others were using the most recent grade, Shelton said. The email was to clarify that the most recent grade — as a measure of progress — should be used, she said. In many situations, she said the student had taken a test twice, in which case the second grade is used. After hearing out Shelton, Johnson said she understood much of the lengthy explanation, but overall "it's not quite jiving 100 percent." She also questioned why K12 or Virtual Academy executives had not testified or answered questions. The Haslam administration bill, sponsored by Brooks, was approved on a 6-3 vote. As amended, it imposes a 1,500-student cap on new virtual schools launched in the state, but not on those already operating. The original bill would have covered Tennessee Virtual Academy — which now has about 3,200 students — with a 5,000 cap. That was dropped by an amendment. The bill has other provisions that declare a virtual school that has below-standard student performance for two consecutive years can be closed by the state's education commission. The commissioner would also have the option to instead impose an enrollment cap.

– Tennessee Virtual Academy, a for-profit, online public school heavily supported by state Republicans, has found a novel way of boosting student performance—just delete bad grades, reports News Channel 5 in Nashville. A leaked December email from the school's VP appears to tell its middle-school teachers to erase some scores that don't measure up. "If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out," it reads. "To me, this appears like it's grade fixing," said one Democratic state representative. Virginia-based parent company K12 is refusing to talk, but the TVA principal said the deletions were intended to "more accurately recognize students' current progress." But as the two-year-old school will receive $7.5 million in funding from the state this year, many Tennessee lawmakers are outraged. The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that a House bill that proposed shutting the school altogether was killed yesterday; a second was passed by the House Education Subcommittee. It would allow the state to shutter a virtual school that records sub-standard student performance two years in a row. (Meanwhile, a Lehigh University student is suing over a bad grade.)

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The hotly anticipated initial public offering of Facebook Inc. on Friday largely fizzled, as the social network’s debut was racked by technical problems as well as a market-wide selloff that clipped nearly all of the stock’s gains by the closing bell. Reuters Facebook debuted on the Nasdaq Friday morning, but lost most of its gains by the end of the session. Facebook FB, -0.21% shares closed Friday at $38.23 — just 23 cents above its IPO price following a volatile session that had the shares up as much as 18% at one point, only to lose most of those gains by the end. Many factors contributed to the weak debut. A broad-based selloff hit the market late in the day, pinching more than 70 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.92% and causing the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.52% to drop 1.2% by the closing bell. What’s more, some believe the massive size of the Facebook offering itself caused some complications. “I think that the market was not there for this many shares,” said Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. “They priced it right if the goal was for the stock to trade flat, but it appears that the addition of 50 million shares on Wednesday night caused a supply/demand imbalance, and the market appetite wasn’t sufficient to support the stock above issue price.” There were also technical glitches on the Nasdaq itself, which delayed the opening of the shares by 30 minutes, and caused confusion for brokers and traders trying to place their orders. Read WSJ story on Nasdaq's problems with Facebook IPO. Some analysts believe the offering was priced too high, maximizing the return for the company itself, but not leaving sufficient room for an upside in trading — or that first-day pop that many Internet debuts have experienced. LinkedIn Corp. LNKD saw its shares jump more than 100% on their first day of trades last May, while Yelp Inc. YELP, -0.05% surged nearly 64% in its own debut in early March. Google Inc. GOOG, +0.47% which went public in August 2004, saw a first-day gain of 18%, according to data from S&P’s CapitalIQ. Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee said it was “surprising that they didn’t get the pop that many were expecting.” He has a 12-month price target of $46 on the shares. “It seems the underwriters did not leave much upside, or perhaps investors were signaling that they would buy a lot more shares than they ended up actually buying,” he added. The underwriters reportedly had to step in and help provide “liquidity support” for the offering during the day. Morningstar IPO analyst James Krapfel said the underwriters appeared to keep the stock from falling below its IPO price. “Facebook debuted at an inopportune time, as the recent stock market swoon clearly pressured the shares,” he said. “Had the company gone public a couple of weeks earlier, first day performance would likely have been much better.” Susquehanna analyst Herman Leung pointed to lingering questions about Facebook’s valuation and potential, saying that the market “would like to see the company prove itself before coming more convinced about the story.” Some concerns have risen about the company’s business, such as the news earlier in the week that General Motors Co. GM, -0.73% pulled its advertising from Facebook, questioning the effectiveness of the social network as an advertising channel. “It comes down to what investors want to pay for Facebook’s potential,” he added. “What’s exciting about Facebook, not right now, but two years or five years from now?” Leung also said Facebook sold a relatively bigger chunk of its total shares, which he estimated at about 18%, in its IPO. In comparison, LinkedIn offered only about 8% when it went public while Groupon offered roughly 5% when it launched. “There are a lot more shares in the marketplace to satisfy the demand from retail investors. A lot of people expected the pop — I would point to that as the first reason.” The company priced its offering of 421.2 million shares on Thursday afternoon, making for the largest technology IPO ever. Underwriters have been granted overallotment options worth about 63.2 million shares, which could bring the total value of the debut to about $18.4 billion. Facebook’s open also seemed to suck the wind out of other firms in social networking. Zynga Inc. ZNGA, +0.25% shares fell more than 13% by the close; the social-game maker draws the vast majority of its revenue from Facebook. Shares of Yelp were down more than 12% while LinkedIn slipped by 5.6%. Read more about social-media shares swooning in the wake of Facebook’s IPO. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, rang the opening bell of the Nasdaq Stock Market’s Friday session remotely from his company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. According to data from Dealogic, Facebook’s deal ranks as the second-largest IPO by a U.S. company in history, including the shares in the overallotment. Visa Inc. V, +0.21% went public in 2008 in a $19.7 billion debut. Google, which went public in August 2004, sold about $1.9 billion worth of shares in that offering. Facebook priced its IPO at the high end of its expected range of $34 to $38 per share. That range was raised earlier in the week from $28 to $35 per share, and the company added more shares to the deal as well — although all of those came from selling shareholders that included several early backers. Read about Facebook's IPO pricing. With its shares at the $38 level, Facebook commands a market cap of about $104 billion. That puts it ahead of many more established and larger tech and Internet companies such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +0.15% eBay Inc. EBAY, +0.23% and Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, +0.85% Facebook is now has about half the market cap of Google, despite only one-tenth the revenue. It had revenues of $3.7 billion last year, with net income of $1 billion. The company says it has about 901 million monthly active users, a number that experts believe will cross into the 1 billion territory later this year. The offering by Facebook was widely expected to be the high point in a wave of social-networking deals. LinkedIn shares more than doubled in its IPO in May last year. Groupon rose 31% when it went public in November, while Yelp jumped more than 60% in its debut last March. One recent disappointment was Zynga, which saw its stock slip 5% in its December 2011 IPO. ||||| &amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=2c80bf265a" &amp;gt;Facebook IPO: Live Blog&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; NEW YORK ( TheStreet ) -- Ending months of feverish anticipation, FB ) made an eventful debut as a public company on Friday, dashing investor hopes of a massive IPO pop. After pricing its IPO at $38 a share late on Thursday, the social networker's stock opened at $42.05 at roughly 11:30 a.m. ET on Friday morning, 30 minutes after the scheduled time. Facebook shares briefly jumped to a high of $45 before running down toward its pricing level. Despite repeatedly touching $38 just before market close, the stock avoided negative territory, and closed at $38.23. The biggest-ever tech IPO, however, caused theexchange to struggle with phenomenally heavy volume as more than 573 million Facebook shares changed hands. Nasdaq even resorted to manually delivering executions to brokerage houses. The IPO price of $38 a share gave Facebook a valuation of $104 billion, significantly above the market caps of tech heavyweights DELL ) and HPQ ). At $38 a share, the offering has raised more than $16 billion for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm. ReadLive Blog recap for more details of Facebook's historic IPO: --Written by James Rogers and Chris Ciaccia in New York. >To follow the writers on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/jamesjrogers and http://twitter.com/Commodity_Bull >To submit a news tip, send an email to: [email protected] Check out our new tech blog, Tech Trends . Follow TheStreet Tech on your wireless devices ||||| Facebook's public debut had plenty of buzz but not much pop. The shares opened 11% higher, but soon struggled to stay above their offering price. David Benoit and Shayndi Raice have details on The News Hub. Photo: Reuters. Facebook Inc. took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss. The stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook's underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time. In the end, the bankers succeeded. When trading on Nasdaq ended at 4 p.m., the social network's stock was up just a hair, 0.6%, at $38.23. The roller-coaster day—Facebook's shares started out jumping roughly 11%, before cooling off—was also beset by trading glitches and a 30-minute delay in the opening of trading. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. didn't respond to requests for comment. Facebook was also hurt by investors' high expectations of a healthy first-day pop in the price, according to people familiar with the matter. When that pop didn't happen, it prompted a selloff, these people said. That's when Facebook's underwriters had to step in to support the company's share price, people familiar with the matter said. In particular, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley was assigned to be the deal's "stabilization agent"—meaning it was the firm's job to keep the shares above the offering price, these people said. In that role, Morgan Stanley was forced to buy Facebook shares as the price slid toward $38 in order to prevent the price from crossing into negative territory, according to these people. Live Chat Recap How did WSJ's David Benoit, Steven Russolillo, Stephen Grocer and Paul Vigna field reader questions in the early hours of trading? Morgan Stanley, which led the platoon of 11 Wall Street banks that arranged the listing, had to dip into an emergency reserve of around 63 million Facebook shares—worth more than $2.3 billion at the offer price—to boost the price and create a floor around $38 a share, according to people close to the situation. In successful IPOs, the reserve, known as the "overallotment" or "green shoe," is used by underwriters to meet soaring demand but in this case, it was used to prop up Facebook's ailing share price. The process is common in IPOs and works like this: The underwriters have the extra shares available to either sell or buy for a period after the IPO. If demand is strong, they sell them like all the other shares. But if the stock price falls, they can buy them back, effectively creating a floor for the price. Facebook's price began falling almost immediately after shares began trading. It is unclear exactly when Morgan Stanley stepped in, but traders said that the price movements throughout the day, with the shares occasionally touching the IPO price but never crossing below it, suggested the firm was active throughout much of the session. Facebook's opening-day travails suggested how tough it can be to live up to high expectations in the market. "There's been way, way too much hype, so it may be impossible not to have it be anticlimactic," said Peter Falvey, managing director of the Boston-based investment bank Falvey Partners LLC. Photos: Facebook's First Day of Trading View Slideshow The stock's 0.6% rise was far below the first-day performance of other companies that raised $5 billion or more in their IPOs, such as United Parcel Service Inc., which experienced a 36% first-day pop in 1999, according to Dealogic. Some Web-company IPOs over the past year, such as the social network LinkedIn Corp., more than doubled on their first days, though game maker Zynga Inc. closed down 5% on its December debut. Still, at a market capitalization of nearly $105 billion by day's end, Facebook took its place among the nation's corporate giants. Its stock market capitalization makes Facebook bigger than computer firm Hewlett-Packard Co., and puts it in the same league as PepsiCo Inc. At Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., the mood was celebratory, according to people on the company's campus. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and who is now worth $19.25 billion, rang the Nasdaq opening bell from there early Friday morning amid a gathering of around 2,000 employees. Related Video Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addresses employees before ringing the Nasdaq bell ahead of Facebook's IPO on Friday. Video: Facebook. Mean Street host Evan Newmark calls on WSJ's Thorold Barker and Rolfe Winkler to discuss the delay and then relatively slow start by Facebook shares following the start of trading. Photo: Getty Images. In his On the Mark segment, Mean Street host Evan Newmark points out that Facebook's slow start out of the IPO gate gives him lots of hope. Photo: AP. WSJ's 'Intelligent Investor' Jason Zweig visits Mean Street and looks at the unique way in which Facebook is intertwined with the lives of its customers and asks 'How much is too much to pay for a piece of yourself?' Photo: Getty Images. Flanked by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Mr. Zuckerberg told the crowd to remember the IPO was just one day. "Going public is an important milestone," said the 28 year old, sporting his trademark hoodie. "But here's the thing. Our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected." He closed with, "Stay focused and keep shipping." The social network last month reported that its first-quarter sales declined from the prior quarter, and that profit also slumped, though revenue was up from a year earlier. Advertisers such as General Motors Co. have publicly questioned the utility of Facebook's ads. And Facebook must grapple with privacy issues as well as concerns over its strategy in mobile devices and the complex China market, among other things. "Facebook's got a great run ahead of it, but things keep moving," said Deepak Kamra, a general partner at venture-capital firm Canaan Partners. "Platforms come and go." For the day, however, the offering drew in investors large and small. Theophilus Hodges, a 36-year-old property manager, stopped into an E*Trade branch in downtown Chicago Friday morning specifically to open an account to buy Facebook shares. Mr. Hodges said he plans to invest $10,000 in Facebook shares, using $4,500 of his own money and $5,500 from his mother. "If it wasn't for Facebook, I wouldn't be here," he said. Some investors who had bought Facebook shares in private transactions in the so-called secondary market before the IPO said they were disappointed the social network didn't have a strong first-day pop. "If the stock were trading in the $50s right now, I might be fighting off some momentary giddiness, but I can't take giddiness to the bank," said Kevin Landis of the $85 million technology fund Firsthand Capital in San Jose, Calif., which bought Facebook at about $31 a share on the secondary market. Yet even if some institutional investors felt let down, Facebook's early venture-capital investors were jazzed. David Sze, a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, which invested about $12 million in Facebook in 2006 at a $525 million valuation, faced criticism at the time for what was viewed as an expensive deal. Greylock now owns a stake in Facebook valued at as much as $1.15 billion. "No one ever believes at the beginning," Mr. Sze said, adding that his partners are "feeling very happy." The hours leading up the IPO on Friday morning were busy at Facebook. Late into Thursday night, hundreds of employees huddled around their computer screens and goofed off, playing hockey or giving impromptu concerts. At around 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, hundreds more employees returned to the campus to watch Mr. Zuckerberg ring in Nasdaq's opening bell. Facebook engineers had rigged the button to automatically post the message, "Mark Zuckerberg has listed a company on NASDAQ - FB," on his own Facebook profile as he rang the bell. But on the other side of the country, on Wall Street, traders were exasperated by a 30-minute delay in the opening of the stock, which didn't begin trading till around 11:30 a.m. Eastern. Nasdaq officials told members in a notice at noon that its staff was "investigating an issue in delivering trade execution messages" from trades made in Facebook's IPO. Around 1 p.m., Nasdaq indicated it would provide a "manual report" to brokers with information on Facebook trades. Once the stock opened, trading was robust. More than 200 million shares changed hands in the first hour, as investors rushed in to buy, and some who had received stock from the IPO cashed out. By day's end, 571 million shares traded hands. The glitches that beset Nasdaq on Friday helped contribute to the lackluster price for Facebook shares, according to people familiar with the snafus. One of the biggest problems, these people said, was that buyers and sellers of Facebook shares weren't provided confirmation of their trades until 2 p.m. That's akin to people not knowing how much money is in their bank account, and therefore not knowing whether to go out and spend more money or save. Lead underwriter Morgan Stanley received about 38% of the IPO shares to distribute, while J.P. Morgan got 20% and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s allotment was roughly 15%. Morgan Stanley is expected to command the largest percentage of more than $175 million in fees from the IPO. —John Letzing, Owen Fletcher, Geoffrey A. Fowler and Jenny Strasburg contributed to this article. Write to Shayndi Raice at [email protected], Ryan Dezember at [email protected] and Jacob Bunge at [email protected]

– Facebook has seen a mixed start to its IPO: Initially priced at $38 each, shares in the company quickly jumped about 11%, opening at $42. But things cooled off, and at one point in the first half-hour, shares were back down to about $38, notes the Wall Street Journal. They were hovering just under $40 around mid-day. “I think it’s surprising that they didn’t get the pop that many were expecting,” one analyst tells MarketWatch. “It seems the underwriters did not leave much upside, or perhaps investors were signaling that they would buy a lot more shares than they ended up actually buying.” TheStreet.com has a liveblog here.

Richard Carpenter to Music Companies You Screwed Me and Karen Royally Richard Carpenter Sues for Karen Over Legendary Music Catalog Richard Carpenter has filed a lawsuit against 2 music companies he claims ripped him off in the royalties over Carpenters tunes, and he's brought Karen into the legal action as well. Richard and Karen Carpenter's estate claim Universal Music Group and A&M Records have shut them out of profits for iTunes and other online sales distributors. It's a whole new world out there with digital downloads, and Richard claims Universal and A&M are not giving artists their fair cut. He goes on to say the courts have agreed with him -- notably in a case involving Eminem -- and now he says it's time to pay up. Richard and Karen's estate have crunched the numbers, and they want more than $2 million. ||||| Richard Carpenter, representing the singer-songwriting duo The Carpenters, claims that Universal Music Group and A&M Records have only paid him and the estate of his sister, Karen, only a “miniscule fraction” of digital royalties owed to them, according to a lawsuit he filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday. The Carpenters contend that accountants they hired to examine the record label books found multiple errors and that the defendants rejected the claim of royalties. He is seeking compensatory damages of at least $2 million. Among other things, according to the lawsuit, the record labels “improperly classified” revenue from digital downloads of Carpenters’ music as sales of records as opposed to licensing revenue — short-changing them from a higher royalty rate. The lawsuit also claims that the defendants undercounted digital downloads and that they applied an incorrect base price to the sales of CDs. The lawsuit notes that the lawsuit is similar to litigation involving the recordings of Eminem in which the defendants were several affiliates of UMG. Ultimately, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that digital downloads were a licensing of master recordings rather than a sale of records. Related Read Universal Music Chief Lucian Grainge’s Year-End Letter to Staff Capitol Music Group Names Amber Grimes Senior VP of Global Creative “I regret that I have been unable to amicably resolve this serious royalty dispute with Universal and A&M,” Carpenter said in a statement. “The Carpenters recordings are among the best sellers in the history of popular music and after 48 years continue to contribute a substantial amount to UMG/A&M’s annual bottom line. It seems only fair that these companies account fairly to my sister’s estate and to me. I look forward to proving the allegations in court.” The lawsuit claims breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The Carpenters are represented by Larry Iser and Greg Gabriel at Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert. During their career, the brother and sister duo recorded 11 albums, released 31 singles, and won three Grammys. Karen Carpenter died in 1983. A spokeswoman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.

– The lawsuits may have only just begun: Richard Carpenter filed a suit in California Wednesday on behalf of sister Karen Carpenter's estate, saying record companies are cheating both of them out of digital royalties. Richard, the surviving member of the sibling duo, accuses Universal Music Group and A&M Records of not giving the band its fair cut of digital sales of Carpenters records, TMZ reports. He says the Carpenters, who recorded 11 albums and released 31 singles before Karen's death in 1983, are owed at least $2 million, and he notes that the courts sided with Eminem in a similar case in 2010. The lawsuit accuses record companies of shortchanging the duo by undercounting digital downloads and "improperly classifying" downloads as record sales when they should be considered licensing, which has a higher royalty rate, Variety reports. "The Carpenters recordings are among the best sellers in the history of popular music and after 48 years continue to contribute a substantial amount to UMG/A&M's annual bottom line," Richard Carpenter said in a statement. "It seems only fair that these companies account fairly to my sister's estate and to me. I look forward to proving the allegations in court."

For Ganley, the current model of how airwaves are allocated to mobile carriers is broken. At the moment, telecoms firms in the U.S. will bid for so-called spectrum through an auction process held by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In other countries, the appropriate regulator will control spectrum auctions. This often leads to dominance from the larger players who have more money to spend. The CEO said that this has killed innovation, particularly among European firms that led the previous generations of mobile technology. "Because of the way spectrum was allocated, we adopted the top-down model in a way we haven't done since feudalism. We recreated a top-down structure now that has become an absolutely critical part of our economy," Ganley said. He added that this model suits the Chinese because of the top-down nature of the world's second-largest economy. In the auction model, U.S. firms are competing heavily against each other to win customers. This hits their profits and therefore their ability to invest in innovation. In China, however, where there are only two or three major state-run networks dominating the market, this model is very fitting. They can continue to operate and invest because of backing by the Chinese government. This could allow them to get ahead of the U.S. telecoms companies which may struggle to compete when it comes to rolling out 5G. Ganley said that while many European and U.S. telecoms companies could die, China could prop their domestic players up for several years. That's why he, and his company Rivada Networks, advocate a wholesale model for allocating spectrum, similar to how the electricity market works. The model would theoretically allow more players to bid for spectrum as and when it is needed to meet demand and this would lead to more dynamic pricing. "What we need to do is completely flip the table," Ganley said, adding that this would allow the U.S. to get ahead of China in 5G. Interestingly, the Trump administration has hinted toward such a policy. Kelsey Guyselman, policy advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at a recent event that the government recognizes that "sharing" spectrum could be a way to roll-out the next generation of mobile network, hinting toward a wholesale model. And it's clear that the upper echelons of the Trump administration are thinking about a wholesale market model for 5G. Brad Parscale, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, tweeted last month that he thinks this is the way forward. Ganley said that the race for 5G is moving quickly and the U.S. needs to introduce a wholesale model or risk losing to the Chinese. "We are 13 months away from really failing," Ganley told CNBC. Not all experts are convinced however that a wholesale spectrum model could live up to the hype. "I think while it’s a good idea the jury is still out on whether it will achieve the goals that have been articulated and some of that is routed in the idea that many of the major players involved in 5G are still seeking out those really lucrative 5G business cases," Shaun Collins, CEO of technology, media and telecoms analyst firm CCS Insight, told CNBC by phone earlier this week. ||||| LISTEN TO ARTICLE 1:29 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email A ship laden with U.S. soybeans that was steaming toward northern China looks to have lost its race to arrive before import duties are imposed. Retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods have now taken effect after the U.S. implemented a raft of duties earlier in the day, China’s foreign ministry said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday afternoon. The Chinese government had previously said it will impose a 25 percent levy on shipments on soybeans among other U.S. agricultural produce and goods including automobiles. The bulk carrier Peak Pegasus, which had been accelerating earlier in the day as it raced to the port of Dalian, was about 25 miles away from its destination as of 4:25 p.m. local time and slowing down, according to ship-tracking data. It’s scheduled to arrive at about 5 p.m., the data show. Peak Pegasus is still heading toward Dalian as China announces its tariffs are now in effect. Click to track the path of the Pegasus. The U.S. fired the first shot in the deepening trade war, imposing tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports from 12:01 a.m. Friday in Washington, just after midday in China. Soybeans have been a key battleground in escalating trade tensions between the two countries as China is the world’s biggest importer and America’s largest customer in trade worth $14 billion last year. The Asian country is expected to cancel or re-sell U.S. soybeans due to the additional duties and purchased 19 cargoes from Brazil last week. China typically imports from Brazil at this time of year before switching to the U.S., spurring concerns about a deficit in the fourth quarter. — With assistance by Shuping Niu ||||| Soybean prices in the U.S. and Brazil, the nations that account for roughly 80% of global exports, have taken drastically different paths thanks to Donald Trump’s trade war. In the U.S., average cash prices fell to about $7.87 a bushel this week, the lowest in almost a decade, according to an index compiled by the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. That comes as China gears up to enact retaliatory tariffs against American farm goods in response to President Trump’s pledge to slap fees on some products from the Asian country. Meanwhile in Brazil, exporters have been handed high times. Soybeans to be loaded in August at the nation’s Paranagua port fetched $2.21 a bushel more than Chicago futures on Thursday, the widest gap since data starts in 2014. The premium has more than tripled since the end of May, according to data from Commodity 3. “Premiums reflect the rising possibility of China being more dependent on Brazil’s soybeans,” Luis Fernando Roque, an analyst at consultancy firm Safras & Mercado, said in a telephone interview from Porto Alegre. The rally means the added premium for Brazil supplies are equal to about two-thirds the cost of the tariffs China is planning to levy on U.S. shipments, according to a report from INTL FCStone (intl). So far, good crushing margins are helping to keep Chinese demand robust for Brazilian supplies, even with surging premiums. China bought about 1.1 million metric tons of soybeans from Brazil last week, while no purchases from the U.S. were reported, according to the China National Grain and Oils Information Center. That’s an unusual move for this time of the year, when China usually starts booking U.S. supply in the months before the North American harvest starts. Supplies in Brazil begin to fall after shipments peak for the season in May.

– Trade disputes generally don't lend themselves to exciting visuals, but the new one between the US and China might be an exception. As the deadline neared for new penalties to take effect, a ship laden with US soybeans raced toward the Chinese port of Dalian, capturing the attention of users on the Chinese social media site Weibo, reports Reuters. "You are no ordinary soybean!" one user wrote in regard to the ship Peak Pegasus, which set out from Seattle last month. "Good luck bro!" wrote another. However, Reuters reports that the Pegasus arrived just a smidge late to beat the deadline, and Bloomberg also reports that the ship "looks to have lost its race"—unless perhaps Chinese officials were feeling generous. Related coverage: Soybeans? They just happen to be the top American agricultural export to China, as an interactive graphic at Reuters reveals. China took in about $12 billion worth last year. US farmers' pain will be Brazilian farmers' gain, reports Fortune. One huge factor: CNBC reports that a major issue behind this trade war is 5G—and whether the US or China will be the nation to dominate the next generation of the mobile internet. This is about far more than faster download times, however. "It is being touted as a technology that could support the next generation of infrastructure, from the billions of internet-connected devices expected to come online in the next few years, to smart cities and driverless cars."

ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — The gunman who opened fire in an Oregon college shot one classmate after saying he could save her life by begging, and others were killed after being told to crawl across the floor, according to relatives of students in the classroom. This undated photo provided by Bonnie Schaan shows her daughter, Cheyeanne Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had her kidney removed after being shot during a fatal shooting at Umpqua Community College on Thursday,... (Associated Press) Melody Siewell places flowers at a makeshift memorial near the road leading to Umpqua Community College, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Armed with multiple guns, Chris Harper Mercer walked... (Associated Press) CORRECTS SPELLING OF CHEYEANNE - Bonnie Schaan, second from left, discuss her daughter, Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, who was wounded in the shooting at Umpqua Community College, during a news conference outside... (Associated Press) A timeline of law enforcement response to the Umpqua Community College shooting is posted for the media at a news conference, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Armed with multiple guns, Chris... (Associated Press) Bonnie Schaan leaves a news conference outside Mercy Medical Center, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore., after talking to reporters about her 16-year-old daughter Cheyanne Fitzgerald. Cheyanne... (Associated Press) Randy Scroggins, a pastor at New Beginnings Church of God, cries as he talks about is daughter Lacey Scroggins on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Scroggins says his daughter Lacey was wounded... (Associated Press) This undated photo from a MySpace page that appeared to belong to Chris Harper Mercer shows him holding a rifle. Authorities identified Mercer as the gunman who went on a deadly shooting rampage at Umpqua... (Associated Press) Signs calling for prayers and remembrance for those killed in a fatal shooting at Umpqua Community College, are seen on a pair of local businesses, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Armed with... (Associated Press) Randy Scroggins, a pastor at New Beginnings Church of God, cries in his church Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Scroggins had just spoke on the phone with the mother of a man who was shot and... (Associated Press) Vanessa Becker, chairwoman of the Umpqua Community College Board of Trustees, speaks during a news conference, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore., where she announced that classes would not resume... (Associated Press) CORRECTS SPELLING OF CHEYEANNE - Bonnie Schaan attends a news conference about her 16-year-old daughter Cheyeanne Fitzgerald outside Mercy Medical Center, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Cheyeanne... (Associated Press) A sign in remembrance for those killed in a fatal shooting at Umpqua Community College, is displayed at a local business, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Armed with multiple guns, Chris Harper... (Associated Press) Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin speaks during a news conference, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Hanlin said that Christopher Harper-Mercer, the gunman that killed nine at Umpqua Community... (Associated Press) Vincent Attanasio holds up a sign while performing with the Roseburg High School band Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. The band was collecting donations for for families of the victims of the... (Associated Press) Charley Thompson, left, and his wife Rachel Thompson place flowers at a makeshift memorial near the road leading to Umpqua Community College, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. Armed with multiple... (Associated Press) Vincent Attanasio holds up a sign while performing with the Roseburg High School band Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in Roseburg, Ore. The band was collecting donations for for families of the victims of the... (Associated Press) However, Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer spared a student and gave the "lucky one" something to deliver to authorities, according to the mother of a student who witnessed Thursday's rampage. Authorities have not disclosed whether they have an envelope or package from Harper-Mercer, who Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Saturday killed himself as officers arrived. But a law enforcement official said a manifesto of several pages had been recovered. Bonnie Schaan, the mother of 16-year-old Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, said she was told by her 16-year-old daughter that the gunman gave someone an envelope and told him to go to a corner of the classroom. Harper-Mercer said the person "'was going to be the lucky one,'" Schaan told reporters outside a hospital where her daughter's kidney was removed after she was shot. Relatives of other survivors of the shooting that killed nine also said Harper-Mercer gave something to a student in the class. Pastor Randy Scroggins, whose 18-year-old daughter Lacey escaped without physical injuries, said she told him that the gunman called to a student, saying: "'Don't worry, you're the one who is going to survive.'" Harper-Mercer then told the student that inside the shooter's backpack was "all the information that you'll need, give it to the police," Scroggins said, citing the account by his daughter. Scroggins also said his daughter heard the gunman tell one victim he would spare that person's life if the student begged, then shot the begging victim anyway. Lacey Scroggins also spoke about students being ordered to crawl to the middle of the room before being shot. Scroggins said his daughter survived because she was lying on the floor and partially covered by the body and blood of a fellow student. The gunman thought Lacey Scroggins was dead as well, stepped over her and shot someone else. Randy Scroggins received a phone call from that student's mother while speaking with The Associated Press. "He saved my girl. I will forever call your son my hero," he said of 20-year-old Treven Anspach. He told the man's mother he would mention her son during his Sunday church service and ask for prayers. "I'm so sorry for your loss." Janet Willis said her granddaughter Anastasia Boylan was wounded in the Thursday attack and pretended to be dead as Harper-Mercer kept firing, killing eight students and a teacher. Willis said she visited her 18-year-old granddaughter in a hospital in Eugene, where the sobbing Boylan told her: "'Grandma, he killed my teacher!'" Boylan also said the shooter told one student in the writing class to stand in a corner, handed him a package and told him to deliver it to authorities, Willis said. The law enforcement official who disclosed the existence of the manifesto did not reveal its contents but described it as an effort to leave a message for law enforcement. The official is familiar with the investigation but was not authorized to disclose information and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official said the document was left at the scene of the shooting but wouldn't specify how authorities obtained it. Boylan, a freshman at Umpqua Community College, also told her grandmother the gunman asked students about their faith. "If they said they were Christian, he shot them in the head," Willis said, citing the account given by her granddaughter. However, conflicting reports emerged about Harper-Mercer's words as he shot his victims. Stephanie Salas, the mother of Rand McGowan, another student who survived, said she was told by her son that the shooter asked victims whether they were religious but did not specifically target Christians. Salas said it was like telling the victims "you're going to be meeting your maker." Salas said the gunman told victims "'this won't hurt very long'" before shooting them. Law enforcement officials have not given details about what happened in the classroom. However they released a timeline that shows police arrived at the scene six minutes after the first 911 call and exchanged gunfire with the shooter two minutes later. Harper-Mercer was enrolled in the class, but officials have not disclosed a possible motive for the killings. In a statement released by authorities, his family said they were "shocked and deeply saddened" by the slayings. The dead ranged in age from 18 to 67 in the attack in Roseburg, a rural timber town about 180 miles south of Portland. Harper-Mercer wore a flak jacket and brought at least six guns and five ammunition magazines when he went to the campus that morning. Oregon's top federal prosecutor said the shooter used a handgun when he opened fire. Several years ago, Harper-Mercer moved to Oregon from Torrance, California, with his mother Laurel Harper. Harper-Mercer's social media profiles suggested he was fascinated by the Irish Republican Army and frustrated by traditional organized religion. Scroggins said he was grateful his daughter survived Harper-Mercer's attack. "There's been a lot of emotion," he said. "But others don't get their children back." ___ Contributing to this report are Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Rachel La Corte in Portland; and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho. ||||| Despite Mr. Harper-Mercer’s online interest in high-profile shootings and neighbors’ memories of him as an enthusiastic gun collector who frequently went target shooting with his mother, the gunman’s father told CNN he did not know his son owned guns. Mr. Harper-Mercer’s parents divorced a decade ago, and he had lived with his mother. The father said he had not seen his son since he and his mother, Laurel Harper, moved to Oregon about two years ago, but said there was no “disharmony or any bitterness” between him and his son. Adding a raw, personal voice to the debate over gun control in the wake of this latest mass shooting, he said the United States needed to tighten gun laws. “It has to change,” he said. “How can it not? Even people that believe in the right to bear arms, what right do you have to take someone’s life?” He would not discuss his son’s mental health issues, deferring to the police investigation. “Obviously, someone who goes and kills nine people has to have some kind of issue,” he said. Standing on his lawn, Mr. Mercer said the shooting had devastated his family. “But we’re not alone in this,” he said. “My heart goes out to all the families that were affected by this.” His interview came on the same afternoon that relatives of one of the students wounded in his son’s rampage also stepped in front of the microphones, here outside the front doors of Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg. Image Christopher Harper-Mercer Credit Associated Press. Bonnie Schaan, the mother of Cheyeanne Fitzgerald, said that her daughter had been shot in the back during the massacre in her classroom. Tears welled up in her eyes as she explained that a bullet had clipped her daughter’s lung and lodged in one of her kidneys, which had to be removed. Cheyeanne, 16, a nursing student, remains in intensive care. Mr. Harper-Mercer asked the young woman about her religion, according to her aunt, Colleen Fitzgerald, but “she didn’t answer.” Instead, Cheyeanne played dead next to her friend, Anastasia Boylan, a student who was also shot. Ms. Schaan said that her daughter did not know Mr. Harper-Mercer. After hearing the news about the shooting on campus, Ms. Schaan said she texted her daughter and said, “I’m on my way to school.” Instead she went to the hospital. Cheyeanne has begun to talk with her father about the ordeal, Ms. Schaan said. Now, even a chair being moved unsettles her. Her mother added, “She’s mentioned all the blood.” Dr. Jason Gray, the chief medical officer at Mercy Medical Center, said only two victims were still in the hospital. One was in critical condition and the other in fair condition. They were expected to be released in two to five days. The hospital treated seven victims in total, Dr. Gray said. Two were released Thursday, four went into surgery and one died in the emergency department. Three other people were being treated for wounds at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the town of Springfield. On Friday, about 300 people showed up at Mercy Medical Center to donate blood, Dr. Gray said. The hospital set up a donation station nearby to handle the crowd. ||||| The family of Oregon community college shooter Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer released a statement Saturday, saying they are “shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific events,” which resulted in 10 deaths, including that of their son. “Our thoughts, our hearts and our prayers go out to all of the families of those who died and were injured,” the statement read, according to multiple news outlets. Authorities say police officers arrived on the scene six minutes after receiving the first 911 call about the shooting, the Associated Press reports, and officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter two minutes later. Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Saturday that the medical examiner’s office also determined that Mercer killed himself, according to the AP. Mercer, who killed nine people at Umpqua Community College also left a “manifesto” for authorities, but the AP says officials did not reveal what was in it. The police have yet to release a possible motive for the killings. Read More: Oregon Sheriff Shared Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory Online Relatives Mourn Oregon Shooting Victims: ‘Our Lives Are Shattered Beyond Repair’ Oregon Shooter Was Army Dropout

– Details are emerging on the grisly mass murder at an Oregon college—including reports that the shooter gave one "lucky" student a message for authorities before killing nine people and taking his own life, reports the AP. Gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer handed over an envelope and said that student "'was going to be the lucky one,'" according to the mother of a student who was shot and wounded in the spree. A pastor whose 18-year-old daughter wasn't injured told a similar story, with the gunman saying, "'Don't worry, you're the one who is going to survive,'" while the grandmother of a survivor said the "lucky" student was told to stand in a corner with the package. Authorities haven't confirmed, but one law enforcement source says a pages-long manifesto has been found. The pastor, Randy Scroggins, relayed other stories from his daughter—about how Harper-Mercer told one student to beg for her life but shot her anyway, and shot other students after telling them to crawl along the floor. Scroggins says his daughter only survived because another student's blood and body was lying on top of her. "He saved my girl," he said after talking to that student's mother. "I will forever call your son my hero." Other reports have Harper-Mercer targeting students in the writing class for being either Christian or religious. Meanwhile, the gunman's family released a statement saying they were "shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific events," Time reports, and the father said a change in gun laws could prevent future tragedies, the New York Times reports.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A $69,000 reward is being offered for anyone with information leading to an arrest in connection to the vandalism of hundreds of gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia. Authorities said the damage was reported just after 9:30 a.m. Sunday at Mount Carmel Cemetery in the Wissinoming section of the city. An estimated 300 gravestones were found toppled and vandalized. A team of helpers are trying to put the gravestones back up. A GoFundMe has also been created to help raise money to fix the damage. Naomi Adler, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, says this act is unacceptable. “We are incredibly disgusted by the nature of this act.” Regardless of the motives, she says this brings up a dark history. “There are a number of people who have this hearken back to the Holocaust or to other Anti-Semitic act. Whether or not this is an act of anti-semitism, it brings up those memories and those fears.” Jennifer was among those who heard about what happened. She came by to show support for those hurting. “I don’t know why anything like this would happen. Somebody did something and maybe they weren’t thinking, or maybe they were thinking too much.” READ: Dog’s Role Investigated In Suspicious Death Of Man In Olney This comes less than two weeks after Holy Redeemer Cemetery in the city’s Bridesburg neighborhood was vandalized. More than 30 tombstones were found knocked over by a man walking his dog. It’s unclear if there is any connection between the two incidents. Mayor Jim Kenney released the following statement on the vandalism of Philadelphia’s Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery. “My heart breaks for the families who found their loved ones’ headstones toppled this morning. We are doing all we can to find the perpetrators who desecrated this final resting place, and they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Kenney said. “Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia. I encourage Philadelphians to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and to show them that we are the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.” Gov. Tom Wolf called it “truly reprehensible.” “Any anti-Semitic act or act of intimidation aimed at Jewish institutions and people in Pennsylvania is truly reprehensible and we must find those responsible and hold them accountable. This is not who we are as Americans or Pennsylvanians,” Wolf said in a statement. “We will not take these threats and acts lightly and I have asked the Pennsylvania State Police and Office of Homeland Security to offer their full resources towards protecting these institutions and finding those responsible.” Last week, a Jewish cemetery in suburban St. Louis reported that more than 150 headstones had been vandalized, many of them tipped over. Through their generous support, the following have donated monetary rewards for information leading to an arrest and conviction: ▪ The Mizel Family Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League is offering a $10,000 reward ▪ An anonymous donor is offering a $10,000 reward ▪ Councilman Allan Domb is offering a $12,000 reward ▪ Mayor Kenney’s office is offering a $15,000 reward ▪ The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #5 is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to an arrest “ONLY”. CBS 3’s Joe Holden and KYW’s Kristen Johanson contributed to this report. ||||| "It's just very disheartening that such a thing would take place," Mallin said. "I'm hoping it was maybe just some drunk kids. But the fact that there's so many, it leads one to think it could have been targeted. It's just very heartbreaking." ||||| Northeast Philadelphia Police Det. Timothy McIntyre and another Philadelphia police officer look over tombstones that were vandalized in the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetary Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 in Philadelphia.... (Associated Press) Northeast Philadelphia Police Det. Timothy McIntyre and another Philadelphia police officer look over tombstones that were vandalized in the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetary Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 in Philadelphia. A police spokeswoman said preliminary estimates are that 75 to 100 graves were damaged The... (Associated Press) Northeast Philadelphia Police Det. Timothy McIntyre and another Philadelphia police officer look over tombstones that were vandalized in the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetary Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 in Philadelphia. A police spokeswoman said preliminary estimates are that 75 to 100 graves were damaged The... (Associated Press) Northeast Philadelphia Police Det. Timothy McIntyre and another Philadelphia police officer look over tombstones that were vandalized in the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetary Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 in Philadelphia.... (Associated Press) PHILADELPHIA (AP) — More than 100 headstones have been vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, damage discovered less than a week after similar vandalism in Missouri, authorities said. A man visiting the cemetery called police at 9:40 a.m. Sunday to report that three of his relatives' headstones had been knocked over and damaged. "The cemetery was inspected and approximately 100 additional headstones were found to be knocked over," apparently sometime after dark Saturday, a police spokeswoman said in a statement. A criminal mischief-institutional vandalism investigation will be conducted by the police Northeast Detectives Division, she said. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia lists Mount Carmel as a Jewish cemetery. Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon called the report "shocking and a source of worry," although he added that he had "full confidence" that authorities in the U.S. would be able to catch and punish those responsible. The damage comes less than a week after a Jewish cemetery in suburban St. Louis reported more than 150 headstones vandalized, many of them tipped over. Police said Sunday evening that the Anti-Defamation League, due to support from the Mizel Family Foundation, is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. A local Fraternal Order of Police lodge also is offering a reward of $3,000. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said authorities were doing everything possible to find those "who desecrated this final resting place." "My heart breaks for the families who found their loved ones' headstones toppled," he said in a statement. "Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia." Aaron Mallin told WPVI-TV that he discovered the damage when he came to visit his father's grave. He called it "very disheartening" and said he hopes it wasn't intended as an anti-Semitic attack. "I'm hoping it was maybe just some drunk kids," he said. "But the fact that there's so many, it leads one to think it could have been targeted."

– Cops in Philadelphia have vowed to track down the vandals who toppled large numbers of headstones in a Jewish cemetery over the weekend. Initial estimates put the number of graves vandalized in the Mount Carmel at around 100. CBS Philadelphia reports that the estimate has risen to 300. "It's criminal. This is beyond vandalism," Northeast Detectives Capt. Shawn Thrush tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's beyond belief." Police say the damage was discovered Sunday morning after a man called to report that three of his relatives' headstones had been knocked over, the AP reports. The Anne Frank Center said it was "sickened, sickened, sickened" by the vandalism and urged President Trump to deliver a nationally televised speech outlining how he plans to fight anti-Semitism, as well as "Islamophobia and other rising forms of hate," the New York Daily News reports. Mayor Mike Kenny offered condolences to affected families. "Hate is not permissible in Philadelphia," he said. "I encourage Philadelphians to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and to show them that we are the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection." (After a similar attack in Missouri last week, Muslim-Americans started a fundraiser.)

EPPING, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire woman who became stuck in a swimming pool after the ladder broke turned to Facebook to ask for help getting out. Sixty-one-year-old Leslie Kahn was swimming in her pool Aug. 11 when the ladder broke, leaving her stranded. She said she didn't have the strength to pull herself. No one else was home and her cellphone was inside. She used a pool pole to drag the chair her iPad was on and posted in a community Facebook page, asking for help. She said she labeled the post "911" to get people's attention. A woman who lived nearby showed up, followed by police and a neighbor. Kahn, a breast cancer survivor, tells WMUR-TV that sometimes you help others and other times, you ask for help. ||||| EPPING, NH (CBS) – A backyard pool mishap stranded an Epping, NH woman in four feet of water, but also revealed the positive power of social media. When Leslie Kahn went for a dip, she didn’t expect her pool ladder to break. But what happened next will renew your faith in people. “I swim as often as possible every summer,” Leslie says. She had just finished her daily swim on a day a lot nicer than today, but as she started to get out, a step on the pool ladder broke. “I had one foot on it, and when I put my other foot on it, it went down. And I cracked my knee,” she says Still, she tried to climb out, but just couldn’t manage it. “Because I don’t have the agility or the upper body strength that I used to,” she said. Now what? “I was thinking I might be here a while because my tenants were out, nobody was home. My phone was inside,” she says. But her old iPad was on a chair on the small pool deck, but it was out of reach. Then, ingenuity. “So then I grab the pole. Hooked the leg of the chair. Dragged it over, and got online,” she says. She posted her 911 on “Epping Squawks,” a community Facebook group. “Only a few minutes to start getting a response,” Leslie says. Offers of help poured in, and people came to Leslie’s house. They tried to fix the ladder, no dice. They tried putting a chair in the water, but it was too tippy. “Every idea we thought of didn’t work,” she says. Finally they tried a step ladder. “And I just climbed out. Happily ever after at that point,” she says. And a big thank you to the good people of Epping. “People keep saying, ‘I bet you can laugh about it now.’ I was laughing about it then. What else can you do!” she says.

– A New Hampshire woman who became stuck in her swimming pool after the ladder broke turned to the loving arms of Facebook to ask for help getting out. "I had one foot on (the ladder), and when I put my other foot on it, it went down. And I cracked my knee," Leslie Kahn tells WBZ-TV of the Aug. 11 incident. The 61-year-old says she didn't have the upper-body strength to hoist herself out, and "my tenants were out, nobody was home. My phone was inside." With few other options, Kahn used a pool pole to drag the chair her iPad was on toward her and posted in a community Facebook page, asking for help. She said she labeled the post "911" to get people's attention. A woman who lived nearby showed up, followed by police and a neighbor. "Every idea we thought of didn’t work," she says, until her rescuers thought to try a step ladder. "And I just climbed out. Happily ever after at that point." Kahn, whom the AP notes is a breast cancer survivor, is apparently no worse for the wear: "People keep saying, 'I bet you can laugh about it now.' I was laughing about it then. What else can you do!"

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| The series also stars Rupert Grint, Nick Frost and Don Johnson. Lindsay Lohan has joined Sky comedy Sick Note, starring Rupert Grint, Nick Frost and Don Johnson, for its newly announced second season. Sick Note follows the story of Daniel Glass (Grint), a compulsive liar stuck in a failing relationship and dead-end insurance job, under the thumb of his boss (Johnson). Lohan will join the show, which airs on Sky 1 in the U.K., for season two as the daughter of Johnson's character. The first season will air this fall, while the second season is currently shooting in the U.K. In the first season, Grint's character is wrongly diagnosed with a terminal illness by his incompetent doctor (Frost) who convinces him to hide the truth of his misdiagnosis from colleagues, friends and family in a lie that spirals out of control. The show is part of Sky 1's growing stable of edgier, grown-up comedies commissioned for the channel’s 10 p.m. slot. Other shows in the fall lineup for that slot include Bliss, from David Cross, starring Stephen Mangan and Heather Graham; and action comedy Bounty Hunters, from Jack Whitehall and Freddy Syborn. Produced by British production firm King Bert, founded by producer Jo Sargent and writers and actors David Walliams and Miranda Hart, Sick Note is created and written by Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz. Matt Lipsey (Little Britain) is directing. Said executive producer Sargent: "We are thrilled to be making a second [season] of this nail-biting comedy and very excited to be welcoming the extraordinary talents of Lindsay Lohan to our all-star cast."

– Lindsay Lohan is making a comeback on the small screen after a three-year hiatus from acting. The NY Daily News reports that the starlet posted a photo from the set of the British television comedy Sick Note announcing her new gig while posing in a blazer with a sleek bob haircut alongside costars Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame and Nick Frost. Season one has yet to air (it's slated for this fall), but according to the Hollywood Reporter, the series follows Grint after he is misdiagnosed with a terminal illness; Lohan will come in during the second season. She is taking on the role of the daughter of Grint’s boss, who is played by actor Don Johnson. (Lohan made headlines last year while on a covert humanitarian trip.)

Jared Leto's take on the Joker made his first appearance via David Ayer's Twitter. (Photo: twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies) If you're going to play the Joker, you might as well look as nutty as humanly possible. Oscar winner Jared Leto has been teasing the look of his take on the Clown Prince of Crime on social media recently, but Suicide Squad director David Ayer gave fans the first look at the actor in full Joker mode Friday via Twitter. "The Suicide Squad wishes you a Happy Anniversary Mr. J!" Ayer wrote, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Batman supervillain's first appearance. (Batman No. 1 came out in April 1940.) Leto's appearance is suitably frightening for the first time on screen since the late Heath Ledger's Oscar-worthy performance in 2008's The Dark Knight. In addition to neon green hair, the actor is sporting pale skin, silver teeth, one purple glove and red lipstick. The tattoos are iconic of the Joker as well, from the playing cards and many uses of "Ha" all over his left side to the toothy grin on his right arm and harlequin skull on his chest — most likely an ode to his Suicide Squad girlfriend Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie. (Also interesting: the script "Damaged" on his forehead.) In theaters Aug. 5, 2016, Suicide Squad began filming earlier this month and also stars Will Smith as Deadshot, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1z2P89F ||||| In collaboration with the University of Manitoba Libraries, the National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation, and the Library and Archives of Canada, the University of Winnipeg Library has curated and captured a selection of webpages, blogs, news coverage, and PDF files that pertain to Manitoba's ongoing involvement with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This growing collection covers a diverse range of topics, which include survivors’ stories, apologies, responses, cultural events, and more. This is an ongoing web-archiving project that will continue to grow as we witness new ways that reconciliation and healing take place in our province. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of Manitoba Tourism, Culture, Heritage, Sport and Consumer Protection, and the Government of Canada in the creation of this collection. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– Marking an anniversary by sharing a photo on Twitter is a pretty routine thing to do, but Suicide Squad director David Ayer did just that in a pretty atypical way yesterday. He marked the Joker's April 25, 1940, comic book debut by tweeting the first image released of Jared Leto as Joker, the role he's playing in the film. It's a Joker complete with green hair, crimson lips, nasty teeth, and a tattoo-heavy body. Among the ink: "HA" repeated over and over, and a cursive "Damaged" on the forehead. Rolling Stone reports the look was inspired by Batman: The Killing Joke, and points out that it's not the first time Ayer has referenced Alan Moore's graphic novel. That leads the magazine to speculate that Leto's turn as the Joker in the film—due Aug. 5, 2016—will hew closer to Moore's Joker, a bust-of-a-stand-up comic who is disfigured and goes crazy in the span of a single day. USA Today also calls out a harlequin skull tattoo on Leto's chest, which it sees as "most likely an ode to his Suicide Squad girlfriend Harley Quinn." She's played by Margot Robbie. The rest of the big-name cast includes Will Smith as Deadshot, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg. What they'll be doing, per the IMDB description: "A secret government agency recruits imprisoned supervillains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency."

(CNN) Hillary Clinton is not considering Bernie Sanders as a running mate, a Democrat familiar with the decision tells CNN. Sanders, who has still not yet officially conceded the Democratic presidential primary to Clinton, was not expecting to be considered as Clinton's vice president and he does not view her decision as a slight, according to a person close to him. Instead, Sanders remains committed to changing the Democratic Party, and not "becoming her partner." He would risk being considered a sell-out by loyal supporters if he joined the Clinton ticket, another person close to Sanders said Wednesday, so the news is not unexpected. The Vermont senator did not bring up the issue in his private meeting with Clinton on Tuesday night that lasted about 90 minutes. Read More ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– The Wall Street Journal has revealed a list of potential running mates being vetted by Hillary Clinton, and it doesn't include Bernie Sanders. Possible future vice presidents currently in the early stages of vetting include Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio. A national poll conducted by Bloomberg found Warren leads in popularity among Clinton supporters, 35% of whom wanted to see her as vice president. She was followed by Booker, Castro, and Al Franken. (Newt Gingrich was the most popular VP choice on the GOP side.) While some Sanders supporters had been hoping for a vice presidential nomination for him, Sanders himself wouldn't be interested in the position anyway, according to a source close to him. CNN reports Sanders would rather work to change the Democratic party from the Senate than be seen as a "sell-out" or Clinton's "partner." That may explain the interest in Warren, whose policies are close to those of Sanders and who could possibly bring some of his supporters over to Clinton. Bustle calls her a "shiny apple to Sanders' orange." Sources close to Clinton say the top priority for a running mate is someone who would be ready to step in as president, and that advisers aren't really looking at what a nominee does for Clinton's campaign in terms of demographics and geography.

A man working at New York City's Grand Central Terminal suffered leg and hand burns after his e-cigarette exploded in his pants pocket, officials said. Electronic cigarettes and other battery-operated electronic smoking devices occasionally do catch fire. (Published Thursday, Nov. 24, 2016) A Florida woman who thought her house guests overstayed their welcome was arrested after she shot one of them, authorities said. Alana Annette Savell, 32, was arrested Monday on a charge of aggravated battery with a firearm, Bay County Sheriff's Office officials said. Shocking Photos Show Inside Abandoned Lincoln Mall in Illinois A woman told authorities that she had gone to Savell's home with a friend. Savell said they started drinking and were getting too loud, and said she didn't want them in her home. Unfortunate Truck Spills: Burning Pumpkins, Frozen Pizza Savell armed herself with a handgun and started shooting at their feet from the doorway of the home, officials said. The woman was hit in the legs and was taken to a hospital for treatment. Savell's boyfriend was also hit in the leg with a bullet during the shooting, authorities said. The boyfriend allegedly told authorities that he told Savell that if someone is told to leave their property three times, she is to get the gun and shoot it at the ground. If that doesn't work, she's supposed to shoot them in the leg. Savell was booked into jail. It's unknown if she's hired an attorney. ||||| A Bay County woman who felt like her visitors had overstayed their welcome opened fire on them early Monday morning. Alana Annette Savell, 32, of the 4200 block of Grady Street, told investigators that her guests had come over to hang out began drinking and getting too loud. But Savell and her boyfriend said there is a solution for this problem; using a .22 caliber handgun to shoot at the guests' feet, according to a news release from the Bay County Sheriff's Office. "The suspect's boyfriend stated to investigators that he has told his girlfriend that once someone is told to leave their property three times, she is to go get the gun and shoot it at the ground," the news release states. "If that does not work, she is to shoot people in the leg." The guests definitely got the message and left, but one of them was struck in the leg, deputies wrote. Savell's boyfriend was also hit with a bullet in the leg. Savell is charged with aggravated battery with a firearm. She was taken to the Bay County Jail.

– A cautionary tale out of Florida for anyone hosting guests this week or, more to the point, anyone who is a guest: Police say a woman fired a handgun at visitors who wore out their welcome and ended up striking two people in the leg with bullets, reports NBC Miami. Deputies say Alana Annette Savell, 32, of Panama City became annoyed when people who had come over to hang out got too loud after drinking and wouldn't leave, so she grabbed a .22-caliber handgun and began shooting toward their feet, reports WMBB. "The suspect's boyfriend stated to investigators that he has told his girlfriend that once someone is told to leave their property three times, she is to go get the gun and shoot it at the ground," says a police statement. "If that does not work, she is to shoot people in the leg." One of the guests did indeed get hit in the leg—as did Savell's boyfriend. Savell is charged with aggravated battery with a firearm.

Renamed the Parker Solar Probe to honour solar astrophysicist who predicted high speed solar wind, the spacecraft will attempt to get close to sun’s surface Nasa has announced its hotly anticipated mission to send a spacecraft into the sun’s outer atmosphere has a new name. Formerly known as the Solar Probe Plus mission, the endeavour will now be known as the Parker Solar Probe, honouring the American solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker who predicted a high speed solar wind – the stream of charged particles, or plasma, that flows from the sun out into space. Parker, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago who will turn 90 on 10 June, put forward his theory in 1958. It was initially met with scepticism. “People just thought it was crazy,” said Justin Kasper, a space scientist at the University of Michigan and lead investigator for one of the probe’s scientific research projects. But later observations proved the prediction correct. Esa’s Solar Orbiter mission passes crucial milestone Read more Parker’s work delved into a longstanding puzzle. While the temperature at the centre of the sun is about 15mC, further out things get complicated. “One of the mysterious things about our sun’s atmosphere is the [sun’s] surface, which is glowing visible in the yellow and white, is 6,000C, but the corona – its atmosphere – is at 1m-5mC,” said Kasper. The incredible temperatures in the corona, Parker realised, would create an unstable situation, meaning the sun’s atmosphere is no longer pulled back by the star’s gravity but instead escapes into space. “Parker said that by a couple of solar radii, the atmosphere would hit the speed of sound, it would break the sound barrier in the sun’s atmosphere, [and] by 10 solar radii it would be going supersonic,” said Kasper. “We enter the space age, and one of the first things we discover is this supersonic solar wind.” With the probe set to investigate the origins of solar wind, including the mysterious heating of the sun’s atmosphere and how the solar wind accelerates to astonishing speeds of up to 400 miles per second, the renaming of the mission is a fitting tribute to Parker. It is not the first time that Nasa has renamed a mission to honour a scientist. In 2008 the space agency renamed the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in honour of the late Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. In 2012, the space agency announced that it was renaming the Radiation Belt Storm Probes in honour of the late James Van Allen. Van Allen discovered two radiation belts composed of charged particles, known as the Van Allen belts, that encircle the Earth. “Nasa has never named a spacecraft after a researcher during their lifetime. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to make history,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Nasa science mission directorate, announcing the new name of the mission at the University of Chicago. Speaking at the press conference Nicola Fox, mission project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, added that a chip would be placed on board the spacecraft carrying pictures of Parker and his scientific papers, as well as a plate with an inscription of his choice. Parker was then presented with a model of the probe. In addition, Parker was awarded with the Nasa Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest award from the space agency for non-governmental personnel – in honour of his lifetime’s work. Dressed in a black suit and tie, Parker said that he was privileged that the mission had been named after him. “I am greatly honoured to be associated with such a heroic scientific space mission,” he said, explaining that designing a spacecraft to withstand temperatures so close to the sun is a considerable feat. Realising a dream from the beginning of the space age The size of a car, shaped like the business end of a torch, and built to withstand temperatures of more than 1400C (2552F), the newly named Parker Solar Probe is set to be launched next summer in an unprecedented attempted to get up close to our star, coming within 4m miles of its surface. “It is just extraordinary - it is something that people have wanted to do from the beginning of the space age,” said Tim Horbury, professor of physics at Imperial College London. Scientist say the mission, costing in the region of $1.5bn, could radically change our understanding of the sun, while offering vital insights into space weather - phenomena including coronal mass ejections that trigger geomagnetic storms that not only damage satellite systems but can knock out power grids on Earth. “It is just a hugely important and scientifically fascinating mission,” said David McComas, vice president of the Princeton University plasma physics laboratory and principal investigator for the probe’s “Integrated Science Investigation of the sun”, research that will probe how electrons, protons and other charged particles are accelerated in the sun’s atmosphere. Facebook Twitter Pinterest An artist’s impression of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Photograph: Johns Hopkins University Applied/PA “It is far closer than anything ever built by humanity has ever gotten to the sun,” McComas said. Instruments for a number of scientific investigations on board the spacecraft will probe myriad solar phenomena from the electric and magnetic properties of the sun’s plasma to counting and catching the components of solar wind. The latter, a project dubbed the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation, is led by Kasper. “The sun is obviously very hot – its outer atmosphere is at hundreds of thousands of degrees Kelvin, and as a result it blows a bubble into interstellar space,” said Horbury. “We live in that bubble, we live in the heliosphere, and it is the solar wind that blows that bubble.” The goal of the probe is to understand how the sun makes the solar wind, and explore the physical process that are occurring. A member of the science team for the probe’s Fields instrument, Horbury plans to study turbulence within the solar wind. “When we first started [looking at the sun from space] that we realised the sun is not a boring yellow sphere, it is an incredibly dynamic, active plasma object,” he said. But the challenges have been immense, Horbury adds, describing the mission as “just on the edge of achievable”. The major difficulty was designing the probe to prevent it being toasted by the sun’s immense heat - as part of the solution the probe boasts a large heat-shield that is actively cooled by radiator systems. “There is a tiny spacecraft cowering behind this big heat shield,” Horbury said. “It is just extreme - everything is different when you are that close in [to the sun].” The Parker Solar Probe will travel far closer to the sun that any previous probe. While 4m miles might sound like a sizeable distance from the sun, it corresponds to under 10 solar radii. “[The Earth is] about 250-odd solar radii away, so it is really close,” said Horbury. The distance is crucial. Solar wind accelerates away from the sun, but it is about 10 solar radii that it effectively goes supersonic. “The point about the probe is it is going to get within that critical point,” said Hornbury. McComas’s part of the mission will explore in detail how certain particles, ejected by events including coronal mass ejections but not part of the solar wind, end up with very high energies, travelling at speeds of up to 80% of the speed of light. “They are really interesting and important particles because, for example, they can cause radiation damage in space to spacecraft, they can be a threat to astronauts in space,” he said. The mission is not only expected to offer unprecedented insights into the physics of the sun – an endeavour that will shed light on processes happening in stars across the universe – but will also yield vital information about space weather, that could help scientists to predict major events before they affect Earth. The stakes for the mission are high, admits Horbury. “The thing about space is everyone has done the easy stuff – we are only left with the difficult things, so by definition this is risky,” he said. “They are really pushing the limits of what is possible. But that is the way you make progress.” ||||| NASA is naming its upcoming mission to “touch the Sun” after Eugene Parker, a prominent astrophysicist who discovered the existence of solar wind — the charged particles that are constantly streaming from our star. The mission, originally named Solar Probe Plus, will now be called the Parker Solar Probe. It’s the first time NASA has named one of its missions after a scientist who is still alive. Parker discovered solar wind in the 1950s and is about to celebrate his 90th birthday. The Parker Solar Probe is NASA’s plan to send a spacecraft closer to our Sun than ever before. The probe, which is being developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is supposed to launch on top of a Delta IV Heavy rocket in either July or August of 2018 and then spend seven years getting into closer and closer orbits around the Sun. To do this, the vehicle will do seven flybys of Venus, which will eventually bring the spacecraft within 3.7 million miles of the Sun. That’s about eight times closer than any other spacecraft has been before, according to NASA. NASA’s plan to send a spacecraft closer to our Sun than ever before From this distance, the Parker Solar Probe will analyze the Sun’s atmosphere, mainly to figure out the mechanics of the solar wind that Parker discovered. The Sun is constantly spewing out highly charged particles in the form of plasma — what is known as solar wind. And it’s all thanks to the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or the corona. Even though the corona extends millions of miles out into space, it is unbelievably hot — so hot that it heats up particles to such extreme temperatures that they break free of the Sun’s gravity and accelerate outward in all directions. This solar wind, which carries part of the Sun’s magnetic field, travels all the way to Earth and slams into our planet’s own magnetic field. Fortunately, our field acts like a protective barrier, so usually this process is pretty harmless for us. But every now and then, the Sun burps out an extra helping of charged particles known as a coronal mass ejection. When this mess of particles reaches Earth, it can disturb our magnetic field enough to cause geomagnetic storms. These storms aren’t too serious, but they can mess with our power grids and communications systems, as well as damage our satellites. We know the basics of how solar wind works, but the processes behind these particle bursts are still not totally understood. That’s what the Parker Solar Probe is going to help us figure out. The spacecraft is designed to “trace the flow of energy” that’s responsible for heating up the corona and accelerating the solar wind. And the more we know about how these processes work, the better we can get at predicting when they will happen. Normally, NASA waits to rename its missions after launch, but the space agency decided to break protocol this time since Parker’s work has been so instrumental for the spacecraft’s mission. His discovery of solar wind has essentially changed our understanding of stars and how they interact with the space around them. Apart from getting the mission named after him, a chip with pictures of Parker will also be included on the vehicles, as well as a copy of his original paper on solar wind. ||||| Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages. EXTENDED SUMMARY THE IMPACT OF SPACE WEATHER Modern technological society is characterized by a complex interweave of dependencies and interdependencies among its critical infrastructures. A complete picture of the socioeconomic impact of severe space weather must include both direct, industry-specific effects (such as power outages and spacecraft anomalies) and the collateral effects of space-weather-driven technology failures on dependent infrastructures and services. Industry-Specific Space Weather Impacts The electric power, spacecraft, and aviation industries are the main industries whose opera- tions can be adversely affected by severe space weather. The effects of space weather can also be experienced by the growing number of users of the Global Positioning System (GPS) such as the oil and gas industry, which relies on GPS positioning data to support offshore drilling operations. Electric Power Industry During intense geomagnetic storms, the auroral oval moves to lower, more densely populated latitudes, where rapidly varying ionospheric currents associated with the aurora can produce direct-current flows in the electrical power grid. Such geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) can overload the grid, causing severe voltage regulation problems and, potentially, widespread power outages. Moreover, GICs can cause intense internal heating in extra-high-voltage (EHV) transformers, putting them at risk of failure or even permanent damage. The March 1989 Quebec blackout referred to above remains the classic example of the impact of a severe space weather event—the most intense storm of the space age1—on the electric power industry. Storm-related GICs caused a voltage depression in the Hydro-Québec grid that Hydro-Québec’s automatic voltage compensation equipment could not mitigate, resulting in a precipitous voltage collapse over a wide area. Specifically, five transmission lines from the James Bay hydroelectric power generation stations were tripped, causing a generation loss of 9,450 MW. With a load of about 21,350 MW, the system was unable to withstand the loss and collapsed within a minute and a half, blacking out the province of Quebec for approximately 9 hours. The effects of the storm were felt in the United States as well, in the Northeast, the upper-Midwest, the mid-Atlantic region, and even as far south as southern California. Approximately 200 storm- related events were reported to have affected power systems in North America; of these events the most severe was the failure of a large step-up transformer at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey. Other events ranged from generators tripping out of service, to voltage swings at major substations, to other, lesser equipment failures. Following the 1989 collapse of the Hydro-Québec grid, electric power companies developed operational procedures to protect power grids against disruption and damage by severe space weather. Grid operators receive space weather forecasts from the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and from commercial and other space weather services. They also monitor voltages and ground currents in real time. During the geomagnetic storms of October and November 2003, for example, power grid opera- EXTENDED SUMMARY tors in New England responded to severe space weather alerts and to real-time data from GIC monitors by modifying power grid operations in order to maintain adequate power quality for customers and reserve capacity to counteract the effects of the storms. Despite severe GICs, the power transmission equipment was protected, and the grid maintained continuous operation. Spacecraft Operations In late October 2003, powerful solar flares and fast Earthward-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) originating in an unusually large sunspot region (see p. 2) triggered especially intense geo- magnetic and radiation storms during which more than half the spacecraft anomalies reported for that year occurred (Figure 1). The impact of space weather on spacecraft systems is not limited to dramatic CME-driven space weather events such as the 2003 “Halloween” storms and the March 1989 storm. Of major concern to the spacecraft industry are the periodic enhancements of the magnetospheric energetic electron environment associated with high-speed solar wind streams emanating from coronal holes during the declining phase of the solar cycle as well the injection of energetic plasma into the inner magnetosphere during magnetic substorms, which can occur during nonstorm times as well as storm times. The effect of space weather on spacecraft operations is illustrated by the outage in January 1994 of two Canadian telecommunications satellites in geostationary orbit.2 On January 20, 1994, Telesat’s Anik E1 was disabled for about 7 hours as a result of damage to its control electronics by the discharge of electric charge deposited in the interior of the spacecraft by penetrating high- energy electrons. The outage occurred during an energetic electron storm that had begun a week earlier as a high-speed solar wind stream swept past Earth. During the E1 outage, the Canadian press was unable to deliver news to 100 newspapers and 450 radio stations. In addition, tele- phone service to 40 communities was interrupted. Shortly after E1 was restored to service, its sister satellite, Anik E2, went off the air, resulting in the loss of television and data services to more than 1,600 remote communities. Backup systems were also damaged, making the $290 million satellite useless. Approximately 100,000 home satellite dish owners were required to re-point their dishes manually to E1 and other satellites. It took Telesat operators 6 months to restore Anik E2 to service. The E2 failure is estimated to have cost Telesat $50 million to $70 million (U.S. dollars) in recovery costs and lost business. The principal cause of space-weather-related spacecraft anomalies and failures is radiation in the form of solar energetic particles, galactic cosmic rays, and energetic particles trapped within Earth’s radiation belts or accelerated during magnetospheric substorms. In order to design spacecraft that can withstand the effects of continuous exposure to space radiation and operate 24/7 for 10 to 15 years, spacecraft designers need accurate long-term models of the radiation environment and information about the statistical distribution of extreme events (e.g., the space weather equivalent of the “100-year storm”). Designers are thus concerned primarily with space climatology rather than with specific space weather events. Spacecraft operators, however, require real-time knowledge of the space environment as well as short-term forecasts (“nowcasts”) in order to make operational decisions (e.g., with respect to thruster firing to reposition a spacecraft) that can reduce risks to spacecraft during disturbed conditions. (Such information is also used to support launch go/no-go decisions.) In the event of a spacecraft anomaly, knowledge of the EXTENDED SUMMARY 70 Average # of events/yr = 24.3 Average # of failures/yr = 2.5 60 Most events/failures are not attributed to space weather, but 46 of 70 in 2003 occurred during Halloween storms 50 Number of Reports 40 30 Ave Events 20 Events SC Failures 10 Ave Failures 0 1993* 1994* 1995* 1996* 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Figure 1. Telecommunication satellite anomalies and failures over a 14-year period. (Data for the years 1993-1996 2.9 Bodeau.eps are less extensive than for the period from 1997 on). The annual probability of an anomaly is around 10 percent, and the annual probability of a failure is about 1 percent. The big spike in 2003 reflects the anomalies that oc- curred during the October-November 2003 “Halloween” storms, which did not produce a significant rise in satellite failures. Around 250 commercial telecommunications satellites are operating in geosynchronous orbit. At a cost of roughly $300 million each, this fleet represents a $75 billion investment and generates an estimated annual revenue stream of more than $250 billion ($100 million per satellite per year). (Image courtesy of Michael Bodeau, Northrop Grumman.) environment where the anomaly occurred as well as climatological information helps operators determine whether or not the anomaly was caused by space weather. Airline Operations In the late 1990s, airline companies began to fly polar routes between North America and Asia in order to avoid strong wintertime headwinds and thus to reduce travel time (Figure 2). Decreased travel time makes it possible to carry less fuel, thus saving costs, and allows the air- lines to transport more passengers and cargo, increasing revenues. Because of the clear economic benefits, the use of polar routes has grown dramatically over the last decade. In 2007, thirteen carriers flew polar routes for a combined total of almost 7300 polar flights, an increase of nearly 2000 flights from the prior year. The transpolar routes take aircraft to latitudes where satellite communication cannot be used, and flight crews must rely instead on high-frequency (HF) radio to maintain communication EXTENDED SUMMARY WASHINGTON 82 N CHICAGO ABERI DEVID RAMEL NIKIN ORVIT BEIJING SHANGHAI HONG KONG Figure 2. Routes flown by transpolar flights between North America and Asia. Originally designated Polar 1, 2, 3, and 4, the routes were re-named after the waypoints ABERI, DEVID, RAMEL, and ORVIT. A fifth route, NIKIN 5.1 Stills.eps (shown in red), was added in 2007. At latitudes above 82° (yellow & typeflight crews cannot use satellite commu- bitmap w vector rules circle), nications and must rely instead on high-frequency (HF) radio to remain in contact with air traffic control. Changes in the polar ionosphere caused by solar energetic particle precipitation can degrade or totally black out HF radio communication. Transpolar flights must therefore be re-routed during intense solar radiation storms (solar energetic particle events). Timely space weather forecasts are important both for short-term (3-4 hour) operational planning and for longer-term (1 day) infrastructure planning (e.g., regarding air crew and aircraft assignments). (Image cour- tesy of Michael Stills, United Airlines.) with the airline company and air traffic control, as required by federal regulation. During certain severe space weather events (referred to by the SWPC as “solar radiation storms”), solar energetic particles—primarily protons accelerated by CME-driven shocks—spiral down geomagnetic field lines into the polar ionosphere, where they increase the density of the ionized gas, which in turn affects the ability of the radio waves to propagate and can result in a complete radio blackout. Such polar cap absorption (PCA) events can last for several days, during which time aircraft must be diverted to latitudes where satellite communication links can be used. During several days of EXTENDED SUMMARY disturbed space weather in January 2005, for example, 26 United Airlines flights were diverted to nonpolar or less-than-optimum polar routes to avoid the risk of HF radio blackouts during PCA events. The increased flight time and extra landings and take-offs required by such route changes increased fuel consumption and raised cost, while the delays disrupted connections to other flights. Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing The 24 Global Positioning System satellites operated by the United States Air Force provide accurate positioning and timing information to a variety of military, government, and civilian users. In addition, “augmentations” by both commercial services and government agencies improve the accuracy, integrity, and availability of GPS data. For example, as part of the transi- tion to space-based navigation as the primary means of navigation used by the National Airspace System, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has implemented the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), which provides precision horizontal and vertical navigation service over the continental United States, Alaska, and most of Canada and Mexico. WAAS effectively increases the capacity of the aviation system by allowing for reduced horizontal and vertical separation standards between planes without additional risk and by providing highly accurate vertical posi- tioning that enables precision approaches and landings. Current GPS-based navigation and positioning systems are vulnerable to space weather— specifically, to ionospheric density irregularities that affect the propagation of the signals from the GPS satellites to the receivers on the ground. Such irregularities are a routine occurrence near the equator; during magnetic storms, however, they occur in the midlatitude ionosphere as well. Degradation of the GPS signal by ionospheric irregularities produces ranging errors and can result in the temporary loss of GPS reception. Solar radio bursts have recently been found to be an additional source of interference with GPS reception in Earth’s sunlit hemisphere. Systems that use single-frequency receivers without augmentation are vulnerable even to minor ionospheric disturbances. Augmented systems are less susceptible to disruption by minor and moderate ionospheric disturbances but still can be adversely affected by scintillation, solar radio bursts, and major ionospheric disturbances. Thus, when WAAS detects ionospheric distur- bances, it disables the use of precision navigation in the affected areas so that safety is never compromised. When large areas of disturbance are detected, precision navigation is disabled for all areas until 8 hours after disturbances cease. During the October 2003 magnetic storms, for example, WAAS vertical navigation service was disabled for approximately 30 hours, although horizontal navigation guidance was continuously available (Figures 3 and 4). To mitigate the effects of space weather on the GPS, new signals and codes are being imple- mented that will allow GPS receivers to remove ionospheric ranging errors. This capability is expected to make augmentation systems unnecessary. In addition, the new signals and codes will be more resistant to fades caused by scintillation or solar radio bursts. The implementation of the new codes and signals, including the L5 signal dedicated to aviation, will take place incre- mentally over the next decade. EXTENDED SUMMARY Figure 3. Availability of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) vertical navigation service during a geomag- netically quiet period. Vertical navigation for precision approaches (LPV) is available when the vertical protection level (VPL) is less than or equal to 50 meters;Eldredge COLOR.eps 2.7 for WAAS-enabled approaches with a decision altitude down to 200 feet (LPV200) the VPL must be less than or equal to 35 meters. (LPV, localizer performance with vertical guidance; bitmap LNAV/VNAV, lateral and vertical navigation.) For LNAV/VNAV approaches the VPL must also be less than or equal to 50 meters. The horizonal protection level for LPV and LPV200 approaches—not shown—is 40 meters; for LNAV/ VNAV it is 556 meters. (Image courtesy of Leo Eldredge, Federal Aviation Administration.) In addition to its use in aviation, GPS positioning and timing information is widely used in a number of other applications, including precision farming, surveying and mapping, marine navigation, offshore drilling rig positioning, and transportation. Future Vulnerabilities: The Specter of Extreme Space Weather Past With increasing awareness and understanding of space weather and its effects on modern technological systems, vulnerable industries have adopted procedures and technologies designed to mitigate the impacts of space weather on their operations and customers. As noted above, airlines re-route flights scheduled for polar routes during intense solar energetic particle events in order to preserve reliable communications. Alerted to an impending geomagnetic storm and monitoring ground currents in real-time, power grid operators take defensive measures to protect the grid against GICs. Similarly, under adverse space weather conditions, launch personnel may 10 EXTENDED SUMMARY Figure 4. Progressive loss of vertical navigation service over North America (top row) as the ionospheric density disturbance (bottom row) worsens during the geomagnetic storm of October 29, 2003. Vertical navigation service over the continental U.S. was not fully restored until around 9:00 a.m. the following day. The color scale in the top panels shows the vertical protection level (VPL) measured in meters; the color scale in the bottom panels shows the vertical ionospheric density in meters. (Image adapted from material supplied by Leo Eldredge, Federal Avia- tion Adminstration.) delay a launch, and satellite operators may postpone certain operations. For the spacecraft indus- try, however, the primary approach to mitigating space weather effects remains designing satellites to operate under extreme environmental conditions to the maximum extent possible within cost and resource constraints. GPS modernization through the addition of the new navigation signals and new codes will help mitigate space weather effects, although to what degree is not known. The FAA will therefore maintain “legacy” non-GPS-based navigation systems as a backup. Our understanding of the vulnerabilities of modern technologies to severe space weather and the protective measures that have been developed are based largely on lessons learned during the past 20 or 30 years, during such episodes of severe space weather as the geomagnetic storms of March 1989 and October-November 2003. As severe as these recent events have been, the historical record reveals that space weather of even greater severity has occurred in the past (e.g., the “Carrington Event” of 1859 and the great magnetic storm of May 1921) and suggests that such extreme events, although rare, are likely to occur again some time in the future (see “The Great Magnetic Storms of August-September 1859,” pp. 14-15). EXTENDED SUMMARY 11 It is not known how a severe space weather event far more intense than any experienced during the space age might impact our modern technological systems. Of particular concern is the degree to which the electric power grid, which lies at the heart of our national infrastructure, might be affected by such an event. A study by the Metatech Corporation suggests that, despite the protective procedures developed since the Hydro-Québec collapse, an unusually powerful magnetic storm could result in widespread outages and possible long-term damage to the nation’s power grid. The Metatech study uses the great magnetic storm of May 1921 (“one of the great- est storms of the past ~130 years”3) to estimate the impact of an extreme space weather event on today’s electric power grid. Using the rate of change in Earth’s magnetic field measured in nanoteslas (nT) per minute as a proxy for GIC intensity, Metatech estimates that GICs during the 1921 storm would have been ten times more intense than those responsible for the March 1989 event. A storm of this magnitude today could result in large-scale blackouts affecting more than 130 million people (Figure 5). Moreover, according to the Metatech analysis, the intense GIC flows produced by the storm would place more than 300 large extra-high-voltage transformers at risk of failure or permanent damage, likely requiring a prolonged recovery period with long-term shortages of electric power to the affected areas (Figure 6). Collateral Impacts of Severe Space Weather An assessment of the societal and economic impacts of severe space weather must look beyond such direct space weather effects as spacecraft anomalies and power grid outages and consider how disruptions of vulnerable technological systems can affect the various sectors of society that are dependent on the functioning of these systems. Given the state of technology in the mid-19th century, the societal and economic impacts of the 1859 Carrington Event were limited to the disruptions of telegraph service “at the busy season when the telegraph is more than usually required,”4 the telegraph companies’ associated loss of income, and whatever the attendant effects on commerce might have been. Should an event of the magnitude of the Car- rington Event occur today, the story could be quite different because of the central role that technology—in particular, electric power—plays in our society and because of the dependencies and interdependencies that characterize our critical infrastructures, rendering them vulnerable to failures cascading from one system to another. Some of the indirect or collateral effects of a severe space weather event are vividly described in the following account of the 1989 Hydro-Québec blackout as it was experienced by the citi- zens of Montreal. The blackout closed schools and businesses, kept the Montreal Metro shut down during the morning rush hour, and paralyzed Dorval Airport, delaying flights. Without their navigation radar, no flight could land or take off until power had been restored. People ate their cold breakfast in the dark and left for work. They soon found themselves stuck in traffic that attempted to navigate darkened intersections without any streetlights or traffic control systems operating. . . . All these buildings [in downtown Montreal] were now pitch dark, stranding workers in offices, stairwells, and elevators. By some accounts, the blackout cost businesses tens of millions of dollars as it stalled production, idled workers, and spoiled products.5 12 EXTENDED SUMMARY Figure 5. Regions susceptible to power grid collapse during a 4800 nT/min geomagnetic field disturbance at 50° 7.1 and C.3a Kappenman.eps geomagnetic latitude, where the densest part of the U.S. power grid lies. The affected regions are outlined in black. Analysis of such an event indicates that widespread blackouts could occur, involving more 130 million people. A disturbance of such magnitude, although rare, is not unprecedented: analysis of the May 1921 storm shows that disturbance levels of ~5000 nT/min were reached during that storm. (Image courtesy of John Kappenman, Metatech Corporation.) � � � � � � � �� � � � � � 40%� � 97% � �� � 39% 30% � �� � �� � � � 7% 24% � � � � � 23% � � �� 72% � 34% � 47% �� �� � 32% �� �� � 12% � � 36%� � � 33% � � �� � � � �� � � �� �� � � � � � � � � � � � � 26% � � � �� � �� � � � � � � �� � � � � �� � � � �� 35% � � 9% � � � � � � � �� 55% � � � ��� � � 11% � � � ��� � � � � � 15% � ���� �� �� � 6% 24% � � � � �� � � � � 82% 19% 18% � � � � � � � � � � �� � � � �� � � � � � � � � � � � � 30% � �� � �� � � 19% � 55% 7% � 27% � � � � � � � � 47% � � � � � �� �� � � 17% � � � � � � � � � � � � � 17% � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �� � 37% � 6%� � 38% � � 1% 7% � � � 75% � � � � � 8% � 21% � 7.2 and C.3b Kappenman.eps Figure 6. A map showing the extra-high-voltage transformer capacity (estimated at ~365 large transformers), by state, at risk of damage during a 4800 nT/min disturbance. Regions with high percentages could experience long- duration power outages lasting several years. (Image courtesy of John Kappenman, Metatech Corporation.) EXTENDED SUMMARY 13 A major power blackout, whether the result of severe space weather or severe terrestrial weather, has the potential to affect virtually all sectors of society: communications, transporta- tion, banking and finance, commerce, manufacturing, energy, government, education, health care, public safety, emergency services, the food and water supply, and sanitation (Figure 7). The severity of the impacts depends on a number of variables, including the duration of the outage. The socioeconomic impacts of a long-term outage, requiring replacement of permanently dam- aged transformers, could be extensive and serious. According to an estimate by the Metatech Corporation, the total cost of a long-term, wide-area blackout caused by an extreme space weather event could be as much as $1 trillion to $2 trillion during the first year, with full recovery requir- ing 4 to 10 years depending on the extent of the damage. (For comparison, the total cost for the United States of the August 2003 blackout—a major non-space-weather-related blackout that affected 50 million people in the northeastern United States and Ontario—is estimated to have been between $4 billion and $10 billion.6) Figure 7. Schematic illustrating the interconnection of critical infrastructures and their dependencies and interde- 3.1 Caverly.eps pendencies. As the nation’s infrastructures and services increase in complexity and interdependence over time, a bitmap major outage of any one infrastructure will have an increasingly widespread impact. (Image courtesy of Department of Homeland Security.) 14 EXTENDED SUMMARY The Great Magnetic Storms of August-September 1859 (the Carrington Event)7 Shortly after midnight on September 2, 1859, campers in the Rocky Mountains were awakened by an “auroral light, so bright that one could easily read common print.” The campers’ account, published in the Rocky Mountain News, continues, “Some of the party insisted that it was daylight and began the preparation of breakfast.” Eighteen hundred miles to the east, Henry C. Perkins, a respected physician in Newburyport, Massachusetts, observed “a perfect dome of alternate red and green streamers” over New England. To the citizens of Havana, Cuba, the sky that night “appeared stained with blood and in a state of general confla- gration.” Dramatic auroral displays had been seen five nights before as well, on the night of August 28/29, when (again in the words of Dr. Perkins) “the whole celestial vault was glowing with streamers, crimson, yellow, and white, gathered into waving brilliant folds.” In New York City, thousands gathered on sidewalks and rooftops to watch “the heavens . . . arrayed in a drapery more gorgeous than they have been for years.” The aurora that New Yorkers witnessed that Sunday night, the New York Times assured its readers, “will be referred to hereafter among the events which occur but once or twice in a lifetime.”8 Low-latitude red auroras, such as those widely reported to have been observed during the Carrington Event, are a characteristic feature of major geomagnetic storms. The aurora shown here was photographed over Napa Valley, Cali- fornia, during the magnetic storm of November 5, 2001. (Image courtesy D. Obudzinski, © Dirk Obudzinski 2001, www. borealis2000.com.) EXTENDED SUMMARY 15 From August 28 through September 4, auroral displays of extraordinary brilliance were observed throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and were seen as far south as Hawaii, the Caribbean, and Central America in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Southern Hemisphere as far north as Santiago, Chile. Even after daybreak, when the aurora was no longer visible, its presence contin- ued to be felt through the effect of the auroral currents. Magnetic observatories recorded disturbances in Earth’s field so extreme that magnetometer traces were driven off scale, and telegraph networks around the world—the “Victorian Internet”9—experienced major disruptions and outages. “The electricity which attended this beautiful phenomenon took possession of the magnetic wires throughout the country,” the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reported, “and there were numerous side displays in the telegraph offices where fantastical and unreadable messages came through the instruments, and where the atmospheric fireworks assumed shape and substance in brilliant sparks.”10 In several locations, operators disconnected their systems from the batteries and sent messages using only the current induced by the aurora.11 The auroras were the visible manifestation of two powerful magnetic storms that occurred near the peak of the sunspot cycle. The two storms, which occurred in rapid succession, are referred as the “Carrington Event” in honor of Richard Carrington, a British amateur astronomer. On September 1, the day before the onset of the second storm, Carrington had observed an outburst of “two patches of intensely bright and white light”12 from a large and complex group of sunspots near the center of the Sun’s disk. Although the connection was not understood at the time, Carrington’s observation provided the first evidence that erup- tive activity on the Sun is the ultimate cause of geomagnetic storms. We know today that what Carrington observed was an extraordinarily intense white-light flare that was associated with a powerful, fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME). The CME and the shock wave that preceded it impacted Earth’s magnetosphere some 17.5 hours after Carrington’s observation, triggering an unusually severe geomagnetic storm. In addition to the low-latitude auroras and intense auroral currents responsible for the telegraph outages, all of the phenomena known today to be characteristic of a major magnetic storm occurred as well, although the mid-19th century lacked the means to detect and measure them, and its most sophisticated technologies were unaffected by them: an increased Earthward flow of magnetospheric plasma, creating or intensifying the ring current; the explosive release of stored magnetic energy in multiple magnetospheric substorms; an increase in the energy content of the radiation belts as well as the possible creation of temporary new belts; and changes in the ionospheric and thermospheric density at midlatitudes. Recent analysis of ice core data indicates that the geomagnetic storm was also ac- companied by a solar energetic particle event four times more intense than the most severe solar energetic particle event of the space age. By this as well as other measures, the Carrington Event ranks as one of the most severe space weather events—and by some measures the most severe—on record.13 Locations of reported auroral observations during the first ~1.5 hours of the September 2, 1859, magnetic 1.2 Green.eps storm (orange dots). (Image courtesy of J.L. Green, NASA.) bitmap 16 EXTENDED SUMMARY Box 1 Space Weather: Some Institutional Issues Space weather potentially affects large complex technical systems that are vital for economic and social stability and functioning. But managing the effects of severe space weather is not just a technical problem: it is also, importantly, a problem of institutions and of society. A key issue affecting our ability to prevent disruption of large technical systems is the difficulty of developing the appropriate institutions to deal with the problem on a long-term basis. Institutional devel- opment occurs most often under conditions of frequent accidents or errors. When nothing bad appears to happen from one year to another, sustaining preparedness and planning in out-years is extraordinarily challenging. Consequently, space weather is not on the radar screen of many people outside the small technical community and some affected businesses. Dependency creep, risk migration, and new technologies are potential problems for operators of large technical systems. As systems become more complex, and as they grow in size, understanding and over- sight become more difficult. Subsystems and dependencies may evolve that escape the close scrutiny of organization operators. Dependencies allow risk present in one part the other overall system to “migrate” to others, with potentially damaging results. GPS and electric power systems have clearly accelerated dependency creep, and consequent risk migration. New technologies, such as nanoscale components, may not be adequately understood in the context of 11-year solar cycles. One of the most fundamental concerns for operators of large technical systems is the efficiency-vul- nerability tradeoff—that is, the question of how much reserve capacity is available to deal with uncertainty and contingencies. In stable protected environments, systems operate with excess capacity: costs are passed on to users and the society. In competitive-market but benign environments, however, systems operate at close to their efficiency frontiers. Slack resources are consumed, buffers shrink, costs fall, and profits rise. But in competitive-market and “hostile” environments where unexpected developments perturb the system, finely tuned technical systems become brittle and have trouble operating outside relatively narrow parameters. Vulnerability can be the consequence of increased efficiency. “Security externalities” emerge due to interdependencies, lack of knowledge, lack of slack, lack of trust, and lack of ways to overcome coordination problems. Space storms of the magnitude of the Carrington Event are fortunately very rare, and the risk that such an event might cause a long-term catastrophic power grid collapse with major socio- economic disruptions, while real, is low. In the field of risk analysis, such an extreme event is termed a low-frequency/high-consequence (LF/HC) event. In terms of their potential broader, col- lateral impacts, LF/HC events present a unique set of problems for public (and private) institutions and governance, different from the problems raised by conventional, expected, and frequently experienced events. As a consequence, dealing with the collateral impacts of LF/HC events requires different types of budgeting and management capabilities and consequently challenges the basis for conventional policies and risk management strategies, which assume a universe of constant or reliable conditions. Moreover, because systems can quickly become dependent on new technologies in ways that are unknown and unexpected by both developers and users, vulnerabilities in one part of the broader system have a tendency to spread to other parts of the system. Consequently, it is difficult to understand, much less to predict, the consequences of future LF/HC events. Sustaining preparedness and planning for such events in future years is equally difficult (Box 1). ||||| Don't call it Solar Probe Plus anymore. NASA's upcoming sun-studying mission, which will come much closer to Earth's star than any spacecraft in history, has been renamed the Parker Solar Probe, agency officials announced today (May 31). The new moniker honors pioneering University of Chicago astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who predicted the existence of the solar wind — the stream of charged particles flowing constantly from the sun — back in 1958. [Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?] NASA has named about 20 space missions after people; the Hubble Space Telescope is perhaps the most famous example. But the 89-year-old Parker is the first researcher to be celebrated in this manner while still alive, agency officials said. "I'm certainly greatly honored to be associated with such a heroic scientific space mission," Parker said during a press conference at the University of Chicago today. An artist's illustration of NASA's Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, formerly known as Solar Probe Plus, studying the sun. The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2018. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory The ambitious $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe mission is scheduled to soar to solar orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 31, 2018. Over the course of the next seven years, the spacecraft will perform 24 close flybys of the sun, some of which will bring it within just 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface. That's well inside the orbit of Mercury, and seven times closer than any other probe has ever gotten to the sun, NASA officials said. The environment in this region is extreme, to say the least: During its closest encounters, the 10-foot-long (3 meters) Parker Solar Probe is expected to experience temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius) and solar radiation intensities 475 times greater than we're used to on Earth. Mission controllers will therefore retract the Parker Solar Probe's solar arrays as it approaches the sun and extend them as the spacecraft retreats, to keep panel power levels and temperatures from fluctuating too much. And the probe will be outfitted with a 7.5-foot-wide (2.3 m), 4.5-inch-thick (11.4 centimeters) heat shield made of advanced carbon-composite material, which will allow its four science instruments to operate at about room temperature, NASA officials said. The Parker Solar Probe will perform a number of tasks with this science gear, such as measure the sun's electric and magnetic fields, photograph solar structure and study the solar wind. If all goes according to plan, the Parker Solar Probe's observations will help mission scientists solve two long-standing puzzles: How is the solar wind accelerated, and why is the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, so much hotter than the solar surface (3 million degrees F, or 1.7 million degrees C, compared with 10,000 degrees F, or 5,500 degrees C)? This latter situation is akin to water flowing uphill, said Parker Solar Probe mission scientist Nicola Fox, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland: "It shouldn't happen." These two big questions can be answered only by getting up-close observations of the sun, Fox added. And the answers are not just of academic interest. "One recent study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that, without advance warning, a huge solar event could cause $2 trillion in damage in the U.S. alone, and the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. could be without power for a year," researchers at APL, which manages the mission for NASA, wrote in an online description. "In order to unlock the mysteries of the corona, but also to protect a society that is increasingly dependent on technology from the threats of space weather, we will send [the Parker Solar Probe] to touch the sun," they added. The Parker Solar Probe will carry a chip loaded with photographs of Eugene Parker and a copy of his seminal 1958 solar-wind paper, Fox said. NASA has also invited Parker to come up with an inscription for a plate that will be installed on the spacecraft, she added. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. ||||| NASA will fly a spacecraft directly into the Sun in a bid to unlock the secrets of solar storms that plays havoc with satellites and power supplies, the agency has announced. The unmanned probe will travel to within four million miles of the star’s surface, inside its Corona, or outer layer, and will have to withstand temperatures of almost 1,400 degrees. Set to launch next year, the Parker Solar Probe promises to “revolutionise” mankind’s understanding of the Sun and the origins of physics, scientists said last night, as well as helping protect equipment from solar radiation. ||||| (CNN) Wearing a nearly 5-inch coat of carbon-composite solar shields, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will explore the sun's atmosphere in a mission that begins in the summer of 2018. It's not a journey that any human can make, so NASA is sending a roughly 10-foot-high probe on the historic mission that will put it closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever reached before. The probe will have to withstand heat and radiation never before experienced by any spacecraft, but the specially designed mission will also address questions that couldn't be answered before. Understanding the sun in greater detail can also shed light on Earth and its place in the solar system, researchers said. This is NASA's first mission to the sun and its outermost atmosphere, called the corona. On Wednesday, the craft -- initially called the Solar Probe Plus -- was renamed the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker. "This is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "It's a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further understand every day. I'm very excited to be personally involved honoring a great man and his unprecedented legacy." Parker published research predicting the existence of solar wind in 1958, when he was a young professor at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi institute. At the time, astronomers believed that the space between planets was a vacuum. Parker's first paper was rejected, but it was saved by a colleague, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist who would be awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics. Less than two years after Parker's paper was published, his theory of solar wind was confirmed by satellite observations. His work revolutionized our understanding of the sun and interplanetary space. Parker is now the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Zurbuchen and Nicola Fox, the mission project scientist for Parker Solar Probe, also presented Parker with the first scale model of the probe and NASA's distinguished public service medal. "I'm greatly honored to be associated with such a heroic scientific space mission," Parker said. The Parker Solar Probe will carry a chip with photos of Parker and his revolutionary paper, as well as a plate carrying whatever inscription Parker wishes to provide -- his message to the sun. The probe will eventually orbit within 3.7 million miles of the sun's surface. The observations and data could provide insight about the physics of stars, change what we know about the mysterious corona, increase understanding of solar wind and help improve forecasting of major space weather events. Those events can impact satellites and astronauts as well as the Earth -- including the power grid and radiation exposure on airline flights, NASA said. The mission's objectives include "tracing the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the sun's corona and solar wind, determining the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind and explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles." "We've been inside the orbit of Mercury and done amazing things, but until you go and touch the sun, you can't answer these questions," Fox said. "Why has it taken us 60 years? The materials didn't exist to allow us to do it. We had to make a heat shield, and we love it. Something that can withstand the extreme hot and cold temperature shifts of its 24 orbits is revolutionary." Solar wind is the flow of charged gases from the sun that is present in most of the solar system. That wind screams past Earth at a million miles per hour, and disturbances of the solar wind cause disruptive space weather that impacts our planet. Space weather may not sound like something that concerns Earth, but surveys by the National Academy of Sciences have estimated that a solar event without warning could cause $2 trillion in damage in the United States and leave parts of the country without power for a year. In order to reach an orbit around the sun, the Parker Solar Probe will take seven flybys of Venus that will essentially give the probe a gravity assist, shrinking its orbit around the sun over the course of nearly seven years. The probe will eventually be closer to the sun than Mercury. It will be close enough to watch solar wind whip up from subsonic to supersonic. When closest to the sun, the probe's 4½-inch-thick carbon-composite solar shields will have to withstand temperatures close to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to its design, the inside of the spacecraft and its instruments will remain at a comfortable room temperature. The probe will reach a speed of 450,000 mph around the sun. On Earth, this speed would enable someone to get from Philadelphia to Washington in one second, the agency said. The mission will also pass through the origin of the solar particles with the highest energy. The mission is scheduled to end in June 2025. "The solar probe is going to a region of space that has never been explored before," Parker said. "It's very exciting that we'll finally get a look. One would like to have some more detailed measurements of what's going on in the solar wind. I'm sure that there will be some surprises. There always are." ||||| A future solar exploring spacecraft will change the understanding of the sun by aiming straight for our solar system's star. NASA revealed new details Wednesday about the first mission to visit the sun. During a news conference at the University of Chicago, NASA officials announced that the spacecraft would be called the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker, credited with discovering solar wind. On track for a summer 2018 launch, the spacecraft will rely on incredible feats of engineering that will allow the probe to touch the sun. A 4.5-inch thick carbon-composite solar shield will protect the probe from temperatures up to 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit while keeping the science instruments at room temperature. Join us at 11am ET to learn more about humanity's first mission to visit a star: https://t.co/ECEIXnuSer pic.twitter.com/7R4GZOm5w0 — NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 31, 2017 The spacecraft will be equipped with a thermal protection system and a solar array cooling system to protect it from the blazing sun. The arrays, or panels, will retract and extend as the spacecraft moves around the sun, keeping it at a safe temperature and also powering it with the sun. Parker Solar Probe's science objects include tracing the energy behind solar wind, understand the heating of the solar corona and to determine what accelerates the solar wind, according to the mission website. “It’s a spacecraft loaded with technological breakthroughs that will solve many of the largest mysteries about our star, including finding out why the sun’s corona is so much hotter than its surface,” said mission scientist Nicola Fox, with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The findings will help answer questions about how stars work and improve space weather forecasting. After launch, Parker Solar Probe will make a Venus flyby before reaching its first perihelion or the closest point to the sun. The spacecraft will then repeat that flyby of the perihelion routine 23 more times over its lifetime until 2025. On the final orbits Parker Solar Probe will fly within 9 solar radii, or nine times the radius of the sun, of the sun’s “surface,” seven times closer than any other spacecraft has been to the sun before. The 20-day launch window opens July 31, 2018. After testing the assembly, the spacecraft will arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to prep for launch. It's the first time a spacecraft will be named for a living person. “It’s a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further understand every day," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Parker, who serves as the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, also attended NASA’s announcement Wednesday. He said he is looking forward to seeing the science form the mission going to a region of space never before explored. “I’m sure that there will be some surprises,” Parker said. “There always are.” Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.

– NASA is going to the sun. More specifically, it's launching an unmanned probe next year that will travel closer to the star than any spacecraft has done previously. "It's a spacecraft loaded with technological breakthroughs that will solve many of the largest mysteries about our star," says Nicola Fox of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. In less scientific terms, per the Telegraph: "We will finally touch the sun." The nuts and bolts: The mission: The 10-foot probe will launch in July or August of 2018 and eventually get to within 3.7 million miles of the sun, about seven times closer than any previous spacecraft. Eventually, it will be whizzing around the sun at a speed of 450,000 miles per hour, reports CNN. The mission ends in 2025. Corona: The probe will actually fly into the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, called the corona, per a mission overview at NASA that touts "humanity's first visit to a star." The heat: The probe will rely on a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite solar shield to help it withstand temperatures up to 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit, reports Orlando's WKMG. Instruments will remain at room temperature. The name: The probe's name has been changed to the Parker Solar Probe to honor astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who's credited with discovering solar wind. Parker, who turns 90 in June, is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, and the Guardian recounts that the theory he put forward in 1958 about a stream of charged particles flowing from the sun was once thought to be "crazy." A first: This is the first time NASA has named a mission after a living scientist. "I'm certainly greatly honored," said the man himself, per Space.com. Two puzzles: Scientists hope to better understand two things in particular: "How is the solar wind accelerated, and why is the ... corona so much hotter than the solar surface?" (It's 3 million degrees Fahrenheit vs. 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.) Why it matters: Generally, solar storms are relatively harmless when they reach Earth, but these particle bursts occasionally wreak havoc on satellites and here on Earth, and they have the potential to be devastating. "The more we know about how these processes work, the better we can get at predicting when they will happen," writes Loren Grush at the Verge.

For wannabe thieves, nothing is more tantalizing than an empty street and a vulnerable ATM. Soon, though, they could be facing more than just failure. Taking design cues from mother nature herself, researchers are building ATMs that fend off thieves with a spray of hot, steaming foam. The inspiration for this dastardly defense mechanism comes from none other than the bombardier beetle, which sprays near-boiling acid at any foes who coming knocking. It keeps the ingredients for its deadly concoction (hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone) in two separate chambers in its abdomin. That way, the chemicals don't mix until they come shooting out, at which point the resulting reaction heats up and nearly vaporizes the noxious liquid. Here's our little friend in action. GIF Researchers at ETH Zurich University took cues from the deadly beetle and built two chemical filled honeycomb chambers. Except this time, hydrogen peroxide was paired with manganese dioxide. Since the two are only separate by a thin sheet of lacquer, any tampering will cause the chamber to break immediately, triggering a reaction that produces water vapor, oxygen, and heat. A much less expensive—not to mention non-face melting—variation on the bomardier's own tactics. Advertisement Advertisement Even though the thief might not walk away with a half-eaten face, this is a much more effective way of rendering ATM-theft useless. The oozing foam from the reaction will be laden with dye, marking the banknotes (rendering them useless) as well as the thieves themselves. What's more, researchers say that including DNA nanoparticles will allow them to trace the cash back to the source. Thieves may be able to run, but thankfully, it's getting much harder for them to hide. GIF Hopefully that barrier is thick enough to withstand the occasional (and inevitable( innocent, frustrated shake. And while this all still just being tested—no plans for immediate rollout yet—we could all use a few more acid-spitting objects in our lives. [Journal of Materials Chemistry via The Atlantic] Image: Getty Images/Sion Touhig ||||| The bombardier beetle inspired the researchers of ETH Zurich. (Photo: jayvee18 – Fotolia) Its head and pronotum are usually rusty red, and its abdomen blue or shiny green: the bombardier beetle is approximately one centimetre long and common to Central Europe. At first glance, it appears harmless, but it possesses what is surely the most aggressive chemical defence system in nature. When threatened, the bombardier beetle releases a caustic spray, accompanied by a popping sound. This spray can kill ants or scare off frogs. The beetle produces the explosive agent itself when needed. Two separately stored chemicals are mixed in a reaction chamber in the beetle's abdomen. An explosion is triggered with the help of catalytic enzymes. “When you see how elegantly nature solves problems, you realise how deadlocked the world of technology often is,” says Wendelin Jan Stark, a professor from the ETH Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences. He and his team therefore looked to the bombardier beetle for inspiration and developed a chemical defence mechanism designed to prevent vandalism – a self-defending surface composed of several sandwich-like layers of plastic. If the surface is damaged, hot foam is sprayed in the face of the attacker. This technology could be used to prevent vandalism or protect valuable goods. “This could be used anywhere you find things that shouldn't be touched,” said Stark. In agriculture and forestry, for example, it could be used to keep animals from gnawing on trees. Like a fuse The researchers use plastic films with a honeycomb structure for their self-defending surface. The hollow spaces are filled with one of two chemicals: hydrogen peroxide or manganese dioxide. The two separate films are then stuck on top of each another. A layer of clear lacquer separates the two films filled with the different chemicals. When subjected to an impact, the interlayer is destroyed, causing the hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide to mix. This triggers a violent reaction that produces water vapour, oxygen and heat. Whereas enzymes act as catalysts in the bombardier beetle, manganese dioxide has proven to be a less expensive alternative for performing this function in the lab. The researchers report that the product of the reaction in the film is more of a foam than a spray when compared to the beetle, as can be seen in slow motion video footage. Infrared images show that the temperature of the foam reaches 80 degrees. Just as in nature, very little mechanical energy is required in the laboratory to release a much greater amount of chemical energy – quite similar to a fuse or an electrically ignited combustion cycle in an engine. ||||| Megan, a reader who voted for Hillary Clinton, shares a powerful confession: I’ve been thinking about the election a lot for the past two days, and the idea that I keep coming back to is that in some ways this is my fault. It’s my fault because I voted for Clinton when she ran against Obama in the 2008 primary, but I didn’t tell anyone because she was the unpopular choice. I wasn’t embarrassed about my decision, but being a real liberal seemed to mean voting for Obama. So I voted quietly in the primary, felt my disappointment quietly when she lost, and seamlessly joined the Obama supporters in the general election. It’s my fault because I voted for Clinton when she ran against Sanders in the 2016 primary, and I didn’t tell anyone because again she was the unpopular choice. She was even more qualified this time around and I had a greater appreciation for the depth of her public service, but being a real liberal seemed to mean supporting Sanders. So I voted quietly in the primary, and rarely mentioned my preference for her. It’s my fault because during the long months of the primary and the general election I didn’t tell anyone how strongly I felt about Clinton. I didn’t put a sticker on my car, I didn’t put a sign in my yard, and I didn’t wear a T-shirt. My loudest statement of support was the tiny pin I purchased after the convention, at a time that it felt safe to be a Clinton supporter. It’s my fault because when I ran into people who were voting for Trump—at the grocery store, in the gym, in my neighborhood—I changed the subject because I didn’t want to get into an argument. I told myself that it wasn’t worth it and that they wouldn’t change their minds. It’s my fault because though I knew my mother was genuinely torn between the two candidates I didn’t engage with her. I didn’t want to know that she actually thought there was a real choice to be made. It’s my fault because I never once asked my sister what she was thinking. She’d supported the Tea Party in the past, and I assumed she was leaning towards Trump. I didn’t want to know. It’s my fault because my father and I had a massive fight about Clinton over Easter, and in an effort to preserve our relationship I stopped talking to him about politics. If we didn’t talk about it, then I didn’t have to deal with the possibility that he was sexist and racist in a way I’d never considered. It’s my fault because I capitulated to the expectation that I not express my emotions publicly. I’m upset right now, and it isn’t lost on me that expressing this upset is potentially disqualifying. It isn’t lost on me that saying I’m angry will make me vulnerable to the accusation I’m too emotional. I’ve spent a lifetime calming down. It’s something that I try to do when interacting with men professionally, and it’s something that I try to do when I interact with men personally. And every time I do this in my private life, I normalize it and make it harder for women to succeed in public life. And it’s also my fault because when I did support her, I did so in a provisional and caveated way. I said things like, “I realize she’s not a perfect candidate” and “I’m not arguing that she isn’t flawed.” And every time I said something like this I affirmed that there was a need to apologize, I singled her out as somehow different from other candidates (in both parties) who were worthy of unequivocal support, and I created the space for the impression that she was critically flawed. I did this nearly every time I spoke about her, and I saw this language in dozens of articles and editorials and statements of support (including The Atlantic’s editorial, though there doesn’t appear to be similarly caveated language in the Lincoln or Johnson endorsements). In fact, I don’t remember seeing this type of language in the editorials written for any of the similarly flawed men who have run for president over the past twenty years. And this, I think, is the thing I regret the most.

– The ATM is getting a lesson in self-defense—from a bug. Researchers in Switzerland were inspired by the bombardier beetle, which shoots out a gas that can burn skin, the Atlantic reports. The beetle's mechanism works by mixing two chemicals normally kept separate in its abdomen. When under attack, the beetle combines the hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone to spray its attack gas. The researchers copied this system by putting hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide side-by-side, separated by only a lacquer. Break that lacquer, and you get the reaction. ATM makers could employ the principle in their machines by rigging them to ooze foam if someone begins tampering, say the researchers. Instead of burning acid, the ATMs could cover bills with dye and DNA, making the cash hard to use and easy to track. "Thieves may be able to run," notes Gizmodo, but "it's getting much harder for them to hide." In fact, the mechanism "could be used anywhere you find things that shouldn't be touched," a researcher tells ETH Zurich—whether to fight vandalism or keep animals off crops. (Click to read about another odd method of self-defense in the animal kingdom.)

(CNN) For the first time, a resident of "Sesame Street" is experiencing homelessness -- and the hope is that her story can help sweep the clouds away for the growing number of young children in the United States without homes to call their own. Lily, a 7-year-old bright pink Muppet, was introduced to the world in 2011. She was originally described as being food-insecure because her family lacked consistent access to food. Now, "Lily is the first Muppet we've created whose storyline includes that she is experiencing homelessness," said Sherrie Westin, president of global impact and philanthropy for Sesame Workshop , formerly Children's Television Workshop, which is the nonprofit behind "Sesame Street." In new online videos, stories and resources, Sesame Workshop has expanded Lily's storyline to include that her family has lost their home and now must stay with friends. This homelessness initiative launched Wednesday as part of Sesame Workshop's Sesame Street in Communities program. "When Lily was first launched, she came out as part of the food insecurity initiative. So she's not brand new, but this seemed like a really perfect extension of her story, so that we could use her to help children identify with," Westin said. "With any of our initiatives, our hope is that we're not only reaching the children who can identify with that Muppet but that we're also helping others to have greater empathy and understanding of the issue." Although her journey with homelessness will not appear in televised episodes of "Sesame Street" at this point, she will be in separate videos and materials in the initiative. "The goal is really to give service providers, parents, teachers tools in order to address homelessness with children, in order to talk about it and raise awareness of the issue from a child's perspective and also to help children experiencing homelessness feel less alone," Westin said. "I think we tend to think of homelessness as an adult issue and don't always look at it through the lens of a child, and we realize that Sesame has a unique ability to do that, to look at tough issues with the lens of a child," she said. 'Humanizing the experience of homelessness' A report released last year by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development revealed that homelessness is increasing across the country, with 553,742 people nationwide homeless on a single night in 2017, an increase of 0.7% from the previous year. JUST WATCHED What in the World: A solution to homelessness Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH What in the World: A solution to homelessness 03:27 About 1 in 20 children younger than 6 experienced homelessness in 2014 to 2015, according to a report released last year by the US Administration for Children and Families During the 2013-14 school year, more than 1.3 million homeless children and youth were enrolled in public schools, according to the US Department of Education However, in general, the exact number of homeless youth in America remains a mystery. "Numbers are always trouble," said Megan Hustings, interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless The number of young people who have experienced homelessness varies depending on age, time frame and how homelessness is defined, but between 500,000 and 2.8 million youth are thought to be homeless within the United States each year, according to the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Julia, a new autistic muppet character, will join the cast of "Sesame Street" in April. The character was first introduced during the new Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children Hide Caption 1 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Sesame Street's original star Big Bird has led the show since its first episode in 1969. The 8-foot Muppet often doesn't understand what's going on but sets the tone for the show by never hesitating to find out. Hide Caption 2 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street "Sesame Street's" Muppet characters were originally intended to be support for the human cast, but test audiences responded so warmly to Bert and Ernie's sketches that the producers put Muppets in starring roles. The comic duo have been two of the show's most popular characters ever since. Hide Caption 3 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Sonia Manzano played shop owner Maria for nearly 45 years before retiring in July. She also worked as a writer for the show. Hide Caption 4 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Alan Muraoka is the owner of Hooper's Store. He also works as a performer on Broadway. Hide Caption 5 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Alison Bartlett O'Reilly took the role of Gina, an assistant at Hooper's Store and babysitter for Elmo and Zoe. She joined the ensemble in 1987. Hide Caption 6 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Bob McGrath was one of the first four human cast members on Sesame Street. He is known for his music and singalongs, although Bob can also tell a good story or two. Hide Caption 7 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Christopher Knowings helps out at Hooper's Store. He was cast in 2006. Hide Caption 8 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Emilio Delgado, who plays Luis, was the first human cast member. When something needs to be fixed, he is the man to call. Hide Caption 9 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Ismael Cruz Cordova is a new addition as Armando. He's best known for his role in the CBS drama "The Good Wife." Hide Caption 10 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Loretta Long has played Susan since the show's beginning. When Big Bird needed comforting, Susan was there to help, and she is known for her maternal instincts. Hide Caption 11 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Nitya Vidyasagar joined "Sesame Street" as Leela. The recent addition has a background in theater performance. Hide Caption 12 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Roscoe Orman has played Gordon, husband to Susan, since Sesame Street began. Orman's real-life son Miles joined the cast in season 17 as Gordon's son, solidifying Orman's role as a kind and caring father. Hide Caption 13 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street The Muppet Show made him a star, but Kermit the Frog had begun winning younger fans on "Sesame Street," explaining to kids that "It's Not Easy Bein' Green" for the first time in 1970. Hide Caption 14 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Fifteen years passed between the premiere of "Sesame Street" and Elmo getting his big break in 1984. But since then, the furry red monster with the high-pitched voice has gone on to become arguably the show's most popular Muppet. Hide Caption 15 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street "Om nom nom nom" -- Cookie Monster's voracious appetite for his favorite chocolate chip treats have endeared him to viewers since "Sesame Street's" first season. He's even managed to fit in teaching some important lessons: Thanks to him, generations of kids have grown up knowing that "C" is for cookie. Hide Caption 16 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street A bad-tempered green monster who loves "anything dirty or dingy or dusty" and lives in a trash can: perhaps not an obvious choice for a children's TV hero. Yet Oscar the Grouch, whose ambition is to be as miserable as possible, has failed to ruin viewers moods, bringing humor and fun to the Street. Hide Caption 17 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Zoe broke into "Sesame Street's" largely male Muppet cast in 1994, becoming the show's stand-out female character. As she appears to be about the same age as Elmo, the two often spend time together. They are understood to be best friends. Hide Caption 18 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Nothing can interrupt the Count when he's counting. Whether counting from one to 10 or up to a billion (as he did in 2013 to celebrate "Sesame Street's" 1 billion YouTube views), the Count is happiest with numbers. He can now count over 40 years of appearances on "Sesame Street" since his debut in 1972. Hide Caption 19 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street Is Grover the coolest Muppet on "Sesame Street"? He certainly thinks he is and describes himself as a "cute, furry little monster." Grover is one of the favorite creations of "Sesame Street" puppeteer Frank Oz, who said his generous personality and distinctive way of pronouncing each word "came about organically" when he brought the Muppet to the Street in 1970. Hide Caption 20 of 21 Photos: The stars of Sesame Street For many years, the adults on "Sesame Street" didn't believe that Mr. Snuffleupagus was real. The gigantic Muppet had an uncanny way of disappearing just before adult characters arrived, and many assumed he was Big Bird's imaginary friend. The very real Muppet is one of the Street's most cultured residents, revealing a love of ballet, opera and art since his first appearance in 1971. Hide Caption 21 of 21 Lily's story as a Muppet serves as an example of how homelessness has become a growing issue in America, said Hustings, who has no relationship with Sesame Workshop. "It's like, wow, we've gotten to this point where this era of homelessness has become so common and so entrenched that it begs a character on 'Sesame Street' to help children understand what they're seeing in their communities," Hustings said. "But we know that 'Sesame Street' is coming from a place of education and really wants to build awareness and understanding of all of our community members, despite differences, which is really amazing," she said. Highlighting Lily's experiences with homelessness can positively impact the way children today think about homelessness and people in poverty, said Rashmita Mistry, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles , who is not involved in Sesame Workshop. "Young children quickly develop ideas about the homeless based on what they see, observe and hear. And, unfortunately, their perceptions lead them to form negative impressions about the homeless," Mistry said. "Humanizing the experience of homelessness is especially important because families with young children and school-age children make up a sizable proportion of the homeless population, especially so in urban communities where there's high cost of housing, a tight housing market and limited rent control along with low and non-sustainable wages," she said. "Homelessness is also a much more varied experience than living on the streets and -- as defined by the Department of Education -- includes living in a car, a motel, a shelter and doubling up with friends. Yet this is a group we often do not talk about." Other Muppets making a difference Since "Sesame Street" launched in 1969 , it has established a reputation for inclusion with its characters. JUST WATCHED Meet 'Sesame Street's' muppet with autism Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Meet 'Sesame Street's' muppet with autism 00:52 Just last year, the "Sesame Street" show introduced a resident named Julia, who has autism Julia was already popular in digital form when Sesame Workshop launched its nationwide initiative " Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children " in 2015, which offers resources for families on how to talk about autism and support the autism community. In 2002, "Sesame Street" in South Africa, called " Takalani Sesame ," introduced Kami , the world's first Muppet with HIV. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team. Kami, the 5-year-old yellow Muppet, is often shown laughing, playing and linking arms with her friends. Her storyline provides basic knowledge of HIV and destigmatization and teaches children how to cope with loss. At the time she was introduced, "one in seven children in South Africa was affected by HIV and AIDS. They were either infected themselves or had lost a parent," Westin said. "We created the first preschool curriculum, and in that, we created a character so that Kami would help destigmatize HIV and AIDS, to help break down that culture of silence." ||||| Sesame Workshop Launches Nationwide Initiative to Address the Impact of Homelessness Among America’s Youngest Children Sesame Workshop Launches Nationwide Initiative to Address the Impact of Homelessness Among America’s Youngest Children Sesame Street’s Muppet Lily to offer help, hope, and healing to families struggling to find a permanent place to live; new initiative featured on www.sesamestreeincommunities.org (New York, NY) December 12, 2018—Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind Sesame Street, announced today a major new initiative to offer help and hope to the growing number of young children across the United States who are experiencing homelessness. The initiative engages children and families with the resilient and relatable Lily, a seven-year-old Muppet whose family is staying with friends on Sesame Street after losing their home. Lily is featured in new videos, storybooks, and interactive activities for families with children ages 2 to 6, in addition to materials for the professionals who serve them, such as teachers, social workers, and healthcare providers. Sesame launched the initiative, part of its Sesame Street in Communities program, to help mitigate the impact of the trauma and stigma that result from homelessness. The rate of young children who do not have a permanent place to live has been steadily growing. More than 2.5 million children are experiencing homelessness nationwide—and nearly half of those children, 1.2 million, are under the age of six. According to the Office of Head Start, there has been a 100 percent increase in enrollment of children experiencing homelessness in Head Start and Early Head Start programs over the past decade, with 2016-17 marking a record number. Through its new initiative, Sesame offers a variety of free, bilingual materials specifically developed to help children who are experiencing homelessness, which often involves an ongoing cycle of physical, emotional, and psychological distress. The resources were created in partnership with national experts on family homelessness and tested with both providers and parents. Lily was originally introduced in 2011, when her family was struggling with hunger. Unfortunately, Lily’s path is common for many children experiencing homelessness. “We know children experiencing homelessness are often caught up in a devastating cycle of trauma—the lack of affordable housing, poverty, domestic violence, or other trauma that caused them to lose their home, the trauma of actually losing their home, and the daily trauma of the uncertainty and insecurity of being homeless,” said Sherrie Westin, President of Global Impact and Philanthropy at Sesame Workshop. “We want to help disrupt that cycle by comforting children, empowering them, and giving them hope for the future. We want them to know that they are not alone and home is more than a house or an apartment—home is wherever the love lives.” By featuring Lily and her friends on Sesame Street, the resources are designed to show the experience from a child’s perspective, with Lily and her friends encouraging optimism, promoting understanding, and modeling simple coping strategies for children. The new resources include: “ Connect the Dots ” : Lily and Sofia play a game that helps Lily feel surrounded by love. : Lily and Sofia play a game that helps Lily feel surrounded by love. “ Rainbow Kind of Day ”: Lily, Elmo, and Sofia learn the benefits of talking about big feelings and asking for help. ”: Lily, Elmo, and Sofia learn the benefits of talking about big feelings and asking for help. “ Ribbons of Hope ”: After her family finds permanent housing, Lily demonstrates “survivor’s pride” and shares a coping strategy—and a special bracelet—with Elmo. ”: After her family finds permanent housing, Lily demonstrates “survivor’s pride” and shares a coping strategy—and a special bracelet—with Elmo. “Home Is…”: Elmo and Rosita meet some new friends who don’t have homes right now and learn about what the concept of “home” means to them. Activities and suggestions to help parents and providers give children a sense of continuity, routine, and predictability. The materials include interactive rhyming poems, coloring pages, storybooks, and helpful answers to children’s difficult questions. There are also resources that help promote engagement between caregivers and children, as well as ideas for comforting routines that parents can do with children anywhere. New professional development videos, articles, and strategies for providers (social workers, shelter staff, teachers, healthcare workers, and more) who play a crucial role in supporting children experiencing homelessness. The new resources aim to raise awareness and offer strategies for providers who can create a circle of care around children. Additionally, on December 13 at 4:00pm ET, Sesame Street in Communities will host an interactive conversation with a panel of expert providers to raise nationwide awareness about homelessness, its effects on children, and ways providers can help. Anyone can join the conversation on Facebook Live and YouTube. “Sesame Street’s new initiative on homelessness is nothing short of transformative for those of us working to create a sense of stability and hope for families experiencing homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, member of Sesame Workshop’s advisory committee and Executive Director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national non-profit organization working to overcome homelessness through education. “At SchoolHouse Connection, we are eager to use the new materials to increase the identification of children who are homeless in early childhood and educational settings, to increase support for children in homeless services and housing programs, and to raise the visibility of family homelessness among policymakers at every level.” Sesame Street in Communities is a program to help community providers, parents, and caregivers give children a strong and healthy start. Sesame Street in Communities partners with community providers to reach parents and caregivers with free, easy-to-use resources on topics ranging from healthy eating and school readiness to tougher issues like trauma and grief. The materials, which include videos, storybooks, digital interactives, games, and professional development resources, are available for free—in English and Spanish—at www.sesamestreetincommunities.org. Sesame Workshop is implementing Sesame Street in Communities in Kansas City, MO and KS; Los Angeles, CA; Guilford County; NC; Transylvania County, NC; Memphis, TN; Leland and Indianola, MS, and, in 2019, Camden, NJ. Sesame Street in Communities aims to reach 4.5 million children under age 6 and their families; connect with more than 11,000 direct service providers; develop 200 national and local partnerships; and expand to at least 35 additional communities across the country. This initiative is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Joan Ganz Cooney Fund for Vulnerable Children. ABOUT SESAME WORKSHOP Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, the pioneering television show that has been reaching and teaching children since 1969. Today, Sesame Workshop is an innovative force for change, with a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. We’re active in more than 150 countries, serving vulnerable children through a wide range of media, formal education, and philanthropically-funded social impact programs, each grounded in rigorous research and tailored to the needs and cultures of the communities we serve. For more information, please visit www.sesameworkshop.org. ABOUT THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION For more than 45 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are working alongside others to build a national Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook. ABOUT THE JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND FOR VULNERABLE CHILDREN The Joan Ganz Cooney Fund for Vulnerable Children was established in 2018 to support content development, training for service providers, research, and implementation for Sesame Street in Communities. Made possible by a generous gift from Joan Ganz Cooney’s late husband Peter G. Peterson, the fund honors Ms. Cooney’s pioneering work as Sesame Street’s co-founder by furthering Sesame Workshop’s commitment to helping children overcome challenges big and small. Press Contacts: Hallie Ruvin [email protected] Abby Manishor [email protected] 917-539-3308 ||||| 'Now we don't have our own place to live': 'Sesame Street' introduces first homeless character CLOSE Lily, the first homeless character on "Sesame Street," will teach kids a lesson of hope and love. USA TODAY Lily, the hot pink puppet with red hair, is the first character to be homeless on "Sesame Street." She was first introduced to the series in 2011 where she explained that her family was experiencing food insecurity – they didn't have enough to eat. In new online clips, the seven-year-old character explains that she is staying with friends on "Sesame Street" because her family has lost their home. "Now we don't have our own place to live, and sometimes I wonder if we'll ever have our own home," Lily expressed to Elmo. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind "Sesame Street," is reintroducing Lily as the first homeless character on the show in order to provide hope for those children that are currently without a home of their own. The story line was created as a new initiative, and part of the Sesame Street in Communities program, to alleviate the stigma around homelessness. In the videos, Lily is also shown to be supported by Elmo who tells her "we got this" and that her friends will always be there for her. Sesame Street in Communities has also provided resources for parents and caregivers with free, bilingual resources and activities and suggestions that help mitigate the effects of homelessness in children. There are videos that show Lily being loved by her friends Elmo and Sofia and others that show other kids who don't have homes sharing what the idea of "home" means to them. One in 20 children younger than 6 years old in the United States experienced homelessness, according to a 2017 release of a 2014-15 report by the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health & Human Services. “We know children experiencing homelessness are often caught up in a devastating cycle of trauma – the lack of affordable housing, poverty, domestic violence, or other trauma that caused them to lose their home, the trauma of actually losing their home, and the daily trauma of the uncertainty and insecurity of being homeless,” said Sherrie Westin, President of Global Impact and Philanthropy at Sesame Workshop in a press release. “We want to help disrupt that cycle by comforting children, empowering them, and giving them hope for the future. We want them to know that they are not alone and home is more than a house or an apartment – home is wherever the love lives.” Like All the Moms? Connect with us on Facebook. Related: Mom stopped in tracks on graduation day Related: Why you should start following The Real Qai Qai, Serena Williams' daughter's doll, on Instagram Related: 'Sesame Street': Bert and Ernie aren't gay... or straight Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2018/12/12/sesame-street-addresses-homelessness-lily/2287252002/

– For the first time in its nearly 50-year history, Sesame Street will have a homeless Muppet character. Lily, a character first introduced as a hungry, impoverished little girl in 2011, is now involved in a storyline involving her family becoming homeless and having to stay with friends, CNN reports. For now, she appears in online clips rather than televised episodes of the show. The show launched the storyline as homelessness is increasing across the US; one report released last year estimates that about one in 20 children under the age of 6 experienced homelessness in 2014-15. "When Lily was first launched, she came out as part of the food insecurity initiative. So she's not brand-new, but this seemed like a really perfect extension of her story, so that we could use her to help children identify with," says a Sesame Workshop exec, who adds that another goal is to educate teachers, caregivers, and other children about issues affecting kids, helping them to empathize and to end the stigma around certain issues. "Now we don't have our own place to live, and sometimes I wonder if we'll ever have our own home," Lily says in one clip to Elmo, who reassures her that her friends will always be there for her, per USA Today. A press release about Lily links to resources parents and others can use with their kids. (Last year, Sesame Street introduced the first Muppet with autism.)

A British chef who died fighting Isil in northern Syria shot himself to avoid being captured by the jihadists, it emerged yesterday. Ryan Lock, 20, from Chichester, West Sussex, died near the city of Raqqa - the capital of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil)’s self-declared caliphate on December 21. Mr Lock, who had no previous military experience, joined the Kurdish People’s Defence Units (YPG) militia as a volunteer after telling his family he was going on holiday to Turkey in August. Macer Gifford, another British fighter with the YPG, said Mr Lock, alongside four comrades, found themselves surrounded by Isil fighters during a fierce firefight in the village of Jaeber. ||||| Image caption Ryan Lock's family described him as a "caring and loving boy" A Briton fighting in Syria "turned the gun on himself" to avoid being taken prisoner by so-called Islamic State, Kurdish sources have told the BBC. Ryan Lock, 20, from Chichester in West Sussex, died on 21 December during a battle for the IS group's stronghold of Raqqa. He was fighting as a volunteer with the Kurdish armed fighting forces, the YPG. The YPG told the BBC that "trace of a gunshot wound was found under the chin", suggesting suicide. Sources said five fighters came under siege by IS - also known as ISIS - in the village of Ja'bar, and they showed "considerable resistance" before they were killed. After the bodies were retrieved examinations showed that "it seems that the British fighter committed suicide in order not to fall captive with Isis". A report said the gunshot wound indicated "that the gun made contact with the bottom of the chin". "This suggests that the fighter committed suicide," it concluded. 'Outstanding bravery' Kurdish rights activist Mark Campbell, from KurdishQuestion.com, told BBC South: "Ryan Lock may very well have turned his own gun upon himself rather than be taken prisoner by ISIS. "There are no words to describe the bravery required to take such an action. "ISIS were robbed of a predictable macabre propaganda opportunity by Ryan's action. "I personally believe he deserves the very highest of military honours for such outstanding bravery in the face of such a barbaric enemy." Mr Lock, a chef, had travelled to Syria in August having told friends and family he was going on holiday to Turkey. Earlier on Tuesday his body was transported into Iraq in preparation to be flown back to the UK. In a statement to the BBC, his father Jon Plater, from Chichester, said: "Since we heard the devastating news of Ryan, it's been pretty tough, especially the difficulties surrounding the repatriation. "We are grateful to the YPG for bringing him home." Mr Lock's body had been in the hands of IS militants. The volunteer, who attended school in Havant, Hampshire, became the third British man to die fighting alongside the Kurds against so-called Islamic State. The Foreign Office continues to advise against all travel to Syria.

– A 20-year-old British man who left his job as a chef to fight ISIS ended up killing himself to avoid capture, family members and Kurdish fighters say. Kurdish sources tell the BBC that Ryan Lock and four other fighters died after they were besieged by ISIS militants during an offensive near Raqqa, Syria. The sources say the fighters put up "considerable resistance." After the bodies were retrieved, they saw evidence that Lock had shot himself under the chin. Lock joined the Kurdish militia in August last year after telling his family he was going on vacation to Turkey, the Telegraph reports. Lock's body was handed to British authorities this week after a ceremony attended by dozens of Kurdish fighters. Kurdish commanders described him as a "martyr" who died putting up a brave fight. "ISIS [was] robbed of a predictable macabre propaganda opportunity by Ryan's action," Kurdish rights activist Mark Campbell tells the BBC. "I personally believe he deserves the very highest of military honors for such outstanding bravery in the face of such a barbaric enemy." (In January, ISIS destroyed Roman monuments in a recaptured ancient city.)

David Tepper's gain is New Jersey's loss. The hedge fund billionaire, founder of Appaloosa Management, officially changed his tax residency and corporate headquarters from New Jersey to Florida. People close to Tepper say he made the move to be closer to his mother and sister, who live in Florida. Yet it could also save him hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes that would have gone to New Jersey. According to Institutional Investor's Alpha, Tepper has earned more than $6 billion over the past three years. Given that the top tax rate in New Jersey is 8.97 percent, his tax bill for the state over that time frame could have been more than $500 million. Of course, his real bill was likely much lower, given charitable deductions and other accounting treatments. Yet he still likely paid in the nine figures to the state of New Jersey over those years. ||||| Billionaire David Tepper is moving from New Jersey to Florida, and much to New Jersey's dismay, he is taking his tax burden with him. Can we eat our way out of the lionfish invasion? (+video) Peggy Whitson logs more space hours than any other US astronaut: A history of women and NASA New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (c.) delivers his budget at the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J., Feb. 16. Next year's budget may be impacted significantly by the departure of one of the state's richest citizens. Billionaire David Tepper is moving from New Jersey to Florida this year — and so is his tax contribution to New Jersey, which is so large the move threatens his former home's state budget. The outsize dent one change of address can make sheds light not only on how much money America's wealthiest citizens can move, but also on how much the "1 percent" contributes to a functioning government. Mr. Tepper, a highly successful hedge-fund manager, registered to vote in Florida last October, according to Bloomberg. He listed a condominium in Florida as his new residential address and moved his business, Appaloosa Management, to the Sunshine State. And the New Jersey legislature took notice. "We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk," testified Frank Haines, a budget officer with New Jersey's Office of Legislative Services, before a Senate committee Tuesday. New Jersey's struggling state budget projections rely on income taxes for 40 percent of revenue, Bloomberg reported. To support this, the state levies the third-highest tax burden in the country, with a marginal income tax rate of almost 9 percent for top earners and an array of estate and inheritance taxes. The Sunshine State, on the other hand, has one of the country's lowest tax burdens: it taxes neither personal income nor investments, and its corporate tax is 5.5 percent, all of which tempted Tepper to move south. New Jersey's current predicament highlights both the stark income difference between America's rich and poor and the subtle side effects of trying to solve it through taxation. As The Christian Science Monitor's Olivia Lowenberg wrote in March: While the gulf between the middle- and lower-class wages has held stable since 2000, the gap between the very wealthy and everyone else is expanding. While inflation-adjusted wages did grow in 2015, not every segment of the population felt the benefits. Wages for men in the top 90th and 95th percentiles of earners increased by 6.2 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively, even as wages stagnated or even dropped off for men in the bottom 60 percent of earners. Wages increased about 2.6 percent for median earners. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has been working with — and sometimes against — the state's legislature on ideas to solve both the economic stagnation of America's middle class and the state budget. During his run for president, he blamed the federal government for increasing income inequality by stagnating growth. "The Fed's easy money policies and the president's anti-growth policies have made the rich even richer and made our middle class work longer and harder for less pay and less promise for the future," Governor Christie told New Hampshire voters. Tepper's flight to the Sunshine State — and the New Jersey legislature's resulting woes — highlight both the economic puzzle and the perils of resolving it through increasing taxes. "The tax burden doesn’t stick out — what really sticks out is the inadequacy of their pre-tax income. That's what's hurting middle-class families," Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould told the Monitor last month. "I don’t think, as a share of people’s budget, that [tax cuts are] where the relief should come. We think about middle-class families that are struggling to pay for housing, childcare," she said. "We need to really think about increasing their wages." ||||| The decision by billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper to quit New Jersey for tax-friendly Florida could complicate estimates of how much tax money the struggling state will collect, the head of the Legislature’s nonpartisan research branch warned lawmakers. Tepper, 58, registered to vote in Florida in October, listing a Miami Beach condominium as his permanent address, and in December filed a court document declaring that he is now a resident of the state. On Jan. 1, he relocated his Appaloosa Management from New Jersey to Florida, which is free of personal-income and estate taxes. His move has state revenue officials on alert. “We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk,” Frank Haines, budget and finance officer with the Office of Legislative Services told a Senate committee Tuesday in Trenton. New Jersey relies on personal income taxes for about 40 percent of its revenue, and less than 1 percent of taxpayers contribute about a third of those collections, according to the legislative services office. A one percent forecasting error in the income-tax estimate can mean a $140 million gap, Haines said. Tepper lived in New Jersey for more than two decades, initially as an executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he helped run junk-bond trading during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He founded Appaloosa in 1993 and now has an estimated fortune of $10.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That ranked him as the wealthiest person in New Jersey. New Jersey residents bear the country’s third-highest tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation in Washington. Along with the nation’s highest property taxes, it’s one of two states that levy both an estate tax on the deceased and an inheritance tax on their heirs. The income-tax rate for top earners is 8.97 percent. Democratic legislators have repeatedly passed a millionaire’s tax that would increase the levy to 10.75 percent, but Republican Governor Chris Christie has vetoed it each time.

– New Jersey, already struggling with its budget, could face a massive shortfall next year—all because one guy chose to move to Florida, Bloomberg reports. In fairness, that guy was the wealthiest man in the state. Hedge-fund manager David Tepper has an estimated worth of $10.6 billion, and after decades in New Jersey he's officially moved his residence and business operations to the Sunshine State. According to CNBC, people close to Tepper say he wanted to be closer to his mother and sister in Florida. But it also points out he stands to save hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes by moving south. Thanks to New Jersey's 8.97% tax burden on its highest earners, Tepper likely paid nine figures in taxes—potentially more than $500 million—over the past three years. Unlike Tepper's old home, which had the third highest tax burden in the country, Florida has one of the lowest, the Christian Science Monitor reports. It has no personal-income or estate taxes. But Tepper's gain is New Jersey's loss. “We may be facing an unusual degree of income-tax forecast risk," New Jersey's budget and finance officer says regarding Tepper's move. The state gets about 40% of its revenue from personal-income taxes—a large chunk of which comes from the incredibly wealthy. Being off by even 1% in income-tax forecasts could mean a budget shortfall of $140 million. But all is not lost for the Garden State. Its population of tax-paying millionaires is continuing to rise, and it boasted the fourth highest number of millionaires in the country in 2015. (This house is available for those who want to move to New Jersey, but it comes with a stalker.)

A man ate 40 knives in two months in Amritsar in Punjab because "he felt like eating them". The matter came to light when he went to the doctor complaining of low appetite, weight loss and stomach pains. A 5-member team conducted a 5-hour surgery on Sunday to remove the metal from his body. The man is now stable. Shocking story from Amritsar! Man eats 40 knives, lives to tell tale; said to the doctor "I felt like eating them" pic.twitter.com/TaLrk6oHQj — ANI (@ANI_news) August 20, 2016 5-member team located knives in body, surgery took 5 hours. Man ate these knives for over 2 months (graphic content) pic.twitter.com/Zazh8oUnqG — ANI (@ANI_news) August 20, 2016 When asked the reason for eating the knives, the man told his doctors that he felt like eating them. "This was very unnerving. Have never witnessed something like this in my career as a doctor," said Dr Jitendra Malhotra, a member of the team who performed the surgery. ||||| AMRITSAR: In one of the rare cases, a team of doctors here successfully removed 40 knives from a patient's stomach.While talking to mediapersons here on Friday, Dr Jatinder Malhotra, managing director of The Corporate Hospital, informed that a police head constable Jarnail Singh (name changed), 42, was admitted in the hospital with complaint of stomach pain and weakness."Patient's ultrasound revealed a growth in his stomach. To confirm the diagnosis, an endoscopy was done which showed a few metallic knives inside the stomach," Dr malhotra said."After that a CT Scan of the abdomen was done, which showed multiple knives inside the stomach," He further said.When inquired from the patient, it was revealed that he had some sort of psychological problem, because of which he had swallowed 40 knives of different sizes in last two months.A team of surgeons, physicians and critical-care doctors operated upon the patient. The team included Dr B B Goyal, Dr Rajinder Rajan, Dr Arti Malhotra and Dr Anita besides Dr Jatinder himself.He said a few knives were opened up, a few were broken due to rust, while a few were lying closed.“In my 20 years of practice, this is the most dreadful surgery I have ever seen or done,” said Jatinder, adding that the head constable was out of danger now.A few knives were opened up, a few were broken due to rust, while a few were lying closed inside the stomach. ||||| “When we began the diagnosis, we found the cause of the pain puzzling. We did an ultrasound, which revealed some solid mass in his stomach, shaped like cancer,” he said. “The patient then told us he had an uncontrollable urge to eat knives. What is astonishing is that he had been eating knives [(for) the past two months. “This was very unnerving, I have not witnessed something like this in my career as a doctor.”

– A 42-year-old police constable came into an Indian hospital complaining of stomach pain, the Times of India reports. According to the Telegraph, an ultrasound showed a mass doctors believed to be cancer. The reality was much more disturbing. An endoscopy revealed the mass to be a whole bunch of knives. On Sunday, doctors performed surgery, removing 40 knives from the man's stomach, News 18 reports. Dr. Jitinder Malhotra calls the five-hour operation the "most dreadful surgery" he's ever performed. The unnamed man had apparently been eating the knives for two months because he felt like it and enjoyed the taste. Doctors say he's suffering from some sort of psychological problem. "This was very unnerving," the Telegraph quotes Malhotra as saying. "I have not witnessed something like this in my career as a doctor." Despite recently having 40 knives of various sizes piling up in his stomach, the man is expected to be OK.

Katie Couric I'm LEAVING CBS News has finally made it official -- announcing moments ago that she's decided to "step down" from her post at the "."Couric told People.com, "In making the decision to move on, I know the Evening News will be in great hands, but I am excited about the future."As for Couric's future in TV, she added, "I am looking at a format that will allow me to engage in more multi-dimensional storytelling."Couric insists the details -- including which network she will land with -- are "still being discussed."As TMZ previously reported, she is talking with CBS about a possible daytime syndicated show ... in addition in continuing with the news division -- probably "."Couric's contract is up in June -- it's likely she won't leave the show until then.TMZ broke the story -- Katie's replacement will be "" correspondent-- we're told that announcement will be made sometime around May 6. ||||| CBS Thinks ABC Will Get Katie Couric Exiting CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric now appears headed for a deal at ABC, according to sources familiar with the talks. There is still an offer on the table for Couric to stay at CBS with a syndicated talk show and a role on the newsmagazine show 60 Minutes. But ABC has made a big push for a Couric talk show plus even wider exposure across its network news platforms, including a presence on its 2012 presidential election coverage and prime time specials. CBS News is not willing to match that end of the offer. NBC, which had expressed interest, is no longer in the running. One person close to Couric described the ABC move as "a distinct possibility." Sources say CBS News insiders initially accepted the idea of having Couric keep a role in the division, but have grown weary with the drawn-out negotiation process. "They are ready to wish her well," says one person close to the talks. "No comment," says a spokesman at ABC News. Couric is expected to officially confirm her departure from The CBS Evening News this week, with no announcement on her next move. 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley will be named as her successor on the evening newscast. Couric has been in the job since September 2006. ABC's last minute surge to get Couric may be driven by the loss of The Oprah Winfrey Show on its owned and operated TV stations. "They are still in the station business," says one industry insider. "They are not going to go with those new daytime shows after killing their soaps and losing Oprah, leading into the evening news and prime time." Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! ||||| NEW YORK -- Katie Couric has confirmed that she's leaving her anchor job at the "CBS Evening News."Couric also told People magazine in a story published Tuesday on its website that she hasn't decided what she's doing next. But she says she is "looking at a format that will allow me to engage in more multi-dimensional storytelling."The Associated Press reported three weeks ago that Couric's tenure as CBS anchor would end just short of five years in the job. Her contract expires June 4.CBS has not set an exit date but is expected to appoint Scott Pelley of "60 Minutes" as her successor as early as next week.Couric was unable to move the "CBS Evening News" out of third place in the ratings.

– Let the Katie Couric bidding war begin in earnest: Couric confirmed to People that she is indeed leaving her job as anchor of CBS Evening News to focus on "multidimensional storytelling" elsewhere. Exactly what that means is unclear, but TV Guide quotes sources as saying she's close to a deal with ABC, where she'd have a big presence on its network news programs and prime-time specials. TMZ, meanwhile, says she's in talks to stay at CBS with a syndicated talk show. And rumors of a reunion with Matt Lauer remain in the mix as well. Her contract isn't up until June, so don't expect to know much for sure before then. "I have decided to step down from the CBS Evening News," Couric says. "I'm really proud of the talented team on the CBS Evening News and the award-winning work we've been able to do in the past five years in addition to the reporting I've done for 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning. In making the decision to move on, I know the Evening News will be in great hands, but I am excited about the future." Click for more.

Russian police and emergency personnel block an area at the Tekhnologicheskaya metro station after explosion in St.Petersburg subway in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, April 3, 2017. The subway in the... (Associated Press) Russian police and emergency personnel block an area at the Tekhnologicheskaya metro station after explosion in St.Petersburg subway in St.Petersburg, Russia, Monday, April 3, 2017. The subway in the Russian city of St. Petersburg is reported an explosion on a subway train. (AP Photo/Yevgeny Kurskov) (Associated Press) ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — A bomb blast tore through a subway train deep under Russia's second-largest city Monday, killing 11 people and wounding more than 40 in a chaotic scene that left victims sprawled on a smoky platform. Hours later, anguish and fear rose again when police found and defused a shrapnel-packed explosive device at another St. Petersburg station. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came while President Vladimir Putin was visiting the city, his hometown. In the past two decades, Russian trains and planes have been frequent targets of terrorism, usually blamed on Islamic militants. News reports initially said police were searching for two suspects, and Russian state television showed a photo of one suspect wearing what appeared to be a skullcap characteristic of Russia's Muslim regions. However, the Interfax news agency later cited unspecified sources as saying police now suspect the blast was the work of a suicide bomber linked to radical Islamists. The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said it was looking for the "perpetrators and organizers of the terror attack." St. Petersburg, a major tourist destination famed for its imperial palaces and lavish art museums, had been spared previous attacks. "From now on, I will be scared to take the subway," said Marina Ilyina, 30, who brought flowers to the station where the train stopped after the bombing. "We in St. Petersburg thought we wouldn't be touched by that." The explosion occurred in midafternoon as the train traveled between stations on one of the city's north-south lines. The driver chose to continue on to the next stop, Technological Institute, a decision praised by the Investigative Committee as aiding evacuation efforts and reducing the danger to passengers who would have had to walk along the electrified tracks. The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said the death toll was 11, with another 45 people being treated for wounds in hospitals. Amateur video broadcast by Russian TV showed people lying on the platform of the Technological Institute station, and others bleeding and weeping just after the damaged train pulled in. "Everything was covered in smoke. There were a lot of firefighters," Maria Smirnova, a student on a train behind the stricken one, told independent TV station Dozhd. Within two hours of the blast, authorities had found and deactivated another bomb at another busy station, Vosstaniya Square, the anti-terror agency said. That station is a major transfer point for passengers on two lines and serves the railway station to Moscow. Russian law enforcement agencies confirmed the device was loaded with shrapnel, and the Interfax news agency said it contained up to 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives. Interfax cited an unidentified law enforcement official saying that investigators think the suspected suicide bomber left the bomb at the Vosstaniya Square station before blowing himself up on the train. The agency said authorities believe the suspect, a 23-year old who came from ex-Soviet Central Asia and was linked to radical Islamist groups, carried the explosive device onto the train in a rucksack. Asked about the report, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn't comment, saying it's up to law enforcement agencies to comment on details of the probe. The entire St. Petersburg subway system was shut down and evacuated, but partial service resumed after about six hours. Security was immediately tightened at all of the country's key transportation sites, Russia's National Anti-Terrorist Committee said. Moscow officials said that included the subway in the Russian capital. Putin, who meeting with the president of Belarus at the Constantine Palace on the city's outskirts, offered condolences on national television. "Law enforcement agencies and intelligence services are doing their best to establish the cause and give a full picture of what happened," a somber-looking Putin said. He later laid flowers outside the Technological Institute station, where the damaged train arrived after the explosion. Some residents of St. Petersburg, a city of 5 million, responded with both dismay and determination. "They won't succeed in breaking up our country. We are all citizens of one country despite various political views and religious beliefs," said 24-year-old Alexander Malikov, who brought flowers and candles to an improvised memorial outside one of the stations. The bombing drew widespread condemnation. President Donald Trump said it was "absolutely a terrible thing." White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the U.S. was prepared to offer assistance to Russia. Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which is backing Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces along with Russia, says the incident was the type of "terrorism" Russia was fighting in Syria. Most of the terrorist attacks in Russia have been connected to the insurgency in Chechnya and other Caucasus republics in the southern part of the country. The last confirmed attack was in October 2015 when Islamic State militants downed a Russian airliner heading from an Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board. The Dec. 25, 2016, crash of a Russian plane near the southern city of Sochi that killed 92 people, including members of the Red Army Choir, is widely believed to have been due to a bomb, but no official cause has been given. Two female suicide bombers killed 40 people and wounded more than 100 in the Moscow subway on March 29, 2010. Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the attack, warning Russian leaders that "the war is coming to their cities." A Moscow-to-St. Petersburg train was bombed on Nov. 27, 2009, in an attack that left 26 dead and 100 injured. Umarov's group also said he ordered this attack. Russian airports also have been targeted. On Jan. 24, 2011, a suicide bomber blew himself up at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, killing 37 people and wounding 180. The same airport in August 2004 saw Islamic suicide bombers board two airplanes and bring them down, killing a total of 90 people. ___ Heintz reported from Moscow. Vladimir Isachenkov and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report. ||||| Police officers and security personnel stay inside a metro station following the St. Petersburg metro blast that took place on April 3, in Moscow, Russia April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Flowers are pictured in front of the Spasskaya metro station in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor ST PETERSBURG The main suspect in a suicide bombing on the St Petersburg metro that killed 14 people had rented an apartment in the city a month before the blast, neighbors and a building maintenance worker told Reuters on Wednesday. A day after Monday's attack, security officials raided the apartment and ordered other residents to leave -- a precaution often undertaken when police believe there may be explosives or bomb-making equipment inside. A witness who was present during the search, and who did not want to be identified, told Reuters she saw belongings packed into black bags and cardboard boxes, and household containers with an unidentified powder inside. The Investigative Committee, the state body leading the investigation, said footage from security cameras near the same building showed the suspect, Akbarzhon Jalilov, leaving home carrying a bag and a rucksack. It did not specify if that was on the day of the attack. Jalilov was born in 1995 in Kyrgyzstan, a mainly Muslim ex-Soviet republic in central Asia, and held a Russian passport. If it is proven that he was motivated by militant Islamist ideology, that will test Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy of military intervention in Syria. Some Russians may decide their country's intervention is making them a target for reprisal attacks by Islamists instead of making them safer as Putin had told them would happen. Jalilov moving into the rented apartment, in a Soviet-built nine-storey building in north-eastern St Petersburg, coincided with his return from a visit to his home city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. Two Kyrgyz government sources told Reuters that Jalilov made the trip in February, leaving in early March on a flight to Moscow. Osh is part of the Fergana Valley, a fertile strip of land that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and is mainly populated by ethnic Uzbeks. It has a tradition of Islamist radicalism and hundreds of people have set out from the area to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Jalilov had previously lived in St Petersburg for several years. It was not clear where he had been living before his trip back to Osh, or why he moved to a new apartment. SILENT TENANT The apartment Jalilov rented in St Petersburg is about 20 km from the site of the explosion, in the center of the city. Neighbors at the building said that Jalilov had first moved into apartment 109 around a month ago. They said the young man they had seen around the building matched pictures of Jalilov released to Russian media since the bombing. "The apartment was always silent," said a resident of the same staircase, who gave her name as Margarita. "When the owner let (the apartment) I asked her and she said he was a decent guy and that I should call her if he makes noise." "But I never heard ... any music playing. Maybe he turned on the TV once." She said on one occasion about five people who appeared ethnically Russian had visited him, but there seemed nothing remarkable about that. A second resident also said Jalilov had been a tenant in the building. Security service officers arrived at the address on Tuesday, and ordered residents to vacate the building. The building maintenance worker, who asked not to be identified, said: "They forced open the apartment. There were various powders in jars. I could see that they had packed up his things. Lots in black bags, and two boxes." The Investigative Committee confirmed the search but a spokeswoman declined to give details about what they found. Jalilov's parents, who say they had not seen their son for a while, were due to fly into St Petersburg on Wednesday and a Reuters witness at Pulkovo airport reported heavy security. A middle-aged man and woman were escorted away after the flight arrived, the Reuters reporter said. Authorities refused to confirm that the couple were Jalilov's parents but the woman, in response to a Russian TV reporter's question, said she did not believe her son was the bomber. In the several years Jalilov spent living in Russia, he blended into the millions of migrants from central Asia, and led an outwardly secular lifestyle. His profile on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, showed he was interested in pop music, fast cars, and boxer Mike Tyson. His aunt, Surayo Jalilova, told Reuters in Osh: "We are speechless, we were all shocked, we never thought he could do something like this. He was the most obedient kid in the family, did well at school." Fatima Kadyrakhunova, who was his class teacher for four years at School no. 26 in Osh, said he was quiet and reserved, but did not excel at his studies. Six people of central Asian origin have been held on suspicion of recruiting for radical Islamist groups, but there is no proof linking the detainees to the metro bombing, Russian investigators said. Meanwhile authorities have beefed up security across major cities, with sniffer dogs and bag checks at several metro stations in Moscow. Putin touched on the attack at a previously scheduled meeting in Moscow with security service chiefs from ex-Soviet countries. "We see that, unfortunately, the situation is not getting better and the clearest confirmation of that is the recent tragic incident in St Petersburg," Putin said. "People died as a result of a terrorist act, many were hurt," he said. (Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Svetlana Reiter in MOSCOW, Hulkar Isamova in OSH, Kyrgyzstan, and Olzhas Auyezov in ALMATY; Writing by Sujata Rao and Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood)

– The suspect behind a deadly terrorist attack on a St. Petersburg subway station was a 23-year-old man from a former Soviet republic in Central Asia who had links to Islamist radical groups, according to reports in the Russian media. Reuters reports that officials in Kyrgyzstan have identified the suspect as Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Russian citizen born in the city of Osh. Officials say the toll from the attack has now hit 14, with up to 50 others injured by a bomb that exploded on a train between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations Monday afternoon. A second bomb left at a different station failed to explode. Investigators believe Jalilov may have planted that device before blowing himself up on the train. The subway driver is being praised for continuing to the next station after the bomb went off, making it easier for rescuers to reach the wounded. According to Russian reports, the second bomb, which was packed with shrapnel and disguised as a fire extinguisher, would have done more damage than the first. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Vladimir Putin, who was visiting St. Petersburg at the time of the bombing, met with security chiefs Monday night, the Guardian reports. Earlier, he laid flowers at the Tekhnologichesky station. President Trump denounced the attack as "absolutely a terrible thing" and White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the US is willing to provide support, the AP reports.

Sycamore, Illinois (CNN) The man convicted in the oldest cold case ever brought to court broke into a wide grin as a judge ordered him released from prison Friday and granted him a new trial. Jack McCullough, 76, was serving a life sentence for the 1957 murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph. Judge William Brady threw out the conviction after a prosecutor found "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough was wrongly found guilty. He was freed shortly after the hearing and was whisked away in a car driven by a family member. After the judge's ruling, McCullough turned toward his stepdaughter, Janey O'Connor, and flashed her a private signal that she says means "I love you." She was seated behind him and broke into tears but managed a big smile back. Maria Ridulph's murder went unsolved for half a century. Then detectives pursued a tip, and a man was brought to trial and convicted in the 1957 murder of the 7-year-old in Sycamore, Illinois. Now that man is free. Ann O'Neill's 2013 series on the case, "Taken," raised questions about whether the trial was unfairly one-sided. Across the aisle, Charles Ridulph, the older brother of the victim, frowned and bowed his head. More than 58 years ago, he helped search for Maria after she vanished from a street corner near their home while playing in the snow with a friend. McCullough's lawyers and DeKalb County state's attorney Richard Schmack argued that McCullough's conviction was based on false testimony, improper legal rulings controlling the evidence presented, and a timeline that was tweaked some 50 years after the fact to rule out McCullough's alibi. McCullough has long insisted that he couldn't possibly have abducted and killed the child because he was 40 miles away in Rockford, Illinois, talking to recruiters and trying to enlist in the U.S. Air Force when she was taken. He repeated the alibi when he spoke with CNN in prison in March 2013. "They proved nothing," he said at the time. "I am in here for murder. A murder I would not, could not have done." McCullough said that when Maria was kidnapped, the telephone in his home in Sycamore was ringing. "And I was on the other end of that phone, in Rockford, three minutes before she was kidnapped. Try and make that happen. Only Scotty could make that happen, if he beamed me up." Jack McCullough, in prison after his 2012 conviction. Now a judge has ordered him freed. An Illinois appeals court upheld his conviction last year. But McCullough made a last-ditch appeal in a jailhouse motion last December, saying police and prosecutors buried evidence supporting his alibi. He asked a judge to find him innocent. Schmack, who inherited the case from predecessor Clay Campbell, was placed in the position of having to defend the conviction. He launched a six-month investigation that included a review of some 4,500 pages of documents -- old police and FBI reports, grand jury transcripts, trial transcripts, affidavits for search and arrest warrants, and even CNN's five-part series on the case, "Taken," which raised questions about whether the courtroom reconstruction of history was unfairly one-sided. Schmack concluded that he'd found "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough had been convicted of a crime he didn't commit. The precise time of Maria's abduction has been in dispute almost from the beginning. JUST WATCHED Taken: The coldest case ever solved Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Taken: The coldest case ever solved 02:18 The dark-haired second-grader with big brown eyes was with her playmate, Kathy Sigman, on December 3, 1957 when they were approached by a stranger who said his name was Johnny. He gave Maria two piggyback rides, Sigman told police at the time. Sigman, now a grandmother known as Kathy Chapman, said she went home to fetch her mittens. When she returned, Maria and Johnny were gone. More than 600 volunteers combed the fields and woods around Sycamore in search of Maria, at times walking hand-in-hand in a grid pattern. And within 24 hours, dozens of FBI agents descended on the small farming community about 65 miles west of Chicago. Agents interviewed some 200 possible suspects -- including McCullough, who passed a polygraph test about his alibi and was cleared. Despite the work of nearly three-dozen FBI agents, the investigation turned up no solid leads to Maria's whereabouts. Her body was discovered 144 days later by a couple looking for mushrooms near the Iowa border. She was under a fallen tree, some 100 miles from home. Because Maria apparently never left Illinois, the FBI pulled out of the investigation and the case went cold for half a century. The Illinois State Police began to look into the Ridulph case again in 2008, after McCullough's half sister, Janet Tessier, emailed a tip. She said her dying mother had pulled her close some 14 years earlier and whispered, "Those two little girls, and the one that disappeared, John did it. John did it, and you have to tell someone." McCullough was questioned in Seattle and arrested in late June 2011. A judge hearing the case without a jury found McCullough guilty after a week-long trial. Schmack, the state's attorney, said he sat through the trial and always doubted whether there was enough evidence to support the conviction. In his review of the case, he said he found new evidence that verified McCullough's long-standing alibi. He subpoenaed records from AT&T and found that a collect call had indeed been placed at 6:57 p.m. to McCullough's home in Sycamore from a pay phone at the post office in downtown Rockford on on December 3, 1957 -- just as McCullough said he had done. At his sentencing, McCullough vehemently professed his innocence. "Look in the box. The truth is in the box," he said, pointing to a cardboard box in the courtroom. It was filled with old FBI reports and other documents that the judge, James Hallock, kept from the trial, saying it was inadmissible hearsay. Prosecutor Richard Schmack reviewed the case and asked for McCullough to go free. Schmack did look at those documents. He built a timeline based on the statements of 21 people -- Maria Ridulph's family members, friends, neighbors and passersby -- that confirmed the FBI's original timeline ruling out McCullough as a suspect. Maria was taken that day some time between 6:45 and 7 p.m. -- and not as early as 6 p.m., as alleged during McCullough's trial. It would have been impossible for him to have been in two places at once. Campbell, the state's attorney who brought the case, was defeated by Schmack in an election just weeks after McCullough was convicted. Campbell has declined to comment since Schmack released his findings. Cold cases are particularly difficult to prosecute because evidence is often lost or destroyed, memories fade and witnesses die. And so questions have lingered over the evidence used to convict McCullough -- and whether it was strong enough. No physical evidence ties him to the crime. ||||| SYCAMORE, Ill. --A 76-year-old man from Washington state who a prosecutor says was wrongly convicted in the abduction and killing of a 7-year-old Illinois schoolgirl in 1957 will be released from prison, a judge ordered Friday. WATCH: "48 Hours:" Cold as Ice The hearing, presided over by Judge William P. Brady, was held in Sycamore, about 70 miles west of Chicago and near where Maria Ridulph was abducted as she played in the snow. Forest hikers found the girl's remains five months later. In 2012, another judge convicted Jack McCullough in Maria's death, in one of the oldest unsolved U.S. cases ever to go to trial. McCullough was sentenced to life in prison. McCullough, in handcuffs, appeared shaken by the judge's decision at first, rocking back and forth, then taking a deep breath. Family members behind him hugged and cried. Moments later, McCullough looked back and smiled broadly. On the other side of the room, Maria's brother and sister displayed little emotion as the hearing ended. Brady said McCullough would be released Friday. The judge pointed to several factors in his decision, including records that support McCullough's long-held contention that he was about 40 miles away from Sycamore when Maria was abducted. That evidence included newly discovered phone records. It wasn't clear until the last minute the Brady would rule as he did. "Rest assured I am not trying this case ... You will not hear the words, 'Mr. McCullough is guilty' or 'Mr. McCullough is not guilty' coming from my mouth." Brady's ruling was prompted by a six-month review of evidence conducted by DeKalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack after the 2012 conviction. Schmack concluded that McCullough could not have killed Maria. Maria's disappearance made headlines nationwide in the 1950s, when reports of child abductions were rare. She had been playing outside in the snow with a friend on Dec. 3, 1957, when a young man approached, introduced himself as "Johnny" and offered them piggyback rides. Maria's friend dashed home to grab mittens, and when she came back, Maria and the man were gone. At trial, prosecutors said McCullough was Johnny, because he went by John Tessier in his youth. They said McCullough, then 18, dragged Maria away, choked and stabbed her to death. Schmack, who wasn't involved in McCullough's case and was elected to the state's attorney post as McCullough's trial came to an end, filed a scathing report with the court last month that appeared to pick the case apart, point-by-point. McCullough's long-held alibi was that he was in Rockford, attempting to enlist with the U.S. Air Force at a military recruiting station, on the night Maria disappeared. Schmack said newly discovered phone records proved McCullough had, as he long-claimed, made a collect call to his parents at 6:57 p.m. from a phone booth in downtown Rockford - which is 40 miles northwest of where Maria was abducted between 6:45 p.m. and 6:55 p.m. Schmack also reviewed police reports and hundreds of other documents, including from the Air Force recruitment office, which he said had been improperly barred at trial. In his review he said the documents contained "a wealth of information pointing to McCullough's innocence, and absolutely nothing showing guilt." He also noted that Maria's friend had identified McCullough as the killer five decades later from an array of six photographs; McCullough's picture stood out, partially because everyone but him wore suitcoats and their photos were professional yearbook pictures. Maria's murder haunted the Sycamore for decades, and McCullough's conviction four years ago seemed to bring some closure. Those wounds now threaten to reopen. Her family remains convinced that McCullough is guilty and have sought the appointment of a special prosecutor in an attempt to keep him behind bars. Maria's brother, 70-year-old Charles Ridulph, still lives in Sycamore and has said in recent weeks that his family feels let down by the state prosecutor's office about-face.

– A man convicted four years ago in the oldest cold case ever tried was freed Friday after an Illinois judge vacated his conviction and subsequent life sentence, CNN reports. According to CBS News, 76-year-old Jack McCullough was convicted of kidnapping a 7-year-old girl, choking her, and stabbing her to death in 1957. The case was reopened in 2008, and McCullough was arrested in 2011 and convicted the following year. After an appeal by McCullough, Illinois state's attorney Richard Schmack launched a six-month investigation that found what he calls "clear and convincing evidence" that McCullough is innocent. While the judge Friday vacated McCullough's conviction, he stopped short of declaring him innocent, and a new trial will be held, the Chicago Tribune reports. McCullough, who lived in the same neighborhood as the kidnapped girl, says he was 40 miles away at an Air Force recruiting center at the time of the kidnapping. It's an alibi that passed a polygraph test in 1957 and made it impossible for him to be the culprit based on the FBI's original timeline for the kidnapping. That timeline was later changed by police, and Schmack says documents—including phone and Air Force records—supporting McCullough's alibi were wrongly not allowed at his trial. A friend of the kidnapped girl picked McCullough out of a photo lineup when the case was reopened. But his was the only non-yearbook photo in the lineup, and she picked a different man out of a photo lineup 50 years earlier. That info wasn't allowed at McCullough's trial either. No physical evidence was ever found to support McCullough's conviction.

Photo by Getty Images / RB modified by author Elvis has officially left the building. Well, Elvis Juice has, anyway. Earlier this week, ever-iconoclastic craft brewers BrewDog lost their legal fight against Elvis Presley's estate, all over a beer that they'd named after the King. In 2015, the Scottish brewers launched a grapefruit-infused IPA that they named 'Elvis Juice,' and it quickly became a top seller. (It's not clear how the beer got its name; late-period Elvis wasn't testing the seams of his jumpsuits because he enjoyed a citrus-heavy diet, but whatever). Shortly after its release, attorneys for the Elvis Presley estate sent BrewDog a copyright infringement notice over the use of the name Elvis. BrewDog co-founders James Watt and Martin Dickie responded by legally changing their names to Elvis to show that Presley wasn't the only Elvis out there. ("We would like to recommend that Presley's Estate diverts its attention to another potential source of quick remuneration: a brewery that calls itself 'The King' of beer," Dickie said at the time.) Weirdly enough, that tactic didn't work. READ MORE: Why These Craft Brewers Legally Changed Their Names to Elvis The Presley Estate balked at BrewDog's attempts to register 'Elvis' and 'Elvis Juice' as trademarks in the United Kingdom and, after a hearing, the Intellectual Property Office agreed. "Put simply, and notwithstanding that Mr Presley died nearly 40 years ago, he was/is such an iconic figure, that I would be very surprised if many people, including those at the younger end of the average consumer age spectrum, had not heard of him," hearing officer Oliver Morris said in a statement. "On the basis that Elvis is a relatively uncommon name, and given that Mr Presley is the most famous of Elvises, I consider that most average consumers, on seeing the name Elvis alone, are likely to conceptualise that on the basis of Elvis Presley." BrewDog now owes the estate £1,500 ($1,934) in court costs and will either have to change the beer's name or ask if the Presley estate will grant them "official permission" to use it. (Fat chance there, fellas.) It seems like BrewDog would understand the value of protecting its trademarks, since it has threatened lawsuits over some of its own branding. BrewDog owns the trademark for the word 'punk' in relation to beer, as it makes a Punk IPA, and has a longstanding crowdfunding campaign called "Equity for Punks." In March, when a music promoter in Leeds, England announced plans to open a pub called Daft Punk, BrewDog's own attorney sent a strongly worded letter discouraging him from doing so. "Our client is very concerned that provision of food and drink services under the mark Draft Punk would give rise to a likelihood of confusion in the marketplace, including a likelihood of association with our client's earlier mark Punk," BrewDog's attorney wrote, according to The Guardian. (The plan for the bar was eventually scrapped.) That same week, BrewDog's attorney challenged a brother and sister in Birmingham, England who wanted to name their own newly opened pub Lone Wolf, because BrewDog launched a range of spirits called Lone Wolf. Watt eventually spoke out, calling the dispute the result of "trigger happy" attorneys, but the pub renamed itself The Wolf anyway. So maybe BrewDog understands what Team Elvis is trying to do. MUNCHIES has reached out to BrewDog for comment on the matter but has not yet received a response. ||||| Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Scottish brewers BrewDog have lost a legal battle with the estate of Elvis Presley over the name of one of their beers. The firm launched their grapefruit and blood orange Elvis Juice IPA in 2015 and they say it has become one of the company’s best-selling products. However, they were contacted by lawyers from The King’s estate who demanded they change the name. In response, James Watt and Martin Dickie, founders of BrewDog, changed their names by deed poll to Elvis in a bid to prove the name was not exclusive. Elvis, who died in 1977, had his name and likeness trademarked by Elvis Presley Enterprises, who earn millions of dollars through a licensing programme that grants the right to manufacture and sell Elvis merchandise worldwide. They objected after BrewDog applied to register “Elvis Juice” and “Brewdog Elvis Juice” as trademarks. The Elvis estate said people could mistakenly believe the beer was endorsed by them. (Image: Getty) Now the UK Intellectual Property Office have found in favour of the Elvis estate after a hearing. Trademark hearing officer Oliver Morris ruled: “I consider most average consumers, on seeing the name Elvis alone, are likely to conceptualise that on the basis of Elvis Presley.” BrewDog, who are based in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, have been ordered to pay the Elvis estate’s £1500 costs in the case.

– A Scottish brewer has lost its battle to give a bestselling beer the same first name as one of the most popular musicians in history. Last week, the UK Intellectual Property Office ruled that BrewDog must change the name of its grapefruit-infused Elvis Juice IPA after attorneys for Elvis Presley Enterprises objected to the brewer applying to register "Elvis Juice" and "Brewdog Elvis Juice" as trademarks, the Daily Record reports. The Scottish brewers launched the IPA in 2015 and it quickly became a bestseller. Not long after, however, attorneys for the Presley estate sent them a copyright infringement notice. In response, BrewDog co-founders James Watt and Martin Dickie legally changed their first names to "Elvis" in October 2016. "There isn't just one single person in the world called Elvis, so we added two more to make a point," Watt told Munchies at the time. Despite those efforts, hearing officer Oliver Morris ruled last week against the brewers, saying, "On the basis that Elvis is a relatively uncommon name, and given that Mr. Presley is the most famous of Elvises, I consider that most average consumers, on seeing the name Elvis alone, are likely to conceptualize that on the basis of Elvis Presley." In addition to losing the name of one of its most popular products, BrewDog must also pay the Presley estate $1,934 in court costs. (Read: Priscilla Presley on why she left Elvis.)

In the R-rated comedy Rough Night, five friends from college - played by Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz - reunite when they rent a beach house in Miami for a wild bachelorette weekend that goes completely off the rails. Just when all hope is lost, they realize there's more to the story than they could've ever imagined. ||||| “Rough Night,” a bachelorette-party-from-hell thriller comedy that’s got some push and some laughs, despite its essentially formulaic nature, is a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers. Do we want to see more women directors who have the scalding audacity of a Kathryn Bigelow, or who can turn a tent-pole origin story like “Wonder Woman” into a cultural event the way Patty Jenkins did? Duh and duh. That said, we also need more women to direct the MOR entertainment of the week. In the case of a goofy-nasty bad-behavior farce like “Rough Night,” directed and co-written by Lucia Aniello, what’s novel isn’t so much the plot as the spin, the female gaze, the inside-the-club sensibility. That, for all the cookie-cutter elements, is what’s fresh about the movie, and why it should find a solid audience. But first, a word on how derivative it is. In “Rough Night,” four college chums reunite for a weekend trip to Miami, where they’ve borrowed a splendid beach house to hold a bachelorette bash for Jess (Scarlett Johansson). A decade ago, they were frat-house-party hellions who could guzzle their way through a night of beer pong. But they’ve grown up — sort of. Jess, now with clipped conservative hair, is running for state senator, and she and her fiancée, Peter (Paul W. Downs), are so respectable and adult that they’re already like an old married couple, too bone-weary for sex. Frankie (Ilana Glazer), a lesbian and full-time activist, organizes protests faster than she can get people to show up for them, and Blair (Zoë Kravitz), who is Frankie’s former lover, is in the thick of a divorce and child-custody battle. Then there’s Alice (Jillian Bell), the exception who proves the rule — which is to say, she’s still every bit the needy, arrested drunk-girl narcissist she was in college. More Reviews San Sebastián Film Review: 'Yuli' TV Review: NBC's 'New Amsterdam' The four go out to a club, where they do endless shots and too much cocaine, and they’re introduced to Jess’ outside BFF, an Aussie free spirit named Pippa (Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live”). Then they go back to the house, where the requisite male stripper has been put on order. A dude shows up at the door (he’s sexy, but seems a little too threatening to be a stripper), and moments later, after push quite literally comes to shove, he’s lying on the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. It’s a complete accident, but he is dead. Ninety-nine percent of the people who see “Rough Night” will have no idea that it lifts its premise, and much of its flavor, from an edgy and overlooked 1998 movie called “Very Bad Things,” which starred Christian Slater and was Peter Berg’s first film as a director. It was about a group of guys who accidentally kill a prostitute during a bachelor party in Vegas; what they do to hide the disaster is hideous but — as Berg staged it — creepily plausible, and the film, though it never caught on, had a queasy power as a foray into the dark side of the male psyche. “Rough Night” is a lighter entertainment. It’s “Very Bad Things” with the sexes reversed, but also with a harmless synthetic dollop of the “Hangover” films, a replay of the best-friend-of-the-bride jealousy drama of “Bridesmaids,” plus a touch of “Weekend at Bernie’s.” It’s all been mashed together in the comedy compactor, yet the best thing about “Rough Night” is the feisty, claws-out spontaneity of its competitive banter between “sisters” who love and hate each other. Lucia Aniello and her co-writer, Paul W. Downs, are two of the forces behind the web-gone-Comedy Central series “Broad City” (which was co-created by Glazer), but this movie is a lot broader. It’s farcical, situational, and over-the-top, yet it gives the actresses room to maneuver. Johansson, who got swallowed up in the “Blade-Runner”-meets-broken-glass cyber doldrums of “Ghost in the Shell,” has long avoided this sort of unabashed megaplex comedy, but it’s a pleasure to see her take on a role in which she can coast along on the no-nonsense vibrance of her personality. She makes Jess cautious but fast — a grown-up trying to let loose even as she keeps her inner desperado in check. Glazer, likewise, creates a lived-in character: a social justice warrior who is spoiled and annoying enough to cue us to the fact that her stridency is compensating for something. It’s Jillian Bell who’s the film’s comic spark plug. Her Alice, as scripted, may seem like a walking “loser,” but Bell has the kind of hostile crack timing that Kathryn Hahn did in “Bad Moms.” When she gets a line like “I can’t just go to jail! I couldn’t even make it through the first episode of ‘Orange Is the New Black,'” she delivers it with dramatic sincerity, digging into the character’s anxiety, and her one-way duel with Pippa says much about the possessiveness of friendship. When Alice glares at her rival, her dark-saucer eyes gleam with a hilariously paranoid desperation that’s almost touching. What do these five characters do with a corpse on their hands? They figure out ways to get rid of it. They debate the issue of whether they’re guilty of involuntary manslaughter (as long as the body just lies there, no; as soon as they make the mistake of moving it, maybe yes). And when they learn that the wealthy swingers next door, played with a bit too much on-the-nose hambone smarminess by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell, have surveillance cameras that may have recorded their cover-up scheme, they send Blair over to the house to sleep with the couple — a twist that would have worked better if Zoë Kravitz had more of a comic angle to play. There are plenty of gags in “Rough Night” that don’t work, like the overly obvious role-reversal stunt of having Jess’ fiancée stage a bachelor party that’s an absurdly effete evening of wine-tasting. McKinnon, as Pippa, has an effervescent silliness, but too much of the joke of her performance boils down to her doing an Aussie accent as if that were a bubbly novelty. Yet Peter’s all-night-long drive to Miami to rescue Jess gets funnier as it goes along, and what’s amusing about the movie is the cocky texture of its feminine bonding — the jokes about home bikini waxing or scarfing pizza over a dead body, delivered with a new style of merciless aggression. It’s hardly the first, or most original, comedy of female outrage to come along, but we’ve had 40 years of men behaving badly on screen, stretching back to “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” and watching these ladies get their turn generates a slobby low-down kick. ||||| Rough Night We gave it a C+ To paraphrase Mel Brooks, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is the second time the dead stripper in penis sunglasses falls off a Jet Ski.” Or maybe it’s just Rough Night, a raunchy, wildly off-the-rails farce from the team that more or less brought you Broad City. Scarlett Johansson is Jess, a 30ish Senate candidate who can barely spare a minute to sit down for Seamless with her fiancé (Paul W. Downs, also a co-writer), let alone celebrate their upcoming union. Her college roommate Alice (Jillian Bell) is the one who insists on reuniting the old crew for an elaborate bachelorette weekend in Miami — including freelance radical Frankie (Ilana Glazer) and Blair (Zoë Kravitz), now a sleek corporate type — even if their paths have diverged since their dorm-room days of midnight Doritos and beer pong. (The arrival of Jess’ Australian year-abroad friend Pippa, played with cracked New Age glee by Kate McKinnon, is a cross she’ll have to bear.) Somewhere between the cocaine, the Weenie Linguine, and the Craigslist gigolo, things somehow begin to go wrong. Director Lucia Aniello stacks her loose cannon of a script with a few truly great bits and some inspired casting — including Ty Burrell and Demi Moore as a pair of predatory, praline-colored swingers — but then never quite trusts their gifts, blowing out her Girls Just Wanna Have Hangovers conceit until it feels like the summer-movie equivalent of a fidget spinner: shiny, manic, and spiraling to nowhere. C+ ||||| It’s hard enough being a woman filmmaker these days, but consider the plight of the woman filmgoer. It took years to get a big-budget Wonder Woman vehicle, and if you really must have role models in your movies, she’s probably not a bad one. But comedies in which women behave really badly—like 2016’s Bad Moms or Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, or the more recent Snatched—have become the happy-hour cosmo of moviegoing. They’re plentiful, and supposedly just the ticket for women looking for a “girls’ night out” picture, just something fun to see for kicks. But if they’re supposed to be just a diversion, why—one after another—do they torture us with so many questions? Am I supposed to like this? Is this supposed to be funny? Does this really represent what Hollywood thinks most—or even just many or some—women really want from big-screen entertainment? Rough Night, directed and co-written by Lucia Aniello—who has also written and directed numerous episodes of Broad City—is the latest entry in the “women whooping it up” genre, and it doesn’t make any of the above questions easier to answer. The movie—co-written by Paul Downs, Aniello’s boyfriend and writing partner, who also appears in the picture—is at its best when it catches the precise crosscurrent between sleazy and breezy. Scarlett Johansson is Jess, who’s launching a bid for state senator—she’s also about to be married, an adventure that just might be scarier than running for public office. Her old college clique—hoity-toity real-estate diva Blair (Zoë Kravitz), kooky activist Frankie (Ilana Glazer, of Broad City) and randy, insecure teacher Alice (Jillian Bell)—are spiriting her off to Miami for one last bachelorette weekend. They don’t know that she has also invited Pippa (Kate MacKinnon), a college friend they don’t know—Jess met her while spending a year abroad. Pippa is Australian, a loopy good-time girl with an Earth-mother streak, and her accent is a wild ocean of exaggerated rolling vowels. She barges into the movie in an assortment of tropical-printed rompers and maxi dresses, and she gets the movie’s best lines—or maybe she only makes them the best, unreeling them like crazy-colored party streamers. The opening third of Rough Night is the best part of the movie and also the most predictable: The women get to Miami and commence partying, hard, immediately. Why is it funny when Frankie scores some coke and the women, at first reluctant to partake (one of them is running for public office, after all), end up descending upon it like gulls fighting for a scrap of fruit on a beach? Somehow the loose, coarse nuttiness of it works. There are props, including funny glasses with a fake penis where the nose should be. There’s a male stripper—make that two male strippers, at least in the literal sense that two brawny guys end up stripping down. But when the movie takes a sort-of dark turn into black-comedy territory, it starts to fall apart. The new, supposedly outrageous scenarios just aren’t as funny as the stock women-gone-wild gags. Ty Burrell and Demi Moore show up in tiny roles, as a kinky, predatory couple, but their oily come-ons are more limp than they are slippery. The idea behind Rough Night isn’t bad by itself, and it’s fun to watch Johansson cutting loose in a comedy for a change. The picture also offers a few sight gags that are pure, dumb genius: they just work. (The sight of Downs, as Jess’ fiance, gingerly and acrobatically polishing the windshield of an eighteen-wheeler—did I mention he’s wearing a diaper?—isn’t something you’re likely to forget soon.) But Rough Night tries hard to capture the pleasurably profane, uncorked spirit of Broad City and doesn’t quite succeed, maybe because the joys of the show lie in how casual and intimate it is. Its glimpses into believable neurotic behavior among women are larkish and offhand—but blown up for the big screen, they’re not quite enough to fill it. I laughed a few times at Rough Night, often at MacKinnon and at least once at Downs in his diaper. And really, as Hangover-style dumb entertainments go, it’s certainly good enough. Which isn’t to say it’s anything close to what what women want.

– A mostly female cast gathers for director Lucia Aniello's Rough Night, which reveals just how bad a bachelorette weekend with college friends can get, especially when male strippers are involved. If this plot seems a bit tired to you, you're not alone. The movie has a lackluster approval rating of about 50% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, despite big-name stars such as Scarlett Johannson and Kate McKinnon. Samples: Rough Night "offers a few sight gags that are pure, dumb genius" and "is at its best when it catches the precise crosscurrent between sleazy and breezy." But when the movie takes a dark turn, "it starts to fall apart," Stephanie Zacharek writes at Time. "As Hangover-style dumb entertainments go, it's certainly good enough," she adds, but she isn't sure this is "anything close" to what women want to see. Owen Gleiberman, on the other hand, says Rough Night is "a perfect example of why Hollywood needs (many) more women filmmakers." Though its formula is quite "derivative," its female perspective makes it fresh, he writes at Variety. The best elements: "the feisty, claws-out spontaneity of its competitive banter between 'sisters' who love and hate each other" and Jillian Bell, "the film's comic spark plug." Leah Greenblatt was less tickled. Rough Night is "a raunchy, wildly off-the-rails farce" that "feels like the summer-movie equivalent of a fidget spinner: shiny, manic, and spiraling to nowhere," she writes at Entertainment Weekly. She does commend the casting—naming Ty Burrell and Demi Moore, who play a swingers couple—but adds the actors have to deal with a "loose cannon of a script." "Well, at least they got the title right," begins Adam Graham at the Detroit News. The rest of his review is no less harsh. "Rough Night is a dismal, excruciating experience, a tired retread of raunchy comedy tropes that can't be bothered to come up with any funny or original bits," he writes. Like one of its characters on cocaine, "it's frantic, scattered and convinced of its own greatness," then "empty and rather sad."

Groupon was hit with its second lawsuit in as many months from employees who said they were screwed out of their overtime. This comes shortly after the online discounter lost its COO, its sales chief, its IPO date, and its favorite bullshit accounting metric. It's almost as though Groupon is some sort of hive of misery and deceit! The latest blow comes from a federal class action suit just filed in Chicago, covering 50 "deal vetters," employees responsible for reviewing Groupon's contract with merchants. The vetters, said PaidContent, allege they did not get overtime for working more than 40 hours per week. In addition, more than 1,000 of Groupon's salespeople are covered by an August class action also seeking overtime pay. This is what happens when your top people take out a ludicrous $810 million in bonuses before the IPO: Everyone else in the operation starts looking real, real carefully at their own compensation. And, no, they won't give you a discount. ||||| Groupon Hit With New Lawsuit September can’t end soon enough for Groupon. The month brought a string of staff departures, SEC spats and the indefinite shelving of the company’s long-awaited IPO. Now a second class of employees has filed a class action against Groupon over unpaid overtime. In a Chicago federal court filing last week, a woman representing so-called “deal vetters” at Groupon claimed the company broke federal and state law by failing to pay overtime to those who worked over 40 hours a week. According to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Doug Werman, deal vetters were responsible for reviewing the terms of the transactions between Groupon and the merchants with which it partners. The position has since been eliminated. SEE ALSO: Groupon's Funky Friday: New COO Goes Back To Google; Numbers Revised The deal vetters’ proposed class action echoes a similar one filed in late August by Groupon salespeople. The salespeople in that suit recently amended their complaint to provide additional facts such as a sample work contract that reveals a starting salary of $32,000. Groupon did not return requests for comment. Werman said about 50 deal vetters are affected by the new lawsuit, while over 1,000 salespeople are covered by the earlier filing. In court proceedings today, a judge said that the parties could begin discovery, a procedure that will allow both sides to collect evidence to argue whether or not the class action should go forward.

– Groupon employees have filed a class action lawsuit against the company claiming unpaid overtime, the second such suit filed against the daily deals website in the past month. This time around, Groupon’s so-called “deal vetters”—a position that no longer exists—say they weren’t paid overtime when working more than 40 hours per week. The first class action, filed late last month, came from salespeople, Paid Content reports. About 1,000 employees were covered by that filing, while about 50 are affected by this most recent one. It hasn’t been a good month for Groupon: It saw a string of departing staff including, Gawker notes, its COO and sales chief; the planned IPO was shelved indefinitely; and the company has sparred with the SEC.

The OFFICIAL twitter of Actor, Author & the man behind the mask of CHEWBACCA! This is where The Wookiee Roars... and Tweets!!!! https://www.facebook.com/thewookieeroars Kashyyyk ||||| Star Wars creator George Lucas is mourning the death of his longtime friend and leading lady Carrie Fisher. “Carrie and I have been friends most of our adult lives,” he said in a statement to PEOPLE. “She was extremely smart; a talented actress, writer and comedienne with a very colorful personality that everyone loved. In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess – feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think.” Get push notifications with news, features and more. “My heart and prayers are with Billie, Debbie and all Carrie’s family, friends and fans. She will be missed by all,” the statement concludes. Fisher, 60, was aboard an 11-hour flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday when she went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics removed her from the flight and rushed her to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for a heart attack. She later died in the hospital. Since her death, other members of the famous franchise have paid tribute to Fisher’s life and legacy. “Carrie was one-of-a-kind…brilliant, original,” Harrison Ford said in a statement to PEOPLE. “Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely…My thoughts are with her daughter Billie, her mother Debbie, her brother Todd, and her many friends. We will all miss her.” Her onscreen brother Mark Hamill, on the other hand, was speechless about the heartbreaking news of Fisher’s death: “No words #Devastated,” the actor tweeted alongside a photo of the two during their Star Wars years. After him, several other Star Wars alums shared messages of love for Fisher on Twitter — including the actor who played Chewbacca. There are no words for this loss. Carrie was the brightest light in every room she entered. I will miss her dearly. pic.twitter.com/GgIeYGeMt9 — Peter Mayhew (@TheWookieeRoars) December 27, 2016 “There are no words for this loss,” said Peter Mayhew. “Carrie was the brightest light in every room she entered. I will miss her dearly.” ||||| Carrie Fisher Wrapped ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ Before Her Death Actress died Dec. 27 after suffering from a heart attack before the holidays Carrie Fisher had wrapped filming “Star Wars: Episode VIII” before her death, TheWrap has learned. The actress reprised her role as Princess Leia in director Rian Johnson’s “Episode VIII,” which the official “Star Wars” Twitter account tweeted had wrapped production back in July. The film is due in theaters on December 15, 2017. The “Star Wars” films sometimes involve reshoots and re-looping — sometimes extensive ones, as was the case with the new “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” — an individual with knowledge of the production said that Fisher had completely finished her scenes on the new film. Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Image 1 of 33 Actress Carrie Fisher died at 60 after suffering a heart attack while on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Look through the following gallery for celebrity and fan reactions to her death. Actress Carrie Fisher died at 60 after suffering a heart attack while on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Look through the following gallery for celebrity and fan reactions to her death. Image 2 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 3 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 4 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 5 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 6 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 7 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 8 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 9 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 10 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 11 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 12 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 13 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 14 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 15 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 16 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 17 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 18 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 19 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 20 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 21 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 22 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 23 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 24 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 25 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 26 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 27 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 28 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 29 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 30 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 31 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 32 of 33 Twitter Twitter Image 33 of 33 Carrie Fisher Wrapped ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ Before Her Death 1 / 33 Back to Gallery Also Read: Carrie Fisher Over the Years: Through Good and Bad, the Wit Endured (Appreciation) However, it’s unknown how Fisher’s death might impact future installments in the blockbuster franchise and whether Leia, a character Fisher originated in 1977’s “Star Wars,” was expected to play a significant role in “Episode IX” that may now need to be reassessed. Representatives for the studio and for Lucasfilm have not responded to requests for comment. Fisher died Tuesday after suffering a heart attack on a plane from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23. After she was taken to UCLA Medical Center for emergency treatment, she was reported to be in stable condition over the weekend. Also Read: Carrie Fisher, 'Star Wars' Icon, Dies at 60 Final slate of the final shot. VIII is officially wrapped. Cannot wait to share it with you all! -@rianjohnson pic.twitter.com/l4Apk0Ro4i — Star Wars (@starwars) July 22, 2016 Fisher made her big screen debut in “Shampoo” (1970) with Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn and Julie Christie. In 1977, she won the role that would make her internationally famous in “Star Wars,” as the revolutionary princess of the planet Alderaan. Following starring roles in “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” Fisher had a string of small or guest parts such as “Scream 3,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” “These Old Broads,” “Sex and the City” and “Entourage.” She most recently starred in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Read original story Carrie Fisher Wrapped ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ Before Her Death At TheWrap

– Carrie Fisher is gone but she will live on through her books and movies—including Star Wars: Episode VIII, which won't be in theaters for almost a year. Sources tell the Wrap that the 60-year-old Fisher had completely finished filming her role and all necessary reshoots for the movie, in which she reprises her role as Princess Leia. It's not clear how her death will affect the future of the Star Wars series. George Lucas was among the many people paying tribute to Fisher on Tuesday. "She was extremely smart; a talented actress, writer and comedienne with a very colorful personality that everyone loved," he told People. "In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess—feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think.” Harrison Ford was among the Star Wars co-stars with warm words for Fisher. "Carrie was one-of-a-kind…brilliant, original," he said. "Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely." Mark Hamill, at first, could only tweet that he was "devastated." In a follow-up tweet, he praised his "beloved space-twin." "She was OUR Princess, damn it, and the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fiercely independent and ferociously funny, take-charge woman who took our collective breath away." Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, tweeted photos of himself with Fisher over the years. "There are no words for this loss," he wrote. "Carrie was the brightest light in every room she entered. I will miss her dearly."

Photo by Ray Ault A car was suspended from a telephone guy wire Wednesday evening in Mendon, after the driver reacted too quickly to a GPS unit's instructions to turn around. Police say a too-quick reaction to a GPS system's directions sent a Toyota Corolla driven by Nabila Altahan up the wire support of a telephone pole in Mendon across from Sugar & Spice Restaurant on Wednesday evening around 8 p.m. Altahan and her passenger were not injured in the incident, State Police said in a release. Police said that the car left the lane of traffice while westbound on Route 4 in Mendon, when a GPS device gave sudden directions to turn around, because the car had passed its intended destination. Altahan reacted quickly to the directions, left the road and the car ended up suspended on the guy wire. A witness at the minature golf course said she saw the driver jump out of the car as it was suspended from the pole. State police responded, as did Rutland City Fire Department, according to Ray Ault, who happened to be driving past the scene around the timing of the accident.

– Police in Vermont say a car ended up almost vertical when the driver swerved quickly in response to her GPS ordering her to "turn around." The car was suspended almost vertically on guide wires attached to a utility pole (see a photo here) in Mendon on Wednesday night, reports the AP. Police say 30-year-old Nabila Altahan of Dorchester, Mass., was headed west on US Route 4 when she passed her intended destination and reacted quickly to the instructions, leaving the road at a significant enough speed to propel the vehicle up the wires. She wasn't injured. (This driver followed her GPS into a lake.)

Mike Brown stands for a portrait in front of an artist portrayal of Planet Nine. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for The Washington Post) Mike Brown is an astronomer at Caltech who's been instrumental in the discovery of more than 30 dwarf planets and asteroids at the far reaches of our solar system. Most members of the general public probably don't know about all of the planetoids he has found — but many know about the one planet he has killed. When Brown and his team discovered Eris, a dwarf planet more massive than Pluto, it was initially referred to as our solar system's 10th planet. But that ended in 2006 when the International Astronomical Union voted to define "planet" officially for the first time. Eris was out of the running, and Pluto was a casualty — cut from the official planetary roll call. Now Brown and his co-author, Konstantin Batygin, believe they've compiled the best evidence for a true ninth planet to take Pluto's place in the history books. We called Brown up to chat about the latest blow he has dealt to Pluto fans. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Washington Post: How did you get into the planet finding (and planet killing) business? Mike Brown: So, planetary science is something I got into when I was in grad school. I went into astronomy anticipating studying some of the most distant galaxies, but I fell in love with this field because planetary science is just so much more concrete to me. I could actually go outside at night and see this thing I was studying. I can’t do that anymore! But it’s still much more visceral to me than some of the more abstract parts of astronomy. And the reason why I particularly like these objects I study in the outer solar system is that they have grand importance for how our solar system came together, and how our planetary system formed, but it's also just as much about this journey of discovery. It’s exploration. For me, this is what we do as humans. We see our neighborhood out there and explore it. Mike Brown points to the gold ring showing the orbital path of Planet Nine. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for The Washington Post) WP: Tell us more about that "grand importance." What can objects like Eris, Pluto and Planet Nine teach us about the origins of the solar system? MB: The objects in the outer solar system have the unique property of not having been messed with very much. All the planets on the inside of the solar system have been heated, smashed, had their orbits pushed around, and so on. But on the very edge, there’s just not as much out there to mess with things. The sunlight isn’t very hot, and they can preserve these very delicate records of what happened at the beginning of the solar system. Planet Nine is actually an example, and not one I ever thought we’d get. The fact that we can find another planet out there based on the very subtle gravitational influence it has is because everything is so pristine. Astronomers say they have evidence of a ninth planet in our solar system. Here's what they say they know about it. (Joel Achenbach,Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) WP: When you discovered the dwarf planet Eris, at what point did you realize Pluto was in trouble? MB: Oh, within 15 seconds. I was sitting — I'm actually sitting in the same chair right now — I was looking at data, and the only reason it took 15 seconds was that for the first 14 I was thinking, no, this can't be right; there's nothing this bright in the sky. Then I did a quick calculation to see how big this object was and — we didn't know exactly how big it was at the time, but it was clearly the size of Pluto or much bigger. Either this was going to be a new planet, or Pluto was in trouble. WP: A lot of people got excited when New Horizons found that Pluto is probably larger than Eris, for exactly that reason. MB: Eris is significantly more massive — 25 percent more massive. If you take Pluto and you add every single object in the asteroid belt to it, you get to the mass of Eris. Pluto is bigger by volume, but it's just puffed up with extra ice. WP: So size isn't really the thing to get hung up on? MB: It's good for bragging rights, but it doesn't actually mean anything. They're both so much smaller than anything else we'd call a planet. In the end, it doesn't matter that Eris exists. Eris isn't the problem with Pluto. Pluto is the problem with Pluto. WP: What made you take on the title of "Pluto Killer" willingly? Any regrets? MB: It all happened kind of accidentally back in the early days of Twitter. I thought, oh, I should try it, and I needed a name and just thought being Pluto Killer would be funny. [Laughing] Be careful what you use, because that's going to follow you forever. I can say it was not really a calculated statement at the time. WP: Do the Pluto fans ever make it personal? MB: I think that there are people who would still love for Pluto to be a planet, and they wish people who kept reminding them why it’s not would be quiet and go home. Personally, I think it actually matters. I think that for people understanding the solar system as it really is, that's really important. So I have not been willing to back down and give up, and there are certainly people who don't like that. WP: And now you haven't just killed Pluto, you're trying to replace it. MB: My daughter — she's still kind of mad about Pluto being demoted, even though she was barely born at that time — she suggested a few years ago that she'd forgive me if I found a new planet. So I guess I've been working on this for her. An artist's impression of Planet Nine, which could sit at the edge of our solar system. (Caltech/R. Hurt) WP: Speaking of Planet Nine, at what point can we actually say the planet has been "discovered"? MB: In the end, discovery means it’s been seen. Someone has seen it, has seen it move, has seen the orbit. We think we know the orbit, but we don't know where on that orbit the planet is, and we haven't seen it yet. This paper we published is like handing everyone a treasure map. It's going to depend on the luck of the person who points the telescope in the right place first. It's going to take a lot of hard work, sure, but also a lot of luck. It might not be us. WP: But if you do get naming rights, what name are you going to propose for Planet Nine? MB: This would only be the third planetary discovery in modern history [note: not counting Pluto!]. Naming it just seems too big for any one person. It just really seems like too big of a thing for the person who happens to have the luck of pointing the telescope. It would be a huge cultural moment. It shouldn't just be some guy saying, hey, I found it, so we're going to name it George. Which, by the way, is what William Herschel tried to do when he discovered Uranus. Unfortunately for him, we didn't stick with George. Read More: New evidence suggests a ninth planet lurking at the edge of the solar system ‘Have you SEEN Pluto?’ — New Horizons scientist still rallying for planetary status Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade This broken space telescope keeps spotting new planets This suspected supernova is 570 billion times as bright as our sun Why is this famous physicist tweeting rumors about gravitational waves? ||||| Astronomers say they have evidence of a ninth planet in our solar system. Here's what they say they know about it. (Joel Achenbach,Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology announced Wednesday that they have found new evidence of a giant icy planet lurking in the darkness of our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. They are calling it "Planet Nine." Their paper, published in the Astronomical Journal, estimates the planet's mass as five to 10 times that of the Earth. But the authors, astronomers Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin, have not observed the planet directly. Instead, they have inferred its existence from the motion of recently discovered dwarf planets and other small objects in the outer solar system. Those smaller bodies have orbits that appear to be influenced by the gravity of a hidden planet – a "massive perturber." The astronomers suggest it might have been flung into deep space long ago by the gravitational force of Jupiter or Saturn. Telescopes on at least two continents are searching for the object, which on average is 20 times farther away than the eighth planet, Neptune. If "Planet Nine" exists, it's big – about two to four times the diameter of the Earth, which would make it the fifth-largest planet after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. But at such extreme distances, it would reflect so little sunlight that it could evade even the most powerful telescopes. [Q&A: The ‘Pluto Killer’ who thinks he’s found the true ninth planet] Confirmation of its existence would reconfigure the models of the solar system. Pluto, discovered in 1930, spent three-quarters of a century as the iconic ninth planet. Then, a decade ago, Pluto received a controversial demotion, in large part because of Brown. His observations of the outer solar system identified many small worlds there – some close to the size of Pluto – and prompted the International Astronomical Union to reconsider the definition of a planet. The IAU voted to change Pluto's classification to "dwarf planet," a decision mocked repeatedly last summer when NASA's New Horizons probe flew past Pluto and revealed a world with an atmosphere, weather and a volatile and dynamically reworked surface. Brown, who tweets under the handle @plutokiller and who wrote the book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming," said now may be the time to rewrite the textbooks yet again. "My daughter, she's still kind of mad about Pluto being demoted, even though she was barely born at that time," Brown said. "She suggested a few years ago that she'd forgive me if I found a new planet. So I guess I've been working on this for her." [Is there a Planet X, a ‘massive perturber,’ hidden beyond Pluto?] NASA's director of planetary science, Jim Green, cautioned Wednesday that there could be other explanations for the observed motion of the small bodies in the outer solar system. He referenced the famous dictum from Carl Sagan that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." “The Sagan Rule applies. If it's there, find it. I challenge you. Somebody out there oughta find it," Green said. But he said he was personally excited about the new research: "What an era we're in, where we’re discovering new things about our solar system that we never thought possible even a handful of years ago." Brown and Batygin initially set out to prove that Planet Nine didn't exist. Their paper builds on earlier research by two other astronomers that revealed a peculiar clustering of the small, icy objects discovered in the past decade or so in the remote regions of the solar system. [Nah, this possible new ninth planet isn’t Pluto] In 2014, Scott Sheppard of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution of Science and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii published a paper in the journal Nature that discussed the potential existence of a giant planet affecting the orbits of those dwarf worlds. Sheppard and Trujillo noted a similarity in the motion of those bodies when they are closest to the sun. "We thought their idea was crazy," Brown said, explaining that extra planets are always the "go-to suggestion" when astronomers find orbital behavior they can't explain. But he and Batygin struggled to debunk that hypothetical ninth planet. They used mathematical equations and then computer models, ultimately concluding that the best explanation for the smaller objects' clustering was the gravitational effects of something far bigger. Such clustering is similar to what's seen in some asteroids that are about as close to the sun as the Earth. They wind up in stable orbits that keep them far from Earth and free from any significant disturbance by the Earth's gravity. Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin stand for a portrait in front of an artist portrayal of Planet Nine at Caltech (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon for The Washington Post) "Until then, we didn't really believe our results ourselves. It just didn't make sense to us," Brown said. But their modeling showed that a planet with 10 times the mass of Earth would exert an influence over the orbits of the smaller bodies and keep them from coming as close to the sun as they should. It would also slowly twist these orbits by 90 degrees, making them periodically perpendicular to the plane of the solar system. "In the back of my head, I had this nagging memory that someone had found some of these modulating objects and not known what to make of them," Brown said. "And sure enough, these objects do exist. And they were exactly where our theory predicts they should be." That's when the Caltech researchers started to take Planet Nine seriously. "That was the real jaw-dropping moment, when it went from a cute little idea to something that might be for real," he said. [NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone] Sheppard, who co-wrote the paper that Brown and Batygin set out to disprove, says the existence of a hidden planet is still a big unknown. "Until we actually see it for real, it will always be questionable as to whether it exists," he said, cautioning that the latest calculations are based on a relatively small number of known objects and that further observations and detections of perturbed bodies would bolster the hypothesis. Still, Sheppard significantly upped the odds of discovery – from 40 percent before to 60 percent now. “Some people took it seriously, but a lot of people didn’t," he said of his own study's findings. "With this new work, it’s much more rigorous, and people will take it more seriously now.” Brown said he puts the odds of Planet Nine being real as "maybe 90 percent." From the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice, France, planetary scientist Alessandro Morbidelli agreed that the evidence was stronger this time. "I immediately felt that this paper, for the first time, was providing convincing evidence for a new planet in the solar system," said Morbidelli, an expert in these kinds of orbital movements who was not involved in either study. "I don't see any alternative explanation to that offered by Batygin and Brown." "We will find it one day," he added. "The question is when." The past two decades have seen a burst of discoveries as astronomers have scrutinized the light of distant stars and looked for signs of orbiting planets. More than a thousand such planets have been detected through analysis of starlight that has traveled across the vast interstellar distances. Brown and Batygin, however, have been searching closer to home, looking for objects that orbit the sun and remain unseen only because the outer regions of the solar system are exceedingly dark. [Scientists caught a new planet forming for the first time ever] The thought of a hidden planet larger than Earth is intriguing, but for now it's difficult to say too much about the hypothetical conditions there. Brown believes it's probably an icy, rocky world with a small envelope of gas – a planet that could have been the core of a gas giant had it not been ejected into a wonky, highly elliptical orbit. It might not make its closest approach of the sun more than once every 10,000 years, and even then it would remain far beyond the known planets. The situation mimics what happened in the 19th century when careful observation of the seventh planet, Uranus, indicated that there must be another body in far-distant space influencing its orbit. That work led eventually to the discovery of Neptune. It would be difficult to see the ninth planet if it's not at or near its closest approach to the sun. Brown doesn't believe the object is at that point, saying it would have been spotted by now. But he does think that the most powerful telescopes on the planet, if pointed in precisely the right direction, might be able to detect it even when it is most distant from the sun. "We've been looking for it for a while now, but the sky is pretty big," Brown said. "We know its path, but not where it is on that path." He and Batygin hope their paper's publication will infuse the search with new energy. "If other people – better astronomers – get excited about the idea of finding Planet Nine, we could hopefully see it within a couple of years," he said. The two know they may not get credit for that discovery. Until the planet is spotted directly with a telescope, any work surrounding it is theoretical. Brown, Batygin and other scientists who have made the case for Planet Nine's existence are providing treasure maps and clues – but someone else could very well strike gold before they do. If and when it's spotted, Planet Nine would be evaluated by the same criteria that got Pluto demoted. Brown isn't concerned about that. "That's not even a question -- it's definitely a planet," he said. One of the trickiest criteria for planet status, based on the standards set by the International Astronomical Union, is that a planet must "clear the neighborhood" around its orbital zone. It needs to have the gravitational prowess to change the orbits of other objects. "Planet Nine is forcing any objects that cross its orbit to push into these misaligned positions. It fits that concept perfectly," Brown said. The "Pluto killer" added: "Not to mention the fact that it's 5,000 times the mass of Pluto." 1 of 22 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × 22 stunning photos of our solar system and beyond in 2016 View Photos A look at the best photos of space. Caption A look at the best photos of space. This undated photo shows the icy moon Mimas dwarfed by Saturn’s enormous rings. NASA/JPL-CalTech/Space Science Institute via AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Read More: Nah, this possible new ninth planet isn’t Pluto Q&A: The ‘Pluto Killer’ who thinks he’s found the true ninth planet Flashback to 2004: Mike Brown discovers "Sedna" This is what it looks like when a black hole tears a star apart This broken space telescope keeps spotting new planets Why NASA’s top scientist is sure that we’ll find signs of alien life in the next decade For more science news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here. ||||| CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists say they finally have "solid evidence" for Planet X, a true ninth planet on the fringes of our solar system. The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path — distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun. This Planet 9, as the two Caltech researchers call it, hasn't been spotted yet. They base their findings on mathematical and computer modeling, and anticipate its discovery via telescope within five years. The two reported on their research Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal. Once it's detected, the researchers insist there will be no Pluto-style planetary debate. They ought to know; one of them, Mike Brown, is the so-called Pluto killer. ||||| Image copyright SPL Image caption Pluto killer: Prof Mike Brown says he has no regrets about his role in Pluto's demotion The New Horizons flyby has renewed calls for Pluto to be reinstated into the club of planets from which it was unceremoniously dumped in 2006. But Dr Mike Brown of Caltech in Pasadena, who rejoices in the sobriquet of "the man who killed Pluto" told BBC News that those arguing for its reinstatement should stop living in the past. "The people you hear most talking about reinstatement are those who are involved in the (New Horizons) mission. It is emotionally difficult for them," he said. Those involved in the New Horizons mission want Pluto to be a planet because they want to be flying to a planet. They would be far better off embracing the reality that it is not a planet Prof Mike Brown, Caltech "They want Pluto to be a planet because they want to be flying to a planet. They would be far better off embracing the reality that it is not a planet and being excited about the fact that they are going to a new type of object in the outer Solar System." Coup de grace Calls for Pluto to be downgraded intensified after a candidate Kuiper Belt object was discovered in 1992. Some argued that Pluto was simply the first resident of this outer Solar System region to be discovered. But the coup de grace was delivered by Prof Brown with his discovery of the dwarf planet Eris in January 2005. It was like Pluto but more massive. This was one of the finds that eventually led the International Astronomical Union to set up a committee to examine how planets should be defined. Image copyright FRIEDRICH SAURER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption An artist's impression of Eris; its discovery did much to force the issue over Pluto's planet status The IAU was forced to decide in 2006 whether it would admit Eris and other small worlds like Ceres, or boot out Pluto. It was a choice of one or the other - the status quo was not an option. Prof Brown argues that had the IAU had decided to keep Pluto as a planet and enrol Eris, it would eventually find itself having to consider the candidacies of hundreds, possibly thousands of wannabe planets. If outrageously calling myself 'Pluto killer' helps people understand what the solar system is really like then I'm happy with it Dr Mike Brown, Caltech "There is no other way of categorising our Solar System than to describe it as having eight dominant objects in it which are the planets we know. It is really no good keeping Pluto and classifying it as one of the major objects because it is just not," he told BBC News. So how did Prof Brown feel the day he heard that Pluto had been demoted? Was it a moment of joy, or was he wracked with guilt? He told me he felt it was more like a cold-blooded mercy killing necessary for the good of science. "It had been clear to me for some years that Pluto had been wrongly classified. So I was quite happy with the idea (of demoting Pluto) that we could go back and fix those mistakes," Prof Brown explained. No regrets Pluto's demotion continues to be acrimonious. Many scientists say that it should remain a planet, arguing that it looks like a planet, behaves like a planet and has been thought of as a planet for three quarters of a century. I asked Mike Brown whether he had any regrets. "No, no regrets. But I am sad about the way the last decade has gone since Pluto's demotion. I wish that people had embraced Pluto's status as an interesting member of the Kuiper Belt rather than the discussion of whether Pluto was a planet or not," he explained. When I met Mike Brown for the first time at a scientific meeting, there was a gleam in his eye - more mischievous than murderous - when I greeted him by saying: "You're the guy who killed Pluto." When I spoke to him this week, I put it to him that he seems to relish in the title, indeed he uses it himself on his website, and his book is called "How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming". He told me that it was intended as a clever joke but no one really understood it at the time. Image copyright SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption And then there were eight. In 2006 Pluto was expelled from the solar system's exclusive club of planets "I thought it was funny to talk about 'killing Pluto' because Pluto was god of the Underworld, but no one really picked up on that," he explained. "It is a bold claim that grabs attention. And that is important educationally. I want people to understand what the Solar System is really like and if outrageously calling myself 'Pluto killer' helps then I'm happy with it." Hate mail Dr Brown still gets hate mail on Twitter, mostly - he says - from people who had learned that Pluto was a planet at school. But he says that children who have grown up with the idea of Pluto not being a planet are comfortable with the idea. He believes that the controversy will gradually die down. "The Sun and the Moon used to be (thought of as) planets too but then we got over that a long time ago. I think it is far more interesting to be going to this new type of object rather than an odd ball planet on the edge of the Solar System. "I'm hoping that after New Horizons, those discussions will die down and we can begin talking about Pluto and what we have learned about the rest of the Kuiper Belt." Follow Pallab on Twitter

– Pluto is gonna be PO'd. While the dwarf planet tries to fight its way back into the good graces of Those Who Deem What Counts as a Planet, another icy orb even further out may snatch that designation first. Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology say a giant celestial body "lurking at the end of our solar system," as the Washington Post puts it, may actually be a planet, and they're even already calling it "Planet Nine." In their research published in the Astronomical Journal, the sky-watching scientists—one of whom is known as the "Pluto killer" for his role in getting Pluto demoted—think their find is five to 10 times as massive as Earth, and per the AP, almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles past that planet's orbit. Michael "Pluto Killer" Brown and Konstantin Batygin haven't seen the supposed planet directly, but say they can infer the "massive perturber" exists by how the orbits of smaller bodies nearby are affected by its gravitational pull, the Post notes. What's interesting is that Brown and Batygin originally set out to disprove the existence of Planet Nine. "We thought their idea was crazy," Brown says of the scientists who originally floated the idea of a large, hidden planet. But as they did their own research, they soon came to their own conclusion in what Brown calls a "jaw-dropping moment" that Planet Nine could be the real deal. Now they're simply hoping more astronomers join in to actually try to spot the alleged planet—and they're not concerned it will face Pluto's fate. "That's not even a question—it's definitely a planet," Brown says. Not everyone's convinced. "I have seen many, many such claims in my career," a planetary scientist at Colorado's Southwest Research Institute tells Nature. "And all of them have been wrong." (The Washington Post caught up with Brown for a Q&A on the latest Pluto-killing endeavor.)

[ooyala code=”BrOWh4NTpclZ6spl7Lv0IUL4nC19XOSe”] Google UK Marketing Director Dan Cobley briefly spoke with Bloomberg TV today on Apple’s decision to remove Google Maps from iOS 6, but the most intriguing part about his statement concerned how people could continue to use Google Maps after updating. Cobley noted folks on iOS 6 can still “use Google Maps by downloading them or going to the Google Maps website.” This is an interesting comment, however, as there is no Google Maps-related app from Google available in the App Store aside from the Google Earth app. It features 3D layers, including roads, borders, places, photos and more, but it is not an adequate Google Maps replacement. There is also no existing option to download a map from Google Maps in mobile Safari. Therefore, it is currently unclear what Cobley meant by “downloading them.” SearchEngineLand asked Google today when iOS would get a new Google Maps app, though, and if it would feature turn-by-turn navigation. Google replied: We believe Google Maps are the most comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps in the world. Our goal is to make Google Maps available to everyone who wants to use it, regardless of device, browser, or operating system. Those who are missing Google Maps can check out 9to5Mac’s roundup of comparable third-party apps. Related articles ||||| IOS6 maps fail so hard, a Tumblr is born You know you have an issue when someone brews up a Tumblr to mock you: theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com . Carabiners with built-in USB cables The Nomadclip draws tons of praise from its users; Nomad also make lots of little charge-cable gizmos like straps that open into cables and cable/keychains. Our house is like Game of Thrones for working USB cables as we steal one another’s precious wires. (via Canopy) READ THE REST Behold the multi-ax For the dwarf who has everything: the $550 Ti-Klax Ax, whose head incorporates 10 tools: Ulu blade, knife, hammer, cutting/gut hook, hex wrench, 1/4″ bit drive socket, bottle opener, lanyard hole and carabiner. (via Bruce Sterling) READ THE REST Enter now for your chance to win a free iPhone 6S The Apple unveiling has come and gone, and we’ve all gone about our week while visions of rose gold phones danced in our heads. Rather than enter your name at the bottom of the pre-order list, throw your name in the giveaway mix and let us do the work. This is NOT a drill—enter here […] READ THE REST Pandora One: 6-Month Subscription For 20% Off Sometimes your Pandora station knows you better than you know yourself, and sometimes it’s just so very wrong. Get six months of upgraded Pandora One and never be stuck listening to (insert your least favorite song) again. If you’ve never used Pandora before, you’re about discover new artists and songs based on your specific taste […] READ THE REST

– If you're one of the people wailing and gnashing your teeth because Apple removed Google Maps from iOS 6, take hope: Google's making it pretty clear it wants to make a standalone map app available. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Google UK's marketing director said iPhone users "can still use Google Maps by downloading them." Of course, that's off the mark, 9to5 Mac points out—there is currently no such download in the app store. You can get to Google Maps via the browser, but it's not ideal. SearchEngineLand asked Google to clarify. "Our goal is to make Google Maps available to everyone who wants to use it, regardless of device, browser, or operating system," the company replied, without elaborating. That seems cagey, so "stay tuned," writes Danny Sullivan. A dedicated app can't come soon enough for many users. Apple's new maps app is so buggy and confoundable that a Tumblr has cropped up for users to post screenshots of its failure, BoingBoing reports. It's derisively titled, "The Amazing iOS 6 Maps."

Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com The Treasury Department warned this year that the restructuring of a government loan to solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC might be illegal, newly released email excerpts show. Those excerpts and other emails released Friday offer a new picture of how the Obama administration may have brushed aside warnings and, in one instance, a possible conflict of interest as officials pushed to support the solar-panel maker. Solyndra received a $535 million Department of Energy loan guarantee in September 2009, and the loan itself came from a part of the Treasury Department. Early this year, with the company's finances growing shakier, private investors ... ||||| WASHINGTON — A senior Energy Department official pushed hard for the government’s $535 million loan to the now-bankrupt California solar energy company Solyndra even after he had disclosed that his wife’s law firm represented the company and he had promised to recuse himself from matters related to the loan application, according to e-mails provided to Congressional investigators by the administration. The official, Steven J. Spinner, then a senior member of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee oversight office and a 2008 Obama fund-raiser, inquired frequently about the progress of the Solyndra loan, urging the White House budget office to move more quickly on approving it. He also communicated directly with Solyndra officials who were anxiously awaiting word from Washington that their loan would be approved. “Any word on O.M.B.?” he asked another Energy Department loan officer. “I have the O.V.P. and W.H. breathing down my neck on this,” referring to the office of the vice president and the White House. The new e-mails provide further evidence of high-level cheerleading on behalf of Solyndra, a maker of innovative tubular rooftop solar panels that declared bankruptcy last month and laid off 1,100 workers. But even as Solyndra was being promoted as a model of new technology, administration officials were raising concerns about its viability, the legality of a later restructuring and whether the government was sufficiently protected should the business fail. The company was the first recipient of a federally guaranteed loan for alternative energy projects, but now is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether it provided misleading financial information to federal authorities. Congressional investigators are also looking at whether the Obama administration adequately oversaw the granting of the loan. The latest e-mails also show that senior White House and Treasury Department officials voiced concerns at several stages of the ill-fated loan guarantee. At one point, they show that the White House considered making a bigger public event than previously known of the formal approval of the company’s financing package. Top officials, including Rahm Emanuel, then the White House chief of staff, weighed whether President Obama would visit the company to formally announce the loan guarantee, which occurred in September 2009. Ultimately, Mr. Obama did not participate in the event. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did by video teleconference and Energy Secretary Steven Chu attended. Earlier, Carol Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, met with an investor in the company. Still, the e-mails reveal that some White House officials were concerned about the company’s health and the haste with which the loan guarantees were moving, while others were eager to hurry it along to make a public relations splash. They also show that days before the Obama administration gave conditional approval to the loan guarantee, a major investor behind the deal met with Ms. Browner. The investor, David J. Prend, a co-founder of Rockport Capital, a high-technology venture capital firm, met with Ms. Browner in late February 2009 and brought up Solyndra, whose application was then pending. Solyndra’s chief executive at the time, Chris Gronet, then wrote to the White House on March 6 to describe the company’s plans, after being contacted by Mr. Prend and told to follow up with the White House. “We just need to complete the D.O.E. process and raise the equity portion of the project!” Mr. Gronet wrote, referring to the Department of Energy. “The company is ramping up production to meet a very strong demand.” Greg Nelson, a midlevel White House staff member, wrote back to Mr. Gronet on March 8, 2009: “It looks like a great product, and the plans for Fab 2 are inspiring,” referring to the manufacturing plant that the federal government would finance. Within days, the Energy Department’s credit committee voted to approve the conditional $535 million loan. It was publicly announced on March 21. Energy Department documents indicate that Mr. Spinner was a senior member of the team involved in vetting the loans and was instrumental in the Solyndra package. His wife, Allison B. Spinner, is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, Calif., law firm that represents dozens of Silicon Valley technology firms. Through her office, Ms. Spinner declined to comment. Mr. Spinner, who has since left the government, did not respond to a message left at his wife’s office. An Energy Department spokesman, Damien LaVera, said the initial terms of the Solyndra loan guarantee were issued before Mr. Spinner joined the staff. Mr. LaVera added that because Ms. Spinner agreed not to participate in or receive any financial compensation from her law firm for work concerning Solyndra, Mr. Spinner was allowed by government ethics officials to oversee the company’s applications. He did not make decisions on the Solyndra transaction. “As agreed, I will recuse myself from any active participation in any of these applications,” Mr. Spinner wrote in September 2009, after sending dozens of e-mails in August to the head of the Energy Department loan program and other energy and Obama administration officials asking about the Solyndra project. At that time, officials from the White House budget office were complaining of being rushed to approve a deal about which they had significant concerns. Administration officials said Friday that while Mr. Spinner was involved in helping coordinate the final steps necessary to clear up disputes so that the administration could commit the money to Solyndra, it does not mean he violated his agreement not to play a role in formally evaluating the loan application. Despite the eagerness of Mr. Spinner and other Energy Department officials to see the loan approved, other administration officials continued to raise flags about the company’s viability and the completeness of the loan application package. A Treasury Department official objected to the decision by the Energy Department that allowed company investors to get first in line among creditors, instead of the federal government, for part of their investment. “Our legal counsel believes that the statute and the D.O.E. regulations both require that the guaranteed loan should not be subordinate to any loan or other debt obligation,” said an Aug. 17, 2011, e-mail from a Treasury official to Jeffrey D. Zients, a top official at the White House budget office. An administration official said Friday that the Energy Department disagreed and believed that it did have the legal authority to give priority to private investors, to secure additional financing. ||||| Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted. The e-mails, which were reviewed by The Washington Post, show for the first time concerns within the administration about the legality of the Energy Department’s extraordinary efforts to help Solyndra, the California solar company that went bankrupt Aug. 31. The FBI raided Solyndra last month, shortly after it closed its doors. The records provided Friday by a government source also show that an Energy Department stimulus adviser, Steve Spinner, pushed for Solyndra’s loan despite having recused himself because his wife’s law firm did work for the company. Spinner, who left the agency in September 2010, did not respond to requests for comment Friday. The documents offer new evidence of wide disagreement between officials at the Energy Department and officials at the Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget, where questions were raised about the carefulness of the loan vetting process used to select Solyndra and the special help it was given as its finances deteriorated. Energy Department officials continued to make loan payments to the company even after it had defaulted on the terms of its loan. The Solyndra controversy has escalated with each new release of documents to a Republican-led House energy subcommittee investigating the matter. President Obama defended the Energy Department in a news conference Thursday, saying its decisions were made by career professionals. Also Thursday, the head of the embattled loan program announced that he would step down, although Energy Department officials said he was not doing so because of the Solyndra matter. As Republican committee leaders moved to get more information about warnings from Treasury and the OMB, an Energy spokesman, Damien LaVera, said agency officials had listened to Treasury’s advice to consult the Justice Department on the loan restructuring but felt it was appropriate to move forward. “Ultimately, DOE’s determination that the restructuring was legal was made by career lawyers in the loan program based on a careful analysis of the statute,” he said. The e-mails show that Mary Miller, an assistant Treasury secretary, wrote to Jeffrey D. Zients, deputy OMB director, expressing concern. She said that the deal could violate federal law because it put investors’ interests ahead of taxpayers’ and that she had advised that it should be reviewed by the Justice Department. “To our knowledge that never happened,” Miller wrote in a Aug. 17, 2011, memo to the OMB. In February, the restructuring was approved by Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Company executives said they needed a quick cash infusion to save the company, and private investors agreed to contribute $75 million if loan repayment terms were modified. Solyndra ran out of money anyway and sought bankruptcy court protection, leaving 1,100 employees out of work. The loan refinancing now makes it likely that taxpayers will have to make up most of the loss, the e-mails show. The Treasury Department’s general counsel had concluded that the renegotiated loan violated the law because it allowed private investors to be first in line for repayment in case of a default. Those private investors include investment funds linked to George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser. Kaiser has said he had no involvement in the loan. The correspondence also suggests that, at the most senior levels at the White House and down through its ranks, the Obama administration wanted to use the Solyndra loan to highlight progress under the stimulus act. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been investigating the loan, issued a statement Friday saying the correspondence showed a “disturbingly close relationship between President Obama’s West Wing inner circle, campaign donors, and wealthy investors.” “After 8 months of stonewalling by this Administration, today we finally learn one of the reasons why they fought our investigation every step of the way,” the statement said. One participant in the Solyndra effort, according to the e-mails, was Spinner. He pressed for OMB officials to speed up review of the Solyndra loan, writing at one point: “Any word from OMB? I have the OVP [Office of the Vice President] and WH [White House] breathing down my neck on this.” Spinner came from Silicon Valley to serve as a senior adviser on the loan program, and his wife was a lawyer with Wilson Sonsini, the law firm representing Solyndra in its application. Despite an ethics agreement under which he said he would recuse himself from Solyndra’s loan application, correspondence shows that Spinner defended the company, worked to get the president or vice president to visit its factory, and pushed for a final decision on approving the company’s loan. “How [expletive] hard is this?” Spinner wrote to a career staffer on Aug. 28, 2009, asking for answers about final approval from an OMB official. “What is he waiting for? Will we have it by the end of the day?” In an Aug. 19, 2009, e-mail, an aide to then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked Spinner if he could discuss any concerns among the investment community about Solyndra. Spinner dismissed the idea that Solyndra had financial problems. “I haven’t heard anything negative on my side,” he said. A day after a discussion about possible problems at Solyndra, Spinner forwarded to the chief of staff’s aide a list of Solyndra’s main investors and attached a published profile of Kaiser. Spinner is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. A senior administration official declined to comment Friday when asked if Spinner violated his recusal agreement. LaVera, the Energy Department spokesman, said Spinner “was authorized to oversee and monitor the progress of applications, ensure that the program met its deadlines and milestones, and coordinate possible public announcements,” because his wife gave up payments related to loan project clients. “He was not allowed to make decisions on the terms or conditions of any particular loan guarantee or decide whether or not a particular transaction was approved,” LaVera said. “This arrangement was reviewed and approved by the department’s career ethics officer.” The e-mails also added more evidence that venture capitalists had access to senior White House decision makers. David Prend, whose firm Rockport Capital was also a Solyndra investor, wrote a March 2009 e-mail to the White House two weeks before Solyndra won conditional commitment on its loan. Prend thanked Greg Nelson, a White House clean-technology aide, for meeting with him. “It was great to meet you with [then-White House climate czar] Carol Browner last week,” he wrote. “I look forward to working with you to get the message out and to effect real change in the Energy Industry. I will follow up shortly on 2 of the companies we discussed,” mentioning Solyndra as one. Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

– New emails are out in the Solyndra mess, and it's probably not a great day to be a guy named Steve Spinner. He is an Obama-fundraiser-turned-Energy-Department-official who pushed hard for the loan even though he promised to recuse himself—because his wife worked as an attorney for the firm representing Solyndra. The major news services are highlighting his role in making sure the loan happened, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Politico. (He has left his post and now works for a Democratic think tank.) The other main point to emerge: A Treasury official raised a red flag about the loan restructuring that went ignored. Mary Miller advised the Energy Department to get the Justice Department to sign off on the deal because it allowed private investors to be repaid before taxpayers if the company went bust. "To our knowledge, that never happened," Miller wrote. Email snippets from Spinner: “As agreed, I will recuse myself from any active participation in any of these applications.” "Any word from OMB? I have the OVP and WH breathing down my neck on this ...," he wrote to an Energy Department staffer (referring to the Office of Management and Budget, the vice president's office and the White House). "How (expletive) hard is this? What is he waiting for?” Spinner wrote, complaining about an OMB official's apparent reluctance to approve the deal. “Will we have it by end of day? If any risk of not, let me know..."

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama reported assets worth between $1.8 million and $7 million for last year, little changed from their previous year's holdings, according to financial disclosure forms released Thursday. The forms, required by law, permit public officials to list their assets in broad ranges. As a result, a precise net worth is difficult to ascertain. The forms show the largest jointly owned assets by the president and the first lady were Treasury notes worth between $1 million and $5 million. While the value of their assets is certainly higher than that of most Americans, their mix reflects the financial demands of a 50-something couple with two daughters. Their assets include Vanguard retirement funds and college savings plans. Royalties in 2013 from Obama's books, "Dreams From My Father," ''The Audacity of Hope" and "Of Thee I Sing," totaled between $70,000 and $165,000. In 2011, they totaled between $250,000 and $2.1 million. The Obamas also have a 30-year mortgage on their Chicago home worth between $500,000 and $1 million with an interest rate of 5.625 percent. Vice President Joe Biden reported 2013 assets of between $276,000 and $940,000, including a rental property owned jointly with his wife, Jill, in Wilmington, Delaware. Unlike the Obamas, Biden has taken advantage of lower mortgage rates and refinanced his mortgage last year. He listed a 30-year mortgage on his principal residence and his rental property worth between $500,000 and $1 million with an interest rate of 3.375 percent. Biden also reported making $25,000 donations to each of two Pennsylvania anti-domestic violence groups. The $50,000 came from an award Biden received from the Pennsylvania Society, which honored Biden last year with its gold medal for distinguished achievement, Last month, the Obamas released their 2013 tax returns and reported paying $98,169 in taxes on $481,098 in adjusted income. The Bidens reported paying $96,378 in federal taxes last year on adjusted gross income of $407,009. ||||| Advertisement Continue reading the main story The assets of President Obama and his wife, Michelle, were valued as high as $7 million last year, according to a financial disclosure form released by the White House on Thursday. Most of the president’s income came from royalties on his three books and investments made possible by the proceeds. His memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” published in 1995, continued to make the most money for Mr. Obama, generating between $50,001 and $100,000 in royalties, according to the disclosure form. “The Audacity of Hope,” from 2006, earned between $15,001 and $50,000, and “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,” released in 2010, earned between $5,001 and $15,000. Sales from Mr. Obama’s books have decreased steadily every year since he took office as president, according to the disclosure forms the White House has released. Treasury notes held jointly by the president and Mrs. Obama are their most valuable assets, worth between $1 million and $5 million. The forms only require the Obamas to list their assets and income in wide ranges, leaving it difficult to discern the exact amount of the couple’s worth in 2013. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s publishing career earned him considerably less than the president’s totals. “Promises to Keep,” released in 2007, earned less than $201 in royalties last year, according to Mr. Biden’s financial disclosure form, also released on Thursday. The Obamas’ 2013 tax returns, released in April, showed they paid $98,169 in federal taxes on $481,098 in adjusted gross income. The Bidens paid $96,378 in taxes on an adjusted gross income of $407,009. The Obama administration was the first to publish financial disclosure reports online. High-ranking government officials have been have been required to release their financial information since passage of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. “Neither the president nor the vice president have any conflicts of interest, and their reports have been reviewed and certified by the independent Office of Government Ethics,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “We are continuing this administration’s practice of posting these forms online here in the interests of transparency.”

– Barack Obama may not be Mitt-Romney-rich (or even Al-Gore-rich), but he's doing all right for himself. The president's latest financial disclosure forms, released yesterday, reveal that he and Michelle had total assets worth somewhere between $1.8 million and $7 million in 2013, the AP reports. (That's just like 2012.) Most of that is in US Treasury notes, which are worth between $1 million and $5 million. Other assets include Vanguard retirement funds and college saving funds. Current financial disclosure rules only require politicians to list their assets within a broad range, so it's hard to pin down exactly how much Obama has, the New York Times explains. Besides his presidential salary, Obama makes most of his money off royalties from his books, though the market seems to believe he peaked as a writer in the '90s. His latest, 2010's Of Thee I Sing, A Letter to My Daughters, earned between $5,001 and $15,000, compared to $50,001-$100,000 for 1995's Dreams From My Father. But even Of Thee's numbers probably sound good to Joe Biden, who made less than $201 in royalties last year off of his 2007 book Promises to Keep.

Sunbury, PA (17801) Today Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 24F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 24F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. Book says Hillary talks to dead First lady acknowledged 'imaginary' chats. June 22, 1996 Web posted at: 11:55 p.m. EDT WASHINGTON (CNN) -- First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton held imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi as a therapeutic release, according to a new book written by Bob Woodward, says a report in Sunday's edition of The Chicago Sun-Times. The first lady declined a personal adviser's suggestion that she address Jesus Christ, however, because it would be "too personal," according to Woodward's book, "The Choice." The book, which is still to be published, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the Clintons, as well as Bob and Elizabeth Dole. Woodward says the adviser was Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which he describes as a group that studies the psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness. The book portrays Houston as an influential adviser who urged Mrs. Clinton to write her book, "It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us," and in the process "virtually moved into the White House" for days at a time to help with revisions, the Sun-Times reported. Woodward suggests the White House hoped to keep Mrs. Clinton's relationship with Houston and her talks with the dead a secret. "Most people in the White House did not know about Hillary's sessions with Houston. ... To some of the few who did, the meetings could trigger politically damaging comparisons to Nancy Reagan's use of astrology," Woodward wrote. Mrs. Clinton's spokeswoman, Lisa Caputo, is quoted in the Sun-Times as saying the first lady's interest in Houston is no secret. Woodward says anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, joined her in sessions of imaginary conversations. Woodward is an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post. As a reporter, he helped break the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein. Mrs. Clinton herself wrote about her imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt in her June 10 column. She said she talked to Roosevelt about the role of a first lady. "She usually responds by telling me to buck up, or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros," Mrs. Clinton wrote. In the column, she described Houston as an expert on philosophy and mythology. "(Houston) has shared her views with me on everything from the ancient Greeks to the lives of women and children on Bangladesh," she wrote. Mrs. Clinton also acknowledged her relationship with Bateson. "She and I have spent hours discussing the ways in which women in different societies attempt to fulfill their responsibilities to their families, jobs and communities," Mrs. Clinton wrote. Related stories: ||||| Meadville, PA (16335) Today Cloudy with snow showers becoming a steady accumulating snow later on. Low 19F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snow accumulating 1 to 3 inches.. Tonight Cloudy with snow showers becoming a steady accumulating snow later on. Low 19F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snow accumulating 1 to 3 inches. ||||| We've detected that JavaScript is disabled in your browser. Would you like to proceed to legacy Twitter? Yes

– A Pennsylvania middle school teacher is in hot water over his spelling of "Hillary Clinton," and no, Benjamin Attinger didn't forget an "L." The Daily Item reports the Shikellamy Middle School teacher was asked by 6th-grade student Mary Reinard for help in sending a letter to Clinton. Mary wrote the letter, in which she reportedly asked Clinton if she really spoke to the dead (a 1996 book said she had imaginary chats with Eleanor Roosevelt and Gandhi, but not Jesus, as a "therapeutic release," per a CNN article published at the time). She and Attinger put it in an envelope bearing the school's return address, and Attinger addressed it: to "HILIAR RODHAM CLINTON." Mary brought the letter home to stamp and mail, and stepmom Shannon Reinard spotted the "liar" in the name and called the school on Friday. In a voicemail Attinger left the Sunbury mom, he apologized and claimed it was a "kind of a joke ... because I was telling her it (talking to the dead) wasn't true." The family met with Attinger and administrators on Tuesday and say they've accepted his apology and don't want him fired. Mary says she's relieved she didn't mail the letter as it was; she hadn't spotted the typo. "I would have felt embarrassed. I wouldn't have been able to go to school for a week." Now, instead of embarrassed, she's "nervi-cided." That's nervous and excited, because after Chelsea Clinton on Wednesday tweeted she'd be happy to hand-deliver the letter to her mom, she was connected with Shannon Reinard on Twitter and told her they'd be on the lookout for the letter, which had been properly mailed. "Please thank Mary for her courage," Chelsea Clinton wrote, per the Meadville Tribune.

The interview segments on The Colbert Report are usually little more than an excuse for host Stephen Colbert to show off his virtuoso in-character improvisational skills, while the guests play along with varying degrees of success. On Tuesday night’s Report, however, Colbert met his quick-witted match in Pussy Riot, the punk band whose members were imprisoned, then released, for insulting Russian President Vladmir Putin. Their feat was all the more impressive for the fact that they conducted the interview through a translator, which at first seemed like it might become drag on the interview. Instead, the responses from Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina were so sharp, funny, and at times poignant, that the presence of the translator only served to hang the viewer on every word. They talked about their imprisonment and release, took shots at Putin, daring him to put them back in jail, and provided alternately hilarious and sobering commentary on the state of Russia’s anti-gay laws. Sometimes, it seems, humor isn’t lost in translation, it is revealed. Here’s the video of Colbert’s interview with Pussy Riot, in two parts, from Comedy Central: Part Two: Have a tip we should know? [email protected] ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– Two newly released members of Pussy Riot tell the New York Times that they're kicking around the idea of running for political office in Russia. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, currently visiting the US as part of an international tour, also made clear that they have no intentions of tamping down their outspoken ways. “This is certainly not the time for us to be afraid," says Tolokonnikova. "The situation in Russia has gotten so much worse. And if we couldn’t keep quiet about it then, then we certainly won’t keep quiet about it now." Alyokhina adds that the support they received from around the world made them feel free even while imprisoned. “In light of that, it’s kind of silly to talk about having to go through that a second time as something that would instill fear in us.” The interview is fairly routine stuff, but not-so-routine was their visit to the Colbert Report, where Stephen Colbert "met his quick-witted match," observes Mediaite. Sample response when asked about Vladimir Putin: "We have different ideas about a bright future, and we don't want a shirtless man on a horse leading us" into that future. Watch it here.

Lawmakers pass anticipated legislation that reduces possession of small quantities to a petty offence and paves way for medical cannabis industry Jamaican lawmakers have passed an act to decriminalise small amounts of marijuana and establish a licensing agency to regulate a lawful medical cannabis industry on the island. After several hours of debate legislators in the lower house on Tuesday gave final passage to drug law amendments that make possession of up to 2oz (56.6g) of marijuana a petty offence that would not result in a criminal record. Cultivation of five or fewer plants on any premises would be permitted in Jamaica, where the drug has long been culturally entrenched but illegal. The law paves the way for a licensing authority to be set up to deal with regulations on cultivation and distribution of marijuana for medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes. Rastafarians can also legally use marijuana for religious purposes for the first time on the island where the spiritual movement was founded in the 1930s. Tourists prescribed medical marijuana abroad will be able to apply for permits at a cost authorising them to legally buy small amounts of “ganja”, as it is known locally. Peter Bunting, the island’s national security minister, said the Jamaican government did not plan to soften its stance on transnational drug trafficking or cultivation of illegal plots. “The passage of this legislation does not create a free-for-all in the growing, transporting, dealing or exporting of ganja. The security forces will continue to rigorously enforce Jamaican law consistent with our international treaty obligations,” Bunting said in parliament. William Brownfield, the US assistant secretary for counter-narcotics affairs, said before the vote that “Jamaican law is of course Jamaica’s own business and Jamaica’s sovereign decision”. But he noted that the trafficking of marijuana into the US remained illegal. “We expect that Jamaica and all states party to the UN drug conventions will uphold their obligations, including a firm commitment to combating and dismantling criminal organisations involved in drug trafficking,” he said. For decades debate has raged in Jamaica over relaxing laws prohibiting ganja. Previous efforts to decriminalise small amounts have been scuttled because officials feared they would violate international treaties and bring sanctions from Washington. But after changes in other countries, Jamaican officials hope the island could become a player in the nascent medical marijuana industry, health tourism and the development of innovative pot-derived items. Local scientists already have a history of creating marijuana-derived products, such as “Canasol”, which helps relieve pressure in the eyes of glaucoma patients. On Tuesday the Jamaican commerce minister, Anthony Hylton, said the industry held “great potential” for Jamaica, which is labouring under its latest loan programme with the International Monetary Fund. On Tuesday Alaska became the third US state to legalise the recreational use of marijuana for adults. More than 20 US states allow some form of medical marijuana and in 2014 Colorado and Washington legalised personal use. Elsewhere in the Americas, Uruguay in 2014 became the first nation to create a legal marijuana market. In Argentina personal possession was decriminalised under a 2009 supreme court ruling that jail time for small amounts of drugs violated the country’s constitution. ||||| KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Marijuana has been pervasive but illegal in Jamaica for decades, consumed as a medicinal herb, puffed as a sacrament by Rastafarians and sung about in the island's famed reggae music. FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2014 file photo, legalization advocate and reggae legend Bunny Wailer smokes a pipe stuffed with marijuana during a “reasoning” session in a yard in Kingston, Jamaica. Jamaica... (Associated Press) After many years of dialogue about the culturally entrenched drug, and emboldened by changes to drug laws in U.S. states, Jamaica's Parliament on Tuesday night gave final approval to an act decriminalizing small amounts of pot and establishing a licensing agency to regulate a lawful medical marijuana industry. The historic amendments pave the way for a "cannabis licensing authority" to be established to deal with regulating the cultivation and distribution of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes. Both houses of Jamaica's legislature have approved the legislation. And in a victory for religious freedom, adherents of the homegrown Rastafari spiritual movement can now freely use marijuana for sacramental purposes for the first time on the tropical island. The law makes possession of up to 2 ounces of marijuana a petty offense that could result in a ticket but not in a criminal record. Cultivation of five or fewer plants on any premises would be permitted. Tourists who are prescribed medical marijuana abroad will soon be able to apply for permits authorizing them to legally buy small amounts of Jamaican weed, or "ganja" as it is known locally. Peter Bunting, the island's national security minister, said the legislation does not mean Jamaica plans to soften its stance on transnational drug trafficking or cultivation of illegal plots. Jamaica has long been considered the Caribbean's largest supplier of pot to the U.S. and regional islands. "The passage of this legislation does not create a free-for-all in the growing, transporting, dealing or exporting of ganja. The security forces will continue to rigorously enforce Jamaican law consistent with our international treaty obligations," Bunting said in Parliament. William Brownfield, the U.S. assistant secretary for counter-narcotics affairs, told The Associated Press days before the vote that "Jamaican law is of course Jamaica's own business, and Jamaica's sovereign decision." But he noted that the trafficking of marijuana into the U.S. remains against the law. "We expect that Jamaica and all states party to the U.N. Drug Conventions will uphold their obligations, including a firm commitment to combating and dismantling criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking," he told AP in an email. Debate has long raged in Jamaica over relaxing laws prohibiting ganja but previous calls to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana fizzled out because officials feared they would bring sanctions from Washington. Jamaican officials now have high hopes that the island can become a player in the nascent medical marijuana industry, health tourism and the development of innovative pot-derived items. Local scientists already have a history of creating marijuana-derived products, such as "Canasol," which helps relieve pressure in the eyes of glaucoma patients. Commerce Minister Anthony Hylton said the cannabis industry holds "great potential" for Jamaica, where marijuana has long been grown illegally on mountainsides and marshes. The move by Jamaican lawmakers adds to an international trend of easing restrictions on marijuana for medical or personal use. More than 20 U.S. states allow some form of medical marijuana and last year Colorado and Washington legalized personal use. On Tuesday, Alaska became the third U.S. state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults. In the Americas, Uruguay last year became the first nation to create a legal marijuana market. In Argentina, personal possession of marijuana was decriminalized under a 2009 Supreme Court ruling that jail time for small amounts of drugs violates the country's constitution. A law in Chile permits use of medical marijuana. Details of Jamaica's licensing authority and its hoped-for medical marijuana sector will need to be refined in coming months. But for now, Jamaican cannabis crusaders applauded the amendments. "This is a big step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of work to do," said Delano Seiveright, director of the Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Taskforce. ___ David McFadden on Twitter: : http://twitter.com/dmcfadd ||||| Jamaica decriminalises possession of small amounts of marijuana Posted Jamaica's parliament has passed a law decriminalising possession of small amounts of marijuana, known locally as ganja. The drug — also called weed or pot — has long been associated with the Caribbean island country, but it has always remained illegal. National security minister Peter Bunting said the change came after an "elephantine" slog through parliament that took decades. "To describe this Bill's development as elephantine, is to label it in euphemistic terms since the parliamentary deliberations on it commenced as far back as 38 years ago," he said in a statement. "It eliminates an unnecessary source of friction between police and citizens, and ensures that our young people are not gratuitously shackled with criminal records." The new law makes possession of small quantities of pot a non-arrestable offence that can instead result in a fine. It will also permit the use of marijuana for religious, medical, scientific, and therapeutic purposes. The legislation paves the way for the development of a lawful industry for medical ganja and industrial hemp, the minister's statement said. "It is significant because it begins to correct decades of criminalising tens of thousands of Jamaicans, mostly poor young black males, for possession of a little 'spliff'," Mr Bunting said. "This progressive legislation also begins to correct the victimisation of our Rastafarian brethren which started in colonial times and continued after Independence." Rastafarianism, the religion followed by late Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley, includes the ritualistic use of marijuana. AFP Topics: drug-use, drug-offences, drugs-and-substance-abuse, law-crime-and-justice, laws, jamaica

– Alaska yesterday became the third state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, and now a country where you would have thought that was the case already is moving closer to that goal itself. Jamaica's parliament last night approved a law decriminalizing small amounts of pot, the AP reports. People found with 2 ounces or less of marijuana will now simply receive a ticket—not a crime on their record—and cultivation of five plants or fewer is now allowed. A licensing agency was also established to oversee pot cultivation and distribution for medical and scientific efforts. Rastafarians are rejoicing, because the bill also grants them the legal right to use cannabis for sacramental purposes, while tourists who have medical marijuana prescriptions elsewhere can pay for permits to buy a bit of ganja on the island. Jamaica has shied away from decriminalization because it didn't want to risk violating international treaties and provoking US sanctions, the Guardian reports. The process for the new law was described by National Security Minister Peter Bunting as an "elephantine," nearly 40-year effort, ABC Australia reports. "[The law] eliminates an unnecessary source of friction between police and citizens, and ensures that our young people are not gratuitously shackled with criminal records," he said in a statement. Jamaica also hopes to boost its health tourism and medical marijuana industries and make it a major player in the pot product market, the Guardian notes. International exporting, however, remains a no-no. A US counternarcotics official told the AP in an email that "Jamaican law is of course Jamaica's own business," but warned that drug trafficking into the US is still illegal.

UPDATED with new information WASHINGTON -- Rick Santorum was already known as starting from a deficit, delegate-wise, in Ohio. He failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts because he didn't turn in delegate names there. But his delegate troubles go deeper. According to the Ohio Republican Party tonight, the former Pennsylvania U.S. senator filed incomplete delegate slates in six additional Ohio districts. Altogether, this means Santorum, who until this week had a fair lead in polls in the Republican nominating race, could be ineligible for 18 Ohio district delegates. Ohio has 66 delegates total, 63 at stake next Tuesday. The candidate with the most delegates wins. Santorum therefore goes into the Ohio primary election with a 29 percent deficit. What will happen if he wins in a district where he failed to allocate a full slate of three delegates? In the short term, he will be eligible to take only the delegates he has already allocated in that district, the party says. Yet he will have won that district -- so the unallocated delegates will not be awarded to anyone else, either. After all, they did not win them. "On Super Tuesday, if Sen. Santorum were to carry a district where he has not seated a full delegate slate, he will be awarded delegates where he has submitted delegate names," said Ohio Republican Party spokesman Chris Maloney. "And the additional delegates in that district will be unallocated." This almost certainly sets up challenges, if not from Santorum then from political rivals such as Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. The state party says it has not faced this situation before, but it has been reviewing its bylaws and is prepared, if there is a challenge, to convene what it calls a "committee on contests." State Republican Chairman Kevin DeWine would appoint three party members to the committee, and they would make a recommendation to the state party's central committee, which would rule. If Santorum or another candidate did not like the ruling, he could appeal to the Republican National Committee. ABC News' The Note broke the story this evening. The Ohio Republican Party says it discovered Santorum's problem this week. While candidates were supposed to file their delegate slates with the Ohio secretary of state as well as the state party, Santorum only filed his with the secretary of state. The secretary of state, however, has no authority over delegate counts. That office merely needs to make sure that a candidate has qualified with a bare minimum of delegates to get on the ballot. Secretary of State Jon Husted's office did that, according to the state Republican Party. In the three congressional districts where Santorum filed no slates of delegates whatsoever, Husted's office ruled that Santorum would be ineligible to be on the ballot for district-delegate purposes. This has been known and reported for some time. Santorum's name will be on ballots in those districts for purposes of another kind of delegate, however, based on the statewide popular vote. In other words, all other candidates will have their names on the ballot twice -- once for district delegates, once for the state delegates. But there are far fewer state delegates to be won than there are district delegates. The Ohio Republican Party, saying it never got a slate of delegates from the Santorum campaign, got a copy from Husted's office, according to one official. The party needed to review delegate slates in preparation for next week's election. It was only then that it realized there was a problem and began informing all the candidates this week. Ohio has 16 congressional districts, or will for purposes of this election. (It now has 18 but will lose two at the end of 2012.) Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul have slates of three delegates in each. But here is how Santorum's slates shake out: District 1: 3 delegates District 2: 3 delegates District 3: 2 delegates District 4: 1 delegate District 5: 3 delegates District 6: 0 delegates District 7: 3 delegates District 8: 2 delegates District 9: 0 delegates District 10: 1 delegate District 11: 3 delegates District 12: 2 delegates District 13: 0 delegates District 14: 3 delegates District 15: 3 delegates District 16: 1 delegate This could get interesting, and difficult, for Santorum because his failure includes districts where he might otherwise run well. He was already at a 3-delegate deficit, for example, in the Steubenville area (District 13) and another 3-delegate deficit further south on Ohio's eastern border (District 6), areas where steel workers and others might remember him from his days serving Pennsylvania. He has campaigned in that region anyway; Santorum's grandfather was a coal miner, as are some of the area's residents. And he has his other 3-delegate deficit on the West Side of Cleveland and some of its suburbs (District 9). While Romney has been expected to perform better in Northeast Ohio in general, Santorum's social conservative message could appeal to Catholic voters in the western neighborhoods and suburbs. But Santorum also has diminished his chances in socially conservative counties like Allen, Shelby and Auglaze (District 4) and -- this is noteworthy -- Montgomery, Greene and Fayette counties (District 10). The latter two can be considered Mike DeWine country. DeWine got his political start in Greene and still has his home there. As state attorney general, DeWine is Santorum's highest-profile supporter in Ohio. Akron, too (District 16), is now problematic for Santorum. A Santorum spokesman has not returned a message seeking comment. But Santorum is in Lake County tonight, where reporters are certain to ask about this. The campaign of his chief competitor, Mitt Romney, has already pounced on Santorum's apparent error. ||||| ABC News' Michael Falcone reports: UPDATED: COLUMBUS, Ohio - Even if Rick Santorum wins Ohio on Super Tuesday, he won't be able to claim all of its delegates. In fact, he is at risk of forfeiting more than one-quarter of them. In three of the state's 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio's border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state's eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates may also be in jeopardy. Sources say that in six other congressional districts - the third, fourth, eighth, tenth, twelfth and sixteenth - Santorum submitted fewer names than required to be eligible for all three delegates up-for-grabs in each district. That means even if he wins in those places, he might not be able to receive the full contingent of delegates. In the three districts where Santorum did not submit a delegate slate at all, he will not be able to receive any delegates. In the six where he submitted only a partial slate, he is eligible to be awarded only the number of delegates he submitted, assuming he wins a particular district. Chris Maloney, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the leftover delegates will be considered "unbound" and the campaigns will be able to file a petition with the state party to claim them. Once such a petition is filed, Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine is required to impanel a "committee on contests" composed of three members of the Ohio GOP's central committee to sort out the delegate awards. What's clear is that Santorum will be competing in Ohio on Tuesday handicapped by the fact that he is ineligible to receive nine delegates and perhaps as many as nine more, or more than one-quarter of the state's delegates. Worse yet, some of these problem districts are in areas of the state where Santorum is expected to do well. The sixth congressional district, for example, hugs Ohio's eastern border with West Virginia and Pennsylvania - the state Santorum represented in Congress. The thirteenth district, which includes Akron, is nearby. Notably, Santorum plans to spend election night in old steel town of Steubenville, Ohio, located in the sixth district, even though he has no chance of collecting any of the district's three delegates. The bar to file what's known in election parlance as a "full slate of delegates" in each district was not particularly high. Candidates were required to submit the names of three delegates and three alternates per district. According to the Ohio GOP, the Santorum campaign is missing the names of one delegate in the state's third district, two in the fourth, one delegate in the eighth, two delegates in the tenth, one delegate in the twelfth and two delegates in the sixteenth. Santorum's opponents - Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich - each filed full slates in all of Ohio's districts as did two candidates who are no longer in the race, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. In other words, Santorum needed to submit 48 names in order to be eligible to compete for all of state's district delegates outright. Santorum is facing a high-stakes contest with Romney in Ohio. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Friday showed the former Pennsylvania senator with a slim four percentage point lead over Romney in the state, 35 percent to 31 percent. Roughly one-third of likely Republican primary voters said they could still change their mind before Tuesday. And as the Republican nominating contest becomes as much a battle for delegates as it is for momentum, Santorum's difficulties in Ohio offer another window into the organizational challenges his campaign has faced throughout the primary season. Santorum is not on the ballot in Virginia, which also holds a primary on Super Tuesday and where each candidate was required to submit 10,000 signatures, including 400 from each of the state's 11 congressional districts. The eligibility requirements in Ohio were comparatively easier, but at the time Santorum's rivals were putting together their delegate slates in December, Santorum was crisscrossing Iowa in a pickup truck ahead of the caucuses, which he ended up winning by a hair. The deadline for submitting the slates in Ohio was the last week of December. There are a total of 63 delegates up for grabs in Ohio on Tuesday, 48 of them are awarded proportionally based on who wins the popular vote in each Congressional district - three per district - and 15 will be awarded to the candidate who wins a majority of votes in the state. However, if no candidate surpasses 50 percent of the vote, the "at-large" delegates are awarded proportionally to each candidate who received more than 20 percent of the statewide vote. Three additional party leaders will act as unbound delegates at the Republican National Convention, but they will not be awarded on Tuesday. The Romney and Santorum campaigns offered vastly different takes on the delegate situation in Ohio. "The attempt by the establishment to to deceive the voters of Ohio and further their hand-picked candidate will be met with resistance on Tuesday. I want to be clear, Rick Santorum's name will appear on every ballot in the state of Ohio and every vote cast will go towards his At-Large Delegate Allocation," Santorum campaign communications director Hogan Gidley told ABC News. "As it relates to individual Congressional Districts, it's clear we aren't the establishment hand-picked candidate and back in December we were a small effort focused on Iowa. Now that we've won several states Obviously much has changed and we feel confident that we will do well in both the delegate and popular vote count on Tuesday." Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said that the Santorum campaign's shortcomings in the state was a sign of weakness. "Rick Santorum has failed to get on the ballot in Virginia, has failed to file full delegate slates in Tennessee, New Hampshire and Illinois, and has failed to submit enough delegates in several Ohio congressional districts," Williams said in a statement. "The fact that he cannot execute the simple tasks that are required to win the Republican nomination proves that Rick Santorum is incapable of taking on President Obama's formidable political machine."

– Rick Santorum may be at the top of the polls in Ohio, but even if he wins there, he may not win. Because his campaign missed several eligibility deadlines, he could lose up to 18 of the state's 63 available delegates, report the Cleveland Plain Dealer and ABC News. In nine districts, Santorum's campaign filed either incomplete delegate slates or none at all. Even worse, several of those problematic districts are areas where Santorum was expected to perform well. Santorum is not even on the ballot in Virginia, and failed to file full slates in Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Illinois, but the eligibility requirements in Ohio were considered easier. Santorum's campaign said that because he is one of the leading candidates in the GOP primaries, he should—and will—receive the full delegate count he wins on Tuesday, but the Romney campaign disagreed. “The fact that he cannot execute the simple tasks that are required to win the Republican nomination proves that Rick Santorum is incapable of taking on President Obama’s formidable political machine," said the campaign. The state party would have the final say.

Mitt Romney appears to have altered his position on the Obamacare ban on denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board. “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance,” said Romney, according to the paper. “But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says, ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance.” In the same interview with the Dispatch, he also argued that not having insurance does not in itself lead to deaths. “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’” Romney said. “Instead you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” Tune in to ABCNews.com on Thursday for livestreaming coverage of the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate in Danville, Ky. Coverage kicks off with ABC News’ live preview show at noon, and full debate coverage begins at 8 p.m. Romney’s reference to a “choice” with regard to pre-existing conditions and his inclusion of giving opportunity to people “who are currently uninsured” would seem to contradict earlier statements from Romney and his own website, which suggest no ban on pre-existing conditions should be extended for people who don’t currently have insurance. A full transcript of the interview has not yet been posted by the Dispatch. The Romney campaign has not responded to a request for comment. Read more about Romney and pre-existing conditions. There were approximately 49 million non-elderly uninsured Americans in 2010, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report that utilized U.S. Census data. More than 70 percent of those have gone without insurance for a year or more, according to the report. Here’s what it says on Mitt Romney’s website about pre-existing conditions: “Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.” That has been taken to suggest that he favors a ban on insurance companies discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions, but not for people who are currently uninsured. “Continuous coverage” generally means three months, so presumably a three-month gap is allowed. Romney has backed this assessment up, most notably in an interview during the GOP primary this spring with Jay Leno, when Romney was careful to stipulate that someone would need to have had insurance. “People who have done their best to be insured are going to be covered,” said Romney. “If they are 45 years old, and they show up and say, ‘I want insurance because I have heart disease,’ it’s like, ‘Hey, guys. We can’t play the game like that,’” Romney told Jay Leno during a March appearance on the “Tonight Show.” ”You’ve got to get insurance when you are well, and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered. “People who have been continuously insured, let’s say someone’s had a job for a while and been insured, then they get real sick and they happen to lose a job, or change jobs, they find, ‘Gosh, I got a pre-existing condition. I can’t get insured,’ I’d say no, no, no. People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance,” he said. In the presidential debate last week, Romney said, “I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions,” but he did not elaborate. ||||| Romney defends plan to repeal Obama healthcare law By Elise Viebeck - Repealing President Obama’s healthcare law would not keep people from getting insurance or quality care, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday. In an interview with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, Romney defended his plans to repeal the healthcare law, saying the uninsured could still visit an emergency room and that people with preexisting conditions could keep their insurance. “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” Romney said. “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital,” he said. “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance,” Romney added. The comment drew criticism from the Obama campaign, which said it showed Romney did not understand the struggles of middle-class families that lack insurance. “If he did, he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. Healthcare is a challenging issue for Romney, who backed an overhaul of the healthcare laws in Massachusetts as that state's governor that President Obama has said served as a basis for his own federal healthcare law. Romney embraces the Massachusetts law, but argues that different states should be free to set up their own healthcare laws. He has described "ObamaCare" as a federal takeover of state healthcare law. In the interview in Columbus, Romney also said he would ensure people with preexisting conditions could not be blocked from getting health insurance as long as they previously had health insurance. But he suggested insurance companies would not be obliged to cover people with preexisting conditions who had never had been insured. “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance," Romney told the Columbus newspaper. "But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance." The comments come as Romney has sought to edge toward the political center with some of his remarks. After an impressive debate performance last week, polls have shown Romney edging into a lead over Obama, and the two men are intensely fighting over centrist, Independent voters. Obama's healthcare law remains unpopular in polls, and conservatives argue it will raise taxes and limit growth while adding to the deficit. Obama and the law's supporters argue it will lower government spending and national healthcare costs, in part by requiring younger, healthier people to purchase insurance. Federal law requires that virtually every U.S. hospital treat anyone who arrives needing emergency care, a guarantee passed in 1986 as part of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The law was designed to prevent the situation Romney described on Wednesday — uninsured Americans dying in their homes for lack of care — but it also creates a “free-rider” problem by burdening hospitals with costs they pass to other patients. Smith cited a report by the liberal advocacy group Families USA, which supports the healthcare law, that found 26,000 Americans die every year because of a lack of health coverage. In 2009, nonpartisan researchers at Harvard Medical School pegged the number of U.S. deaths related to lack of coverage closer to 45,000 annually. This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. ||||| A growing collection of websites selected by the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) of the National Library of Medicine, which focuses on the discussions surrounding possible changes, repeal, or reform of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Enacted in 2010, The Affordable Care Act has implications both for coverage and utilization of health care as well as the relationship of public health to the general health care system. With a change in the political administration in the White House and the Senate, a priority for the administration became a focus for the government. The websites examined in this collection will reflect the debates taking place in the government, and will have been influential in influencing the eventual decisions reached by the Government. Website captures began in late 2016, with the aim of capturing discussions of repeal/replace/revise conversations that will occur over the next following 4 years. The collection will focus on data, analyses, and proposed changes by highlighting websites, blogs, collections of white papers, reports, and news items from high-value analytic and policy sources. These sources reflect all political and value perspectives, to give the most concise picture of the debate. ||||| L iberal critics of Mitt Romney's plan to repeal ObamaCare argue that a President Romney would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance they would otherwise have under Obama's reform law. In a meeting with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board this week, Romney sought to downplay the harm that such an insurance-revoking plan would cause. "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance," Romney said, repeating a claim he made last month on 60 Minutes. Is Romney right, or is he underestimating the dangers faced by the nation's tens of millions of uninsured Americans? Here, a brief guide: First off: What exactly did Romney say? He told the newspaper's editors that even those without health-insurance coverage have a safety net, because federal law prohibits hospitals from turning even uninsured people away when they show up to an emergency room. "We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack,'" Romney said. "No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital." Is Romney right? About the law, yes, he is, says Rebecca Leber at Think Progress. Emergency rooms really do serve as "a place of last resort" for the uninsured. Still, an analysis released in 2009 by Harvard Medical School researchers found that 45,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance. That's one person every 12 minutes. Other studies have put the figure lower — the Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that about 18,000 people die annually because they're uninsured. Indeed, the consensus among researchers is that you run a greater risk of dying if you're not insured. Why do uninsured Americans die if hospitals must admit them? Hospitals have to treat them in the emergency room, but many patients don't get there until it's too late. And patients with chronic conditions often can't afford care they need on a regular basis — basic services that emergency rooms aren't set up to provide. "For any doctor," Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the 2009 study, told Reuters, "it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent." Why is Romney talking about this at all? He's stuck with "defending his emergency-room plan as a tenable solution," says Steve Benen at MSNBC, because he knows full well his proposal to gut ObamaCare will strand tens of millions of Americans with no coverage. "The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage," and forcing hospitals and taxpayers to foot the bill for free emergency room care is "the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised." But Romney isn't talking about returning to the pre-ObamaCare status quo, says John Hinderaker at Power Line. He wants to help get more people covered by doing things like "banning discrimination" against people with pre-existing conditions. So disagree with him if you must, but don't distort his plans. Sources: Columbus Dispatch, MSNBC, PowerLine, Reuters, Think Progress Read more political coverage at The Week's 2012 Election Center. ||||| Politics Romney: ‘We Don’t Have People Who Die Because They Don’t Have Insurance’ Mitt Romney doubled down on his suggestion that uninsured Americans can find the care they need in emergency rooms, telling The Dispatch that people will always receive the treatment they need, and do not die or suffer because they can not pay for care. He pointed to federal law that requires hospitals to admit emergency patients, repeating his advice that patients rely on the most expensive form of care reserved strictly for emergencies. Romney told the Columbus Dispatch: “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal. “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs. Emergency rooms serve as a place of last resort, but 45,000 Americans still die every year because they lack health insurance, or one every 12 minutes. Uninsured adults under age 65 are also at a 40 percent higher death risk. Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care. Romney’s health care proposal would leave 72 million Americans without health insurance and wouldn’t provide all uninsured Americans with a stable source of insurance. ||||| Supporters of the health care reform hold signs outside a health care town hall meeting with U.S. congressman Kendrick Meeks in Miami, Florida September 3, 2009. WASHINGTON Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday. "We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters. Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage. The findings come amid a fierce debate over Democrats' efforts to reform the nation's $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry by expanding coverage and reducing healthcare costs. President Barack Obama's has made the overhaul a top domestic policy priority, but his plan has been besieged by critics and slowed by intense political battles in Congress, with the insurance and healthcare industries fighting some parts of the plan. The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or "single-payer" health insurance. An similar study in 1993 found those without insurance had a 25 percent greater risk of death, according to the Harvard group. The Institute of Medicine later used that data in its 2002 estimate showing about 18,000 people a year died because they lacked coverage. Part of the increased risk now is due to the growing ranks of the uninsured, Himmelstein said. Roughly 46.3 million people in the United States lacked coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, up from 45.7 million in 2007. Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get good care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back across the country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he said. Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that without proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from complications associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Some critics called the study flawed. The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank that backs a free-market approach to health care, said researchers overstated the death risk and did not track how long subjects were uninsured. Woolhandler said that while Physicians for a National Health Program supports government-backed coverage, the Harvard study's six researchers closely followed the methodology used in the 1993 study conducted by researchers in the federal government as well as the University of Rochester in New York. The Harvard researchers analyzed data on about 9,000 patients tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics through the year 2000. They excluded older Americans because those aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S. Medicare insurance program. "For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Editing by Xavier Briand)

– A comment from Mitt Romney on health insurance is making waves, especially among critics on the left. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch editorial board (in all-important Ohio), Romney sought to convey the notion that sick people wouldn't be left high and dry with the repeal of ObamaCare. His quote: “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack. No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government, or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” It's that last part getting the most attention: White House: If Romney understood middle-class struggles, "he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage." See the Hill for more on that. ThinkProgress: Emergency rooms don't cut it as a last resort. "Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care," writes Rebecca Leber. She cites a study putting the yearly death toll as a result at 45,000. The Note blog at ABC News thinks Romney might have actually shifted his position on pre-existing conditions in the interview, and The Week has more background and context on Romney's statements.

Dartmouth College accused 64 students of cheating in a sports ethics class last semester, the latest in a string of cases of academic dishonesty involving athletes at elite U.S. colleges. Students used a hand-held device known as a clicker to answer questions for classmates who were absent, according to Randall Balmer, who teaches the class, “Sports, Ethics and Religion.” “I feel pretty burned by the whole thing,” Balmer, chairman of Dartmouth’s religion department, said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never faced anything on this scale before.” The class was designed in part to appeal to athletes at Dartmouth, Balmer said. He said he discovered 43 of the almost 300 students in the class were cheating and reported them to Dartmouth’s judicial board as a violation of the school’s honor code. Another 21 then came forward and turned themselves in to the school, he said. An appeal process is under way and should be finished by the end of this month to determine how many students will be suspended, said Diana Lawrence, a spokeswoman for the college in Hanover, New Hampshire. The disciplinary action was reported earlier by the local Valley News newspaper. Harvard University investigated 125 students in 2012 for inappropriate collaboration on a take-home final exam in a U.S. government course. Half were told to withdraw for a year, including the senior co-captains of the basketball team, while the rest were given probation. Paper Classes The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last year detailed an academic fraud that spanned 18 years and made it easier for student athletes to maintain eligibility to play. An independent investigation found that 3,100 students took so-called paper classes with no faculty involvement or class attendance. Aine Donovan, director of Dartmouth’s ethics institute, said more students are cheating at colleges, reflecting a culture where students are “raised with the notion that they are the best, not with the notions of integrity, responsibility and self-sacrifice.” “It’s a difficult notion for an 18-year-old -- self-regulation,” Donovan said. “Our society doesn’t encourage that anymore.” To contact the reporter on this story: Michael McDonald in Boston at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Hechinger at [email protected] Stephen West ||||| According to the Valley News, 64 Dartmouth students have been charged with honor code violations after the school discovered widespread cheating in an ethics course designed to help struggling student-athletes. Almost a quarter of those enrolled in "Sports, Ethics and Religion" this fall are said to have participated in the scheme, which involved students answering questions for absent classmates on electronic devices designed to record attendance. "I feel pretty burned by the whole thing," religion professor Randall Balmer told Bloomberg. "I've never faced anything on this scale before." Rather than flunk the accused students, Balmer ultimately decided dropping their scores by a letter grade was the right thing to do, not that any of them would know it. ||||| Department of Religion Chairman Randall Balmer, who in November accused some of his students of misrepresenting their class attendance, said that “with a few exceptions, most of the students were suspended for a term.” The college’s head of judicial affairs, Leigh Remy, declined to comment, though spokeswoman Diana Lawrence confirmed the number of students facing possible sanctions. Lawrence said that the college would not make detailed comments on the judicial proceedings until the appeals process ends in mid-January. According to Balmer, in late October, students who failed to attend class passed off handheld devices known as “clickers” to classmates. Those students then used the gadgets to answer questions on the absent students’ behalf to make it appear as though they were present in class, Balmer said. Though Balmer said that 43 students — less than the total number of students facing sanctions — handed off their clickers to their peers, some others confessed to him that they had helped their friends cheat. The course in question was originally intended to help student-athletes, who sometimes had trouble with the coursework at Dartmouth, Balmer said. After a popular first run last year, the fall term’s class swelled to more than 280 students, and attendance and cheating became a problem. Balmer left Columbia University to teach at Dartmouth in 2012. He also contributes regular essays to the Valley News’ Perspectives section. In the Dec. 7 Valley News piece “Whatever Happened to Honor at College?”, Balmer argued that the college’s 53-year-old academic honor principle was out of touch with the mores of current-day society, where he said personal advancement outranks abstract moral principles. “The whole affair is sad and regrettable,” he wrote. “Dozens of students will very likely have a stain on their college transcripts. A level of trust between professor and student, so necessary for effective teaching and learning, has been broken. Dartmouth’s reputation as a first-class educational institution (which it is) has taken a hit, at least in the short term.” He said that he had first sought to resolve the matter outside of the college judicial process, but that academic regulations forced him to report the students. Dartmouth’s student handbook outlines the potential sanctions a student faces for honor code violations. “Given the fundamental nature of the Academic Honor Principle in an academic community, students should expect to be suspended if they engage in acts of academic dishonesty,” it says. “Any student who submits work which is not his or her own, or commits other acts of academic dishonesty, violates the purposes of the College and is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including suspension or separation.” Additionally, faculty members “may reserve the right to fail the student for the exercise, the course, or both.” Balmer said in an email Wednesday night that “after many sleepless nights,” he had decided to drop the marks of the accused students by a full letter grade, rather than fail them. Dartmouth runs on 10-week terms, and as part of the “D-Plan” schedule, students may be away from campus during the year for internships, foreign study programs or other reasons. The college judicial affairs website says that suspended students may not participate in any of Dartmouth’s academic or extracurricular activities, nor may they obtain course credits elsewhere during their punishment. A spokesman for the athletic department could not be reached for comment Wednesday on whether sports players could see additional sanctions from their coaches. Rob Wolfe can be reached at [email protected] or 603-727-3242.

– One might expect students taking a class called "Sports, Ethics, and Religion" to know better, but Dartmouth College says that it's uncovered widespread cheating in a class with that title, reports Bloomberg. "I feel pretty burned by the whole thing," says class professor Randall Balmer, who says he found 43 kids were using a clicker to answer questions for absent students. "I’ve never faced anything on this scale before." After he made the bust, and reported it as an honor code violation, another 21 students came forward. The class was aimed at jocks, and many of those accused are student athletes, notes the Valley News. Laments Dartmouth's ethics institute director, the current generation was "raised with the notion that they are the best, not with the notions of integrity, responsibility, and self-sacrifice. It’s a difficult notion for an 18-year-old—self-regulation." Balmer opted to drop students by a letter grade rather than flunk them, in what Gawker says is "the right thing to do, not that any of them would know it."

Video Of Chinese Bank Employees Being Spanked Prompts Suspensions The president of a regional bank in China has been suspended after a video was circulated in which an official at a special training session went down a row of eight employees to deliver a hard spanking as punishment for poor performance. A second executive has also reportedly been suspended. In theory, the incident might sound like a parody of a corporate motivational session. But as the video shows, the reality was severe: a man wielding a section of wood repeatedly went up and down a row of male and female bank employees, striking them across their backsides for "not exceeding themselves," as China's People's Daily wrote in its translation. As the South China Morning Post reports, many people have "criticized the bank executives for the brutal punishment, which they said had violated the rights of employees." The punishment was carried out on an auditorium stage Saturday, in full view of around 200 fellow employees of the Rural Commercial Bank in Shanxi province. A video that seems to have been recorded by an audience member soon went viral, depicting the trainer making at least four trips up and down the row of employees and drawing clearly pained reactions from the participants. People's Daily provides these details about the bank's explanation: "The announcement made by the Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives said that this was a 'Breakthrough in Performance' training session for their employees. The trainers were hired from 'Hongfeng Leadership Academy' in Shanghai. One of the trainers graded their performance on June 18, and punished those who ranked bottom by spanking and cutting hair. "The bank said it has stopped the training session, asked the Leadership Academy and its trainer to openly apologize, and suspended several managing personnels from the branch. Economic compensation is in discussion for the spanked employees, said the announcement." According to the South China Morning Post, the man identified as the wood-wielding trainer has apologized for his actions. Citing the Beijing Times, the Morning Post adds that the trainer, Jiang Yang, explained that he sees spanking as "one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness" — and that he acknowledges that not everyone would agree. ||||| Two executives from a bank in northwestern China have been suspended from work after a video was circulated on the internet showing staff getting publicly spanked for performing poorly in a training class. The video, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed eight employees in yellow uniforms standing on a platform when a man with microphone asked why they had ranked last in the day’s training. The eight, including four women, listed reasons such as “failing to make a personal breakthrough” and “inadequate team cohesiveness”. With a thick stick in his hand, the man said “get your butts ready” and began to spank each of the eight in turn in front of other trainees. Outcry after film shows motorist in Beijing repeatedly slapping tricycle delivery man for scratching his car After three rounds, a woman on the far right tried to cover her hip and the man berated her, saying, “take off your hand!” The 75-second video emerged online on Monday and quickly triggered heated discussion online. Many criticised the bank executives for the brutal punishment, which they said had violated the rights of employees. Officials from Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union later confirmed to the news website Chinanews.com that the video was taken on Saturday when the Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank carried out performance training for its 216 staff. An unnamed member of staff told the Beijing Times that the spanking was only a part of the training that day and as another punishment 16 employees were forced to have their heads shaved. The newspaper quoted another unnamed female employee as saying that the spanking was a part of the training and the man with the stick was a trainer rather than a bank executive as some internet users claimed. Jiang Yang, the trainer from the Shanghai Hongfeng Leadership Academy who was filmed in the video, later issued a public apology online for his behaviour. He said physical spanking was “one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness”, although he admitted his training methods may not be acceptable to everybody. Jiang later told the Beijing Times the aim of the training was to improve students’ way of thinking and to encourage them to be more competitive. Pope says it’s OK to spank your children Unnamed sources told the newspaper Jiang charges 100,000 yuan (HK$120,000) a day to carry out training classes. The Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union, which oversees the rural commercial bank, said the two executives, including the president of the Zhangze bank, were suspended for failing to assess the training and a special task force had been set up to investigate, the newspaper said. The bank would also help employees seek compensation from the trainer, it said.

– A disturbing video getting attention on social media shows a row of eight Chinese bank employees on a stage being told to "get their butts ready" then spanked—hard—in front of their colleagues for "not exceeding themselves." The employees had been in a "Breakthrough in Performance" training class, and a man with a microphone asked them each to explain why they ranked lowest in the class, the South China Morning Post reports. After they all gave reasons like "failing to make a personal breakthrough," he whacked each of them on the behind with a thick stick four times. (After the third time, when one woman tried to cover herself with her hands, he yelled, "Take off your hand!") After the 75-second video, taken by someone in the audience, appeared online Monday and went viral, the president and another executive from the bank were suspended. Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union confirmed the video was taken during Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank's training on Saturday. NPR, citing People's Daily, says at least 200 people were in the audience. An anonymous staff member says that another punishment involved 16 employees whose heads were forcibly shaved. The man doing the spanking was a trainer, not a bank executive, and reportedly charges more than $15,000 per day for his classes. He has publicly apologized, though he insists spanking is "one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness."

Several hundred Pacific walrus are hauled out on a barrier island near the village of Point Lay, on the Chukchi Sea coast. Listen now It’s the earliest such haul out since the walrus first started showing up in 2007 — and may be linked to this year’s rapidly retreating Arctic sea ice. Andrea Medeiros is a spokesperson with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She said during this time of year, adult female and young walrus in the region usually haul out on sea ice to rest while feeding. “When that ice retreats to the deeper water, they can’t do that,” Medeiros said. “They need a place to rest after they’ve fed, so they will travel to the shore and haul out there to rest in between feeding periods.” This year, Medeiros said sea ice in the Chukchi Sea has retreated to the deep water beyond the continental shelf earlier than in the past. The walrus started gathering on the barrier island near Point Lay around August 3. As many as 40,000 animals have hauled out on the narrow islands in recent years, putting them at risk for overcrowding. As in the past, Fish and Wildlife and the Village of Point Lay are asking people to stay away from the animals, to avoid causing stampedes. Fish and Wildlife is currently deciding whether to list the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act. Environmental groups argue that the loss of sea ice threatens to drive the animals toward extinction. Correction: This story previously misspelled Andrea Medeiros’ last name as Madieros. ||||| Several hundred Pacific walruses have started to gather on an island off the northwest coast of Alaska — the earliest the animals have been observed leaving the water for the annual ritual, according to federal wildlife officials. The walruses started appearing on a barrier island near the village of Point Lay during the first week of August. "This is the earliest date yet for the haulout to form," the Alaska Division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a release. Previously, the earliest haulout date on record was Aug. 17, back in 2011, said Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros. The gathering of the enormous animals near Alaska's Chukchi Sea coastline is the result of retreating sea ice in recent years. Walruses typically use floating ice as platforms to rest between dives to forage for food, but summer and fall melt has forced them ashore. The animals haul out about two weeks after the continental sea ice recedes. "This year, sea ice has retreated beyond the continental shelf earlier than in previous years," Medeiros said. Arctic sea ice extent for July 2017 averaged 3.17 million square miles, the fifth-lowest July in a satellite record spanning nearly four decades, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "It will be important to monitor August 2017, as weather conditions and storm events during this month have been closely related to the seasonal minimum sea ice extent in the recent years," the data center said in an Aug. 3 report. A herd of 6,000 Pacific walruses hauled out on the same barrier island last year, but at a much later-than-average date of Oct. 7. But after a weekend there, the herd appeared to have moved on, with officials reporting that the animals were likely headed south to coastal haulouts in Chukotka, Russia. The big Point Lay gatherings have happened almost every fall since 2007, a year notable for sea ice retreat. As with most recent years, the villagers of Point Lay are expressing concern about the potential disturbance to the animals. The Fish and Wildlife Service relayed statements from Leo Ferreira III, the tribal council president of the Native Village of Point Lay, addressing the need to protect the walruses from disturbances by aircraft and boats. The village does not have the infrastructure to support tourists, Ferreira said. ||||| ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Hundreds of Pacific walruses came ashore to a barrier island on Alaska's northwest coast, the earliest appearance of the animals in a phenomenon tied to climate warming and diminished Arctic Ocean sea ice. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that several hundred walruses were spotted during the first week of August near the village of Point Lay on the Chukchi Sea. Last week, the number had grown to 2,000, said spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros in an email response to questions. It's the earliest date for the arrival, known as a "haulout," to form, the agency said. Walruses from now until early fall are expected to use the barrier island and other locations along the coast as resting areas as they move to and from feeding areas. Walrus dive hundreds of feet to eat clams on the ocean bottom, but they cannot swim indefinitely. While adult females dive, sea ice gives calves a safe resting place, with plenty of space to see the approach of predators such as polar bears. In winter, the southern edge of sea ice is in the Bering Sea. As temperatures warm, ice recedes north all the way through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea. Walruses stay on the edge, and they use the ice as a sort of conveyor belt that continually moves over new ocean bottom. With global warming, however, sea ice in recent years has melted much farther north, beyond the shallow continental shelf, over water more than 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) deep. That's far too deep for walruses to reach the ocean bottom. Instead of staying on sea ice over the deep water, walruses have come to shore, sometimes gathering in herds of more than 35,000. Walruses packed shoulder to shoulder in large numbers face the threat of a stampede. If a herd is startled by a polar bear, hunter, airplane or boat, the animals rush to the safety of the ocean, often crushing smaller walruses. Observers from Point Lay told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service they already have seen three to five dead animals. "It was kind of heartbreaking to see that these animals were being wasted this way, in this manner," said Leo Ferreira III, tribal president, in an interview taped by the agency. "We're trying to protect the walruses from disturbance by aircraft, boat, and ship activity in our area." The village and the agency actively discourage people flying to the village to photograph the walruses. Pacific walruses are hunted for food by residents of Point Lay and other villages.

– Sign of the times? Several hundred Pacific walruses began amassing on an island off Alaska’s northwest coast in the first week of August in what wildlife officials say is the earliest date yet for their annual "haulout." The culprit appears to be shrinking Arctic ice. Walruses tend to head ashore two weeks after warm temperatures cause sea ice to recede too far north for them in the Chukchi Sea. This year, it happened earlier than ever. Walruses typically use sea ice for protection and as a home base, particularly for juveniles, while adults dive to the ocean floor for food. But "when that ice retreats to the deeper water, they can't do that," Fish and Wildlife rep Andrea Medeiros tells Alaska Public Media. For the past several years, a barrier island near Point Lay has served as an alternative home base. Last year, thousands of walruses had arrived there by Oct. 7. This year, however, the haulout was observed beginning on Aug. 3—a full two weeks ahead of the next earliest date observed back in 2011, reports Alaska Dispatch News. Medeiros tells the AP that last week some 2,000 walruses were observed on the island, where they're expected to stay until the fall. Hoping to head north to observe the animals? Officials would rather you not. Not only is it illegal to disturb them, the walruses are known to stampede to the water in response to plane and boat activity in the area, which spells bad news for juvenile walruses.

"NO MORE!!" exclaims Heather McGill, the wife of Alabama State Senator Shadrack McGill (R-Woodville), in a fire-and-brimstone Facebook post aimed at the many women who have apparently been using the social networking site to send her husband private photos and invite him "to explore." "I have been silent for long enough!!" McGill writes, claiming that "multiple" women, some of whom "may not even be real" have been soliciting her spouse through Facebook while children are present. "It is a shame that people are so heartless that they would try to split up families," McGill, or a person claiming to be her, says in the warning shot posted on her husband's official Facebook page last night. "We have children that look at our face books from time to time! Shame on you! You know who you are." McGill, who says she is "blessed to be the wife of a God fearing, hard working, ministry minded, loving father and husband," insists it is "not just my right but my duty to lovingly serve" Shadrack "by protecting him." She goes on to threaten to expose the Facebook succubi by publicly naming them "before we 'unfriend' you." Her post continues: I love my husband and my children too much to sit here and allow this to go on and will not give the enemy anymore foothold into my family! This is the "behind the scenes" garbage that political life brings. I will not turn a blind eye to it any longer! I remember years ago my Pastors wife standing before the congregation preaching to the young women about their dress which had gotten out of hand and she boldly stood before them and spoke the truth. I boldly stand before you today and declare that I will stand beside my husband, support him, love him, and protect him at ALL cost!!!! Those of you who know who you are consider yourself warned! Those of you who understand my heart, thank you for listening and may God bless your families! McGill hopes that by going viral, her post "strengthens marriages and families across this district, our state, and our country." State Sen. McGill was last in the news back in February for comparing the aborting of a fetus to the destruction of an eagle egg. UPDATE: In a follow-up interview just posted to AL.com, Sen. McGill claims his wife's Facebook post was the end result of frustrations that have "built up" since having allegedly unsolicited strippers show up at their house during his last campaign. "As we get into the campaign season, we have concern whether we'll have to deal with that kind of thing again," McGill told the news site. He also claims that, since he took office, his Facebook page has "hijacked" a couple of times by women who have "sent me pictures of themselves half-naked, saying, 'I had a great time last night with Shadrack McGill.'" In the comments of his wife's post, McGill thanked his wife for her support. "Thank you my dear loving help mate for doing some much needed house keeping on our face book page," the lawmaker wrote. "You are a wise woman and If you were running for my senate seat, I would vote for you babe." [photo via Facebook] ||||| A Facebook post by the wife of Alabama Sen. Shadrack McGill on Monday night was prompted by incidents during McGill's last legislative campaign, including one in which two strippers showed up at his home in the middle of the night, McGill told AL.com Tuesday. "As we get into the campaign season, we have concern whether we'll have to deal with that kind of thing again," Sen. McGill told AL.com Tuesday. On Monday, McGill's wife, Heather, wrote in a Facebook post that women had used the social network to approach her husband "multiple times" since his election in 2010, and warned those women to stay away, or face public scorn. She asked that women stop sending pictures to her husband's account. "Next time everyone will know who you are!!" McGill wrote. "For I will publicly share your name before we 'unfriend' you." Sen. McGill, R-Woodville, said Tuesday that her wife's frustrations "kind of built up from even the campaign," in 2010, when McGill ran against and defeated then-Sen. Lowell Barron, D-Fyffe. "During the campaign, we had two strippers come to my house at 1 o'clock in the morning," Sen. McGill said. He said the women were beating on the door. "Me and my wife both got up to address the situation. They did inform me that they were strippers at a particular club in Huntsville," Sen. McGill said. He declined to name the women's place of employment, or to speculate about why the women came to his door. (He did, jokingly, say they were there due to "car trouble.") "In my 35 years, I've never had that happen," McGill said. In another situation, Sen. McGill said he saw a woman in the parking lot at his place of business. He sent employees out to talk to her, he said. "She thought she had a flat tire and wanted her tire looked at, but she did not have a flat tire." McGill said the woman handed his employees a business card that said she was from a strip club. The trouble didn't end with the campaign, Sen. McGill said. "Shortly after taking office, a couple of times my Facebook was hijacked and women sent me pictures of themselves half-naked, saying, 'I had a great time last night with Shadrack McGill.' That sort of thing." "She has a legitimate concern about that sort of thing getting worse, and Facebook being one of the mediums for that happening," Sen. McGill said of his wife. "I'm proud of her; she has a lot of wisdom and when she prays about something and gets a certain direction on her mind, she's very bold about addressing it." Sen. McGill said he does not use his Facebook account very often - Heather McGill and a secretary generally handle his Facebook account, he said. McGill noted that he thanked his wife, Heather, in the comments of her Facebook post. "Thank you my dear loving help mate for doing some much needed house keeping on our face book page," Sen. McGill wrote. "You are a wise woman and If you were running for my senate seat, I would vote for you babe." "She is a strong woman and a protector of the family. It's a shame that you have to monitor your child picking up your phone, or your Facebook or whatever." "Facebook is a very resourceful tool for getting your message out, free-of-charge basically, to a wide variety of people, and I appreciate that," McGill said. "But, as more and more of this country deals with a moral decline, it may be that I have to get rid of my Facebook account due to the moral issue that has become with using it." As of noon Tuesday, more than 300 had "liked" Heather McGill's post on her husband's profile, and dozens had offered their support. Read more: Alabama state senator's wife demands possibly fake women stop soliciting her husband on Facebook ||||| Notice You must log in to continue.

– The wife of an Alabama state senator helps run his Facebook account, so she's plenty familiar with all the women sending her husband come-hither photos and messages. "NO MORE!" wrote Heather McGill on Facebook on Monday night, in a diatribe spotted by Gawker. "It is a shame that people are so heartless that they would try to split up families," wrote McGill, who warned that she's going to start publicly naming people if it continues (though she noted that these women "may not even be real"). Husband Shadrack says he supports his wife's post and tells Al.com that it also stems from some real-life incidents during his last campaign—including one in which two strippers showed up at the family's home late one night. He also says his Facebook page got "hijacked" more than once, and "women sent me pictures of themselves half-naked, saying, 'I had a great time last night with Shadrack McGill.' That sort of thing." His wife wants to put an end it to it all, he says. (The last time the lawmaker made headlines was when he cited "Biblical principle" to argue against giving raises to teachers.)

It's Tuesday which can only mean one thing... that this week's LOOK magazine is on sale now - yay! Find out all about the emotional 'please take me back' letter Katie Holmes has received from ex-husband Tom Cruise, plus... Royal Bodyguard Warns: 'Kate Middleton's Baby Is In Danger!' Hello, New Season! LOOK Picks The Key Trends To Start Wearing Now Picks The Key Trends To Start Wearing Now Kristen Wiig: 'I'd Like To Apologise For My Wild Past' Cyber Spies: Are 'Ratters' Watching You Through Your Computer? The World's Top Make-Up Artist Reveals A-Listers' Secrets It looks like it's going to be another great week, and don't forget that LOOK is also packed full of loads of uh-mazing high street fashion buys we think you'll love. So, what are you waiting for? Get your slippers on and run down to your local newsagents to pick up this week's LOOK now, or if you're feeling lazy download the digital edition from iTunes. Happy LOOK Tuesday! By Lauren O'Callaghan Remember, you can buy the digital edition of LOOK magazine for your tablet or iPhone. And don't forget to rate it in iTunes! ||||| Tom Cruise has reportedly written an "emotional letter" to Katie Holmes. The couple divorced in July last year after Holmes filed legal papers to end the marriage on June 29. After 12 months apart, friends say Cruise has taken the surprising step of writing to his ex in an attempt to rekindle their friendship, if not more. "[He wrote an] emotional letter. I think it's something Tom's been thinking about a lot recently, but especially as July was approaching," an insider told UK magazine Look. "It's like he's finally recognised that Katie will always be the love of his life. It was such a shock when she left him - although she would no doubt argue that he ignored the signs - but I think Tom finally understands why she had to end things." Sources say the Mission Impossible star decided to write as he knew Katie, 34, would be unreceptive over the phone. The pair allegedly attempted a truce in March, which proved to be too soon and they've barely spoken since. "It won't have been an over the top letter - it has been a year and I'm sure Tom will have been aware that Katie wouldn't be interested in running straight back into his arms," the insider continued, "but he'll have wanted to tell her how much he still cares for her and that he hopes she's doing well." Sources close to the former Dawson's Creek star say Cruise's letter has had the desired effect on her. Holmes has reportedly been "genuinely touched" by the 51-year-old's words. "I'm sure it would have been a very emotional read for her, but cathartic too - and so important," the source shared. "I think this letter would have been a hint at that old, romantic Tom - the one she fell for. Tom would no doubt take her back in a second, but I don't think that's what Katie wants." Following their split Katie has settled in New York City with Suri, her daughter with Tom, and is slowly building a new life for herself. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– It's been a year since Katie Holmes filed for divorce from Tom Cruise, and apparently Cruise is feeling sentimental. A source tells UK magazine Look the actor sent Holmes an "emotional letter" looking to, at the very least, be friends again, Australia's News Network reports. "It's like he's finally recognized that Katie will always be the love of his life," the source says. Even so, "It won't have been an over the top letter—it has been a year and I'm sure Tom will have been aware that Katie wouldn't be interested in running straight back into his arms." Sources close to Holmes say she was "touched" by the letter, which doesn't sound promising for Cruise. "Tom would no doubt take her back in a second, but I don't think that's what Katie wants," says one. (Just to keep things in perspective, we'll point out that Look is the sort of magazine that also runs headlines like, "Royal Bodyguard Warns: 'Kate Middleton's Baby Is In Danger!'") In other news, Huffington Post notes that it's Cruise's 51st birthday.

President Obama will hold a meeting with Democrats on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to discuss how to protect the Affordable Care Act next year against Republican efforts to dismantle his signature domestic achievement. The meeting will include both House and Senate Democrats, a senior Democratic aide confirmed. The meeting was first reported by Politico . Republicans are planning a rapid repeal of the Affordable Care Act early next year, a move that would finally fulfill a GOP campaign promise but also throw the country's health insurance markets into uncertainty. Republican leaders have said they may delay the repeal's effective date for as long as three years to allow time to implement a replacement. Democrats are divided on how best to salvage Obamacare. Some have expressed a willingness to work with Republicans on a replacement to the law, but almost all are united against attempts to repeal it. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to try and block Republicans' repeal efforts next year, as well as a conservative replacement. "They have nothing to put in its place," Schumer said earlier this month. "To our Republican friends across the aisle, bring it on." More than 20 million people have insurance as a result of the legislation, including people under the age of 26 who are allowed to stay on their parents' plans and people with preexisting conditions. Obama has credited the law for slowing the growth in the rise of health care costs. The law's critics have taken aim at rising premiums in certain states. President-Elect Donald Trump has promised to keep in place some of the more popular aspects of the law, including prohibiting insurance from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. Health policy experts widely consider such cherry-picking to be unworkable, since the popular elements of the law are paid for by more unpopular elements like the mandate that people have insurance or pay a fine. ||||| The meeting is at 9 a.m. in the Congressional Visitors Center auditorium. | Getty Obama to huddle with Hill Democrats on saving Obamacare President Barack Obama will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday to meet with congressional Democrats about how to shield Obamacare from Republican efforts to dismantle it, a Capitol Hill source told POLITICO. The meeting is at 9 a.m. in the Congressional Visitors Center auditorium and is for both House and Senate Democrats, according to a notice sent to members Friday morning. Story Continued Below With Republican vowing to begin repealing Obamacare almost immediately when the 115th Congress convenes next week, Democratic lawmakers are immersed in strategy sessions on how to protect the nearly seven-year-old health care law. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised to stand firm against repeal efforts and subsequently, Republican efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act with a more conservative framework. And a conference call convened by House Democrats earlier this week focused largely on emphasizing the benefits of Obamacare, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) noting that she sees parallels between the current situation and the 2005 effort by then-President George W. Bush to privatize Social Security, according to an aide on the call. “The Affordable Care Act has been successful in meeting its goals of reducing cost, increasing access and improving quality of care,” Pelosi wrote to members in a “Dear Colleague” letter this week. Democrats are also launching a broader health care offensive against Republicans that focuses not only on their push to repeal Obamacare but any prospective efforts from the GOP to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid. To that end, Democrats, led by Schumer, Pelosi and liberal firebrand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — will host a so-called “day of action” on Jan. 15 that is meant to rev up grass roots support for shielding social safety net programs. “Beginning in January, it is likely that Republican leaders in Congress will follow through on their threats to ram through a budget bill that will severely undermine the health care needs of the American people,” the three lawmakers wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated earlier this week. Though most legislation generally needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate, Republicans can do away with significant portions of Obamacare with a simple majority by using a parliamentary move called “reconciliation,” which undercuts a filibuster. The GOP is also mulling a lengthy transition period for Obamacare repeal, meaning that the law would not actually be abolished for years — buying Republicans time to craft a replacement. Still, if the pillars of Obamacare are successfully dismantled, moderate Democrats — particularly those senators up for reelection in 2018 — could come under considerable pressure to help Republicans replace the law and are already openly entertaining that option. Incoming House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley of New York said the meeting will likely include discussion of other policy matters in addition to Obamacare — such as the Dodd-Frank financial law and environmental issues. “There are a myriad of issues he could address," Crowley said in an interview Friday. "As he retires from public office, we’re left to defend the advancements he’s made. Not only as a party, but as a people.” Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

– President Obama looks genuinely worried about the fate of ObamaCare: He will meet Wednesday morning with House and Senate Democrats to plot strategy on how to prevent Republicans from killing it, reports Politico. The problem for Democrats is that there may not be much they can do in the near future. As both Politico and the Hill point out, Republicans can pass a repeal measure without any Democratic support through a legislative maneuver known as a reconciliation vote. The procedure requires only a simple majority, not 60 votes, and the GOP has promised to move on it immediately in the new year. The caveat is that, assuming repeal passes, Republicans are expected to delay the actual dismantling of the law for quite a while to give them time to craft a replacement. That delay could be as long as three years, reports Time. So what can Democrats do? For one thing, raise political pressure. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, plan rallies next month, and ObamaCare advocates promise to flood the airwaves with ads in states such as Arizona and Nevada, where they think GOP senators might be swayed. The idea is not only to try to block repeal itself but to keep as much of the law in place as possible if repeal passes. President-elect Trump, for example, has said he would like to keep parts of ObamaCare intact, notably protections for those with pre-existing conditions. The White House said this month that 6.4 million people had signed up for ObamaCare before a Dec. 19 deadline, up 400,000 from the previous year.

In this photo released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian Presidency, Syrian President Bashar Assad, fifth left, prays at the dawn Eid al-Adha prayers at the Saad ibn Muaaz Mosque in Daraya,... (Associated Press) In this photo released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian Presidency, Syrian President Bashar Assad, fifth left, prays at the dawn Eid al-Adha prayers at the Saad ibn Muaaz Mosque in Daraya, a blockaded Damascus suburb, Syria, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. (Syrian Presidency via Facebook) (Associated Press) In this photo released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian Presidency, Syrian President Bashar Assad, fifth left, prays at the dawn Eid al-Adha prayers at the Saad ibn Muaaz Mosque in Daraya, a blockaded Damascus suburb, Syria, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. (Syrian Presidency via Facebook) (Associated Press) In this photo released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian Presidency, Syrian President Bashar Assad, fifth left, prays at the dawn Eid al-Adha prayers at the Saad ibn Muaaz Mosque in Daraya,... (Associated Press) BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on developments in the civil war in Syria where a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia is due to start at sundown (all times local): 7:05 p.m. Syria's army says it has begun implementing a U.S.-Russian cease-fire, but the country's most powerful insurgent groups have not yet said whether they will abide by it. The Syrian government and its main allies, Russia and Iran, say they will abide by the weeklong truce, which was set to begin at 7 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday. Half an hour before the truce went into effect, violence was reported in several areas throughout Syria. The deal, announced last week by Washington and Moscow, calls for a halt to fighting between the U.S.-backed opposition and the Russian-allied Syrian government. If the truce holds for a week, the U.S. and Russia would begin intelligence sharing and target coordination against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants. ___ 6:45 p.m. Russia says it will continue strikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants in Syria in coordination with the U.S. military as a cease-fire brokered by Moscow and Washington goes into effect. Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff says the Russian and U.S. militaries will set up a joint executive center to coordinate the strikes. He adds that the Russian military will use drones to monitor the observance of the cease-fire, which is set to take effect Monday at sundown. U.S. and Russian officials announced the cease-fire early Saturday, saying they hoped it would facilitate humanitarian access to civilians. ___ 6 p.m. Italy says a Syrian cease-fire could pave the way for political negotiations aimed at ending the long and bloody conflict. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told reporters after talks with his Cypriot counterpart that a cessation of hostilities must happen before talks can begin. He said "a long list" of difficulties had confronted U.S. and Russian officials trying to hammer out the deal, but an agreement was reached, with the cease-fire set to begin in a few hours. The deal, announced last week by the U.S. and Russian foreign ministers, calls for a halt to fighting between the U.S.-backed opposition and Russian-supported Syrian government. It also allows the government to continue to strike the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants for another week. ___ 5 p.m. Russia's deputy foreign minister says peace talks to end Syria's five-year civil war could be resumed next month. Mikhail Bogdanov's comments on Monday came hours before a cease-fire was scheduled to go into effect in Syria at sunset. Bogdanov told the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency that he expects talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups to resume in early October, adding that Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy to Syria, would name the date. The cease-fire, announced Saturday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, calls for a halt to fighting between the U.S.-backed opposition and the Russian-allied Syrian government. ___ 2:35 p.m. Syrian President Bashar Assad says his government is determined to "reclaim every area from the terrorists, and to rebuild" the country. His remarks came just hours ahead of the start of a cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia. Assad spoke to the state news agency SANA on the streets of Daraya, a Damascus suburb that surrendered to government authority last month. He says: "We call on all Syrians to turn toward reconciliation." Earlier in Daraya, Assad joined the prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in a rare public appearance that sent a strong message to his opponents. SANA says no civilians were present in the suburb, once home to nearly a quarter million people, after the last of them were evacuated as part of the surrender agreement. ___ 1:55 p.m. The U.N. envoy for Syria says his office will monitor the start of a U.S.-Russia-brokered cease-fire in Syria "carefully before making any hurried comments." Staffan de Mistura said in a text message to The Associated Press on Monday that no statement from his office about the truce was expected before the following afternoon. The cease-fire, announced last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, calls for a halt to fighting between the U.S.-backed opposition and Russian-supported Syrian government. It also allows the government to continue to strike the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants for another week. The U.N. offices in Geneva, where de Mistura is based, was closed Monday to honor the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. ___ 12:45 p.m. Activists say Syrian government forces and their allies are bombing opposition areas in the country's north, just hours ahead of the start of a U.S.- and Russia-brokered cease-fire. The bombing on Monday came as al-Qaida-linked militants pushed on with an offensive in the country's southern Quneitra province. Ahmad Primo, an opposition media activist in the contested city of Aleppo, says airstrikes on the city's rebel-held eastern district "have not let up" since the morning. The Local Coordination Committees monitoring group reported airstrikes on the Aleppo neighborhoods and suburbs of Rashiddine, Salihine, and Jazmata. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 18 militants were killed fighting government forces in the push in the south. ___ 12:10 p.m. Turkey's president says his country will send food, clothing and children's toys to the contested Syrian city of Aleppo after a U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire takes effect at sundown in the neighboring country. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's pledge came at the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on Monday and the Turkish leader says the aid will be delivered along specific routes at sundown. Erdogan said Turkey's Red Crescent, along with the country's disaster and emergency management agency, will try to deliver aid to the northern Syrian towns of al-Rai and Jarablus. Ankara's incursion last month into northern Syria has helped Syrian rebels retake Jarablus from the Islamic State group. ___ 10:10 a.m. A cease-fire brokered by the United States and Russia is set to begin at sunset in Syria amid mixed messages of commitment from various rebel factions but with verbal backing by President Bashar Assad's government. Assad made a rare public appearance on Monday, attending prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha at a mosque in the suburb of Daraya, which surrendered last month after four years of government siege. The cease-fire deal hammered out between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva last week allows the Syrian government to continue to strike at the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants, until the U.S. and Russia take over the task in one week's time. Rebel factions have expressed deep reservations about the deal. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Jeremy Bowen drives into west Aleppo ahead of the ceasefire A cessation of hostilities has come into effect in Syria, although it is unclear how widely it will be observed. The Syrian army says it is implementing the truce, which began at sunset, but rebel groups have been more guarded. US Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped broker the deal, warned it could be the last chance for peace in a united Syria. Humanitarian groups are hoping to make aid deliveries to the worst-hit areas, especially the war-torn city of Aleppo. Mr Kerry, speaking at the state department in Washington, said early reports indicated "some reduction in violence". But he said that it was too early to draw a definitive conclusion about how effective the truce would be. Just after the ceasefire came into effect at sunset on Monday, the Syrian army announced a seven-day "freeze" on military operations. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that calm appeared to be prevailing on most front lines. The deal was struck on Friday in Geneva after months of talks between Russia and the US. It also requires both sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian aid to besieged areas. Image copyright AP Image caption The Free Syrian Army has cautiously welcomed the cessation of hostilities If the truce holds for seven days, the US and Russia will carry out co-ordinated air strikes on militant groups. The opposition Free Syrian Army group has said that while it will "co-operate positively" with the ceasefire, it was concerned it would benefit the government. Another major rebel group, the hardline Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, initially rejected the deal but later appeared to have softened its stance. Opposition sources quoted by Reuters said a forthcoming statement supporting the cessation "with harsh reservations" would be backed by "the largest groups", including Ahrar al-Sham. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption President Bashar al-Assad: "The Syrian state is determined to recover all areas from the terrorists" Speaking earlier, President Bashar al-Assad welcomed the deal but said the Syrian state was still "determined to recover every area from the terrorists, and to rebuild". The cessation of violence is due to be renewed every 48 hours. Big test for US and Russia: BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen The strength, or otherwise, of the ceasefire is a big test of what appears to be a less sour, more workable relationship between the foreign ministers of the US and Russia. Diplomacy failed in the first, critical years of the war. A major reason for that was diplomatic deadlock between President Bashar al-Assad's ally, Russia, and the US, which demanded his immediate departure from office. Since then Russia has become the most influential outside power in Syria. The US and its Western allies have struggled to keep up. Perhaps Moscow is now ready to build on a ceasefire, if it lasts, to push President Assad towards a political transition that might end the war. Or perhaps, as enemies of President Assad and the Russians believe, the ceasefire will be a chance to regroup and rearm. The truce followed a weekend of air strikes by government forces on several rebel areas that killed about 100 people. Russian warplanes were also in action in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, say Syrian activists. Image copyright Abo Anas Image caption Children play on a bomb in the al-Muyaser neighbourhood in Aleppo Syrian children celebrate Eid in a warzone Such intensification of violence has occurred before other, aborted, ceasefires in Syria. Under the plan, Syrian government forces will halt combat missions in specified opposition-held areas. Russia and the US will then establish a joint centre to combat jihadist groups, including so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (known until recently as the Nusra Front). The conflict in Syria, which began with an uprising against Mr Assad, has raged for five years and claimed the lives of more than a quarter of a million people. More than 4.8 million have fled abroad, and an estimated 6.5 million others have been displaced within the country, the UN says. If the truce holds... Image copyright GEORGE OURFALIAN Image caption Government forces have regained ground in Aleppo Jihadist groups like so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham face the joint might of the Russian and US air forces Moderate rebels and civilians in the areas they hold will no longer face the threat of indiscriminate air strikes such as barrel-bombing although the Syrian air force will not be grounded completely; aid deliveries will be allowed to areas currently under siege President Assad will be in a stronger position as the US and Russia engage two of his most effective military opponents while moderate rebels observe the truce with his forces Syria's history of failed deals Image copyright AFP Image caption Can Kerry (left) and Lavrov succeed at last? February 2012: Syrian government "categorically rejects" an Arab League plan calling for a joint Arab-UN peacekeeping mission June 2012/January 2014/January 2016: Three failed UN-sponsored peace conferences in Geneva September 2013: Kerry and Lavrov negotiate a deal to strip the Syrian government of its chemical weapons in return for the US backing away from air strikes. Since then, the government has again and repeatedly been accused of using toxic chemicals against rebel-held areas February 2016: World powers agree in Munich on a nationwide "cessation of hostilities" in Syria excluding jihadist groups. There is no agreement on any joint US-Russian operations. The "pause" quickly unravels as Assad promises to regain control of the whole country March 2016: President Vladimir Putin declares "mission accomplished" in Syria and orders removal of "main part" of Russia's air army in Syria. Russian air strikes have continued ever since ||||| (CNN) As the sun set in Syria Monday, another ceasefire aimed at ending the country's bloody conflict began. Now the world watches with bated breath. The country has faced an apparent intensification of airstrikes in the last 48 hours , a seemingly deliberate attempt by those on the ground to send a message of strength. So will this agreement be a pivotal moment in the Syrian civil war or simply another brief hiatus in the death and destruction? Five questions about the latest truce: How will it work? The US and Russia brokered a pact to pause the violence on Friday after months of back and forth talks. US Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the ceasefire along with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, said the deal would stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's air force from flying combat missions anywhere the opposition is present. "That should put an end to the barrel bombs, an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilian neighborhoods," Kerry said The ceasefire will also allow for much-needed humanitarian access to besieged cities like Aleppo. If the accords hold for seven days, Russia and the US will begin to discuss military options for targeting one-time al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, previously known as the al Nusra Front , and ISIS. Who does it apply to? The deal is supposed to cover everyone involved in the fighting. But in reality that's difficult to enforce because there are so many groups in play. The specifics of the agreement call for Assad's troops and the opposition to abide by the ceasefire. Terrorist groups, including ISIS and Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, are not included in the agreement and military operations against them will continue. Syria's opposition has said it welcomes the ceasefire but only "if it is going to be enforced," according to a statement form Bassma Kodmani, a member of the High Negotiations Committee on Saturday. "When the cessation of hostilities was installed in February, the opposition -- 100 groups -- respected it. It was violated by the regime," Kodmani said. "So a return to a cessation of hostilities has been our demand." The agreement has also been welcomed by the UN and foreign ministers from the UK, Turkey and Germany. There is little trust between rebel groups and the regime itself. The rebels, for their part, agree to basic principles such as the creation of humanitarian corridors. But they have raised concerns about how the ceasefire will be monitored and what the consequences of any violations will be. There are also concerns that the deal will actually strengthen the regime and create a much more chaotic scene on the ground. Will this push for peace be any different to previous attempts? Nobody knows. US Secretary of State Kerry stressed in the ceasefire announcement on Friday that this latest set of accords relies on the goodwill and trust of those involved. "If the plan is implemented in good faith, if the stakeholders do the things that are available to them to do and are being called on to do, this can be a moment where the multilateral efforts at the diplomatic table, the negotiations could take hold, and you could really provide the people of Syria with a transition," he said. JUST WATCHED Kerry: 'Key for Syria agreement will be enforcement' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Kerry: 'Key for Syria agreement will be enforcement' 08:57 He also warned that the truce's success depends on Russia actually putting pressure on al-Assad. "'We -- the Obama administration, the United States is going the extra mile here because we believe that Russia and my colleague have the capability to press the Assad regime to stop this conflict and to come to the table and make peace," he said. This isn't the first time various parties have tried to end the bloody battles that have afflicted Syria since civil war broke out five years ago. • In 2011, Syria signed an Arab League proposal aimed at stopping the fight between government forces and protestors but violence continued and the following month, the Arab League suspended its mission in the country. • The UN has hosted three separate peace conferences in Geneva in hopes of ending the conflict, but each has ended without a breakthrough. • The US and Russia coordinated a partial ceasefire back in February . But human rights groups monitoring the situation reported several airstrikes in the Aleppo region and near Raqqa, ISIS's de facto capital, just days after the truce took effect. What are ramifications for disobeying ceasefire? It's not immediately clear if there are any penalties in the current framework should any of the parties involved violate the ceasefire. Under the terms of the cessation of hostilities in February , the agreement foresaw proportionate response in self-defense, if and when attacked. What's at stake? The lives of millions of Syrian people.

– The latest attempt to bring peace to Syria has officially begun: A ceasefire brokered last week by the US and Russia went into effect Monday morning, reports the BBC. However, this being Syria—whose civil war is a many-sided conflict—it remained unclear just how effective it would be. The Syrian government and its main allies, Russia and Iran, say they will abide by the weeklong truce, but the country's most powerful insurgent groups have not yet said whether they will, reports AP. If the truce holds for a week, the US and Russia would begin intelligence sharing and target coordination against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked militants. Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed that his government would take back all its land from "terrorists." Assad spoke during a rare public appearance that included attending prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, which had surrendered last month and reverted to government control after a four-year siege. "We call on all Syrians to turn toward reconciliation," he said. Italy, meanwhile, says a Syrian cease-fire could pave the way for political negotiations aimed at ending the long and bloody conflict. Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told reporters after talks with his Cypriot counterpart that a cessation of hostilities must happen before talks can begin. CNN has a primer on the truce.

Barnes & Noble is starting to have second thoughts about the Nook. After sales of the e-reader and tablet line fell 34% in the company's fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in April, Barnes & Noble (BKS) executives said Tuesday that it's time for a change in strategy. The bookseller will stay the course on its e-reader business, but Barnes & Noble plans to pursue a partnership to help it make Nook HD tablets. The company will continue to sell Nook tablets in stores, but future devices might be co-branded with the new manufacturer's name as well as the Barnes & Noble logo. "We are 100% not exiting the device business," insisted William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, on a conference call Tuesday. Lynch did not name the company that Barnes & Noble will partner with, but he said that more information on device strategy would be released in coming months. The news comes on the heels of an industry rumor that Microsoft (MSFT) is considering the purchase of the Nook brand. The software giant already invested in the Nook business, taking a 17.6% stake in April 2012. Microsoft declined to comment about its future plans for the Nook. The bookseller's stock fell by about 18% after the earnings report was released Tuesday morning. Barnes & Noble said the Nook HD has simply become too costly to produce, despite the fact that its has successfully reduced overhead costs in recent months. The company spent $26 million less on the Nook when compared to the previous fourth quarter. The bookseller said it will continue to build its digital catalog and add thousands of e-books every week. Its digital sales decreased by almost 9% for the fourth quarter, but Barnes & Noble noted that the decline is party due to drop in device sales and also because popular novels, such as The Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey trilogies, were best-sellers a year ago. Overall, Barnes & Noble reported a fourth quarter net loss of $118.6 million, nearly double its loss from a year ago. Revenue fell by 7.4% to $1.3 billion. Consistent with prior years, Lynch expects the company to open five new stores in the coming year while closing between 15 and 20 stores. ||||| Article Excerpt After spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to compete with Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. in the market for tablets and e-readers, Barnes & Noble Inc. is beating a retreat. The bookseller said Tuesday that losses at its Nook digital business more than doubled in the quarter ended April 27, easily wiping out profits generated at its bookstores. As a result, Barnes & Noble said it would stop producing its own color tablets, in favor of co-branded devices made by third-party manufacturers. Barnes & Noble will continue to design and make its own black-and-white Nook e-readers, which ...

– Barnes & Noble appears to be admitting defeat when it comes to competing with Apple, Amazon, and Samsung in the tablet market. The company announced today that it will no longer be making its own color Nook tablets, following big losses for Nook in the fourth quarter. However, the bookseller will still manufacture its black and white Nook e-readers, and will sell co-branded color tablets made by other companies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Not only did Nook revenue decline 34%, but declining Nook sales also hurt the retail store results for the quarter. The decision to pull back from the tablet market leads to questions about where the bookseller is headed; CEO William Lynch has been focused on technology for the past three years, as the print book market continues to struggle. But, CNNMoney reports, Lynch insisted today, "We are 100% not exiting the device business."

The seed for Wide00014 was: - Slash pages from every domain on the web: -- a ranking of all URLs that have more than one incoming inter-domain link (rank was determined by number of incoming links using Wide00012 inter domain links) -- up to a maximum of 100 most highly ranked URLs per domain - Top ranked pages (up to a max of 100) from every linked-to domain using the Wide00012 inter-domain navigational link graph ||||| Hostess Brands -- the maker of such iconic baked goods as Twinkies, Drake's Devil Dogs and Wonder Bread -- announced Friday that it is asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to close its operations, blaming a strike by bakers protesting a new contract imposed on them. Hostess' nearly 18,500 workers will lose their jobs as the company shuts 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers nationwide, as well as 570 outlet stores. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union represents about 5,000 Hostess employees. "We deeply regret the necessity of today's decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike," said CEO Gregory Rayburn in a statement. Hostess will move to sell its assets to the highest bidder. That could mean new life for some of its most popular products, which could be scooped up at auction and attached to products from other companies. A letter that Hostess sent to its network of stores that carry its product said it expects "there will be great interest in our brands." But it said it could not give a time frame for when the sales would take place and when its products would be available again. But even if those brands are bought and restarted, the Hostess workers will not get their jobs back. Related: Hostess workers face tough job market "It's been a very sad day," Rayburn told CNN. "I think that this was just a monumental failure on the part of everyone involved, and it was just the wrong outcome." Hostess filed for bankruptcy in January, its second trip to bankruptcy court since 2004. It previously emerged from restructuring in 2009 after a four-and-a-half year process. The company is now controlled by a group of investment firms, including hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital. Frank Hurt, president of the bakers' union, called the liquidation "a deep disappointment" but said his members weren't the ones responsible, blaming the various management teams in place at Hostess over the past eight years for failing to turn the firm around. "Our members decided they were not going to take any more abuse from a company they have given so much to for so many years," Hurt said in a statement late Friday. "They decided that they were not going to agree to another round of outrageous wage and benefit cuts and give up their pension only to see yet another management team fail and Wall Street vulture capitalists and 'restructuring specialists' walk away with untold millions of dollars." While approval of the bankruptcy court is needed before Hostess can start selling its assets in liquidation, the company said production at all of its bakeries stopped effective Friday, and that stores will no longer receive products from Hostess Brands after the final round of deliveries of products that were made Thursday night. But products that are already in stores can be sold, and the outlet stores will remain open for about a week to sell the products they already have. Related: The end of Hostess Hostess had annual sales of about $2.5 billion. The company said it had been making 500 million Twinkies and 127 million loaves of Wonder Bread annually before Friday's shutdown. Its bread brands, including Wonder Bread, Nature's Pride and Butternut, make the company the No. 2 bread baker in the country, according to Symphony/IRI Group. Bimbo Bakeries, maker of the Arnold and Stroehmann brands, is the No. 1 bread baker. The company had given a 5 p.m. ET Thursday deadline for the bakers to return to work or face a shutdown of the company. Related: The history of labor battles at Hostess In September, membership of one of its major unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, voted narrowly to accept a new contract with reduced wages and benefits. The Bakers' union rejected the deal, however, prompting Hostess management to secure permission from a bankruptcy court to force a new concession contract on workers. The Teamsters union, which represents 6,700 Hostess workers, issued a statement blaming mismanagement by Hostess executives for the company's problems. But it also was critical of the decision of Bakers' union, although it did not identify the union by name. "Unfortunately, the company's operating and financial problems were so severe that it required steep concessions from a variety of stakeholders but not all stakeholders were willing to be constructive," said Ken Hall, the Teamsters' Secretary-Treasurer. "Teamster Hostess members, based on the facts and advice from respected restructuring advisors, understood what was at stake and voted to protect all jobs at Hostess." Related: Don't worry - Twinkies will survive The new contract cut salaries across the company by 8% in the first year of the five-year agreement. Salaries were then scheduled to bump up 3% in the next three years and 1% in the final year. Hostess also reduced its pension obligations and its contribution to the employees' health care plan. In exchange, the company offered concessions, including a 25% equity stake for workers and the inclusion of two union representatives on an eight-member board of directors.

– Sorry, Twinkies fans: Hostess really is shutting its doors. The company threatened to do so yesterday if striking workers did not return by the end of the day. Apparently they didn't, because CNN reports that the Twinkies maker is now asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to go out of business. That will mean 18,500 employees will lose their jobs, but CNN notes that Ding Dongs and other popular items could still survive under another brand, as Hostess will be selling its assets at auction. Slate reminds us that Hostess has gone bankrupt before; that time around, Mexico's Bimbo Bakeries tried to nab it. Maybe they'll try again—although, writes Matthew Yglesias, "the company's various packaged snack cakes are cultural icons, but also pretty unfashionable in the era of artisanal cupcakes." Wonder Bread, too, has suffered as customers gravitate toward healthier options like multigrain bread. (Click to see why one food writer fervently believes it's time for the Twinkie to die.)

Senator Cory Booker today got a lot of attention for testifying against Senate colleague and Trump AG nominee Jeff Sessions in what he called a matter of conscience but what more cynical observers felt was his kickoff to a 2020 presidential run. Booker acknowledged at the outset today just how extraordinary his testimony is (more on that here), but said, “In the choice between standing with Senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, I will always choose conscience and country.” Leading up to his testimony today, there were reports highlighting Booker’s praise of Sessions last year when the two senators came together to award the congressional gold medal to Selma marchers. He said at the time he felt “blessed and honored” working with Sessions on it. Booker acknowledged this in his remarks today, but he maintained that he believes his colleague has shown “hostility” towards certain aspects of criminal justice that he believes are important for the U.S. attorney general to hold. He said Sessions would not be a leader in tackling racial bias in police departments across the country at a time when America needs more “hope and healing.” One of the biggest reactions to Booker’s speech circulating on Twitter was that he was using it to raise his national profile for a presidential run: Cory Booker kicks off 2020 moves with testimony against Sessions: https://t.co/DkOoXeak8n pic.twitter.com/4tz391SjCy — The Hill (@thehill) January 11, 2017 Corrie Booker finishes Sessions testimony by handing out Booker2020 bumper stickers — Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) January 11, 2017 It was courteous of Cory Booker to begin and end his 2020 presidential campaign on the same day. — Ian Tuttle (@iptuttle) January 11, 2017 The "make America just again" theme Booker laid out in his testimony against Sessions will be a good animating theme for his 2020 campaign. — Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) January 11, 2017 Cory Booker begins his Booker for President 2020 campaign today. #SessionsHearing — Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 11, 2017 Sen. Booker just declared he's running in 2020 by smearing Sen. Sessions. Stay classy, liberals. — Brent Bozell (@BrentBozell) January 11, 2017 And one of Booker and Sessions’ Senate colleagues weighed in with this: .@CoryBooker attacks on Jeff Sessions are so far-fetched I half-expected his make-believe friend T-Bone to be next witness. — Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 11, 2017 (Senator Cotton is referring to this controversy Booker got into a few years ago.) Watch above, via CNN. [image via screengrab] — — Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac Have a tip we should know? [email protected] ||||| Washington (CNN) New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker gave an impassioned and unprecedented plea to the Senate on Wednesday to vote against Donald Trump's nominee for attorney general and his fellow senator, Jeff Sessions. Booker, civil rights legend Georgia Rep. John Lewis and Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond each delivered emotional testimony that Sessions' record on civil rights disqualifies him from serving atop the Justice Department under President-elect Trump. "The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it," Booker said. "America needs an attorney general who is resolute and determined to bend the arc. Sen. Sessions record does not speak to that desire, intention or will." Booker became the first sitting senator to testify against a fellow sitting senator at a confirmation hearing for a Cabinet position. His panel with other lawmakers and supporters of Sessions was added to the hearings at the request of the top Democrat on the committee, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, though Democrats criticized Chairman Chuck Grassley for scheduling the members of Congress at the end of all proceedings. The testimony from Booker, Lewis and Richmond against Sessions was the emotional finale of two days of hearings that returned repeatedly to the issue of race relations and civil rights in the United States. Both Sessions' supporters and detractors were at times passionate in their position. Sessions and his backers defended his record as the victim of character assassination, saying that the events of his unsuccessful 1986 confirmation hearing to be a federal judge were being unfairly misconstrued 30 years later to malign a man with a record of fighting for civil rights. The Democrats and civil rights activists who testified, however, said that the record from the '80s not only stood today, but that Sessions has shown a pattern of disregard for the at-risk members of society throughout his time in the Senate. Democrats failed to land any knockout blows on Sessions during the hearing, with the Republicans on the committee unanimously coming to his defense as a fair enforcer of the law. The came closest when Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken questioned Sessions on exaggerating his civil rights record in past statements and his Senate questionnaire. But the committee also treated Sessions with respect and warmness as a fellow colleague, a fact noted by his former staffer on the Judiciary Committee, William Smith. "Members of this committee know Sen. Sessions ... is fair and honest," Smith said. "After 20 years of knowing Sen. Sessions, I have not seen the slightest evidence of racism because it does not exist. I know a racist when I see one, and I have seen more than one. Sen. Sessions is not one." Sessions will likely be confirmed by the GOP majority Senate. Booker, Lewis give emotional testimony Booker's decision to testify has thrust him -- already a fixture on lists of potential 2020 presidential candidates -- into the limelight. Booker said his "conscience" and "country" motivated him to speak out against his fellow senator, even though he acknowledged he has enjoyed "collegiality" with Sessions, working on a bill to give the Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights marchers. "Yeah, I've been criticized, but if you're not being criticized in America, you're probably not doing a lot of good things," Booker said after the hearing. The panel focused significantly on the issue of "law and order," which Sessions himself touted as part of his tough-on-crime pitch to be attorney general. While his supporters praised Sessions for being a "law and order" candidate, his critics say that "law and order" is more than law enforcement -- and Lewis spoke about how "law and order" was used to justify oppression when he grew up in the Jim Crow South. "Law and order without justice is unobtainable," Booker said. "They are inextricably tied together. If there is no justice, there is no peace." Booker said Sessions would uphold the responsibility of the Justice Department in pursuing "civil rights, equal rights, and justice for all of our citizens." "In many times in his career, he has demonstrated a hostility toward these convictions," Booker said. Lewis also testified against Sessions, citing his experience and history of the civil rights movement. "It doesn't matter how Sen. Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you, but we need someone who's going to stand up, speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who have been discriminated against," Lewis said. JUST WATCHED Pundit, former Sessions staffer clash on race Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Pundit, former Sessions staffer clash on race 02:10 "We all live in the same house -- the American house. We need someone as attorney general who is going to look out for all of us and not just for some of us," he added. Richmond said the Congressional Black Caucus also opposed the nomination, and added his objection to the fact that he, Lewis and Booker were not given the courtesy of testifying earlier in the proceedings. "To have a senator, a House member and a living civil rights legend testify at the end of all of this is the equivalent of being made to go to the back of the bus," Richmond said. Defending Sessions Sessions allies who have previously worked with him testified on his behalf, saying the media portrayal of Sessions during the hearing doesn't match their experience. "One of the things I can say about Jeff is that he's always been the same person that I've known," said Willie Huntley, a former assistant United States attorney in Alabama. "He's always been available for me and always been there when I needed him. At no point in the time that I've known Jeff has he demonstrated any racial insensitivity." South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham also asked the president of the NAACP about the racial equality organization's scorecard, reading aloud the rankings each member of the panel had received. Every Republican had 11% to 29%, while every Democrat save one had 100% -- and the exception got a 96% rating. "You're picking things that conservative Republicans don't agree with you on and liberal Democrats do. I hope that doesn't make us all racist, and all of them are perfect," Graham said in a display of frustration. "Maybe we're all wrong and maybe we're all right. I doubt if it's that way." ||||| Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., delivered unprecedented testimony today against the nomination of his Senate colleague, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., for attorney general, saying that his "conscience" outweighed Senate tradition. “I know that some of my many colleagues aren’t happy that I am breaking with Senate tradition to testify on the nomination of one of my colleagues, but I believe, like perhaps all of my colleagues in the Senate, that in the choice of standing with Senate norms or standing up for what my conscience tells me is best for our country, I will always choose my conscious and country," Booker said. Booker said he believed President-elect Trump's pick for attorney general has "not demonstrated a commitment" to a central prerequisite of the job -- to demand equal rights and justice for all citizens. "In fact, at numerous times in his career, he has demonstrated a hostility towards these convictions," Booker said of Sessions. The New Jersey senator said he was "deeply motivated" by the many issues the next attorney general will influence, especially the crisis of mass incarceration. Booker said that while he and Sessions disagreed on the issues, they have always exercised a "collegiality and a mutual respect." In fact, Booker spoke of legislation that he and Sessions co-sponsored to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to the "foot soldiers who marched at Selma." Andrew Harnik/AP Photo It was an emotional plea in which Booker said that those marchers in Selma inspired him as a young lawyer to seek justice for all in New Jersey, and begin representing black families looking to integrate white neighborhoods who were turned away and denied housing. "I am literally sitting here because of people, marchers in Alabama," he said. Booker said that his colleague's record "indicates that he won't" pursue justice for women, defend the equal rights of gay and lesbian and transgender Americans, defend voting rights or defend the rights of immigrants as attorney general. This was the first time a sitting senator testified against another sitting senator in a cabinet confirmation hearing, according to Booker's office, which contacted the Senate Historian's office for the records. Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who helped lead the 1965 march in Selma, and Cedric Richmond, D-Louisiana, leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, also expressed concern about Sessions' nomination at today's hearing. "It doesn’t matter how Senator Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you, but we need someone who is going to stand up, speak up and speak out. For the people that need help for people who have been discriminated against," Lewis said. ABC News He told the senators that after decades of progress, many Americans are concerned that some leaders want to return to the "dark past, and the power of the law will be used to deny freedoms protected by the Constitution." "We need someone as attorney general who is going to look out for all of us and not just for some of us," Lewis said. However, others on today's panel came to the Alabama senator's defense. "A lot has been said about Senator Sessions' character. We have seen people who have never met Senator Sessions claim to know him and know his heart. We have seen members of this body and members of the House of Representatives just now who have worked with Senator Sessions and praise him for his work and now attack him. This should not be," said Sessions' former staffer William Smith. Smith, the former Chief Counsel on the Administrative Oversight and the Courts Subcommittee, said that his former boss had fought for civil rights and against the Ku Klux Klan and fought for people regardless of the color of their skin. "I'm not testifying to someone who just met him yesterday. I've known his family, I've dined at his house. We've eaten Johnny Rockets burgers together," Smith added. "I've been in every political situation with him. Senator Sessions is unquestionably qualified for the job for which he has been nominated. He is a good Christian man, and a good family man. He is a man who has dedicated his public life to service." ABC News' Hayley Walker and Ben Siegel contributed to this report.

– Jeff Sessions' two-day confirmation hearing came to a close Wednesday with something that's never happened before: a current senator testifying against another current senator up for a Cabinet position. CNN reports Sen. Cory Booker, despite having worked well with the attorney general nominee in the past, said his "conscience" forced him to take the unprecedented step. "The arc of the moral universe does not just naturally curve toward justice, we must bend it," Booker testified. "America needs an attorney general who is resolute and determined to bend the arc." The senator from New Jersey said Sessions has shown a lack of "commitment"—and has in fact shown "hostility"—toward supporting equal rights for all Americans, according to ABC News. During his five-minute testimony, Booker said he was worried Sessions wouldn't work to reduce mass incarceration, ensure equal rights for LGBT citizens, or protect the voting rights of immigrants. Mediaite reports he said he was also concerned Sessions wouldn't address racial bias in policing. Booker, who admitted his choice to testify wasn't a popular one among fellow senators, was joined by Rep. John Lewis and Rep. Cedric Richmond. Meanwhile, Mediaite states many are seeing Booker's first-of-its-kind testimony as a bid for attention ahead of a run for president in 2020. Supporters continued to deny all accusations of racism against Sessions, who's likely to be confirmed.

[+] Enlarge Frederick Breedon/Getty Images Brek Shea and the U.S. took a one-goal lead into stoppage time. But El Salvador equalized to end the match at 3-3, eliminating the Americans from Olympic qualifying. Despite being a heavy favorite to emerge from the CONCACAF qualifying tournament with a ticket to the 2012 Olympics in London this summer in hand, the U.S. Under-23 national team was eliminated in a 3-3 tie to El Salvador Monday night. Needing a win to advance from Group A after suffering a 2-0 upset to Canada on Saturday, the U.S. went ahead before a minute was up, surrendered its lead, went behind, equalized, went ahead again and allowed the game-tying goal in the very last minute of extra time. A first-minute goal got the U.S. off to a flying start. Brek Shea broke through on the left and sent a cross into Terrence Boyd, who volleyed the ball into the net from close range. But the Americans had trouble establishing their usual possession-dominating rhythm in the first half, discovering quickly that they were facing the strongest opponent in the tournament thus far. El Salvador competed for the ball and clogged the spaces well. This forced the U.S. to lump long balls to Shea and Boyd. And although Boyd did his best to be a handful in the box -- winning the ball in the 11th and putting himself through on goal before giving up possession -- this tactic was largely ineffective. Crucially, keeper Bill Hamid tweaked his left ankle in the 31st minute. Within six minutes, El Salvador would twice punish his refusal to come off, or coach Caleb Porter's failure to substitute him. Undoubtedly, this will be picked apart in the coming weeks. In the 35th minute, Hamid failed to impose himself, or even move, on a corner to his near post. Lester Blanco rose over Kofi Sarkodi and headed in to equalize. In the 37th, Perry Kitchen and Jorge Villafana stood and watched as a low, straightforward cross into the box rolled toward the post, where Andres Flores beat the stumbling Hamid to the ball and slipped it underneath him and into the net. Shell-shocked and panicked, the U.S. barreled forward for the remainder of the half but produced little of consequence. In the second half, El Salvador set about running down the clock, nibbling away the minutes with a series of time-wasting tactics. Mostly, El Salvador frustrated the U.S. by inviting the Americans into its own half before crashing the spaces and clearing the ball to send its opponent back to square one. Throughout the game, the U.S.'s midfield trio failed to secure enough of the ball to settle into a rhythm and provide service to the forwards. All the U.S. could muster, then, for 20 minutes, was a dangerous shot by Freddy Adu. In the 64th minute, a flagging El Salvadoran defense slipped up. Boyd brought down a long punt from Sean Johnson (who had replaced the injured Hamid), whereupon Adu slipped Boyd a ball through the back line. Boyd finished cleanly, making it 2-2. Four minutes later, Joe Corona, anonymous throughout the game, found himself on the end of a rare dangerous cross from Adu at the second post and was allowed to head in the liberating goal. With the deficit overturned, the U.S. was seemingly on its way to the decisive semifinal game. It had now fallen to the U.S. to ride out the game. But it fell into the same trap as El Salvador had. The Americans allowed themselves to be put under pressure and cede the initiative to their irked opponents, who grew increasingly aggressive. The Yanks appeared to be getting away with it, too. But in the fourth and final minute of extra time, Amobi Okugo lost track of playmaker Jaime Alas, who ran through the center of the U.S.'s defense and hit a bouncing shot that skipped awkwardly. Johnson punched the ball skyward, only to see it skip into the U.S. goal. The U.S. had been unable to stamp its authority on a second consecutive game, allowing El Salvador entry points into the game time and again by failing to maintain possession. Brimming with talent, this U.S. team's failure to qualify for the Summer Games will be remembered as both a stain on a federation that failed to send a U-20 team to the 2011 World Cup and a blight on the resume of coaching prodigy Porter. But given its performances, it's hard to argue that the U.S. deserved much better. Here are our player grades (10=best) GK -- Bill Hamid, 3: Was convincing in the early going but should have indicated that he was in no condition to proceed after taking a knock in the 30th minute. El Salvador's first two goals could have been avoided by prompter interventions from Hamid (or the coach) before he came off in the 39th minute. D -- Kofi Sarkodie, 4.5: Simply beaten in the air on the 1-1, Sarkodie was once again better going forward than he was defensively. D -- Ike Opara, 4: Looked sharper than he had against Canada, but he failed to step out on Alas on the dooming 3-3. D -- Perry Kitchen, 4: Kitchen was steady enough throughout the game, but he should have been more alert as the eventual 2-1 rolled past him. D -- Jorge Villafana, 4.5: Impressive early on, Villafana just let Flores run by him undisturbed to make it 2-1. M -- Amobi Okugo, 5.5: A seventh-minute yellow card took the sting out of his game but he nevertheless had a strong night plugging holes and shielding the defense. And then he let Alas run away from him to score the 3-3. M -- Mix Diskerud, 5: Not a banner night for him, but not his worst either. He tried his best to distribute but was sometimes sloppy and didn't find enough of the ball to go around. M -- Joe Corona, 4.5: Scored the goal that should have sent the U.S. through but was otherwise invisible. Like he had against Canada, Corona appeared completely lost. F -- Freddy Adu, 7: Played out on the right again, a position where he never looked comfortable, Adu was most effective on set pieces and when he drifted inside. His two assists were incisive, however, and should have made the difference. F -- Terrence Boyd, 7: Active and mobile, Boyd replaced Agudelo capably by providing a good target and getting teammates involved. He converted two of four big chances and should have been the hero of the night. F -- Brek Shea, 6: Did good work disturbing the back line and picked up an assist. But his crossing often let him down. Subs: GK -- Sean Johnson, 4.5: Confidently stepped in for Hamid in the 39th minute and made a handful of crucial saves. But that bouncing shot that sent the U.S. crashing out may haunt him for years, as he probably should have dealt with it. M -- Michael Stephens, Incomplete: An 88th minute substitute for Corona, Stephens had little impact. F -- Joe Gyau, Incomplete: A 93rd minute time-wasting substitution. Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderESPN. ||||| The Americans had only a handful of seconds left to run out the clock and advance a step closer to the Olympics. With the pressure building with each tick, the victory slipped right through their hands. El Salvador's Lester Blanco (17) celebrates with Andres Flores (20) after Blanco scored a goal against the United States in the first half of a CONCACAF Olympic qualifying soccer match on Monday, March... (Associated Press) El Salvador's Lester Blanco (17) slides on the grass to his teammates after scoring a goal against the United States in the first half of a CONCACAF Olympic qualifying soccer match on Monday, March 26,... (Associated Press) El Salvador's Richard Menjivar (16) chases down the ball with United State's Mix Diskerud (8) in the first half of a CONCACAF Olympic qualifying soccer match on Monday, March 26, 2012, in Nashville, Tenn.... (Associated Press) El Salvador's Jaime Alas (10) falls as he chases the ball with United States' Freddy Adu (7) nd Kofi Sarkodie, right, in the first half of a CONCACAF Olympic qualifying soccer match on Monday, March 26,... (Associated Press) The United States, known for producing top goalkeepers such as Brad Friedel, Kasey Keller and Tim Howard, found itself done in Monday night when substitute Sean Johnson couldn't handle a long shot from Jaime Alas of El Salvador in stoppage time. The ball bounced off his hands, up over him and into the net, and El Salvador ousted the United States from Olympic qualifying with a 3-3 tie. The stunned Americans missed the Olympics for the second time since 1976 and second time in three games. "This is probably the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life so far as a pro athlete," U.S. captain Freddy Adu said. "This is going to be hard to get over. But at the end of the day things like this happen. For me, I never want to feel this way again, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to never feel this way again." The Americans had to win to reach Saturday's semifinals in Kansas City, Kan., and they led 3-2 on Joe Corona's goal in the 68th minute. Officials added 4 minutes of stoppage time onto the game, and U.S. coach Caleb Porter said they were "seconds away" from closing out the win and taking the top spot in Group A. A television clock showed the ball going in 4 minutes, 14 seconds into stoppage time. What happened is something U.S. midfielder Mix Diskerud said no one wants to experience in life, something he couldn't believe. "The last 20 minutes after our third goal, all those minutes felt like very, very long hours. But I thought we were going to make it. Everybody thought we were going to make it.," Diskerud said. "One shot." Several Americans dropped to the field in exhaustion and disbelief after Alas' score, and Porter had to rally them back to their feet for one last gasp chance that didn't materialize. Porter said he hugged Johnson after the game. The 6-foot-4 keeper did not speak with reporters. "He feels like he's let everybody down, let his teammates down, and I told him he didn't," Porter said. El Salvador reached the semifinals, putting it a win away from its first Olympic berth since 1968. Canada, which tied Cuba 1-1 earlier, finished second. Lester Blanco and Andres Flores also scored for El Salvador, a team coach Mauricio Alfaro pointed out had less than two weeks to prepare for this tournament and didn't have the whole roster together until late. "It was just incredible," Alfaro said of the win, speaking through an interpreter. But Alfaro also said he had told his players to shoot more in the second half to try to pressure Johnson and the El Salvador coach said he did feel Johnson made a mistake on Alas' kick. "The shot didn't have much power," Alfaro said. Terrence Boyd scored twice for the U.S., and Johnson replaced keeper Bill Hamid in the 39th minute. After a 2-0 loss to Canada in the second of this three-game, round-robin tournament, the Americans needed to win to advance. So did El Salvador, and the crowd of 7,889 was about evenly split between the countries keeping the U.S. from a true home-field advantage at LP Field, home of the NFL's Tennessee Titans. El Salvador survived a physical game with plenty of yellow cards on each side. Boyd went to the sideline with blood on the front of his shirt late in the game. Diskerud said both he and Adu were bitten and showed reporters marks as proof. "Part of the game, I guess," Diskerud said. The U.S. had a little bit of time left to try and go ahead but couldn't get anything going before the game ended. The result leaves the Americans adding 2012 to 2004 and 1976 as years they failed to qualify for the Olympics, missing out on a 15th appearance overall. Boyd got his first start in this round-robin tournament with Juan Agudelo recovering from surgery in New York to fix torn cartilage in his left knee, and Boyd gave the Americans the scoring boost they missed against Canada on Saturday night. The Americans attacked from the start, Boyd scored 61 seconds into the game. Brek Shea dribbled out of three defenders and sent a cross over to Boyd who scored off a left-footed volley. And Boyd nearly scored twice more. His header went over the crossbar in the 10th minute, and he had a breakaway chance in the 11th only to see keeper Yimy Cuellar come out to break up the play. Hamid rolled covering up a ball and appeared to hurt his ankle midway through the first half. El Salvador took advantage by scoring two goals in two minutes to grab the lead and the momentum. Blanco scored on a header off a corner kick over Hamid's hands in the 35th minute, and Flores beat Hamid in the 37th minute off what had been a weak shot by Alas that turned into a cross. Porter pulled Hamid in the 39th minute, putting in 6-4 Johnson for his first appearance in the tournament. Boyd tied it up with his second goal off a pass from Adu in the 65th minute. Corona, whose mother is a native of El Salvador, scored off a header just inside the left post off a pass from Adu. Johnson smothered one strong kick from Isidro Gutierrez, but couldn't stop the ball when it mattered at the end.

– The US won't be competing in men's soccer at the Olympics, thanks to a heartbreaking goal that came literally at the last minute. El Salvador battled the US to a 3-3 draw last night, the AP reports; the US, which had been heavily favored to win its group in CONCACAF qualifying, needed a win after being upset by Canada 2-0. It was a back-and-forth affair, with the US scoring in the first minute, then falling behind, and finally coming back to lead 3-2. But in stoppage time El Salvador's Jaime Alas bounced a ball off the hands of substitute keeper Sean Johnson and into the net. Starting keeper Bill Hamid had been injured in the 31st minute, but, in a move ESPN suspects will be much-criticized, he wasn't pulled out immediately. El Salvador scored two goals against him in six minutes.“This is probably the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life,” says captain Freddy Adu. “This is going to be hard to get over.”

President Trump asked then-FBI Director Comey in February to stop investigating ousted national security advisor Michael Flynn , a request that Comey then recorded in a memo, the NY Times reports . The quote, per Comey's memo: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." What's next: Per the NYT, Comey has memos from all of his interactions with Trump. House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz has requested them from the FBI, and Democrats are claiming obstruction of justice. ||||| The controversy over President Donald Trump's abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey has threatened to slow or even stall Republicans’ policy agenda on Capitol Hill. Already facing Democratic opposition on some of their top priorities, Republicans insist the matter won't derail them but it's already proven to be a distraction at the very least. As the week began, Senate Republicans were focused on health care after the House narrowly passed its version of legislation to overhaul Obamacare. By Friday, health care, tax reform and other top GOP priorities had been shoved off the front-burner, at least momentarily, by the abrupt firing of Comey and new questions about the future of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Play Facebook Twitter Embed Trump under fire over 'tapes' threat as White House searches for new FBI director 3:03 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog Comey’s ouster means that the Senate will have to confirm a new director to replace him, a process that has already shown signs of controversy as Democrats are demanding more answers about the timing of the firing and the FBI’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. A host of Democrats have said that they won’t consider a new replacement to lead the FBI until a special counsel has been appointed to oversee that investigation, which Comey was leading. “Frankly we should hold off on the FBI director until we get this special prosecutor,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, indicating that he would try to slow down or block the confirmation of any FBI director. The bombshell that shook Washington this week has further strained a slow-moving Senate schedule that is void of any major legislative achievement. For the first months of this year, the upper chamber has been consumed with processing Trump's nominees — including the successful confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — as well as GOP-backed Congressional Review Act measures to roll-back regulation from the Obama administration. The Senate has moved slowly, in part because of its rules, but also because Democrats have opposed the GOP's agenda. That's why one GOP senate aide sees little impact of the Comey firing. “The Democrats were already opposing everything all the time. Unless you are Spinal Tap you can’t really turn the opposition volume from 10 to 11,” the aide said. Senate Republicans began the Congressional year with a long to-do list, but it has been shrunk to accommodate the realities of governing in a partisan environment. They still, however, are working to pass a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a reform of the tax system before the end of the fiscal year in September — two major pieces of legislation that don’t need the support of Republicans because of a budget mechanism Republicans plan on using. Democrats say that go-it-alone approach increases the prospects of any gridlock that grips the Senate. “I think we need to move ahead as much as possible to get things done for the American people. ... But trust is very, very difficult when the administration is trashing the oath of law,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters this week. Democrats successfully held up a days’ worth of hearings on Capitol Hill Wednesday, the morning after Comey’s firing, which is just one example of how they can slow down the process on Capitol Hill. Republicans insist that little has changed. A group of 13 senators have been plotting a way forward on health care, holding two meetings this week and the entire Republican conference spent much of their time on the subject at two lunches. For instance, they held their regularly scheduled lunch on Wednesday that lasted for nearly an hour-and-a-half, focused on health care. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said the caucus discussed Comey for maybe “90 seconds” on the topic. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, who is leading the health care talks, predicted the Comey matter won’t detract from his work. “I actually think that Republicans and Democrats will be looking for exactly the same thing: a very well-qualified FBI director of unimpeachable integrity who can lead the FBI and continue the investigation into what the Russians were doing in our election. I don’t think it makes any difference for health care,” Alexander said. Play Facebook Twitter Embed 'I'm Not Saying This Is Going to Be Easy:' GOP Battles on Health Care 8:26 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog But the reality is that the controversy has eaten into the rest of their work already. At their conference lunch on Thursday, which was supposed to again focus on health care, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., briefed his fellow Republicans on the conversation he had earlier in the day with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who the Trump administration said recommended Comey’s firing. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V. and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said the Senate needs to move on to other business beyond Russia and Comey, but he noted that it is becoming more difficult. “We have to make sure we do a thorough job and leave no stone unturned… and go wherever the intelligence takes us,” he says. While Senate rules and the calendar make sudden distractions like the Comey firing more damaging to their broader policy agenda, at least one Republican operative it could prove beneficial. "It takes attention and fire away from an important policy effort," the operative said. "Having the focus and the fury over a personnel matter could make the policy items a little easier because it dials down the attention and scrutiny from the hard left." Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, said he was confident his work on health care would not be impeded by Comey's ouster. He then struggled to fight his way past a mob of reporters blocking the elevators as they questioned his Democratic colleagues. "Does anyone see the down button?" he said.

– President Trump's controversies may be wearing thin on both sides of the aisle in the Senate. Two different outlets on Monday have posts with a similar theme: New York Times: "Senate Republicans, increasingly unnerved by President Trump’s volatility and unpopularity, are starting to show signs of breaking away from him as they try to forge a more traditional Republican agenda and protect their political fortunes." Senate Leader Mitch McConnell may still be a reliable Trump defender, but that appears to be changing among the rank and file, as seen in the public and private criticism of Trump in the aftermath of the James Comey firing. The story includes a quote from Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who says that among his GOP colleagues, "there is a lot less fear of him than there was just a month ago." Axios: It notes that Senate Republicans are going their own way on health care and the Russian investigation, and it predicts the same will happen on tax reform. Trump can't get leverage over his own party because Senate Republicans don't need him for the 2018 races, don't particularly like him, and no longer fear him, per the post. "Not long ago, Republicans worried about a Trump tweet fired their way. No more." NBC News and the Washington Post, meanwhile, have stories explaining how the Comey firing is the latest example of a surprise distraction taking away from the GOP agenda in the Senate, particularly on health care. "Anytime you have something else come along when you’re debating legislation, while you’re trying to iron out something, it can—it takes some of the momentum away," GOP Sen. Mike Lee said on Fox News Sunday. But, he added, "We’re going to get it done one way or another."

Double-amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius got emotional in the dock on Monday as more graphic images of the night he killed his girlfriend were shown in court. Earlier, his defense called pathologist Jan Botha to the stand. The athlete admits shooting Reeva Steenkamp, 29, but maintains it was a case of mistaken identity. Pistorius sobs as Botha tells court "death ensued fairly quickly after sustaining the head injury" -Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) April 7, 2014 #OscarPistorius head in hands, retching. His family member wipes away tears. -Aliza Nadi (@alizanadi) April 7, 2014 Pistorius leans forward and covers head as, once again, the court is shown an image of his blood-covered toilet. -Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) April 7, 2014 Pistorius looks tormented - but he is likely to be the next witness to testify. -Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) April 7, 2014 Reeva Steenkamp was shot at Oscar Pistorius' home in Pretoria, South Africa, on Feb 14, 2013. Mike Holmes / Gallo via Getty Images, file Court shown a close up image of one of Reeva's wounds. Pistorius cannot look. Nor can some of Reeva's friends and family -Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) April 7, 2014 Court adjourns. The extreme close up of Reeva's wound still on the screen. -Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) April 7, 2014 Pistorius, 27, is accused of the premeditated killing of the model and law graduate. The sprinter insists he thought she was an intruder when he opened fire through a bathroom door on Feb. 14, 2013. The trial continues. ||||| 1.51pm BST With the hearing over for the day, it's time for a closing summary. This will be very similar to the lunchtime summary, as we only had about 45 minutes of evidence in the afternoon: • Oscar Pistorius has taken to the witness stand to begin giving evidence in his murder trial. He began with a tearful, broken-voiced apology to the family and friends of Reeva Steenkamp, his girlfriend who he shot in February last year, believing – he says – she was an intruder. • Pistorius said there is "not a moment" when he does not think about her family, and prays for them daily. He added: "I've tried to put my words on paper many times to write to you but no words would ever suffice" • Pistorius said he had taken anti-depressants and sleeping pills since the shooting, often waking with "terrible nightmares" in which he dreamed he could smell blood. He said he often calls his sister to sit with him during the night. On one occasion he climbed into a cupboard to call her. • He said his religious faith was the only thing to sustain him over the past year: "There have been times when I've just been struggling a lot. My God is a God of refuge." • Pistorius spoke at length about his fear about, and experience of, crime. He said his his mother was worried about intruders and kept a pistol under her pillow • Pistorius said a speedboat accident in 2009 which almost killed him left him fearful and withdrawn. • Earlier, the first defence witness was a pathologist, Prof Jan Botha, who questioned prosecution evidence that Steenkamp must have eaten about two hours before her death at 3am, something which runs counter to Pistorius's statement that they went to bed at 10pm. • Botha was questioned aggressively and at length by the prosecution counsel, Gerrie Nel, giving a taste of the likely cross-examination Pistorius will face. • While this evidence was heard, including details of Steenkamp's injuries and photos of wounds and blood, Pistorius spent much of the time with his hands over his face, also retching.

– Oscar Pistorius' defense team is launching its case, and yet again, the testimony seems to have been too much for the athlete to take. Pistorius threw up multiple times—now a frequent occurrence—into a bucket as a forensic pathologist discussed the bullet wounds that killed Reeva Steenkamp, Reuters reports. The pathologist, Jannie Botha, agreed with the state pathologist regarding the sequence of shots that hit Steenkamp. A sobbing Pistorius and others in the court couldn't bear to look at graphic photos displayed, NBC News notes. Next, Pistorius himself took the witness stand and began by apologizing to Steenkamp's family. "There is not a moment and there hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family," he said, struggling to speak clearly through emotion. Other noteworthy moments, via the Guardian: Pistorius said he has trouble sleeping. "I have terrible nightmares about what happened that night. I wake up and I can smell blood." He often calls his sister for help, once doing so from inside a cupboard, he said. He added that he never wanted to touch a gun again. He discussed his close relationship with his mother and her sudden death when he was a teenager. As for his physical abilities without his prosthetics, a question central to the shooting: "I don't have balance on my stumps. I can stand on my stumps. I can't stand still on my stumps."

Hillary Clinton’s camp late Sunday issued a significant clarification about the steps they say were taken to review thousands of personal emails before they were deleted, claiming her team individually read “every email” before discarding those deemed private. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill made the clarification in a written statement to Fox News. This comes after the former secretary of state’s office revealed last week that while more than 30,000 “work-related” emails were turned over to the State Department, nearly 32,000 were deemed “private” and deleted. This admission raised questions over how her team decided to get rid of those messages. Merrill on Sunday clarified an earlier fact sheet that described some of those methods but did not say every email was read. “We simply took for granted that reading every single email came across as the most important, fundamental and exhaustive step that was performed. The fact sheet should have been clearer in stating that every email was read,” Merrill said. Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, tried to tamp down the controversy over her exclusive use of personal email while secretary of state during a press conference last week. But the admission that she deleted thousands of messages, and her insistence that her personal server remain private, stirred the ire – and curiosity -- of lawmakers who want greater access to her communications as secretary and complain much of it may be gone forever. More on this... Trey Gowdy on efforts to retrieve Hillary Clinton's emails Whether the assurance that “every email” was read before being either deleted or turned over eases those concerns remains to be seen. “I have zero interest in looking at her personal emails,” South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But who gets to decide what’s personal and what’s public? And if it’s a mixed-use email, and lots of the emails we get in life are both personal and work, I just can’t trust her lawyers to make the determination that the public’s getting everything they’re entitled to.” Fox News' Ed Henry contributed to this report ||||| House Speaker John Boehner is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal, top House Republicans told ABC News today. Interested in ? Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest During a news conference last week, Clinton did not go into the details of how the review of her email was conducted, but said it was “thorough” and that she went “above and beyond” what she was required to do in turning over many of her emails to the State Department. "We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department," she said, adding that all other emails were personal and pertained to matters such as "yoga routines," "family vacations," and "planning Chelsea's wedding." After the news conference, Clinton’s team distributed a lengthy question-and-answer document that detailed the “multi-step” process. The process appeared to have included an extensive, nuanced search of Clinton’s inbox, but the document did not make clear how many of the emails were opened and read in the review. On Sunday, Clinton’s spokesman clarified that “every email was read” and that the steps they outlined in the document “were in addition to reading them all, not in lieu of reading them all.” According to the document, here is a summary of how Clinton’s attorneys, who were tasked with the job, said they sorted through her emails: First, a search was done of all emails Clinton received from a .gov or state.gov account during the period she was secretary of state -- from 2009 to 2013. Then, with the remaining emails, a search was done for names of 100 State Department and other U.S. government officials who Clinton may have had correspondence with during her tenure. Next, the emails were organized and reviewed by sender and recipient to “account for non-obvious or non-recognizable email addresses or misspellings or other idiosyncrasies.” Lastly, of the emails still left over, a "number of terms" were searched, including “Benghazi” and “Libya.” The results of the search were that Clinton’s attorneys found 30,490 work-related emails and 31,830 emails that were deemed “private and personal.” Clinton said on Tuesday she deleted all of the personal emails because she felt she “had no reason to save them.” The revelation has only raised more questions among Clinton’s detractors about what was in those emails and why she used the private account in the first place. Clinton said she did so out of “convenience,” but acknowledged during the news conference it “would have been better” if she had used two separate phones and two email accounts. "I thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously it hasn't worked out that way,” she said. Democratic strategist and Clinton ally James Carville, speaking on “This Week,” said he suspected the former First Lady “didn't want [Rep.] Louis Gohmert rifling through her e-mails,” and added the controversy “amounts to nothing but a bunch of people flapping their jaws about nothing.” ||||| Hillary Clinton’s claim that most work-related emails sent from her personal account were preserved in the electronic files of other State Department officials fell apart Friday. After a week of deflecting questions about how emails were handled during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the agency finally acknowledged that the email traffic of other senior officials was not automatically or routinely archived. Story Continued Below The loose record-keeping practices, which were immediately criticized by historians and open government advocates, are only now being corrected. “It’s very troubling,” said Nate Jones of the National Security Archive, a non-profit group which gathers and disseminates declassified government records. “People in the community of recordkeepers and historians had known that our history was at risk for a long time….It’s a wake up call, I think, for the public at large, which assumed everyone had Gmail capabilities and didn’t realize how backward the government was.” The practices raise the possibility that many messages of historical importance were destroyed unless individual officials made a practice of saving their emails or printing out paper copies. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it would be incorrect to call the emails destroyed since some might be retrievable through technology. But she acknowledged that regular archiving of the work email in-boxes of senior officials besides the secretary did not begin until “February of this year.” “I wouldn’t state it’s ‘lost to history’ because there are technical means of gaining access to past information,” Psaki said. “I’m not an expert on the technical capabilities.” Clinton had said at a news conference Tuesday that she believed the vast majority of work-related emails she sent or received from the private account, linked to a server at her New York residence, were “immediately captured and preserved” because she was in correspondence with other officials using “.gov” accounts. But in another day of intense questioning from reporters, Psaki said automatic archiving began just last month for “dozens” of top officials — such as deputy secretaries, under secretaries and assistant secretaries. “Our goal is to apply this to all employee mailboxes by the end of 2016,” she said. The state spokeswoman previously said Secretary of State John Kerry uses an official account and his emails have been archived since soon after he succeeded Clinton. A Clinton spokesman had no comment on the department’s disclosure. However, some transparency advocates said it’s now incumbent on the former secretary and likely 2016 presidential candidate to explain why she thought she was preserving her emails simply because they were sent to someone with a “.gov” address. “She spoke as if she could just roll along with the firm expectation and belief that at least the ‘vast majority’ were being ‘handled’ in that way. From whence did that come? That’s the question that arises now,” said former Justice Department Office of Information and Privacy Director Dan Metcalfe, who now teaches on secrecy issues at American University’s law school. “What was her foundation for even that? Did someone incorrectly tell her that that was happening, or did she incorrectly make such a self-serving assumption?” Psaki also revealed Friday that the department “recently” requested copies of work-related emails some current and former State officials had sent or received on private accounts. She said she believed the letter requesting such records was sent earlier this week and was related to investigations underway on Capitol Hill. “There have obviously been requests from Congress for certain information,” Psaki said. She did not immediately have details on how widely the department’s request for current and former officials was distributed. Clinton sent copies of 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department in December in response to a letter sent in October to her and three other former secretaries seeking copies of work-related records held in private accounts. State is now processing those emails for public release under Freedom of Information Act standards. Clinton also said Tuesday that she disposed of about 32,000 emails on the same account after her lawyers determined the messages were personal in nature. Psaki declined to answer reporters’ repeated questions about whether the department was satisfied with Clinton’s explanation for her use of a private email account as secretary. Later in the briefing, however, Psaki suggested that there was confusion among some State Department employees about what was and was not being automatically saved. “I assume some assumed that was happening at the time as well,” Psaki said. “We’re updating it because it’s an imperfect system.” Speaking without reference to Clinton, Psaki said the duty was on individual employees to save records that met standards for permanent archiving. “Clearly, individuals — any top officials — would also be expected to preserve their documents,” she said. Psaki said the move last month to begin archiving senior officials’ emails was not triggered by concerns about Clinton’s email practices. “They have long been planning to do this. It’s just something that it took some time to put in place,” she said. Despite the State Department’s practice of not archiving top officials’ emails until recently, some of the emails were saved when employees printed them and put them in permanent files, saved them in electronic folders, or — in a specific agency system — marked them as permanent records. “Obviously, this [automatic archiving] is a more efficient way — a way that will require less human effort….We have quite a bit going on here at the State Department,” Psaki said. “There were ways to preserve [emails] and employees and individuals were expected to do that prior to this new process.” State’s disclosure Friday did expose a bizarre twist to Clinton’s decision to do all her e-mailing as secretary via a private account and server: some of those emails may be more accessible now as a result, given what appears to have been a default policy at state not to automatically archive official emails. “That’s the silver lining, but it’s not the solution,” Jones said. “The solution is having the National Archives and Records Administration actually preserve the records in the first place. No one’s going to come out smelling like roses after this one.”

– Hillary Clinton's team has—somewhat belatedly—clarified that every one of the approximately 32,000 emails deemed "private" and deleted was opened and read before being chucked. The clarification comes a few days after a Time story claimed that the review involved searching by keywords and not checking every email. A Clinton spokesman blames the confusion on a fact sheet provided after a press conference last week, which mentioned keyword searches. "We simply took for granted that reading every single email came across as the most important, fundamental, and exhaustive step that was performed," he said in a statement to Fox. "The fact sheet should have been clearer in stating that every email was read." But while the 31,830 emails appear to be gone forever, it doesn't look like the controversy for Clinton is going to go away anytime soon. House Speaker John Boehner plans to announce a new probe this week into Clinton's email use, including the deletions, according to ABC News, which cites "top House Republicans." And it's not just Clinton's emails that are gone: The State Department has admitted that routine archiving of the inboxes of senior officials only began last month. "It's very troubling," a spokesman for the National Security Archive group tells Politico. "People in the community of record-keepers and historians had known that our history was at risk for a long time."

Police in Mexico are searching for a band of 20 musicians and roadies who went missing after a gig. Kombo Kolombia, who are Mexicans but play Colombian-style vallenato music, last played a private gig in Hidalgo, north Mexico, but have not been seen or answered their mobile phones since. "They were not answering their mobile phones, but we just thought it was because they were in a remote place," said family member Jose Ruiz. "We started to look for them, and we found their cars open and empty, and neither they nor their instruments were at the farm where they were scheduled to play." Police confirmed that the band has not been seen or heard from since Thursday. A number of musicians have been kidnapped and murdered by drug gangs in Mexico over the last few years. In 2007 Sergio Gomez, singer in the band K-Pax, was kidnapped and strangled to death. Hours after denying reports of his murder, Sergio Vega, known as El Shaka, was shot dead while driving his red Cadillac. Most of those murdered were narcocorridos, who sing songs celebrating the lives of drug barons. Among them is Diego Rivas, who was shot dead in 2011 after composing a song in praise of Joaquin Shorty Guzman, Mexico's most wanted drug baron. The missing band play Colombian music, not usually linked to drug gangs, but local media report that the venue of the band's last gig does have links to drug violence. Last year conductor and pianist Rodolfo Cazares, music director of the Bremerhaven City Theatre in Germany, was kidnapped while visiting relatives in Mexico. He has not been seen since. Fears are growing that he may have been murdered by a drug gang. Last year more than 70,000 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico, prompting President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was sworn in last December, to set-up a new national police force to tackle organised crime. To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail: To contact the editor, e-mail: Share this This article is copyrighted by IBTimes.co.uk, the business news leader ||||| Authorities in northern Mexico still have no leads after searching two days for 20 people with a Colombian-style band who went missing after a private performance at a bar, an official with the Nuevo Leon State Investigation Agency said Sunday. The 20 people include 15 members of Kombo Kolombia and the band's crew. People living near the bar in Hidalgo municipality north of Monterrey reported hearing gunshots about 4 a.m. Friday, following by the sound of vehicles speeding away, said the source with the state agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by the news media. The officials added that gunfire is common in the area, and said investigators found spent bullets nearby. Relatives filed an official report about their missing loved ones on Friday, after they lost cellular telephone contact with them following the Thursday night performance. When family members went to the bar to investigate, they found the band members' vehicles still parked outside. For three years, Kombo Kolombia has played a Colombian style of music known as vallenato, which is popular in Nuevo Leon state. Most of the group's musicians were from the area, and have held large concerts in addition to bar performances. Nuevo Leon state officials said one of those missing is a Colombian citizen with Mexican residency. Members of other musical bands, usually groups that performed "narcocorridos" celebrating the exploits of drug traffickers, have been killed in Mexico in recent years. But Kombo Kolombia did not play that type of music and its lyrics did not deal with violence or drug trafficking.

– Members of a Colombian-style band who disappeared after a gig in northern Mexico last week have become the latest musicians to be kidnapped and murdered by drug gangs, authorities fear. The 16-man Kombo Kolombia band and four of its roadies were reported missing early Friday; investigators have now discovered at least eight bodies dumped in a well in the area, the AP reports. The band members were Mexican but played Colombian-style vallenato music, which is not normally associated with drug gangs, the International Business Times reports. After the band played a private show in a bar north of Monterrey last Thursday night, people reported hearing gunshots and vehicles speeding away. The band members' empty vehicles were found outside the bar.

In one instance, Mansour leaked damaging information about a liberal radio host in Alaska. “Got a scoop for you about Shannyn Moore. You’ll love this! Feel free to post it far and wide and chat about it everywhere,” Mansour wrote in a July 3, 2010, message, “First, Shannyn gets no pay for her show. In fact, she actually has to pay $150 a hour or $450 a day to rant on the air … Second, ever wonder why there are no sponsors KUDO 1080am’s 11am-2pm show? No one will buy commercial time.” “It seems her life partner Kelly Walters is hocking the show for any sponsor. I guess Planned Parenthood and Valtrex were unavailable,” Mansour wrote. Valtrex is a drug for treating genital herpes. Mansour serves as Palin’s domestic policy adviser and speechwriter. She is a gatekeeper, deciding who gets to see and talk to Palin, and who doesn’t. Mansour also maintains Palin’s online presence. Part of her online work, apparently, includes improving Palin’s morale by urging activists to say nice things about the former governor online. “Hey can you remember to send BigBoss some love @SarahPalinUSA. She reads her RTs (now that she has the new BB Twitter app) & haters spam her,” Mansour wrote in a May 30, 2010, message. When originally contacted by TheDC about the messages, Mansour lied and said none of them were from her. Mansour said she had already encountered the messages and accurately recalled the Twitter handle for their source. “I did actually send him one direct message. He was asking for – it was like something really innocuous – he was just asking for information about something. And I just replied and said, ‘no’ or something like that. And then the kid then used that and started to create direct messages. And that was like a real serious thing for me because I realized anyone can do that with like a screencap,” Mansour explained. TheDC then took steps to authenticate whether the messages were real, including logging into a Hotmail account that received email announcements from Twitter with the content of the direct messages in them. Two forensic computer analysts verified that the emails had been sent from Twitter’s servers after searching the message source code for signs of forgery. Presented with this evidence, Mansour changed her story from an initial denial to anger (“this is really kind of skeezy”), bargaining (“can I just appeal to you to leave the Bristol stuff alone?”), and sadness at the consequences of her words (“this is going to destroy my reputation simply because people will say, ‘why were you sending a direct [message to a Palin activist]?’”). In some instances, Mansour admitted to sending the messages and recalled additional context about what she was thinking when she sent them. “If you’re asking whether I called Erick Erickson a douchebag once? Absolutely, I probably did, because he’s written some nasty things about my boss.” Minutes later she said, “I believe at the time when I wrote that comment about Erickson he had written a snotty piece about Palin.” Finally, rather than answer questions about the context of the messages, Mansour sent a short statement saying the messages were part of “personal private conversations between myself and someone who I thought was a friend.” ||||| A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. Red State Editor-in-Chief and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote, but usually Romney’s presence online is just an “AstroTurf brigade.” “Would love to tell Mitt’s lackeys to stop backstabbing my boss anonymously,” Mansour wrote. Then-California Senate candidate Chuck DeVore “wants to be the next Hugh Hewitt (or Huckabee). He knows he can’t win. He wants to become a ‘personality’. Give him a show to go away,” Mansour wrote. Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina over DeVore in the GOP primary for the race, angering some conservatives. Mansour sent these embarrassing and revealing missives as “direct messages” on Twitter to an online-only acquaintance approximately a year ago. The person who received the messages forwarded them to TheDC. The messages show that, at least last summer, Palin was planning to run for president and calculating her political moves with a run in mind. Palin (whom Mansour refers to as “BigBoss”) “took a big risk in endorsing Nikki [Haley for South Carolina governor]. You don’t pick a loser in SC. Very important state. Mitt has no hope of winning it, so…he could endorse a 4th place underdog ‘cuz his strategy for ’12 is ignore the South. SC is crucial to someone like the Gov. She took a risk.” When author Joe McGinnis moved next door to Palin, prompting a protest by her, Mansour told her correspondent, a pro-Palin activist, “Time to find a way to go medieval on this McGinniss. Don’t be fooled by the light tone of the [Facebook] post. The BigBoss is so upset by this.” In response to an unknown suggestion by the recipient of the messages, Mansour wrote “I was thinking more along the lines of mailing him a dead fish.” But by far the most incendiary messages are about Palin’s daughter Bristol. Sent in the aftermath of Bristol announcing to Us Weekly she was planning to marry Levi Johnston, Mansour wrote, “I wish they were the Cleavers too. But it’s life.” “Two words: Patti Davis. Okay three more: Ron Reagan Junior. Two more: Billy Carter. Doesn’t your family have one?” Mansour said. “She will hold her at arm’s length. Even Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing,” Mansour wrote. Other messages, including several TheDC has chosen not to publish, reveal details about the internal dynamics of the Palin family and Mansour asking the activist whether he knew “anyone upstanding? I’m serious?” who could replace Johnston as a suitable suitor for Bristol. But Mansour did add she was “impressed” by how much Bristol Palin loved her son. Contacted about the messages, Mansour said she was trying to “calm down” a Palin supporter and that the messages reflected only her opinions, not Palin’s. Mansour refused to provide additional context or information about the messages. In one instance, Mansour leaked damaging information about a liberal radio host in Alaska. “Got a scoop for you about Shannyn Moore. You’ll love this! Feel free to post it far and wide and chat about it everywhere,” Mansour wrote in a July 3, 2010, message, “First, Shannyn gets no pay for her show. In fact, she actually has to pay $150 a hour or $450 a day to rant on the air … Second, ever wonder why there are no sponsors KUDO 1080am’s 11am-2pm show? No one will buy commercial time.” “It seems her life partner Kelly Walters is hocking the show for any sponsor. I guess Planned Parenthood and Valtrex were unavailable,” Mansour wrote. Valtrex is a drug for treating genital herpes. Mansour serves as Palin’s domestic policy adviser and speechwriter. She is a gatekeeper, deciding who gets to see and talk to Palin, and who doesn’t. Mansour also maintains Palin’s online presence. Part of her online work, apparently, includes improving Palin’s morale by urging activists to say nice things about the former governor online. “Hey can you remember to send BigBoss some love @SarahPalinUSA. She reads her RTs (now that she has the new BB Twitter app) & haters spam her,” Mansour wrote in a May 30, 2010, message. When originally contacted by TheDC about the messages, Mansour lied and said none of them were from her. Mansour said she had already encountered the messages and accurately recalled the Twitter handle for their source. “I did actually send him one direct message. He was asking for – it was like something really innocuous – he was just asking for information about something. And I just replied and said, ‘no’ or something like that. And then the kid then used that and started to create direct messages. And that was like a real serious thing for me because I realized anyone can do that with like a screencap,” Mansour explained. TheDC then took steps to authenticate whether the messages were real, including logging into a Hotmail account that received email announcements from Twitter with the content of the direct messages in them. Two forensic computer analysts verified that the emails had been sent from Twitter’s servers after searching the message source code for signs of forgery. Presented with this evidence, Mansour changed her story from an initial denial to anger (“this is really kind of skeezy”), bargaining (“can I just appeal to you to leave the Bristol stuff alone?”), and sadness at the consequences of her words (“this is going to destroy my reputation simply because people will say, ‘why were you sending a direct [message to a Palin activist]?’”). In some instances, Mansour admitted to sending the messages and recalled additional context about what she was thinking when she sent them. “If you’re asking whether I called Erick Erickson a douchebag once? Absolutely, I probably did, because he’s written some nasty things about my boss.” Minutes later she said, “I believe at the time when I wrote that comment about Erickson he had written a snotty piece about Palin.” Finally, rather than answer questions about the context of the messages, Mansour sent a short statement saying the messages were part of “personal private conversations between myself and someone who I thought was a friend.” ||||| A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. Red State Editor-in-Chief and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote, but usually Romney’s presence online is just an “AstroTurf brigade.” “Would love to tell Mitt’s lackeys to stop backstabbing my boss anonymously,” Mansour wrote. Then-California Senate candidate Chuck DeVore “wants to be the next Hugh Hewitt (or Huckabee). He knows he can’t win. He wants to become a ‘personality’. Give him a show to go away,” Mansour wrote. Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina over DeVore in the GOP primary for the race, angering some conservatives. Mansour sent these embarrassing and revealing missives as “direct messages” on Twitter to an online-only acquaintance approximately a year ago. The person who received the messages forwarded them to TheDC. The messages show that, at least last summer, Palin was planning to run for president and calculating her political moves with a run in mind. Palin (whom Mansour refers to as “BigBoss”) “took a big risk in endorsing Nikki [Haley for South Carolina governor]. You don’t pick a loser in SC. Very important state. Mitt has no hope of winning it, so…he could endorse a 4th place underdog ‘cuz his strategy for ’12 is ignore the South. SC is crucial to someone like the Gov. She took a risk.” When author Joe McGinnis moved next door to Palin, prompting a protest by her, Mansour told her correspondent, a pro-Palin activist, “Time to find a way to go medieval on this McGinniss. Don’t be fooled by the light tone of the [Facebook] post. The BigBoss is so upset by this.” In response to an unknown suggestion by the recipient of the messages, Mansour wrote “I was thinking more along the lines of mailing him a dead fish.” But by far the most incendiary messages are about Palin’s daughter Bristol. Sent in the aftermath of Bristol announcing to Us Weekly she was planning to marry Levi Johnston, Mansour wrote, “I wish they were the Cleavers too. But it’s life.” “Two words: Patti Davis. Okay three more: Ron Reagan Junior. Two more: Billy Carter. Doesn’t your family have one?” Mansour said. “She will hold her at arm’s length. Even Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing,” Mansour wrote. Other messages, including several TheDC has chosen not to publish, reveal details about the internal dynamics of the Palin family and Mansour asking the activist whether he knew “anyone upstanding? I’m serious?” who could replace Johnston as a suitable suitor for Bristol. But Mansour did add she was “impressed” by how much Bristol Palin loved her son. Contacted about the messages, Mansour said she was trying to “calm down” a Palin supporter and that the messages reflected only her opinions, not Palin’s. Mansour refused to provide additional context or information about the messages. In one instance, Mansour leaked damaging information about a liberal radio host in Alaska. “Got a scoop for you about Shannyn Moore. You’ll love this! Feel free to post it far and wide and chat about it everywhere,” Mansour wrote in a July 3, 2010, message, “First, Shannyn gets no pay for her show. In fact, she actually has to pay $150 a hour or $450 a day to rant on the air … Second, ever wonder why there are no sponsors KUDO 1080am’s 11am-2pm show? No one will buy commercial time.” “It seems her life partner Kelly Walters is hocking the show for any sponsor. I guess Planned Parenthood and Valtrex were unavailable,” Mansour wrote. Valtrex is a drug for treating genital herpes. Mansour serves as Palin’s domestic policy adviser and speechwriter. She is a gatekeeper, deciding who gets to see and talk to Palin, and who doesn’t. Mansour also maintains Palin’s online presence. Part of her online work, apparently, includes improving Palin’s morale by urging activists to say nice things about the former governor online. “Hey can you remember to send BigBoss some love @SarahPalinUSA. She reads her RTs (now that she has the new BB Twitter app) & haters spam her,” Mansour wrote in a May 30, 2010, message. When originally contacted by TheDC about the messages, Mansour lied and said none of them were from her. Mansour said she had already encountered the messages and accurately recalled the Twitter handle for their source. “I did actually send him one direct message. He was asking for – it was like something really innocuous – he was just asking for information about something. And I just replied and said, ‘no’ or something like that. And then the kid then used that and started to create direct messages. And that was like a real serious thing for me because I realized anyone can do that with like a screencap,” Mansour explained. TheDC then took steps to authenticate whether the messages were real, including logging into a Hotmail account that received email announcements from Twitter with the content of the direct messages in them. Two forensic computer analysts verified that the emails had been sent from Twitter’s servers after searching the message source code for signs of forgery. Presented with this evidence, Mansour changed her story from an initial denial to anger (“this is really kind of skeezy”), bargaining (“can I just appeal to you to leave the Bristol stuff alone?”), and sadness at the consequences of her words (“this is going to destroy my reputation simply because people will say, ‘why were you sending a direct [message to a Palin activist]?’”). In some instances, Mansour admitted to sending the messages and recalled additional context about what she was thinking when she sent them. “If you’re asking whether I called Erick Erickson a douchebag once? Absolutely, I probably did, because he’s written some nasty things about my boss.” Minutes later she said, “I believe at the time when I wrote that comment about Erickson he had written a snotty piece about Palin.” Finally, rather than answer questions about the context of the messages, Mansour sent a short statement saying the messages were part of “personal private conversations between myself and someone who I thought was a friend.” ||||| Sarah Palin has used Twitter to weigh in constantly on politics and policy, often driving full media frenzies over a one-sentence message. But Palin’s account was silent Tuesday morning, as the Daily Caller published direct messages on Twitter from a member of the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate’s inner circle showing the aide’s disdain for some conservative personalities and even criticism of Palin’s daughter. Text Size - + reset POLITICO 44 The messages, from Palin spokeswoman Rebecca Mansour, are creating a major headache for Palin’s operation and again leading to questions about Palin’s staff. Likely the most damaging internal messages regard Palin’s daughter Bristol, whom Mansour predicts will be held “at arm’s length” by the former Alaska governor. “I wish they were the Cleavers too. But it’s life,” Mansour wrote. “Even Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing.” A Palin spokesman declined to comment on Mansour. Her current status within the organization is unknown. Mansour came to SarahPAC after founding a pro-Palin fan site that attracted the former governor’s attention. Mansour was hired as a policy adviser and speechwriter, but quickly transitioned to the role as Palin’s lead spokesman and representative to the press. Mansour frequently responded harshly over Twitter to any negative story or comment about Palin, but was often much less direct in phone conversations. Mansour’s public role, however, has noticeably diminished in recent weeks. She did not make any statement about the story over Twitter, until now her preferred form of communication. Mansour is also quoted in the story calling RedState founder Erick Erickson a “total douchebag” after the conservative blogger and activists attended a rally with Palin and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley last year. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion,” she wrote. Erickson responded via a post on RedState by saying that Mansour likely didn’t know he had been asked to attend by Haley’s staff. In addition to the damaging Tweets, the Daily Caller reported that Mansour initially denied that she had sent the messages to the unnamed source, claiming they had been doctored. “I did actually send him one direct message. He was asking for – it was like something really innocuous – he was just asking for information about something,” she tried to explain. “And I just replied and said, ‘no’ or something like that. And then the kid then used that and started to create direct messages. And that was like a real serious thing for me because I realized anyone can do that with like a screencap.” If Mansour has been let go by SarahPAC, there is unlikely to be any announcement for some time. Staff changes and reshuffles in Palin’s camp are typically announced quietly only weeks or months after the fact. Or Palin watchers might have to wait for an answer until the PAC’s next FEC report to see if the aide is still being paid. ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

– It pays to know who your social media friends are: Sarah Palin's spokeswoman and perhaps fiercest defender has egg on her face today after a former Palin supporter leaked a series of not-so-subtle Twitter direct messages to the Daily Caller. Rebecca Mansour savaged top Republicans in the private messages—and even Palin's own family, notes Politico. A sampling of the highlights: On Bristol Palin's former plans to marry Levi Johnston: “I wish they were the Cleavers too. But it’s life. Two words: Patti Davis. Okay three more: Ron Reagan Junior. Two more: Billy Carter. Doesn’t your family have one?" Then: “She will hold her at arm’s length. Even Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing." On Joe McGinniss: “Time to find a way to go medieval on this McGinniss. Don’t be fooled by the light tone of the [Facebook] post. The BigBoss is so upset by this.” Then, in response to an unknown message: “I was thinking more along the lines of mailing him a dead fish." On endorsing Nikki Haley: Palin “took a big risk in endorsing Nikki. You don’t pick a loser in SC. Very important state. Mitt has no hope of winning it, so…he could endorse a 4th place underdog ‘cuz his strategy for ‘12 is ignore the South. SC is crucial to someone like the Gov. She took a risk." To supporters: “Hey can you remember to send BigBoss some love @SarahPalinUSA. She reads her RTs (now that she has the new BB Twitter app) & haters spam her." Mansour's Twitter account is here.

A respected religious counselor in New York's ultra-orthodox Jewish community was convicted Monday of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had come to him with questions about her faith. The Brooklyn courtroom was silent as the foreman said jurors had found Nechemya Weberman guilty of 59 counts, including sustained sex abuse of a child, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse. He faces 25 years in prison on the top charge and may get more time when he is sentenced on Jan. 9. The 54-year-old defendant looked down as the verdict was announced and glanced briefly back at his family, who held hands, as he was handcuffed and led from the courtroom. Some of the accusers' supporters smiled quietly. The girl's mother, who was not in the courtroom at the time, said later she was weeping tears of joy, according to her friend. Defense lawyers said the jurors, who deliberated about half a day, did not properly grasp the complicated issues. They plan to appeal. "We firmly believe that the jury got an unfairly sanitized version of the facts," attorney George Farkas said. "As a result, the truth did not come out and the struggle continues in full force to free this innocent man." The trial put a spotlight on the insular Satmar Hasidic sect, and its strict rules that govern clothing, social customs and interaction with the outside world. The accuser, now 18, told authorities that Weberman abused her repeatedly behind his locked office door from the time she was 12 until she was 15. She had been ordered to see him by her school because she had been asking questions about her religion and was dressing immodestly according to the sect's customs, and she needed to be helped back on the right path. Weberman was not a licensed counselor but spent decades working with couples and families in his community. Assistant District Attorney Linda Weinman said Weberman abused his role as a confidant and teacher, intimidating the girl to satisfy his sexual needs. "The defendant took this young girl with a fiery spirit and he broke her," Weinman said. But there was no physical evidence regarding the suspected abuse. Defense attorney Stacey Richman said the case boiled down to a simple "he said," `'she said," and the girl was a petulant, calculating liar. "The only evidence in this case of sexual abuse is the word of (the girl)," Richman said. "She's making things up in front of you as they occur." The Associated Press typically doesn't identify people who say they are the victims of sexual assault. Brooklyn is home to the largest community of ultra-orthodox Jews outside Israel, more than 250,000, and the Satmar sect is one faction clustered mostly in the Williamsburg neighborhood. The group has its own ambulances, volunteer police and rabbinical courts. Women dress modestly and cover their heads. Men wear earlocks and dark clothing. Men and women rarely interact in public; in the packed courtroom, the women sat in one row and the men another even though it often meant Weberman's family sat next to supporters of the girl. "It's really a sad day for our community that a person did such heinous deeds," said Judy Genut, a Hasidic woman who had been to court to support the young woman. "We are a wonderful people, and a wonderful community, and this has been embarrassing." Questioning faith or customs is strictly forbidden, according to trial testimony, and the sect has what's known as a "modesty squad" that admonishes followers who break the rules. The girl, who is now married, testified for four days, chronicling abuse that she said lasted for three years. Weberman would take off her clothes and touch her, force her to perform oral sex and re-enact scenes from porn films, she said. She didn't know what to do; he was a well-respected member of the community, and she was "a piece of dirt," she said. "My body just froze. I didn't know how to respond," she said. "I just felt I wanted to die." The allegations surfaced last year when the girl told a guidance counselor at a different school that she'd been molested, and later that she was molested by Weberman. She eventually went to police. Weberman also testified, saying he "never, ever" abused the girl. Defense attorneys said she was angry that he had betrayed her trust, telling her parents about a boyfriend, and had conspired to help get the boy arrested. The charges were later dropped, and the girl then accused Weberman of sex abuse out of revenge, and a hatred for her community, the defense said. The guarded society strongly discourages going to outside authorities. The girl testified she was branded a traitor and was shunned for going to police. Her father lost his job and her nieces were kicked out of school, she said. Three men were charged with criminal contempt for photographing the girl and posting her picture online during her testimony. Before the trial, District Attorney Charles Hynes charged other men with trying to bribe her with $500,000 to drop the case. Genut and other supporters were doubtful that the case would make it easier for others to come forward _ but remained hopeful. "I don't know how it will change," Genut said. "There is such intimidation to sweep it under the rug," she said. "But it only takes one pioneer." Hynes said he hoped the courage of the girl, and the trial outcome, would encourage other victims to come forward, and he urged the Satmar community to reform its rules restricting families to go to outside authorities. He said he's not clear how widespread sexual abuse is in the community, but there was at least one more victim of Weberman's who has not come forward. "What the leaders have to understand is we will never get to the bottom of this until there is total cooperation," he said. ||||| On Dec. 9, Mr. Weberman was found guilty of 59 counts of sexual abuse, charges that carried a maximum combined sentence of 117 years. He was found guilty of engaging in various sexual acts, including oral sex, groping and acting out pornographic videos, during therapy sessions that were meant to help the girl become more religious. The abuse lasted three years. In her statement, the victim said that for years during and after the abuse, she would look in the mirror and see “a girl who didn’t want to live in her own skin.” “I would cry until the tears ran dry,” she said. But now, she said, she can see someone “who finally stood up and spoke out,” on behalf of both herself and “the other silent victims.” “You played around with and destroyed lives as if they were your toys,” she told Mr. Weberman, “without the slightest bit of mercy.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Mr. Weberman, who wore his traditional black suit and head covering, did not speak before the sentencing, but his lawyer, George Farkas, said he was “innocent of the crimes charged.” An appeal is planned. Critics have charged Mr. Hynes with not being aggressive enough in going after molesters in the politically well-connected community. But Mr. Hynes has attributed the lack of prosecutions on the intimidation to stay silent that ultra-Orthodox sexual-abuse victims and their families often face from their own community leaders. Support for Mr. Weberman was strong in powerful circles of the Satmar community after his arrest in 2011, with hundreds turning out for a fund-raiser for his defense. But the courtroom on Tuesday was about equally divided between supporters for him and for his victim. Mr. Hynes has said he believes the case may be a turning point for ultra-Orthodox victims of sexual abuse. In addition to convicting Mr. Weberman, his office also charged seven Hasidic men with bribery and intimidation of Mr. Weberman’s victim, who testified over four days. Prosecutors say they know of more victims who were too afraid to testify. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “If there is one message to take away from this case, it is that this office will pursue the evil of sexual abuse of a child no matter where it occurs in this county,” Mr. Hynes said in a statement. “The abuse of a child cannot be swept under the rug or dealt with by insular groups believing only they know what is best for their community.” The victim, who has since married and enrolled in college, no longer lives in Williamsburg but continues to face harassment and intimidation by some who still support Mr. Weberman, according to her husband. “She definitely feels relieved, and she will be able to sleep better at night,” the husband said Tuesday. “He definitely won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”

– Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist and powerful member of the Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn, will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars after being convicted of 59 counts of sexual abuse yesterday, reports the New York Times. After days of testimony from a victim who says she was repeatedly abused by Weberman starting when she was 12, a judge sentenced him to 103 years in prison, just short of the 117-year maximum. During her testimony, the victim, now 18, told Weberman that he "played around with and destroyed lives as if they were your toys, without the slightest bit of mercy.” Weberman's crimes included various sexual acts with minors, sometimes during therapy sessions under the guise of helping girls become more religious. The case is the first in two decades Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes has brought against a member of the Satmar ultra-Orthodox community. While many criticize Hynes for not being aggressive enough toward Hasidic abusers, he says the self-silencing culture of the Satmar community is to blame. The case has divided the community, even leading to violence against a victim advocate.

Jockey Jose Flores was officially pronounced dead at 12:42 p.m. Thursday, three days after a “sickening” accident in the ninth race at Parx Racing in Bensalem. When Flores came out of the starting gate Monday, it was ride No. 28,684 in a career that was among the very best in the history of Pennsylvania horse racing. The jockey, 56, was riding 14-1 shot Love Rules in a 6-furlong race. Just three weeks before, Flores had won a race on Love Rules by 4 lengths. Monday, horse and rider were on the lead when, with absolutely no warning, the horse went down and Flores was off, hitting the ground headfirst. Nobody will ever know for sure, but it’s likely that initial shock was the cause of the massive cranial damage that caused his death after he was placed on life support at Aria Frankford Torresdale Hospital. “It’s unbelievable, just sickening,” said Scott Lake, the all-time leading trainer at Parx and a man who has known Flores since 1991 when they both getting started at Penn National. “He was just tremendous, a nice guy, always a professional.” Flores won 4,650 races in a career that began in 1987. His mounts won more than $64 million. His longtime agent, Dave Yanuzzi, is certain Flores would have been at more than 5,000 wins had he not suffered several serious injuries in the last 3 1/2 years. When Yanuzzi asked Flores whether he wanted to keep going after his last previous injury, the jockey told him: “You don’t understand. I love this. What else would I do? Where else would I go?” They canceled racing at Parx on Tuesday, but plan to resume Saturday. ||||| Legendary Pennsylvania Jockey Dies After Headfirst Fall ... in Horse Racing Accident Legendary Pennsylvania Jockey Dies After Headfirst Fall in Horse Racing Accident Breaking News Jose Flores, a Pennsylvanian jockey who earned $64 MIL in his storied career, is dead at 57 after a headfirst fall during a race Monday in Philly. Flores suffered major head and spine injuries as a result of the accident ... and was pulled off life support on Thursday. The tragic incident happened Monday at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pennsylvania ... when Jose's horse, Love Rules, went down -- launching him from his saddle. Flores had compiled 4,650 wins across 3 decades in the sport ... and was reportedly going for the magic number of 5,000. Jose is the 157th North American rider to die from a horse-racing accident since 1940. He leaves behind a wife and 3 sons. RIP. ||||| In this Sept. 19, 2015 photo, provided by Equi-Photo, jockey Jose Flores poses at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. Flores, 56, who was among the best jockeys in Pennsylvania history, died Thursday, March... (Associated Press) In this Sept. 19, 2015 photo, provided by Equi-Photo, jockey Jose Flores poses at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. Flores, 56, who was among the best jockeys in Pennsylvania history, died Thursday, March 22, 2018, of injuries suffered in a racing accident, Parx Racing said in a statement. Flores was racing... (Associated Press) In this Sept. 19, 2015 photo, provided by Equi-Photo, jockey Jose Flores poses at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. Flores, 56, who was among the best jockeys in Pennsylvania history, died Thursday, March 22, 2018, of injuries suffered in a racing accident, Parx Racing said in a statement. Flores was racing... (Associated Press) In this Sept. 19, 2015 photo, provided by Equi-Photo, jockey Jose Flores poses at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. Flores, 56, who was among the best jockeys in Pennsylvania history, died Thursday, March... (Associated Press) PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A renowned jockey who was among the best in Pennsylvania history died Thursday of injuries suffered in a racing accident. Parx Racing announced the death of Jose Flores, 56, who was racing Monday at the suburban Philadelphia track when his horse went down and Flores was thrown off. The jockey hit the ground headfirst and suffered a massive trauma. He was removed from life support Thursday afternoon. Flores won 4,650 races in a career that spanned more than three decades. He was the top career earner at Parx, formerly known as Philadelphia Park. "It's unbelievable, just sickening," Scott Lake, the top trainer at Parx, who has known Flores since 1991, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "He was just tremendous, a nice guy, always a professional." Flores' mounts earned $64 million in nearly 29,000 career starts, according to the Equibase thoroughbred database. Parx called Flores an "outstanding jockey" and expressed condolences to his family. The Jockeys' Guild said Flores is the 157th jockey to die in a racing accident in unofficial records going back to 1940. The group said that before Flores, it had no record of a jockey ever being killed in an accident at a Pennsylvania track.

– A renowned jockey who was among the best in Pennsylvania history died Thursday of injuries suffered in a racing accident, the AP reports. Parx Racing announced the death of Jose Flores, 56, who was racing Monday at the suburban Philadelphia track when his horse went down and Flores was thrown off. The jockey hit the ground headfirst and suffered a massive trauma. He was removed from life support Thursday afternoon. Flores won 4,650 races in a career that spanned more than three decades. He was the top career earner at Parx, formerly known as Philadelphia Park. TMZ calls him "legendary." "It's unbelievable, just sickening," Scott Lake, the top trainer at Parx, who has known Flores since 1991, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He was just tremendous, a nice guy, always a professional." Flores' mounts earned $64 million in nearly 29,000 career starts, according to the Equibase thoroughbred database. Parx called Flores an "outstanding jockey" and expressed condolences to his family. The Jockeys' Guild said Flores is the 157th jockey to die in a racing accident in unofficial records going back to 1940. The group said that before Flores, it had no record of a jockey ever being killed in an accident at a Pennsylvania track. The Inquirer says there was "absolutely no warning" before the horse, Love Rules, went down. Flores is survived by a wife and three sons.

The bodies of some of the first victims recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 have been brought to the Netherlands from the crash site in eastern Ukraine. Two military aircraft - one Dutch and the other Australian - left Kharkiv Airport in northeastern Ukraine earlier carrying the bodies of 40 victims between them in wooden coffins. The jets arrived at Eindhoven airport in the Netherlands where they were met by relatives, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and members of the Dutch royal family. Bells were sounded across the country and the Last Post played at the airport as an eerie silence fell across the airbase. A coffin of one victim is carried from a plane to a hearse in Eindhoven The coffins were carried off the planes by military personnel and each one put in a hearse. Sky's Ian Woods, at the airport, said: "Around 1,000 relatives are watching from behind a screen, including members of two British families, even though they don't know if their loved ones are on board the planes." Play video "Crash Victims' Bodies Leave Ukraine" Video: Crash Victims' Bodies Leave Ukraine A minute's silence was observed nationwide, and a motorcade took the bodies to the Korporaal Van Oudheusdenkazerne military barracks in Hilversum, where the long process of identifying the remains will begin using DNA, dental records and finger prints. Jean Fransman, a spokesman for the ministry of security in the Netherlands, told Sky News: "We have chosen this location because these facilities have everything that's needed to carry out the identification process as quickly as possible with respect and discretion." There was a national day of mourning in the Netherlands for the 298 people killed, including 193 Dutch, that also included a silent march in Amsterdam. Play video "The Challenges Of MH17 Forensics" Video: The Challenges Of MH17 Forensics The Dutch Prime Minister has warned it could take weeks or even months to formally identify the victims before their bodies are released for repatriation. A team of nine disaster victim identification (DVI) personnel from Britain, including six police officers, a crime scene manager and forensic photographer, will assist the Dutch authorities, which are leading the investigation. The bodies are the first of some 200 victims which are expected to be flown out of Ukraine during the course of this week. Play video "Missile System 'That Downed MH17'" Video: Missile System 'That Downed MH17' It is thought more than 80 bodies still remain at the scene. However, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has cast doubt over the numbers that have been recovered and handed over by pro-Russian separatists, and warned it is unclear how many bodies may have arrived in Kharkiv and been left behind. "It's quite possible that many bodies are still out there in the open, in the European summer, subject to interference and subject to the ravages of heat and animals," he said. Play video "Footage Of Downed Ukrainian Jets" Video: Footage Of Downed Ukrainian Jets Meanwhile, unverified video has emerged apparently showing the wreckage of two Ukrainian fighter jets which were reportedly shot down by separatists. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "Nations united in grief": Annita McVeigh reports on the ceremony at Eindhoven The Netherlands has received the first victims' bodies from crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in a solemn ceremony at Eindhoven air base. Forty hearses left for the town of Hilversum where the formal identification process will begin. The Netherlands is observing a national day of mourning for the 298 victims, most of whom were Dutch. Ukrainian pro-Russian rebels have been widely accused of shooting down the plane on 17 July. UK government sources say intelligence shows rebels deliberately tampered with evidence, moving bodies and placing parts from other planes in the debris. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatseniuk claims one of its jets may have been downed by an air-to-air missile As fighting continued in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, officials in Kiev told the BBC that two aircraft, thought to be military jets, had been downed just 35km (20 miles) from the crash site. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk later told the BBC that one of the fighters could have been hit by an air-to-air missile. He did not directly accuse Russia but said it was not brought down by a Ukrainian jet. Image copyright Reuters Image caption The hearses left Eindhoven air base in a cortege, passed flags at half mast Image copyright AP Image caption Members of the Dutch royal family and Prime Minister Mark Rutte watched the coffins leave the planes Image copyright Reuters Image caption Earlier, honour guards had carried the coffins on to two planes at Kharkiv airport Image copyright Reuters Image caption Many observing the day of mourning went to Schiphol Airport, where flight MH17 took off from, to lay flowers Image copyright AP Image caption Teams of investigators from several countries are still at the crash site Two military planes - one Dutch and the other Australian - carrying the first 40 coffins landed at Eindhoven air base on Wednesday afternoon. They were met by members of the Dutch royal family, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and hundreds of victims' relatives. Churches around the Netherlands rang their bells for five minutes before the planes landed, and flags of all the nations affected by the disaster have been flying at half mast. There was also a minute's silence. The coffins were slowly loaded into a fleet of waiting hearses which then moved off in motorcades. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption A day of mourning is being held in the Netherlands, Anna Holligan reports All the bodies are being taken to the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks south of the city of Hilversum for identification, a process that could take months. Two more planes carrying victims are due to arrive in Eindhoven on Thursday. Earlier, the coffins had been loaded on to the planes by a military guard of honour at Kharkiv airport in eastern Ukraine. There has been mounting international anger at the delays in recovering the bodies. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Pro-Russian rebel leader Alexander Borodai denied neglecting bodies at the scene However, separatist leader Alexander Borodai told BBC Newsnight that international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had told them to leave the bodies to be collected by experts. "So we wait a day. We wait a second day. A third day. Come on! Not a single expert. Well, to leave the bodies there any longer, in 30 degree heat, it's absurd. It's simply inhuman. It's a scene from a horror movie," he said. OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw denied they told rebels not to move the bodies. He told the BBC: "It is not consistent with our mandate to tell people what to do. We're here to monitor, observe and report." BBC - Error 404 : Not Found Rebels have also been accused of exaggerating the number of bodies transported from the crash site to the town of Kharkiv on Tuesday. They had claimed there were 282 bodies but experts said only 200 could be verified. In a separate development, the Dutch air safety board said the cockpit voice recorder from flight MH17 had been successfully downloaded and contained "valid data from the flight". The "black box" flight-data recorders are being examined at the headquarters of the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough. Image copyright AP Image caption Experts have expressed concern that forensic evidence at the crash site could be lost Earlier in Washington, intelligence officials presented evidence they had gathered on the involvement of the rebels. "It's a solid case that it's an SA-11 [missile] that was fired from eastern Ukraine under conditions the Russians helped create," said the officials, who requested that their names not be reported. They said the "most plausible explanation" was that rebels mistook the airliner for another aircraft. The evidence they presented included: Satellite images of a facility allegedly used to train rebels near the Russian city of Rostov, which were later tweeted by Geoffrey Pyatt, US ambassador to Ukraine Other images purportedly showing a surface-to-air missile launcher in the area Analysis of voice recordings of pro-Russian rebels apparently admitting bringing the airliner down Photos and messages from social-media sites pointing to rebel involvement Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Richard Galpin reports from Kharkiv airport as some of the victims' "long journey home" begins BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said some observers suggested the US statement constituted a subtle backing off from more assertive claims over the weekend in which they said they could not rule out a direct Russian role. American diplomats said this was not the case. Meanwhile, fighting between Ukrainian government forces and rebels around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk has reportedly left 16 people dead. A statement from overall military commander Igor Strelkov posted on a rebel website said he had withdrawn his fighters from the outskirts of Donetsk. He said they had pulled back and were prepared to defend their positions. The fighting in eastern Ukraine erupted in April and is believed to have claimed more than 1,000 lives.

– The planes carrying the bodies of some of the first victims recovered from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site have landed in the Netherlands, Sky News reports. The two military aircraft, one Dutch and one Australian, contain a total of 40 bodies in wooden coffins; they took off from Ukraine's Kharkiv Airport and landed at Eindhoven Airport, where the Dutch prime minister, members of the Dutch royal family, and hundreds of relatives of the victims were waiting, the BBC reports. Bells were tolled for five minutes before military personnel carried the coffins off the planes and put them in hearses; they'll be taken to a military barracks for identification. Click for the poignant stories of the final hours of some of MH17's victims.

Published on Sep 25, 2017 “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” Megyn Kelly admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family (including her mother and husband, who are in the audience), and describes events that have shaped her, especially the death of her father. Answering a question from the audience, she says, “my biggest challenge is the alarm clock.” » Subscribe to TODAY: http://on.today.com/SubscribeToTODAY » Watch the latest from TODAY: http://bit.ly/LatestTODAY About: TODAY brings you the latest headlines and expert tips on money, health and parenting. We wake up every morning to give you and your family all you need to start your day. If it matters to you, it matters to us. We are in the people business. Subscribe to our channel for exclusive TODAY archival footage & our original web series. Connect with TODAY Online! Visit TODAY's Website: http://on.today.com/ReadTODAY Find TODAY on Facebook: http://on.today.com/LikeTODAY Follow TODAY on Twitter: http://on.today.com/FollowTODAY Follow TODAY on Google+: http://on.today.com/PlusTODAY Follow TODAY on Instagram: http://on.today.com/InstaTODAY Follow TODAY on Pinterest: http://on.today.com/PinTODAY Megyn Kelly Launches Megyn Kelly TODAY: ‘I’m Done With Politics For Now’ | Megyn Kelly TODAY ||||| Megyn Kelly isn’t playing politics anymore – at least not on camera. The former Fox News anchor vowed to put aside the hard-edged interviewing style that made her famous and turned her energy Monday full-bore into the launch of a new morning program, in one of the bigger bets NBC has made on a single talent since, perhaps, it named an unknown Conan O’Brien in 1993 to succeed David Letterman at the helm of its wee-hours “Late Night” franchise. Kelly told a live studio audience in the opening moments of her new “Megyn Kelly Today” that “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” and said she hoped instead to help viewers “get yourself through the day, to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear – and maybe a little hope to start your day. Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing.” The mission represents a marked change for the popular news host whose prosecutor-like style in Fox News Channel’s primetime made her a star. Kelly has no experience hosting a morning program of this sort, and just months ago was anchoring a Sunday-night newsmagazine program on NBC that at times proved polarizing. But she put all of that in the rear-view mirror Monday as she re-introduced herself to the audience, talking about her upstate New York roots and introducing her husband and mother to the in-studio crowd and the audience at home. It’s a technique that was put to good use by NBC colleague Jimmy Fallon in the opening moments of his run on the network’s late-night franchise “Tonight.” Related NBC Touts Megyn Kelly’s Softer Side in Bid to Launch New Morning Show To Lure Ad Dollars, NBC Tied Megyn Kelly to ‘Today’ NBC is packaging Kelly as part of its “Today” empire. She’s coming on after colleagues Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie deliver most of the headlines – and a lot of lighter fare, as well. And she’s on before Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford start sipping wine and delving into less serious topics. As the rest of the “Today” anchors came on set to toast her, Kelly offered the assemblage mimosas, meant to represent a transition between the wake-you-up coffee served on the show’s first two hours and the alcohol consumed in its last. But there was no talk of current events: No reference to the devastation in Puerto Rico, or the protests that took place over the weekend across the nation’s various NFL games. Kelly has long harbored ambitions of filling in the space in the TV-news business once occupied by Barbara Walters or Oprah Winfrey. “Diane Sawyer left her anchor role. Oprah has moved to the OWN network and is doing a different thing now. So why not me?” she told Variety during an interview in 2015. On Monday, she dove into the role, hosting a multi-segment visit with the cast of “Will & Grace,” the popular NBC sitcom that is getting a reboot this season. She bantered with the rest of the “Today” crew in a taped segment that had Kelly biking to work with Al Roker, and getting advice from Kathie Lee Gifford (“Be authentic!”) as she sat in the makeup chair. The show ended with a long field piece that had Kelly journey to the Windy City to meet a 77-year-old Chicago nun who was working diligently to improve a tough neighborhood. Sister Donna Liette and some of her supporters also joined Kelly in the studio. The title of the segment, “Settle For More,” is borrowed from Kelly’s recent memoir, and looks as if it might be a regular feature on the show about people trying to improve their situation in life. “If you want change, you must seek it,” Kelly told the crowd. NBC managed to weave promotional support from advertisers into the opening program – much like Oprah Winfrey did over the years. And while there was no mass giveaway of new cars to the in-studio crowd, as Winfrey did in 2004 when she gave free Pontiacs to more than 250 audience members, Kelly was able to offer one man a free trip to California to see a “Will & Grace” taping, courtesy of United Airlines. Coldwell Banker and Ace Hardware coughed up checks on stage to help Sister Liette continue her work. Unilever and General Mills were among the sponsors running multiple commercials during Kelly’s debut. Daytime TV is notoriously difficult, and reliable operatives including Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira have faced headwinds in their attempts to launch programs similar to Kelly’s. NBC is clearly hoping the force of her personality and an inspirational backstory lend the host an edge – not the polarizing kind – with a broader audience that it was reaching with the previous inhabitant of the 9 a.m. timeslot. Will Kelly be able to maintain the lighter, inspirational tone of her debut in a swirling news cycle that seems utterly consumed with politics and cultural clashes? Will she want to bring her hard-news chops to bear now and again? The magic of a morning program is that it always has another broadcast waiting in the wings that might allow its host to try those ideas out. ||||| Kelly's much-anticipated new show, 'Megyn Kelly Today,' debuted Monday. Megyn Kelly, in a series of prelaunch interviews, has been very clear about the show she wants to run every day at 9 a.m. on NBC — one that's light on politics but heavy on inspiration and fun. She followed through on that early vision with the Monday morning launch of Megyn Kelly Today, which replaces the 9 a.m. hour of Today. "As you heard, we have the entire cast of Will & Grace live, along with the show creator," Kelly told her live studio audience. "And then we'll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh, wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I’m kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all felt it, it's everywhere. And it's just gotten so dark." The first episode of the show felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly. Her mother was in attendance, as was her husband, who came out from the audience and gave her a bouquet of roses. Kelly said her husband, unlike her, is "not a TV person" and "likes his privacy." Kelly began the show by talking about her background and telling the story of losing her father to a heart attack at the age of 15. "We didn't have a lot of money, but we did have a lot of love and a ton of honesty," the former Fox News anchor said. Kelly also received a very warm welcome from the entire Today show family. In a taped segment, she rode a tandem bike to work with Al Roker and cooked an omelet with Matt Lauer, who earnestly seemed excited to have Kelly as a colleague. "I wish you success, honey," 10 a.m. co-host Kathie Lee Gifford told her. "Mostly, I wish you joy." Later, the cast of Today came out and held a mimosa toast to Kelly, who had said in a New York Times story last week that "if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa." Lauer led the toast, and said, "Here's the newest addition to our family. Here's to many happy mornings. Here's to Megyn Kelly Today." Kelly interviewed the entire cast of the rebooted NBC show Will & Grace, and, like a good morning show host, asked at many points, "What did that feel like?" In another dose of corporate synergy, Kelly will have the cast of This Is Us on Tuesday morning's show. ||||| Megyn Kelly has officially made her morning show debut! On Monday, the former Fox News anchor debuted Megyn Kelly Today, which occupies the NBC morning show’s third hour. “I’m so excited,” she said. “I’m also a little nervous!” “We’ll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump — oh no, we will not be doing that,” she said. “The truth is, I am kind of done with politics for now.” Kelly, 46, encouraged her live studio audience in New York City to “have a laugh with us, a smile, and sometimes a tear” as she celebrated the show’s launch day, getting emotional as she recalled her father dying of a sudden heart attack in their family home when she was 15 years old, just 10 days before Christmas — “the single most devastating event of my lifetime,” as she called it. Kelly — whose mother was in the audience — said her goal at Megyn Kelly Today is to “deliver hope and optimism, and to have fun.” Kelly encouraged her audience to ask questions, informing them that every morning would begin with a dialogue between the host and the studio audience. RELATED: Megyn Kelly Left Fox So She Could Watch Her Kids Grow Up — ‘I Hadn’t Tucked Them Into Bed on a Weeknight in 3 Years’ One audience member asked Kelly, who previously hosted The Kelly File on Fox News before leaving the network in January for a diverse new role at NBC, what has been her biggest joy — and biggest challenge — in transitioning from evening to morning television. “The biggest challenge by far is the alarm clock,” Kelly joked. “My biggest joy has been so far just all of it — I mean honestly, all of it. Professionally, I feel fulfilled, personally, I’ve been having dinner with my husband and my kids every night.” One minute to air here in Studio 6A! #MegynToday pic.twitter.com/udDcWXfv9b — Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) September 25, 2017 Kelly’s husband Douglas Brunt then made a surprise appearance, gifting his wife of 11 years with a bouquet of red roses. “You’ve already made us all laugh and cry,” he said as the two embraced. “Congratulations!” “That is so sweet, because he is not a TV person,” said Kelly after he exited the stage. “Doug, unlike me, likes his privacy!” Earlier this month, Kelly told PEOPLE she’s been “having so much fun [at NBC] it’s almost not right.” “I’ve been having a great time,” she said. “Just today in the audience, there were two people up front who were die-hard Fox viewers and remain die-hard Fox viewers and used to watch me every night on The Kelly File. They were so sweet. They said: ‘Oh we miss you, we miss you.’ The woman held my arm and said, ‘You seem so happy,’ and I am. She saw it and I feel it and it’s just been rewarding.” Megyn Kelly Today airs weekdays on NBC (check local listings). ||||| Megyn Kelly launched her daytime makeover on Monday with "Megyn Kelly Today," conspicuously trying to reintroduce herself in the mold of Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres -- complete with a caffeinated, cheering studio audience -- while establishing distance from her time as a Fox News anchor. It's absurdly early, of course, to draw any conclusions about the efficacy of the Kelly experiment. Still, after tepid marks for her prime time newsmagazine and now her addition to "Today," it's worth considering that NBC News brass leapt at the opportunity to snag a high-profile news star without having fully thought through how best to deploy her. Related: Megyn Kelly turns to daytime for a shot at her own 'Oprah effect' Wasting no time, Kelly opened the show by essentially seeking to reintroduce herself in this new role, complete with a mission statement and biography, which included discussing the sudden death of her father when she was a teenager. "The truth is I am kind of done with politics for now," she stated, citing the show's objective as providing the audience a place to share "a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear, and maybe a little hope to start your day." Given that she was best-known for combatively grilling guests (HBO's John Oliver provided a montage on Sunday) before her run-ins with then-candidate Donald Trump, hope is certainly a change for Kelly. But there she was mounting a charm offensive -- fielding questions from the audience, receiving flowers from her husband and warmly yukking it up with the cast and producers of "Will & Grace," in an interview that wouldn't have looked out of place on any other daytime talk show or "Access Hollywood." Related: Megyn Kelly makes the case for Alex Jones interview The same tone characterized a taped piece in which the "Today" team introduced Kelly to her new gig, which simply felt like a hurried attempt to soften the image of the franchise's newest host by adding her to NBC's morning family. Kelly closed with "Settle for More," a segment designed to provide moments of hope and uplift -- the premiere's focus was a Chicago nun, who received some lovely gifts from sponsors -- but which simultaneously promotes her book. Kelly told the New York Times that the morning program is "the show that I was born to do. This is what I was meant to do." That sense of mission, of purpose, would only seem to ratchet up the self-imposed pressure, as if much more was needed given NBC's high-stakes investment in her. Kelly is a polished interviewer. Yet whatever her interests and concerns about psychic health, it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it. In the aforementioned taped segment, which was followed by a welcoming toast from the "Today" crew, Kelly asked Kathie Lee Gifford for the secret to success in daytime. Her answer: "Being authentic." Based on first impressions, Kelly is working awfully hard at being herself. And as they say in TV, if she can fake that, the rest should be easy. ||||| CLOSE “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” she admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family and describes events that have shaped her. NBC News’ Megyn Kelly TODAY Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly prepares for her morning debut on NBC's 'Megyn Kelly Today.' (Photo: Peter Kramer, NBC) Megyn Kelly is "done with politics for now." The host opened Monday's inaugural episode of Megyn Kelly Today, the 9 a.m. hour of NBC's Today show, with that declarative statement. She noted that politics are everywhere, infused into every facet of our lives, and her new morning show would be far more focused on "fun." It was a bit of necessary rebranding for the former Fox News anchor, who made her name diving into politics headfirst on the cable news channel, to enter the more lifestyle-focused world of morning TV. Minus politics, Monday's premiere was a blend of personal stories from Kelly, an audience Q&A, celebrity interviews and an "inspirational" field piece to close out the hour. More: 'Megyn Kelly Today': 'It's not going to be the Trump channel,' she promises The combination is tricky, and the first episode was a bit awkward. Like any new series, Megyn has some growing pains, and that was apparent in missed cues, clumsy seating arrangements and some stiffness from Kelly, who, whether because of nervousness or her attempts to develop a new tone, speaks with a strange cadence. And even an hour of the Today show cannot divorce itself from politics entirely. Her first guests were the cast and creators of NBC's returning Will & Grace, which, as Kelly repeatedly explained, was a groundbreaking show for LGBTQ representation on television. Kelly focused on the impact the series had on that community, except she only mentioned "gays and lesbians," and, in an ill-timed joke that didn't land, asked a superfan in the audience, "Is it true you became a lawyer and gay because of Will & Grace"? Kelly also devoted a segment to an elderly nun working against gun violence on the south side of Chicago, an area that Kelly called "like a war zone." Chicago's gun violence is another issue that's been politicized, particularly by President Trump, but her focus is on the feel-good aspect of the nun's "Peace Garden," and her efforts to bring the mothers of violence victims and perpetrators together. While that serves its own purpose, it doesn't make the issue entirely apolitical. That, perhaps, is the biggest hurdle. She can say that she's done with politics, but the subject is (by her own admission) everywhere, and side-stepping it won't make it go away. The show will get better at staging and timing as it goes on, but a purpose is something harder to refine. There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues. Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2yoaoHg

– Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly made her debut Monday as a morning-TV host, declaring that she's "kind of done with politics for now" and instead focusing on more lighthearted fare, reports Variety. (See video here.) Kelly is hosting the 9am slot of the Today show on NBC, and Monday's show included the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace and a feature on a nun fighting gun violence in Chicago. So how did show No. 1 go? A sampling of reviews: Warm and fuzzy: Episode No. 1 "felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly," writes Jeremy Barr at the Hollywood Reporter. Especially when her husband emerged to give her flowers. Kelly also spoke emotionally about the death of her father when she was a teenager, notes People. Better balance? At USA Today, Kelly Lawler writes that the episode was a "bit awkward" as Kelly, who displayed "some stiffness" at times, transitioned into her new role. "There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues," she writes. "Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance." Questionable strategy: Brian Lowry at CNN also found the debut a little awkward. He cautions that it's too early to draw conclusions, but writes that it seems NBC landed Kelly without a clear sense of how to make use of her talents. What's more, "it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it." Harsh take: At the Washington Post, Hank Steuver delivers a particularly negative review. "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find," he writes. Kelly "moved stiffly" and "interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself." Ouch.

Image copyright Thinkstock Exposure to bright light can lead to greater sexual satisfaction in men who have low sexual desire, a new study suggests. Scientists from the University of Siena in Italy found that using a light box, similar to those used to treat some forms of depression, increased testosterone levels. And this led to greater reported levels of sexual satisfaction. But they said more research was needed before it could be used as a treatment. The researchers carried out their study on 38 men who had been diagnosed with disorders which cause a lack of interest in sex. Bright light One half of the group was treated with a light box, while the other half was treated with an adapted light box which gave out significantly less light. They were treated for half an hour early in the morning for two weeks. When they retested the participants, they found that the group exposed to the bright light tripled their sexual satisfaction scores while the control group's scores stayed roughly the same. The researchers also found that testosterone levels increased in men who had been given the active light treatment from around 2.1 ng/ml to 3.6 ng/ml - but the control group showed no increase. Prof Andrea Fagiolini, who led the study, said the increased levels of testosterone explained the greater reported sexual satisfaction. What is light box treatment? Light therapy is where a special lamp called a light box is used to simulate exposure to sunlight. A light box contains very bright fluorescent tubes - usually at least 10 times the intensity of household lights. They are commonly used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder. A patient looks into the light box and when light hits the back of the eye, messages are passed to the part of the brain that controls sleep, appetite, sex drive, temperature, mood and activity. Some people seem to need a lot more light than others for their body to function normally. Mimics nature And he went on to explain how the light box treatment works. He said: "In the northern hemisphere, the body's testosterone production naturally declines from November through until April and then rises steadily through the spring and summer with a peak in October. "You see the effect of this in reproductive rates, with the month of June showing the highest rate of conception. The use of the light box really mimics what nature does." Prof Fagiolini said he thought the light therapy inhibited the pineal gland in the centre of the brain, which allowed more testosterone to be produced. Future hope There are several possible reasons for lack of sexual desire and treatment depends on the underlying cause. It can be treated with testosterone injections, antidepressants, and other medications. The researchers believe that light therapy in the future may offer the benefits of medication, but with fewer side effects. But he said they were not yet at the stage where they could recommend it as a clinical treatment. The paper will be presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress in Vienna. ||||| Shining bright lights at men might help them with flagging sex drives, according to a new study. Exposure to light helps boost men’s levels of the male hormone testosterone and increases sexual satisfaction, according to the new research. Many men experience low sexual desire after the age of 40. Some studies have estimated that up to a quarter of men might be hit by problems, which seem to depend on their age among other factors. Science news in pictures 23 show all Science news in pictures 1/23 New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the “interstitium”. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty 2/23 Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs José Iriarte 3/23 One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty 4/23 Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary 5/23 A 3D reconstruction of an African grey parrot post euthanasia Included in Wellcome Image Awards, this 3D image of an African grey parrot shows the highly intricate system of blood vessels. Scott Birch. Wellcome Images 6/23 Baby Hawaiian bobtail squid Another Wellcome Images Award winner, this time of baby Hawaiian bobtail squid. The black ink sac and light organ in the centre of the squid’s mantle cavity can be clearly seen. Macroscopic Solutions. Wellcome Images 7/23 Skeletons of 5,000-year-old Chinese ‘giants’ discovered by archaeologists The people are thought to have been unusually tall and strong. The tallest of the skeletons uncovered measured at 1.9m YouTube 8/23 Nasa discovers 75,000 mile-wide hole in the Sun Sunspots are caused by interactions with the Sun’s magnetic field and are cooler areas on the star’s surface. Nasa 9/23 View(active tab) Apple News Breaking news email Edit Revisions Workflow Clear Cache NewsScience 132 million-year-old dinosaur fossil found at factory in Surrey Paleontologists Sarah Moore and Jamie Jordan believe they have discovered a Iguanodon dinosaur, a herbivore that was around three metres tall and 10 metres long Cambridge Photographers/Wienerberger 10/23 Discovering life on Mars is less likely as researchers find toxic chemicals on its surface The Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars Getty Images 11/23 The Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest in the United States and third largest in the world, is seen in Yellowstone National Park. The park is famous for its geothermal activity – which includes its spectacular, flowing springs as well as the famous "Old Faithful" geyser that sprays water out every hour or so. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart 12/23 An iris clip fitted onto the eye This images is apart of the Wellcome Images Awards and shows how an artificial intraocular lens is fitted onto the eye. Used for conditions such as myopia and cataracts. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS FT. Wellcome Images 13/23 The Syrian civil war has caused the first ever withdrawal from the 'doomsday bank' Researchers in the Middle East have asked for seeds including those of wheat, barley and grasses, all of which are chosen because especially resistant to dry conditions. It is the first withdrawal from the bank, which was built in 2008. Those researchers would normally request the seeds from a bank in Aleppo. But that centre has been damaged by the war — while some of its functions continue, and its cold storage still works, it has been unable to provide the seeds that are needed by the rest of the Middle East, as it once did. 14/23 Scientists find exactly what human corpses smell like New research has become the first to isolate the particular scent of human death, describing the various chemicals that are emitted by corpses in an attempt to help find them in the future. The researchers hope that the findings are the first step towards working on a synthetic smell that could train cadaver dogs to be able to more accurately find human bodies, or to eventually developing electronic devices that can look for the scent themselves. 15/23 Black hole captured eating a star then vomiting it back out Astronomers have captured a black hole eating a star and then sicking a bit of it back up for the first time ever. The scientists tracked a star about as big as our sun as it was pulled from its normal path and into that of a supermassive black hole before being eaten up. They then saw a high-speed flare get thrust out, escaping from the rim of the black hole. Scientists have seen black holes killing and swallowing stars. And the jets have been seen before.But a new study shows the first time that they have captured the hot flare that comes out just afterwards. And the flare and then swallowed star have not been linked together before 16/23 Dog-sized horned dinosaur fossil found shows east-west evolutionary divide in North America A British scientist has uncovered the fossil of a dog-sized horned dinosaur that roamed eastern North America up to 100 million years ago. The fragment of jaw bone provides evidence of an east-west divide in the evolution of dinosaurs on the North American continent. During the Late Cretaceous period, 66 to 100 million years ago, the land mass was split into two continents by a shallow sea. This sea, the Western Interior Seaway, ran from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Dinosaurs living in the western continent, called Laramidia, were similar to those found in Asia 17/23 'Male and female brains' aren't real Brains cannot be categorised into female and male, according to the first study to look at sex differences in the whole brain. Specific parts of the brain do show sex differences, but individual brains rarely have all “male” traits or all “female” traits. Some characteristics are more common in women, while some are more common in men, and some are common in both men and women, according to the study 18/23 Life on Earth appeared hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought Life may have come to earth 4.1 billion years ago, hundreds of millions of years earlier than we knew. The discovery, made using graphite that was trapped in ancient crystals, could mean that life began "almost instantaneously" after the Earth was formed. The researchers behind it have described the discovery as “a potentially transformational scientific advance”. Previously, life on Earth was understood to have begun when the inner solar system was hit by a massive bombardment from space, which also formed the moon's craters 19/23 Nasa confirms Mars water discovery Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae — or dark patches — on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. 20/23 Earth could be at risk of meteor impacts Earth could be in danger as our galaxy throws out comets that could hurtle towards us and wipe us out, scientists have warned. Scientists have previously presumed that we are in a relatively safe period for meteor impacts, which are linked with the journey of our sun and its planets, including Earth, through the Milky Way. But some orbits might be more upset than we know, and there is evidence of recent activity, which could mean that we are passing through another meteor shower. Showers of meteors periodically pass through the area where the Earth is, as gravitational disturbances upset the Oort Cloud, which is a shell of icy objects on the edge of the solar system. They happen on a 26-million year cycle, scientists have said, which coincide with mass extinctions over the last 260-million years 21/23 Genetically-engineered, extra-muscular dogs Chinese scientists have created genetically-engineered, extra-muscular dogs, after editing the genes of the animals for the first time. The scientists create beagles that have double the amount of muscle mass by deleting a certain gene, reports the MIT Technology Review. The mutant dogs have “more muscles and are expected to have stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications”, Liangxue Lai, one of the researchers on the project. Now the team hope to go on to create other modified dogs, including those that are engineered to have human diseases like muscular dystrophy or Parkinson’s. Since dogs’ anatomy is similar to those of humans’, intentionally creating dogs with certain human genetic traits could allow scientists to further understand how they occur 22/23 Researchers discover 'lost world' of arctic dinosaurs Scientists say that the new dinosaur, known as Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis, “challenges everything we thought about a dinosaur’s physiology”. Florida State University professor of biological science Greg Erickson said: “It creates this natural question. How did they survive up here?” 23/23 A team of filmmakers in the US have made the first ever scale model of the Solar System in a Nevada desert Illustrations of the Earth and moon show the two to be quite close together, Mr Overstreet said. This is inaccurate, the reason being that these images are not to scale. But that flagging sex drive seems to vary with the seasons. That led scientists to suggest that it might be a consequence of the amount of ambient light, and that sex drive was reduced in the winter because it was so dark. That led them to shine daily doses of bright light at men, and explore the way that it changed their libido. Researchers at the University of Siena recruited 38 men who have been diagnosed with having low libidos. Half of them then spent every morning for two weeks in a room with a light box, which can emit bright white light at people and simulate the effect of more sun. Those men that spent more time with the box found that their testosterone levels had gone up significantly. And, accordingly, they were much more satisfied sexually, they reported. "We found fairly significant differences between those who received the active light treatment, and the controls,” said lead researcher Andrea Fagiolini. "Before treatment, both groups averaged a sexual satisfaction score of around two out of 10, but after treatment the group exposed to the bright light was scoring sexual satisfaction scores of around 6.3 - a more than three-fold increase on the scale we used. In contrast, the control group only showed an average score of around 2.7 after treatment." The average amount of testosterone in the group that didn’t have the lights shone at them didn’t change. But the men that were treated with the light box had their levels rise from 2.1 nanograms per millilitre to 3.6. "The increased levels of testosterone explain the greater reported sexual satisfaction," said Professor Fagiolini. "In the northern hemisphere, the body's testosterone production naturally declines from November through April, and then rises steadily through the spring and summer with a peak in October. You see the effect of this in reproductive rates, with the month of June showing the highest rate of conception. The use of the light box really mimics what nature does." He added: "We believe that there may be several explanations to explain the underlying mechanism. For instance, light therapy inhibits the pineal gland in the centre of the brain and this may allow the production of more testosterone, and there are probably other hormonal effects. "We're not yet at the stage where we can recommend this as a clinical treatment .. however if this treatment can be shown to work in a larger study, then light therapy may offer a way forward. It's a small study, so for the moment we need to treat it with appropriate caution."

– Men with low sex drive might try switching on a light, a new study shows. Taking a cue from depression treatment, researchers at the University of Siena in Italy found that bright light stimulates testosterone levels and led to better results in the bedroom, reports the BBC. Using a light box lined with fluorescent tubes, researchers tested the effects on 38 men diagnosed with low libidos. One half were exposed to bright lights, and the rest to lower doses of light. Those who received the brighter lights for 30 minutes daily over two weeks tripled their rate of sexual satisfaction.The amount of testosterone in the control group didn't change, but the bright-light group saw their levels rise to 3.6 nanograms per milliliter from 2.1. "The increased levels of testosterone explain the greater reported sexual satisfaction," said lead author Andrea Fagiolini, per the Independent. He said testosterone production among men in the northern hemisphere declines naturally from November through April (peaking in October). "The use of the light box really mimics what nature does," Fagiolini said. He said light therapy "inhibits the pineal gland in the center of the brain and this may allow the production of more testosterone, and there are probably other hormonal effects." Light box therapy is commonly used to treat depression caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder. Although researchers cautioned that more research was needed, light therapy could be a promising hope for men whose sex drive is off, particularly during the winter months. A quarter of men over 40 report lagging libido and other problems, reports the Independent. (Women with low libido should check their heart rate.)

Delhi rape victim's family: She was brave, full of life Many in India are calling for death penalty for the attackers Continue reading the main story Related Stories The world knows her as the "Delhi gang-rape victim". But her grief-stricken family and relatives, trying to come to terms with their loss, remember her as a brave girl who dreamed of relieving people's pain. She wanted to build a hospital in her ancestral village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. She seldom visited the village, in one of the most undeveloped regions in the country, but she had said she wanted to do something to help the people there. The family moved to Delhi in 1983 in search of a better life but on Monday, her family arrived to scatter her ashes in the river Ganges. I joined her parents and brothers in the village. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The last time I spoke to her was in the hospital on Christmas. She gestured with her fingers that she was going to heaven” End Quote Victim's brother Her father sat cross-legged on a stack of hay spread out thinly across the floor in a crudely-built hall outside the house. "She was brave, had no fear, and was full of life," he said. Born and raised in a lower middle class family, the 23-year old saw education as the passport to improving her family's economic plight. She wanted to be a doctor since "she began playing with dolls", says the father. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "I told her repeatedly that I could not fund her education, but she did not budge." But, she was determined and eventually she won. The family sold off a chunk of their village land to fund her education. "I wanted my children to get the best of education," he says, proudly. 'Going to heaven' Her brother, who was the last member from the family to speak to her before she was attacked, remembers her as an affectionate and hardworking elder sister who led by example while prodding her two brothers to study hard. "She studied day and night. We would not even know when she slept and woke up." Her ancestral village was in one of the most undeveloped regions of the country He breaks down every time he remembers the fights he had with her, mostly over the television remote control - she preferred to watch soaps and Bigg Boss was one of her favourite programmes. "She scolded me, but she loved me as well." He recalls the events of the day when his sister was brutally attacked by six men in a bus. "My sister normally returned home by 8pm every day. If she anticipated a delay, she would call up without fail and tell us how and when she would be back. "On that day she rang up around 7pm and I took her call. She said that she would be slightly delayed but when I began calling her after 8pm, I couldn't get through to her." A few hours' later, the family received a call from the Safdarjung hospital where she was taken by the police for treatment informing them that she had "met with an accident". "She was not scared of anyone. We could never imagine that such a fate would befall her... She must never have imagined it." Grim mood He says the last time he spoke to her was in the hospital on Christmas. The attack has triggered an outpouring of anger across India "She gestured with her fingers that she was going to heaven." Her father remembers how she asked for food once she regained consciousness in hospital. "She specifically asked for toffee. The doctor asked, 'will you mind a lollipop,' and she replied, 'yes!'" He dismisses reports that she was about to get married soon: "She said she would not marry till her brothers finished their education." The mood in her ancestral village is grim and the villagers are calling for the death penalty for the accused. But her father is asking his two sons to look ahead. "He told us to focus us on our forthcoming examination. But I can't - I have lost my power to feel and think," her brother said. ||||| NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five Indian men were formally charged in court on Thursday with the gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in a case that has generated widespread anger about the government's inability to prevent violence against women. The December 16 attack on the 23-year-old student and a male companion provoked furious protests close to the seat of government in New Delhi and has fuelled a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual crime in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes. The woman died of her injuries in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, on Saturday. The five are accused of assaulting the woman on a bus in New Delhi, leaving her with such severe injuries that she died two weeks later. They were not present in court. A sixth accused is under 18 and is due to be tried separately in a juvenile court. A public prosecutor read out charges including murder, gang rape and criminal conspiracy. The court will examine the charges on Saturday, duty magistrate Surya Malik Grover said. Murder carries the death penalty in India. The father of the woman said earlier he backed the chorus of calls for those responsible to be executed. "The whole country is demanding that these monsters be hanged. I am with them," the father told reporters in his home village of Mandwara Kalan in Uttar Pradesh state. The woman was born in the village but the family later moved to New Delhi. She has not been identified and nor have members of her family, in accordance with Indian law. In a sign of the depth of feeling surrounding the case, the bar association at the court said none of its members was willing to represent the accused. The court is expected to assign a defense lawyer for the men. Advocates dressed in black robes protesting outside the court called for fast justice. In the northern state of Kashmir, school girls marched with black ribbons over their mouths and demanded harsh punishment for the accused. The case is due to be processed by a new, fast-track chamber set up in response to the crime. While the fast-track procedure has broad support, many lawyers worry new that legislation written in haste could be unconstitutional and oppose introducing the death penalty for rape. "A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said on Wednesday. ANGER Police have said the accused have admitted to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson". She fought back and bit three of them, a police source told Reuters, and the bite marks are part of the evidence against them. After throwing her from the private bus, the driver tried to run the victim over but she was pulled away by her companion, a senior police official told Reuters. Police have prepared a dossier of evidence and charges against the accused, which is believed to run to 1,000 pages, including testimony from the woman's friend who survived the hour-long attack and a man who said he was robbed by the same gang prior to the rape. Days of protests in New Delhi and other cities followed the attack. Many of the protesters have been students, infuriated by what they see as the failure of the government to protect women. In the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday, village women beat a politician and handed him to police for what they said was the attempted rape of a woman, police said. Anti-rape protests have also broken out in neighboring Nepal. The government has set up two panels headed by retired judges to recommend measures to ensure women's safety. One of the panels, due to make recommendations this month, has received some 17,000 suggestions from the public, media reported. India's chief justice inaugurated the first fast-track court for sexual offences on Wednesday - a long standing demand of activists to clear a court backlog. A review of India's penal code, which dates back to 1860, was presented to parliament last month, before the attack, and widens the definition of rape, another demand of activists. That bill is now likely to be revised further, with chemical castration and the death penalty in rape cases among proposals under consideration. "We want the laws to be amended in such a stringent way that before a person even thinks of touching a girl, he should feel chills down his spine," said lawyer Suman Lata Katiyal, protesting at the south Delhi courthouse. Hanging is only allowed in the "rarest of rare" cases according to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. It was used for the first time in eight years in November when the lone surviving gunman from a 2008 militant attack on Mumbai, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab from Pakistan, was executed. (Additional reporting by Diksha Madhok, Annie Banerji and Satarupa Bhatgtacharjya in NEW DELHI; and Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

– As expected, murder charges were filed today against five men accused of brutally gang-raping a woman on a New Delhi bus. The sixth suspect, a teenager, will see his case handled separately. The men were also charged with rape and other crimes, a list expected to include kidnapping, robbery, and assault, the New York Times reports. The combination could result in the death penalty, which is rare in India. Also rare in India: The trial will be fast-tracked. (Click for more details that have leaked from the filing.) The father of the victim, who was a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, wants the men responsible—including the teen—to be hanged, Reuters reports. He also wants new sex crimes legislation named after his daughter, who has not been identified in accordance with Indian law. The BBC has a profile of her: She dreamed of building a hospital in her ancestral village to help people in the severely undeveloped region; she had wanted to become a doctor since childhood and saw education as the way to improve her family's situation; she studied at all hours. "She was brave, had no fear, and was full of life," says her father.

In this May 27, 2013 photo released by the National Weather Service, the ice jam on the Yukon River at Bishop Rock is shown in Galena, Alaska. Several hundred people are estimated to have fled the community... (Associated Press) A colossal river ice jam that caused major flooding in a remote Alaska town was starting to churn Wednesday as water finally chewed ice chunks away from the stubborn, frozen mass after most of the residents were forced to flee from the rising water. An aerial survey Wednesday afternoon revealed chunks of ice have broken off at the front of the 30-mile (50-kilometer) ice jam on the Yukon River, National Weather Service hydrologist Ed Plumb said. That means the jam will move soon and waters will begin to recede in the waterlogged town of Galena. The flooding lifted homes off foundations and has threatened to break a dike protecting the airport, virtually the only dry spot left in the community of 500 where floodwaters washed out roads and submerged homes. There are no reports of injuries. The National Guard flew 32 more people and 19 dogs to Fairbanks Tuesday night. Other residents were evacuated earlier. Now that the water is trying to push through the jam, conditions could change quickly. When the jam breaks, the downriver community of Koyukuk will be at risk of flooding. In an earlier flight Wednesday, Plumb said, the ice was locked firmly in place, despite temperatures of 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius). The hot weather is expected to last a couple days before cooling slightly. The damage has left the town without power, fresh water and cell phone reception. When the ice jam knocked out the bridge leading to the airport, evacuees had to be taken there by boat or helicopter, according to Ray, who said the flooding began with a trickle Sunday. In a place where spring flooding is nothing new, many homes are built on stilts, but the fast rising water reached them, too. The disaster has left people feeling traumatized and vulnerable, Ray said. "We didn't have any idea how vast the flood was going to be," he said. Zidek said the damage is being assessed and a disaster policy cabinet will forward recommendations to Gov. Sean Parnell, who visited the area Tuesday. Recommendations are likely to include issuing a disaster declaration. ___ Follow Rachel D'Oro at _https://twitter.com/rdoro ||||| Lookouts stood high on Koyukuk Mountain Wednesday, watching the Yukon River below with binoculars and hunting scopes. "We're looking at a flash flood. Something like a dam breaking," said Koyukuk Mayor Patrick Madros. Koyukuk sits about 14 miles downriver from the ice jam that caused massive flooding and a near-complete evacuation of Galena this week. It's the latest community to put life on hold as the annual river breakup winds down the Yukon. The ice dam began flooding Galena on Sunday and by Wednesday an estimated 300 or more people had fled by plane to Fairbanks, Anchorage or other villages. The local school district estimated 30 to 40 people stayed behind, camping with their dogs at the airport, taking shelter in former Air Force barracks and eating military-style "meals ready to eat." The jam showed signs of weakening by 11 a.m. Wednesday, and by 5 p.m. the Weather Service reported that part of the dam had peeled away. It was still blocking the river, but water levels had already began rising downstream, the agency said. The Weather Service expected the jam to break and water to began draining from Galena by late Wednesday or Thursday. When it does, a surge of water was expected to flood Koyukuk, where the service has issued a flood warning through 4 p.m. Thursday. The damage to Galena has been devastating, said Weather Service hydrologist Ed Plumb. Plumb has been stationed in Galena, where a dike surrounding the airport and a few government buildings has created a dry "island" in the middle of bobbing ice and debris. "There's a lot of cars that are totally submerged in water and floating around," Plumb said. "There are houses that are totally submerged in water up to the roof." "You can see sheens of fuel across the floodwaters and spilled fuel tanks," Plumb said. Water inundated the sewage lagoon, which "is just part of the flood now," he said. There is no power in the village, no working bathrooms and limited food. "All we've had is the shirt on our backs," Plumb said. The flooding began with a few fingers of water covering the roads, said Paul Apfelbeck, a teacher. Sometime on Monday afternoon it began to surge, seemingly climbing by a foot at a time. It sounded like Niagara Falls, he said. "People were scrambling all over the neighborhood, putting their cars up on higher ground." Apfelbeck flew to Fairbanks late Tuesday on an Alaska Air National Guard HC-130. The plane carried 32 people and 19 dogs. Alaska State Troopers flew another six people and seven pets to Fairbanks at about the same time. Some Galena residents, including schools superintendent Chris Reitan, said the state waited too long to help with widespread evacuations given the alarming surge of flood waters Monday night. No one has been killed or reported missing. Nearly every home in town has been damaged, residents said. Gov. Sean Parnell visited Galena Tuesday and members of his cabinet met Wednesday to discuss whether the state should declare a disaster emergency, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. A disaster declaration could unlock state relief money for the village, he said. The state Emergency Management team in Galena asked for additional supplies for those remaining in the community, including 10 cases of bottled water and 12 cases of MREs. In Koyukuk, a Koyukon Athabascan community about 30 miles downriver, residents were already preparing for the worst, Madros said. They hauled water and wood to higher ground. They prepared to shut the power off in the town of about 75 people and evacuated the sick and elderly Tuesday on a plane to Fairbanks. Madros, the mayor, stood on flood watch from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday. "This is the worst flood we've ever seen in Galena so we're expecting a lot of water once that dam breaks to come this way," he said. The Weather Service expects the surge to take about four hours to reach Koyukuk once the ice jam breaks. The water will arrive in a wave, the flood warning says. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adn_kylehopkins. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334 or email him at [email protected]. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adn_kylehopkins. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334 or email him at [email protected].

– The remote Alaska town of Galena is accustomed to spring flooding, so much so that many of its homes are built on stilts, reports the AP. But it wasn't prepared for what it faced this week: a 30-mile ice jam that literally jammed the Yukon River and unleashed intense flooding on the town. The waters began to rise Sunday and by yesterday many of Galena's 500 residents had fled via plane, with a few holdouts camping at the airport, one of the only dry spots left. Homes have been ripped from their foundations, cell and electrical service is down, and the bridge to the airport was knocked out. A Weather Service hydrologist at the scene tells the Anchorage Daily News that bathrooms aren't functioning and "there are houses that are totally submerged in water up to the roof." Though no injuries or deaths have been reported, locals say just about every house has suffered damage. And with temps hitting the 80s, the jam is starting to break up—putting a community 14 miles downriver from the jam at risk. Says Koyukuk's mayor, "We're looking at a flash flood. Something like a dam breaking." The expectation is that when the jam breaks, it will send a wave of water toward Koyukuk, reaching it in about four hours.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email Veterinarian John Robb steers his Chrysler out of the parking lot, gliding past the Dunkin’ Donuts and the boarded-up furniture store, and leaves behind another Saturday shift at Catzablanca, the clinic where he’s been reduced to working since losing his own hospital. There’s a big cardboard box stuffed with court papers in the back seat, the air conditioning is up against Connecticut’s July heat, and an audiobook of the Bible is playing loud. “When I get into the car,” Robb tells me, “I’m like, ‘Lord I need to hear from you.’ ” It wasn’t a day harder than most, but he’d had to put a little girl’s cat to sleep while she sobbed in the reception area. Later, exam rooms got backed up while Robb investigated why another feline was vomiting. A cell phone picture of a flowerpot knocked over in the owner’s backyard suggested the cause: poisonous hydrangea blossoms. By the time Robb locked up for the night, the cat was resting in a cage, hooked up to an IV and meowing. “I’ve probably listened to the Bible 500 times in the last eight years,” he says as we pull onto the highway, leaving the Hartford suburb of Rockville. “That’s when God decided to give me jobs at least an hour away from home.” “It was like, ‘Yeah, we lost his dog. We took care of his cremation, that’s enough’ ” Eight years ago is also when he made what he thought of even then as a deal with the devil. Robb is a born-again Christian who believes he’s been called to protect pets, because, he says, they can’t speak for themselves. But concern for animals wasn’t foremost in his mind in 2008, when he decided to buy a franchise of Banfield Pet Hospital, America’s biggest chain of veterinary clinics. He was thinking about money. Many veterinarians scoffed that Banfield dumbed down its medicine by using a software program, PetWare, to standardize care. The company also put its hospitals inside the big-box retail stores of PetSmart, turning medical care into a product to be purchased along with dog food and chew toys—just another item on a one-stop shopping list. A former chief medical officer at Banfield once compared the business to the no-frills carrier Southwest Airlines. “If you want first class,” he said, “you can buy it from a different airline.” Some animal doctors called Banfield “vet in a box,” but it was a gibe that betrayed anxiety. Veterinarians feared Banfield just as mom and pop grocery stores once feared Walmart. Robb knew all of this. He also knew that a lot of doctors thought Banfield overvaccinated pets. But he had a wife and two kids to support, and he knew he could make a very good living with a pet hospital inside a shopping center. Robb at a New Haven clinic. Photographer: Simone Lueck for Bloomberg Businessweek A 57-year-old with thinning hair, Robb walks with a slight limp, the result of a high school football injury. He’s an excitable man, a freight train of a talker. Near midnight, he’s pacing in his New Fairfield farmhouse, still in the green surgical scrubs he wore to work, having talked nonstop from the minute we left Catzablanca. If his wife, Aldona, hadn’t touched him on the shoulder to remind him of the time, he might have ranted until morning about how Banfield stole his hospital and is turning animal medicine into an exploitative, even dangerous business. “It’s peticide,” Robb says, pausing before offering a definition. “The systematic destruction of pets by corporations for profit.” Pet care is undergoing the same sort of consolidation that transformed human health care in the 1990s, and Robb has worked for both of the industry’s biggest players. In 1999 he sold his first practice for $1 million to VCA—then called Veterinary Centers of America—a consolidator that’s bought hundreds of animal hospitals and trades on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker WOOF. He worked six years for VCA. Then, in 2008, he paid $400,000 for his Banfield franchise in prosperous Stamford. Banfield had itself traded hands just a few months before, when the veterinarian who founded the company sold it to Mars, the giant candy and pet-food manufacturer. The change had dire consequences for Robb and, he says, for millions of pets. In December 2012, Banfield seized Robb’s franchise for violating its vaccine protocols and breaking Connecticut law. Robb doesn’t dispute that he started giving half-doses to little dogs after several almost died of vaccine reactions, but he says Banfield used that as an excuse to take his hospital—just as it came up with pretexts for taking hospitals from other veterinarians. Banfield sued Robb over his medical practices. Robb countersued, claiming breach of contract, and has turned his case, still playing out in court, into a crusade against Banfield, which he says pushes vets to put profit ahead of the health and safety of animals. Banfield says its medicine is compassionate and sound. In a letter responding to this story and Robb’s accusations, the company writes: “We strive to understand the needs of pets and clients and provide safe, high-quality care to every pet, every time.” It’s Robb’s practices, Banfield says, that demand scrutiny. The fight has gotten messy. Robb has picketed and been arrested. Once he was handcuffed to a stretcher in the aisles of PetSmart and carried to a psych ward; lawyers for Banfield and PetSmart accused him of “walking around the store in an erratic manner with Bible in hand.” Later, after failing to have the case thrown out, they tried another tactic: accusing Robb of witness tampering. The judge rejected that. Robb has made outrageous moves of his own. He turned down a 2013 settlement offer by asking for $20 million, triple what even he thinks he’s owed. If that wasn’t folly enough, Robb demanded that Banfield be renamed Protect the Pets and that he be made chief medical officer. Now, as he waits for a trial, Robb seeks justice by social media. His “Boycott Banfield” page on Facebook draws a steady stream of bereaved pet owners and former Banfield doctors and nurses, few of whom seem to care or even know about Robb’s religious views or his commercial dispute. They’ve simply come to rage about Banfield and the corporatization of pet care. When Robb was growing up in the 1960s in Long Branch, N.J., most of his neighbors kept their dogs chained up in the backyard. On the rare occasions when people took their pets to a veterinarian, it was for the basics: to have them spayed or neutered or put down. By 1985, when Robb finished veterinary school at the University of California at Davis, animal medicine was changing. More technology came into play as hospitals started selling their old MRI machines and CAT scanners to veterinary clinics. And, as human birthrates fell, pets took the place of children in some families. In 2014 there were 179 million cats and dogs in the U.S., up from 98 million in 1980. Today, according to the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), more than 80 percent of pet owners think of themselves as their pets’ moms and dads. Americans love their pets so much, they spent $35 billion on veterinary care in 2015. This outpouring of sentiment and money represents an amazing opportunity for businesses such as Banfield and VCA. Tom Fuller, VCA’s chief financial officer, has started investor presentations with a story about a man who drowns in a frozen lake trying to rescue his dog from a hole in the ice. “It’s horrible,” he says. It’s also one big reason, he continues, investors should love the pet-care industry. “We’re all kind of crazy about our pets. It’s why the business is so resilient.” It’s not the only reason, though. In contrast to human medicine, in which everything from the nurse-patient ratio to the caloric count of injections is mandated and overseen by a web of government agencies, veterinary medicine is largely unregulated. And pet owners pay cash: Vets don’t deal with insurers haggling for better prices or questioning whether that vaccine or ultrasound or blood panel is really necessary. (A small percentage of pet owners carry insurance, but they pay vets upfront, like anyone else, and then take on their insurers for reimbursement.) What’s more, when veterinarians make fatal mistakes, they face no real financial consequences. The law hasn’t changed to reflect the attitudes of the average pet owner; courts still treat pets as property. Damages paid to owners whose pets have been killed or injured are so low that a typical medical malpractice insurance policy for a veterinarian costs less than $20 a month. Damages are so low, in fact, that few pet owners can find a lawyer willing to take even the most egregious case of veterinary malpractice. When Bobby Hanners’s shar-pei, Charlie, died at a Banfield hospital in Hagerstown, Md., during a neutering in 2015, the company offered to do little more than pay for the dog’s disposal. “It was like, ‘Yeah, we lost his dog. We took care of his cremation, that’s enough,’ ” says Hanners, a manager at a Hagerstown McDonald’s and one of the pet owners who posted on Robb’s Facebook page. Asked about the accident, Banfield responded, “There was no evidence of intent to harm or malice—this was a situation when a doctor was performing in a manner they believed was best for the pet.” Hanners says Banfield’s veterinarian used the wrong sedatives and then tried to cover up the error. Even so, no lawyer would have taken the case if a Banfield employee hadn’t violated privacy laws by posting details of Hanners’s billing history on Facebook in an attempt to paint him as someone looking to exploit his pet’s death for money. “Quit looking for a check,” the employee wrote. Hanners sued for invasion of privacy and settled with Banfield. “There would have been nothing, absolutely nothing that I could have done, and that was straight from my lawyer’s mouth,” he says. “They would have got away with it.” West Los Angeles Animal Hospital may be the apotheosis of corporate veterinary care. When it became VCA’s first purchase, in 1986, it was already the biggest pet hospital west of the Mississippi River. Today it occupies a three-story building with an attached parking garage and is staffed by 60 doctors, including cardiologists, neurologists, oncologists, even a psychologist. There are underwater treadmills for overweight cats and gimpy dogs and a sterile isolation room for pets recovering from bone marrow transplants, a cancer treatment that can easily cost $16,000. “All the advancements that you hear about in veterinary medicine? None of that would be possible if it was just your neighbor working by himself like it used to be,” says VCA Chief Executive Officer Bob Antin. Corporations now own 15 percent to 20 percent of America’s 26,000 pet hospitals, and consolidators, copying the model pioneered by VCA, are buying them fast. (Banfield is one of the few big businesses building its own clinics; the rest are rolling them up.) In 2014 a chain of 250 hospitals called National Veterinary Associates was purchased by Ares Management for $920 million. In 2015 the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan spent $440 million to buy a pet hospital group. Last May, VCA spent $344 million for a group of 56 hospitals pooled together by a smaller consolidator for the express purpose of flipping them. In the past 15 months, Mars has bought two hospital groups for undisclosed amounts, adding more than 100 clinics to a portfolio that already includes 950 Banfield locations. “The individual ownership of veterinary hospitals in America? It’s got one more generation,” says Bill Folger, a former board member of the American Association of Feline Practitioners. “Maybe two.” This is all happening despite laws in most states banning corporations from owning veterinary practices. As old-fashioned as it may sound, the idea behind the laws was that doctors employed by corporations might have a harder time exercising independent judgment on behalf of patients; commercial interests could intrude. Nonetheless, there’s a reason states allow complicated ownership structures—called management service agreements—that get around these laws: It’s what the doctors want. When it’s time to retire, vets expect to be able to sell their practices at the highest possible price, and these days that typically means selling to a corporation. “Just remember,” Antin says, “in every state we’re in, even the person who runs the state association, they’re a practicing doctor, and they want the freedom to be able to get value for their practice.” Antin says he and his brother Art didn’t know anything about veterinary medicine when they started VCA in 1986 with a friend, Neil Tauber. But they did know how to run a health-care business. They’d made a small fortune with an outpatient surgery chain in the early 1980s. In pet care, they saw an opportunity to apply modern management techniques to poorly run, undercapitalized hospitals that could benefit from economies of scale. Today, VCA employs 3,000 veterinarians and owns 750 hospitals. Robb Animal Care Center was somewhere around the 200th purchased by the chain. VCA’s most important acquisitions, though, have been labs; the company combined about a dozen testing facilities to create Antech Diagnostics, the industry’s biggest laboratory. Antech does bloodwork and other tests for more than half the country’s animal hospitals and accounts for 41 percent of VCA’s operating profit, according to the company’s financial statements. Fuller puts it this way when he speaks to investors: “Diagnostics is what grows the industry.” More testing can sometimes provide more certainty; it almost always makes medicine more expensive. The cost of veterinary care has risen even faster than the cost of human health care, more than doubling since 2000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Independent vets have to balance the cost of covering every possibility against the risk of using more restraint. The corporations lean toward a maximalist approach. Diane Petrillo, a registered nurse from New Haven and a former client of Robb’s, tells a story about how this was taken to absurd lengths last May when her VCA vet wouldn’t renew a prescription for her cat’s lifesaving blood thinners unless she paid $450 to repeat an echocardiogram that 12 months earlier had shown a deadly heart defect. “You already told me he’s never going to come off the meds, so why not just give it to him?” Petrillo asks. The answer to that question may lie in VCA’s annual financial reports, which say the company’s business strategy is “to leverage our existing customer base by increasing the number and intensity of the services received during each visit.” When I ask Bob Antin what he thinks about that language and Fuller’s statements to investors, he waves it off. Those communications, he says, are meant for a financial audience and don’t affect VCA’s veterinarians. “A veterinarian? The last thing they think of is, ‘I’ve done five of these today. Can I do six of them tomorrow?’ That is the single last thing a veterinarian thinks, and if that kind of person exists, I don’t see them.” But those people do exist, precisely because of the pressure VCA puts on its doctors, according to Wendy Beers, a veterinarian who resigned in 2014 from a VCA hospital in Albany, Calif. “Every month they would print out things to say how many packages you sold, how many procedures you did,” she says. “And if they came out and said, ‘This month we want everyone to do 20 heartworm tests,’ and you only did eight, well, next month you have to do better. I don’t feel when they’re lecturing us that their chief interest is to make sure animals get the best care.” An annual postcard reminding you that your dog or cat is due for its shots—“it’s time for the tough love”—is the main way veterinarians get pets in the door each year. That’s why many animal doctors, at every kind of practice, have chosen to ignore guidelines from the AAHA, which since 2003 has recommended dogs not be given what are called the core vaccines—for distemper, parvovirus, and adenovirus—more often than every three years. Indeed, the guidelines say a single series of these shots is probably enough to provide a lifetime of immunity. “Some folks don’t like me to emphasize that,” says Ronald Schultz, a retired immunologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine and one of the guidelines’ main authors. He spent a career being rebuffed by veterinarians unwilling to accept the results of studies he’d been publishing since the 1970s on the long-term effectiveness of vaccines. Schultz’s former laboratory in Madison is one of the deadliest places on earth for any dog that hasn’t been immunized. Some dogs are locked in viral gas chambers. Others are injected with disease or have viral aerosols sprayed directly into their snouts. Decades of these tests have shown that a single series of shots is enough to protect dogs from the main canine diseases for seven or more years. “I could drown them in virus,” Schultz says, “and I couldn’t reinfect them.” Still, asking veterinarians to forgo seven years of vaccine income would have caused a revolt, so Schultz and the others on the AAHA Canine Vaccination Task Force compromised at three years. “We split the difference,” Schultz says. “The idea was, let’s see if we can get them to walk before asking them to run.” The standard for vaccine dosages has its own unscientific provenance. At some point in the 1960s, pharmaceutical companies simply settled on a round number that worked: 1 milliliter. Today, vaccines are the only pet medications that aren’t scaled to body weight. Whether it’s a 120-pound Great Dane or a 3-pound Chihuahua, one size fits all. Some doctors have wondered whether it would be safer to cut doses for smaller dogs or whether shots could be given less frequently, but those are expensive questions to answer, and when the numbers were first finding their way onto drug labels, hardening into dogma, pets weren’t that far from being considered livestock. They were just cats and dogs. It’s a telling anachronism that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for the safety of pet vaccines. A pet may receive dozens of shots in a lifetime, at a cost of hundreds of dollars, but surprisingly little research has been done to find out how safe they are, and there is wide disagreement among experts. A 2005 study by Purdue University using Banfield data from more than 1 million medical records found 38 adverse reactions for every 10,000 shots, a rate of about 0.4 percent. Schultz and a research partner, Jean Dodds, argue the numbers are much higher, more like 3 percent or 4 percent, with about 1 in 200 dogs experiencing life-threatening reactions such as anaphylactic shock. “Vaccines can kill,” Schultz says. “If you don’t need to vaccinate annually and you do, you’re taking unnecessary risks.” Whatever the real risk of an adverse reaction, it isn’t zero. The value of repeated shots, though, has pretty well been debunked. (Robb likes to point out that he himself has had exactly one rabies vaccine, in 1983, at veterinary school; he confirms his immunity through regular titer tests, something that can also be done for dogs and cats.) Nevertheless, more than a decade after the AAHA adopted its guidelines, Banfield still recommends on its website that dogs “be boostered yearly for most vaccines.” Karen Faunt, Banfield’s vice president for medical quality advancement, says despite that language, the company’s vaccine protocols have been aligned with industry guidelines since 2010. “This is something that has evolved greatly in my time here,” she says. “I’m very pleased with that.” It’s true that Banfield has reduced the frequency with which it administers the core vaccines. Still, it routinely pushes annual boosters for others the guidelines say should be given “only in special circumstances.” Shots for leptospirosis and Bordetella, or kennel cough, are two examples of vaccines the AAHA says most dogs don’t need, but which Banfield regularly recommends. Vaccines are at the center of Banfield’s main product, a selection of preventive-care packages called wellness plans. For a monthly fee of $30 to $60, a wellness plan covers exams, office visits, diagnostic tests, and shots for dogs and cats. Call any Banfield hospital, and you’ll be told it’s the vaccines that make the plans such a good value, because à la carte, they are as much as $40 each, along with $50 for each doctor visit. Schultz says he contacted Banfield several times a year for many years to urge it to heed the full intent of the AAHA guidelines. “They’ve paid some lip service to it,” he says, “but they’re not listening.” Banfield traces its origins to 1955, when a vet named Warren Wegert started a small animal hospital in Portland, Ore. On the company website, Wegert is shown in a photo as a balding, kind-looking man in a white doctor’s coat. But to call him Banfield’s founder wouldn’t be accurate. That distinction belongs to the younger man standing slightly behind Wegert in the picture: Scott Campbell, the veterinarian who purchased Wegert’s single hospital in 1987 and created an empire. Campbell forged the partnership with PetSmart in 1994 and created Banfield’s wellness plans. The son of a small-town physician who warned him not to go into human medicine because he thought “one day all the doctors would be working for the government,” Campbell is probably the world’s richest veterinarian. Since selling to Mars in 2007, he spends most of his time on his ranch, a spread in northeast Oregon that’s bigger than many national parks. When Campbell started Banfield, the average veterinary clinic was an insular fiefdom run by a doctor who was on his own and accountable to no one. Maybe he was skilled and conscientious—and maybe not. To standardize care at his hospitals, Campbell computerized the records and developed rigorous treatment protocols, ideas he says he borrowed from his wife, Sandy, who worked in quality assurance at Kaiser Permanente, the giant network of human hospitals. “The whole profession got better because of what we did,” Campbell says. To educate veterinarians in his methods, Campbell built a training program called Banfield Doctor Academy at company headquarters in Portland. Robb spent a few days there in the summer of 2008. He was surrounded by young doctors, he says, most of them fresh out of veterinary school. All the vets were taught to use PetWare, a proprietary software package with touchscreen menus that guide veterinarians through the process of diagnosing medical problems and prescribing care. Robb was sent home with a 116-page New Hire Doctor Workbook describing how to operate version 3.7 of the system. That old PetWare manual makes for interesting reading. In one example, explaining how the software is used to prescribe treatment, the book shows a checklist of therapies for a dog with atopic dermatitis, or itchy skin. Doctors are encouraged to recommend a biopsy, analgesics, topical medications, antibiotics, a therapeutic dietary supplement, an allergy diet, and a flea control package. They’re required to recommend antihistamines, shampoos, serum allergy testing, lab work, a skin diagnostic package, and anti-inflammatories. It’s a treatment course that might run $900 for symptoms that, in a best-case scenario, indicate something as prosaic as fleas. In bold print, the manual reminds doctors: “You cannot change items that were initially marked Required. They must remain required.” “They stole my hospital, and I think they’re sons of bitches” Faunt says since Mars took control, Banfield has distanced itself from Campbell. The academy is gone—the company’s vets now have to get outside the bubble for their continuing education. PetWare, too, has become less of a straitjacket. Faunt declined to show an updated version of the software, but she says the system is now an optional tool. “My understanding with Dr. Campbell was that he had a sincere belief that consistency was one of the hallmarks of quality,” she says. “We’ve transitioned to understanding how to provide individualized care for each pet. We learn every single year.” One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the wellness plan. Last year more than 2 million pets were covered by a Banfield wellness plan, and every dog on one still gets basically the same treatment, regardless of whether it’s a 10-year-old miniature poodle living in a high rise or a 2-year-old Labrador retriever that runs free on a farm. The one-size-fits-all approach infuriated James Robinson, a vet who owned Banfield franchises in Tennessee until the end of 2014. “My two that I owned? I hated working at them, because it wasn’t real medicine. It just really wasn’t,” he says. “Like you got a 3-year-old dog, a completely normal dog with a good physical exam, and we’re going to run bloodwork on him. Umm, that’s kind of like doing bloodwork on your 8-year-old child.” If the wellness plans make medicine into a standardized product, Banfield’s pet drop-off policy is what allows a hospital to hum at maximum efficiency. Pet owners are required to leave their dogs and cats all day when taking advantage of the plan’s twice-yearly comprehensive exam. For some people this is exactly why Banfield is so appealing—no more interrupting your work schedule for a vet appointment. For Banfield it’s a way to squeeze exams into the gaps between surgeries, walk-ins, and other appointments. While pets wait for treatment, they’re warehoused in a wall of kennels at the back of the hospital—sometimes without water, because animals that drink need to urinate. Donna Smith, a licensed technician at a Banfield facility in Waterbury, Conn., who was fired in 2014, says staff at her hospital worked like a “pit crew,’’ with all the hurry and commotion that connotes. But instead of changing tires and refilling tanks, they were pulling dogs out of cages, giving vaccines, taking blood and fecal samples, and rushing through physical exams that might take no more than 90 seconds. “I once saw a doctor vaccinate the wrong dog because we had paperwork everywhere and so many dogs lined up,” Smith says. Vince Giordano, one of the pet owners who contacted Robb through his Boycott Banfield page, says one-size-fits-all medicine is the reason his dog Max is dead. A worrying, protective owner, Giordano took Max to a Banfield hospital in March 2013 for some antibiotics after the dog sniffed a dead opossum during a walk in Giordano’s suburban neighborhood on Long Island, N.Y. Max was a 3-year-old Labrador mutt with a long list of unusual health problems, all of which were detailed in lengthy medical records from Banfield’s Suffolk County hospital, where the dog was a patient for most of his life. About a year before the March visit to Banfield, Max had undergone chemotherapy to treat a malignant tumor found in his tail, half of which had to be amputated. Even before that, Max had exhibited allergies to vaccines, and Banfield had prescribed Benadryl to reduce his reactions. When Giordano brought Max in after the opossum encounter, Banfield’s vet didn’t seem to consult the dog’s records or hear him explain the history. Instead, he says, she focused on her computer screen and began reading off a list of treatments that were due according to Max’s wellness plan. “She turned it into a vaccine session,” Giordano says. “She kind of twisted my arm and made me feel like an irresponsible dog owner.” After Giordano resisted, the veterinarian suggested a compromise: just one shot, for leptospirosis. Giordano agreed. Thirty minutes later Max dropped dead at home. No Benadryl was administered, and the veterinarian didn’t take the precaution of keeping Max at the hospital for observation. In a settlement letter offering $1,000 as a goodwill gesture in exchange for a promise not to discuss Max’s death publicly, Banfield said the decision to vaccinate “was made very carefully and deliberately.” Giordano rejected the money. Later he learned that leptospirosis is easily treated with antibiotics, and that, according to the AAHA, lepto vaccines “are much more likely to cause adverse reactions” than others. “There was no reason to give him that vaccine, especially after he got cancer,” Giordano says. “But we were on the program where they push the vaccines.” Just a few months after Robb opened the doors of his new Banfield hospital in 2008, Mars began remaking the company. By the following January, an exodus of doctors was under way. A former McKinsey consultant who’d come up through the ranks at Office Depot was hired to run operations. Campbell was replaced as chairman by Pamela Mars-Wright. A granddaughter of Forrest Mars, the company’s founder, she’d run a dog-food factory for the family. Mars is one of the world’s biggest family businesses, with annual revenue of more than $33 billion. Its corporate culture is infused with the personality of its founder, a perfectionist known for setting strict profit targets and berating employees who didn’t meet his standards. According to Joël Glenn Brenner’s 1999 book The Emperors of Chocolate, Forrest once ordered his youngest son, John, to get down on his knees and pray for the company for an hour in front of other executives. Along with inheriting their father’s business in the 1970s, brothers Forrest Jr. and John also inherited his temperament and his ideas about profit. In the middle of the second floor of Mars’s corporate offices in McLean, Va., the brothers once placed a large butcher block adorned with a plaque that read: “head on the block responsibility.” The founder’s management philosophy, spelled out in a set of precepts called the Five Principles, still governs the family empire. When Robb bought his Banfield franchise, he was given a money clip embossed with the text of the fifth, crowning principle: freedom. “We need freedom to shape our future,” it said. “We need profit to remain free.” The Banfield management shake-up soon filtered down to Robb. The veterinarian who’d sold him his franchise was fired. Pam Hale, the medical director to whom he reported, quit. “More people were making decisions that weren’t veterinarians,” she says. “That’s the reason I left.” Leticia German, chief of staff at a Banfield hospital in Colorado from 2010 through April 2013, remembers the most disagreeable part of her job was making sure doctors hit sales targets. She answered to two field managers who’d come from Starbucks and treated medical care, she says, as if it were any other retail business. Under Campbell, Banfield had been obsessed with standardizing care; now there was an obsession with the numbers, especially the average patient charge, or APC. Doctors who fell short were made to attend workshops “to school them into how to better meet their numbers,” German says. “It was definitely intimidating.” Pushing doctors hard was one way to make more money. Ending the franchise business was another. Under Mars, Banfield has winnowed the number of charters from 205 to fewer than 10 today, leaving behind a lot of angry veterinarians. In December 2011, Robb received a registered letter from headquarters threatening to revoke his charter if he didn’t “cure” a long list of medical infractions, mostly having to do with record keeping. There was no mention of the thing that would eventually cost Robb his hospital: He’d been reducing vaccine doses for small dogs, a violation of Banfield protocol and, in the case of rabies vaccines, Connecticut law. A few months later, Banfield made what Robb considered a lowball offer to buy his practice: $600,000. A veterinary hospital is worth, as a rule of thumb, about one year’s gross sales. Robb’s revenue in 2011 came to $1.6 million. According to several other franchise owners and a former company executive who asked not to be named for fear of being sued, Banfield used similar tactics elsewhere: making below-market offers to vets who’d been softened up with the threat of having their charters revoked or not renewed. Robb’s wasn’t the only charter that got pulled. Robinson, the Tennessee veterinarian, says Banfield refused to renew both his charters and paid him nothing. Dale Lonsford, a Texas vet, says he lost his hospital the same way. When Banfield recruited the doctors, it hadn’t been a problem that they also operated their own independent clinics. Later, Banfield claimed they were in violation of noncompete clauses. In the case of Robinson’s Knoxville franchise, which Banfield seized in 2014, the offending clinic was 100 miles away. “They stole my hospital, and I think they’re sons of bitches,” Robinson says. Banfield says it made fair offers for both men’s practices, and CEO Vincent Bradley says the company treated all its charter owners more than fairly. “We’ve provided in my mind a fantastic exit for franchise owners that have decided to retire or exit or do something different,” he says. “Many of them, obviously, have taken advantage of it.” After Robb refused Banfield’s offer, more threatening letters arrived. Field managers made unannounced inspections of the practice. Finally, in December 2012, he received a phone call from his regional director: His charter had been revoked, and he had 10 minutes to get out. Litigants whose motivations aren’t strictly economic make for nettlesome adversaries. Ever since one of Robb’s former nurses set up the Boycott Banfield page for him in late 2012, people have been writing and calling to commiserate, ask for advice, and just plain vent. The numbers have never been huge—Robb once planned a picket of Mars headquarters, and only one person showed, a woman who flew from Canada—but the traffic has been sufficient to irritate Banfield. Last January, a doctor e-mailed Robb to tell him she’d quit a Banfield practice that morning. He posted her letter, and within hours, the doctor says, the company threatened to sue her if the letter didn’t come down. “They reprimand me for actually educating clients about over vaccinating,” the now-deleted letter said. “I was writing vaccine exemption letters which is allowed under state law and got reprimanded for that too. Isn’t it MY discretion to withhold vaccines if I feel it in the best interest of my patient? So angry!” Robb has won, and lost, battles along the way. He scored some points in his legal case when the judge ordered Banfield to disclose how many deaths had occurred at its hospitals during dental work, which for a pet requires the same general anesthesia as any surgery. Banfield claimed that Robb hadn’t been monitoring anesthesia properly—that was another reason for seizing his practice—and this was a way to test that assertion. When the data was divulged in 2015, it showed Robb hadn’t lost a dog during 2,241 dental procedures. (He says he’s never lost one during dental work in his 30 years as a vet.) Banfield, on the other hand, had lost 747 dogs in five years, about one death for every 2,000 dental procedures. Kim Van Syoc, Banfield’s head of public relations, says the loss rate at the company’s hospitals is no worse than it is anyplace else, but—as with so many other things in veterinary medicine—there appear to be no good statistics on the subject. Consider this, however: Many wellness plans include an annual cleaning, so some animals will go under anesthesia 10 or more times in a lifetime, for an entirely elective procedure. Meanwhile, the giant drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim did something that suggests Robb’s vaccine practices aren’t so crazy. In 2014 it began marketing the industry’s first half-millimeter doses, basically squeezing the viral load of a traditional shot into half the liquid volume by stripping out protein debris. It’s not the same thing as simply giving a half-dose, as Robb was doing in his own unscientific way, but the goal is the same: to reduce reactions. “It’s definitely beneficial for smaller animals,” says Mark Kimsey, the veterinarian who designed the product. In that same year, the veterinarian appointed by the state health department to review Robb’s medical practices appeared to side with him. “I did not question Dr. Robb's passionate concern for his patients nor his integrity, nor that his protocol decreased the incidence of observed vaccine reactions,” Koen Loeven wrote in a letter to the health department's lead investigator. Loeven went on to criticize Banfield directly. “I have been very distressed by the rise of corporate veterinary medicine and the pure profit motive being instilled in the medical process,” he wrote. “I have seen many clients from Banfield in my practice and fully agree with you in your disgust that they promote unnecessary vaccinations, over-vaccinate during a given office visit and generally push clients into excess expenditure at the cost of pet health and safety.” Outside of the movies and the Bible, though, Davids rarely beat Goliaths. In November the Connecticut State Board of Veterinary Medicine recommended that Robb be put on probation and prohibited from ever giving a rabies shot again—a heavy blow to his economic prospects, no matter what he says about having broken a bad law in order to protect his patients. The state’s attorney general’s office is reviewing the board’s decision. In Robb’s case, a different judge is weighing a final appeal from Banfield to block the trial—and Robb’s standing could be much diminished. If there is a trial, Banfield will have to contend with Robb in front of a jury and defend medical practices that have received little public scrutiny. And if the jury is representative of the country at large, more than half its members will have pets they think of as family. ||||| A pending merger will put a number of the nation’s biggest veterinary care chains — VCA Inc., Banfield Pet Hospital, and BluePearl Veterinary Partners — under the ownership umbrella of candy and packaged foods giant Mars Inc. This deal will add VCA’s nearly 800 hospitals into what some critics say is a one-size-fits-all medical assembly line. Why does Mars––a company more associated with Snickers and Twix than with veterinary care––want to be so heavily involved in animal hospitals? Pet care is becoming a big business, as pet owners increasingly treat their dogs and cats like family members, paying top dollar to keep them healthy and extend their lives. At the same time, chain clinics are replacing smaller, independently owned clinics. Mars Inc. bought the Banfield chain in 2007. The clinics, conveniently connected to Petsmart stores, sell their wellness plans as something that isn’t quite health insurance, but that spreads a pet’s medical costs throughout the year. Since 2008, we’ve shared consumers’ problems with these plans. Pet owners are often shocked to learn that they have to keep paying for the plan for the rest of the year after their pet dies, since the plans sound like health insurance to the average consumer. Hospital employees have told consumers that they can “cancel at any time,” leaving owners on the hook for another year of payments when they don’t want to continue the plans. In a recent, lengthy piece that every pet owner should read about the rise of Banfield, Bloomberg Businessweek heard from former Banfield vets and patients that the wellness plans include services that a pet might not necessarily need and that could put it at risk, like an annual teeth cleaning under general anesthesia, and annual doses of vaccines that animals don’t need every year to maintain immunity. Now Mars will be adding nearly 800 VCA hospitals to its existing 900 or so Banfield clinics, raising concerns that these problematic plans will be the norm for thousands of additional pets and their owners. At the same time, the sheer size of the Mars Inc. animal care business raises questions about the future about the veterinary care industry. This same sort of rapid consolidation has already occurred in certain niche care businesses, like funeral homes, where bereavement Voltrons like Service Corporation International are allowed to gobble up independent, traditionally family owned funeral homes as the owners of these smaller businesses retire or sell out.

– Under a pending merger, VCA Animal Hospitals will come under the ownership of Mars, Inc. Not only is it a bit strange for a chain of veterinary care facilities to be owned by a candy and packaged foods company—it's more than a bit concerning for pet owners, the Consumerist reports. Mars already bought the Banfield Pet Hospital chain back in 2007, and big problems have been reported with those veterinary offices, which are connected to PetSmart stores. Most troubling is Banfield's practice of selling pet owners pricey "pet wellness plans," which sound like pet health insurance but aren't. Owners are charged a monthly fee in exchange for receiving discounts on veterinary services, and are often told by Banfield representatives that they can cancel at any time after the first year without incurring a fee. The problem? That's not exactly true. Once the plan renews, members are on the hook for another full year of monthly payments—or, yes, a fee if they cancel, as one angry plan owner once explained to the Consumerist. Other pet owners have been distressed to learn that, should their pet die mid-plan year, they're also still on the hook for the rest of that year's monthly payments. There's also the fact that, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently revealed, those same wellness plans include services that not all animals need—and even some that could put them at risk, like annual teeth cleanings under general anesthesia. Mars will be adding 800 VCA hospitals to its 900 or so Banfield locations, and will also be merging with another large veterinary chain, BluePearl Veterinary Partners, meaning a huge number of veterinary facilities could soon be adopting similar practices. As for why Mars is getting into the vet care industry? It's becoming a huge moneymaker, with pet owners willing to put out big bucks for their animals.

General Mills Although we have nothing against Lucky Charms cereal as a whole, we’ve got to admit: The marshmallow charms are and always will be the best part. And it looks like the good people over at General Mills (the HQ for all things Lucky Charms) are finally listening up. According to the General Mills blog, the company is releasing limited-edition marshmallow-only boxes after receiving “countless calls, emails, tweets, and Facebook posts” from fans begging for the cereal-free cereal. That’s right: A whole box filled with nothing but the classic, sugar-y marshmallow shapes. RELATED: Kylie Jenner Requests Lucky Charms Marshmallows Only — and Receives a One-of-a-Kind Box Of course, there’s a catch. Only 10 boxes of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms will be available to the public. So, how do you get your hands on a “unicorn of the cereal world?” They can only be won via social media: The cereal manufacturer is asking fans to post a selfie of themselves holding an imaginary box of Lucky Charms (with the hashtag #Lucky10Sweepstakes) on Twitter or Instagram. Then, from the entries, 10 winners will be chosen. For the full rules, you’ll have to watch a video of Biz Markie rapping the fine print to the tune of his song “Just a Friend.” RELATED: John Mayer Tweets Cookie Dough Almond Butter Into Existence The brand previously gifted Kylie Jenner, Blake Shelton and Jessie Pitts custom boxes, while Khloé Kardashian revealed that she keeps a stash of them in her super-organized pantry. —Grace Gavilanes ||||| news Oct 14, 2015 • By Ashley Halladay Win a box of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms A box of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms has always been the unicorn of the cereal world – fantasized about, but never seen. The Lucky Charms team receives countless calls, emails, tweets and Facebook posts from marshmallow-obsessed fans longing for a box filled with only the magically-delicious marshmallows. Well marshmallow maniacs, Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms are here! Yes, you read that correctly. But there is a catch. There are only 10 boxes available. So, how can you become one of the Lucky 10? It’s simple! Just share a photo of yourself holding an imaginary box of Lucky Charms on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram between October 14 and 18 using #Lucky10Sweepstakes. Watch the #Lucky10Sweepstakes video, here. And yes, that’s Biz Markie! Why Biz? Well, the brand team says “he’s just a friend” with a great remix to sing about the Lucky 10. Watch another #Lucky10Sweepstakes video, here. The sweepstakes will live exclusively in social media because that’s where Lucky Charms fans continuously express their love for the brand, especially the marshmallows. “We wanted to tap into where that love is and it’s across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Lucky Charms is one of the most Instagrammed cereals and these platforms are the right place to ignite and connect to the passion we hear about,” says Amanda Hill, associate marketing manager, Lucky Charms. The Marshmallow Only sweepstakes is a way for the brand to show fans some love in return. “We wanted to have a little fun and connect with our fans. It needed to be easy and accessible for everyone to have a chance to win and celebrate what makes us, us – the marshmallows,” Amanda says. Let the marshmallow mania commence! *The sweepstakes ends October 18. You must be 18 to enter and a legal resident of the United States or District of Columbia. There are three ways to enter- via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Limit of three entries per person, one per entry method. Potential winners will be notified on or around Oct. 20, 2015. For full rules and regulations, visit the Lucky Charms Facebook page. Subscribe to “A Taste of General Mills” by email – here – and we’ll notify you about our latest posts.

– Big news for fans of sugary breakfast cereals and social-media-driven brand promotions: Lucky Charms is giving people the chance to win "the unicorn of the cereal world," a box of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms, People reports. According to General Mills, the contest is in response to the constant requests the company gets for an all-marshmallow box of the cereal. Also, Biz Markie is involved for some reason. To win one of only 10 boxes being made available, post a selfie of yourself holding an imaginary box of Lucky Charms to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and tag it #Lucky10Sweepstakes by Sunday. Or, you know, just buy one of these.

Whose Virtual Stock Has Gone Up This Week? Email This The Dow is up for the third day in a row. Hurrah! But rather than bore you with talk of retail returns, we thought we'd take a look at something much more fun. Whose personal stock, literally and figuratively, got a boost this week? Here at PopEater, we are obsessed with the ups and downs of fame. And these days, there are so many ways folks can use fame and celebrity to increase their value in the media marketplace. Whether it was sponsoring a beauty pageant for Tiger Woods' mistresses, hopping on Conan's Twitter bandwagon or the unfortunate passing of a close friend, here are the folks who increased their value on the fame industrial average this week. The Dow is up for the third day in a row. Hurrah! But rather than bore you with talk of retail returns, we thought we'd take a look at something much more fun. Whose personal stock, literally and figuratively, got a boost this week? Here at PopEater, we are obsessed with the ups and downs of fame. And these days, there are so many ways folks can use fame and celebrity to increase their value in the media marketplace. Whether it was sponsoring a beauty pageant for Tiger Woods' mistresses, hopping on Conan's Twitter bandwagon or the unfortunate passing of a close friend, here are the folks who increased their value on the fame industrial average this week. -- If you hadn't heard of AshleyMadison before this week, you probably know their name now. They're a Web site designed for people looking to have an affair. In a fit of branding genius, they put up the $100,000 prize for Howard Stern's Miss Mistress Pageant this week, and according to founder Noel Biderman that investment has translated into "millions of dollars of free advertising." Comparing the 55 days prior to the announcement that AshleyMadison would be sponsoring the pageant and the 55 days following the announcement, those crazy number crunchers at AshleyMadison estimate they have realized a 22% increase in revenue and a 27% increase in site membership. Thank you Tiger, yet again you've contributed to the weakening of the marital union.-- Let's call this one the Six Degrees of Conan O'Brien. We have all heard the story of Sarah Killen, whose life has been forever made more awesome by Conan O'Brien's decision to make her the one person he follows on Twitter. Prior to Conan shaking up her life, Killen had been struggling to figure out how to pay for her wedding. Those worries are now out the window -- she has been gifted with the wedding of her dreams, as sponsors have hopped on the Conan bandwagon and offered Killen free rings, wine, shoes and the most important of all wedding day items, the dress. Enter NYC dressmaker Kelima K, who has given Sarah a dress in return for Sarah promoting their favorite charity, The Children's Hunger Fund. The kids win and now Kelima K has become one of this season's most sought after dressmakers. Not bad for three degrees of Conan separation.-- Is it too soon to bring this up? Probably. The death of Corey Haim is a tragedy. He was taken from us much too soon. The two Coreys have been close since puberty -- when they both experienced the roller coaster ride of making it big young and flaming out early. Feldman is the obvious celebrity choice to publicly mourn and remember Haim, but it bears mentioning that no one has paid this much attention to Feldman since his twenties. Now, everyone's been clamoring for a sit-down with Feldman. He gave the first to Larry King, telling the talk show host that Haim had died destitute and couldn't even afford to own a car. Not exactly the kind of glowing eulogy you'd want to hear from your best friend. So Feldman's stock has gone up this week due to unhappy circumstances. Now, we just have to wait and see if he continues to try to capitalize. ||||| Exclusive: Student shocked by fame over Twitter link to Kanye West 1 2 next A TEENAGER catapulted to fame by megastar rapper Kanye West has spoken exclusively to the Coventry Telegraph about his bizarre moment in the spotlight. Despite having nearly 400,000 followers on social networking website Twitter, American A-list celebrity West is following only one – 19-year-old Steve Holmes of Eastern Green. West, an award-winning rapper and hip-hop producer, mysteriously selected Steve before sending him a message reading: “You are the chosen one. Dun dun dun.” On Twitter, people who “follow” you – whether friends or strangers – can see updates you leave on your account, and if you follow them back you can exchange messages. But since gaining the star’s seal of approval on Saturday night, student Steve has been inundated with admiring, jealous and strange messages from fans, journalists and wannabe celebrities across the globe. He told the Coventry Telegraph: “I just commented on something on Kanye West’s account and next thing I know he’s following me. “I was like, “Oh my God!”, but about 20 seconds later I had 20 messages from people I didn’t even know and my phone wouldn’t stop bleeping.” In two hours Steve’s followers rocketed from 60 to more than 1,000. To try and get some peace Steve deleted the Twitter application from his iPhone, but it hasn’t stopped people worldwide trying to track him down through other social networking sites, like Facebook. ||||| When Conan O’Brien randomly started following Sarah Killen’s Twitter page (@LovelyButton) she got nearly 19,000 followers, a new iMac, a free wedding gown, gratis wedding rings, $2,600 in donations for her cancer walk, and the chance to meet Ludacris. In return, Sarah is inviting Conan to her wedding. “My fiance wants Conan to be his best man,” she said. “That would be really cool. And hey, if he wants us to come on his show, we’d get married on there. That would be fantastic.” Guess she’s not that big of a fan if she hasn’t heard that there isn’t a show anymore? [Gawker] Twitter has done some crazy things to our world. Nerds have become popular and we know more about strangers than our closest friends thanks to the constant updates of their mundane thoughts. And it’s also set the celebrity world a bit topsy-turvy. Here are just a few of those who’ve been plucked from obscurity and thrust into Twitter greatness.

– The random woman Conan O’Brien decided to follow on Twitter got a new computer, donations to her cancer walk, and the wedding of her dreams. The random guy Kanye West decided to follow on Twitter just got…annoyed. “Before this weekend I thought it would be cool to have a celebrity following me on Twitter but now I think it’s really not worth it,” 19-year-old Steve Holmes tells the Coventry Telegraph. “It’s crazy. I’m getting messages from people I don’t even know.” His followers jumped from 60 to more than 6,000 and his iPhone “wouldn’t stop bleeping,” so he deleted the Twitter application from it. “A guy wanted me to look at his film trailer and people have been sending me links to their music demos—as if I have some sort of influence over Kanye West,” Holmes says. He’s turned down interviews with outlets including the BBC and CNN, and recently tweeted that he won’t be speaking to any more press.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the... (Associated Press) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., right, sitting next to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., left, listens during a hearing on "Cyber-securing the Vote: Ensuring the Integrity of the U.S. Election System," on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Donald Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in U.S. elections — at times even calling it a "hoax" — acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. But he added "they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don't want Trump!" That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. At Tuesday's hearing, Christopher Krebs of the Homeland Security Department said the intelligence community has observed "continued malign influence operations" into 2018, though they do not appear to be "an effort at the same scope or scale" as in 2016. As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers — even some of Trump's closest GOP allies — strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina criticized Trump directly. "Unfortunately, the president's recent comments at the U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki failed to hold Putin accountable for his attacks on our country's interests and deter him from future indiscretions," she said. Other Republicans were careful to draw a line and not directly disagree with the president. "I don't think anyone here denies the fact that Russia attempted to meddle in the elections," said Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. "The issue of meddling is one thing, the issue of the president colluding is another and that is indeed a witch hunt." Democrats said Republicans haven't done enough to keep the vote secure this fall. They asked for more questioning, more documents and more money for states to secure their election infrastructure. "We need all of our Republican colleagues to conduct oversight — not just use strong words," said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House oversight panel. Earlier this year, Congress allocated $380 million to assist states with election security upgrades, and most of that money has been disbursed. Democrats want to continue the money through 2019, but Republicans have said new spending isn't needed. The very makeup of the election infrastructure — decentralized and different in every state — provides some protection against hacking efforts. But state and local election officials have been working with the Department of Homeland Security to shore up their efforts after at least 21 state systems were scanned for vulnerabilities by Russian hackers and at least one state saw its voter registration system breached. In addition to helping state election officials obtain security clearances so they can be briefed on the latest threats to elections, Homeland Security officials also offer remote scanning of their networks to identify any vulnerabilities as well as intensive cybersecurity reviews that involve onsite exams. "DHS has made tremendous strides and is committed to working collaboratively with those on the front lines of administering our elections to secure election infrastructure from risks," Krebs said. Even if state elections systems are better protected, other threats remain. Last week, Microsoft officials said they had seen evidence that suggested phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections. The company would not disclose the candidates, citing privacy issues. Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the U.S. "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation." ___ Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro, Tami Abdollah and Deb Riechmann in Washington and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report. ||||| I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!

– Under pressure to show he's taking the threat of Russian interference seriously, President Trump claimed without evidence Tuesday that Moscow will be "fighting very hard" to help Democrats win in the 2018 midterm elections, the AP reports. Trump, who has offered mixed messages on Russian interference in US elections—at times even calling it a "hoax"—acknowledged in a tweet that the midterms are a likely target. "I'm very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election," Trump wrote. "Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!" That's despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying outright last week, following the leaders' summit in Helsinki, that he wanted Trump to win in 2016. US intelligence agencies also have determined that Russia interfered in the election to help him win, and the agencies have warned there are ominous signs of more cyberattacks to come. As Trump tweeted on Tuesday, House Republicans held a hearing on election security in which lawmakers—even some of Trump's closest GOP allies—strongly criticized Russian interference and pointed to an indictment this month of 12 Russian intelligence officers. The indictment alleges that the Russians broke into Democratic email accounts and tried to penetrate state election systems. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy noted that the indictment said there is no evidence the vote count was affected, "but that was not likely for a lack of trying." Meanwhile in the Senate on Tuesday, two senators introduced bipartisan legislation to impose new Russian sanctions, saying the US "must make it abundantly clear that we will defend our nation."

JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, will provide $100 million to help debt-ridden Detroit with housing repairs, blight removal, job training and economic development projects over the next five years, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans. The investment, a mix of loans and grants, will add to a growing pile of money from outside private institutions as the city nears the final, painful stages of the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy proceeding. Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection in July, with an estimated $18 billion in long-term debt. This summer, a federal judge will decide whether to approve a plan that would allow the city to exit bankruptcy court by mid-October. In recent days, the city has been lobbying to secure nearly $200 million in funding from Michigan lawmakers, who are wary of setting a precedent by using taxpayer dollars to bail out a major metropolis. If approved, the state funding would be part of a so-called grand bargain that would also include hundreds of millions of dollars from philanthropic foundations. The money would be used to cushion pension cuts for Detroit retirees and avert the sale of the city’s art collection. The Legislature is weighing a package of bills regarding the outside funding this week. JPMorgan’s support, previously reported by Detroit newspapers, will focus on city revitalization efforts and may help ease concerns by some legislators that Detroit could find itself in financial trouble again down the road. The institution’s chairman and chief executive, Jamie Dimon, will make a public announcement about the money with state and city officials on Wednesday. A spokesman for the bank would not discuss the matter before then. “The city’s challenges remain significant — unprecedented, in some regards — but JPMorgan Chase believes that Detroit has the ingredients and intrinsic strengths to reshape and rebuild a dynamic modern economy and make the city a great place to live, work and invest,” said a company document detailing how the $100 million would be spent, which The Detroit Free Press posted online on Tuesday. “We are committed to helping make that future a reality.” The bank will direct half of the money to community projects that would otherwise lack access to capital. It will put $25 million toward assisting groups like the Detroit Land Bank Authority and the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, which have begun aggressive demolition campaigns to rid the city of its estimated 78,000 vacant structures. The rest will be diced up: $12.5 million for work-force training, $7 million for small-business assistance and $5.5 million toward economic growth projects such as a new streetcar system. The company announced another five-year initiative in December that infused $250 million into Detroit and other big cities for job-skills training. Both efforts come as JPMorgan emerges from a period of intense scrutiny. The bank reached a $13 billion settlement in November over its sale of questionable mortgage securities in the prelude to the financial crisis. Goldman Sachs, another bank that has been buffeted by regulatory woes, pledged $20 million to Detroit in November for job creation and economic development. ||||| When the head of the world's largest bank called the local billionaire bent on Detroit's revival, good things happened. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon plans to be in Detroit today to announce a $100-million investment in the city that began several months ago with a phone call to billionaire Dan Gilbert, the Quicken Loans founder who owns or controls more than 40 downtown buildings. "Obviously, Detroit was having issues," Dimon told the Free Press this week in an exclusive interview. "I got together some of our senior people and said, 'What can we do that's really neat, that could be really ...

– JPMorgan is moving to help a bankrupt city get back on its feet. The bank is putting $100 million, divided between loans and grants, toward Detroit's revitalization, the New York Times reports. The money is intended to help the city with an array of projects, including housing improvements, the demolition of some 70,000 empty buildings, and job training. "I think we can make this our finest moment," CEO Jamie Dimon told the Today show. Dimon rejects the idea that the bank's move has anything to do with a $13 billion settlement last year tied to the financial crisis. "We invest and develop communities around the world … That's what banks do." The effort began several months ago when Dimon contacted Quicken Loans boss Dan Gilbert, who has a large stake in downtown buildings, the Detroit Free Press reports. "No one’s forcing them to do this by any means," Gilbert says. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, for his part, calls the money a "significant start." Dimon's goal with the funding: "If it works, you'll have a healthy and vibrant economy, jobs and population, businesses will beget home ownership, better schools, and a completely revived city."

Media playback is not supported on this device This video has been removed for rights reasons Sir Roger Bannister, the first person to run a mile in under four minutes, has died at the age of 88. His time of three minutes 59.4 seconds, set at Iffley Road sports ground in Oxford on 6 May 1954, stood as a record for just 46 days but his place in athletics history was assured. Bannister also won gold over the same distance at the 1954 Commonwealth Games and later became a leading neurologist. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2011. A statement from his family said: "Sir Roger Bannister, died peacefully in Oxford on 3 March, aged 88, surrounded by his family who were as loved by him, as he was loved by them. "He banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends." IAAF president Lord Coe, who ran a mile world record of 3:47.33 in 1981, said: "This is a day of intense sadness both for our nation and for all of us in athletics. "There is not a single athlete of my generation who was not inspired by Roger and his achievements both on and off the track." Bannister viewed running as something to be done in his spare time away from the demands of his medical studies at the University of Oxford, but that did not prevent him reaching the biggest stages in the sport. He was considered for the British team at the 1948 London Olympics - just two years after taking up running as a 17-year-old - but did earn a place in the team at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, where he set a new British record en route to fourth in the 1500 metres final. Bannister, who used his medical knowledge to devise his own training regime and investigate the mechanical aspects of running, turned his sights on becoming the first person to run inside four minutes for the mile after the Olympics and twice went close to achieving his goal in 1953. American Wes Santee and Australia's John Landy were also targeting the record when Bannister finally achieved the feat in the spring of 1954. The organisers of the London Marathon paid tribute to Bannister with a picture of him alongside pacesetters Chris Chataway (right) and Chris Brasher when he broke the mile world record Bannister was helped in his achievement by Sir Christopher Chataway - who beat Bannister to the inaugural BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award later that year - and Chris Brasher, who acted as pacesetters. Brasher, who went on to co-found the London Marathon, died in 2003 after a short illness and Chataway died from cancer in 2014. Australian John Landy bettered Bannister's record the following month with a time of 3:57.9. The men's mark has tumbled over the years, with Britons Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram each holding the record at least once in the 1980s. The current mile world record is held by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a time of 3:43.13 seconds in Rome on 7 July 1999. At the end of 1954, Bannister retired from athletics to pursue his medical studies full-time and later became a consultant neurologist. Media playback is not supported on this device Archive: Bannister reflects on his famous achievement He continued to run to keep fit until he broke his ankle in a car accident in 1975, the same year he was knighted. He revealed he had the neurological disorder Parkinson's disease in a BBC interview in 2014. "I have seen, and looked after, patients with so many neurological and other disorders that I am not surprised I have acquired an illness," he said at the time. "It's in the nature of things, there's a gentle irony to it."

– Britain's Roger Bannister, the first runner to break the 4-minute barrier in the mile, has died at age 88. Bannister's family said in a statement that he died peacefully on Saturday in Oxford. On a windy late afternoon in Oxford on May 6, 1954, Bannister ran four laps on a cinder track in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds to crack the mythical 4-minute mile—a feat many had thought humanly impossible, reports the AP. "There is not a single athlete of my generation who was not inspired by Roger and his achievements both on and off the track," said Lord Sebastian Coe, the holder of a 3:47:33 mile he ran in 1981. Indeed, Bannister's record stood for just 46 days, but as the BBC puts it, "his place in athletics history was assured." A medical student who went on to have a long and distinguished career as a neurologist, Bannister viewed running as more of a hobby, but used his medical knowledge to inform his training and break down the mechanics of running. A few months after his record in 1954, Bannister beat Australian rival John Landy in the "Miracle Mile" or "Mile of the Century" at the Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, as both men ran under 4 minutes.

A merger between terrorist groups spells even more trouble for Syrians caught in the middle. By Jamie Dettmer. Syrians battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad shouldn’t settle for democracy as the reward for their sacrifices but should embrace strict Islamic sharia law when the Syrian regime has been finally defeated, says the emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. In a recorded audio message lasting 20 minutes and released yesterday to jihadi websites, Al-Baghdadi acknowledged that Al Qaeda has been involved in the fighting in Syria, confirming that the Jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra, which has become one of the most effective and disciplined rebel formations in the civil war, is an extension of Al Qaeda in Iraq, otherwise known as the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Nusra, which has launched more than 40 successful bombing attacks against mainly government military targets, often using suicide bombers, has been tagged a terrorist organization by the Obama administration because of its links with al-Qaeda. It has been enjoying growing cachet among Syrian rebels from recent operational accomplishments on the battlefield and has been in the vanguard of many successful full-scale rebel clashes with Assad forces. Al-Baghdadi says that al-Nusra’s ties with Al Qaeda were kept obscure for security reasons and to provide Syrians the opportunity to judge the jihadist fighters through their own eyes as opposed through the filter of a biased international media that would immediately have dismissed them. According to the Al Qaeda leader, there were already jihadist cells in Syria before the conflict erupted. These cells were “awaiting the chance” to expand their operations and when the civil war started Abu Muhammad Al-Julani was dispatched along with other Iraqi jihadists to establish al-Nusra and to set strategy. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been splitting its funds with al-Nusra, he says. His boast will be seized on by the Assad regime, which has consistently spun the propaganda line that the rebellion is a foreign conspiracy relying on terrorists and foreign Jihadist fighters. The evidence on the ground is that al-Nusra has been able to swell its ranks with homegrown fighters as well foreigners drawn from elsewhere in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia and with a sprinkling from Europe. The Obama administration, which took major criticism from Syrian rebels for tagging al-Nusra a terrorist organization, will likely highlight al-Baghdadi’s remarks as final justification for its desgination. Al-Baghdadi is a highly effective if brutal leader. He has been responsible for directing large-scale operations in Iraq such as the August 28, 2011 attack on the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad that killed prominent Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi. He has had deep experience in setting up jihadist groups and organized the flow of fighters from Syria and elsewhere into Iraq, a recruitment process that strengthened Al Qaeda in Iraq, say U.S. intelligence sources. He became the emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2010. On December 2, 2012 Iraqi officials claimed that they had captured him in Baghdad following a two-month-long investigation but later admitted they had lifted a less important jihadist leader. Al Baghdadi became notorious before taking over the Al Qaeda leadership for running Islamic courts to try locals for working with the Iraqi government and coalition forces and would sometimes abduct whole families. Those he found guilty were publicly executed. Al-Baghdadi’s remarks are likely to complicate the arming of Syrian rebels by Gulf powers. Since January, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have increased significantly weapon supplies to brigades affiliated with the Free Syrian Army in the hope that the weapons would shift the balance of the war decisively and quickly in favor of the rebels. But videos posted by al-Nusra last month show their fighters using Croatian anti-tank weapons the Gulf powers are thought to have earmarked for the FSA. The British and French governments have been pushing to increase the flow of weapons to the Syrian rebels and for a European Union arms embargo to be lifted, but other European nations have resisted, arguing the equipment would fall into the hands of jihadist groups such as al-Nusra. European critics of the Anglo-French position say the intended recipients of the weapons, the FSA rebel units, work too closely with al-Nusra to keep the weapons to themselves, say German diplomats involved in EU negotiations. “We are concerned that the FSA isn’t really a cohesive force with a single command-and-control structure,” says a German diplomat based in Brussels. “The FSA can’t stop weaponry from being shared with al-Nusra and other jihadists,” he says. According to al-Baghdadi al-Nusra will now be officially merged with Al Qaeda in Iraq and the two groups will operate under the name Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. The name change is significant and highlights Al Qaeda’s ambitions to use the Syrian conflict for greater regional goals. Al-Sham refers to Greater Syria, a pan-Arab geographical definition of a hypothetical united Arab state that corresponds to a medieval Arab province encompassing the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Levant as well as Western Mesopotamia. In recent weeks al-Nusra fighters have come closer to Lebanon and the likelihood has increased of a confrontation along the border between Lebanon’s Shiite armed movement Hezbollah and Sunni jihadists with al-Nusra, who have been moving into Shiite villages on the Syrian side of the border along a 30-mile stretch in the mountainous al-Nabk area about 50 miles north of Damascus, say Lebanese intelligence sources. Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily Digest Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). By clicking "Subscribe," you agree to have read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy Subscribe Thank You! You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason In his audio message al-Baghdadi says the new merged group will not abide by geographical borders or be constrained by ethnic affiliations. That echoes what al-Nusra has said in recent months to other smaller Jihadist groups fighting in Syria. In January al-Nusra issued a call to arms after a meeting in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zour with nine other jihadist groups. Al-Nusra urged all jihadist brigades to “unite in the cause of Allah, organize the efforts and the attacks against the soldiers of disbelief and apostasy, and distinguish the ranks of truth from falsehood.” The statement continued: “We call upon our sincere mujahedin brothers all over the strong Levant to unite their ranks in groups, pure of the filth of suspicious groups and the infiltration of people who have no qualities or faith, in order to clarify their banner and purify their path.” As well as being at the forefront of major battles with Syrian government forces, al-Nusra has unleashed a bombing campaign. Its first suicide bombing came nine months after the uprising against Assad began with a two-car bomb attack on December 23, 2011—targeting the regime’s intelligence offices, killing at least 44 people, and wounding more than 160. According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, it is likely that two female suicide bombers from Iraq carried out that attack. Since then the pace of al-Nusra bombings has increased from one a month in the first three months of 2012 to four to six a month now. The group has been careful in the past to limit its jihadi messages when interacting with locals in rebel-held territory and has talked more in terms of assisting the poor. It has basked in growing popularity in the rebel areas of Idlib and Aleppo provinces tucked under the border with Turkey. Civilians contrast the discipline and honesty of al-Nusra fighters with some FSA fighters and argue the jihadists share war spoils with civilians unlike FSA units. ||||| In this Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 file citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows rebels from al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra waving their brigade flag as they step on the top of a Syrian air force helicopter, at Taftanaz air base that was captured by the rebels, in Idlib province, northern Syria. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN, File) | AP BEIRUT — Tensions emerged Wednesday in a newly announced alliance between al-Qaida's franchise in Iraq and the most powerful Syrian rebel faction, which said it was not consulted before the Iraqi group announced their merger and only heard about it through the media. Al-Qaida in Iraq said Tuesday that it had joined forces with Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front – the most effective force among the mosaic of rebel brigades fighting to topple President Bashar Assad in Syria's civil war. It said they had formed a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The Syrian government seized upon the purported merger to back its assertion that it is not facing a true popular movement for change but rather a foreign-backed terrorist plot. The state news agency said Wednesday that the union "proves that this opposition was never anything other than a tool used by the West and by terrorists to destroy the Syrian people." Talk of an alliance between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida in Iraq has raised fears in Baghdad, where intelligence officials said increased cooperation was already evident in a number of deadly attacks. And in Syria, a stronger Jabhat al-Nusra would only further complicate the battlefield where Western powers have been covertly trying to funnel weapons, training and aid toward more secular rebel groups and army defectors. Washington has designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization over its links with al-Qaida, and the Syrian group's now public ties with the terrorist network are unlikely to prompt a shift in international support for the broader Syrian opposition. Earlier this year, the U.S. announced a $60 million non-lethal assistance package for Syria that includes meals and medical supplies for the armed opposition. It was greeted unenthusiastically by some rebel leaders, who said it does far too little. Washington's next step is expected to be a broader package of non-lethal assistance, expanding from food and medical supplies to body armor and night-vision goggles. However, President Barack Obama has not given final approval on any new package and an announcement is not imminent, a senior administration official said. Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Syrian opposition leaders in London on Wednesday, hinted at the new non-lethal aid package this week, saying the administration had been holding intense talks on how to boost assistance to the rebels. The U.S. opposes directly arming Syrian opposition fighters, in part out of fear that the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists such as Jabhat al-Nusra. The apparent tensions between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida in Iraq emerged on Wednesday, when Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani appeared to distance himself from claims the two groups had merged. Instead, he pledged allegiance to al-Qaida's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Golani said he was not consulted about the merger and only heard about it through the media. He did not deny the two groups had united, but remained vague, saying the announcement was premature and that his group will continue to use Jabhat al-Nusra as its name. "The banner of the Front will remain unchanged despite our pride in the banner of the State and those who carried it and sacrificed and shed their blood for it," he said in a reference to al-Qaida in Iraq, formally known as the Islamic State in Iraq. The message appeared to be, at least in part, an effort by Jabhat al-Nusra to reassure Syrians that the group remains dedicated to the uprising to oust Assad and is not beholden to non-Syrian interests despite its pledge of fealty to al-Qaida. "What you saw from the Front of its defense of your religion, honors, and blood, and its good qualities with you and the fighting groups, will remain as you experienced it," al-Golani said in remarks addressed to the Syrian people. "The announcement of the pledge of allegiance will not change anything in its (Nusra's) policy." Al-Golani's message was first reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist websites. Earlier this week, al-Zawahiri urged Islamic fighters in Syria to unite in their efforts to oust Assad. That may have provided at least part of the impetus for the announced merger with al-Qaida in Iraq. The purported unification was announced by ISI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a 21-minute audio message posted on militant websites late Monday. In the recording, al-Golani confirmed his group's long-standing, close ties with al-Qaida's Iraqi franchise, and expressed gratitude for the money and manpower it provided to help get Jabhat al-Nusra off the ground. The Syrian group has made little secret of its links across the Iraqi border, but until now it has not officially declared itself to be part of al-Qaida. It was unclear what impact the apparent tensions might have on relations between the groups, although they have shown increasing cooperation in recent months, according to intelligence officials in the region. Jabhat al-Nusra, which wants to oust Assad and replace his regime with an Islamic state, first emerged in a video posted online in January 2012. Since then, it has demonstrated its prowess – and ruthlessness – on the battlefield. It has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest suicide bombings against Syrian government institutions and military facilities. The group's success helped fuel a surge in its popularity among rebel fighters, although it has also emerged as a source of friction with more moderate and secular brigades in Syria. Iraqi officials say the groups are sharing three military training compounds, logistics, intelligence and weapons, and are growing in strength around the Syria-Iraq border. One of the most dramatic attacks by the group – and at the time the clearest indication of cross-border cooperation with al-Qaida in Iraq – came on March 4, when 51 Syrian soldiers were killed in a well-coordinated ambush. The Syrians had crossed into Iraq to seek refuge following clashes with rebels on the Syrian side of the border. Inside Syria, the news of Jabhat al-Nusra's fealty to al-Qaida mattered little to some activists, for whom the fight against the regime is paramount. Abu Raed, an activist in Aleppo province, said the merger "is of no interest to anyone here." "The rebels in Syria have one common goal, which is toppling the regime of Bashar Assad and anything that comes from the outside is of no interest to us," Abu Raed said, giving only an alias because of security concerns. "There is room for different opinions in the revolution and the important thing is the common goal." Also Wednesday, activists said at least 42 people were killed in clashes between regime forces and rebels in the villages of Sanamein and Ghebgha in the southern province of Daraa, including 16 fighters and three soldiers. Fighting in the province has escalated in recent weeks as fighters capitalize on an influx of weapons to advance in the strategically important region along the border with Jordan. ___ Associated Press writers Barbara Surk and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report. ||||| Story highlights Peter Bergen: The announcement of links between Syrian insurgents, al Qaeda is worrying He says it gives al Qaeda an opportunity to demonstrate that it is still relevant The insurgent group, al-Nusra, is the most effective of the rebel groups in Syria, he says Bergen: The Obama administration has been right to move deliberately on aid to rebels On Tuesday, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq announced that it had merged with the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra to form the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant." The announcement came in the form of an audio message from the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Sheikh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that was distributed to key jihadist websites. The merger was first reported by SITE, a Washington-based group that tracks jihadist material online. The authors were able to confirm the announcement by monitoring the jihadist site, Ansar al Mujahideen, which frequently posts material from al Qaeda, including Tuesday's news of the merger of the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda. Complicating matters, on Wednesday al Nusra claimed it wasn't merging with al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, but instead was pledging its allegiance to al Qaeda's overall leadership. The news that there is some kind of connection between al Qaeda in Iraq and the Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra (in English "the Victory Front") is not entirely surprising. U.S. officials have long suspected that al-Nusra was really, in part, a front for Iraqi jihadists who had crossed the Syrian border to join the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The State Department added Jabhat al-Nusra to its list of designated foreign terrorist organizations in December. Peter Bergen The fact that al-Nusra has publicly aligned itself with central al Qaeda is worrisome. A long-term safe haven for this group in Syria could be the prelude for the formation of an organization with the wherewithal to attack the West, just as al Qaeda's sojourn in Afghanistan when it was controlled by the Taliban prepared the group for the 9/11 attacks. Second, al-Nusra is widely regarded as the most effective fighting force in Syria, and its thousands of fighters are the most disciplined of the forces opposing Assad. Al-Nusra is also the first al Qaeda affiliate to take a page out of Hezbollah's book and operate not only as an effective fighting force but also as a large-scale provider of services , for instance, distributing enormous quantities of desperately needed bread in the areas of Syria that the group controls. Finally, al-Nusra is the first jihadist group for many years that has chosen to merge with al Qaeda at a time when it is having significant success on the battlefield. Al Qaeda's North African franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as well as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, both announced their affiliation with al Qaeda only when they were struggling for resources and exposure. While al-Nusra is enjoying real battlefield success in Syria, it is formally allying itself to al Qaeda at a time of great weakness for the global terrorist organization. The announcement of the merger with al-Nusra provides al Qaeda's leaders, now headed by the Egyptian Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chance to prove they are still relevant. Al Qaeda has received severe blows in recent years: a contingent of U.S. Navy SEALs killed the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, two years ago, while CIA drone strikes have decimated al Qaeda's ranks in Pakistan's tribal regions, and the group hasn't pulled off an attack in the West since the suicide bombings on the London transportation system in 2005. JUST WATCHED Report ties Syrian rebels to al Qaeda Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Report ties Syrian rebels to al Qaeda 03:22 JUST WATCHED Al Qaeda's rise in Iraq Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Al Qaeda's rise in Iraq 03:34 JUST WATCHED Surviving al Qaeda Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Surviving al Qaeda 05:28 Sheikh al-Baghdadi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, said that he had delayed the announcement of the formal merger with al-Nusra because he wanted to allow Syrians time to get to know al-Nusra on its own terms, without the inherent negative bias that would be caused by an early announcement of its ties to al Qaeda. This was prudent. Had al-Nusra voiced its links to al Qaeda during the rebellion's nascent stages, al-Assad would have had an easier time blaming the uprising on "terrorists" as he has done since violence first broke out in Syria in March 2011. Syria is in its third year of a bitter civil war that has claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people, and wide swaths of the population support the opposition. In these circumstances, if al-Nusra continues to fight effectively against al-Assad, Syrians are not, at least for the moment, likely to care too much about what the group's broader ideological leanings are. For al-Nusra the gains of a public announcement of its alliance with al Qaeda are far from clear. In fact, it is likely to be quite counterproductive. According to Leila Hilal, a Syrian-American who meets regularly with the Syrian opposition and is the head of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, the merger announcement may "confirm the suspicions of much of the Syrian public that al-Nusra is not fighting for a free Syria, but for the establishment of an ultra-fundamentalist state." That might explain why the head of al-Nusra, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, claimed in an audio message released on Wednesday that he wasn't "consulted" on the announcement of the merger of the Syrian and Iraqi wings of al Qaeda. Jawlani then stepped on his effort at damage control by announcing his pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is, of course, the overall head of al Qaeda worldwide. For al Qaeda, the advantages of commanding an effective, large-scale fighting force in Syria, which is in the heart of the Arab world and borders on Israel, are all too obvious. The people of Syria, however, should have good reason to worry about this ominous development. Finally, the announcement that al Nusra has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda underlines that the Obama administration's seeming dithering about how exactly to aid the Syrian opposition makes more sense than it has done hitherto. There clearly are unintended consequences and risks in supporting the Syrian opposition, which is fractured into hundreds of local groups, some elements of which are hardly supportive of the United States. The Obama administration decision, reported by CNN Tuesday , to sign off on a new tranche of nonlethal aid to the rebels in Syria is best understood as an effort to bolster the Syrian opposition groups that are separate from al-Nusra and to give them a better fighting chance in what everyone agrees is likely a long Syrian war in which al-Assad is eventually removed from power -- but only then, unfortunately, does the real fighting for lasting power begin.

– The head of Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadist group at the forefront of Syria's civil war, has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda honcho Ayman al-Zawahiri. What that means isn't exactly crystal clear at this point. While Al-Qaeda in Iraq says the groups have merged under the snappy title of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, al-Nusra chief Abu Mohammed al-Jawalani denies his group will be ordering new letterhead just yet, the BBC reports. "The banner of the Front will remain unchanged despite our pride in the banner of the State and those who carried it and sacrificed and shed their blood for it," he said in an audio message, the AP reports. Al-Nusra is among the most effective of the rebel groups fighting the Syrian government. It has committed more than 40 successful bombing attacks and has been on the frontline of clashes against Assad forces, adds the Daily Beast. The alliance is not a surprise (Obama labeled it a terrorist organization last year), but it is concerning, says CNN. Al-Nusra's success on the battlefield and reputation for distributing free bread makes it popular with everyday Syrians. With a powerful army in Syria, al-Qaeda would gain a strong strategic position in the Middle East, and a safe haven for long-term scheming.

Jimmy McMillan in a comedy sketch: need we say more? It's no secret that the Internet finds the "Rent Is Too Damn High" candidate who gained fame during the New York gubernatorial debate last month absolutely hilarious, and by the looks of this Funny Or Die video, he is definitely in on the joke. In this PSA of sorts, McMillan and his "son" Timmy McMillan (played by Billy Eichner) tell you about the latest thing that is "too damn high": Charlie Sheen. The McMillan boys feel very strongly that Sheen is in danger of losing his gig on "Two And A Half Men," among other things. They don't even trust Sheen with a shoe, saying that if they married a shoe, "Charlie Sheen would probably snort that shoe." The bottom line is, according to McMillan Sr., "The only thing higher than the rent is Charlie Sheen!" WATCH: ||||| 1. Customize Widget THEME Dark Light LAYOUT Horizontal Vertical HEIGHT WIDTH 2. Customize Title TITLE HEIGHT FONT SIZE Preview 3. Copy and Paste this HTML wait for it... Loading... Want More Widgets? We hope you do, because we made a shit-ton. Go to our Widget Headquarters. ||||| As Carl Paladino took the stage at a downtown Buffalo ballroom last night to give his concession speech, Rachel Maddow was on MSNBC surmising what would unfold: "he's going to reveal himself as a performance artist." Paladino essentially lived up to that measure, as he stammered through a bitter and angry speech, railing against his political opponents and critics in the media. Staring into his telepromter, battling with a crowd who kept interrupting him with their own concessions speeches and criticisms, he said, "I promised to bring a baseball bat to Albany, well here it is." Paladino proceeded to hoist an orange baseball bat over his shoulder, pose like an aging baseball star, and challenge Andrew Cuomo to grab the baseball bat, or "have it wielded against you." Paladino ended his speech and campaign with this chilling threat: "Make no mistake -- you have not heard the last of Carl Paladino." WATCH:

– Carl Paladino may have taken his bat and gone home, but another of the losing New York gubernatorial candidates is still with us. Happily, it's Jimmy McMillan of the Rent-Is-Too-Damn-High fame. He's back in a Funny or Die video with a new passion: Charlie Sheen Is Too Damn High. His "son" is played by Billy Eichner. See the Huffington Post for more.