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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is calling for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to monitor a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, amid reports that at least 13 soldiers were killed while withdrawing from the town of Debaltseve. (Reuters) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is calling for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers to monitor a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, amid reports that at least 13 soldiers were killed while withdrawing from the town of Debaltseve. (Reuters) Hopes for a cease-fire in Ukraine were fading on Thursday as fighting spread again across the war-torn east a day after a stinging defeat for government forces. The renewal in combat from the Sea of Azov northward nearly 100 miles to the rebels’ new trophy of Debaltseve, a key railway hub, dimmed hopes for a peace deal reached last week. Rebels said Thursday they would continue to “purge” their new territory of Ukrainian soldiers, threatening further violence in the coming days. The continued battles came as Ukraine’s government reported steeper losses than it had initially stated in a chaotic pullout from Debaltseve a day earlier. The conflict is increasingly threatening the stability of Ukraine’s government, which must explain to citizens why it allowed an entrapment that led to the bloody denouement on Wednesday. European leaders and the White House also face credibility questions, having threatened tough consequences if the peace plan failed to take hold. Ukraine’s military said Thursday that at least 13 soldiers were killed and 92 captured on Wednesday alone. An additional 82 soldiers were missing after the pullback from Debaltseve. Prospects for their recovery were grim; many of the troops who escaped said they had left corpses behind in the retreat over the frozen Ukrainian steppe. [Read: Ukrainian soldiers recall desperate run to safety] View Graphic Map: Cease-fire pull back lines After the defeat, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pleaded for U.N. peacekeepers to fan out across Ukraine’s border with Russia, as well as the front line between rebel and government territory. The request amounted to a stark admission that he no longer believes Ukraine can defend itself alone. But Russian diplomats said Thursday that any such mission would derail the cease-fire agreement reached last week in the Belarusan capital, Minsk, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany. Russia holds veto power on the U.N. Security Council and could scuttle any proposal for U.N. peacekeepers. Even many Poroshenko allies questioned the handling of the operation during which thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were encircled and trapped under heavy bombardment by rebel forces. Combined with Ukraine’s grinding economic difficulties, the military debacle means Poroshenko may face an erosion of support in Kiev only eight months after taking power. Later, Poroshenko told reporters that after the peace deal was signed, rebels and Russian forces “destroyed Debaltseve, wiping it off the face of the Earth. Today Debaltseve resembles a lunar landscape.” Russia has denied sending its troops to eastern Ukraine in the conflict, which has cost more than 5,600 lives. The group charged with monitoring the two sides’ compliance with the agreement said Thursday that a key part of the plan — the pullback of heavy weaponry from the front lines — did not appear to be happening, despite claims from both sides that they were doing so. “The Minsk documents are not a shopping list; it’s one integrated whole,” said Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 1 of 63 Full Screen Autoplay Close March 3, 2015 Tuesday March 2, 2015 Monday Feb. 21, 2015 Saturday Feb. 19, 2015 Feb. 18, 2015 Wednesday Feb. 14, 2015 Saturday Feb. 9 to Feb. 10, 2015 Skip Ad × Violence persists in eastern Ukraine View Photos Fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists intensified a day before a cease-fire took effect. Caption As part of the cease-fire, government forces and rebels swapped prisoners. March 5, 2015 An elderly woman walks to a bus stop in Donetsk, Ukraine, a stronghold for pro-Russian rebels. The neighborhood, close to the city's airport, has seen heavy shelling over the past months. John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. The organization said later that both sides had been using heavy weaponry on Thursday across the region. Observers have not been allowed into Debaltseve, the scene of the hardest fighting in recent days, Bociurkiw said. Rebel leaders said Thursday that OSCE teams could soon enter — but only after the pro-Russian forces had emptied the town of pro-Ukraine holdouts. “Tomorrow, or maximum the day after tomorrow, the purge of Debaltseve will be over. The OSCE mission will be able to visit,” said rebel military spokesman Eduard Basurin, according to Russian news agencies. If Ukrainian forces continued shelling rebel positions, the rebels would pull out of the peace deal, he warned. Fighting flared Thursday near the key Ukrainian-held port city of Mariupol, where an eastern suburb came under heavy artillery attack by rebel forces. Witnesses in Donetsk also reported artillery fire lasting for hours. In spite of the violence, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande appeared Thursday to be clinging to hopes that the peace plan would take hold. Merkel’s office said the leaders had agreed to “hold firm to the Minsk agreements despite the grave breach of the cease-fire in Debaltseve.” But rising discontent could be seen clearly in Ukraine after the military defeat. Borys Filatov, deputy governor of the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, urged Poroshenko, nominally an ally, to “live not by lies” after the president said Wednesday that only six soldiers had died in the pullout. And Semen Semenchenko, a militia commander-turned-lawmaker who is also theoretically a Poroshenko ally, said Thursday that he and other volunteer commanders were forming an alternative “coordinating headquarters” to exchange intelligence and battle planning. The group would exist outside the formal structures of the Ukrainian military, an unusual decision that suggested splits in the military command. Poroshenko’s request for international peacekeepers would depend on finding a peacekeeping force acceptable to both sides, probably ruling out any involvement for European Union, U.S. or Russian soldiers. A Ukrainian military spokesman said Thursday that more than 90 percent of its forces had been withdrawn from Debaltseve. Reporters who visited the devastated town Thursday said they heard continued shooting at its outskirts, suggesting that some final holdouts may remain there. Rebels were fully in control of the territory. The trauma hospital in government-held Artemivsk — about 30 miles northwest of Debaltseve — was largely cleared Thursday of the wounded soldiers who were there a day earlier, although the smell of dirt, sweat and blood lingered in the halls. Doctors and nurses would not say how many soldiers they had treated. But Yura Sadyha, 29, a soldier who had returned from the front a few days earlier and volunteered to help carry the wounded into the hospital, said that more than 200 soldiers came through it Wednesday for treatment. “It’s an awful situation, because so many more people were left on the battlefield,” Sadyha said, rubbing his eyes after working at the hospital for 24 hours straight. Demirjian reported from Artemivsk. ||||| Image copyright AP Image caption President Poroshenko said about 2,500 troops withdrew from Debaltseve on Wednesday Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin has denounced Ukraine's call for the deployment of UN peacekeepers in eastern Ukraine as a destructive move. The Ukrainian president's call "raises suspicions that he wants to destroy the Minsk accords", Mr Churkin said. The Minsk ceasefire deal was reached a week ago but fighting round the strategic town of Debaltseve saw the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops there. Shelling significantly increased in the rebel-held city of Donetsk on Thursday. And Ukrainian officials reported mortar attacks by separatists on the coastal town of Shirokyne, near Mariupol. 'Violation' Mr Churkin accused Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of seeking a new scheme instead of doing what he had signed up to. "If one proposes new schemes right away, the question arises whether [the accords] will be respected", he said. The leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic described the call for peacekeepers as a violation of the Minsk accords. The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, the four parties to the Minsk accords, held further talks over the phone on Thursday. The French presidency said the ceasefire breaches were denounced and the leaders called for "the implementation of the full package of measures agreed in Minsk" including a full ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons and the release of prisoners. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption President Poroshenko met troops who withdrew from Debaltseve Mr Poroshenko called for UN-mandated peacekeepers to enforce the ceasefire after fighting continued following the rebel advance on Debaltseve. A police mission by the European Union would be the best format for a peacekeeping operation, Mr Poroshenko said on his website. It would help guarantee security "in a situation where the promise of peace is not being kept", he told an emergency meeting of Ukraine's national security and defence council. Analysis: Jonathan Marcus, BBC defence and diplomatic correspondent Could a peacekeeping force help to secure the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine? Well for a start there would need to be a functioning ceasefire; nobody is going to send troops into an active war zone. Just getting agreement at the UN for such a force might be an insurmountable diplomatic hurdle. Russia - with a key veto power on the Security Council - is not just an interested bystander. Despite its denials, it is seen by Ukraine and the West as an active participant in the conflict. An effective peacekeeping force paradoxically might be in nobody's interests. Peacekeepers tend to fix battle lines in place. In Ukraine both sides probably have further ambitions on the ground. The Russian-backed separatists may well want to advance further and the Ukrainian government's forces certainly aspire to take back territory that they have lost. Many experts fear there is a lot more fighting to be done whether this ceasefire is implemented or not. Nearly 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers withdrew from Debaltseve on Wednesday. Ukraine's army said 82 soldiers were still missing on Thursday. Rebels claim to have captured hundreds. Earlier a senior Ukrainian military official said 22 Ukrainian soldiers had died in Debaltseve over the past three days. Rebel claims of a much higher figure have been dismissed by the government. Under threat The ceasefire, which officially came into effect on Sunday, has reportedly seen some heavy weaponry withdrawn by both sides. However, the BBC's Ian Pannell in Donetsk reported a significant increase in shelling on Thursday, with artillery fire shaking buildings in the city centre. Meanwhile Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh said rebels had attacked the town of Shirokyne with tanks and weaponry. After the fall of Debaltseve the peace agreement appears to be under serious threat, our correspondent says. Earlier rebel spokesman Eduard Basurin said Debaltseve was now "completely under the control" of the separatists, with just "scattered" pockets of resistance that were being "neutralised". Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the rebels' offensive had put the wider peace agreement at risk. The White House said both the rebels and Russia had failed to live up to the terms of the Minsk agreement. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted the rebels' actions in Debaltseve had not violated the ceasefire because it was a rebel-held city at the time of the agreement. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage of Debaltseve captured by a drone showed evidence of shelling Most of the city's 25,000 population has been evacuated but about 5,000 civilians are still believed to be in the town. Fighting began in eastern Ukraine in April, a month after Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula. The UN says more than 5,600 people have been killed, but there are fears the actual death toll could be much higher. Ukraine's pro-Western government says Russia is supporting the separatists with troops and weapons, but the Kremlin has consistently denied this. Minsk agreement: Key points Ceasefire from 00:01 on 15 February (22:01 GMT 14 February) Heavy weapons to be withdrawn, beginning on 16 February and completed in two weeks - beyond a buffer zone behind the current front line for Ukrainian forces and behind the September front line for separatist forces All prisoners to be released; amnesty for those involved in fighting Withdrawal of all foreign troops and weapons from Ukrainian territory. Disarmament of all illegal groups Ukraine to allow resumption of normal life in rebel areas, by lifting restrictions Constitutional reform to enable decentralisation for rebel regions by the end of 2015 Ukraine to control border with Russia if conditions met by the end of 2015 Do you live in eastern Ukraine or have friends and family in the region? What do you think about the recent developments? You can email your experiences to [email protected] Please include a contact number if you wish to be contacted by a BBC journalist. ||||| Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called for an international peacekeeping mission for his country after ordering several thousand of his troops out of the strategic eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve, which has been taken over by Russia-backed separatists. Poroshenko's office reported late Wednesday that a meeting of the country's National Defense and Security Council chaired by the Ukrainian president had come to a decision that the United Nations should be asked to send "a peacekeeping mission, which will act in accordance with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council." The move came just hours after thousands of Ukrainian troops fled Debaltseve, a strategic rail hub that links the separatist strongholds of Luhansk and Donetsk. The rebels reportedly captured hundreds of government troops and surrounded those it did not take prisoner, cutting off their food and water supplies. White House comments The White House said Wednesday that it is "crystal clear" that the separatists in eastern Ukraine and Russia are not living up to the cease-fire agreement negotiated last week in Minsk, Belarus, and warned of possible costs. “We believe that it is important for all sides to live up to [the Minsk] agreement. It is also crystal clear that Russia-backed separatists and Russia themselves have not lived up to their commitments that they made in the context of [the Minsk] negotiations,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. Earnest added that the separatists and Moscow may incur “greater costs” and “should be mindful of that as they consider their next steps.” He said that Washington continues to believe that “the way the situation can be revolved is around the negotiating table." Map of Debaltseve, Ukraine x Map of Debaltseve, Ukraine Putin gloats Tuesday in Hungary, Russian President Vladimir Putin took a more philosophical view of Kyiv's losing control over Debaltseve and said the cease-fire negotiated last week must be implemented. "Of course, it is always bad to lose. Of course, it is always painful to lose, especially if you lose to yesterday's miners and tractor mechanics," Putin said, referring to rebel fighters Kyiv and many Western goverments claim are supported by Moscow with manpower and weapons. "But life is life, and it will definitely go on.... We should resolve the main task -- save lives of lives of the people who are there now, to insure that they would return to their families, and fulfill the whole plan agreed on in Minsk,'' said Putin. Germany condemned on Wednesday the pro-Russian separatists' offensive at Debaltseve, calling it a clear violation of a cease-fire agreed to last week, but said it was too early to call the broader Minsk peace deal dead. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said Europe stood ready to introduce new sanctions against Russia. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, shakes hands with Ukrainian servicemen in the town of Artemivsk, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2015. x Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, shakes hands with Ukrainian servicemen in the town of Artemivsk, Ukraine, Feb. 18, 2015. EU, NATO reaction Also stepping up Western criticism of the rebel offensive on Debaltseve, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in Brussels, "The actions by the Russia-backed separatists in Debaltseve are a clear violation of the cease-fire. “The EU stands ready to take appropriate action in case the fighting and other negative developments in violation of the Minsk agreements continue,” she said, making an apparent threat of further economic sanctions on Moscow. Voicing his concerns about fighting at Debaltseve, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the refusal of pro-Russian separatists to respect the cease-fire threatened the Minsk accord. “The refusal of the separatists to respect the cease-fire threatens the agreement, as does their denial of access to the area for the OSCE monitors,” Stoltenberg told reporters in the Latvian capital where he was attending a meeting of European Union defense ministers. He also said Russian forces, artillery and air defense units were still active in Ukraine. Watch video report from VOA's Zlatica Hoke: ​Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution drafted by Russia that supports the Minsk cease-fire deal, while calling for rebels to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine is approaching the first anniversary on February 20 of the Maidan uprising, when months of anti-government protests in Kyiv turned violent, with security forces opening fire on protesters, killing over a hundred of them. The escalation led Ukraine's Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych to flee Kyiv for Russia. Some material for this report came from Reuters, AP and AFP.

– In an unraveling ceasefire with Russia-backed separatists, Ukraine lost the city of Debaltseve yesterday; the BBC also reports that shelling picked up in the rebel-held city of Donetsk, and that separatists have been conducting mortar attacks in the town of Shirokyne. So it's perhaps not surprising that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked yesterday for the UN to step in and send peacekeepers to the eastern part of the country, as per the Washington Post. But Russia isn't having any of that, telling its adversary to keep UN peacekeepers out or risk violating the Minsk deal reached last week, the BBC reports. Poroshenko's call for help "raises suspicions that he wants to destroy the Minsk accords," says Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador, per the BBC. "If one proposes new schemes right away, the question arises whether [the accords] will be respected." Poroshenko today called Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merken, and French President Francois Hollande—the parties who drafted the ceasefire—and implored them not to act like "what happened in Debaltseve" met ceasefire mandates, the Post reports. The Russian foreign minister says the taking of the city does adhere to the rules, because Debaltseve was held by rebels before the deal, the BBC notes. One analyst for the BBC isn't even sure a peacekeeping mission would work, saying that "nobody is going to send troops into an active war zone," and that Russia and Ukraine will both dig their heels in to take (or take back) what they think is theirs. Still, the White House seems to know where it stands: "It is … crystal clear that Russia-backed separatists and Russia themselves have not lived up to their commitments that they made," press secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday, per Voice of America. Hollande's office issued a statement saying a "new push" was under way to enforce the ceasefire, the Post notes.

Mothers are squaring off and sounding off over the cancellation of their kids' field trip to see Santa Claus. A South Bay school may see a mass student walkout on Friday if the controversy is not resolved.The Santa storm started brewing in San Jose's Cambrian School District after one parent complained about the long-standing tradition. An apparent war over Christmas has taken over the local elementary school and the battle lines are being drawn.Parents are pitted against each other at Sartorette Elementary School. Students in the three kindergarten classes have taken a field trip to Big E Cafe every December over the past several years to drink hot chocolate and visit Santa.This year the field trip was cancelled after a mother named Talia, who did not want to use her last name, went to the principal and school board over her concerns the Christmas tradition was not inclusive.In a letter to other parents, Talia said she did not like the idea of her 5-year-old feeling left out of an assignment, being that she is the only Jewish student in the class."The field trip was tied to two writing workshops that were supposed to be spent writing to Santa," she said. "There was also a reindeer party and other Christmas related activities. There was nothing done for the Diwali festival. We have two Hindu girls in our class. There was nothing done for Ramadan. We have a Muslim boy in our class."Talia says she was satisfied when the principal told her the Dear Santa letters would be changed to thank you letters to the owner of the coffee shop and arrangements would be made for Santa to be at the Big E cafe after hours. But eventually the whole field trip was cancelled.Talia has other parents among her supporters."I think in the world of intolerance that we live in anything we can do to promote tolerance and understanding is gonna be a benefit to everybody," said parent Bao Nguyen.Many parents say Talia's complaints and the school board's actions are actually intolerant of Christmas.Vanessa House volunteers every day in her son's kindergarten class. She says they do acknowledge and teach about other religions and cultures in her class by doing similar lessons in December on Diwali, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa.Other parents say the whole point of the field trip has been twisted about by rumors and half-truths."It is not a field trip to go see Santa because it never was," said parent Vitina Mandella. "The letter writing assignment was never a Santa writing assignment it is an assignment for the children to write letters and they can choose to write letters to Santa or a grandparent or a friend."House added, "She talks about having all diverse traditions and holidays but yet our Christmas now has been taken away, it's been removed now. So how can it be diverse if Christmas is not even you know, mentioned."Parents attended a school board meeting Thursday night and many told ABC7 News they're pulling their kids from class Friday and marching them down to the cafe with or without the school's permission in protest. ||||| SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) — Parents of San Jose school kids confronted a school board Thursday night after a decision to cancel a field trip to see Santa Claus followed a complaint by a Jewish mother who objected to the school-sponsored outing. The visit to Santa, along with a ‘Dear Santa’ assignment, was a decade-long tradition at Sartorette Elementary School, part of San Jose’s Cambrian School District. Last week, the Sartorette staff informed parents the school would suspend the outing to see Santa at a local coffee shop after a Jewish mother, who identified herself only as Talia, complained to the school board that the district was celebrating one religion over others. “We need to teach about all the holidays,” said Talia. ”We live in a global society.” Talia said as a result of her complaint and the decision by the school board, other parents began to bully her. “I had some parents that called me a communist, that said that I didn’t want any holidays in the school.” Some parents are blaming Talia for ruining Christmas. “It’s really scary how one parent can go and voice her opinion and then everything gets shut down,” said parent Vanessa Howes. “I think that’s it’s really sad that the school district didn’t ask for other opinions,” said parent Melanie Scott. Cambrian School District Superintendent Carrie Andrews told reporters outside Thursday night’s school board meeting that what began as a tradition 10 years ago is not necessarily the right thing to do today. “The bigger conversation that needs to be had is really looking at the diversity of our beliefs and our customs and making sure we instill that, and that’s what public schools need to be doing.” Talia said she is not ruining Christmas for the kids in her child’s school. “No, Santa will be there. I’m not going around to anybody’s homes asking them not to celebrate Christmas. I’m not going to go to anyone’s church or private school, but in a public school we have to design curriculum to fit everybody.” Parents voiced their opinions to the school board Thursday night, but the board was unable to take any action on the issue because it was not on the agenda. Some parents vowed before the meeting to walk out of school in protest Friday if the decision wasn’t reversed, but not one parent told the board they planned to go through with that threat Thursday night. ||||| SAN JOSE -- A Santa storm is brewing in San Jose. After a field trip to visit Santa Claus by kindergarten students at Sartorette Elementary School was canceled by administrators on the heels of a complaint by one Jewish mother, things are getting ugly down on Woodford Drive. Angry parents plan to descend on the board meeting Thursday, threatening a student walkout Friday if the Cambrian School District's board fails to reinstate the annual Santa trip. The woman who made the complaint, who identified herself only as Talia and declined to be interviewed Wednesday evening, stood by her claim that having kids write or visit Santa unfairly imposes one religion on all students. She fired off an angry letter Dec. 7 to fellow parents at the charter school, alleging she was "ambushed by a group of moms from Ms. Kay's class" who she said yelled at her for "ruining Santa for the kids." It's difficult to say how much support Talia has among parents in her drive to end the Santa activities, which include a short walk to a nearby coffee shop Friday morning where the kids enjoy hot cocoa and sit on Santa's lap. Talia has released emails of support from a few fellow parents, including one named Katie who wrote: "You didn't ruin Santa for anybody. If parents want their kids to see Santa, they should be doing it on their own time, not on a school field trip." Meanwhile, her opponents have unfriended her on Facebook and accuse Talia of starting "the war on Christmas." Several parents reached by this newspaper expressed strong opposition to both Talia's position and the district's decision to support her. Advertisement "It's very upsetting that the district would act after taking one person's opinion and not talking to the 500 other families at the school," said Melanie Scott, mother of a first-grader who took the field trip last year. "But we're not fighting this woman, in particular; we're against the school board's decision. And that's why we're doing the walkout, because they didn't give us a say." In an email exchange with Scott, Talia wrote that "the 'Dear Santa' assignment, field trip, and reindeer party included 1 religion that does NOT represent all of the children in the class. As a result, the children who do not celebrate end up feeling left out." Talia's emails suggest that she believes having the entire class meet with or write to Santa would be unfair to those children who may see him as a symbol of a Christian holiday they don't believe in. "I realize that you don't know how it feels, but I do because I lived it," Talia wrote to Scott. "Maybe you should ask around. Speak to the nanny of the girl from Ms. Kay's class who grew up a Jehovah's Witness, or a religious Christian who finds the secular Christmas offensive, or a Muslim. Let the classroom be the one safe place where everyone feels included." Efforts late Wednesday to reach the district's superintendent Carrie Andrews were unsuccessful. She had previously responded to Talia's complaint, calling it "very concerning" and "quite valued." But on Tuesday, Andrews wrote an email to parents suggesting there may be a workaround coming that might defuse the situation. "As you are aware a decision was made to cancel an upcoming kindergarten field trip," Andrews wrote. "I acknowledge we failed as District to provide adequate information as to the change in the field trip. I am working directly with the site administrator to find optimal solutions as we move forward. Cambrian School District is committed to working with staff and families to meet the needs of all of our students and their diverse values and traditions.'' Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689 or follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc ||||| Concerned parents confronted the Cambrian School District in San Jose late Thursday after the superintendent canceled a decade-old tradition of writing letters to Santa and then delivering them on a school field trip to Big E's coffee shop. Peggy Bunker reports. (Published Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015) Parents in San Jose, California, plan to pull their kindergarteners out of school Friday after the principal canceled a decade-old tradition of writing letters to Santa and delivering them on a field trip to a local coffee shop. Parent Vanessa Howe will carry on the tradition by staging a walkout at 10 a.m. Friday, the day the field trip was scheduled to take place. She is urging anyone who wants to join to meet at the corner of Woodford Drive and Hallmark Lane. Parents will bring their children to Big E's coffee shop to visit Santa. "We had a person come in last week to my son's class to speak about Hanukkah, and it would be like saying, 'I don't want you coming into the classroom because I don't want my son around that, or learning about that,'" Howe said. It comes after the Jewish mother of a child at Sartorette Elementary School sent a four-page letter to the school district asking for the event to be canceled. She brought up "best practices" concerns and told administrators she is not anti-Christmas, but feels it's inappropriate that only one religion be represented in school. Santa Field Trip Canceled in San Jose: Mom Accused of Waging 'War on Christmas' A San Jose kindergarten class’s field trip to visit Santa was abruptly canceled this week, launching a Christmas controversy that has left a slew of hurt feelings and spurred a protest. Michelle Roberts reports. (Published Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015) The parent, who wants to be identified only as Talia, had the support of the superintendent and the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute in Washington, D.C., which said the field trip to see Santa during public school hours was inappropriate and ill advised. In a letter to the school board, Talia said the "Dear Santa" letters and field trip are not "inclusive of all students." Video 2 Killed When Greyhound Bus Flips on Side in San Jose Talia went to see Supt. Carrie Andrews, and worked out a compromise: To attend the field trip and drink hot chocolate without Santa. Parents could take their kids to see Santa on their own time. She also advocated for a more multi-cultural holiday approach, which her own kindergarten teacher readily adopted. Parents from eight cultures came to class on Thursday to teach about customs across the globe. But the principal canceled the trip, which is upsetting other parents. Many said the biggest issue is that they were not consulted by the school board. As Andrews pointed out to NBC Bay Area, however, the decision wasn't the school board's to make. Andrews acknowledged a "communication breakdown on a personnel level" was at the root of it. "(School officials) preemptively made a decision without getting further input beyond one person it appears, so I'm here to hear what they have to say for themselves," parent Mitch Williams said late Thursday. Video MLK Day Protesters Block Traffic on the Bay Bridge Still, other parents ended up siding with Talia. Elizabeth Snowden, who is Christian, never realized the tradition might cause people of other faiths to feel left out. Snowden said she actually felt jealous of the multicultural party held in Talia's daughter's class, and was thinking of bringing her own 5-year-old to that. "I think kids in her class are getting a much better holiday party," she said. NBC Bay Area's Lisa Fernandez contributed to this report.

– Every year for a decade, kindergarten students at Sartorette Elementary School in San Jose have been writing letters to Santa then delivering them to the man himself on a school-sponsored outing. Not this year. The Cambrian School District says this month's field trip to meet Santa Claus at a local coffee shop has been canceled after a Jewish mother complained that the school board was honoring Christianity above other religions and her 5-year-old might feel left out. "The field trip was tied to two writing workshops that were supposed to be spent writing to Santa," the woman, identified only as Talia, tells ABC7. "There was also a reindeer party and other Christmas related activities. There was nothing done for the Diwali festival" or for Ramadan, she adds, noting there are also Muslim and Hindu students in the class. "We need to teach about all the holidays," she says, per CBS San Francisco. "We live in a global society." Some support Talia's move. "I think in the world of intolerance that we live in anything we can do to promote tolerance and understanding is going to be a benefit to everybody," says a fellow parent. But Talia says she's also taken a lot of flak. "I had some parents that called me a communist, that said that I didn't want any holidays in the school," she says. Some even threatened to pull their children out of school on Friday and accused Talia of ruining Christmas and starting a "war on Christmas," per the San Jose Mercury News. "It's really scary how one parent can go and voice her opinion and then everything gets shut down," says a parent. NBC Bay Area reports parents from eight cultures spoke to the class about different customs on Thursday. (Parents are peeved about this school's calligraphy lesson.)

Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified. Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska... ||||| (CNN) -- The deal ending the shutdown may not have put a dent in Obamacare, but the battle over implementing the health coverage law is not over. CNN Fact Check: Obamacare One venue that Republicans are turning to for leverage, starting next week: oversight hearings, beginning with some tough questions about why the rollout of the website for enrolling in health care exchanges is having so many problems. "The American people deserve to know what caused this mess," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "Delays and technical failures have reached epidemic proportions." Obama: Website glitches unacceptable Upton has already asked officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to brief his committee on the problems at a hearing scheduled for next Thursday. He also is asking them to turn over records of their communications with website contractors about the preparations for the site's launch, and the problems people have had trying to use it. Logging into Healthcare.gov tough for some early registrants Additionally, the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, last week wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanding information about the rollout problems. Joining him was Sen. Lamar Alexander, ranking Republican on the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions. HHS official: Sebelius not available to testify Thursday One issue has been the ability to log in to healthcare.gov. A senior administration official told CNN some users, especially those who signed up "early on," have been having trouble logging in, but the administration is working on a fix. There also was conflicting word on whether some passwords were deleted if they were created in the first week or so after the launch. Sebelius concedes there have been implementation difficulties. "I'll be the first to tell you that the website launch was rockier than we would have liked," she told an audience in Cincinnati on Wednesday, during her tour to promote Obamacare. But, she told CNN affiliate WLWT, "There are constant improvements under way, so that we are getting people in much more quickly." Nevertheless, a couple of Republicans have called on Sebelius to resign. "Enough is enough," said Sen. Pat Roberts, who has called for her to step down in spite of being a longtime friend of her family. "Secretary Sebelius has had three and a half years to launch Obamacare, and she has failed." Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana tells CNN he is working to collect signatures calling for Sebelius to leave. White House spokesman Jay Carney pushed back on Tuesday. "The secretary does have the full confidence of the president," he told reporters. And when he was asked Thursday who would be held accountable for the problems with the website, Carney replied, "The people who are responsible for making it work are hard at work, fixing the problems that need to be fixed." He focused instead on the benefits the uninsured Americans are now entitled to. "The result will be millions of Americans who have insurance who did not have it before. That's the goal. And the goal is not about the website. The goal is that the American people who have been shut out of affordable health care options in the past have those options available to them." But former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, while not naming names, said of the website on MSNBC, "when they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people that were in charge." Gibbs: Fire those who botched website Public attention may have been focused more on the shutdown fight this month than the problems with enrolling in the exchanges. But with the shutdown ended, part of the emerging Republican message is that the problems with the Obamacare website reflect broader problems with the law overall. "I think this is emblematic of how problematic this is going to be in the future," said Fleming. At a minimum, the implementation of the individual mandate, requiring people to get health care, should be delayed, he said. But a spokeswoman for Sebelius said the online enrollment process is proceeding. "While traffic is down somewhat from its peak on day one, it remains high as Americans continue to seek to learn more about their new coverage options," said spokeswoman Joanne Peters. How many have signed up for health care? Well, it depends

– The ObamaCare website hasn't just been plagued by traffic problems and design flaws; it has also collected inaccurate or incomplete data on a number of people who have managed to enroll, insurance companies tell the Wall Street Journal. Among the mistakes: Some spouses were reported as children, many people double- or triple-enrolled by hitting the submit button too many times, and in at least one case, a single family was listed as having three spouses. It's so bad that Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska has hired temporary employees to call enrollees who have submitted error-ridden applications. "It takes an automated process and turns it into a manual process," a Blue Cross sales manager says. Republicans see this kind of technical incompetence as their next opening to attack ObamaCare, CNN reports. Some Republicans are calling for Kathleen Sebelius' head—one rep is working on a petition to force her out—and Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa is demanding information from her. "Delays and technical failures have reached epidemic proportions," says Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton, who has scheduled his own hearing on the matter.

Synopsis: Science of Slosh An image analysis program reveals the biomechanics of walking with coffee. H. C. Mayer and R. Krechetnikov, Phys. Rev. E (2012) Each morning, blurry-eyed physicists try to solve a frustratingly complex mechanical problem: how to walk with a full cup of coffee, without letting it slosh over the sides. Writing in Physical Review E, Hans Mayer and Rouslan Krechetnikov at the University of California, Santa Barbara, report their study of the biomechanics of walking with coffee and the factors that lead to spills. The sloshing of liquid in a cylindrical container, like a mug, is similar to the motion of a pendulum: the natural frequencies of oscillation depend on the liquid’s height and diameter (and, of course, gravity). In a typical mug, 7 cm in diameter and 10 cm tall, the lowest frequency oscillation of the coffee rocking back and forth in the cup is easily excited by walking at a normal pace. This gives an intuitive explanation of why coffee spills, but Mayer and Krechetnikov have found that noise—potentially caused by uneven steps or small jerks of the cup — plays an important role in amplifying the natural oscillations of coffee into a full-blown spill. They set up an image analysis program to track coffee levels in cups carried by human subjects, who were asked to either focus on keeping the coffee from spilling, or to walk without paying attention. Staying focused makes it less likely a walker will spill his coffee, but Mayer and Krechetnikiv are still testing if this is because the vigilant coffee carrier acts as feedback control that is activated at the first signs of coffee tipping toward the rim. – Jessica Thomas ||||| Tuesday, November 18, 2014 Credit: Julius Schorzman via Wikimedia Commons Anyone who has ever carried a tray full of pint glasses without getting their feet wet knows that such a feat is hard work , but perhaps our sympathies should go out to the baristas in coffee shops instead. New research has concluded that carrying coffee without spilling is harder than beer since the foam on the surface of beer dampens sloshing.A team of physicists at Princeton and NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering set up an experiment which jolts three identical pint glasses carrying Guinness, Heineken, and black coffee, and measures the resulting oscillations.This video is the team's entry to the annual APS Gallery of Fluid Motion competition and explains their whole analysis.The pint of Guinness, which has the largest head of foam, sloshes the least, while the pint of coffee sloshes so much that it spills over the edge of the tall glass.To test this more rigorously, the team lead by Howard Stone of Princeton studied the sloshing of liquid in a thin, clear container, with various amounts of foam added on top. Each trial showed the characteristic motion of damped harmonic oscillation , but the amount of time it took for the sloshing to stop depended upon the height of the foam on top.It turns out that foam thicker than about 5 layers of bubbles is enough to damp out nearly all of the motion at the top of the foam. The team was also able to mathematically relate the amount of damping to the height of the foam, as shown in the video.These very practical results from a simple physics experiment could make things a lot easier for those in the industry of liquid transport. The researchers are presenting their work at next week's APS Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting.But the barista at your local coffee shop may still face challenges — after all, not everyone wants to order a cappuccino. In that case, the coffee sloshing research which won a 2012 Ig Nobel prize might be helpful.--By Tamela Maciel , also known as "pendulum"

– Transporting a round of beers from the bar to your table is an achievable task, but you probably wouldn't want to carry three cups of coffee without lids. Scientists at Princeton and NYU are explaining why: When it comes to beer, we have the bubbles to thank, the Smithsonian reports. Using high-speed cameras, the researchers recorded motion on the surface of several drinks: coffee, amber beer, and Guinness. Foam reduced sloshing, and the experts say it's because the foam absorbs the energy of the moving liquid. More foam meant less sloshing. That means that if you're looking for an easy-to-carry beer, Guinness may be your best bet. Why, you ask, are scientists spending their time on this? Well, it's not just to have a better night out. The study, an abstract says, "has promising applications in numerous industrial applications such as the transport of liquid in cargoes." And believe it or not, this isn't the first time the physics of coffee spillage has received study, Physics Central reports: A couple of years ago, "blurry-eyed physicists" tried to figure out how to walk with a full cup of coffee without spilling any, as the American Physical Society noted. (Some of us respond very inappropriately when our beer is spilled.)

LORAIN, Ohio -- A man accused of crashing his car with a child inside as a result of a heroin overdose made his first court appearance before a judge in Lorain County. Nathan Carroll, 29, and his wife Samantha Schigel, 24, both face child endangering charges. Carroll faces additional charges of driving with a revoked or suspended license, operating a vehicle under the influence of drugs and alcohol and other charges in the incident that happened Monday evening. Attorney Michael Duff made a court appearance Thursday on their behalf and entered not-guilty pleas. Carroll is free on a $3,000 bond and Schigel was released on a $1,000 bond, a court bailiff said. The arrests happened about 5 p.m. Monday after a passerby saw a 2006 Chrysler Town and Country drive off of West 24th Street onto Leavitt Road and up a curb, according to a police report. Carroll passed out after driving up the curb. Police gave Carroll two doses of Narcan, an opioid overdose remedy, and paramedics administered more Narcan when they arrived on scene, according to the report. He woke up and was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center. Officers learned Schigel suffered an overdose across the street in the 2300 block of Westview Court, the report says. Officers said Schigel and Carroll were snorting a substance they thought was heroin just before Carroll decided to leave to go get food for the family with the child in the car, according to the report. The infant, whose age is not listed in a police report, was not harmed and is currently in the custody of a family member, Lorain police Lt. Ed Super said. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments section. ||||| × Lorain police: Dad overdoses with baby in car; Mom overdoses at home with other children LORAIN, Ohio– A mother and father were arrested after Lorain police say they both overdosed in the presence of their children. An officer found Nathan A. Carroll, 29, in a mini van in the area of West 24th Street and Leavitt Road Monday evening. According to the police report, the van had just missed hitting a tree and an infant was in the backseat. Carroll was blue in the face and had shallow breathing. When paramedics arrived, they administered Naloxone, a heroin antidote, several times. Police responded to Carroll’s house on Westview Court, where a young girl answered the door. The officer eventually spoke with Samantha R. Schigel, 24, who said she snorted a powder with Carroll then he left with the baby to get some food. During her conversation with police, Schigel became unresponsive on several occasions, the police report said. Paramedics also gave her Naloxone. The couple was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center, then to the Lorain City Jail for booking. Carroll was arrested for operating a vehicle under the influence, endangering children, driving under suspension and failure to control. Schigel was arrested for endangering children. Police contacted Lorain County Childrens Services. Grandparents took custody of the couple’s five children. The suspects told police they believed they used heroin. But, according to the Lorain Police Department, the substance tested positive for cocaine and fentanyl. Carroll and Schigel will likely face drug-related charges.

– Cops say a 29-year-old Ohio man crashed his minivan—with an infant in the backseat—while suffering a drug overdose, reports Fox 8. Both survived, but the story then takes a turn for the worse: When officers arrived at Nathan Carroll's Lorain home to tell his wife what happened, they learned that she, too, had just suffered an overdose. A girl of about age 6 answered the door, and officers found 24-year-old Samantha Schigel inside, surrounded by children, reports ABC News. "Mommy was sleeping and they could not wake her up," a neighbor quotes one of the kids as saying. Both Carroll and Schigel were given overdose antidote naloxone and taken to a hospital, where they recovered. Police say Schigel later explained that she and Carroll had snorted a powdered substance they believed was heroin before Carroll left to get food for the family, reports Cleveland.com. (The crash occurred just across the street from the family home.) Police say a white powder found at the home tested positive for cocaine and fentanyl. Schigel is now charged with child endangerment, while Carroll faces charges including child endangerment and driving under the influence. Both pleaded not guilty Thursday and are free on bond. Their five children—including the infant involved in the accident, who was uninjured—are staying with grandparents. (A couple fatally overdosed with their three children in the backseat.)

Bigger. Bigger. Bigger. The new Apple iPhones going on sale this week, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, have crisper screens, faster processors and sharper cameras. And, as you might have heard, they are also bigger than previous iPhones — the 6 Plus by a long shot — joining the stampede toward bigger handsets. But after almost a week of trying the phones, it became clear that the hardware was not the best part of the package. In its quest to deliver bigger phones to a market clamoring for them, Apple has made one phone that is actually a little too small and one that’s a little too big. (Apple lent The New York Times an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus under the condition that a review would be not be published before Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.) The best part of the new phones is actually the new software inside, which is available for some older models, too, starting on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple’s ease of use and reliability. ||||| CLOSE Personal Technology columnist Ed Baig takes a look at the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. (Photo: Apple) NEW YORK — Are the bigger iPhones worth all this big time attention? The answer is a resounding yes, a point emphasized by consumers who've preordered the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in record numbers. These are the phones Apple devotees have been waiting for: iPhones that measure up to what's fast becoming the new normal — the large, modern smartphone display. Count me among those glad they're here. People have preordered on faith, since they haven't seen these super-sized iPhones up close or experienced what they feel like in pockets and handbags. I have and let me be reassuring — you won't regret your decision, though going big may require a small adjustment, and my experience wasn't totally trouble-free. The new phones are enclosed in sturdy anodized aluminum. And though the handsets are bigger and heavier their predecessors, they're also thinner. The sleep/power button has moved to the side. Each has the Touch ID fingerprint scanner introduced on the iPhone 5s. The 6 Plus is the first Apple phone to enter the phablet category popularized by Samsung's Notes. Samsung has been running ads — a bit defensively I think — knocking the new iPhone as playing catch-up with even its older Notes models. But while Samsung's phablets are equipped with souped-up styluses called the S Pen for writing and other tricks, Apple eschews the pen. Here's a closer look at the 6 Plus and the 6. • SIZING UP THE SIZES. The iPhone 5 and 5s really do look like a kid brother placed next to the 6 or 6 Plus; the iPhone 4 or 4s models are practically toddler-sized. I prefer the 6 Plus because I like the biggest of the big screens, and like that I have to squint less often. It felt fine in my jeans pocket, but won't fit every snug purse or small pair of hands. The 5.5-inch 6 Plus has an 88% larger viewing area than the 5s. The 4.7-inch iPhone 6 has a 38% larger area. Both have splendid Retina HD displays, with resolutions of 1334 X 750 and 1920 X 1080 respectively. The screens accommodate an extra row of home screen icons. And when you're, say, checking your calendar, you can glance at seven days of appointments at once on the 6 Plus in the weekly landscape view, compared with six days on the 6 or five days on the 5. The iPhone 6 Plus, at left, and iPhone 6 are displayed on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014, in Cupertino, Calif. (Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP) It's harder (but not impossible) to use the iPhone 6 Plus one-handed, even with Apple adding a gesture called Reachability which makes the top portion of the display move down toward the bottom when you gently double-tap the home button. It's also still a tad unnatural to hold a really large phone up to your ear during a call. In that sense the 6 felt more comfortable. Apple made other accommodations on the 6 Plus: When you rotate the phone to its side, some apps display a two-panel view. On both new phones you have the option of choosing a standard view with normal-size icons and fonts, or a zoomed view that gives you bigger controls but less room for other stuff. Developers may have to make some adjustments before their apps are iPhone 6 Plus- ready. The search icon inside the YouTube app actually touched the Bluetooth icon and the battery gauge in the Apple task bar. The rumored rugged Sapphire display didn't happen (though Sapphire covers the Touch ID button and the camera lens), so if you're the type to protect your phone with a case, you'll obviously have to spring for a bigger replacement. • CAMERAS. Larger displays double as larger viewfinders, a benefit to photographers. You can use either volume button to fire off a picture, which is nice. I generally found the 6 easier to maneuver, though the 6 Plus has an optical image-stabilization feature that the 6 lacks, to reduce the shakes when you're taking a photo. Both models have a cinematic stabilization feature for keeping video steady. Video I shot on the 6 Plus from a moving car came out smooth. However, on the 6 Plus I once couldn't stop shooting a video, an apparent bug. You can now shoot high-definition videos at a faster (60fps) frame rate and also shoot time-lapse videos. And Apple has also improved the focusing system. I was pleased with the quality of pictures and videos I shot. Of note, selfie fans can now capture 10 photos per second as part of a burst mode feature added to the front camera. I took advantage of a timer feature that gives you three or 10 seconds to prepare for your close-up burst. CLOSE Personal Technolgy columnist Ed Baig takes a look at iOS 8, Apple's latest mobile operating system. • iOS 8. The operating system need not play second fiddle to the hardware; iOS 8 brings numerous improvements, starting with a better predictive Apple keyboard you come to appreciate quickly. The ability to install third-party keyboards as on Android phones is an added plus. The new Health app is a useful repository for all sorts of health and fitness data. I used it to display the number of stairs I climbed, a measurement made possible by the barometer inside the new phones. IOS 8 has also improved notifications and messaging. For example, you can tap and swipe to add a recording to an outgoing text message that can expire in two minutes. Also promising is a Family Sharing feature that lets you and other members of the household share a calendar, photos and iTunes, iBook and app purchases. You can make the kids ask before they buy. Expect frequent requests: The App Store now has more than 1.3 million apps. • APPLE PAY. Can Apple get you to shop your way through a mall with a wave of your phone? We'll find out come October, when Apply Pay debuts for the 6 and 6 Plus. I got to demo Apple Pay but not test it in the real world with crowded shoppers. The process certainly seems simple. In a store, you'll place the phone within about an inch of a compatible terminal while pressing the Touch ID fingerprint scanner to transact — pretty robust security right there. There's no need to unlock the phone. Your credit cards are stored in the up-to-now seldom used Passbook app. Payment info is kept secure inside a chip on the phone. The merchant never sees your actual credit card number, and Apple is kept in the dark on what you bought or spent. If your phone is lost or stolen you can remove your cards from Passbook remotely through Find My iPhone. But there's no need to actually cancel your credit cards. • BATTERY. Both new phones have bigger batteries, which should yield better results than on prior iPhones. Apple is touting longer battery life on the 6 Plus compared with the 6, up to 14 hours watching video, vs. 11 hours. I didn't conduct a formal test, but after a day of heavy mixed use, the battery on the 6 Plus pooped out about 7:15 p.m. • GROWING PAINS. With the 6 and 6 Plus, Apple ditched a 32GB storage model. If you take lots of pictures and videos or download frequent apps, the 16GB entry capacity may not cut it. Now the step-up is 64GB or 128 GB. Inside is a new Apple-designed A8 chip and the phone is snappy. But I hit a few snags, especially with the 6 Plus. A few times, the 6 Plus failed to rotate from landscape to portrait or back (the rotation lock was unlocked). Once the Mail app froze. Another time the 6 Plus restarted on its own. Reachability also didn't work one time until I rebooted the phone. Hopefully this is an aberration. Notwithstanding such growing pains, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are smartphone stars. Really big stars. THE BOTTOM LINE: IPhone 6 and 6 Plus www.apple.com IPhone 6 is $199 (16 GB), $299 (64GB) and $399 (128GB) with two year contracts from AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless or $649, $749 or $849, contract-free from T-Mobile. IPhone 6 Plus is $299, $399 and $499 on AT&T, Sprint and Verizon with two-year contracts, or $749, $849 or $949 contract-free from T-Mobile. Pro. Large displays provide extra screen real estate. Touch ID. IOS features such as Health app and redesigned predictive keyboards. Improved camera and Photos app. Optical image stabilization (iPhone 6 Plus only). Con. IPhone 6 Plus may be too large for some users. 6 Plus was buggy. You may need to buy new cases or other accessories to accommodate larger displays. E-mail: [email protected]; Follow @edbaig on Twitter. (Baig is the co-author of iPhone For Dummies, an independent work published by Wiley.) Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1u4I7wY ||||| I have really big hands. It’s not something I usually think about; you don’t ever really think about your hands. Those are my hands, you might idly remark to yourself from time to time. I wonder if I can use them for anything good. But using a smartphone with a huge screen, like the iPhone 6 Plus, forces you to constantly consider the size of your hands. This phone looks huge, even in my admittedly large hands, you might think to yourself. Or: Dammit, I can’t reach that button without using my other hand. Or: If my children and my children’s children and their children and all the children after that keep contorting their hands to use phones like this for generations, will our hands evolve to have gigantic thumbs? It is not often that a new iPhone threatens to alter the course of human evolution, is what I’m saying. But here we are. I have really big hands. The iPhone 6 Plus isn’t beautiful the way the iPhone 4 was beautiful. No one’s going to hold it up and say it reminds them of a gorgeous old Leica camera. It’s not sleek and dangerous-looking, like the black iPhone 5. It’s not flashy like the gold iPhone 5S. My review unit is silver and white, and with its rounded edges and aluminum back it reminds me of nothing so much as the first-gen iPhone, scaled up. The white front panel makes the phone seem even bigger than it is; the space gray version has a black front panel that blends more seamlessly into the frame, which makes the entire thing appear smaller. But there’s no escaping the sheer size of the thing. The screen itself is bigger than an entire iPhone 5S, and it dwarfs even the new, larger iPhone 6. I found myself carrying it around almost like you’d carry a Moleskine notebook, tucked into the curve of my fingers. After a while you begin to realize that Apple had no choice but to move the sleep / wake button to the side of the phone; you’d never be able to reach it otherwise. No one's going to compare the iPhone 6 Plus to an old Leica The iPhone 6 Plus is a big phone because it has to be; Apple made a big phone in 2014 because consumers have demanded big phones. Samsung’s empire is built on gigantic phones that keep getting bigger — the Galaxy S5 is 5.1 inches, while the Note 3 and Note 4 are 5.7 inches — and while Apple initially derided screen size as an unworkable gimmick, it turns out that bigger sells. (Steve Jobs famously called big phones "Hummers," but it turns out that’s only an insult in California.) Big phones like the Note 3 work because they defer almost the entire front of the phone to the display; you don’t need to put a lot of stuff around a screen that big. But the iPhone 6 Plus has large top and bottom bezels that make a big phone even bigger. Apple’s tied to its iconic round home button, while Samsung can get away with a rectangular home button that takes up less space. The extra height increases the surfboard-like nature of the 6 Plus — it’s a well-balanced package, but it’s so long it can feel top-heavy if you don’t grab it in the middle. It’s less stable to hold in one hand than Samsung’s Note 3, which is a bit more squat and squared-off. It’s a tiny difference in spec-sheet dimensions, but in day-to-day use the Note 3 definitely feels smaller. (Samsung’s upcoming Note 4 is a tiny bit taller and skinnier, but it’s not out yet, so it’s hard to judge.) Huge phones get to have huge batteries, and the iPhone 6 Plus is a huge phone with a huge battery: I consistently got about two days of battery life from the 6 Plus in regular daily use — slightly more than the day and a half we got from the iPhone 6, and basically the same as the Note 3. iPhone battery life tends to fade quickly, however, and I dread the day I inevitably stuff the 6 Plus into a battery case and make it even bigger. Apple manages to make up for the slightly more awkward dimensions of the 6 Plus with finer materials than the weird fake-leather plastic of the Note 3. The back of the iPhone 6 Plus is a smooth aluminum, marred only by the protruding camera lens and an ugly set of plastic lines at the top and bottom that allow the phone’s various antennas to speak to the world. That aluminum feels quite nice, but it’s also a little slippery, especially when you factor in the size of the phone and its rounded sides. The iPhone 6 Plus is the first iPhone that looks and works better in a case — I’ve been using Apple’s leather sleeve and it makes the phone easier to hold, evens out that camera bump, and hides the weird lines on the back. But enough about sides and backs; let’s talk about the screen. Where the iPhone 4’s Retina display was a quantum leap past the competition, the Retina HD Display on the 6 Plus is more of a thoughtful step around. I haven't seen another phone display that looks this immediate The 6 Plus has an absolutely stunning display. It’s a 5.5-inch, 1920 by 1080 panel, which works out to 401 pixels per inch. That’s the highest-density display Apple’s ever shipped, but there’s a whole range of Android phones out there with big and great-looking high-density screens: the 5.1-inch Samsung Galaxy S5 at 432ppi, the 5-inch HTC One M8 at 441ppi, the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 4 at 515ppi, and the 5.5-inch LG G3 at an insane 538ppi. Of course, it’s debatable whether your eyes can even perceive any of these higher pixel densities, and driving all those extra dots takes a toll on battery life. Apple seems to have aimed firmly at the middle ground with the iPhone 6 Plus: it’s a great-looking display that’s plenty sharp, but it’s not so crazy high-res in the service of specs that it needs a bigger battery to keep it lit up all day. Apple’s using some other tricks to make the display look amazing, though: there’s a new polarizer that makes the phone easier to see in sunlight, wider viewing angles with more accurate color reproduction, and overall higher contrast than previous iOS screens. And perhaps most importantly, the entire display stack is thinner, so it looks more like you’re touching the pixels directly than ever before. It’s like the screen is painted on. This, more than anything, is what makes the iPhone 6 Plus display pop — I haven’t seen another phone display that looks quite so immediate. It would be nice if there was a spec-sheet number to describe this quality so the rest of the industry could race to improve it; that seems to be how these things work. The bigger screen comes with a tradeoff, though: it’s a totally new resolution for an iOS device, so apps that aren’t updated for the 6 Plus simply get zoomed up to fit the screen. Apple says the 6 Plus has a "desktop-class scaler" to make this all work seamlessly, but if you’re paying attention you’ll spot the difference between scaled apps and updated apps every time: the status bar at the top of the screen gets way bigger when a scaled app is open. YOU HAVE THREE BARS OF AT&T LTE, announces the iPhone 6 Plus when you open an older app. IT IS 11:07AM AND YOUR BATTERY IS AT 65 PERCENT. It’s comedy gold, if you think big things are funny. (They are.) The app scaling also affects various apps differently, and most of them definitely need to be updated to look better. Twitter looks fine, with sharp text and only moderately soft icons. (It’s hilarious that you can only see four tweets at a time, though.) Instagram photos look terrific, but the text is a little soft. Facebook and Gmail are pretty fuzzy all around. Text in the Kindle app is headache-inducing soft; it definitely needs an update to be readable. FIFA 14 looks solid, but Madden Mobile glitches out with a totally misaligned screen on load. Whoops. Scaled apps are comedy gold, if you think big things are funny But you have to be looking to spot these flaws, and it’s a safe bet that popular apps will be updated in short order. In the meantime, even scaled-up apps benefit from simply being bigger: Instagram is awesome on the iPhone 6 Plus. So are Facebook photos. Watching video on the 6 Plus is tremendous — the display is almost as big as the iPad mini showing 16:9 videos since the mini has to letterbox those videos to fit its 4:3 screen. I watched a lot of football using the Sunday Ticket app last weekend; I never once wanted to find a TV. I could spend days banging through YouTube and Vevo on this thing. If you’re a traveler who carries an iPad just for movies on the road, the 6 Plus is going to be your best friend. But while the screen is terrific for videos, the speaker situation on the iPhone is starting to get a little silly. There’s still just the single mono speaker on the bottom, right where your hand goes when you’re holding the phone in landscape mode. The iPhone 6 Plus already demands that you contort your hands when you’re actually using it, but having to adjust your grip so you can hear the speaker when you’re watching a video or playing a game is asking a little too much. HTC and Motorola have solved this problem by putting stereo speakers on the front of their phones; it might be time for Apple to take that cue from the competition as well. Apple’s built a few new hooks into iOS 8 that let updated apps lift a few ideas from the iPad when the phone’s in landscape mode: there’s a new two-paned mode for apps, a new keyboard with dedicated arrow keys and formatting buttons, and even a new landscape home screen. These are all interesting ideas, although only Apple’s apps make full use of them right now, and some of the implementations are frankly a bit messy. I’m not sure Apple put a huge amount of effort into how this iPad mini-mini should actually work, and it shows in various ways. For example, starting an email in landscape involves a new-document sheet sliding up along with the busy landscape keyboard, leaving the screen a mess of inactive interface elements. Safari is pretty crashy in landscape, especially on responsive sites like The Verge, and some apps like Weather don’t take advantage of the extra space at all. The 6 Plus could be the start of an entirely new platform for Apple, but it’s going to take a little more work to get there. The landscape keyboard also requires some serious adjustment; I kept hitting the right arrow key when I mean to hit delete, and the emoji and numbers buttons are swapped from the portrait keyboard and iOS 7 landscape keyboard, which is just cruel. And let’s not even talk about the paste icon, which is ridiculous. First of all, it’s a glue bottle. Second of all… look, let’s just move on. Having a better landscape keyboard is a great idea, but this one needs a lot more work. A better landscape keyboard is a great idea, but this one needs a lot more work Apple’s also built in a small concession to using the phone one-handed called Reachability. Double-tapping (not pushing) the home button slides the screen down so you can hit buttons at the top more easily. It sounds silly — and it is — but once you get used to using it, it’s nice to have, and easier to understand than Samsung’s tiny-one-handed-phone mode on the Note 3. The other new software features on the iPhone 6 Plus all come courtesy of iOS 8, which will be available on many other iOS devices as well. iOS 8 is a welcome update to the ambitious sweep of iOS 7, which redesigned much of the familiar iPhone experience but left some jagged edges in place. Everything about iOS 8 is smoother and faster, and it especially flies along on the A8 chip in the 6 Plus. There are loads of features small and large and a new sense of openness about the system that make iOS 8 perhaps one of the most important iOS updates ever. You can quick-reply to messages from the notification shade (small) and you can replace the stock keyboard entirely (huge). You can send quick audio messages to your friends (small) and when the next version of OS X comes out you’ll be able to seamlessly switch from working on iOS to working on a Mac using Continuity (huge). You can now use Spotlight to search across the web and various services like Yelp (small) and you can share all your iTunes purchases with up to six family members (huge). You get the idea. There’s so much to iOS 8 that we’ll have a full separate review shortly; it’s that big. The iPhone 6 Plus camera is the best smartphone camera I’ve ever used. Apple’s holding firm at 8 megapixels while everyone else is racing to put ever-bigger numbers on spec sheets, and it feels like the right decision: the iPhone 6 Plus focuses faster, works better in low light, and generally produces the best photos I’ve ever seen from a phone. The 6 Plus has the same basic shooter as the iPhone 6, but it adds optical image stabilization to the mix, which improves low-light performance even more. It’s not going to help you when you’re shooting anything that moves, like people, but for sunsets and skylines, it’s clutch. It basically lets the camera hold the shutter open a little bit longer than it otherwise could without causing a blurry image, so more light hits the sensor. If you’re like me and you mostly find yourself taking photos at dusk and in dark rooms, you’ll end up with many more usable shots. Until you take too many shots and everything gets blurry regardless. Grid View The best smartphone camera I've ever used The iOS 8 Camera app is also much improved; I love the feature that lets you instantly adjust exposure by dragging up and down on the screen. And the new time-lapse and 240 fps slow-mo modes are pretty fun — slow-mo works really well, and while the time-lapse mode isn’t quite as good as Instagram’s Hyperlapse app, it’s still pretty good. There’s also a new feature called "cinematic stabilization" that does an impressive job of smoothing out unwanted motion in video clips; it’s strong enough to make a meaningful difference but subtle enough that you won’t notice the effect until you’re looking for it. It’s also easier to take photos and videos with a huge screen helping you frame your shots. No wonder people insist on using their tablets to take photos; having a screen this large paired with such an excellent camera is revelatory. The iPhone has long had a better camera than just about any Android phone, and it’s always had a better ecosystem of editing and sharing apps than any other platform. The iPhone 6 Plus should just increase that lead. ||||| But a phone's screen size doesn't have to dictate how large the device itself is. Take the LG G3, a 5.5-inch phone with the exact opposite in-hand feel. Compared with the LG G3, the Plus is nearly 12mm taller, 3.2mm wider and 1.8mm thinner; LG's large-screened option has a smaller bezel and arched back that fit the natural contours of my hand extremely well. It feels much more comfortable to hold for long periods of time, and I never worry about it slipping out of my hands. Both the 6 and 6 Plus use an IPS Retina HD display, but the Plus is even more high-def than the 6. It has a screen resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, which means you'll get a pixel density of 401 pixels per inch. On the flipside, the 6 maxes out at 1,334 x 750, which translates into 326 ppi. (That's the same screen density as the 5s.) Both displays are sharp, but I do see some minor differences between the two when I look at them side by side. Specifically, the Plus' text and images are sharper, with no jagged lines whatsoever. That said, I don't think it's enough to steer you from one device to the other; they both look fantastic from a few inches away. Additionally, the color representation on both phones is less saturated than the Super AMOLED panel on the Note 3, and is extremely close to the colors on a Retina display MacBook Pro. With the Retina HD display, Apple is also introducing what it's calling "dual-domain pixels," which arrange the display's subpixels into a chevron-like pattern designed to compensate for the contrast that normally shows up when you look at the screen from oblique angles. It also helps produce deeper darks and sharper text; both new iPhones have brighter whites than the 5s, but the Plus has the warmest tint of the three. The viewing angles are indeed among the best I've seen, and it's great to see Apple incorporate this technology into its latest products. All that said, it's worth noting that while Apple makes this screen technology sound brand-new, it's actually been used before on phones like the HTC One M7 and the One X. Over the years, Apple's continued to fine-tune its reputation for building devices that combine solid build quality with a premium design. While these new iPhones generally continue that tradition, there are a couple quirks that are difficult to un-see. The first is the excessive use of antenna lines on the back. The two stripes stretching across the top and bottom sections enhance the look of the phone's rear -- much like the HTC One series -- but there are two unsightly lines that follow the upper and lower perimeter, and they stick out like a sore thumb. Secondly, though the phones got thinner, the camera module did not; the result is a lens that sticks out from the rest of the chassis, which increases the likelihood of the casing and lens getting scratched. I am, of course, nitpicking. After all, an aluminum phone needs to have openings for antennas to get a signal, and that's precisely what the stripes on the sides and back do. Unfortunately, though, they do detract from the device's beauty, not enhance it. As for the camera, many flagship phones come with tiny humps around the camera module to compensate for the extra depth they require, but I would've rather seen Apple go with a design that's less severe. (Update: A few folks have rightly pointed out that the lens is sapphire, so scratches shouldn't be an issue. Still, its prominence compared to the rest of the chassis remains a design distraction.) One final concern: The phones are prone to scratches if you're not careful. After just a day of use, I started noticing a few small marks on the backs of both devices. The most extreme thing I did to the phones during this time was slide them around on an office table. Granted, a case will resolve all of these issues, but unfortunately, cases also add a fair amount of bulk, and I've always preferred showing off my phones in all their beauty. NFC Apple's coming out with a mobile payment service in October called Apple Pay. I haven't been able to test it out yet, so I'll revisit that when it becomes available. Once it's up and running, it'll use a wireless standard known as Near-Field Communications (NFC) that comes built into the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In short, a transmitter on your device can communicate with a receiver located just a few millimeters away; this is incredibly useful for mobile payment transactions because the short distance makes it more secure than any other wireless connection, so you don't have to worry about a third party getting unauthorized access to your sensitive information. Since NFC is a standard, the iPhone is theoretically capable of doing a lot more than just mobile payments -- tap-to-pair for Bluetooth devices, unlocking doors and hotel rooms, mobile tickets for public transit, Foursquare check-ins, et cetera. For now, though, the iPhone's NFC radio will be limited just to Apple Pay; developers can't do anything with it right now. Apple hasn't said if this will change in the future, but I suspect the company is approaching it with the same timidity as it did with Touch ID; Apple initially used it just to unlock the iPhone and approve iTunes purchases, and now, a year later, it's finally opening up the sensor for developer support. Software Both iPhones come preloaded with iOS 8. You can find my in-depth review of the update here, so I won't go into much detail in this review. But there are a few specific software features on the 6 and 6 Plus worth revisiting. Apple is treating the Plus as a small iPad mini (mini iPad mini?) of sorts: The springboard now can switch into landscape mode, and a few of the native apps (Mail, Calendar and Messages) come with dual-pane windows. This is a great use of the extra screen space, and it gives the Plus a clear productivity advantage over the 6. While I'm on the subject of landscape mode, the keyboard also looks rather different. The standard keyboard shows up directly in the middle and is flanked by heaps of symbols and other options. Arrows and many of the popular punctuation marks are on the right, while options like copy and paste, undo and voice dictation are on the left. Both iPhones also feature Display Zoom, which magnifies the screen and makes your icons, text and other materials larger. There's one-handed mode, which Apple refers to as "Reachability." This is technically available on both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but it makes the most sense on the larger model. Since it's tough to stretch your tiny fingers all the way to the top of the screen, Apple's solution is to bring the screen down to you. When you double-tap on the Touch ID button, the entire UI slides down so the top half of the app is located on the bottom half of the screen. You can scroll and interact with it just like you normally could in full-screen mode, but in case you need to get to a link at the bottom of a website, or you're trying to get down to the end of an email, you'll have to go back out to see the entire screen. It's better than having no one-handed mode at all, but it still feels cumbersome and I only really used it when I wasn't able to use two hands (e.g., when I'm walking down the street while holding a bag). It may sound like the Plus isn't ideal, and indeed, it's not for everyone. But for many, the additional screen real estate is worth sacrificing some one-handed comfort. Not only do you get more rows of icons on each screen (the 5s is 6 x 4, while the 6 is 7 x 4 and the 6 Plus is 7 x 4 with slightly larger icons and more space in between), but you're also going to be able to see more emails, tweets, Google search results, Engadget posts, calendar appointments and, well... more of everything. More screen space equates to more room for consuming, creating and manipulating content, and since it's still small enough to fit in most jeans pockets (provided they're not too tight), it's still more portable than any iPad. Camera While the megapixel war rages on among manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, LG and Microsoft Devices (Nokia), Apple doesn't seem to feel compelled to join the fray. Instead, it's sticking with a modest 8MP iSight camera similar to the one found n the 5s. Although the aperture and pixel size haven't changed, Apple's added "Focus Pixels," which is the company's fancy term for Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF). The tech is used in many DSLRs and phones like the Galaxy S5, and the idea is to lock autofocus faster. Fortunately, Focus Pixels doesn't disappoint; in several side-by-side shots in which my goal was to snap a photo as quickly as possible, the 6 and 6 Plus did considerably better at producing focused images. In case you need extra perks for going with the larger device, the Plus comes with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS). This feature is designed to reduce the amount of blur that can come from the natural shaking of your hand, and it produces better low-light performance as a result. I took several nighttime shots with the 6 and 6 Plus side by side, and although there was no difference in how much light the cameras took in, the images from the Plus consistently came out sharper -- both when viewing at standard size and especially when zoomed in. I also pitted the Plus head to head against several other flagships. It bested the HTC One M8 in sharpness and white balance, though it didn't get quite as much light; it had more natural colors and less noise than the LG G3; it got more light, better colors and clearer focus than the Galaxy S5; and although the Lumia 1020 brought in the most light, it also did so at the expense of unnatural colors and noise.

– Tech experts are applauding the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, noting the bigger screens and improved features. But the critics aren't without their reservations about the new devices, which, they say, aren't exactly revolutionary: "It's clear that Apple spent the last year tweaking and improving every square inch of the iPhone," writes David Pierce at the Verge, reviewing the 6. For instance, it "takes better pictures than any smartphone I've ever used." But it's "not terribly exciting, or groundbreaking. It’s just excellent." As for the 6 Plus, Nilay Patel at the Verge notes an "absolutely stunning display," but acknowledges that "there's nothing here that competitors aren't doing with their big phones." "Are the bigger iPhones worth all this big time attention? The answer is a resounding yes," writes Edward C. Baig in USA Today. But he has some complaints, particularly about the "buggy" 6 Plus, which, he found, has issues with freezing and rotation and is tough to use with one hand. In keeping with others, Brad Molen notes a camera lens that "sticks out" on the phones; the devices are also easily scratched. Still, he gives both phones high marks at Engadget, adding that the more comfortable 6 is "the better choice for most people." Still, the 6 Plus offers "more of an iPad-like user experience on a much smaller device." In the New York Times, Molly Wood writes that Apple has released "one phone that is actually a little too small and one that's a little too big." But the new operating system, iOS 8, "combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple's ease of use and reliability." Overall, Apple remains "just in front of their competitors."

White Sox go from cursed to first Email By Jayson Stark ESPN.com Archive HOUSTON -- A month ago, you never would have bet it would end like this. A month ago, the debate about those Chicago White Sox never seemed to involve whether they belonged in the same sentence as the '27 Yankees, or even the '99 Yankees. Game 4 A championship for the history books No, the debate back then was whether they were heading for the same sentence as the '64 Phillies -- asentence, that is. In confinement with the great collapsers of all time. "Yeah, a month ago, they were calling us chokers," said White Sox poet laureate A.J. Pierzynski on a magical night in October. "But now they can call us something else that starts with a C-H -- champions." The Chicago White Sox ... champions. How 'bout that for a stranger-than-heck phenomenon? Until Wednesday night, it was a phenomenon that only about 14 living humans were familiar with -- for the same reason that you no longer run across many members of the Eddie Cicotte Fan Club. In other words, 88 years ago was a long, long, lonnnnggg time ago. Even longer than that World Series game these White Sox played Tuesday night. The last time the Chicago White Sox won a World Series, there were no radio stations to listen to it on. And no such thing as a national anthem to sing before every game. And no such animal as a commissioner of baseball to hand them their trophy. The last time the Chicago White Sox won a World Series was 1917. And the best part of winning it that year was they never had to hear a sole complaint about crummy TV ratings. One of these years, or one of these decades, or one of these centuries, you knew some White Sox team was bound to win another one. But who among us thought it would be this team, in this year? (Sorry, members of the Guillen and Konerko families are ineligible to answer that question.) On the final Wednesday of October, though, it didn't matter what anybody thought of these White Sox in February. All that mattered was the 27th out that landed in the glove of Mr. White Sox, Paul Konerko. The out that finished off a 1-0 win over the Houston Astros. The out that finished off an improbable sweep of an improbable World Series. The out that ended 88 years of Wait 'Til Next Year seasons for a franchise that has spent every one of those seasons living in the shadow of another team in its own city. "I've been here for seven years," said Konerko, a guy whose impending free agency will be the story around this franchise once they sweep up the tickertape. "And on this team, I've been here the longest, along with Frank (Thomas). But compared with all the fans and all the people who put up with the frustrations of this team for all those years, that's nothing. Those are the people who have suffered for a long, long time. "But when you win, people don't forget you. So now, we'll always be remembered as part of the team that finally jumped over that wall." Shortstop Juan Uribe reached into the stands to make a clutch catch on Chris Burke's popup in the ninth inning. When this team jumped that wall, however, it was one giant leap for White Sox kind, because here's the thunderous way in which they did it: • They swept the World Series -- for the first time in franchise history. • They won their final eight games in a row -- tying the 2004 Red Sox for the longest winning streak any team has had in a single postseason. • They went 11-1 in their 12 postseason games -- tying the '99 Yankees for the best postseason record of the 11-season wild-card era. • They played six road games in this postseason -- against teams (Boston, Anaheim and Houston) that finished a combined 69 games over.500 at home this season -- and won all six. • And they became just the third team in history to sweep a World Series after a season in which they were in first place every day of the season. Those other two teams were the 1990 Reds and the fabled '27 Yankees. "The '27 YANKEES?" gulped Pierzynski after hearing that news. "I don't think we're exactly the '27 Yankees. We've got no Babe Ruth. We don't even have a Roger Maris. We do have the Three Stooges, though -- me, (Joe) Crede and (Aaron) Rowand: Ro, Mo and Yo." But if that's what it took to shake off 88 years of ghosts and demons, no one on the South Side of Chicago would have cared if their double-play combination was Laurel and Hardy, or their starting rotation was the cast of "American Pie." "We're different than a lot of teams that win the World Series," said Konerko. "We don't have a lot of all-star type guys. We've got a bunch of low-maintenance, low-key guys here. I don't think that when we're done, we'll have any guys who will make you say, 'That guy was the best player in the league at his position.' ... "But we're proof that you don't have to put together an all-star team to win it, like some teams that went down along the way. I don't have to mention their names. You know who they are. We're not a team that was a lock to win. We could start the playoffs again tomorrow and get knocked off in three games, because we aren't some unbelievably great team. We're just a team that played our best baseball when we had to." This was a team whose claim to fame all year was its ability to win those 2-1 games that supposedly went out of style about 1968. This was a team that, amazingly, won 15 games in which it scored one run or two -- the most by any team since the '69 Mets. And this was a team that, including the postseason, went an insane 68-35 in games decided by one run or two -- the best record in baseball. So how fitting was the final chapter to this team's story? How fitting was it that the White Sox wound up sweeping a World Series in which they never led by more than two runs at any point in any game? How fitting was it that they outscored the Astros by only six runs over the entire World Series and still managed to sweep it -- tied with the 1950 Yankees for the smallest margin by any sweepers in history. And how fitting was it that the grand finale was one last 1-0 game? "Our first game of the year was 1-0," Pierzynski said. "Our first game of the second half was 1-0. And our last game of the year was 1-0. You couldn't ask for a better script." “ You know, if we'd won this game, 10-0, that would have been great. But it wouldn't have been right. That's not us. So I was waiting for them to tie it up in the ninth, so we could say, 'OK, let's go. Extra innings.' ” — Paul Konerko It was a script that included the first World Series game to roll into the eighth inning with a 0-0 score since Jack Morris versus John Smoltz, Game 7, 1991. It was a script that revolved around the brilliance of one more White Sox starting pitcher -- in this case, Freddy Garcia (7 IP, 4 hits, 0 runs). And it was a script that turned on the efforts of yet another member of this team's bench crew -- the increasingly legendary Group 4 scrubeenies who spent their October in relentless obscurity. In this case, the special Group 4 guest star du jour was infielder Willie Harris, who was sent out to pinch-hit for Garcia to start the eighth -- against a man nobody would want to hit against after three weeks without an at-bat: Houston closer Brad Lidge. But Harris poked a single into left -- for his first hit in 24 days. His teammates moved him along to third with a bunt and a ground ball. And then the World Series MVP, Jermaine Dye, knocked him in with a single up the middle. So all of a sudden, the team with the 88-year drought had a one-run lead -- and only six more outs to get. "Unbelievable," said Group 4 ringleader Geoff Blum, the guy who had hit the game-winning homer just the night (or morning) before. "It took eight stars to get us here -- and Group 4 to get us over the top." Relievers Cliff Politte and Neal Cotts got the first three outs, squirming out of a two-on, one-out jam in the eighth. So then, in the ninth, it was Bobby Jenks' turn. Jenks is another guy who seemed to sum up this team's year. Claimed on waivers over the winter. Pitching in Birmingham in April. Then standing on the mound with a World Series to finish in October. Perfect. He'd thrown 41 exhausting pitches in Game 3, less than 24 hours earlier. But there was "no way in hell I wasn't coming in" to pitch this game, he said. Of course, he had to make it as terrifying as possible, though. Of course, as his teammates crowded around the top step of the dugout, he had to give up a bloop leadoff single to Jason Lane -- followed by a Brad Ausmus bunt that moved the tying run to second base. "What an inning," Blum would say later. "It was scary. It was quixotic. What's that mean, anyway -- quixotic?" Hey, you've got us. But it sounded good. Whatever, it was Jenks-otic. And that was the last thing anybody in Chicago needed, after all the Bartman-esque things that have gone on there for the last 88 years. "You know, if we'd won this game, 10-0, that would have been great," said Konerko. "But it wouldn't have been right. That's not us. So I was waiting for them to tie it up in the ninth, so we could say, 'OK, let's go. Extra innings.' " Turned out that wouldn't be necessary, though -- thanks to Jenks and his trusty shortstop, Juan Uribe. With that tying run on second, Jenks dueled pinch-hitter Chris Burke for six stirring pitches. Burke lofted the last of those six toward the seats beyond third base. It sure looked as if it would float out of play. But there was one guy on the field who didn't think so -- Uribe. He scrambled toward the stands, lunged precipitously and careened into the crowd, like some character in a Road Runner cartoon. But a moment later, he emerged with the baseball. And the White Sox were one out away. If Derek Jeter had made that play in a game like this, it would turn into a major motion picture, coming to a theater near you. That won't be happening for Juan Uribe. But his teammates knew what this play meant. "That play pretty much sums up our team," Konerko said. "Juan is probably the one guy on this team who's capable of making that play. But every guy on this team would do that -- crash into those stands if that's what it took." Crash or no crash, though, Jenks still needed to get one final out. His teammates were just about bursting out of the dugout by then. The stadium P.A. system blared out, "We Will Rock You," as Orlando Palmeiro dug in. Jenks surged ahead of Palmeiro, 1 and 2, then stood on the rubber and heaved one final big gulp of oxygen. Then he fired his final fastball of the night. Palmeiro chopped it into the sky. Jenks leaped for it, then realized the most disastrous thing he could have done was deflect it. So he pulled his hand back and watched it hop over his head. “ I'm not sure what happened after (the last out) other than a whole lot of loudness -- and a bunch of guys hitting me on the head. ” — Closer Bobby Jenks It looked, for an instant, like an infield hit waiting to happen. But here came Uribe one more time, charging, scooping, firing the baseball toward Konerko at approximately 866 miles per hour. Thwack. The ball hit the glove. Frrrummphh. Palmeiro's foot hit the bag. First-base ump Gary Cederstrom pumped the out sign toward the Great Lakes. And 88 years of agony melted into the past tense. "I knew I caught it in time," Konerko said. "But I still sneaked a look over at the umpire -- because I didn't want to get caught celebrating prematurely." "I'm not sure what happened after that," said Jenks, "other than a whole lot of loudness -- and a bunch of guys hitting me on the head." Then he looked up and saw his catcher, Pierzynski, sprinting toward him -- and (yikes) leaping into his arms. "I knew he was coming," Jenks said. "I just had a feeling. I saw it in his face: 'Here I come.' " "Hey, I knew he wouldn't drop me," Pierzynski said. "He might be the only guy in the league who's fatter than me." "It didn't matter how big he is," Jenks said. "I could have picked up a car right then." Then they all dissolved into a gigantic group hug -- a hug that stretched from the pitcher's mound all the way to a famous lakefront in Illinois. A team from Chicago had won itself a championship. And it didn't require the services of Michael Jordan, Mike Ditka or Jim McMahon to do it. Drew Barrymore wasn't around to run around the field, chased by any Hollywood producers. Stephen King wasn't around, to dial his friendly neighborhood publisher. The Cubs weren't around, to remind the champs who's really No. 1. No, this wasn't about any of those teams these White Sox are always being compared to. This was their moment, their time, their trophy. And the second-longest championship drought in the history of professional sports was no more. The Chicago White Sox ... Champions. How 'bout that phenomenon? "Who," grinned A.J. Pierzynski, "would have thunk it?" Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com. ||||| Unless you had religiously followed him to the minor-league towns of Harrisburg and Syracuse -- unless you had seen footage from his college games at San Diego State -- the young pitcher with the howitzer right arm was still very much myth, something to be believed rather than broken down on celluloid. Because baseball at its sublime best can still be a game of the imagination -- AM radio making you see an inside-the-park home run, excited tales of a kid who could throw more than 100 mph tumbling from an old scout's lips -- Stephen Strasburg, the person, did not take the mound two weeks before his 22nd birthday last night as much as Stephen Strasburg, folk hero with a forkball did. Hardly interviewed before his first major league start, heard about more than seen in person, he pretty much walked out of a Ken Burns documentary or a Robert Redford screenplay. "He does have this Roy Hobbs-like quality to him," said, yes, Ken Burns, the great chronicler of American history who took in the game Tuesday night at Nationals Park. "For those of us who haven't seen him, there's so much we take on faith." Fourteen strikeouts later, on the most pristine night in Southeast Washington imaginable, believe. Believe big. Believe in everything you're hearing or they're saying about Strasburg, who incredibly surpassed expectations we almost felt guilty about heaping on him. Heck, when they tell you he struck out "The Whammer" three weeks ago at a county fair while Robert Duvall called strikes in a meadow, believe that too. Because when that same kid takes the mound at 7:06 p.m. and pitches almost flawlessly through seven innings -- moving the ball, changing speeds, mastering the moment -- it's not a myth anymore. It's the future. "It's not just good, it's amazing what I see from him," Liv??n Hern??ndez said, surveying Strasburg sitting by his cubicle in the Nationals' clubhouse late Tuesday night. "I might never see a pitcher that young pitch like that in my life in his first game." He froze hitters. He discombobulated Lastings Milledge with a curveball that went sideways, straight and then sideways again. Fourteen strikeouts is one shy of any kid in major-league history making his debut. It's two more than the electronic 'K' line at Nationals Park could display. "I had no idea it only went to 12 strikeouts," Stan Kasten, the Nationals team president, said after the "It never occurred to me that we needed more." And the noise, growing in decibels as each batter was sent back to the dugout. "Let's go Strasburg! Let's go Strasburg!" They chanted his name as he reared and fired that last strike and fanned the Pittsburgh side in the seventh, a 95 mph, high, blazing heater that brought 40,315 to their feet. "I was able to talk to John Smoltz the other night, and he just reminded me to soak it all in," Strasburg said. "I went out earlier to stretch and really looked at everything around, looked at the fans. It's just a great experience, but once they said 'play ball,' it was go time." When he trudged onto that field more than a half hour before his first start, he had this almost affected jocular walk, cowboy-like, as if he had been roping cattle and breaking stallions in the bullpen. Then came those bullets sailing toward home plate, two-seamers and four-seamers and that baffling curveball. This is the most majestic part of a young phenom making a city stand and roar -- the beginning. We love our agents of hope and change in this town, especially the young ones. John Wall will soon see. Bryce Harper, too. Of course the romance gradually turns to reality. In sports and life, myth gives way to man. And we soon lump the messiahs in with the establishment -- Hello, Mr. President -- and the search for the next chosen one begins anew. But the hope here is that comes way down the road for the rookie right-hander who sent everyone home happy and in awe on Tuesday night. That he paused for a moment of reflection and gratitude before the first pitch, just like John Smoltz told him to, says everything. Nice, no? Strasburg took the time for at least one glance into the stands to see all the red, to see the euphoric faces from different generations filled with hope and possibility looking back at him. It was the first night, the best night, and nothing that follows, good or bad, can take that away from him and the people who chanted his name.

– Drew Storen said it best: “He’s the only guy in baseball who lives up to all the stories you hear.” And, oh the stories they told. Stephen Strasburg made his major league debut touted as the greatest pitching prospect of all time—a “folk hero with a forkball,” writes Mike Wise of the Washington Post. Yet somehow he actually exceeded all that hype, striking out 14—two less than the Nationals’ scoreboard could hold. “I had no idea it only went to 12 strikeouts,” said the team’s president. “It never occurred to me that we needed more.” It was the greatest debut of all time, says Jayson Stark of ESPN. Yes, two other rookies have managed 15 punchouts in their maiden outings, but that was in the days before pitch counts, and both went nine innings. Strasburg, on a 94-pitch leash, crammed those Ks into seven. Heck, forget debuts; only five other pitchers have ever managed 14 strikeouts and no walks. That's pretty memorable, unless you're Stephen Strasburg. “It’s kind of like getting married,” he told the AP. “You go into it wanting to remember everything, and once it's done, you can't remember a single thing.”

One man is in custody after a deadly shooting in Bude. One man is in custody after a deadly shooting in Bude. Franklin County Sheriff James Newman says it happened about 6:20 Friday evening near the intersection of D and Gerard Streets. Juan Middleton, A tragic accident claimed a life in Simpson County. A man was hit and killed by a train. A tragic accident claimed a life in Simpson County. A man was hit and killed by a train. It happened near Highway 149 inside the Magee city limits just after 4 p.m. Friday afternoon. Simpson County Coroner A picture on WLBT's Facebook page posted by commenters is creating a stir online and in the community. The picture is of a effigy of President Barack Obama, hanging outside a gas station. A picture on WLBT's Facebook page posted by commenter's is creating a stir online and in the community. The picture is of a effigy of President Barack Obama, hanging outside a gas station. Those posting Jackson police are investigating a Saturday afternoon shooting in downtown. Officers have not released any details about the incident. It happened about 4:30 PM on Hudson Street, just off Roach Street. A Chinese man who divorced his wife, then sued her for being ugly has made internet headlines across the world after winning the suit. A Chinese man who divorced his wife, then sued her for being ugly has made internet headlines across the world. A Yazoo City man is being detained by the Humphreys County Sheriff's Department after two people reported being pulled over by someone who did not appear to be a law enforcement officer. A Mercury Grand Marquis with blue lights, some of them painted blue, and glued on antennas is now in the hands of investigators. They believe it could be the same vehicle involved in a police impersonation investigation that began about 9 p.m. on Wednesday. Officers say a man saw blue lights flashing behind him and pulled over on Highway 149, near Silver City. "Once he pulled over, he saw the suspect get out of the car and come to the passenger side of the vehicle, like he had his weapon out. So, immediately he saw that and took off," says Yazoo County Sheriff Jacob Sheriff. The impersonator gave chase but the motorist fought back. "As they was going down the road where he speeded up to probably 120 miles per hour, he (the victim) stated, and fired a round out of the car." A short time later, a female also reported being pulled over in the same area by a similar car. Thursday morning, Yazoo County deputies were able to stop the car, driven James Lucas, 45. They identified it by an upside down state of Mississippi tag on the front. It matched the same description given by Humphreys County investigators. Humphreys County wouldn't say if Lucas is the person being questioned in the investigation, but deputies think the correct suspect is in custody. "We are doing the investigation with M.B.I. to continue this, to see if he is our man, to make sure that we have the right guy," explains Humphreys County Investigator Sam Dobbins. According Yazoo County Sheriff Jacob Sheriff, a search of Lucas' girlfriend's Yazoo City home revealed fake handguns, police badges, and handcuffs. Lucus was at one time a suspect in two separate investigations of impersonating a police officer. If you're pulled over by an unmarked vehicle and don't feel safe, officers have some advice. "Continue to a safe place and dial 911 or *MHP and continue to a safe place where they are comfortable in identifying them as being a law enforcement officer," says Sheriff. Investigators believe the Grand Marquis is a retired patrol car and was bought at an auction. It's unclear if a second person was involved in the Humphreys County investigation. Deputies are also trying to determine if this police impersonation investigation is tied to two deadly police impersonation shootings in north Mississippi. Copyright 2012 WLBT. All rights reserved. ||||| By: | Published: May 17, 2012 A police impersonator takes fire from a man he stopped in Humphreys County. This all started around 9pm last night on Highway 149 near Silver City. We're told the driver being pulled over noticed the man did not appear to be an officer, that's when he took off and the impersonator followed. The driver then opened fire through his window at the police impersonator. As we first reported on News Channel 12 at Noon, a car matching the description from last night was pulled over in Yazoo City. The blue Mercury Marquis, and the man behind the wheel, are both in Humphreys County Sheriff's Department custody. Authorities are also investigating another incident in Humphreys County, 10 to 15 minutes after the police impersonator was shot at. Deputies say someone pulled over a woman, but she took off because the man who go out of the car looked suspicious. Police are investigating if there is any connection to the fatal highway shootings in Northern Mississippi. We will continue to bring you any updates as we get them.

– Police in Mississippi have taken into a custody a man suspected of posing as a police officer in the wake of two fatal shootings, report WLBT3 and WJTV12 of Jackson. Police detained a 45-year-old Yazoo City man after two more motorists reported being pulled over last night. Both drivers got suspicious and drove off before the man got to their vehicle. One noted an upside down state flag on the suspect's vanity plate, and police later spotted the vehicle and took James Lucas into custody. He has not been charged. One bizarre twist: One of the witnesses said the suspect got out of his car with a gun in his hand, which prompted the witness to drive off. The other man pursued him, however, and the witness then pulled out his own gun and fired at the pursuing car. He apparently didn't hit the driver, but he did manage to escape and give police the information about the license plate. Police found fake badges and handcuffs where the man was staying, notes WLBT.

CLOSE Fashion model Hanne Gaby Odiele is teaming up with the non-profit organization, InterACT Advocates for Intersex Youth. Odiele recently revealed that she is intersex and is hoping to give a voice to people who are often in the shadows. USA TODAY NETWORK Hanne Gaby Odiele attends the 2015 CFDA Fashion Awards at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center on June 1, 2015, in New York. (Photo: Larry Busacca, Getty Images) Hanne Gaby Odiele is a fearless fashion star known for putting herself out there in a bold and striking take on street style. Now, the veteran of the runway and city sidewalks is revealing a more intimate piece of herself: Odiele is intersex. “It is very important to me in my life right now to break the taboo,” says the 29-year-old supermodel from Kortrijk, Belgium, in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY. “At this point, in this day and age, it should be perfectly all right to talk about this,” says Odiele, one of the first high-profile people to disclose her intersex status and share her story. Intersex individuals are born with sex characteristics such as genitals or chromosomes that do not fit the typical definitions of male or female. Up to 1.7% of the population is born with intersex traits, according to the United Nations — a figure roughly equivalent to the number of redheads. Beyond giving a voice to people who are often in the shadows, Odiele is making this disclosure to spotlight medical procedures intersex children undergo without their consent in a misguided effort to make a child appear more typically male or female. “I am proud to be intersex,” she says, “but very angry that these surgeries are still happening.” More coverage:What it means to be intersex and how common is it? Odiele was one of those children. She was born with an intersex trait known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) in which a woman has XY chromosomes more typically found in men. She also had internal, undescended testes, and her parents were told that if she did not have her testicles removed, “I might develop cancer and I would not develop as a normal, female girl,” she says. At 10, she had surgery to remove her testes, an experience she could barely process at the time. “I knew at one point after the surgery I could not have kids, I was not having my period. I knew something was wrong with me.” At 18, Odiele — whose modeling career took root when she was discovered a year earlier at a music festival in Belgium — underwent an equally distressing procedure in the form of vaginal reconstructive surgery. “It’s not that big of a deal being intersex,” she says. But the anguish of the two surgeries is an issue for her that is still troubling today. “If they were just honest from the beginning... It became a trauma because of what they did.” AWARENESS AND OUTRAGE Kimberly Zieselman, executive director of interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth, says Odiele will be a powerful champion for the intersex community and will help thrust medical procedures that try to “fix” intersex kids into the harsh focus they deserve. Zieselman says Odiele will partner with her advocacy group. “I think her speaking out, having her voice added to the mix is going to culturally raise awareness in the mainstream,” she says, noting that groups such as the U.N. and the World Health Organization already condemn these surgeries as human rights violations. It will “help in raising awareness – and raising outrage.” Zieselman, now 50, had an experience as searing as Odiele’s. At 15, a reproductive oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital told her parents she had a partially formed uterus and ovaries that needed to be removed so they would not become cancerous. Her parents consented. When the married mother of adopted twin girls was 40 and struggling with a hernia problem, she obtained her medical records. Zieselman was stunned to find the surgery she had as a teen removed internal, undescended testes. Zieselman never had a uterus, ovaries — or cancer; she was intersex. “My story quite frankly is not unique,” says Zieselman, whose group’s No. 1 priority is ending irreversible procedures. “Hundreds of women have a similar story. Hiding the truth conjures up feeling like a freak.” A fear of non-binary bodies — not a pressing medical need — is often what drives surgical interventions on intersex children, says Sue Stred, a professor of pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University. When a newborn’s genitals do not appear “typical,” parents can be compelled to have their child undergo cosmetic surgery to appear more ordinary. As for concerns about cancer, Stred says there is not “good, long-term data” on whether someone with a condition such as AIS may develop cancer if testicles are not removed. “The possible percentage chance of cancer is vastly overwrought,” says Stred, who specializes in pediatric endocrinology. LIFELONG REPERCUSSIONS The consequence of removing gonads is a lifelong dependence on hormone replacement medications, Stred says, and permanent infertility. Other physical issues are reduced sexual sensations, urinary tract infections and incontinence. The psychological repercussions of these medical procedures can also be devastating, Stred says. “There is a sense of betrayal when teens or young adults find out. Some individuals leave medical care altogether because they are so angry at what physicians did to them before they were the age of consent.” And there is tremendous resentment of parents, she says. Kids think “something was done to me; you felt I wasn’t perfect; I had to be fixed.” Awareness of intersex issues is slowly evolving, says Zieselman, who notes that many people don't even know what intersex means. Being intersex relates to biological sex characteristics. It is not the same as transgender: someone whose gender identity — how they feel inside — does not correspond with their birth sex. An intersex individual can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual. “It’s amazing to me just in the last two years to see the difference in how many intersex young people are willing and comfortable to speak out at earlier ages. It is largely thanks to the LGBT movement ahead of us,” Zieselman says. It is that group that may also carve a path on the issue of unneeded surgeries, she says. The transgender community “is doing it right,” she says. “No surgical treatment until (individuals) have psychological support. That’s a model we can use.” Above all, Stred says there should be no surgery until an intersex child is at an age of consent and can weigh the benefits and risks. “You wouldn’t do a nose job on a 7-year-old,” she says. A PASSIONATE VOICE When Odiele’s career was at the starting gate in 2006, she was slammed by a car that ran a red light on the streets of New York, leaving her with two broken legs and multiple fractures. After several surgeries and physical therapy, she was back on the catwalk — just 10 months later. She says the experience grounded her in her career choice and “gave me something to fight for.” Now she is hoping to take that fighting spirit to the next level by being a passionate advocate for intersex youth. “It is an important part of my life to talk about this,” says Odiele, whose story will also appear in the issue of Vogue magazine that hits newsstands Wednesday. Odiele has been more open about her status in the past year with close friends and trusted associates — particularly during chats about periods or having babies — but this is her first public announcement. She says she doesn't fear any backlash from colleagues in the fashion industry. "They will see me as they have before," she says. "Nothing should change." Today Odiele loves to lounge in her husband’s clothes as her “go-to day to day” just as much as getting “glammed up.” She says being intersex has given her a forward-thinking perspective on fashion. “I didn’t have to fit into certain roles,” she says. “I was able to kind of have a sense of being more of an individual.” Her husband, model John Swiatek, says he is “incredibly proud and happy” his wife is speaking out. “I am very impressed with her decision to advocate for intersex children in order to give them an opportunity to make up their own minds about their bodies, unlike the lack of options and information Hanne and her family (and many others) were given,” he says. Last summer, the fashion star who has been in front of cameras for the industry’s A-list photographers and poses for brands from Dior to Alexander Wang, married Swiatek in an outdoor bash infused with countryside cool in upstate New York. She wore a hooded cape draping a sheer lace dress, with cargo pants and a bra top peeking through. Bridesmaids strolled barefoot through fields in shimmering lavender slip dresses. It was trademark Odiele. Odiele, who calls her innovative style “just being myself; no rules,” has the same message for intersex youth today: “You can be whoever you want. It doesn’t matter.” Follow Miller on Twitter @susmiller Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2jPBxiH ||||| To answer this question in an uncontroversial way, you’d have to first get everyone to agree on what counts as intersex —and also to agree on what should count as strictly male or strictly female. That’s hard to do. How small does a penis have to be before it counts as intersex? Do you count “sex chromosome” anomalies as intersex if there’s no apparent external sexual ambiguity? (Alice Dreger explores this question in greater depth in her book Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex.) Here’s what we do know: If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which won’t show up until later in life. Below we provide a summary of statistics drawn from an article by Brown University researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling. The basis for that article was an extensive review of the medical literature from 1955 to 1998 aimed at producing numeric estimates for the frequency of sex variations. Note that the frequency of some of these conditions, such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, differs for different populations. These statistics are approximations. Not XX and not XY one in 1,666 births Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000 births Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia one in 13,000 births Late onset adrenal hyperplasia one in 66 individuals Vaginal agenesis one in 6,000 births Ovotestes one in 83,000 births Idiopathic (no discernable medical cause) one in 110,000 births Iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment, for instance progestin administered to pregnant mother) no estimate 5 alpha reductase deficiency no estimate Mixed gonadal dysgenesis no estimate Complete gonadal dysgenesis one in 150,000 births Hypospadias (urethral opening in perineum or along penile shaft) one in 2,000 births Hypospadias (urethral opening between corona and tip of glans penis) one in 770 births Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births We were recently asked to update these frequency figures, and a lively discussion arose between two staff members. ||||| 1 / 6 Expand __SLIDE_TITLE__ __SLIDE_CAPTION__ __SLIDE_CREDIT__ See more photos of: Read Caption __SLIDE_TITLE__ __SLIDE_CAPTION__ __SLIDE_CREDIT__ Vogue may earn compensation on these sales through affiliate programs. See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Kasia Struss / @kasiastruss See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Alana Zimmer / @zimzimzimmer See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Esteban Cortazar / @ecortazar See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Simon Rasmussen / @simonrasmussen See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Grace Mahary / @gracemahary See more photos of: Expand Photo: Courtesy of Nicholas Grasa / @nicholasgrasa See more photos of: What happens when a crew of self-proclaimed “bad girl” models get together to celebrate a fellow catwalker’s wedding? Well, as you might expect, it’s a major throw-down. This past weekend, Hanne Gaby Odiele, the leggy model known for her outré street style married her longtime boyfriend and fellow model John Swiatek in a charming, bucolic bash in upstate New York. Odiele, a staple on Alexander Wang’s runway and campaigns, wore white low-slung trousers and a bra top from the designer with a lace overlay and an ivory silk cape thrown over for a bride-to-be effect. Swiatek looked especially dapper in a matching white suit. Bridesmaids included models Kasia Struss, Anna Ewers, Sheila Marquez, and Alanna Zimmer, as well as makeup artist Tracy Alfajora, all of whom wore slinky lavender slip dresses and went barefoot. Guests included Ladyfag, who hung on a tractor in a slashed-up green leopard-print skirt and bustier tank, while Mica Arganaraz wore an artfully floppy plaid shirt and hip bone–hanging flares and Julia Nobis punctuated the rainy weather in a bright graphic jacket and sneakers. Louise du Toit, who officiated the ceremony, wore a blush pink robe and a violet stole. Though many of those attending the wedding may have looked slightly more formal than their usual, late-night, partying selves, some habits are hard to break—or as Alexander Wang pointed out in his video of Odiele and crew strutting, “When u walk the runway down the aisle.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a model wedding is done. ||||| Crawl of outlinks from wikipedia.org started March, 2016. These files are currently not publicly accessible. Properties of this collection. It has been several years since the last time we did this. For this collection, several things were done: 1. Turned off duplicate detection. This collection will be complete, as there is a good chance we will share the data, and sharing data with pointers to random other collections, is a complex problem. 2. For the first time, did all the different wikis. The original runs were just against the enwiki. This one, the seed list was built from all 865 collections. ||||| CLOSE At least 1 in 5,000 U.S. babies are born each year with intersex conditions _ ambiguous genitals because of genetic glitches or hormone problems. Secrecy and surgery are common. But some doctors and activists are trying to change things. (April 17) AP Hanne Gaby Odiele attends the 2015 CFDA Fashion Awards at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center on June 1, 2015, in New York. (Photo: Larry Busacca, Getty Images) Model Hanne Gaby Odiele is one of the first high-profile people to disclose that she is intersex. The 29-year-old supermodel from Kortrijk, Belgium, said she is speaking out because she wants to "break the taboo" surrounding intersex people. But what does it mean to be intersex? Here's a quick explainer: Intersex individuals are born with sex characteristics such as genitals or chromosomes that do not fit the typical definitions of male or female. "A girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY," according to the Intersex Society of North America. While intersex can be discovered at birth, some people may not realize they are intersex until later in life when they reach puberty or find they are infertile, according to the Intersex Society of North America. How common is intersex? Up to 1.7% of the population is born with intersex traits, according to the United Nations — a figure roughly equivalent to the number of redheads. What happens to children that are born intersex? People born intersex may go through surgical procedures to make their genitals appear more male or female. Odiele was born with an intersex trait known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) in which a woman has XY chromosomes more typically found in men. She also had internal, undescended testes, and her parents were told that if she did not have her testicles removed, “I might develop cancer and I would not develop as a normal, female girl,” she says. At 10, she had surgery to remove her testes, an experience she could barely process at the time. “I knew at one point after the surgery I could not have kids, I was not having my period. I knew something was wrong with me.” Are intersex people identified as male or female on their birth certificates? In December, 55-year-old Sara Kelly Keenan received what is believed to be the first intersex birth certificate in the U.S., NBC reported. Keenan was born in New York City with male genes, a mix of male and female reproductive organs and female genitalia, according to the news outlet. She was classified as a male for three weeks and then issued a female birth certificate and was unaware she was intersex until adulthood. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2kj2Hez

– She's used to putting herself on display, but Belgian model Hanne Gaby Odiele exposed herself in a different way on Monday. The 29-year-old sat with USA Today and revealed something that "should be perfectly all right to talk about ... in this day and age": Odiele is intersex, having been born with undescended testes and Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, meaning she has XY chromosomes. Odiele, whom Vogue refers to as an Alexander Wang staple, says being intersex is "not that big of a deal," but she can't say the same for the two surgeries she has undergone, one at age 10 to remove those testes, which doctors told her parents could lead to cancer. USA Today calls her "one of the first high-profile people" to reveal intersex traits, which an LGBT initiative associated with the UN Human Rights Office estimates are present in 0.05% to 1.7% of people. (The Intersex Society of North America digs into the frequency question in a much more detailed way.) Now married to fellow model John Swiatek, Odiele says she's "very angry that these surgeries are still happening." A professor of pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University tells the paper parents are often pressured into agreeing to subject their intersex kids to surgery when there is no medical necessity, but rather to produce more "normal" children. Odiele's story will appear in the next issue of Vogue; she plans to work with the interACT Advocates for Intersex Youth.

The sex of human and all mammalian babies may be determined by a simple modification of a virus that insinuated itself into the mammalian genome as recently as 1.5 million years ago, a new Yale University-led study has found. “Basically, these viruses appear to allow the mammalian genome to continuously evolve, but they can also bring instability,” said Andrew Xiao of the Department of Genetics and Yale Stem Cell Center, senior author of the paper published online March 30 in the journal Nature. “Aside from the embryo, the only other places people have found this virus active is in tumors and neurons.” Xiao and the Yale team discovered a novel mechanism by which the early embryo turns off this virus on the X chromosome, which ultimately determines the sex of an organism. If the level of this molecular marker is normal, X chromosomes remain active, and females and males will be born at an equal ratio. If this marker is overrepresented, X chromosomes will be silenced, and males will be born twice as often as females. “Why mammalian sex ratios are determined by a remnant of ancient virus is a fascinating question,” Xiao said. Tens of millions of years ago viruses invaded genomes and duplicated themselves within the DNA of their hosts. Xiao estimated that more than 40% of the human genome is made up of such remnants of viral duplications. In most cases, these remnants remain inactive, but recently scientists have discovered they sometimes take on surprising roles in developing embryos and may even push mammalian evolution. Researchers found that the virus active in the mouse genome that influences sex ratios is relatively recent — in evolutionary terms — and is enriched on the X chromosome. The Yale-led team found the mechanism that disables the virus. The newly discovered modification in mammals is a surprising expansion of the epigenetic toolbox, say the researchers. Epigenetics modulates gene expression during development without actually altering the sequences of genes. In the new marker, a methyl bond is added to adenine — one of the four nucleotides that comprise base pairs in DNA — allowing it to silence genes. For decades, most researchers assumed that a modification of the nucleotide cytosine was the only form of gene silencing in mammals. Xiao said it is possible that this mechanism might be used to suppress cancer, which has been known to hijack the same virus to spread. He also noted in other organisms, such as C elegans and the fruit fly Drosophila, this mechanism plays an entirely opposite role and activates genes, not suppresses them. “Evolution often uses the same piece but for different purposes and that appears to be the case here,” Xiao said. Tao P. Wu of Yale is the lead author of the study. Pacific Biosciences of Menlo Park provided the technology used in the discovery. Primary funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health. ||||| It's a boy! Or maybe it's a girl, but either way, new research suggests that the sex of mouse babies, and perhaps the sex of human babies, may be influenced by a newfound way to deactivate ancient viral genes that have been embedded in mammal genomes for more than a million years. In the research, the scientists looked at viral DNA that is active in the mouse genome. Viral DNA can become part of an animal's genome when a kind of virus called a retrovirus infects a cell, and slips its genes into the DNA of host cells. (The most notorious retrovirus is HIV, the virus behind AIDS.) If a retrovirus infects a sperm or egg cell — and that sperm or egg is involved in fertilization and becomes part of a person — all of the person's cells will have the viral DNA, and they will pass it on to their descendants. Hence, people and animals today carry in their cells the genetic remnants of viruses that invaded the genomes of their ancestors. In fact, more than 40 percent of the human genome may be composed of viral "leftovers," said Andrew Xiao, the senior author of the new study and a molecular biologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Most viral remnants are inactive. But some viral DNA "can interfere with development or health," Xiao told Live Science. And it could also accelerate mammalian evolution, he said. For example, if an organism faces changes in the climate or its food source, viral DNA may introduce variations that help the organism adapt to the change. In the new study, the scientists found high levels of a viral remnant on the mouse X chromosome, which helps determine the sex of mice. If this viral DNA is active, X chromosomes stay active, and females and males are born at an equal ratio. However, if this viral material is silenced, X chromosomes will get deactivated, and males will be born twice as often as females, according to the findings, published in the March 31 issue of the journal Nature. Although it remains uncertain whether a similar mechanism influences human sex ratios, the human X chromosome also contains viral material, Xiao said. [The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth] The researchers also discovered how the mouse cells deactivate the viral genetic material in order to shut down the X chromosome. Cells commonly deactivate genetic material by attaching a compound known as a methyl group to the DNA. This methyl "tag" influences genetic activity without changing the genetic sequence itself. The gene is shut down, while the sequence of A, T, G and C nucleotides remains intact. But Xiao and his colleagues found that mouse embryo cells add a methyl tag to the nucleotide A, or adenine, to silence the viral genes. For decades, scientists thought the only way to silence a gene in mammals was to tag a C nucleotide, or cytosine. Although scientists knew for a long time that single-celled organisms could tag the A nucleotide, "this is the first time it's been seen in mammals," said Gerd Pfeifer, a molecular biologist at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who did not take part in this research. Aside from helping determine the sex of offspring, the viral material the researchers studied has been shown to potentially help tumor cells grow, and to be active in the brain, Xiao said. [7 Diseases You Can Learn About from a Genetic Test] The researchers are still investigating which enzyme tags the A nucleotides. "We also want to find out how this mechanism might be involved in human health," Xiao said. This new work revealed that this tagging of adenine is very rare in the mouse genome, only affecting "about seven out of every million adenines," Pfeifer said. Future research should further investigate whether this tagging is more common in some tissues than in others, Pfeifer added. Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| NEW HAVEN, Conn., March 31 (UPI) -- Over the course of human evolution, the human genome has picked up foreign fragments of DNA, mostly from ancient viruses. The majority of those fragments are inactive, but a few serve novel purposes -- like determining the sex of a developing embryo. Yale researchers believe an ancient viral DNA strand -- incorporated into the mammalian genome as recently as 1.5 million years ago -- plays a key role in turning off the X chromosome. Scientists at Yale University determined that some embryos turn off the virus on the X chromosome, affecting sex ratios, and discovered the mechanism by which they do it. In the epigenetic marker they found, a methyl bond is added to adenine, one of the four nucleotides that form DNA base pairs, producing a gene-silencing ability. Higher levels of the marker turn off the virus, silencing X chromosome expression, and males are born at a ratio of 2-to-1. When the molecular marker is normal, males and females are born in equal numbers "Why mammalian sex ratios are determined by a remnant of ancient virus is a fascinating question," Andrew Xiao, a geneticist at the Yale Stem Cell Center, said in a news release. Xiao is the senior author of a new paper on the discovery, published this week in the journal Nature. Until recently, researchers believed mammals could suppress gene expression via manipulation of nucleotide cytosine. Xiao and his colleagues think the newly discovered mechanism may be used to suppress cancer, as previous studies suggest cancer can hijack the virus in an attempt to spread. "Aside from the embryo, the only other places people have found this virus active is in tumors and neurons," Xiao said.

– The sex of baby mice—and quite likely baby humans—is determined by a virus that inserted itself into the mammalian genome 1.5 million years ago, Live Science reports. Yale researchers published their surprising findings on March 30 in Nature. According to a press release, more than 40% of the human genome is comprised of remnants from viruses that invaded it millions of years ago. Researchers found some of that viral material on mice X chromosomes—the chromosomes that determine the sex of embryos. As long as that viral remnant is active, males and females are born at equal rates. But if the viral remnant is turned off, which UPI reports happens in some embryos, males are born at twice the rate of females. While it's unclear if the same process holds for humans, the human X chromosome contains the same viral material as its mouse counterpart. What's more, researchers believe the method by which mice embryos turn off the viral remnant could be used to keep cancer from spreading. That's because the same viral material is also found in tumors and could be helping them grow. But really they're still trying to figure this whole thing out. "Why mammalian sex ratios are determined by a remnant of ancient virus is a fascinating question," says esearcher Andrew Xiao. (Thanks to genetics, girls in this town become boys at puberty.)

CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share Natalie DiBlasio hosts NewsBreak covering a new record. Three men drove from New York to L.A. in just 28 hours and 50 minutes. USA TODAY Three men have set a new record. Driving across the United States – from New York to Los Angeles - in 28 hours and 50 minutes. (Photo: http://edbolian.com/) Twenty-eight hours and 50 minutes. That's how long it took three men to drive across the United States, from New York City to Los Angeles, smashing the record. The previous record, set in 2006, was 31 hours and 4 minutes, Jalopnik, an auto news site, reported. That's 2,813 miles. According to a Google maps search, that should take 42 hours. Ed Bolian, a 27-year-old Lamborghini dealer from Atlanta, had been planning the trip since 2009. He carefully selected a car, the Mercedes CL 55 , and filled it with technology to outsmart cops, outrun traffic and deal with the weather. Bolian also added two 22-gallon auxiliary fuel drums to the car's existing 23-gallon tank. That weighs nearly 400 pounds. "I've wanted to break the record since I was 18 years old," Bolian told Jalopnik. The car's max speed was 158 mph with a moving average of 100 mph and an overall average of 98 mph, including 46 minutes of stop time. "Our goal with this project was to pay tribute to what we consider to be one of the coolest and most interesting chapters of American automotive history," Bolian said on his website. "I do not advise that anyone attempt this or break the law in any way. This type of activity could easily have resulted in our death, imprisonment, or led to a litany of other consequences. Oh, there was also a bedpan, just to avoid any unnecessary stops. Twitter: Follow reporter Natalie DiBlasio @ndiblasio Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1bJ4jUn ||||| He's a tall, lanky Southerner with a penchant for cars, and, of all things, lizards. He has a polite face and an eager-to-please demeanor. His teaches Sunday school with his wife. Ed Bolian is the kind of guy you might meet on an airplane and forget before you picked up your bags – with one exception: he just became the fastest man ever to drive across the United States. That's right: Alex Roy's familiar cross-country driving record, set in his now-famous LeMans Blue 2000 BMW M5 during the fall of 2006, no longer stands. It was allegedly broken by a three-man team consisting of Ed, a co-driver, and a passenger, in a 2004 Mercedes-Benz CL55 AMG. Advertisement But we'll get to all that. First, we should address the term "broken." When I think of a record that's been "broken," I imagine beating something by a second, or a minute, or maybe a few RBIs. If what Ed says is true, the record wasn't broken: it was shattered. In 2006, Alex and company completed the transcontinental journey in 31 hours and 4 minutes. Two weeks ago, Ed and his crew say they managed to do the deed in 28 hours and 50 minutes. Google says it takes 40 and a half. Advertisement Another driver, who wishes to remain anonymous, attempted the same journey a week prior and could only muster a time of 31 hours and 17 minutes. When he finished the run, he sent a text message to Alex Roy. It said only: "Long live the King." So who is this new guy claiming the throne? Meet Ed Advertisement I first met Ed a few years ago in his official capacity as the sales director for Lamborghini of Atlanta. Over time, he's helped me look for various wacky used cars – and even though I never bought one from him, he's always addressed me with the same friendly, upbeat, and cheerful attitude as he did the first time we met. That was exactly his demeanor when we sat down earlier this week to discuss his record-setting run – only this time, he may have been a little more cheerful. "I suppose congratulations are in order," I said. "Thank you very much," Ed replied. Some History Advertisement Before we get into Ed's run, let's take a brief run through some transcontinental record history and the interesting characters who attempt to race the sun from the Atlantic to the Pacific. All of this started in 1933 when a crazy man from Indiana named Edwin "Cannonball" Baker drove from New York to Los Angeles in 53 hours and 30 minutes in some car called the Blue Streak. No one knows Baker's motivation for the run, but his 50 mph average was highly impressive, considering the interstate system was not yet built. The record went unbeaten for 40 years. In the 1970s, noted auto racer and Car and Driver contributor Brock Yates conceived the "Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash" – also called the Cannonball Run – to protest highway speed limits. I won't bore you with the details, but the record was slowly whittled down over the next decade until Dave Heinz and Dave Yarborough teamed up in 1979 to make the trek in 32 hours and 51 minutes behind the wheel of a Jaguar XJS. Advertisement Though Cannonball disbanded after that, a similar event, dubbed the US Express, quickly took its place. In the final US Express, Doug Turner and David Diem drove a Ferrari 308 across the country in 32 hours and 7 minutes. That record, set in 1983, went unbroken for more than 20 years – until Alex Roy's crossing in 2006. And now… The Car Advertisement "I've wanted to break the record since I was 18 years old," said Ed, now 27, casually sipping coffee. He doesn't sound like someone with a razor-sharp focus on breaking one of the most difficult – and bizarre – automotive records in existence. But he is. Preparations started several years ago. At first, it was just the general questions. What car to buy. What route to take. What supplies to bring. But last year, he finally got serious. The car came first. "I thought about a Ferrari 612," said Ed. "But gas mileage would've been bad. A Bentley would've been perfect, but you'd want the V8 for gas mileage, and those are still way too expensive." Advertisement Why not an E63? Or my CTS-V Wagon, which has "understated lawbreaking" written all over it? "You need active suspension," said Ed. "You know… for the fuel tanks." That's right: the fuel tanks. You see, look at it from the outside and you wouldn't know Ed's CL55 is anything other than a typical CL-Class, purchased by some old guy in Palm Beach because, let's face it, the S-Class just has too many doors. But poke around under the skin, and Ed's CL is far from typical. Advertisement Let's start with the fuel tanks. There are two of them, both 22 gallons – and that's in addition to the 23-gallon tank Mercedes installed at the factory. The result is a constant, pervasive gas smell when you're standing anywhere in the car's vicinity. But it also means the car can hold 67 gallons of fuel – or, put another way, over 400 pounds of gasoline. Hence the active suspension. But it's so much more than fuel tanks. There's a police scanner. There are two Garmin GPS units with traffic capabilities. There are two iPhone chargers and cradles to run apps like Trapster; an iPad charger and cradle; and three radar detectors. And that's just the easy stuff. There's a switch to kill the rear lights, a switch to activate the fuel tanks, and a professionally installed switch panel mounted in the center stack that controls all of these goodies. There's a CB radio, complete with a giant trunk-mounted antenna. There are two laser jammers. Ed had someone working on a radar jammer, but it wasn't ready in time. Advertisement "How much do you think you've spent on all this?" I ask. "I don't even want to calculate it," says Ed. Advertisement But Ed knows exactly what he spent on the car's final service before its record-breaking run: nearly $9,000 in one comprehensive, front-to-back, full overhaul. That included new fluids and filters, new tires, new brake pads and rotors, new control arm bushings, new spark plugs, a new battery, and new struts for the car's complicated Active Body Control system. If that sounds like a lot of effort, it's because the record-breaking car is no spring chicken: the odometer reads 115,000 miles. "Probably 118,000 now," says Ed. The Preparation Advertisement You might think the hardest part of setting the cross-country driving record is driving across the country. You might think the hardest part is staying awake for more than 24 hours, or constantly keeping your foot on the floor. You might think the hardest part is round-the-clock vigilance for law enforcement. You'd be wrong. Ed assures me, wholeheartedly, that the most difficult thing about breaking the record was the preparation. "Every year, Alex [Roy] hears about five to seven attempts to break the record," says Ed, who sought advice from the former recordholder about exactly how to prepare for the trip. "None of the challengers come close." Advertisement But that wasn't Ed. Between the 67-gallon gas tank and the CL55's "upper 13s" fuel economy, Ed says he was able to travel more than 800 miles between fuel stops. He removed the rear seat on the driver's side to fit a spare tire, since trunk real estate was reserved for the fuel tanks. And he used the CB radio to pose as a trucker. "If two trucks were next to one another, we'd call to one of them," he explained. "'FedEx, this is King Trucking. I'm right next to you. Can you tap your brakes so I can get by?' When we sped past, they probably saw the huge antenna on my trunk and got really mad." Advertisement Ed's preparation didn't stop there. He loaded the car with nutrition bars, energy drinks, and Blue Donkey Iced Coffee. He hired a GPS tracking company to document the car's every move. Worried about anything that would eat precious time, he brought along extra bottles and bedpans – in case the team had to use the bathroom … on the go. He thought of everything. Well, almost everything. The Team Advertisement After all the effort Ed put into preparing for the run, he still had one big hurdle to clear: finding someone – anyone – who was both crazy enough to go with him and competent enough to share driving responsibilities. Thirty hours of intense, high-speed driving just couldn't be done alone. And so Ed began calling everyone he knew. One of those calls came to me, about six weeks ago. Ed told me his plan, and then – politely as ever – asked me to be his co-driver. The cross-country driving record has always fascinated me, and I've always said I would break it one day – but right now, I couldn't bear the intense liability and legal risk. Most potential drivers had similar concerns. Who wants to be primarily known for breaking thousands of laws across a dozen states, just to beat some record that very few people care about? Worse: who wants to be known for dying in an attempt? And who wants to be arrested by some rural sheriff's deputy in the middle of the night and hauled off to jail while trying to achieve Ed's dream? Advertisement Two weeks before the record-setting run, it was just Ed. Eventually, he recruited a co-driver: Dave Black, a self-employed friend and customer from the Lamborghini dealership. A passenger – considered necessary by Ed to help with spotting police cars, calculating fuel consumption, and, above all, keeping everyone awake – was still up in the air. Ed dug deeper into his contacts. Then he started going through his Facebook friends. "I got a Facebook message from Ed," said Dan Huang, a young Georgia Tech grad with a love of cars – and a fairly open schedule. "He didn't even have my cell phone number." Advertisement The message came on Thursday afternoon: Ed was asking for a favor. Dan called to see what it was, and the two talked. They met up to examine the CL55. Less than 24 hours later, Dan was sitting inside of it, behind Dave and Ed, sharing the rear bench seat with a spare tire. They were driving up the East Coast, headed for the starting line. But while the team was assembled, they weren't necessarily ready. On a test run to find the best way out of Manhattan, Ed was stopped by the NYPD for making a right turn on red – and heading the wrong way on a one-way street – at the advice of a mobile app suggested by Dave. Advertisement Though the officer only issued a warning, morale was low. The car smelled like fuel. The enormity of the task ahead weighed on all three men. After leaving Manhattan during the test run, they stopped at a Starbucks in New Jersey. Dan considered bailing out. "I almost said, 'Guys, I can't do this,'" Dan told me later. "I had everything I brought in my backpack. I could've just taken a cab to LaGuardia and flown home. I almost opened my mouth." But Dan didn't open his mouth, and neither did Dave – though Dave later admitted he was prepared to leave the team and fly home from New York if things didn't "feel right." Instead, everyone stayed quiet, piled into the car, and drove back to Manhattan. They were leaving in less than four hours. Advertisement The Run Ed, Dave, and Dan left the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan, the site of the original Cannonball Run starting line, at 9:56 p.m. on Saturday, October 19. They promptly got stuck in traffic. Advertisement "It took us 15 minutes to get out of Manhattan," Ed said. But they weren't stuck for long. I'm going to be vague about exact jurisdictions here, but I've pored over the telemetry and listened to the story I'm going to tell below, and I'll say this: New Jersey went by quickly. Pennsylvania went by really quickly. Ohio must've been a blur. "I don't even remember Indiana," Ed recalled. Part of the reason they could travel so fast was all the equipment. They didn't have night vision, as Roy did, and the police scanner wasn't working. But the detection devices behaved perfectly, the CB was adequate, and, most importantly, every GPS unit was plotting the same course. Advertisement "We had trouble communicating in New York," said Dan. "But once we left, everything came together. It was like a symphony." More importantly, however, they had a lead car to follow through most of Pennsylvania. It was the first of several they'd have along the trip: a friend of Ed's or Dave's who lived along the way and volunteered to get on the highway a few hours before the CL55 came raging past. The lead car would drive the speed limit, 150 or 200 miles ahead, and warn the team of police, construction, or other potential issues. It made all the difference on the first leg. "That set the tone for the whole trip," Ed said. By the time the team left Ohio, their average speed was already where it needed to be in order to tie Roy's record. When they reached St. Louis, the sun still hadn't come up. They kept heading west at a furious pace. They entered Oklahoma. They left Oklahoma. As they crossed into Texas, Ed got an excited call from a friend back home who was tracking the group's progress. He had some incredible news: the team could travel the speed limit for the entire remainder of the trip … and still break Roy's record. They had 1,200 miles to go. Advertisement But they didn't travel the speed limit. Instead, they pushed faster. Reaching western states like Arizona and New Mexico, Ed and Dave exploited the enormously straight stretches of notoriously empty highways. Speeds reached … well, they reached pretty damn high, according to the telemetry data. Fortunately, the extra fuel tanks meant that cruising at such high speeds wasn't a problem. Yes, the car smelled like the inside of a gas pump – but that was the tradeoff for its immense range. And the team could use two pumps simultaneously, which meant filling up all three tanks took about as long as filling up a normal car's single tank. As long as the CL55 could last a few more hours without catching on fire, Ed knew the team would make it. Advertisement Unfortunately, California posed problems. "The race is in the second-half of the run," former record holder David Diem tells Jalopnik. The team reached Southern California just as the sun was setting, meaning that they were virtually blinded. To make matters worse, they were heading down in elevation, which meant there were no mountain ranges to offer occasional shadows. Speeds dropped. Delirium set in. At one point, a tractor-trailer cut in front of Ed and two of the CL55's wheels left the pavement. It was the closest they had come to an accident. With just a few hundred miles left in the journey, the team was on edge. Advertisement As they reached Los Angeles, they had a choice. They could slow down, cruise to the finish line, and claim the record. Or they could push it, take their chances with the police, and try to set a time that would be virtually unbeatable for any future drivers who might make an attempt. With more than 27 hours of non-stop, high-speed driving under their belts, the group took a vote. They decided to push it. At 11:46 p.m. on Saturday, October 20, the group reached the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach, California, the site of the original Cannonball Run finish line. No one in the hotel had ever heard of the Cannonball Run. The valet had no idea why he was taking pictures of three grown men standing in front of a used Mercedes that was splattered with bugs. He also had no idea why it smelled so distinctly of fuel. Advertisement The run was over, and the watches were stopped. According to those involved, they all said the same thing: 28 hours, 50 minutes. The team covered 2,813.7 miles at an average speed of 98 miles per hour. They stopped for fuel just three times. Based on that number, Alex Roy's 31:04 record had been beaten by two hours and 14 minutes. Surprisingly, Ed says problems with law enforcement were minimal. Though the group saw a lot of police cars, especially in New Mexico and Arizona, the only close call came late at night in Ohio when they passed a Crown Vic sitting in a median. Dave was driving, and Ed yelled to slow down – but it was too late. They passed the police car at 95 miles per hour. It didn't move an inch. Advertisement The team checked into the Portofino Hotel for a night's rest before waking up the next morning to catch a plane back to Atlanta. Hotel staff gave the group earplugs, customarily provided to guests so they wouldn't be kept awake by the sound of nearby sea lions. After almost 29 hours on the road, none of the men bothered to wear them. Burden of Proof Advertisement Those who have laid claim to this record in the past have done so with toll tickets, punched time clocks, gas receipts, and logbooks. Ed took a far more precise approach to verification. It's in the form of a document, prepared by the GPS tracking firm he hired, that lists his address, latitude, longitude, and speed every minute or so throughout the entire trip. It's 218 pages long. I looked over the document from start to finish, and the evidence is, at the very least, comprehensive. I ask Ed if he plans to post it on the Internet. "It's very incriminating," he says with a smile. The club of men (it's almost entirely male) who claim to have done this trip share something beyond a heavy right foot and a passion for danger: they all think the other guy is full of crap. Advertisement Six months after Roy attempted his journey, but before he announced it publicly, Richard Rawlings (of Fast N' Loud fame) joined Dennis Collins, on a bet, to make the same trip from Midtown Manhattan to Redondo Beach. The two averaged 87.6 m.p.h. in a Ferrari 550 Maranello, making the 2,811 mile trip in just 31 hours and 59 minutes. When Roy later announced his 31:04 run, Rawlings complained to the New York Times that Roy didn't follow the right route, saying that "Alex's perceived transcontinental record is not valid. He didn't stick to the route." Collins calls Roy a "frenemy," and they all seem to talk to one another regularly enough. They also seem to be generally aware when people attempt to best their records – so they already knew about Ed when contacted by Jalopnik. Advertisement "I talked to that jackwagon, and it doesn't make sense to me," said Rawlings. "But I'm willing to look at anything and, fuck, if you've got the proof, badass. I don't know mathematically how it worked." That last point, about speed, is something Collins and others also brought up. Rawlings claims that, in his run with Collins, the duo exceeded 200 m.p.h. multiple times. Ed, meanwhile, admits his car is speed-limited to 156 – and that he was mostly driving slower than that. "I don't want say [it's] impossible, but… miraculous," says Collins who, like everyone else, is interested in seeing the GPS data. Advertisement Ed arranged for Jalopnik to speak with an employee of the GPS company that tracked Ed's run, who asked not to be named and requested that the company not be named. This person said the company was unaware of how Ed planned to use its services prior to the attempt – but noted that it attests to the accuracy of the data that was exported from Ed's in-car tracking device. Though all the players in the world of transcontinental speed records were skeptical, everyone Jalopnik contacted seemed to think it was, at the very least, possible. And they were all anxious to dissect the trip. "Records are made to be broken, I'm surprised our record stood for as many years as it did," said Diem, who was especially surprised Alex's record was broken in a CL55. Advertisement Roy, for his part, doesn't wish to speak publicly about it. What Now? Advertisement After Alex Roy set the transcontinental driving record, he waited a year to come forward – until the statute of limitations expired on every single illegal act he committed. Ed and Dave waited less than three weeks. I asked Ed if he was worried about getting caught, extradited, and possibly put on trial for speeding in every rural county between New York and L.A. that's looking to make an example out of a Mercedes-driving, big-city lawbreaker. He told me his concern ebbs and flows – but he noted it would be hard to prove he was speeding in any one particular jurisdiction. Still, he didn't set out to prove the inadequacy of law enforcement – and he's worried one officer or jurisdiction may try to make an example out of him. But are they really going to spend the money and take the time to extradite someone for speeding? Ed asks the question, hoping the answer is 'no' – but he knows that the same outcry over a speed record set around Manhattan earlier this year could bring the police down on him. He just hopes that doesn't happen. Advertisement I also ask if he's worried about the public. Will a mob of angry citizens show up outside his house, demanding that he "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"? He admits that's possible, too – but he hopes that any furor will die down until the only people who remember his name are fellow car enthusiasts. And if there's no angry mob or indignant police? Maybe he'll write a book, as Alex did. Maybe a few YouTube videos. But Ed doesn't care about any money he could make from the endeavor, largely because he knows there won't be much. Advertisement Plus, he didn't break the record for money. He did it so one day, years from now, he could sit down with his grandchildren and tell them about his passion for cars – a passion highlighted not by selling Lamborghinis or driving exotics, but by the time their grandfather was the fastest man ever to drive across the United States. And then he'll bring them into his garage and show them the CL55 that will be forever linked to his record-setting run. Maybe, by then, it will stop smelling like fuel. @DougDeMuro is the author of Plays With Cars. He operates PlaysWithCars.com. He owned an E63 AMG wagon and once tried to evade police at the Tail of the Dragon using a pontoon boat. (It didn't work.) He worked as a manager for Porsche Cars North America before quitting to become a writer, largely because it meant he no longer had to wear pants. Also, he wrote this entire bio himself in the third person.

– Ed Bolian says he's done something virtually impossible, highly dangerous, and extraordinarily illegal: Along with a hastily-recruited co-driver and passenger, he drove from New York City to LA in 28 hours and 50 minutes, he tells Doug Demuro of Jalopnik. That means the team traveled an average of 98mph, including 46 minutes of total stop time, USA Today reports, with a top speed of 158mph. If it's true—and Bolian allegedly has 218 pages of GPS tracking data to prove it is—the Oct. 19-20 drive shatters the 2006 record of 31 hours and 4 minutes. Though little-known, the cross-country record has a storied history, dating to 1933. "I've wanted to break the record since I was 18 years old," Bolian says. He spent years planning his run, outfitting his car—a nine-year-old Mercedes-Benz CL55 with 115,000 miles on it—with two extra 22-gallon fuel tanks; two GPSes; a host of cop-avoidance gadgets, including three radar detectors; and a CB radio, used to trick truckers into getting out of his way by posing as one of them. They also brought a bedpan, so they could avoid all possible stops. It's a pretty wild story, with the drive kicking off with 15 minutes of NYC traffic, and Demuro's full writeup is worth a read.

CLOSE Denis Ten, the 2014 Olympic figure skating bronze medalist, was stabbed to death in Kazakhstan on Thursday. He was 25 years old. Time Denis Ten of Kazakhstan won bronze at the Sochi Games. (Photo: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sport) Kazakh figure skater and Olympic medalist Denis Ten died Thursday after being stabbed in an attack in the streets of the country's largest city, a top Kazakh official confirmed on social media. He was 25. Kazakh Minister of Culture and Sports Arystanbek Mukhamediuly wrote in a Facebook post that Ten, the first figure skater from Kazakhstan to earn an Olympic medal, died of stab wounds after thieves tried to steal the mirrors off his car in Almaty, Kazakhstan. An emergency surgery to save Ten's life was unsuccessful, Mukhamediuly added. "This is an unthinkable tragedy and irreparable loss," Mukhamediuly wrote in the post, according to a translation from Kazakh news agency Kazinform. The International Skating Union and International Olympic Committee also confirmed Ten's death on Twitter on Thursday morning. "Denis Ten was a great athlete and a great ambassador for his sport," IOC president Thomas Bach said in a statement. "A warm personality and a charming man. Such a tragedy to lose him at such a young age." Ten was one of Kazakhstan's most accomplished individual athletes and its most prominent figure skater. He twice medaled at the World Figure Skating Championships — earning a silver in 2013 and a bronze in 2015 — and won bronze at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. U.S. Olympian Adam Rippon was among those in the figure-skating community to pay tribute to Ten on social media. "(Ten) was so kind to everyone and a huge inspiration to me and so many other people," Rippon wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. "Murdered in the streets of Kazakhstan. Denis, thank you for showing us how to be a champion. Your time with us was way too short. Love you forever." My skating friend, @Tenis_Den, passed away today. He was so kind to everyone and a huge inspiration to me and so many other people. Murdered in the streets of Kazakhstan. Denis, thank you for showing us how to be a champion. Your time with us was way too short. Love you forever. — Adam Rippon (@Adaripp) July 19, 2018 Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on Twitter @Tom_Schad. ||||| (CNN) Tributes are being paid to Denis Ten, Kazakhstan's Olympic medal-winning figure skater, who died Thursday at the age of 25 after being stabbed. Ten, who became the first Kazakh figure skater to win an Olympic medal when he secured bronze at Sochi 2014, was stabbed as two men attempted to steal his car mirrors, according to news agency Kazinform The former world silver medalist was taken to the hospital after the attack in Almaty, the country's largest city, but died later of his injuries. American figure skater Adam Rippon described Ten as a "huge inspiration." Rippon wrote on Twitter: "My skating friend, @Tenis_Den, passed away today. He was so kind to everyone and a huge inspiration to me and so many other people. Read More

– Kazakhstan is in mourning for a beloved Olympic athlete who was murdered by thieves on a street in the country's biggest city. Authorities in the central Asian country say Denis Ten, a 25-year-old figure skater, was fatally stabbed in Almaty by two men who had been trying to steal the wing mirrors from his car, CNN reports. He was hospitalized but died from his injuries Thursday. Ten, one of Kazakhstan's most famous athletes, won bronze at the 2014 Olympics and earned a silver medal at the World Figure Skating Championships in 2013, followed by a bronze in 2015, USA Today reports. American figure skater Adam Rippon was among many people paying tribute to Ten Thursday. "He was so kind to everyone and a huge inspiration to me and so many other people," Rippon tweeted. "Murdered in the streets of Kazakhstan. Denis, thank you for showing us how to be a champion. Your time with us was way too short. Love you forever." Ten "was a great athlete and a great ambassador for his sport," International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach said in a statement. "Such a tragedy to lose him at such a young age."

People listen to speeches in front of a statue in Independence Square in Kiev February 21, 2014. KIEV Ukraine's parliament on Friday voted heavily in favor of an unconditional amnesty for all those detained or who might face possible prosecution in the current unrest. The amnesty, which means all charges will be dropped against people detained or who might fear arrest for participating in protests, was part of an EU-brokered agreement signed between President Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leaders to end a protracted crisis. (Writing By Richard Balmforth; Editing by Timothy Heritage) ||||| Except for a series of loud explosions on Friday night and angry chants in the protest encampment, Kiev was generally quiet. And the authorities, although previously divided about how to handle the crisis, seemed eager to avoid more confrontations. By late in the afternoon, all police officers had vacated the government district of the capital, leaving behind burned military trucks, mattresses and heaps of garbage at the positions they had occupied for months. In Independence Square, the focal point of the protest movement, however, the mood was one of deep anger and determination, not triumph. “Get out criminal! Death to the criminal!” the crowd chanted, reaffirming what, after a week of bloody violence, has become a nonnegotiable demand for many protesters: the immediate departure of Mr. Yanukovych. When Vitali Klitschko, one of the three opposition leaders who signed the deal, spoke in its defense, people screamed “shame!” A coffin was then hauled on a stage in the square to remind Mr. Klitschko of the more than 70 people who died during violence on Thursday, the most lethal day of political mayhem in Ukraine since independence from the Soviet Union more than 22 years ago. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The violence escalated the urgency of the crisis, which began with protests in late November after a decision by Mr. Yanukovych to spurn a trade and political deal with the European Union and tilt his nation toward Russia instead. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It was difficult to know how much of the fury voiced on Friday night in Independence Square was fiery bravado, a final cry of anger before the three-month-long protest movement winds down or the harbinger of yet more and possibly worse violence to come. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Vividly clear, however, was the wide gulf that had opened up between the opposition’s political leadership and a street movement that has radicalized and slipped far from the already tenuous control of politicians. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Klitschko was interrupted by an angry radical who did not give his name but said he was the leader of a group of fighters, known as a hundred. Video “We gave chances to politicians to become future ministers, presidents, but they don’t want to fulfill one condition — that the criminal go away!” he said, vowing to lead an armed attack if Mr. Yanukovych did not announce his resignation by 10 a.m. on Saturday. The crowd shouted: “Yes! Yes!” Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd. “The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,” he said. “Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story He added that he and his supporters were “ready to take responsibility for the further development of the revolution.” The crowd shouted: “Good! Good!” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Previous settlements and truces have all broken down, engulfed by wild bursts of violence on the streets of the capital, Kiev, and unrest in other parts of the country, particularly western regions where antigovernment sentiment has always been strong. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Eric Fournier, France’s representative at the talks, cautioned that Friday’s deal was “a beginning, not an end.”

– Ukraine's newly empowered parliament has voted to allow the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after more than two years in prison. Legislators voted 310-54 to decriminalize the count under which she was imprisoned, meaning that she is no longer guilty of a criminal offense. "Free Yulia! Free Yulia!" legislators chanted after the vote. It was not immediately clear when she might be released from the eastern city of Kharkiv where she is serving her sentence. As part of today's deal between President Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leaders, the parliament also granted unconditional amnesty to detained protesters, notes Reuters. It seems to bode well for an end to the recent violence, but the New York Times raise two big caveats: Russia hasn't backed the deal, and many protesters continue to demand the resignation of Yanukovich.

The Donald C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant near Bridgman, on the shores of Lake Michigan. (Photo: Indiana Michigan Power) An oil cooling system on the turbine of a southwest Michigan nuclear power plant leaked oil into Lake Michigan for about two months, according to plant officials. Officials with the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant near Bridgman reported the leak to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as state and local authorities, on Dec. 20, according to an event notification posted on the NRC's website. Plant officials believe 2,000 gallons of oil leaked into the lake, and a retroactive examination of system oil levels leads plant personnel to believe the leak may have been ongoing since about Oct. 25, said Bill Schalk, communications manager for the Cook Nuclear Plant. "One of the first things we did when we looked at the potential for a leak is examine the lake," he said. "Oil floats on top of the water and you see a sheen, but we could find no evidence of oil in our reservoirs, in the lake or on the beach. It has been dispersed." The leak involved an oil cooling system on the two-turbine plant's Unit 2 main turbine. The series of tubes runs in a heat exchanger where hot oil is cooled by water from Lake Michigan. It's believed the oil leaked into a tube or tubes and was mixed into the cooling water, Schalk said. The turbine system is separate from the plant's radioactive facilities, so the leaked oil is not contaminated with radiation, he said. Plant officials extrapolate that the oil leaked at about 0.04 gallons per minute, which did not allow detection in the total water discharge flow of 1.5 million gallons of water per minute, Schalk said. It took time to identify the existence of a leak because a variety of factors can account for changes in oil levels in the system, he said, including lake temperatures and the fact that the plant temporarily shut down on Nov. 1 due to storms in the region. "About a day and a half from when we really believed in earnest there could be a leak, we discovered it" on Dec. 20, Schalk said. The exact location of the leak has not yet been determined, but workers isolated the cooling system tank in which the leak is occurring, he said. "We won't return that tank to service until we are certain we have found the leak, and there is no more potential for leaking," Schalk said. Three other tanks also cool turbine lubrication oil at the plant, so it is able to continue operating at full power, he said. The Berrien County Sheriff's Department's Office of Emergency Management, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NRC were all notified of the leak, Schalk said. The Cook Nuclear Plant is operated by Indiana Michigan Power Co., a unit of American Electric Power headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Its two nuclear power units have operated since 1975 and 1978 respectively, and together generate more than 2,150 megawatts of power, enough electricity for 1.5 million average homes, according to the plant's website. NRC licenses for plant operation expire in 2034 for Unit 1; 2037 for Unit 2. Buy Photo (Photo: Detroit Free Press) Both the DEQ and EPA will require follow-up reports on the oil leak within the next month, Schalk said. Michael Keegan, director of the nonprofit Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, is troubled by news of the leak. "What's concerning is they don't really know the extent of the leak," he said. "Nearly two months later is the first determination they make that they have an oil leak? It speaks to the quality assurance of all of their other systems." The fact that the oil is not recoverable is also problematic, Keegan said. "There's a belief some have that the solution to pollution is dilution. It's not," he said. Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1I6Ppqb ||||| UPDATE: Story has been updated to include comment from Cook Nuclear Plant spokesman. BRIDGMAN, MI -- Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman has leaked an estimated 2,000 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan since Oct. 25, according to an event notification posted on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website. Plant officials notified the NRC, plus state and local officials, on Dec. 20 about the leak, which is from the Unit 2 main turbine lube oil cooler. The notification said that "no visible oil or oil sheen is present on Lake Michigan or the shore line." The leak was isolated as of 10:30 a.m. Dec. 20, the notice said. "Leak repairs will be made to the cooler prior to placing back in service." Plant officials notified federal, state and local officials as soon as they realized there was a leak, said Bill Schalk, the spokesman for Cook. He said the company noticed a slight drop in its oil levels starting on Oct. 26, but "there are lots of things that can cause that." In addition, the plant was taken offline for two days at the end of October after excessive debris from large waves from Lake Michigan damaged several water screens. "Because of that, we didn't have a good steady stream of date to recognize that we were losing (oil)," Schalk said. It wasn't until Dec. 16 that it was determined a leak might exist and on Dec. 19, it was traced to one of four heat-exchange tanks, where hot oil runs through hundreds of tubes and is cooled by lake water in the tank. "We've shut off that tank, and now we need to develop a plan to find the leak," he said. The oil was leaking at a rate of about a third of cup, or 5 ounces, an hour into the plant's lake-water discharge of 1.5 million gallons an hour. "We take samples of lake water every day, but the leak was small enough that we didn't pick it up," Schalk said. The estimate of 2,000 gallons of oil leakage overall is based on a calculation that the leak began Oct. 26. "That the worse-case scenario," he said. "It wouldn't be more than that, and it's probably less." The incident has not affected the plant's electrical production, Schalk said, and the leak was small enough that there is no cleanup involved. "We just need to fix the tank and make sure it doesn't happen again," he said. In August, plant officials issued a report that 8,700 gallons of diesel fuel were suspected to have been released from a buried fuel oil tank, but later said there was no leak and the report resulted from "instrumentation error." The plant is located near Bridgman, 11 miles south of St. Joseph along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Unit 2 went into operation in 1978. The plant is owned by American Electric Power and operated by Indiana Michigan Power, an AEP subsidiary. Julie Mack covers K-12 education and writes a column for Kalamazoo Gazette. Email her at [email protected], call her at 269-350-0277 or follow her on Twitter at @kzjuliemack.

– A nuclear plant leaked oil into Lake Michigan for almost two months, and although the oil wasn't contaminated with radiation, safety groups are alarmed by how long it took the plant to spot the leak. Officials at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in southwest Michigan reported the problem to federal authorities on Dec. 20, estimating around 2,000 gallons of oil leaked into the lake starting in late October, reports the Detroit Free Press. Plant officials say the oil leaked from a cooling system at the rate of around 0.04 gallons per minute, which made the leak tough to detect amid water discharge of 1.5 million gallons of water per minute. "We take samples of lake water every day, but the leak was small enough that we didn't pick it up," a plant spokesman tells MLive.com, explaining that factors including a huge storm at the end of October made it harder to monitor oil flow. The estimate of 2,000 gallons of leakage is a "worst-case scenario" and the true figure is probably less, he says. The director of the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes doesn't find that reassuring. "What's concerning is they don't really know the extent of the leak," he tells the Free Press. "Nearly two months later is the first determination they make that they have an oil leak? It speaks to the quality assurance of all of their other systems."

Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Tweet with a location You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| 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

– Eyes now automatically turn to Twitter after anyone criticizes Donald Trump, and Meryl Streep's dig at the president-elect during Sunday's Golden Globes did indeed elicit a Trump response. Streep used her time onstage while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award to talk about when she first saw Trump mock a disabled reporter at a 2015 rally. "It kind of broke my heart," she noted, berating the "instinct to humiliate" that he seemed to display. The New York Times first got hold of Trump right after the awards—it was Times reporter Serge Kovaleski whom Trump reportedly made fun of—and although he said he hadn't seen Streep's speech, he noted he "wasn't surprised" about coming under fire from "liberal movie people." "People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter's disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing," he said, adding he'd simply been "calling into question a reporter who had gotten nervous because he had changed his story." He reiterated his stance early Monday with a three-tweet defense. "Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a … Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never 'mocked' a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him … 'groveling' when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!" He also told the Times there'd be "plenty of movie and entertainment stars" at his inauguration and that "all the dress shops are sold out in Washington."

I wonder how she’ll dig herself out of this …. well, you know. Valerie Macon / Getty Images If you don’t believe that truth is stranger than fiction, it’s time for you to learn about the Isaiah Silva vs. Courtney Love lawsuit. The suit filed in Los Angeles County alleges that Love, Britney Spears’ former manager Sam Lufti, and 13 Reasons Why star Ross Butler (yes, really!) all conspired to kidnap, murder and rob Silva, Frances Bean Cobain’s ex-husband, in June 2016. According to the suit, the trio was after Kurt Cobain’s famed MTV unplugged guitar, an acoustic-electric 1959 Martin D-18E. The Martin would be the last guitar Kurt Cobain ever played. The guitar has been a point of contention between Silva and the Cobain/Love family ever since Frances Bean Cobain filed for a divorce from Silva in 2016. It is a one-of-a-kind model, having been customized by the left-handed Kurt Cobain so that he could play it upside down. That particular model of guitar was also only produced for one year before being discontinued. In 2016, Courtney Love told TMZ that the guitar “is not [Silva’s] to take” and is “a treasured heirloom of the family” that her daughter “never planned on” giving to Silva. “I’m really glad she’s out of this very dangerous and toxic relationship,” Love said. Silva’s lawsuit paints a very different—and altogether wilder—picture. According to him, Frances Bean Cobain gave him the guitar as a dating anniversary present shortly before their wedding. Moving the guitar out of storage required Courtney Love’s signature as well. Shortly after their marriage, Silva claims Frances Bean Cobain became addicted to narcotics and benzodiazepines which were allegedly provided to her by Sam Lufti and delivered by Ross Butler. Although Cobain and Silva attempted to settle their divorce amicably, according to the suit, Love and Lufti became obsessed with the Martin D-18E and began conspiring to murder Silva. The suit alleges that Lufti, Love, Butler, and a chauffeur named Yan Yukhtman hacked into Silva’s iMessage account and impersonated him via text in order to make him seem suicidal. The plan, the suit claims, was to stage Silva’s suicide, thus freeing up the guitar and a number of his and Cobain’s shared assets. The foursome allegedly moved to execute this plan on June 3, 2016, when they supposedly entered Silva’s home and threatened him with rape and bodily harm in order to make him enter a car with them. A friend of Silva’s who had been in the house and was forcibly removed by the foursome reportedly called the police, who caught up with the car. The suit alleges that Lufti “hurriedly concocted a false story intended to prevent LAPD from arresting them” and threatened to kill Silva’s seven-year-old daughter if he didn’t follow along. The police allegedly bought Lufti’s story that he, Love, Butler, and Yukhtman had just been playing a prank on their friend. The suit says, “it is believed, based upon facts and evidence, that Silva would have been taken to a secondary crime scene and murdered on June 3, 2016.” According to Silva, the foursome then brought him back to the house and proceeded to try and pressure him into signing a settlement that would surrender the guitar, any claim to his and Cobain’s houses, and any spousal support from Cobain. Lufti’s threats against Silva’s family allegedly continued even after Silva fled his house, leaving Silva too scared to turn to the police. The suit claims that Silva believed Lufti, Love, and Cobain “controlled the LAPD, judicial system, and media.” Despite this, Silva filed a police report on June 8, 2016 and soon received a restraining order against Lufti. If you were wondering where a Courtney-Love-killed-Kurt-Cobain conspiracy theory comes into this, here you go: According to Silva, Kurt Cobain’s mother Wendy O’Connor accused Love of being involved in Cobain’s suicide and said she was “keenly aware of the disturbing correlations between [Silva’s] circumstances and those of [Kurt Cobain].” According to Billboard, a source close to Love and Frances Bean Cobain says, “Frances and the family are prepared to fight with a fury of unprecedented legal force, and they will prevail.” This is a wild tale which raises unending speculation and questions, but hopefully I’m not alone in asking the most important one: How did Zach from 13 Reasons Why/Reggie from Riverdale get involved in all this? ||||| Britney Spears' former manager Sam Lutfi is also a defendant in the lawsuit around a claimed attempt to regain possession of Kurt Cobain's iconic 'Unplugged' guitar. Courtney Love is being sued by her daughter's ex-husband, alleging she conspired to have him murdered over ownership of her late husband Kurt Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E guitar that was used during Nirvana's iconic MTV Unplugged in New York performance in 1993. Along with several others, Sam Lutfi -- who managed Britney Spears during her public meltdown in 2007 -- is also named in the suit and accused of supplying illicit drugs to Love's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, as well as kidnapping, attempted murder, false imprisonment, extortion and more. Actor Ross Butler, star of 13 Reasons Why, is also accused of playing a role. According to the civil complaint filed in Los Angeles County, Love, Lutfi and Butler entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit trespass, burglary, home invasion, robbery, assault, battery, kidnapping and murder against musician Isaiah Silva, all in order to take possession of the guitar, which is believed to be worth millions of dollars. Billboard has reached out to Love's rep for comment. A source close to the family told Billboard, "Frances and the family are prepared to fight with a fury of unprecedented legal force and they will prevail." Since Cobain filed for divorce from Silva in 2016, the guitar has been the subject of public interest and a point of contention in the couple's settlement. (The rare acoustic-electric 1959 Martin D-18E was produced for just a year before being discontinued and the left-handed Kurt Cobain had its bridge and nut adapted so he could play it upside down.) As the press has followed the matter over the past couple years, Love has spoken out on the subject, calling it a "treasured heirloom of the family" and saying, "It's not [Silva's] to take." But, according to the suit, the guitar was gifted to Silva by Cobain in 2014 six months before their wedding as a dating anniversary present, marking a sentimental time in their turbulent relationship. The documents go into great depth detailing Sivla's gift to Cobain for the same anniversary -- an extravagant and heartfelt conversion of the couple's spare bedroom designed, essentially, in tribute to Cobain and her interests. The lawsuit also notes that Cobain needed Love's permission to remove the Martin D-18E guitar from storage, as both of their consent was required for such a decision. As well, it is described that Cobain never showed any interest in or asked that Silva return the guitar when she initially left him in February 2016 and filed for divorce a month later. Yet, according to Silva's suit, once Love and her business manager and so-called "rottweiler" Lutfi got involved, the battle over the guitar -- along with some property rights -- became life-threatening. Silva and Cobain began dating in 2010 and started living together a year later. But, according to Silva's lawsuit, when Love moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her daughter in 2012, soon after Lutfi began supplying Cobain with narcotics and illicit benzodiazepines, which Cobain and Lutfi referred to as "cookies." Often the drugs would be delivered by Butler in secret, without Silva knowing. From there, according to Silva, Cobain developed an addiction, which was supported by Lutfi, causing great strain to their relationship and resulting in Silva ending their engagement at one point. In 2014 the couple married, but Cobain's alleged drug use only intensified over the years, leading up to a grand mal seizure later that year that nearly killed Cobain at the couple's home while Silva was there with his young daughter, Arlo. Still, according to the suit, her drug use persisted leading up February 2016 when she disappeared from the couple's home in West Hollywood, California. As Silva and Cobain worked to amicably settle their divorce without attorneys, the lawsuit says the guitar became a point of contention for Love and Lutfi and the two "became obsessed with finding a way to retrieve the guitar from Silva." From there, Love, Lutfi, Butler and a chauffeur named Yan Yukhtman allegedly hacked into Silva's iMessage account and sent out messages "making it appear Silva was despondent and on a mental precipice contemplating suicide." This was allegedly part of a plan to commit a home invasion, kidnap Silva, murder him, make it appear to be a suicide and recover the guitar, as well as remove him from claims to the couple's house, another house they had acquired for Silva's daughter Arlo and her mother and any spousal support. Silva reported the suspicious activity to the Los Angeles Police Department, noting, according to the suit, that it follows "a disturbingly similar pattern and course of conduct to the modus operandi of Lutfi" in various previous harassment cases. From there, things worsens, as Lutfi and Love allegedly began threatening Silva's friends, family and bandmates in attempt to turn them against Silva. Shortly after midnight on June 3, 2016, according to the lawsuit, Lutfi, Butler and Yukhtman broke into Silva's house and tried to enter his bedroom -- where he had been watching a movie with a friend -- claiming they were the police. Lutfi allegedly yelled at and threatened the friend, telling him to leave, before Butler and Yukhtman pushed him out of the house. Following some struggling, the documents continue, Silvia was overpowered and then threatened to calm down by Lutfi "grabbing Silva's genitals through his pants, and whispered to Silva, 'Listen f----t, calm the fuck down or we'll drag you upstairs and take turns fucking you.' In fear for his life, Silva tried to appear calm and cooperative. However, he claims, Lutfi, Butler and Yukhtman continued to threaten him and physically removed Silva from his Curson Avenue residence against his will," forcing him into the back seat of a Cadillac Escalade outside and driving off. Silva's friend had been outside calling 9-1-1 from his car and was able to drive ahead of the Escalade, blocking its way on the narrow canyon road trying to prevent Silva's captors from getting away, the suit claims. When police arrived in cars and a helicopter overhead, Silva claims Lutfi "hurriedly concocted a false story intended to prevent LAPD from arresting them" and threatened the lives of Silva's family -- including his 7-year-old daughter Arlo -- if he didn't go along with it. "In shock and fearing for his life and the lives of his family and daughter," Silva agreed to go along with Lutfi's story that they were old college friends and the kidnapping had been a prank. Were it not for the intervention of Silva's friend and the LAPD, the suit says, "it is believed, based upon facts and evidence, that Silva would have been taken to a secondary crime scene and murdered on June 3, 2016." The lawsuit also several times tries to draw parallels between the allegedly false narrative Love and her cohorts attempted to establish around Silva with the often-speculated upon death of Kurt Cobain. Silva claims that Kurt Cobain's mother Wendy O'Connor confided in him that she was "keenly aware of the disturbing correlations between his circumstances and those of O'Connor's late son." She also said that she "believed Love to be involved in the alleged suicide of her son, Kurt Cobain." Once LAPD left the scene, the suit claims Lutfi, Butler, Yukhtman and Silva returned to the house, where Silva was held hostage for several hours while he was threatened repeatedly over the location of the 1959 Martin D-18E guitar. Silva eventually told Lutfi that the guitar was not there because he was in the process of recording with his band. Eventually, Lutfi allegedly changed his tactic to extorting Silva into signing a settlement agreement looking to accomplish the original objectives of their conspiracy with the help of attorney Marc Gans -- demanding Silva agree to surrender the guitar, any claim to the houses and spousal support from Cobain, as well as all photographs and recordings of Cobain he had acquired during their relationship and marriage. In return, Lutfi said he had convinced Love and Cobain to offer him $120,000 if Silva signed the agreement with those terms and the harassment would end. Eventually, Lutfi left the house, where Silva remained to scared to leave on his own. Later that day, Silva's mother and sister brought him and his daughter Arlo back to their home in Orange County for safety. But Lutfi's harassment and threats continued, according to the suit, as he tried to further pressure Silva into signing the settlement agreement, including stalking him and his family. As well, Lutfi allegedly sought to defame Silva and undermine his claims to the guitar and property. According to the lawsuit, Lutfi caused one of Silva's friends to lose his job at the Chateau Marmot, posted a Craigslist ad with his daughter's puppy advertising a free dog with her mother's phone number attached, and illegally rerouted Silva's mail delivery to his own apartment. Throughout it all, Silva claims he was afraid to go to the police because of the constant threats and he was convinced by Lutfi that he, Love and Cobain "controlled the LAPD, judicial system, and media." Finally on June 8, 2016, he did file a police report and obtained a temporary restraining order against Lutfi later that month. Silva and Cobain's divorce was finalized last year and the two reached a settlement agreement earlier this year. Silva's attorney Douglass Unger could not speak to whether the harassment ended entirely following the restraining order, but confirmed that under the settlement agreement Silva retained possession of the guitar, while Cobain won rights to the couple's property and was free from any spousal support.

– If true, there's a Coen brothers movie here somewhere. Courtney Love’s former son-in-law, Isaiah Silva, is accusing Love and two others of attempting to murder him to get Kurt Cobain’s 1959 Martin D-18E guitar, reports Billboard. The guitar was used by Love’s late husband at Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged in New York performance and is the last one he ever played, per Slate. Silva contends that Love’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, gave him the guitar shortly before they married; they divorced in 2016. Silva alleges that Love, former Britney Spears manager Sam Lufti, actor Ross Butler, and chauffeur Yan Yukhtman tried to kill Silva and make it look like a suicide, which would have conveniently freed up the guitar and other shared assets. Silva claims that on June 3, the four broke into Silva’s home and forced him into a car by threatening him with rape and other physical harm. A friend of Silva’s who was in the house at the time called the police, who intercepted the car. Lufti told police the call had been a prank, and Silva did not speak up because he feared for the safety of his 7-year-old daughter, whom Lufti had allegedly threatened to kill if Silva said anything. The alleged attackers then drove Silva back to his house and tried for several hours to get him to sign away his rights to the guitar, other assets, and spousal support. Silva filed a police report five days later. A civil complaint filed in Los Angeles County accuses Love, Lutfi, and Butler of criminal conspiracy to commit trespass, burglary, home invasion, robbery, assault, battery, kidnapping, and murder. "Frances and the family are prepared to fight with a fury of unprecedented legal force, and they will prevail," says someone close to Love's family. (Love has also been in some hot water recently over her taxes.)

Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Photo by Alex Trautwig/Getty Images If you were watching television on 9/11, then you probably remember the early initial reports—later proven false—that a car bomb had exploded outside of the State Department. This mistaken bit of speculation, which spread widely during that day’s chaos, was later used as “evidence” by those who accused the government and media of complicity in the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. Twitter has only made the business of news gathering and sharing in the wake of a disaster more treacherous. If, as a wise journalist once said, journalism is the first rough draft of history, then Twitter is the first rough draft of journalism. During nightmarish events like today’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, the micro-blogging service is both the cause of and solution to a whole lot of journalistic problems. Soon after details started to trickle in about the Boston attacks, George W. Bush’s former press secretary Ari Fleischer noted this murkiness with some smart rules for responding to a crisis as a member of the press, a newsreader, and an official government spokesperson: 1. Don't make assumptions.2. Reporting will skyrocket. Items that ppl ignored will now b called in.3. 1st reports will change. "— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 15, 2013 4. Don't RT sensational/extreme tweets. Rumors don't help.5. For spokesppl, don't rule 2 much in/out. Wait till you know. "— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 15, 2013 Fleischer’s advice is wise, but as the voice behind Slate’s Twitter feed, I have a few more thoughts about what journalists, news organizations, and anyone else with a Twitter account should do during a national tragedy like what happened today in Boston. First, media outlets need to turn off their automated Twitter feeds to ensure that frivolous and/or off-topic items don’t get sent out by mistake. You don’t want to be tweeting about the tax benefits of the state of Texas while limbs are being amputated in Boston if you’re @GovPerry, or—ahem—the latest “Dear Prudence” column if you’re @Slate. Chicago businesses: Texas is your escape from high taxes and burdensome regulations. governor.state.tx.us/news/press-rel… "— Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry) April 15, 2013 #DearPrudie: "How do I tell my husband that I want to explore extra-marital sex with other women?" slate.me/12fDCnQ — Slate (@Slate) April 15, 2013 Advertisement Second, use first-person eyewitness accounts and official sources like the Boston Police department’s Twitter account or official press conferences. Always cite these sources directly, and don’t rely on people who’ve heard something on police scanners—a notoriously unreliable source if you’re looking for solid, confirmed information. Though the wire services are typically the most reliable and first to know, they’ll still get plenty of things wrong in the first few hours of a breaking news frenzy. (The AP filed a false report early in the afternoon, which was picked up by Slate and others, indicating that authorities had shut down cellphone service in Boston in order to prevent remote bomb detonations.) Also, look to local sources. The Boston Globe was one of the best sources of verified information and eyewitness accounts on Twitter and the Web in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Finally, keep your tone as serious as the occasion merits, even if you are in the business of opinion journalism or cracking snarky jokes. In managing the Slate Twitter account each day, I try to keep the tone very light. But when something like Boston happens, followers want you to convey whatever valuable and accurate information you can find, not make jokes about an awkwardly worded Reuters tweet.* Now, here’s a much longer list of what not to do. First, do not pass on speculation. For much of the day, the New York Post was sharing unconfirmed reports, which were later proven erroneous, that 12 people had been killed in the attack. I actually retweeted BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, one of the smartest and most conscientious journalists on Twitter, and repeated this tidbit on the official Slate account. In hindsight, it would have been wiser for both of us to broadcast that news in more skeptical terms. Advertisement At times, I have succumbed to the desire to be the first source to pass along a story, and I’ve gotten burned. Slate was one of the first outlets to tweet out that we had found the likely Facebook page of the man who was then being reported to be the Newtown shooter, Ryan Lanza. Shortly after that report, it was discovered—by, ironically, the New York Post among others—that the shooter wasn’t Ryan, but his brother Adam. In reporting that CNN’s Susan Candiotti had named Ryan as the shooting suspect, I was very cautious to cite a mainstream source. It turned out that the source was wrong, and this was one of the most embarrassing mistakes I’ve made as a journalist. Which brings us to point number two: Don’t shame people on Twitter for passing on speculation. Because of the nature of breaking news, factual mistakes will be made and everyone will make them. Let he who is without sin cast the first critical tweet. You might find yourself fact-shaming the New York Post one minute, only to pass on an inaccurate report from Reuters the next. Related to this Twitter sin of shaming, avoid declarations of piety and high-mindedness. They sound self-righteous and glib: Who wrote, and what human being edited this? RT @lauraolin: Really, is that what it shows twitter.com/lauraolin/stat… — Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) April 15, 2013 [Update: This tweet has since been deleted.] Advertisement Third, don’t use a tragedy to make a political point before the facts are even known. Shortly after the attacks, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted this inanity: “explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment.” Probably realizing how his snarkiness sounded under the circumstances, Kristof quickly deleted the tweet and called it a “low blow.” On the right, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin sent out this doozy, comparing the national media’s coverage of Boston to its alleged non-coverage of the Kermit Gosnell abortion case: Not writing on Boston. It is a local crime story for now. — Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) April 15, 2013 (This was a shot at Rubin’s Post colleague Sarah Kliff, who tweeted last week that she wasn’t writing about Gosnell because, “I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime.”) A lesser version of this most egregious Twitter sin of political point-scoring is to offer political analysis before there’s any actual information available. On his blog today, Slate’s Dave Weigel summed this point up rather nicely. The early hours are the time for the local news media to do reporting, and the national media to do its best possible job of fact gathering and sharing. Finally, don’t retweet trolls. This may seem like an obvious one, but it can be hard to control yourself. What Alex Jones says is not news. It’s his job to float outrageous conspiracy theories. And our job is to ignore him. Read more on Slate about the Boston Marathon bombing. ||||| Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more

– In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Twitter was flooded with breaking news—some of which turned out to be erroneous—as well as some journalists using that news to score political points. Journalism has been called "the first rough draft of history," and Twitter has become "the first rough draft of journalism," writes Jeremy Stahl on Slate. As such, the media must abide by some basic rules while using it: Turn off auto-posting: Slate did not, and its Twitter feed (which Stahl oversees) ended up tweeting a Dear Prudence column about threesomes. Use official or first-person sources, and cite them: Ignore people reporting things they heard on police scanners, "a notoriously unreliable source" of confirmed information. Don't tweet speculation: Both Slate and BuzzFeed tweeted a New York Post report that 12 were dead, which turned out to be false. But realize even the best outlets get things wrong: The AP erroneously reported that Boston authorities purposely shut down cell service yesterday; Reuters erroneously reported the JFK Library fire was an explosion (and Slate retweeted it). Don't snark: No one wants to read "jokes about how Republicans are going to blame Obama for this" right now. Don't try to score political points: Similarly, no one wants to read things like what Nicholas Kristof tweeted and quickly removed: "explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment." In fact, don't get political at all: In the immediate aftermath of a tragedy like this, reporters should report—not "offer political analysis before there's any actual information available." Don't feed the trolls: Retweeting "outrageous conspiracy theories" is tempting, but just ignore them. But if you find someone else making one of the above mistakes, don't shame them and don't get self-righteous, Stahl writes. "Let he who is without sin cast the first critical tweet. You might find yourself fact-shaming the New York Post one minute, only to pass on an inaccurate report from Reuters the next." Click for his full column.

This story was updated at 7:10 p.m. ET with comment from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs put its own interests ahead of its clients in trying to profit off the souring housing market of 2007, documents released Monday show. The firm, which had profited handsomely off packaging and selling securitized subprime home mortgages to investors during the housing boom, switched directions in early 2007, furiously shedding its home mortgage-linked risk and buying as much insurance as it could, effectively shorting the market throughout the year -- a move that netted the firm "billions and billions" at the expense of its clients, according to the documents released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars from betting against the housing market, and it placed those bets in some cases at the same time it was selling mortgage-related securities to its clients," said the committee's chairman, Carl Levin (D-Mich.). "They have a lot to answer for." Goldman says it always puts its clients' interest first. It's a position the firm has stuck by as Levin's investigation has produced emails and internal documents apparently showing otherwise. "Our clients' interests always come first," Goldman says on its website. But by late 2006, company officials, presciently realizing that losses from subprime mortgage-related products would soon begin to mount, began to aggressively reduce the firm's risk. It did so by reducing its inventory of positions, and by betting against subprime-related securities, the documents show. "A very profitable year was underway," Levin said. "In 2007, when Goldman Sachs took steps to reduce its inventory of mortgage-related investments, the Goldman Sachs sales force was instructed to sell those investments, including high-risk...securities that Goldman Sachs wanted to get of its books, creating a conflict between the firm's proprietary interests and the interests of its clients," the panel said in a statement. The firm was "spreading the poison throughout the system," Levin charged, adding that investors had a "reasonable assumption [the securities] were designed to succeed." One particular security, named Timberwolf I, a collateralized debt obligation of other collateralized debt obligations that were based not on actual home mortgage bonds but instead on those bonds' movements, lost 80 percent of its value within five months of issuance. A senior executive, Tom Montag, remarked in a June 22, 2007, email, "Boy, that timberwo[l]f was one shi**y deal." That security was rated less than three months prior to Montag's email. He has since left the firm. Goldman "cannot portray itself as working on behalf of clients," Levin said. It sold securities "that it clearly didn't believe in." "[D]uring the early summer of 2006 it was clear that the market fundamentals in subprime and the highly levered nature of CDOs was going to have a very unhappy ending," one top executive, Michael Swenson, wrote in September 2007 in his annual self-evaluation. In a March 2007 memo, the firm noted that it was "Game Over" for subprime as there was an "accelerating meltdown for subprime lenders such as Fremont and New Century." An email the same month remarked that "overall as a business, we are selling our longs and covering our shorts." Part of the problem, Levin said, was that Goldman didn't tell its clients it was shorting the market throughout the year -- it waited until the end of the year. At times, Goldman had a net short position as large as $13.9 billion, according to a memo prepared by Levin's investigators. In shorting the very securities it was peddling to investors, Goldman told its customers that there were a variety of other investors shorting those securities, investigators said. In at least a few of those instances, though, Goldman was the only party shorting the securities, investigators said, raising questions about possible violations of securities law. The firm states in its most recent annual report that it "did not generate enormous net revenues by betting against residential related products." In a statement to the Huffington Post, the firm's top spokesman, Lucas Van Praag, said: "We respectfully disagree with Chairman Levin's statement. We did not have a big bet against the housing market, as our performance in residential mortgages demonstrates, and we believe we at all times worked appropriately with our clients. We did try to manage our risk, as our shareholders and regulators would expect. There are many lessons from the financial crisis, and we are intent on learning from them. To that end, we support strong regulatory reform to safeguard markets for the future." Levin says the firm made as much as $3.7 billion shorting the market -- proprietary trades that only benefited the firm, and not its clients. Evidence that the firm was heavily shorting the market -- rather than just hedging its risks -- is overwhelming, investigators said. "Company documents show the firm taking every opportunity during early 2007 to take short positions against mortgages," the panel said in a statement. "And in reducing its risk, the firm aggressively sold its mortgage holdings to clients. "Documents show the firm's sales force raising questions about the quality of securities Goldman was trying to unload, and complaints from clients who posted big losses on products Goldman had sold them." The panel's nearly 18-month-long investigation has yielded about 2 million documents, investigators said. Its hearing examining Goldman Sachs, featuring both current and former executives, begins 10 a.m. ET Tuesday. READ Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's prepared remarks before the panel below: ||||| “It was one of the worst days of my professional life, as I know it was for every person at our firm,” Mr. Blankfein said. “We have been a client-centered firm for 140 years, and if our clients believe that we don’t deserve their trust we cannot survive.” Mr. Blankfein will also testify that Goldman did not have a substantial, consistent short position in the mortgage market. But at the press briefing in Washington, Carl Levin, the Democrat of Michigan who heads the Senate committee, insisted that Goldman had bet against its clients repeatedly. He held up a binder the size of two breadboxes that he said contained copies of e-mail messages and other documents that showed Goldman had put its own interests first. “The evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients,” Mr. Levin said. Mr. Levin’s investigative staff released a summary of those documents, which are to be released in full on Tuesday. The summary included information on Abacus as well as new details about other complex mortgage deals. On a page titled “The Goldman Sachs Conveyor Belt,” the subcommittee described five other transactions beyond the Abacus investment. One, called Hudson Mezzanine, was put together in the fall of 2006 expressly as a way to create more short positions for Goldman, the subcommittee claims. The $2 billion deal was one of the first for which Goldman sales staff began to face dubious clients, according to former Goldman employees. Photo “Here we are selling this, but we think the market is going the other way,” a former Goldman salesman told The New York Times in December. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Hudson, like Goldman’s 25 Abacus deals, was a synthetic collateralized debt obligation, which is a bundle of insurance contracts on mortgage bonds. Like other banks, Goldman turned to synthetic C.D.O.’s to allow it to complete deals faster than the sort of mortgage securities that required actual mortgage bonds. These deals also created a new avenue for Goldman and some of its hedge fund clients to make negative bets on housing. Goldman also had an unusual and powerful role in the Hudson deal that the Senate committee did not highlight: According to Hudson marketing documents, which were reviewed on Monday by The Times, Goldman was also the liquidation agent in the deal, which is the party that took it apart when it hit trouble. 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. The Senate subcommittee also studied two deals from early 2007 called Anderson Mezzanine 2007-1 and Timberwolf I. In total, these two deals were worth $1.3 billion, and Goldman held about $380 million of the negative bets associated with the two deals. The subcommittee pointed to these deals as examples of how Goldman put its own interests ahead of clients. Mr. Levin read from several Goldman documents on Monday to underscore the point, including one in October 2007 that said, “Real bad feeling across European sales about some of the trades we did with clients. The damage this has done to our franchise is very significant.” As the mortgage market collapsed, Goldman turned its back on clients who came knocking with older Goldman-issued bonds they had bought. One example was a series of mortgage bonds known as Gsamp. “I said ‘no’ to clients who demanded that GS should ‘support the Gsamp’ program as clients tried to gain leverage over us,” a mortgage trader, Michael Swenson, wrote in his self-evaluation at the end of 2007. “Those were unpopular decisions but they saved the firm hundreds of millions of dollars.” The Gsamp program was also involved in a dispute in the summer of 2007 that Goldman had with a client, Peleton Partners, a hedge fund founded by former Goldman workers that has since collapsed because of mortgage losses. According to court documents reviewed by The Times on Monday, in June 2007, Goldman refused to accept a Gsamp bond from Peleton in a dispute over the securities that backed up a mortgage security called Broadwick. A Peleton partner was pointed in his response after Goldman refused the Gsamp bond. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We do appreciate the unintended irony,” wrote Peter Howard, a partner at Peleton, in an e-mail message about the Gsamp bond. Bank of America ended up suing Goldman over the Broadwick deal. The parties are awaiting a written ruling in that suit. Broadwick was one of a dozen or so so-called hybrid C.D.O.’s that Goldman created in 2006 and 2007. Such investments were made up of both mortgage bonds and insurance contracts on mortgage bonds. While such hybrids have received little attention, one mortgage researcher, Gary Kopff of Everest Management, has pointed to a dozen other Goldman C.D.O.’s, including Broadwick, that were mixes of mortgage bonds and insurance policies. Those deals — with names like Fortius I and Altius I — may have been another method for Goldman to obtain negative bets on housing. “It was like an insurance policy that Goldman stuck in the middle of the sandwich with all the other subprime bonds,” Mr. Kopff said. “And it was an insurance policy designed to protect them.”

– Goldman Sachs sold investors a mountain of securitized subprime mortgages throughout the housing boom, but when things started to turn sour, they bet against those assets furiously—sometimes while still selling them, according to documents the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee intends to browbeat the company with today. “They have a lot to answer for,” says Chairman Carl Levin. But Goldman insists that it always put clients first, the Huffington Post reports. “If our clients believe that we don’t deserve their trust, we cannot survive,” CEO Lloyd Blankfein will say according to his prepared testimony. But the committee's accusations go beyond the SEC's, the New York Times explains. It details, for example, at least one product Goldman created with the specific intention of betting against it as soon as it was sold.

poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201512/1991/1155968404_4642152251001_4642106078001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Wednesday that he had asked for the resignation of the city's police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. PLAYBOOK LIVE Rahm Emanuel: I have no plans to resign 'We have a process called the election. The voters spoke,' the Chicago mayor said to POLITICO, rebuffing calls for his ouster. Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that he would not resign, despite growing criticism for what some are calling his botched response to video footage showing a Chicago police officer last year firing 16 times at Laquan McDonald, who was walking away from officers. "No," he said, during one of several testy exchanges through the course of a nearly hour-long discussion with POLITICO's Mike Allen and POLITICO Illinois' Natasha Korecki. "Because I really so much looked forward to this interview and I wanted to have it. I just felt so good saying that to you. We have a process called the election. The voters spoke. I'll be held accountable for the decisions and actions that I make." Story Continued Below The Chicago mayor is struggling to quell the controversy, and on Tuesday dismissed police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, even though Emanuel still spoke highly of the police chief's record during a press conference. He also appointed a new "police accountability task force." While Emanuel and his lawyers have fought for much of the past year to keep the police dashboard video of the October 2014 shooting from public eyes, citing concerns the footage could compromise the investigations into McDonald's death, a Cook County judge's ruling forced the release of the video last week. The outrage was swift, prompting days of protests surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday. Speaking at the POLITICO Illinois breakfast event in Chicago on Wednesday, Emanuel declined to entertain the notion that he might not have been reelected had the video been released prior to his April runoff election against Jesús "Chuy" Garcia. He struck a defensive tone in explaining why he did not watch the video before its release to the general public, saying there is a balance of two competing principles. The first, he said, is the right of the public and the media to see the footage, while the second is to protect the integrity of investigations. Asked by Korecki why he would wait until more than a year after the shooting to release the video, Emanuel responded that Korecki is "reflecting the immediacy of cable television." Additionally, he said, the issues plaguing Chicago with respect to the relationship between the police and the communities it serves are not unique to the city, but that the town "has its own history and narrative." Emanuel also responded to comments from the office of Cook County State Attorney Anita Alvarez, which told POLITICO Illinois on Tuesday that they did not tell the city to take up a legal fight to keep the video from the public. “They asked us our position in telephone calls — we said it was not our preference to release it, but it was ultimately their decision because of the FOIA,” Alvarez spokeswoman Sally Daly told POLITICO in the report published Wednesday. “We’re not party to the litigation on the FOIA.” Emanuel reiterated Wednesday that his only knowledge of details surrounding the video of McDonald's shooting came from testimony from city attorney Stephen Patton delivered in April to the City Council, before the approval of the city's $5 million settlement with the McDonald family. “I did not see the tape. I know what happened on the tape based on Steve’s testimony and what he had briefed me on," he said. In a sign of the pressure Emanuel is under, the New York Times late Tuesday issued a scathing editorial entitled “The Chicago Police Scandal” in which the paper said, “All along, Mr. Emanuel’s response, either by design or because of negligence, was to do as little as possible — until the furor caused by the release of the video forced his hand. The residents of Chicago will have to decide whether that counts as taking responsibility.” Emanuel on Wednesday elaborated on his decision to ask for McCarthy's resignation, saying it had nothing to do with McCarthy's overall performance. "Well, as I said yesterday and I've said over the two years, a lot of people over a year asked me, or two years, to fire the superintendent," Emanuel said, noting the department achieved the lowest homicide rate in the last 50 years in 2014 and further reductions in that rate, adding that there has been real progress. "He has become the issue rather than dealing with the issue," Emanuel also said, remarking that while he is "loyal" to McCarthy, he is more loyal to the people of the city of Chicago. Following Emanuel's announcement, Illinois Attorney Lisa Madigan on Tuesday requested that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division investigate the city's police department practices. "Chicago cannot move ahead and rebuild trust between the police and the community without an outside, independent investigation into its police department to improve policing practices," Madigan wrote. DOJ has said that it will review the request. On Wednesday, Emanuel suggested that the city does not need that investigation right now. And in addressing why he did not plan to attend the ongoing climate talks in Paris, Emanuel said that it was not the right time, "even though I believe in the issue of climate change. It's current and pressing. It's not in the distance, it's now." "I'm not going to go to Paris, I'll deal with the issue appropriately, consistently do what we need here in the city, consistent with what I think is a tough issue, but I'm going to also deal with the issue that's front and center for the city," he said, listing one-on-one interactions with constituents in grocery and department stores in the last week. Asked whether he would consider firing any more people, as Rev. Jesse Jackson suggested Tuesday, Emanuel remarked that "this is not the end of the problem but the beginning of the solution." Further wrongdoing "hasn't been brought to anybody's attention at this point," he told Allen and Korecki. ||||| Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday cancelled his trip to a climate change conference in Paris — and postponed a political fundraiser scheduled for next week — to devote his full attention to the political climate change in Chicago caused by the continuing furor over the Laquan McDonald shooting video. After firing Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday, Emanuel said the trip was up in the air. He had not yet decided whether to forge ahead with plans to join President Barack Obama, his former boss, and other world leaders in Paris at a global conference on climate change. The remark sounded almost tone-deaf, considering the heat Emanuel has taken for waiting until one week after the April 7 mayoral runoff to ask the City Council to authorize a $5 million settlement to the McDonald family even before a lawsuit had been filed. The mayor has been further criticized for keeping the incendiary video under wraps until last week and releasing it, only after a judge ordered him to do so. Overnight, the mayor who promised to listen more and talk less in a second term apparently thought better of it. He cancelled the trip to Paris to do what parochial Chicagoans want their mayor to do in all circumstances, no less during a crisis: Stay home and devote his full attention to solving Chicago’s problems. “I’ve worked on the issue of environmental policy and climate change and energy my whole public life. We’ve done a lot here in Chicago. We were the last city with two coal fire power plants. We shut `em dn. We have probably one of the largest public and private and private retro-fits going on. I’m proud of that record,” the mayor said during a live interview at Politico.com’s “Playbook Breakfast.” “That said, obviously this is a challenging time for the city. … It needs sustained effort and part of that sustained effort requires the mayor to be present. … This is not a time for me — even though I believe in the issue of climate change. It’s current and pressing. It’s not in the distance. It’s now — I’m not going to go to Paris….I’m going to deal with the issue that’s front and center for the city.” Emanuel said he would spend the time he would have spent in Paris doing what he did last weekend: Going to churches, stores and restaurants on the South Side to allow everyday Chicagoans to talk openly with their mayor without the staged intrusion of microphones and cameras. “I wanted to be in the community on the South Side as we’re dealing with some tough challenges — not for images, but to be able have people directly, without anybody around, talk to me and say what they thought. So they felt free to say what they want and I was just there,” he said. “I believe in being out and about with the public. I take the train to work twice-a-week so people — not in staged situations — can come up and approach the mayor. I do that — not with the media present so the public doesn’t feel held back — but, with the mayor present, so the public feels they can address me in a more personal way. I’m going to continue to do that through this weekend so I’m out and about talking to people directly, hearing from them, have them directly hear from me and know that I’m listening to what they have to say.” The $2,500-a-head political fundraiser was originally scheduled for next week to replenish a campaign war chest with $122,000 in unpaid bills after Emanuel spent a record $24 million to get re-elected — before the furor over the Laquan McDonald video. Emanuel had put out the word about the fundraiser the week before the City Council vote on his tax-laden city budget. It was a shot across the bow to those who believe that a second term will be Emanuel’s last—either because he chooses not to seek re-election or because he is unelectable after socking it to Chicago taxpayers. The fundraiser has now been rescheduled to a later date, once again to avoid looking crass and tone-deaf. David Axelrod, who worked together with Emanuel in the Obama White House, said his friend of 30 years made a wise move on both fronts by cancelling the trip to Paris and putting off the blockbuster fundraiser. “Chicago has an obvious and acute challenge. He needs to stay home and meet it. It’s smart for him to stay. The focus should be on the problem here and nothing else,” Axelrod said. “This panel he set up needs to produce substantive, meaningful and, hopefully long-lasting reforms. He has a search for a new police chief, a critically important decision. There’s a breach to be healed between community, police and City Hall. There’s plenty of work to be done right here.” After firing McCarthy, Emanuel was forced to fend off questions about demands for the mayor’s own resignation. Axelrod served as political consultant to Obama and former Mayor Richard M. Daley and Harold Washington. He was asked what Emanuel needs to do to rebuild trust with black voters who helped elect and re-elect him even after he closed a record fifty public schools. “The way you rebuild trust is through your actions,” Axelrod said.

– If Rahm Emanuel thought firing his police chief would relieve the pressure on him in Chicago over a police shooting, he learned otherwise Wednesday at a testy breakfast in which he was hit with questions about whether he would resign, reports Politico. "No," was the answer to journalists. "We have a process called the election," he said. "The voters spoke. I'll be held accountable for the decisions and actions that I make." Emanuel is taking heavy criticism over the video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, given that his administration fought to keep it from the public. In a blistering editorial, the New York Times accused the mayor of demonstrating a "willful ignorance" and a "complete lack of comprehension" about the case. "All along, Mr. Emanuel’s response, either by design or because of negligence, was to do as little as possible—until the furor caused by the release of the video forced his hand. The residents of Chicago will have to decide whether that counts as taking responsibility." More fallout: Emanuel canceled a trip to Paris to attend the climate change conference, and he scrapped a fundraiser set for next week, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Jefferson, Larimer, Lincoln, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 11:43AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Clear Creek, Douglas, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Jefferson, Larimer, Park, Summit Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 2:37PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Bent, Huerfano, Las Animas, Otero, Prowers Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: El Paso, Fremont, Teller Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Costilla, Custer, Fremont, Huerfano, Las Animas, Pueblo, Saguache Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 5:01AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Chaffee, Conejos, Lake, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Custer, El Paso, Fremont, Teller Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Weather Advisory issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Baca Winter Storm Warning issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring January 31 at 5:00PM MST in effect for: Conejos, Mineral, Rio Grande Winter Storm Warning issued February 1 at 4:04AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Crowley, Kiowa, Pueblo Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:56PM MST expiring February 2 at 5:00PM MST in effect for: Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Yuma Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 2:37PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Crowley, Pueblo Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Kiowa Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 8:30PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Clear Creek, Douglas, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Jefferson, Larimer, Park, Summit Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 8:30PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 11:43AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Jefferson, Larimer, Lincoln, Weld Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Chaffee, Lake, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Custer, Huerfano Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Crowley Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Bent, Las Animas, Otero, Prowers Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Pueblo Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Fremont Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 1:42PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Huerfano, Las Animas Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 5:50AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: El Paso Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 11:43AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Morgan, Washington, Weld Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 11:43AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Logan, Phillips, Sedgwick Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 31 at 11:01AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Conejos, Costilla, Custer, Fremont, Huerfano, Lake, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Baca, Bent, Crowley, Kiowa, Las Animas, Otero, Prowers Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Custer, El Paso, Fremont, Huerfano, Las Animas, Pueblo, Teller Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 5:01AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Costilla, Custer, El Paso, Fremont, Huerfano, Las Animas, Pueblo, Saguache, Teller Winter Storm Warning issued January 30 at 4:27PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Archuleta, Dolores, La Plata, Montezuma, San Miguel Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Gunnison, Montrose Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Garfield, Mesa, Rio Blanco Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:14PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Logan, Phillips, Sedgwick Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:14PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Jefferson, Larimer, Lincoln, Morgan, Washington, Weld Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:14PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Clear Creek, Douglas, Gilpin, Jefferson, Larimer, Park Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 9:19PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Grand, Jackson, Jefferson, Larimer, Park, Summit Winter Storm Watch issued January 31 at 5:50AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Conejos, Costilla, Custer, Fremont, Huerfano, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Chaffee, Lake Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 5:01AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Conejos, Costilla, Custer, El Paso, Fremont, Huerfano, Las Animas, Mineral, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Saguache, Teller Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 2:04PM MST expiring February 2 at 5:00AM MST in effect for: Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Yuma Winter Storm Warning issued January 31 at 12:24AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:49AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:49AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:49AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 8:49PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Gunnison, Montrose Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 8:49PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Garfield, Mesa, Rio Blanco Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 8:49PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 8:49PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:27PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Eagle, Garfield, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Routt Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:28AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Chaffee, Lake, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Conejos, Mineral, Rio Grande Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:18PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 8:00PM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Chaffee, Lake, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:14PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Grand, Jefferson, Park, Summit Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 3:14PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Boulder, Grand, Jackson, Larimer Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:28AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Alamosa, Chaffee, Conejos, Costilla, Custer, El Paso, Fremont, Huerfano, Lake, Las Animas, Mineral, Pueblo, Rio Grande, Saguache, Teller Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:28AM MST expiring February 2 at 11:00AM MST in effect for: Conejos, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache Winter Storm Watch issued January 30 at 4:49AM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Archuleta, Dolores, La Plata, Montezuma, San Miguel Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 3:07PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Archuleta, Delta, Dolores, Gunnison, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mesa, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, San Juan, San Miguel Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 3:07PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Dolores, Mesa, Montrose, San Miguel Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 3:07PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Archuleta Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 11:56PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Delta, Garfield, Gunnison, Mesa, Montrose Winter Storm Watch issued January 29 at 3:07PM MST expiring February 2 at 12:00PM MST in effect for: Dolores, La Plata, Montezuma, San Miguel ||||| Not even in nursing—a field women dominate 10 to 1—are employees exempt from a gender-based pay gap that gives male workers better wages, sending male nurses home with anywhere from $3,800 to $17,000 more than women make every single year. The amount varies among specialties, but male nurses make an average of about $5,000 more annually than women, according to a study published in The Journal of American Medicine Association on Tuesday. Nurse anesthetists have the widest gap and general hospital nurses the lowest, with orthopedics the only specialty that did not report inequity. The report highlights longstanding concerns of inequality that have flummoxed nurses and supervisors alike—if a field hires women the vast majority of the time and women frequently advance to leadership roles, how is the pay gap still so wide? “I can’t understand it,” Tish Kilfoyle, director of home care nursing at Hospice of the Western Reserve in Cleveland, told TakePart. “It’s just wrong.” As someone who hires nurses on a daily basis, Kilfoyle is confident her staff is paid according to their education and experience. “We have a scale that we pay all our nurses the same on, and it’s all on nursing experience and years of experience,” she said. But that doesn’t mean she’s surprised that male nurses still make more on occasion. The study combed through the salaries of more than 290,000 nurses over 25 years, determining that male nurses made more money every year from 1988 to 2013. They study’s authors have taken into consideration location, age, race, marital status, and children, yet still report that female nurse bring home less for the same work. And with registered nurses making an average salary of approximately $66,000, that translates to men earning about 8 percent more than women. While evidence of a pay discrepancy between men and women is nothing new, the persistent gap in this female-dominated field is surprising. “You may think women have caught up or even might be ahead of men,” wrote study author Ulrike Muench, referencing that women make up the bulk of the workforce. “But we find that’s not the case.” Kilfoyle thinks the pay gap might have something to do with trying to diversify staff and having to compete for a small number of hires. “In some agencies…you need to meet your quota. You need to have a certain number of female, male, and different nationalities. So is that a piece of it if there’s inequity? That’s possible.” While the study did not explore the reasons behind the difference in pay, Muench offered a few explanations, including that women may leave the workforce temporarily to have children, men have stronger negotiating skills, and, of course, plain old gender discrimination.

– Miss Georgia's singing talent may have helped her win the Miss America crown, but it was Miss Colorado who made waves with her monologue about being a nurse. Kelley Johnson, who ended as second runner-up, appeared on stage in nurse's scrubs and spoke about caring for Alzheimer's patients. "I went over to him and I lifted his head up out of his hands. And I said, 'Joe, I know that this is really hard. But, you are not defined by this disease,'" she said, per ABC Denver. The Alzheimer's Association later thanked Johnson in a tweet, but the ladies of The View weren't wowed. She "came in a nurse's uniform, and basically read emails out loud and shockingly did not win," Michelle Collins said during a segment Monday. "I swear to God it was hilarious." Joy Behar next commented, "Why does she have a doctor's stethoscope around her neck?" One look at The View's Facebook page shows numerous demands for an apology, most using the hashtag #NursesUnite, per the Coloradoan. "It is a NURSE stethoscope too. I use it to listen to a child's lungs," writes one nurse, per E! "Your comments denigrated our most noble profession. You owe all of the nurses of this world an apology." In a post with some 530,000 likes, another nurse notes, "Nursing is a talent. It takes a talented person to put an IV in a dehydrated newborn with veins as fragile as a piece of hair. It takes talent to perform CPR for 2 hours while desperately trying to save someone's child. It takes talent to safely manage a confused and combative patient." She continues, "I'm not at all envious of what you do. I'm sorry I wouldn't want to take a walk in any of your shoes. I'll stick with mine. The shoes of a talentless nurse." (Female nurses face another obstacle every day.)

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is set to remove one or both of the carcasses of blue whales that washed up in western Newfoundland, Fisheries and Oceans Canada officials announced Thursday. ROM scientists will travel to Rocky Harbour and Trout River on the northwest coast of Newfoundland soon to preserve the whales’ skeletons and collect tissue samples from the massive marine mammals. While the whales' ice-locked death was unfortunate — an estimated five per cent of the endangered species population was lost in the event, according to the ROM — it also marks an opportunity for the scientific community. Scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto are set to remove one or both of the blue whale carcasses so the mammals' skeletons can be preserved. (Michelle Siu/Canadian Press) ​"This is an important opportunity to further our understanding of these magnificent animals and provide an invaluable resource for Canadian science and education now and in the future," said Mark D. Engstrom, the ROM’s deputy director of collections and research. Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said the government is happy to partner with the ROM to preserve the skeletons. Shea said Canadians will benefit from the chance to study the whales up close. It’s not immediately clear how long it will take the ROM scientists to get the decomposing whales off the beaches where they washed up. Some blue whales are as long as two school buses, Residents of Rocky Harbour and Trout River, however, still have concerns the whales may explode due to the gases trapped inside their carcasses. 'I think now people are beginning to realize that how often does a blue whale wash up on your beach? It's pretty awesome to have it there.' - Jenny Parsons, owner of Seaside Restaurant in Trout River The dead blue whale in Trout River has been expanding since it washed ashore several weeks ago. Many have also expressed concern with the smell from the rotting whales. But Jenny Parsons, who operates the Seaside Restaurant in Trout River, said some people in town will be sad to see the whale go. This blue whale carcass was found near Bonne Bay last month. Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials have said they could determine whether the whale was part of the same group of dead whales spotted near Bay St. George earlier this year by taking DNA samples. (Photo courtesy DFO) "I think now people are beginning to realize that how often does a blue whale wash up on your beach? It's pretty awesome to have it there," said Parsons. Parsons said she would like to see a blue whale pavilion in western Newfoundland, something she thinks would attract tourists from far and wide. Journalists have been calling all day from around the world, she told CBC Radio's As It Happens, many curious about the possibility of a whale explosion. Ideally, Parsons said, DFO would move the whale out of the community while it decomposes but then return it. That makes more sense than sending it to Toronto, she said. "It's not going to be no small feat to move this to Ontario," Parsons said. Concern growing about Rocky Harbour carcass The other blue whale carcass has been grounded in Rocky Harbour, located in Gros Morne National Park. People have been visiting Trout River to catch a sight of the blue whale carcass that washed ashore last month. (CBC) Mayor Walter Nicolle said that for the first week or so, the whale was a real tourist attraction. "But right now the whale is starting to smell a bit, so the local people are getting concerned about it," he told CBC News. At first, Nicolle was told the 20-metre whale was the town's problem. So town officials proceeded to secure a permit to remove the carcass, though Nicolle admitted they are not sure just how to do that. "I'm a little bit surprised they're going to take it away already." The loss of nine blue whales has attracted international and national scientific interest. Sample tissue of one whale has been taken to gather scientific data. In 2010, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa unveiled a blue whale skeleton. The museum acquired the remains of the female whale in 1975 after it beached itself in Newfoundland. ||||| Residents of the Canadian town of Trout River in Newfoundland are concerned about the disposal of a dead blue whale that washed up on its beach last week. There had been fears that the carcass - which is bloated with methane gas - could explode. Town Clerk Emily Butler told BBC News that the whale had deflated slightly but it would still be difficult to deal with. ||||| The Canadian Press ST. JOHN'S, N.L. -- The deaths of endangered blue whales off Newfoundland are a tragic loss but also a rare chance to study the world's largest animal, says the head of the Royal Ontario Museum team that will handle their two carcasses. "We wish it hadn't happened," Mark Engstrom, deputy director of collections and research for the museum, said Thursday from Toronto. "But this is an incredible opportunity to see one and to work with one." Engstrom is not, incidentally, worried that the massive corpses that washed ashore on Newfoundland's west coast will explode. "I think the concerns about that have been overblown -- no pun intended," he said. "It will simply deflate." Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea announced Thursday that the museum researchers will preserve the two skeletons and collect tissue samples. It's believed nine of the giant whales, which can reach lengths of 30 metres and weigh up to 180 tonnes, were crushed in thick sea ice last month. Two of the massive bodies beached in the small west coast communities of Trout River and Rocky Harbour near Gros Morne National Park. Town officials appealed for help with the huge and costly job of removing the carcasses. They raised concerns that the rotting whales pose health hazards and could drive away tourists if left to decompose. Engstrom said a team of at least 10 assembled by the museum will head to Newfoundland next week. He said they'll use flensing knives to cut through the skin, blubber and skeletal muscles of the two carcasses before dismantling the skeletons. Flesh and blubber will be disposed of in local dumps, Engstrom said. The bones will be packed into large containers and driven back to Ontario using at least 18-wheel trucks, he added. The operation is being funded by the museum and will cost tens of thousands of dollars, Engstrom said. He figures it will take at least two weeks once work begins. Engstrom in the past has helped salvage the remains of a right whale, a fin whale, a sperm whale, a humpback and a killer whale. "It's a lot of very smelly work. There's nothing that smells worse than a dead whale. They don't smell good to begin with and these have been dead awhile." Engstrom said tissue samples will be preserved for DNA study and the skeletons will be available to scientists from around the world. One of the skeletons could ultimately be displayed at the museum if funds are available, he added. Northwestern Atlantic blue whales are listed as endangered with a population estimated at just 250 before the nine known deaths. Walter Nicolle, mayor of Rocky Harbour, is relieved to see someone step up. The federal Fisheries Department had said earlier in the week that the carcasses are above the high water mark and therefore provincial responsibility. "We're only a small town," Nicolle said in an interview. "We don't have a budget large enough to take care of that whale." Nicolle said a steady stream of visitors has arrived for photos with the carcass as concerns about potential eruptions due to internal methane gas buildup made international headlines. "If it were to stay there for much longer it would stink up the whole community, I would say." ||||| CTVNews.ca Staff Residents of two small towns in Newfoundland are worried the giant blue whales that have washed ashore could soon explode, and it appears they’ve been left to dispose of the rotting carcasses themselves. Three of the mammoth marine mammals beached on the west end of the island, close to Rocky Harbour and Trout River, this past weekend. In Trout River, a tourist community, a nearly 26-metre-long whale carcass continues to draw interest from curious residents, but the town's manager fears the fascination will soon turn to disgust. "With the warm temperatures coming on we're really concerned about the smell from this," Emily Butler told NTV on Monday. "We are also concerned with the health aspect of this animal being on the beach line." As the whale decomposes, its corpse fills with methane gas. Town officials fear that it will continue to swell until it eventually explodes. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans said it will likely be up to the local and provincial governments to find a way to dispose of the rotting blue whale carcasses, but Butler said the small town does not have the money or the resources to do so. "The response we're getting is basically that, this is on the beach and we could naturally let it decompose here," Butler said. She added that, if the whale pushed back into the ocean, the DFO would consider its potential interference with marine navigation. The endangered blue whales were among nine that were found dead off Newfoundland's coast earlier this month. The DFO had expected weather patterns and water currents to float the carcasses out to sea. It's believed the whales drowned or were crushed by heavy ice while feeding. With a report from NTV's Don Bradshaw

– Residents of a Newfoundland town can breathe a sigh of relief: It looks like the carcass of a blue whale that washed up on the shores of Trout River might not explode after all. Officials feared it would, as gases swelled the creature's 81-foot-long body, but the whale has since deflated a bit, the town clerk tells the BBC. Now the town just needs to get rid of the 60-ton carcass—there had been, as one official noted earlier this week, some concern "about the smell from this" as warmer temperatures arrived. Fortunately, CTV reports, the Royal Ontario Museum has agreed to help, and will send a 10-person team next week to cut away the skin, blubber, and muscles, which will be dumped, and then take apart the skeleton, which will be transported to Ontario on an 18-wheeler. What does the museum get out of the two-week operation, which will cost tens of thousands of dollars? Quite a bit, says one official: The endangered blue whale is the world's largest animal, and though no one is cheering the death, "this is an incredible opportunity to see one and to work with one," he says, though "it's a lot of very smelly work." The museum will also handle another blue whale carcass that washed up elsewhere in Newfoundland; both whales, along with seven others, are believed to have been crushed in thick sea ice last month. (That's 5% of the estimated population in the Northwest Atlantic, CBC notes.) Tissue samples and skeletons will be studied, and one of the skeletons may eventually be displayed—though scientists won't get all the parts; the Western Star reported earlier this week that someone illegally sawed off one of the whale's flippers. (Some whale carcasses have been known to explode—in one recent case, all over a biologist.)

Archive-It Partner 1067: The Political TV Ad Archive, a project of the Internet Archive, collects political TV ads and social media sites in key 2016 primary election states, unlocking the metadata underneath and highlighting quality journalism to provide journalists, civic organizations, academics, and the general public with reliable information on who is trying to influence them & how. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The Florida man in custody in connection with the package bombs sent to Democratic political figures is a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump with an extensive record of past arrests, including a stint served on probation for making a bomb threat. Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura is an amateur body builder and businessman whose online resume describes him as a promoter and booking agent for male stripper and burlesque shows. He was born in New York City and attended college in North Carolina before moving to the Miami suburbs in the late 1980s. He is a registered Republican with social media accounts containing memes supporting Trump, denigrating Democrats, and promoting conspiracy theories about George Soros, the billionaire political donor who was the first targeted this week by a package bomb. At the auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, where Sayoc was taken into custody, authorities towed away a white van covered with stickers supporting Trump and criticizing media outlets that included CNN, the news channel also targeted by a mail bomb this week. Court records in Florida show that Sayoc was arrested in 2002 and served a year of probation for a felony charge of threatening to throw or place a bomb. Court records available online did not immediately provide further details about the case, but his lawyer in the case told The Associated Press the case involved a heated conversation with a Florida utility representative. Ronald Lowy, a Miami attorney, said Sayoc became frustrated about a lack of service and told a Florida Power and Light employee "something to the effect that you're not taking care of my problem and I bet you would if I threw a bomb at you." Lowy said Sayoc showed no ability at the time to back up his threat with any bomb-making expertise. The lawyer went on to describe Sayoc as "a confused man who had trouble controlling his emotions." Lowy said Sayoc displayed no political leanings at the time except for plastering a vehicle he owned with Native American signs. Lowy said Sayoc told him his father was Native American. Sayoc was also convicted in 2014 for grand theft and misdemeanor theft of less than $300, and in 2013 for battery. In 2004, he faced several felony charges for unlawful possession of a synthetic anabolic steroid often used to help build muscles. He also had several arrests for theft in the 1990s and faced a felony charge for obtaining fraudulent refunds and a misdemeanor count of tampering with physical evidence. Lowy said he recalled that Sayoc also had a run-in with authorities over possession of steroids and another case in Broward County where he was charged with possessing a fake driver's license after altering his birthdate to make him appear younger. "His mind doesn't seem to operate like most peoples'," Lowy said. "It shows in his anger, his emotion and his behavior." Sayoc's name is listed on business records tied to dry cleaning and catering businesses. Records also suggest he also had recent financial problems, including filling for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in 2012. In court records filed as part of the bankruptcy case, Sayoc was described as having $4,175 in personal property and more than $21,000 in debts. His monthly income at the time was $1,070. "Debtor lives with mother, owns no furniture," Sayoc's lawyer indicated in a property list. He owned a 2001 Chevy Tahoe with 285,000 miles on the odometer. Most of his debt was from unpaid credit cards opened up in South Florida and banks across the U.S. Court files show Sayoc completed a financial management course and was discharged from his debts in September 2012. Sayoc's mother, Madeline, also filed for bankruptcy at the same time and was discharged in January 2017. She was not immediately available to respond to phone messages left with her by the AP. Sayoc's bankruptcy attorney, Christian Olson, declined to comment. A Twitter account that appears to belong to Sayoc, @hardrock2016, includes memes denouncing Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, including a photo of Soros made to look like he's holding a puppet that resembles Gillum. Other posts called Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg "fake phony." He posted memes repeatedly attacking Hogg in July. He also called Gov. Rick Scott "greatest Governor Ever" in a posting that shows the Republican governor alongside Trump. In June, he praised Trump in a birthday message saying: "Happy Birthday President Donald J. Trump the greatest result President ever." ___ Associated Press reporter Jonathan Drew in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this story. ___ Follow AP investigative reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck ||||| (CNN) Cesar Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes, including illegal mailing of explosives, threats against former presidents and others, and assaulting current and former federal officers.

– His name is Cesar Sayoc, he is 56, and he lives in Aventura, Florida. Those were among the first basic facts to emerge Friday after the FBI arrested Sayoc in connection with the string of mail bombs mailed to prominent Democrats earlier in the week. Details and developments: Big supporter: Sayoc appears to be an ardent supporter of the president. The Miami Herald reports that his confiscated white van had pro-Trump stickers and right-wing stickers covering the windows, along with rifle scopes over the faces of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Another sticker said, "CNN Sucks." 'Confused': An attorney familiar with Sayoc calls him "a confused man who had trouble controlling his emotions," per the AP. "His mind doesn't seem to operate like most peoples,'" says Miami attorney Ronald Lowy. "It shows in his anger, his emotion and his behavior." 58 years: Sayoc faces five federal charges: transporting explosives across state lines, illegally mailing explosives, threatening former presidents and others, threatening interstate communications, and assaulting federal officials, reports the Washington Post. He faces up to 58 years in prison, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Read the complaint against him here.

Lockheed Martin is developing a hypersonic spy plane, called the SR-72, that will be able to fly at Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. A new hypersonic spy plane, capable of flying up to six times faster than the speed of sound, is being developed by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp., according to company officials. The new aircraft, known as the SR-72, is the unmanned successor to Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird, a twin-engine, two-seater, supersonic aircraft that was developed in the 1960s. The company's new spy plane will be able to fly twice as fast as the Blackbird and three times faster than current fighter jets, accelerating to Mach 6, which is six times the speed of sound, or more than 3,500 mph (5,600 km/h). The hypersonic SR-72 also will be able to fly to any location within an hour, which could be revolutionary for the military, said Brad Leland, Lockheed Martin's program manager for hypersonics. [In Photos: The 10 Fastest Military Airplanes] "Hypersonic is the new stealth," Leland told Reuters. "Your adversaries cannot hide or move their critical assets. They will be found. That becomes a game-changer." Furthermore, Lockheed is designing the spy plane using existing technology, which could help the company develop a prototype in five or six years for under $1 billion, he added. Lockheed is aiming to fly a missile to demonstrate the new technology as early as 2018, and Leland said operational SR-72s could be in service by 2030, according to Aviation Week, which was first to report on the new project. "What we are doing is defining a missile that would have a small incremental cost to go at hypersonic speed," Leland told Reuters. The SR-72 is being developed by Skunk Works, Lockheed's California-based advanced research program that previously worked on the SR-71 Blackbird and the famed U-2 spy plane. The hypersonic SR-72 will feature a two-phase propulsion system, which uses a basic jet turbine to accelerate the plane to Mach 3. Lockheed is collaborating with rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne to incorporate this turbine with an air-breathing, supersonic ramjet engine to propel the vehicle from standstill to Mach 6. The new spy plane will build upon Lockheed's previous experimental hypersonic programs, such as the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, or HTV-2, which was developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) Falcon Project. In 2011, the unmanned, arrow-shaped HTV-2 glider reached Mach 20 and controlled itself for approximately three minutes, before crashing into the Pacific Ocean. During the flight, surface temperatures on the vehicle reached 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,930 degrees Celsius), which is hotter than a blast furnace capable of melting steel. The SR-72's predecessor, the SR-71 Blackbird, could accelerate to Mach 3.3 (more than 2,200 mph, or 3,540 km/h) at an altitude of 80,000 feet (24,400 m). The Blackbird made its first flight in December 1964, and was flown by the U.S. Air Force until 1998. The two-seater aircraft was capable of outracing potential threats during reconnaissance missions, including being able to accelerate and out-fly surface-to-air missiles if it was detected. Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience. ||||| Lockheed Martin's planned SR-72 twin-engine jet aircraft is seen in this artist's rendering provided to Reuters November 1, 2013 by Lockheed Martin. WASHINGTON Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) unveiled plans on Friday for a hypersonic spy plane that could fly at Mach 6, twice as fast as its famed SR-71 Blackbird, and said a missile demonstrating the new technology could fly as early as 2018. Brad Leland, the Lockheed engineer who has headed the seven-year research effort, said the new aircraft, dubbed the SR-72, was designed using off-the-shelf materials to keep it affordable in the current tough budget environment. He said the new plane offered game-changing capabilities to the military - and a twin-engine demonstrator jet that could reach any target in an hour could be developed for under $1 billion in five to six years. "Hypersonic is the new stealth," Leland told Reuters in an interview. "Your adversaries cannot hide or move their critical assets. They will be found. That becomes a game-changer." The new aircraft would travel three times as fast as current fighter jets, which can reach speeds of Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, and it could be outfitted with light weapons to strike targets. Aviation Week first reported Lockheed's work on the project earlier on Friday in a cover article entitled "Son of Blackbird." Lockheed developed the supersonic SR-71 Blackbird, a long-range manned spy plane, 50 years ago. A few of those planes remained in service until 1999. Details of the new hypersonic spy plane project emerged days after Lockheed, the Pentagon's biggest supplier, teamed up with No. 2 supplier Boeing Co (BA.N) to develop a bid for the Pentagon's new long-range bomber. Lockheed, Boeing and other big weapons makers are pressing the Pentagon to continue funding new aircraft development programs despite big cuts in military spending, arguing that a retreat from such projects could undercut U.S. military superiority in years to come. Leland, who works for Lockheed's Skunk Works advanced development arm, said missiles based on the new technology could be ready for operational use in 2020, at a cost only slightly more than the current Tomahawk or JASSM missiles. Lockheed declined to say how much it had invested in the SR-72 project to date, or what the new airplane might cost if it is ever built. But it said it had tried to keep the current tight budget environment in mind while working on the project. "What we are doing is defining a missile that would have a small incremental cost to go at hypersonic speed," Leland said. He said about 20 Lockheed employees had worked on the project. One key factor in keeping the new project affordable was a decision to limit speed to Mach 6, rather than reaching for higher speeds that would require more expensive materials such as those used on the space shuttle, Leland said. He said top Pentagon officials had been briefed on the program's progress and they were very interested in the new technology as a possible way to counter work by potential adversaries on technologies that could detect stealth aircraft. He said the company and its partners had developed and tested key components of the proposed new aircraft using their own internal research funding, but the program needed additional funds to move ahead with larger-scale demonstrations of the technologies involved. Rob Stallard, analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said in a note on Friday that the new aircraft could help the U.S. military quickly identify or hit targets that were intentionally hidden or protected by an enemy's air defenses. He said the previous SR-71 was "the coolest airplane ever made, rivaled only by fictional aircraft." Leland said Lockheed had worked closely with Aerojet Rocketdyne, a unit of GenCorp Inc GY.N, to develop a propulsion system for the new aircraft, which uses an off-the-shelf turbine with a scramjet engine to reach the hypersonic speeds. The project builds on HTV-3X, an earlier hypersonic project funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that was canceled in 2008 after its turbojet engines were found not ready for further development. (Editing by Matthew Lewis) ||||| November 01, 2013 Ever since Lockheed’s unsurpassed SR-71 Blackbird was retired from U.S. Air Force service almost two decades ago, the perennial question has been: Will it ever be succeeded by a new-generation, higher-speed aircraft and, if so, when? That is, until now. After years of silence on the subject, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has revealed exclusively to AW&ST details of long-running plans for what it describes as an affordable hypersonic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike platform that could enter development in demonstrator form as soon as 2018. Dubbed the SR-72, the twin-engine aircraft is designed for a Mach 6 cruise, around twice the speed of its forebear, and will have the optional capability to strike targets. Guided by the U.S. Air Force’s long-term hypersonic road map, the SR-72 is designed to fill what are perceived by defense planners as growing gaps in coverage of fast-reaction intelligence by the plethora of satellites, subsonic manned and unmanned platforms meant to replace the SR-71. Potentially dangerous and increasingly mobile threats are emerging in areas of denied or contested airspace, in countries with sophisticated air defenses and detailed knowledge of satellite movements. A vehicle penetrating at high altitude and Mach 6, a speed viewed by Lockheed Martin as the “sweet spot” for practical air-breathing hypersonics, is expected to survive where even stealthy, advanced subsonic or supersonic aircraft and unmanned vehicles might not. Moreover, an armed ISR platform would also have the ability to strike targets before they could hide. Although there has been evidence to suggest that work on various classified successors to the SR-71, or some of its roles, has been attempted, none of the tantalizing signs have materialized into anything substantial. Outside of the black world, this has always been relatively easy to explain. Though few question the compelling military imperative for high speed ISR capability, the astronomical development costs have made the notion a virtual nonstarter. But now Lockheed Martin believes it has the answer. “The Skunk Works has been working with Aerojet Rocketdyne for the past seven years to develop a method to integrate an off-the-shelf turbine with a scramjet to power the aircraft from standstill to Mach 6 plus,” says Brad Leland, portfolio manager for air-breathing hypersonic technologies. “Our approach builds on HTV-3X, but this extends a lot beyond that and addresses the one key technical issue that remained on that program: the high-speed turbine engine,” he adds, referring to the U.S. Air Force/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) reusable hypersonic demonstrator canceled in 2008. The concept of a reusable hypersonic vehicle was an outgrowth of Darpa’s Falcon program, which included development of small launch vehicles, common aero vehicles (CAV) and a hypersonic cruise vehicle (HCV). As structural and aerodynamic technologies for both the CAV and HCV needed testing, Lockheed Martin was funded to develop a series of unpowered hypersonic test vehicles (HTV). In the midst of these developments, as part of a refocus on space in 2004, NASA canceled almost all hypersonic research, including work on the X-43C combined-cycle propulsion demonstrator. The Darpa HTV effort was therefore extended to include a third HTV, the powered HTV-3X, which was to take off from a runway on turbojet power, accelerate to Mach 6 using a scramjet and return to land. Despite never progressing to what Leland describes as a planned -HTV-3X follow-on demonstrator that “never was,” called the Blackswift, the conceptual design work led to “several key accomplishments which we didn’t advertise too much,” he notes. “It produced an aircraft configuration that could controllably take off, accelerate through subsonic, supersonic, transonic and hypersonic speeds. It was controllable and kept the pointy end forward,” adds Leland.

– Lockheed Martin is working on an unmanned spy plane that can travel at six times the speed of sound—meaning that no matter where it needs to go, it can be there in an hour, LiveScience reports. The SR-72, under development in California, is a follow-up to the SR-71 Blackbird, developed in the 1960s and used by the US Air Force until 1998. At mach 6—some 3,500mph—the upcoming plane will go twice as fast as its predecessor, and three times as fast as today's fighter jets. "Hypersonic is the new stealth," Lockheed engineer Brad Leland tells Reuters. "Your adversaries cannot hide or move their critical assets. They will be found. That becomes a game-changer." A missile showing off the technology could be ready in five or six years, at a cost of less than $1 billion, he says. But the plane itself will take a little longer. It could be ready for service by 2030, notes Aviation Week via LiveScience.

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. JERUSALEM — Actress Natalie Portman has snubbed a prestigious prize known as the "Jewish Nobel," saying she did not want her attendance to be seen as an endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Portman was to have received the award in Israel in June and said in a statement issued early Saturday that her reasons for skipping the ceremony had been mischaracterized by others, and she is not part of the BDS, a Palestinian-led global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. News of Portman's decision to skip the event triggered an angry backlash Friday from some in the country's political establishment. That was due to reports that Portman through a representative had told the Genesis Prize Foundation she was experiencing "extreme distress" over attending its ceremony and would "not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel." Portman's statement said her decision had been mischaracterized. "Let me speak for myself. I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony," she wrote. "Like many Israelis and Jews around the world, I can be critical of the leadership in Israel without wanting to boycott the entire nation. I treasure my Israeli friends and family, Israeli food, books, art, cinema, and dance.'" She asked people to "not take any words that do not come directly from me as my own." Israel faces some international criticism over its use of lethal force in response to mass protests along the Gaza border led by the Islamic militant group that rules the territory. One Israeli lawmaker warned that Portman's decision is a sign of eroding support for Israel among young American Jews. The Jerusalem-born Portman is a dual Israeli-American citizen. The Oscar-winning actress moved to the United States as a young girl, evolving from a child actress into a widely acclaimed A-list star. Portman received the 2011 best actress Academy Award for "Black Swan," and, in 2015, she directed and starred in "Tale of Love and Darkness," a Hebrew-language film set in Israel based on an Amos Oz novel. Her success is a great source of pride for many Israelis. The Genesis Prize Foundation said Thursday that it had been informed by Portman's representative that "recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing" to Portman, though it did not refer to specific events. Since March 30, more than three dozen Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army fire, most of them in protests on the Gaza-Israeli border. Hundreds more have been wounded by Israeli troops during this time. Israel says it is defending its border and accuses Hamas, a militant group sworn to Israel's destruction, of trying to carry out attacks under the guise of protests. It has said that some of those protesting at the border over the past few weeks tried to damage the fence, plant explosives and hurl firebombs, or flown kites attached to burning rags to set Israeli fields on fire. Several Israeli communities are located near the Gaza border. Rights groups have branded open-fire rules as unlawful, saying they effectively permit soldiers to use potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters. Israel's right-wing Culture Minister Miri Regev said in a statement Friday that she was sorry to hear that Portman "has fallen like a ripe fruit into the hands of BDS supporters," referring to the Palestinian-led boycott movement. "Natalie, a Jewish actress born in Israel, is joining those who relate to the wondrous success story of Israel's rebirth as a story of 'darkness and darkness'," Regev said. Rachel Azaria, a lawmaker from the centrist Kulanu party, warned that Portman's decision to stay away is a sign of eroding support for Israel among young American Jews. "The cancellation by Natalie Portman needs to light warning signs," Azaria said in a statement. "She is totally one of us. She identifies with her Jewishness and Israeli-ness. She is expressing now the voices of many in U.S. Jewry, mainly those of the young generation. This is a community that was always a significant anchor for the state of Israel. The price of losing them could be too high." Oren Hazan, a legislator in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Party, called on the government to revoke Portman's Israeli citizenship. Gilad Erdan, Israel's Public Security Minister said he sent a letter to Portman expressing his disappointment. "Sadly, it seems that you have been influenced by the campaign of media misinformation and lies regarding Gaza orchestrated by the Hamas terrorist group," he wrote. He invited her to visit and see for herself the situation on the ground. The Genesis foundation said it was "very saddened" by Portman's decision and would cancel the prize ceremony, which had been set for June 28. "We fear that Ms. Portman's decision will cause our philanthropic initiative to be politicized, something we have worked hard for the past five years to avoid," it said. Portman said in her statement that the backlash has inspired her to make numerous contributions to charities in Israel. She pledged to announce those grants soon. The Genesis Prize was launched in 2013 to recognize Jewish achievement and contributions to humanity. Previous recipients include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, actor Michael Douglas, violinist Itzhak Perlman and sculptor Anish Kapoor. When Portman was announced late last year as the 2018 recipient, she said in a statement released by organizers at the time that she was "proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage." ||||| Natalie Portman Denounced by Israeli Government Over Decision Not to Attend Awards The move, believed to be in response to Israel's recent deadly shooting of Palestinian protestors, has been praised by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Israel's minister for culture and sports has denounced Natalie Portman's decision to decline an award in her homeland of Israel over politics. "I was saddened to hear that Natalie Portman has fallen as a ripe fruit in the hands of BDS supporters," stated Miri Regev, associating the actress' decision with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. "Natalie, a Jewish actress who was born in Israel, now joins those who refer to the success and wonder of the rebirth of Israel as 'a tale of darkness.'" Regev's reference was to the Oscar winner's 2015 directorial feature debut A Tale of Love and Darkness, an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Israeli author Amos Oz that was shot in Jerusalem. Portman was due to collect the Genesis Prize but pulled out Thursday, with a rep telling event organizers that "recent events in Israel have been extremely distressing to her and she does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel" and that "she cannot in good conscience move forward with the ceremony." The Genesis Prize honors notable individuals "who inspire others through their dedication to the Jewish community and Jewish values." Previous Hollywood honorees include actor Michael Douglas and musician Itzhak Perlman. The Genesis Prize Foundation announced Portman as the honoree in November. News of Portman's decision drew strong reaction on social media, with many taking offense not only at Portman's announcement but its timing, as Israel wrapped up its 70th Independence Day celebration on Thursday. "She's spitting in her homeland's face on our most celebratory day," read an online comment, while others called Portman's action nothing short of "treason" and "a shameful elitist choice against her fellow countrymen" and "succumbing to BDS movement's ploy." Some simply suggested the award be given to Gal Gadot, who "represents our country with great honor." Meanwhile, PACBI, the academic and cultural arm of the BDS movement and a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated pro-Palestinian activist group that seeks to cut global ties with Israel, praised Portman's move. "After decades of egregious human rights violations against Palestinians, Israel's recent massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza has made its brand so toxic that even well-known Israeli-American cultural figures, like Natalie Portman, now refuse to blatantly whitewash, or art-wash, Israeli crimes and apartheid policies," it said in a statement. While Portman declined further comment, the decision comes as an apparent response to mass protests on the Gaza-Israel border that saw scores of Palestinians shot dead by Israeli Defense Forces and more than 1,000 injured, and her ongoing opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Portman's criticism of Netanyahu dates back to his 2015 election day video message on Facebook urging supporters to hurry up and vote as, "The right-wing government is in danger, Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves." He later apologized, acknowledging, "the things I said a few days ago hurt some Israeli citizens." "We, who have such a history with anti-Semitism, should understand the danger of racism and of how we treat minorities, and I felt that his comments were very much not showing a Jewish spirit of equality and dignity and peace," said Portman during an interview that year with The News Company's Yonit Levi. "I think all Israelis know that it's much easier to criticize in Israel than outside, I don't know, it's such a hard combination to be — to obviously have deep love for the place you're from and also see what's wrong with it. So it becomes a tricky thing, certainly increasingly tricky." Additional reporting by Maya Cohen.

– Israeli-born Natalie Portman has set off a controversy in her native country with a decision to skip a prestigious award ceremony there for political reasons. Portman had been scheduled to travel to Israel in June to receive the Genesis Prize, which NBC News notes is known as the "Jewish Nobel." However, the actress informed prize organizers that she won't be making the trip because she would "not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel." Her rep cited "recent events" without providing specifics, but Portman is believed to be referring to Israel's use of deadly force against unarmed protesters on the border between Israel and Gaza. It's unclear whether Portman will still receive the $1 million in prize money from the Genesis Prize Foundation, which she planned to donate to women's groups, reports the New York Times. Portman has been publicly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and his polices in the past, and her decision to skip the award ceremony drew condemnation from Israel's minister of culture and sports, notes the Hollywood Reporter. "I was saddened to hear that Natalie Portman has fallen as a ripe fruit in the hands of BDS supporters," said Miri Regev, using the acronym for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. However, Israeli lawmaker Rachel Azaria said Portman's move signaled that Israel is losing the support of young Jewish people in America. "The price of losing them could be too high," she says. Portman was being recognized for her work in films, including 2015's Tale of Love and Darkness, an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by Israeli author Amos Oz that was set in Israel. Portman starred in the film and directed it.

Meltzer, 48, has an impressive ultrarunning resume that includes 38 100-mile race wins, a world record. He has won the Hardrock 100 five times and also holds the world record for most golf holes played in 12 hours at 230. This was Meltzer’s third attempt at setting the Appalachian Trail record. He finished the entire route in 2008, taking 54 days and missing the mark by a week. In 2014, he was forced to drop out after 1,500 miles because of an injury. To break the record, Meltzer averaged 47 miles a day through technical, and often hilly terrain. It is recommended that hikers attempting to complete the Appalachian Trail in one shot take at least six months. Melzter took a quarter of that time. For his latest and successful trek, he prepared meticulously with his crew. Last September they practiced the first six days of the trail—considered one of the most difficult sections. He also helped crew Jurek last year. Jurek credits Meltzer’s knowledge of the trail for helping him break the record last year. Jurek had broken the previous mark by three hours. Jurek returned the favor the past week, crewing Meltzer, along with Jurek’s wife, Jenny, and their four-month-old toddler, Raven. ||||| UPDATE: Meltzer’s website report on 9/18 reads: Karl Meltzer just set a new Appalachian Trail thru-hike speed record! 2,190 miles. 45 days. 22 hours. 38 minutes. redbull.com/atrun Look for a complete report on Competitor.com later this week. On Sept. 18 at 3:38 a.m., professional ultrarunner and Red Bull athlete Karl “Speedgoat” Meltzer emerged from the Appalachian Trail’s southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Ga., and set a new Appalachian Trail thru-hike speed record with a time of 45 days 22 hours and 38 minutes. Meltzer started his supported run at 5 a.m. on Aug. 3 from Mt. Katahdin, Maine, and averaged approximately 47 miles per day at a pace of 3.2 miles per hour. Meltzer’s time beats the previous record by more than 10 hours, which was set by Scott Jurek in 2015. Today’s accomplishment for Meltzer comes after two previous speed record attempts on the Appalachian Trail in 2008 and 2014. “It’s been a long journey,” Meltzer said. “I’ve been trying to get this record for eight years, and I was finally successful. It just took me three tries to do it. It’s a very special time right now, definitely a stamp on my career.” The project, in planning for more than two years, was accomplished with a small core crew consisting of Meltzer’s father, Karl Sr., and crew chief Eric Belz. Others joined the crew to support Meltzer for short periods throughout the hike, including Meltzer’s wife and fellow ultrarunners. The crew traveled alongside Meltzer every day, providing him with food, water, medical attention and logistical support. Meals were prepared and taken in a van, which also served as Meltzer and Belz’s sleeping quarters. “Eric Belz was the best. Karl Senior was amazing,” Meltzer said of his crew. “For the crew, enduring 46 days of this was probably harder for them than it was for me. Without them it wouldn’t have happened.” Meltzer’s time on the trail typically began around 5 a.m. and ended between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. with several big meals during the day consisting of steak, fried chicken, ice cream, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hamburgers, steamed vegetables, pasta, Red Bull and beer (at dinner). Meltzer averaged 60-70 minutes between the time he came off the trail and when he went to sleep; on a few occasions he slept on the trail itself rather than in his support van. After completing nearly 46 consecutive days, Meltzer took approximately 4.2 million steps (92,300 avg. per day), burned 345,100 calories (7,500 avg. per day), ran for 678 hours (14.8 avg. per day) and used up 20 pairs of shoes. Meltzer’s crew kept up with him using a satellite-linked SPOT tracker that reported his current location every two-to-three minutes. Daily updates from Meltzer’s journey are published on www.redbull.com/atrun to give running enthusiasts and fans an intimate look into the daily struggles and successes Meltzer and his crew faced on the trail from preparation until the finish. A camera crew traveled with Meltzer throughout his record-setting thru-hike, and a documentary film will be released in 2017. The Appalachian Trail runs from Maine to Georgia stretching 2,190 miles through 14 states. It is roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as the crow flies. A thru-hiker will experience 464,500 feet of elevation change, or 16 climbs of Mt. Everest. Thousands of people attempt an Appalachian Trail thru-hike every year, yet only one in four hikers finish the journey, and they typically take five to seven months to complete the entire trail, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. “The highlight of the trail is sitting here (at the end), but it’s also the magic of the place. Just being on the trail is really a highlight,” Meltzer said. In recent days, Metzler has enjoyed the support of company of former AT record-holder David Horton, as well as support from Jurek, the current record-holder. “His company on the trail has been greatly appreciated; the strong bond among the ultra community is at work here,” reads the Day 44 update on the Red Bull site that’s tracking his progress. “Karl had ups and downs mentally throughout the day, but physically his body is holding up well. He’s consistently knocked out each crew stop on time, and that allowed him to finish the day with 46 miles before sundown. As he reaches the final days, every ounce of energy counts; every step is critical.” “It’s crunch time,” the report says. “Whether Karl wants to cut the record close or shatter it is completely in his hands. If his body stays healthy and his crew strong, odds are, Karl will be the next AT record holder. Only the next 48-hours will tell.” Follow Meltzer’s progress by visiting redbull.com/atrun RELATED: Karl Meltzer Prepared to Go After AT Record Again

– Running through 14 states in 45 days, 22 hours, and 38 minutes may be a long and arduous journey, but as of this week it's also the fastest any person has ever completed a supported thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Karl Meltzer, a 48-year-old ultrarunner who also holds a world record for winning 38 100-mile runs, beat the record his friend Scott Jurek, six years his junior, set last year by 10 hours, reports Runner's World. To do this he had to endure a grueling regimen of nearly 50 miles in 15 hours every day, so it's not surprising that he ran through 20 pairs of shoes and, unlike the vegan diet kept by Jurek, indulged in bacon, steak, fried chicken, burgers, ice cream, PB&Js, candy, and at the end of each day, beer, reports Running. "It's been a long journey," he said, quite literally. The Appalachian Trail winds its way 2,190 miles through often rough terrain from Maine to Georgia—which, as the crow flies, is about the distance from Los Angeles to Washington, DC— providing runners with almost 465,000 feet of elevation change (that's like summiting Mt. Everest 16 times, minus the thin air). Of the thousands who attempt the thru-hike each year, one in four makes it and most take six months. Meltzer, who the New York Times reports used to be a ski-resort bartender, endured less than seven hours of sleep a night and, in his final push, covered 83 miles nonstop between Saturday morning and 3:38am Sunday. He celebrated by downing a pepperoni pizza and beer and going straight to sleep. (This woman ran the same stretch in 54 days without a support van.)

Viruses, it turns out, have most likely evolved to affect men in more severe ways than women: tuberculosis, papillomavirus, and others have that in common. Now a fresh study has discovered the surprising reason why that might be. And it’s not because pathogens are sexist. Part of the explanation could be the differences in the two sexes' immune systems. But scientists at the Royal Holloway University of London believe they've made a breakthrough in identifying the main reason - that women are more valuable hosts for the viruses. The differences in severity are stark. As it turns out, men are 1.5 times more likely to die of tuberculosis than women, twice more likely to develop Hodgkin's lymphoma from the Epstein-Barr virus as well – and a whopping five times more likely to develop cancer if infected with the papillomavirus. As the researchers point out, we may have the wrong idea about how a virus spreads and what really drives it. The answer, they say, lies in women’s capacity to create life: they’re simply more valuable to the virus than men. Read more The aim of a virus is not so much to infect, as it is to replicate itself as many times and within as many hosts as possible. Women win hands down here: with their ability to get pregnant, they inherit several ways of spreading a virus that men do not – from being pregnant to breastfeeding, even during birth itself. “Viruses may be evolving to be less dangerous to women, looking to preserve the female population,” Dr Francisco Úbeda, a biologist at Royal Holloway, confirms in the press release. Like other organisms, viruses are subject to natural selection. By using mathematical models, the Royal Holloway scientists posit that virus survival is more likely to happen in the less infected host, especially when the host is pregnant. This is aptly demonstrated in the case of the T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1), which has been shown to affect men in Japan more than either sex in the Caribbean. Why is that? Because traditionally, the Japanese breastfeed for longer, making it a more safe passage from the mother to infant. The virus does not want to infect the woman as much as it wants to be transmitted to the next host. Read more Where it gets interesting is the mechanism by which the virus knows whether it is inside a man or a woman. Vincent Jansen of Royal Holloway tells New Scientist that this is where continuing research should lie, as “there are all sorts of hormonal and other pathways that are slightly different between men and women.” And we can only manipulate virus behavior if we understand the mechanism. “We could try to make the virus think it’s in a female body rather than a male body and therefore take a different course of action,” Jansen adds. All of this is replicated in animals as well, with chicken populations showing greater propensity for male illnesses than female ones, according to Jansen, who wants research to continue with animals, where that particular sex dynamic has not been studied. “Survival of the fittest is relevant to all organisms, not just animals and humans. It's entirely probable that this sex-specific virulent behaviour is happening to many other pathogens causing diseases. It's an excellent example of what evolutionary analysis can do for medicine,” Úbeda adds in the press release. ||||| Hero Images/Getty Is man-flu a quirk of viral evolution? Some viruses might cause weaker symptoms in women than in men because it makes them more likely to spread. Many infections cause more severe illness in men than women. Men infected with tuberculosis are 1.5 times more likely to die than women; men infected with human papillomavirus are five times more likely to develop cancer than women; and men infected with Epstein-Barr virus are at least twice as likely to develop Hodgkin’s lymphoma as women. Latest news: Research on male animals prevents women from getting best drugs Many think this pattern is because of differences between the sexes’ immune systems. But another explanation is that women are more valuable hosts. Women can pass infections to their children during pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, so there’s an evolutionary pressure on viruses to be less harmful to them, say Francisco Úbeda and Vincent Jansen at Royal Holloway University of London. Advertisement Mother to child In order for a virus to infect others, it needs to produce more copies of itself in the body. Making their host ill is an unavoidable consequence of this. “That’s not something a pathogen particularly sets out to do because it’s shooting itself in the foot, should it have one,�? says Jansen. The researchers used mathematical modelling to show that, for pathogens that affect both sexes, natural selection in theory should favour those that cause less illness in women – as long as they can be transmitted from mother to child. This evolutionary pressure, they argue, could explain a longstanding puzzle: why human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) progresses to leukaemia much more commonly in Japanese men than Japanese women, but affects both sexes equally in the Caribbean. They argue that this discrepancy is because women breastfeed their babies more commonly and for longer in Japan – giving the virus more opportunity to enter another host. For this to be the case, though, the virus would have to be able to detect whether it’s inside a man or a woman. We don’t yet know how it would do this, but it’s not impossible, says Jansen. “There are all sorts of hormonal and other pathways that are slightly different between men and women,�? he says. If we were to identify a mechanism, that would open the possibility of manipulating it. “We could try to make the virus think it’s in a female body rather than a male body and therefore take a different course of action,�? says Jansen. Sex differences The study emphasises the need to conduct clinical trials in both sexes, rather than predominantly in men as is often the case, says David Duneau, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Toulouse, France. “The parasites themselves are behaving differently in males and females, so we need to know what they do in both sexes,�? he says. It’s refreshing to consider pathogen evolution as an alternative explanation for sex differences in diseases, says Sabra Klein, who researches differences in immune responses at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore. But she says the model’s assumptions about HTLV-1 transmission in Japan and the Caribbean ignore other variables – such as ethnicity or culture – that could also be involved. Jansen now plans to look at animal diseases, such as retroviruses that cause cancer in chickens. “When flocks of chickens are infected with a particular virus, we see that more of the male chickens develop tumours than females,�? he says. Could selection pressure on viruses bolster men’s claims that they are affected more strongly by colds or flu? It wouldn’t be expected, says Jansen, as mother-to-child transmission isn’t an important route for flu viruses. “To me, man-flu sounds like an excuse for men not to go to work,�? he says. Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13849 ||||| Model formulation We extend the classical SIR model23 incorporating vertical and horizontal transmission between male and female hosts (see Fig. 1 and Methods for details). We solve this model allowing pathogens to exhibit different virulence in men and women. Figure 1: Diagram showing our epidemiological model of vertical and horizontal transmission in males and females. We model the continuous change in time of the fraction of susceptible (subscript s), infected (subscript i) and recovered (subscript r) individuals in males (m) and females (f). Males and females born, B m and B f , are infected with probability αf i . Susceptible males and females, m s and f s , become infected with probability given by the force of infection in males H m =β(δ m )γ mm m i +β(δ f )γ fm f i and females H f =β(δ f )γ ff f i +β(δ m )γ mf m i . In a population at equilibrium every individual that dies is replaced with a new-born. Full size image There is a large literature on epidemiological models exploring the evolution of virulence in pathogens that are horizontally transmitted only24,25. There is a limited literature on epidemiological models exploring the evolution of virulence in pathogens that are vertically transmitted only26, showing that natural selection disfavours pathogens that are vertically transmitted only (when vertical transmission is uniparental) if they exhibit any degree of virulence26,27. Pathogens can only be maintained if they exhibit some special feature that compensates for the fitness loss caused by the death of their host26,28. Epidemiological models of pathogens that are only horizontally or vertically transmitted do not consider pathogens that may exhibit different virulence in men and women (but see ref. 29 for sex-specific virulence as a result of different resistance of male and female hosts). There is also a large literature on behavioural models exploring the evolution of male killing by pathogens transmitted exclusively through cytoplasmic inheritance (male-killers)30,31, that is, equivalent to male limited virulence in pathogens that are vertically transmitted only. Natural selection does not disfavour male-killers because their virulence is limited to the sex that does not transmit them and thus does not translate in any fitness loss32. However, natural selection favours male-killers only when the death of a male translates into greater fitness of females closely related to the male-killer (fitness compensation)28. Here we formulate an epidemiological model exploring the evolution of virulence in pathogens that are horizontally and vertically transmitted (mixed transmission). When there is mixed transmission, pathogens that are vertically transmitted can be maintained because they are also horizontally transmitted and not because they exhibit any form of fitness compensation26,27,33,34. Because of their complex nature, epidemiological models of mixed transmission are rare27,33,34,35,36, and they do not consider pathogens that may have different virulence in men and women. Thus, to the extent of our knowledge, ours is the first epidemiological model to consider pathogens with a sex-specific virulence. Most importantly, this model allows us to investigate the evolution of sex-specific virulence in pathogens causing infectious diseases—where horizontal transmission plays a role—when the only difference between the sexes is the presence of vertical transmission in women. In our model, infection can take place either through vertical transmission at a rate α or horizontal transmission at a rate β per contact (Fig. 1). Horizontal transmission can either be from males or females, that is β m and β f , where subscripts m and f denote males and females. Contacts can be established between any of the sexes, taking place at rates γ mm , γ mf , γ fm , and γ ff with the first subscript indicating origin and the second destination. We assume that the number of contacts per unit of time is independent of the number of individuals in the population. An infected individual either recovers at a rate σ, dies from causes unrelated to the infection at a rate μ (natural mortality), or dies from causes related to the infection at a rate ν (virulence) (Fig. 1). Therefore, infections are lost from the population at a rate δ equal to the sum of these rates (δ=σ+μ+ν; Fig. 1). Another way of interpreting δ is as the reciprocal of the average duration of the infection: the higher the δ, the shorter the average duration of the infection will be. The rate of loss of infection δ is the pathogen’s strategy to exploit its host (exploitation strategy). Crucially, we allow the pathogen’s exploitation strategy to be different in men (δ m ) and women (δ f ) (Fig. 1). Trade-off between virulence and recovery and transmission The higher the virulence ν, (and therefore the shorter the duration of the infection), the higher the horizontal transmission rate β37,38,39,40, that is β′(δ)>0 where prime denotes the derivative (see Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Table 1 for the notation used). We make the assumption—standard in evolutionary epidemiology models24,25,41—that there is a saturating trade-off between the horizontal transmission rate of a pathogen β from males and females, that is β m and β f , and its virulence ν in males and females, that is ν m and ν f , mediated by the sex-specific strategies δ m and δ f (refs 24, 25, 41), that is β m (δ m ), β f (δ f ) and ν m (δ m ), ν f (δ f ). Following classic vertical transmission models33,34 we make the assumption that the vertical transmission of a pathogen, α, is independent of its virulence, ν. Because we are interested in researching whether adding vertical transmission favours the pathogen to have different strategies in men and women (that is, whether evolution favours values of δ m and δ f that are not equal), we make the conservative assumption that the transmission-virulence trade-off is the same in pathogens residing in hosts of either sex, that is β m =β f =β and ν m =ν f =ν. Because transmission and virulence depend on the sex-specific exploitation strategies, this allows for the transmission and virulence of pathogens in women (β(δ f ) and ν(δ f )) to be different from those residing in men (β(δ m ) and ν(δ m )). ESS for a non-sex-specific strategy We derive the fitness of a mutant pathogen and the exploitation strategy that once established in the population cannot be beaten by any alternative exploitation strategy (ESS)32,42. We do this by finding the exploitation for which the selection gradient is zero (see Methods section at the end of the paper and Supplementary Methods for details of the derivation). We show that the non-sex-specific (δ m =δ f =δ) ESS, , satisfies: This result renders itself to a simple interpretation: can be interpreted as the fraction of time a pathogen spends in females in a population at equilibrium, can be interpreted as the average number of females that an infected son infects through horizontal transmission at equilibrium, and are the male and female birth rates at equilibrium (Fig. 2). The expression can be interpreted as the effective rate of vertical transmission (Fig. 2). In the absence of vertical transmission, α=0, we recover the classic result for the evolution of virulence in pathogens with horizontal transmission only24,25. Figure 2: Interpretation of parameters. Interpretation of parameter and expression . is the average number of females horizontally infected by a son and the male infections he will give rise to and results from adding up all possible transmission events to females. is the effective rate of vertical transmission. It results from calculating the probability of vertical transmission to sons and daughters and horizontal transmission from son to females with whom he establishes contact. Full size image ESSs for sex-specific strategies Solving for a different exploitation strategy in males and females, δ m and δ f , we determine the ESS for a male-specific strategy, : and the ESS for a female-specific strategy, : Notice that the ESS male-specific strategy is the same as the ESS non-sex-specific strategy when virulence is not expressed in females, that is, when , and the ESS female-specific strategy is the same as the ESS non-sex-specific strategy when virulence is only expressed in females, . In the absence of vertical transmission, α=0, there is no difference in virulence between the male- and female-specific strategies. See Table 1 for a summary of results. Table 1: Summary of results on the ESS host exploitation condition. Full size table Using a graphical method43 to analyse result (1) we confirm existing results indicating that a pathogen that is horizontally and vertically transmitted evolves to be less virulent than a pathogen that is horizontally transmitted only (Fig. 3a)34,44. Using the same graphical method to analyse results (2) and (3) we make two novel predictions: first, a pathogen that is horizontally and vertically transmitted is under selective pressure to evolve sex-specific virulence with lower virulence in females than males (Fig. 3b). The intuitive reason is that the existence of an additional route of transmission makes the life of hosts that transmit vertically—females but not males—more valuable to the pathogen. Second, the greater the vertical transmission the greater the difference in virulence between males and females a pathogen is selected for (Fig. 4). Therefore, given two populations that differ in their rates of vertical transmission, sex-specific virulence is more likely to be observed in the population with the greater rate of vertical transmission. Although this result is generic, the magnitude of the difference can depend on the model parameters (Supplementary Methods). Figure 3: Interpreting the ESS virulence levels with a graphical method. We use a graphical method similar to the one developed by van Baalen and Sabelis43 to determine which ESS virulence will be greater. (a) Comparison between the ESS virulence with and without vertical transmission in the absence of sex-specific strategies. Without vertical transmission (α=0) the ESS exploitation strategy ( ) is the point where the tangent of the horizontal transmission function (β′(δ)) crosses the abscissa in δ=0. With vertical transmission (α>0), the ESS exploitation strategy ( ) is the point where the tangent of the horizontal transmission function (β′(δ)) crosses the abscissa in . Notice that the tangent of the horizontal transmission function at the ESS is higher or equal with vertical transmission, that is . This implies that the ESS virulence is greater or equal without vertical transmission, that is . (b) Comparison between the ESS virulence when the virulence can differ in males and females. With male-specific virulence ( ) the ESS exploitation strategy ( ) is the point where the tangent of the horizontal transmission function crosses the abscissa in δ m =0. With female-specific virulence ( ) the ESS exploitation strategy ( ) is the point where the tangent of the horizontal transmission function crosses the abscissa in . Notice that the tangent of the horizontal transmission function at the ESS is higher or equal with female-specific virulence, that is . This implies that the ESS virulence is greater or equal in males, . Full size image Figure 4: Evolutionarily stable virulence levels as a function of the rate of vertical transmission. The probability of dying of the disease over a lifetime ( ) at the ESS for male specific, female specific and non-sex-specific exploitation strategies as a function of the rate of vertical transmission, α Parameters=1/80 σ f =σ m =0; ϕ=0.5, ; ; and . For these parameters the probability of dying of the disease for males, under male specific virulence will go to an ESS value of 6%. Full size image Evolutionary predictions are often hard to validate. However, in this case there is a unique natural experiment that allows us to test our prediction. HTLV-1 is a retrovirus that is horizontally transmitted via sexual intercourse and vertically transmitted via breast-feeding13. Infection with HTLV-1 can progress to ATL that is lethal. The Tax protein—encoded by the viral gene tax—orchestrates the oncogenic potential of the virus45,46, and therefore expression of the Tax protein is positively correlated to the virulence of the pathogen. The presence of anti-Tax antibodies is also an independent risk factor for sexual transmission47 but not for transmission through breast-feeding48. Therefore, the synthesis of Tax by HTLV-1 generates a trade-off between horizontal transmission and virulence in accordance with the assumptions of our model. HTLV-1 is highly prevalent in two foci located in Southern Japan and the Caribbean13. These foci differ in the relative importance of each transmission route with breast-feeding being more important in Japan and sexual intercourse being more important in the Caribbean. This claim is sustained by three observations: (i) in Japan the spatial distribution of HTLV-1 has a patchy structure characteristic of vertical transmission49,50,51 while in the Caribbean the distribution is more uniform52,53; (ii) HTLV-1 transmission through breast-feeding (vertical transmission) is not sex-biased but transmission through sexual contact (horizontal transmission) is female-biased. In Japan prevalence of HTLV-1 is unbiased early in life and female biased later in life (from age 40-50) which is consistent with vertical transmission being more important there50,51,54 while in the Caribbean prevalence of HTLV-1 is female biased all through adult life (from age 20)53,55; (iii) Japanese women include breast-milk in their children’s diet for longer time and in greater proportion than Caribbean women56,57,58 thus increasing the rate of vertical transmission per child59. That vertical transmission rate is larger in Japan than in the Caribbean leads us to predict that HTLV-1 should be less virulent in women relative to men in Japan than in the Caribbean (Fig. 5). This prediction is borne out by epidemiological data: Japanese men infected with HTLV-1 are between 2 and 3.5 times more likely to develop ATL than Japanese women are13,14,45. In contrast, Caribbean men infected with HTLV-1 are as likely to develop ATL as Caribbean women13,52,60 (Fig. 6). While it would be possible that this difference is caused by men being worse at fighting infectious diseases than women are in Japan but not in Jamaica it is unlikely. The male-to-female mortality ratio because of infectious diseases is 1.04 in Japan and 1.11 in Jamaica (GBD 2013 (ref. 61)). Notice that we would need the mortality ratio of those already infected in each country (which is not available) to provide a definitive answer but these figures suggest that the health of men relative to women in these countries do not differ significantly. There is also some indication that the virus acts differently between these two locations: significantly fewer Japanese carriers show an anti-Tax antibody response than Caribbean carriers do, which implies that the virus acts differently in the two regions and produces less Tax protein, and thus less leukaemia, in Japan45. Figure 5: Predicted sex-specific virulence in two populations with different rates of vertical transmission. Predictions for the evolution of sex-specific virulence in two populations where the relative weight of vertical transmission is lower (a) (for example, the Caribbean where transmission through breast-feeding is low) and higher (b) (for example, Japan where transmission through breast-feeding is higher). Figures show how the difference in virulence between men and women is predicted to be greater in Japan than in the Caribbean. Full size image Figure 6: Sex-differences in the virulence of HTLV-1 in Japan and the Carribbean. Data on the lifetime risk of progression to ATL among male HTLV-1 carriers relative to female carriers. The lifetime risk of progression to ATL is approximately the same in men and women in the Caribbean60 but between 2.0 and 3.5 times more likely in men than women in Japan14. Full size image We suggest that the geographical differences regarding progression to ATL that have puzzled scientists in the last two decades13,14,45 are, at least in part, caused by a sex-specific adaptation of HTLV-1 virulence. In Japan, where the importance of breast-feeding transmission relative to sexual transmission is greater, natural selection on HTLV-1 favours slower progression to ATL in women than men thus preserving women as a viral route of transmission. However, in the Caribbean where the importance of breast-feeding relative to sexual transmission is lower, natural selection on HTLV-1 does not favour any difference in progression to ATL between women and men.

– It is now well established that many viruses wreak more havoc on men than on women. Examples: Men are five times as likely to develop cancer from HPV as women, twice as likely to develop Hodgkin's lymphoma from the Epstein-Barr virus, and 1.5 times as likely to die of tuberculosis, per New Scientist. Scientists puzzling over why have suggested that women could have stronger immune systems, which would make sense from an evolutionary perspective given the importance of being able to bring offspring to term and nurse them through infancy. But now researchers using mathematical modeling say it might be the viruses themselves that have evolved to behave differently in their hosts depending on sex, and that includes in other animals like chickens, they report in the journal Nature Communications. Viruses spread between hosts by making more copies of themselves. But in doing so, they also make their hosts ill, which doesn't actually behoove them. "That's not something a pathogen particularly sets out to do because it's shooting itself in the foot," says one researcher. Because a virus so easily jumps from mother to fetus or infant, women are the superior host, and thus there is evolutionary pressure to harm them less, Reason reports. How a virus can determine the sex of its host is a mystery, though subtle differences in hormones and other pathways could play a role. If researchers can sort this out, they might be able to trick viruses into thinking they're always infecting women, and get them to go easy on the men, too. (These are the deadliest viruses to infect humans.)

Here's a look at the compelling events, athletes and storylines of the Sochi Olympics on Friday, Feb. 14. Alpine Skiing Men's super combined downhill, 1 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Men's super combined slalom, 6:30 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Americans Bode Miller and Ted Ligety could win medals in this event, which starts with one downhill run in the morning and concludes with an afternoon slalom. Miller is the defending Olympic champion. Ligety is the reigning world champion and also won the 2006 Olympic combined (which was one downhill and two slaloms). If Miller wins a medal, he will move into solo second on the all-time Olympic Alpine medals list with six, trailing Norway's Kjetil Andre Aamodt, who won eight. Ligety seeks his second Olympic medal. The top international contenders include Croatia's Ivica Kostelic, 34, who is the reigning Olympic and world silver medalist. He is also the older brother of Janica Kostelic, the most decorated female Olympic Alpine skier ever who is retired. Don't lose sight of France's Alexis Pinturault, either. Both Kostelic and Pinturault will be behind after the downhill. Even speed racer Aksel Lund Svindal has a shot here. He better be faster than Miller, Ligety and Kostelic in the downhill though. Much faster. Men's hockey Czech Republic-Latvia, 3 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Sweden-Switzerland, 7:30 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE The Czechs and Latvians both lost their openers, so both teams are looking to avoid being the last-place team in Group C. This is a meeting of three guys who used to face each other in the NHL in the 1990s -- Jaromir Jagr (41, Czech), Petr Nedved (42, Czech) and Sandis Ozolinsh (41, Latvia). This matchup is for the top spot in Group C after two games. The Swedes are coming off a 4-2 win over the Czechs, while the Swiss blanked the Latvians 1-0 behind Jonas Hiller. The Swiss have opted not to start Hiller though. Instead, they will go with Reto Berra of the Calgary Flames. Regardless, Sweden is the favorite here as it hopes to follow a path to its third straight gold at a European Olympics (if we're counting Sochi as a European Games). Figure Skating Men's free skate, 10 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE As expected, the top two men in the short program were Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu and Canada's Patrick Chan. Hanyu leads Chan by 3.97 points after breaking his own record with a 101.45-point short program. Hanyu and Chan are both looking to become their nations' first Olympic men's figure skating champions. American Jason Brown, is in sixth place but just .98 of a point behind third-place Javier Fernandez of Spain. Brown, who will skate last, could become the youngest Olympic figure skating medalist since Viktor Petrenko in 1988. The other American, Jeremy Abbott, struggled in his short program for the second straight Olympics and is in 15th, far out of the medal picture. Russian Yevgeny Plushenko, a four-time Olympic medalist, withdrew prior to his short program with a back injury Thursday. Women's skeleton runs 3 & 4, 10:40 a.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Americans Noelle Pikus-Pace and Katie Uhlaender could both win medals here, but gold will be very tough to grab. Great Britain's Lizzy Yarnold leads by .44 of a second after two of four runs. She's the World Cup season champion and looking to make it two straight women's skeleton golds for Great Britain after Amy Williams' 2010 title. Pikus-Pace, who had limited training this week due to a back injury, is in second place. She finished fourth in 2010, retired, had her second child and returned for a final Olympics. Russian Elena Nikitina came from nowhere for third place Thursday, .55 back of Yarnold. Nikitina, 21, has one career World Cup podium and would be the youngest skeleton medalist since 1928. Uhlaender is .14 behind Nikitina. She is the 2012 world champion and the silver medalist on this track in a World Cup event last year but hasn't been better than sixth in any World Cup this past season, missing time due to post-concussion effects. The first two runs of men's singles will precede the women. Men's hockey Canada-Austria, 12 p.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Norway-Finland, 12 p.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE Canada eased into the Olympics by beating Norway 3-1 on Thursday. Austria shouldn't pose any threat, either, in its first Olympic men's hockey tournament since 2002. The key will be how Roberto Luongo fares in net after Carey Price beat the Norwegians. You have to think the man named starter for the group finale against Finland will be in the driver's seat to stay there for the bracket-round games. Like Canada, Finland should be able to dispose of Norway. It scored eight times on 52 shots against Austria, making up for Tuukka Rask giving up four goals on 20 shots. Finland matched its highest goal output since 1992. Canada and Finland will likely be playing for Group C supremacy Sunday. Freestyle Skiing Women's aerials final, 12:30 p.m. ET -- CLICK HERE TO WATCH EVENT LIVE China is the world's deepest nation in aerials, which shouldn't be shocking given the gymnastics nature of the flipping, twisting event. It sends the 2010 Olympic silver medalist, 2013 world champion and two other women who have won World Cup events this season into qualification in the early evening. The top 12 women overall advance to the first round of finals at 2:30. The top eight from there will go to the second final, and the final four to the last final. Australia boasts the defending Olympic champion in Lydia Lassila, one of three non-Chinese women to make a World Cup podium in five events this season. The U.S. has two-time Olympian Ashley Caldwell and three-time Olympian Emily Cook. Caldwell, back from two torn ACLs, was second at the first World Cup event this season. ||||| Ted Ligety of the United States in action during a training session for the Alpine Skiing Men's Super Combined Downhill on day 6 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Rosa Khutor Alpine Center on Feb. 13, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. ( Clive Rose, Getty Images ) KRASNAYA POLYANA, russia — No matter how well Ted Ligety performs at the Sochi Olympics, he is unlikely to duplicate his stunning results at the world alpine championships a year ago in Austria. And he is quick to concede the point. Ligety became the first man to win three gold medals at the world championships since Jean-Claude Killy did it at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics. He won the super combined and the super-G, then captured the third gold in giant slalom, an event he has dominated the past five years. Talk about a hard act to follow. "I think winning three gold medals at the Olympics is probably somewhat of an unrealistic expectation," Ligety said with a wry smile. "There's a reason it hasn't been done in (46) years. There's so many guys that are specialists, and in the sport of ski racing the best guy often doesn't win. You have to have a quiet nonchalance about how you're going to go about your races. It's not swimming, where if you're the best guy in the world, you're going to win most likely." With giant slalom coming next week and the super-G on Sunday, Ligety makes his debut at these Games on Friday in the super combined, and he must be regarded as a medal contender. He finished first and second in two World Cup super combined races last month. Advertisement He won a gold medal in combined at the 2006 Turin Games, when combined consisted of a downhill run and two slalom runs. Now the super combined is a downhill with one slalom run. "I want to be able to try to get on the podium or win," Ligety said of Friday's race. "I think that's well within my grasp if I ski well. My downhill's gotten better all year long, I've felt more and more comfortable, so hopefully (Friday) I can piece together a good run and then have a good run of slalom as well. Hopefully that equals something metallic around my neck." The super combined pits racers better in downhill against racers who are better in slalom. The race can favor "speed" racers such as Bode Miller or "technical" specialists like Ligety and Alexis Pinturault of France, depending on course difficulty and other factors. "It's a challenging downhill for sure, which in some cases gives guys that have the ability to turn the ability to stay closer," Ligety said of the Sochi Olympic course. "We'll see. That's what is kind of cool about super combined. There's never really truly distinct favorites, just because somebody like myself or Pinturault can have really big swings in downhill ability. Guys like Bode can have big swings in slalom ability. That's what makes it cool."

– Sandro Viletta of Switzerland stunned the favorites and won the Olympic super-combined title today in a spring-like race in which the temperature soared to 55 degrees. Viletta finished in a two-run combined time of 2 minutes, 45.20 seconds. Ivica Kostelic of Croatia took the silver medal in this event for the third consecutive Olympics, 0.34 behind, and Christof Innerhofer of Italy took bronze, 0.47 behind, to add to his silver from downhill. It was more bad news for the US: Defending champion Bode Miller made a big mistake during his downhill run and finished sixth, while world champion Ted Ligety had a ragged slalom leg and placed 12th. Ligety had been considered a favorite and both were considered medal contenders.

I was nine years old when I first wanted to be an astronaut, and my first hero was Sally Ride. I looked up to her as a woman, a scientist, and an astronaut. Sally’s enthusiasm for life, boundless energy, intelligence, and passion for science were constant beacons throughout my formative years. Sally Ride was a trailblazer both for NASA and for working women everywhere. She showed women that they could achieve the same status as their male peers. Sally Ride’s integrity never faltered, even as a woman in a male-dominated profession for much of her career. You can understand just how sad I was to hear that Sally Ride passed away today, July 23, 2012, after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Sally is survived by her 27-year partner, Dr. Tam O’Shaughnessy, and her mother, Joyce. Before her official obituary today, Sally had always referred to her partner as “a good friend,” never feeding rumors or speculation as to her sexual preferences, keeping her private life … private. Born May 26, 1951, Sally Ride grew up wanting to be a scientist. She received four degrees including her PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1977. After answering a newspaper ad for astronaut applicants, Sally Ride became one of the first six women to join the NASA astronaut corp in 1978, beating out most of the other roughly 8000 applicants. During her pre-flight career, she served as Capsule Communicator (CapCom) and worked on developing the shuttle’s famous robotic arm. On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on STS-7 aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. During her historic flight, she became the first person to ever retrieve a satellite with the robotic arm that she had helped design. Her second flight on STS-41G, also aboard Challenger, took off on October 5, 1984. STS-41G was the first flight to carry a full seven person crew and was tasked with deploying a satellite and performing scientific Earth observations. Sally had spent 343 hours in space and was eight months into the training for her third flight when disaster struck NASA on January 28, 1986. After the Challenger accident, Sally served on the Challenger Accident Investigation Board and was tasked with reviewing mission operations. When the review was finished, she was permanently reassigned to NASA headquarters as special assistant to the administrator for long-range and strategic planning and ultimately became the first Director of the Office of Exploration. In 2003, Ride became the only member of the Columbia accident review board who had also served during the Challenger review. Listen to Sally describe in her own words what it meant to be the first female American in space and her memories of her experiences in space. This JPL interview was conducted on the 25th anniversary of her historic first flight. Sally Ride retired from NASA in 1987, and spent much of the next 14 years as a physics professor at UC-San Diego. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated to encouraging boys and girls to peruse STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers. Her company creates exciting and engaging classroom materials, programming, and professional development for teachers in hopes of inspiring children to pursue their scientific dreams. She has written or co-written seven different science books for children. Sally Ride’s life was filled to the brim with adventure and inspiration. Her legacy will be no different. Her company will continue to inspire children for years to come to pursue their dreams, and her memory will live as a constant reminder to everyone that dreams really do come true. We here at GeekMom want to thank you, Sally, for being an inspiration to us all. ||||| Story highlights Sally Ride, America' first female astronaut, died this week Meg Urry: For a handful of women, she was an irreplaceable leader She says Ride was part of a wave of accomplished women who broke through barriers Urry: In later years, Ride took on science literacy, opening doors for younger women Sitting in a meeting at NASA's Science Advisory Committee on Monday afternoon, I heard the news that Sally Ride had died. She was important to everyone in that room -- mostly space scientists and NASA officials. But for a handful of women like me, she was an irreplaceable leader. Sally Ride wasn't the first woman to go into space, or to want to do so, much less the first woman qualified to do so. She would have been the first to tell you that. But as the first U.S. woman in space, on STS-7, the seventh flight of America's new space shuttle, she was the first woman astronaut most Americans knew about. And she used that fame for good. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut whose pioneering flight took place only two years after her colleague Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. At NASA, in contrast, there was a 20-year gap between human (male) space flight and Ride's historic flight. Meg Urry Her giant step for womankind happened two decades later than it should have. That's why it was so important, especially for those of us women trying to succeed in male-dominated arenas. As STS-7 blasted off in 1983, I was finishing up my doctorate in physics -- astrophysics, to be more precise -- just as Ride had done a few years earlier. Most of my classmates were men, and I often felt out of place. Whether she shared that sense of being an outsider or not doesn't matter -- the important thing was that, thanks to her notoriety as a NASA astronaut, I found out about one more precious role model, someone in whose steps I could hope to follow. (OK, not the astronaut part -- I am far too chicken for that.) Ride made success seem attainable, even in the men-only world of physics. Born in 1951, Ride, like all women her age, grew up in a United States led by men, where it was major news if a woman became a pilot, ran for political office or headed a Fortune 500 company. JUST WATCHED First American woman in space dies Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH First American woman in space dies 01:24 JUST WATCHED Ride in 2006: Have to 'smash stereotypes' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Ride in 2006: Have to 'smash stereotypes' 01:01 JUST WATCHED 1983: Reagan honors Ride, astronauts Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 1983: Reagan honors Ride, astronauts 01:30 She was part of a wave of accomplished women who broke through the barriers. Ride was one of the first six women accepted by NASA for astronaut training in a class of 35 selected in 1978. They were all pioneers, but after the STS-7 crew was announced, Ride's name became a household word. The press attention at the time was relentless, but she weathered it with evident calm. For a student like me, it was empowering to see such a talented, poised, accomplished woman take on this challenge -- one of the "first woman this-or-that" breakthroughs I had dreamed about as a child. One of Ride's astronaut classmates, Kathryn Sullivan, became the first American woman to walk in space. In 1984, Sullivan and Ride were crew mates on the STS-41-G flight, Ride's second time in space. Both flights were on the Challenger. Ride was training for her third shuttle flight when the Challenger exploded, on January 28, 1986. That led to a three-year moratorium on NASA human space flight. Ride served on the NASA board investigating the Challenger disaster, then left NASA in 1987. For her, the bloom must have been off the space shuttle rose. Ride could easily have rested on her laurels. Instead, she took on the great challenge of science literacy, especially for girls. She had gotten her doctorate in physics at a time when few women did so. She knew firsthand the joy of doing science and the satisfaction of helping advance knowledge. That must be one of the reasons she worked toward a world in which other women were encouraged to do science, not pushed away. In 2001 she started a company, Sally Ride Science, that runs science camps and daylong festivals for middle school girls as well as trains science teachers. Sally Ride Science is a partner in the GRAIL MoonKAM , a camera on NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellite now orbiting the moon, the first NASA flight project dedicated fully to education and public outreach. Her company is also involved with EarthKAM on the International Space Station. The "KAM" in both names stands for Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students -- that was Ride's grail. In the early 1960s, as NASA was selecting the Mercury 7 to be America's first astronauts, several dozen U.S. women underwent similar evaluation, in secret. A group of women later known as the Mercury 13, including some of the finest aviators of the day, passed the same grueling physical and psychological tests as the Mercury 7. According to Martha Ackmann, author of "The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of 13 American Women and the Dream of Space Flight," some of the women scored better on the tests than their male counterparts of the Mercury 7. But none was ever accepted by NASA for training. Unlike Ride, the names of the women pilots and would-be astronauts are not widely known today: Jerrie Cobb, Bernice Steadman, Janey Hart, Jerri Truhill, Rhea Woltman, Sarah Ratley, Jan and Marion Dietrich, Myrtle Cagle, Irene Leverton, Gene Nora Jessen, Jean Hixson and Wally Funk. Some 40 years later, happily, they have been celebrated as pioneers and recognized with awards such as the Adler Planetarium's Women in Space Science award in 2005. I suspect these women appreciate the recognition but would rather have done what Ride did. They would rather have flown in space. Still, 343 hours in space wasn't all that Ride was about. Her true passion was opening doors for younger women, so they can follow their interests and talents without restrictions. Today, middle school students at Sally Ride Science learn the excitement and fun of science, the thrill and the challenge. Ride got to walk that walk in a big way. Her legacy is that other women do, too. Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion. Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion. ||||| Astronaut Sally Ride, mission specialist on STS-7, monitors control panels from the pilot's chair on the Flight Deck of the Space Shuttle Challenger in this NASA handout photo dated June 25, 1983. Floating in front of her is a flight procedures notebook. Sally Ride, who died today after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, was the first female U.S. astronaut in space and became friends with Tam O'Shaugnessy at the age of 12. It was not until today, however — nearly 50 years after meeting — that their 27-year romantic relationship was made public. The pioneering scientist was, a statement from Sally Ride Science announced, survived by "Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years." With that simple statement — listed alongside her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin and nephew, Whitney — Ride came out. Bear Ride, talking with BuzzFeed, said today, "We consider Tam a member of the family." Saying that her sister was a very private person, Bear Ride said, "People did not know she had pancreatic cancer, that's going to be a huge shock. For 17 months, nobody knew -- and everyone does now. Her memorial fund is going to be in support of pancreatic cancer. "The pancreatic cancer community is going to be absolutely thrilled that there's now this advocate that they didn't know about. And, I hope the GLBT community feels the same," Bear Ride, who identifies as gay, said. "I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them," she added. Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman from Sally Ride Science, the company Ride formed to provide educational materials and programs for schools, confirmed to BuzzFeed that there had not, to her knowledge, previously been published acknowledgment of Ride and O'Shaugnessy's relationship. Bear Ride, though, said that her sister "never hid her relationship with Tam. They have been partners, business partners in Sally Ride Science, they've written books together .... Sally's very close friends, of course, knew." O'Shaugnessy is the chief operating officer and executive vice president for Sally Ride Science, as well as an emeritus professor at San Diego State University. Sally Ride had previously been married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley in 1982; they divorced in 1987. Ride went into space on two missions, first in 1983 and then again in 1984. Of Sally Ride's sexual orientation, Bear Ride said, "Sally didn't use labels. Sally had a very fundamental sense of privacy, it was just her nature, because we're Norwegians, through and through." Calling Ride "a patriot and a pioneer," Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin told BuzzFeed, "For many Americans, coming out will be the hardest thing they ever do. While it's a shame that Americans were not able to experience this aspect of Sally while alive, we should all be proud of the fact that like many LGBT Americans, she proudly served her country, had a committed and loving relationship, and lived a good life." Of the further implications of today's news, Griffin added: "The fact that Sally Ride was a lesbian will further help round out Americans's understanding of the contributions of LGBT Americans to our country. Our love and condolences go out to her partner." Asked about those who would have opposed legal recognition of her sister's relationship, Bear Ride bluntly replied, "Who cares about them, really? There are those who are stubbornly ignorant, and if they want to continue in that, God bless them, but probably best not to talk to my family." ||||| That wasn't too hard, was it? But it takes a long time into the NYT obit of Sally Ride for readers to realize that the first American woman in space was a lesbian, and, even then, you have to be alert. Maybe this could have tipped them off: Dr. Ride was known for guarding her privacy. She rejected most offers for product endorsements, memoirs and movies, and her reticence lasted to the end. At her request, NASA kept her illness secret. In 1983, writing in The Washington Post, Susan Okie, a journalist and longtime friend, described Dr. Ride as elusive and enigmatic, protective of her emotions. “During college and graduate school,” Dr. Okie wrote, “I had to interrogate her to find out what was happening in her personal life.” Now talk about a buried lede! The only thing preventing the NYT from writing an honest obit is homophobia. They may not realize it; they may not mean it; but it is absolutely clear from the obit that Ride's sexual orientation was obviously central to her life. And her "partner" (ghastly word) and their relationship is recorded only perfunctorily. The NYT does not routinely only mention someone's spouse in the survivors section. When you have lived with someone for 27 years, some account of that relationship is surely central to that person's life. To excise it completely is an act of obliteration. I'm afraid the Beast's tribute is worse. Lynn Sherr manages to write an appreciation which essentially treats Ride as a heterosexual. When Sherr writes this ... In technological terms, NASA was pushing ahead toward the 21st century. But in human terms, it had finally entered the 20th. And it could not have picked a better pioneer. ... she is referring to Ride's gender, not her sexual orientation. And one often over-looked aspect of this is the long-standing discomfort of some in the feminist movement with lesbians in their midst. Feminists often "inned" lesbian pioneers, or the lesbians closeted themselves. This was not because they were in a reactionary movement; it was because they were in a progressive movement that did not want to be "tarred" with the lesbian image. (Think of Bayard Rustin for a gay male equivalent). Now, of course, Ride chose the closet throughout her life. Given who she was, how independent and brilliant, brave and cool, this is surely testament to how deep homophobia ran in American life. But it may also, as one reader suggests, be part of a welcome shift: We only know O'Shaugnessy is a female from that vague abstraction - "partner" - and from a parenthetical statement that Ms. O'Shaugnessy was the CEO of the late Ride's company. I have no idea if Ride was out to her friends or out to the public. But this could be another replication of the Anderson Cooper phenomenon - a movement towards a gay equality where people can come out on their own terms, without making what they perceive to be a big deal out of it. Hopefully we're getting to the point where being gay is an utterly unremarkable fact in a great American life. Another: I don't always keep up with the latest on who has come out openly, but this certainly came as a surprise to me. I guess putting this information at the end of the obit is in line with the Times's treatment of sexuality; they certainly would not go out of their way to identify someone as heterosexual other than in listing survivors. That alone shows how far we've come. But are we really in a world where the fact that one of the most respected and pioneering women of the past quarter century was a lesbian is not worthy of mentioning more prominently? According to the obit, Ride was very concerned with promoting women's opportunities in the sciences. She apparently was not as interested in promoting opportunities, or visibility at least, for gays and lesbians (at least, no such efforts are mentioned), which is a shame. But assuming that she was not out before her death, I don't think we can judge this as a failing. We all do what we can, and play the role we are most comfortable with. Now that the information is in the open, the LGBT community has another heroine to claim as our own and celebrate posthumously. I'm not so understanding. We can judge this decision in the context of Ride's life. Her achievements as a woman and as a scientist and as an astronaut and as a brilliant, principled investigator of NASA's screw-ups will always stand, and vastly outshine any flaws. But the truth remains: she had a chance to expand people's horizons and young lesbians' hope and self-esteem, and she chose not to. She was the absent heroine. (Photo: Sally Ride in June 1983, on the shuttle "Columbia." NASA / AP Photo)

– A sample of some of the commentary after the death of Sally Ride, who became the first US woman in space in 1983: Helene McLaughlin, GeekMom: "I was nine years old when I first wanted to be an astronaut and my first hero was Sally Ride," writes the astrophysicist. Her "life was filled to the brim with adventure and inspiration," and the company she founded will continue to inspire young girls. Meg Urry, CNN: She used her "fame for good," writes the Yale professor. Ride could have sat back after her historic shuttle trip, but "instead, she took on the great challenge of science literacy, especially for girls." Her legacy can be found in the youngsters she's still inspiring. Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast: Her professional achievements may be brilliant, but Sullivan wishes she were more of a trailblazer in her personal life. Ride was lesbian, which didn't become widely known until she died (as BuzzFeed notes). "She had a chance to expand people's horizons and young lesbians' hope and self-esteem, and she chose not to," writes Sullivan. "She was the absent heroine."

Paris police on Saturday confirmed press reports that the princess had tried to do a runner on the swanky Shangri-La hotel on Paris’s posh avenue Iéna, near the Arc de Triomphe. Interactive map of France They contacted the Saudi embassy and searched the dozens of bags being carried by her companions. No charges appear to have been made since Al-Sudani enjoys diplomatic immunity and the hotel said Saturday that it has no unpaid bills at the moment. The princess already had a dubious reputation in Paris’s luxury establishments after leaving bills of as much as 15 million euros for jewels, clothes and hotel accommodation behind her in 2009. Then the fashion chain Key Largo went to court to obtain 89,000 euros she owed. King Abdallah then grounded her, confining her to a palace for two years. But she returned to Paris in 2011, taking over the entire seventh floor of the Shangri-La, 41 suites and rooms, at about 20,000 euros a night. She had managed to pay about 10 million euros of her bill before her pre-dawn departure. She reportedly intended to move to the nearby Royal Monceau hotel in the hope that it’s Qatari owners would be more understanding of payment problems. ||||| Saudi princess tried to leave hotel without paying PARIS — A Saudi princess was caught trying to leave the Shangri-La hotel in Paris without settling a six million euro ($7.4 million) bill for her rooms, police said Saturday, confirming a report in the daily Le Parisien. Maha al-Sudani, the former wife of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, tried to walk out on 3:30 am Thursday without paying for her suite and those of her 60-strong entourage, prompting staff to call in police, Le Parisien reported. The Saudi Arabian ambassador was also contacted during the incident, added Le Parisien, which noted that Sudani enjoys diplomatic immunity. When contacted by AFP, the luxury hotel's director Alain Borgers said that that are "no problems" with its clients and "no unpaid bills" at the moment. The princess has already had previous run-ins over unpaid bills. In 2009, fashion chain Key Largo went to court to obtain 89,000 euros owed by the princess. Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ||||| Saudi princess tries to flee from €6m hotel bill in Paris Paris’ Shangri-La hotel, where a Saudi princess tried to leave on without paying a 6m euro bill Saudi Princess Maha al-Sudani has been stopped by French police as she was trying to sneak out of a luxury hotel in Paris without paying a 6 million-euro bill for the rooms. Hotel staff called the police as the former wife of Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz was trying to leave the Shangri-La hotel, where she had reserved a 41-room floor since Christmas without paying for her room and those of her 60-strong entourage.She was then stopped as her extensive baggage was being put into a fleet of limousines, Police said on Saturday, confirming the news earlier reported by the media.The Saudi Arabian ambassador was then contacted, as ex-wife of the man second in line to the throne apparently wanted to enjoy diplomatic immunity.The princess and her servants were then offered refuge at the Royal Monceau, a luxuary hotel owned by Emir of Qatar.Sudani has already had a dubious reputation in the luxury businesses in the French capital as she left bills of about 15 million euros for jewels, clothes and hotel rooms unpaid in 2009.She formerly claimed diplomatic immunity in Paris in 2009, when the fashion chain Key Largo took legal action against her to obtain 89,000 euros she owed.Furious King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud then grounded her and confined her to a palace for two years, as she was considered a royal pain in Saudi Arabia.SAB/JR/AZ

– Etiquette lesson of the day, folks: Paying for things is generally considered polite, even if you're royalty and have diplomatic immunity. This lesson was apparently lost on Saudi Princess Maha al-Sudani (ex to Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz), who was caught last week trying to sneak out of a luxury hotel in Paris without paying her $7.5 million bill, according to RFI. The hotel staff called the cops when al-Sudani tried to leave at 3:30am with her 60-member entourage, who had taken over a 41-room floor of the Shangri-La since December. When police arrived, al-Sudani was still loading her copious baggage into a bevvy of limousines, according to Press TV. No charges were filed, ostensibly thanks to her diplomatic immunity, but the hotel appears to have gotten its money in the end. When contacted by the AFP, it said it had "no problems" with clients, and "no unpaid bills." The princess, who was "grounded" in a palace for two years by King Abdallah after running up other massive bills in 2009, was eventually given refuge at a hotel owned by the emir of Qatar.

Fearing a tide of spending by outside conservative groups, President Obama is giving his blessing to a pro-Democratic Party “super PAC” that will work to help his reelection, his campaign said late Monday. Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a message to supporters that “our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it stands,” which he said gives a large financial advantage to Republicans and their allied groups. Messina said Obama will throw his support to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC founded by two former White House aides that until now has been unable to match its conservative competitors in fundraising. “We can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm,” Messina wrote. Dan Eggen will live chat with readers at 1 p.m. ET on what Obama’s reversal on super PACs means. Submit questions, comments and opinions now. The move marks a clear political risk for Obama, who has staked much of his political career on opposition to the outsized role of “secret billionaires” and other monied interests while also attempting to win reelection in a struggling economy. The decision underscores the dramatic changes that have rocked the U.S. political system in the wake of a series of rulings, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that have made it easier for corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to bankroll political advertising and other efforts. The clearest example of the changes have been super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited funds as long as they do not directly coordinate with candidates, who nonetheless can help raise limited amounts of money for them. Priorities USA raised just $6.7 million in 2011 between its super PAC and related nonprofits, officials have said. That sluggish pace put it far behind its Republican rivals, in part because many major Democratic donors said they did not feel the Obama campaign was supportive of the effort. Obama has regularly slammed the Citizens United decision as misguided, and complained about super PACs in an interview aired earlier Monday on NBC News. “Unfortunately right now, partly because of Supreme Court rulings and a bunch of decisions out there, it is very hard to get your message out without having some resources,” he said. Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for American Crossroads, one of the largest Republican-leaning groups, called the shift a “brazenly cynical move by Barack Obama and his political handlers, who just a year ago had the chutzpah to call outside groups a threat to democracy.” Messina said senior Obama campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events, but will not solicit donations during the appearances. Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will not appear at any Priorities USA events, he said. Super PACs have outpaced regular campaigns in the GOP primary race, including one group supporting Newt Gingrich fueled by $11 million from casino magnate Shel Adelson and his family. Many other outside nonprofit groups are also able to spend unlimited funds on elections without having to reveal their donors. ||||| WASHINGTON — President Obama is signaling to wealthy Democratic donors that he wants them to start contributing to an outside group supporting his re-election, reversing a long-held position as he confronts a deep financial disadvantage on a vital front in the campaign. Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to deliver speeches on behalf of Mr. Obama at fund-raising events for Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic “super PAC,” whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign’s National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and announced in an e-mail to supporters. “We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” Jim Messina, the manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, said in an interview. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.” Neither the president, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., nor their wives will attend fund-raising events or solicit donations for the Democratic group. A handful of officials from the administration and the campaign will appear on behalf of Mr. Obama, aides said, but will not directly ask for money. The decision, which comes nine months before Election Day, escalates the money wars and is a milestone in Mr. Obama’s evolving stances on political fund-raising. The lines have increasingly blurred between presidential campaigns and super PACs, which have flourished since a 2010 Supreme Court ruling and other legal and regulatory decisions made it easier for outside groups to raise unlimited donations to promote candidates. The Republican National Committee sharply criticized the decision. A spokesman, Joe Pounder, declared: “Yet again, Barack Obama has proven he will literally do anything to win an election, including changing positions on the type of campaign spending he called nothing short of ‘a threat to our democracy.’ ” The outside groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in the presidential race by running aggressive advertising campaigns, often attacking opponents. Mr. Obama said in 2008 that he did not want support from outside groups and took a strong stand against the influence of special-interest money in politics, effectively shutting down independent activity on his behalf. For his re-election campaign, he did not object to the formation of Priorities USA Action, which is run by two former White House aides, but until now had done nothing overtly to help the group. His past criticism of outside groups, some Democrats said, had made it hard to persuade donors to back Priorities USA Action, contributing to its problems in keeping up with conservative groups. “It’s hard to pass the plate for super PAC money while Democratic leaders have been preaching about the sins of it,” said Robert Zimmerman, a New York fund-raiser for Mr. Obama. “But the reality is, it is essential in 2012.” Several Democratic financiers said they were alarmed last week by fund-raising reports from the major Republican super PACS. Two groups that were formed with help from the Republican strategist Karl Rove, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, raised $51 million between them last year for the Congressional and presidential races. Groups supporting specific Republican presidential candidates brought in roughly $40 million. But the major Democratic groups, including Priorities USA Action, raised only $19 million for the year. Those lopsided figures led Mr. Messina to send his top network of donors an e-mail last week urging them to raise more money. “Due to unlimited and unprecedented super Pac spending, we may have no spending advantage (as we did in 2008) and could in fact get outspent,” Mr. Messina wrote in the e-mail. “I thought this might help you put the other side’s efforts into some context as you talk to friends and supporters about why we need their help and we need it now.” But major donors to Mr. Obama said in interviews that they were not sure the Democratic super PAC’s lackluster fund-raising was due entirely to the president’s public misgivings about outside spending. One longtime, high-dollar Democratic fund-raiser said it was also partly a result of Wall Street’s anger at Mr. Obama’s statements and policies concerning bank regulation, some of which have sent former Obama donors and fund-raisers to the Republicans.

– President Obama has made no secret of his distaste for super PACs, but now he's signaling that his wealthy supporters should feel free to donate to one on his behalf. In a message to supporters yesterday, campaign manager Jim Messina said Obama is now embracing the efforts of Priorities USA Action, a pro-Democrat super PAC formed by two former White House aides, because it's time to "face the reality of the law as it stands"—or hand Republicans a huge financial advantage. Two major Republican super PACs raised $51 million last year between them, while groups supporting individual GOP presidential candidates raised around $40 million. Meanwhile, Priorities USA Action and other big Democratic groups raised just $19 million, the New York Times reports. A spokesperson for one Republican super PAC called Obama's shift a "brazenly cynical move," considering the president once called "outside groups a threat to democracy"—and it certainly is a political risk, the Washington Post notes. As part of the decision, Obama himself will not attend Priorities USA Action events, but senior campaign staffers, White House advisers, and Cabinet officials will. (Click to watch Buzzfeed's "greatest hits" of Obama's attacks on Citizens United.)

Rumor has it Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez are back together. The former couple, who split in November 2012 after nearly two years of dating, were spotted kissing in Oslo, Norway, according to People. The 20-year-old "Spring Breakers" star traveled to Oslo to be with the 19-year-old pop star, who performed a concert there on April 18. An insider tells People that the pair looked to have rekindled their romance. "They were holding hands, hugging and they kissed on the lips," the source reveals. "They looked really in love, like no fights ever happened before. It definitely looked like they were back together." And TMZ has proof Gomez is still on Bieber's brain, sharing photos of the "As Long As You Love Me" singer's screensaver on his iPhone -- which just so happens to be a snapshot of his gorgeous ex-girlfriend. The photo of Gomez is from a March 4 photoshoot. According to the Daily Mail, a source said that Bieber and Gomez "have a crazy connection." "They just can't seem to break their connection," the insider adds. "It can be intense." Still, Gomez just told Ellen DeGeneres that she's happy and doing "great" after her split with the Biebs. So, we'll have to wait and see if the flame has really been reignited ... Also on HuffPost: ||||| One of Hollywood’s most talked about on-and-off couples may be on again. Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez are making big headlines again thanks to a photo that briefly surfaced on the wonderful world of Instagram early Sunday. The intimate snapshot, featuring Gomez with her eyes closed as Bieber looks straight into the camera, was shared on the Biebs’ Instagram account long enough for the production of screenshots by everyone from Beliebers to TMZ. The photo has since been taken down. The new Jelena photo comes just days after Gomez, 20, was spotted jetting off to Norway, where Bieber was touring. “They were holding hands, hugging and they kissed on the lips,” a source told PEOPLE. “They looked really in love, like no fights ever happened before. It definitely looked like they were back together.” And while in Amsterdam last week, Bieber, 19, was spotted clutching onto his iPhone, which featured a background image of his potentially on-again flame. Bieber is due in Stockholm for three consecutive shows, beginning on Monday. Gomez recently performed her new single, “Come and Get It” at the MTV Movie Awards. Earlier this week, the Spring Breakers star appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and revealed that no one had asked her out since her November split from the Biebs. Do you think Jelena are back together? ||||| LIVING in squalor and watching every penny, George Bieber admits that no one would guess he is the doting grandad of Justin Bieber, one of pop’s wealthiest stars. The ailing 61-year-old has not even been able to fix the hole left by a tree hitting the roof of the wooden cabin that has been his home for 40 years.

– With a name like George Bieber, you'd think a person would have it made. But no, Justin Bieber's 61-year-old grandfather is, as the Sun puts it, "living in squalor." He has work-related back problems that keep him from working—or even making it upstairs in his cabin, where he beds down on a "dirty mattress." And speaking of the cabin, a tree left a hole in the roof, and George doesn't have enough money to fix it. Yet his super-rich grandson isn't helping him out—though he often sends his other set of grandparents on trips and buys them houses and cars, George says. "He’s got too big for his britches," says George, the father of Justin's dad, Jeremy. According to the New York Daily News, George says Justin hasn't even visited in years, never calls, and has only sent a small amount of Christmas cash and a TV. Right now George and his wife are just barely getting by: "His grandma has a bad back, too, but works like a dog hauling huge bags of paint powder 40 hours a week" at a factory job, George says. In other Bieber news, Justin might be back with Selena Gomez: They were recently spotted kissing in Norway, and then Bieber posted and deleted a picture of them together.

With the Olympic games scheduled for later this year in Brazil, athletes and national Olympic committees across the globe are expressing concern about the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. George Boville, an Olympic bronze medalist swimmer for Trinidad and Tobago in the 200 meter individual medley and two-time world champion, told ABC News that he was worried about going to Brazil, where the outbreak of the Zika virus in the Americas started. "It is definitely a concern," he told ABC News via Twitter. By the time of the Olympic games, "it should be rampant." The New Zealand Olympic Committee and the Australian Olympic Team Committee have already told their athletes to take protective measures. The New Zealand Olympic Committee said they are abiding by government recommendations, which at this point advise "expectant mothers or those planning pregnancy do not travel to areas with the Zika virus present." "We would support any athlete or support staff member in their decision to not attend the games if this were the case," the committee said in a statement last week. The Australian Olympic Committee said they are advising all athletes to wear long sleeves and that any team member who is "pregnant at the time of the Games need to consider the risks very carefully before deciding whether to proceed with travel to Brazil." American wrestler Adeline Grey told reporters at a test event on Sunday at Rio's Olympic Park that she didn't plan to skip the games, but that if she were pregnant she would reconsider participating. "If I was planning to have a child next month, I would be extremely uneasy about this," Gray said, according to the Associated Press. "Maybe that would have changed my decision" to come to Rio for the test event. The International Olympic Committee released a note on Friday to all Olympic committees outlining medical advice. "We remain confident that there will be a safe environment for successful and enjoyable Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro," the IOC said in the statement. The United States Olympic Committee officials said they are most concerned about the well-being of athletes and staff going to the games. "We continue to closely monitor the situation through the CDC and have ongoing contact with the International Olympic Committee, the organizing officials in Rio, the World Health Organization and infectious disease specialists with expertise in tropical diseases, including the Zika virus," the USOC said in a statement. The Zika virus is characterized by mostly mild symptoms, including fever, rash and fatigue. However, it has been associated with a worrying rise in a dangerous birth defect called microcephaly, where an infant is born with an abnormally small head. It has been known to be associated with developmental delays and seizures. Rio 2016's communications director, Mario Andrada, said there currently was no measurable reaction in ticket-holders, according to Reuters. "Tickets have not been returned nor trips canceled," he said, according to Reuters. Pregnant Olympic athletes are a rare occurrence, but multiple women have reportedly competed while they were unknowingly pregnant. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Kerri Walsh Jennings was five weeks pregnant when she won the gold medal, according to ESPN.com. And many of those who travel to the Olympics are the family members of the athletes. ||||| NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States Olympic Committee told U.S. sports federations that athletes and staff concerned for their health over the Zika virus should consider not going to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in August. The logos of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and Rio 2016 Paralympic Games are pictured next to a message on a screen that reads "Message about Zika" during a media briefing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes The message was delivered in a conference call involving USOC officials and leaders of U.S. sport federations in late January, according to two people who participated in the call. Federations were told that no one should go to Brazil “if they don’t feel comfortable going. Bottom line,” said Donald Anthony, president and board chairman of USA Fencing. The USOC’s briefing to sport federations is the latest sign that Olympics officials are taking the Zika threat to the games in Rio de Janeiro seriously, and acknowledging that at least some athletes and support staff could face a tough decision over whether to attend. The United States won most medals at the last Olympics in London in 2012, so any disruption to its presence would be important for the Rio games. Global health authorities suspect the mosquito-borne Zika virus has caused a spike in Brazil of microcephaly, a birth defect marked by an abnormally small head. As a result, the World Health Organization declared an international health emergency Feb. 1, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is advising pregnant women or those considering becoming pregnant to avoid travel to places with Zika outbreaks. The USOC’s Alan Ashley, its chief of sport performance, and other USOC officials, briefed the leaders of the federations. Ashley did not respond to email or phone calls requesting comment. USOC spokesman Mark Jones confirmed by email that Ashley had “briefed federation leaders on the CDC’s recommendations and we will continue to ensure that athletes and officials affiliated with Team USA receive any updates from the CDC.” The USOC has not issued its own set of recommendations for athletes and staff beyond what the CDC and WHO have issued. Jones declined to comment further or respond to specific questions from Reuters before publication. In a statement on Monday, another USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said media reports that the USOC has advised U.S. athletes to reconsider competing in Rio due to the Zika virus were inaccurate. It was unclear what media reports he was referring to and he couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. “Team USA looks forward to the Games and we did not, would not and will not prevent athletes from competing for their country should they qualify,” Sandusky said. EXPRESSED OPTIMISM Recalling the conference call, Anthony, a former Olympian, said: “One of the things that they immediately said was, especially for women that may be pregnant or even thinking of getting pregnant, that whether you are scheduled to go to Rio or no, that you shouldn’t go.” “And no one should go if they feel at all as though that that threat could impact them,” said Anthony, who praised the USOC’s handling of the outbreak so far. Zika outbreaks have been reported in 33 countries, most of them in the Americas. Symptoms of infection often are mild or imperceptible. But the outbreak in Brazil that began last year has been accompanied by more than 4,000 cases of suspected microcephaly; investigators have confirmed more than 400. The link to Zika is unproven but strongly suspected. Related Coverage Factbox: Impact of Zika virus on Olympic preparations In El Salvador, which is experiencing outbreaks of the virus, women are being advised to put off pregnancy until 2018. Will Connell, Director of Sport at the U.S. Equestrian Federation, said the USOC was leaving the decision up to individual athletes and staff members. “They said no one who has reasons to be concerned should feel obliged to go,” Connell said. “If an athlete feels that way, of course they may decide not to go.” During the call, the USOC did not indicate they were concerned that large numbers of athletes would avoid Rio or that Zika could derail the Games, the two federation leaders said. Instead, officials expressed optimism that risk would be minimized by close cooperation among health agencies, mosquito control efforts and the Games’ timing during Brazil’s winter when mosquito-borne illnesses are less common. The USOC officials on the call said the organization would adhere to the recommendations of health agencies including the CDC, the sport federation leaders said. “As we get closer to the Olympics the guidance could get updated,” Connell said. In a Jan. 29 letter from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to national committees, the IOC’s chief doctors said they were monitoring the situation closely. They passed along mosquito avoidance advice, but remained confident the games would go ahead as planned. The Australian and New Zealand Olympic Committees said they had already warned their athletes of the potential dangers for pregnant women. “If any athletes on the team felt they didn’t want to go, we would absolutely support them on that,” an NZOC spokeswoman said on Tuesday. An Australian Olympic Committee spokeswoman said they would “totally understand” if an athlete chose not to go to Brazil. “But at this point no athletes have indicated they intend to withdraw from the team,” she added. Both Connell and U.S. Fencing’s Anthony said the USOC’s message was focused primarily on the potential risks for women who are pregnant or are thinking about trying to become pregnant. Since the call, the CDC has issued more guidance in light of increasing suspicion that Zika can be transmitted sexually. The CDC said Friday that men who reside in or have traveled to Zika-affected areas may want to abstain from sexual activity or use condoms. The Olympics have long promised to be a triumphant showcase for Latin America, which is playing host to the global sports spectacle for the first time. Rio has also been expecting more than 380,000 tourists for the Games, which come as Brazil’s economy is mired in recession and its government reels from a corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras. An ongoing Zika epidemic could prompt some athletes, staff, sponsors and high-spending tourists to steer clear of the Games. Even if the risk of infection to any given visitor is very low – as health experts expect – uncertainties persist. There is no Zika vaccine, and currently available blood tests cannot always detect the virus. Olympics officials “are taking the right approach from a standpoint of, let’s be cautious, do not do anything that is going to put anybody, our staff or our athletes in danger,” Anthony said. Anthony said no U.S. fencers had spoken to him about Zika. “I think our athletes are aware,” he said. “But it has not become a mission critical issue yet. Not yet.”

– If the US medal count is lower than normal at the Summer Olympics this year, blame mosquitoes. The United States Olympic Committee has spread the word to American athletes: If the Zika virus worries them, they should skip the Games in Brazil, reports Reuters. The message came in a conference call to the leaders of US sports federations, and the head of USA Fencing says that the "bottom line" was clear enough: Nobody should head to Rio "if they don't feel comfortable going." ABC News previously rounded up concerns of US athletes, including wrestler Adeline Grey saying she might have opted out of a recent competition in Rio had she been pregnant.

Visitors observe a diorama depicting a caged dinosaur inside a replica Noah's Ark at the Ark Encounter theme park during a media preview day, Tuesday, July 5, 2016, in Williamstown, Ky. The long-awaited... (Associated Press) Visitors observe a diorama depicting a caged dinosaur inside a replica Noah's Ark at the Ark Encounter theme park during a media preview day, Tuesday, July 5, 2016, in Williamstown, Ky. The long-awaited theme park based on the story of a man who got a warning from God about a worldwide flood will debut... (Associated Press) WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. (AP) — A 510-foot-long, $100 million Noah's ark attraction built by Christians who say the biblical story really happened is ready to open in Kentucky this week. Since its announcement in 2010, the ark project has rankled opponents who say the attraction will be detrimental to science education and shouldn't have won state tax incentives. "I believe this is going to be one of the greatest Christian outreaches of this era in history," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, the ministry that built the ark. Ham said the massive ark, based on the tale of a man who got an end-of-the-world warning from God about a massive flood, will stand as proof that the stories of the Bible are true. The group invited media and thousands of supporters for a preview Tuesday, the first glimpse inside the giant, mostly wood structure. "People are going to come from all over the world," Ham said to thousands of people in front of the ark. The ark will open to the public Thursday and Ham's group has estimated it will draw 2 million visitors in its first year, putting it on par with some of the big-ticket attractions in nearby Cincinnati. The group says the ark is built based on dimensions in the Bible. Inside are museum-style exhibits: displays of Noah's family along with rows of cages containing animal replicas, including dinosaurs. The group believes that God created everything about 6,000 years ago — man, dinosaur and everything else — so dinosaurs still would've been around at the time of Noah's flood. Scientists say dinosaurs died out about 65 million years before man appeared. An ark opponent who leads an atheist group called the Tri-State Freethinkers said the religious theme park will be unlike any other in the nation because of its rejection of science. "Basically, this boat is a church raising scientifically illiterate children and lying to them about science," said Jim Helton, who lives about a half-hour from the ark. Ham said the total cost of the ark surpassed $100 million, a far cry from a few years ago, when fundraising for the boat was sluggish and much larger theme park plans had to be scaled back. Millions of people first learned about plans for the ark during a debate on evolution between TV's Bill Nye "the Science Guy" and Ham in early 2014. A few weeks later, a local bond issuance infused tens of millions of dollars into struggling fundraising efforts. And earlier this year, a federal judge ruled the ark could receive a Kentucky sales tax incentive worth up to $18 million while giving a strict religious test to its employees. Months later, the tax incentive ruling still has some opponents of the boat scratching their heads. "It's a clear violation of separation of church and state. What they're doing is utterly ridiculous and anywhere else, I don't think it would be allowed," Helton said. The court ruled in January that Kentucky officials could not impose requirements on the ark that were not applied to other applicants for the tax incentive, which rebates a portion of the sales tax collected by the ark. That cleared the way for the group to seek out only Christians to fill its labor force. New applicants will be required to sign a statement saying they're Christian and "profess Christ as their savior." Philip Steele, one of the thousands who got an early preview of the ark Tuesday, echoed Ham's often repeated comment that the sales tax generated by the ark wouldn't exist if the ark was never built. "I just don't think they understand it," Steele said of the ark's critics. "They'll be able to keep a portion of (the sales tax) to further their ministry, but so be it." When Ham was asked about the tax incentive at the Tuesday event, he drew loud cheers when he proclaimed no taxpayer money was used to the build the ark. As much of a boon as the $18 million tax break would be, Bill Nye's agreeing to debate Ham may have helped turn the tide of years of sluggish fundraising. Nye, a high-profile science advocate and former TV personality, debated Ham on evolution and drew a huge online audience. Nye later said he didn't realize the attention it would draw and said he was "heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky." The video of the debate posted by Answers in Genesis on YouTube has 5.4 million views. About three weeks after the debate, Ham announced that a bond offering from the city of Williamstown had raised $62 million for the project, and a few months later Answers in Genesis was breaking ground at the site of the ark. ||||| The Ark Encounter, based on proportions laid out in the Bible, is 510ft long, seven stories tall, and features model animals – including dinosaurs God curbed his dramatic tendencies on Tuesday, neglecting to initiate a global flood during the figurative launching of a full-size Noah’s ark replica in Kentucky. The Ark Encounter, based in the north of the Bluegrass state, is sculpted to proportions specified in the book of Genesis. It is 510ft long, seven storeys tall and, given its base is made of concrete, almost certain not to survive another of God’s watery caprices. (The vessel would displace – while sinking like a stone – 15,000 to 20,000 tons of water). Answers in Genesis, a creationist religious organisation that believes God created the Earth in six days and that the world is 6,000 years old, is behind the modern-day ark, which will open to the public on 7 July. The group estimates that 1.4m people will visit the vessel in the first year and that the ark will bring $4bn to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The ark is a non-floating exhibition offering both a glimpse into Noah’s life at sea and an opportunity to learn about Answers in Genesis’s theories on how our planet came to exist. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Visitors tour the newly opened Ark Encounter. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA For those making the journey to Williamstown, 50 miles north of Lexington, a genuinely impressive structure awaits. In fact the ark’s scale is such that even Charles, the taxi driver who dropped me off there on Tuesday morning and had never heard of the Ark Encounter, despite living only twenty miles away, was impressed. “Wow,” he said as we pulled up at the ark’s port side. “That’s neat as hell.” The whole ship looks like something one might find at Ikea: smooth lines, minimal design and a baffling assembly method Neat is quite a good adjective for the ark’s exterior. It looks brand new and pristine. The pale yellow wood on its long hull – Radiata pine imported from New Zealand – brings to mind Ikea’s ubiquitous birch veneer furniture collection. In fact, the whole ship looks like something one might find at Ikea: smooth lines, minimal design and a baffling assembly method. Answers in Genesis got the details for the build from measurements written in Genesis 6, in which God tells Noah the ark should be “300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high”. A cubit is roughly the distance from your fingers to your elbow – you can buy a “Noah’s cubit” in the gift shop. Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Ark Encounter took far less time to build than Noah’s ark did, according to the Bible. Photograph: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images Noah’s ark, according to Answers in Genesis, took between 55 to 75 years to build. Once it was constructed, Noah herded the world’s animals, two by two, into the bowels of his vessel, where he tended to them until the flood receded. Noah's Ark: the scientific version | Dean Burnett Read more The Ark Encounter comfortably beat Noah’s construction time, having been assembled in less than two years. It holds no livestock, but has models of various creatures stored in wooden cages. Creationists believe that rather than taking one of every modern species onboard the ark, Noah took ancestors of the animals we know today. According to this belief, the original ark would have held two early forms of canine, whose offspring developed into wolves, foxes, domestic dogs and other animals upon leaving the ark. As such, the model animals held on the Ark Encounter are approximations of what dogs’, cats’ and rhinos’ ancestors would have looked like. There’s a cat-type mammal that has a head like a lion but is about the size of a big house cat. There’s something that looks like a rhino but without the horn. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A visitor looks into a cage containing a model dinosaur on the ark. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP And, given Answers in Genesis believes that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man, there are also dinosaurs. Lots of them. There’s one which is akin to a brachiosaurus, with a long neck and tail. There’s one that looks like a stegosaurus, with spines on its back. There’s some sort of dwarf-T Rex, and a depressed-looking leathery-thing that might be related to a pterodactyl. The animals are stored across three levels inside the ark. Huge wooden columns – tree trunks harvested in Washington and Montana – support each floor. The stern of the ship is free of animal storage, allowing visitors to see the curvature of the craft’s hull, with huge beams holding pine planks in place. It succeeds in giving a sense of what it might have been like on the ark. Or on an old wooden ship. The seafarers’ accommodations look like something Roger Moore’s James Bond might blunder into on a jaunt to Morocco That impression is slightly spoiled by the presence of two Pepsi-branded refrigerators stocking a range of soft beverages, but – just as in Noah’s day – people do get thirsty. The ark, which cost around $100m to build, has been the subject of some controversy. Answers in Genesis was awarded a tax break, reportedly worth $18m, by the state of Kentucky, allowing it to recoup taxes on money made from visitors. The break was rescinded after it emerged Answers in Genesis would only hire Christian staff members, but the organisation sued and won. This June it also emerged that those wanting to work at the ark have to sign an agreement disavowing same-sex marriage and pre-marital sex. Staff and volunteers at the ark confirmed to the Guardian they had committed to the pledge. Ken Ham, president and co-founder of Answers in Genesis, defended the Christian-only policy at Tuesday’s media preview. “If you’re a religious organisation, you can have a religious preference in hiring. It makes sense. I can’t think of Planned Parenthood employing someone like me,” Ham said. “Besides which,” he said, “this is going to create jobs outside of the ark.” Answers in Genesis executives conducted interviews with the media on the third level of the ark, which, according to some accounts, is where the unclean animals were stored on the original. Thankfully, the top level of the Ark Encounter is instead home to a re-creation of the Noah family living quarters. In this modern-day interpretation, Noah and his sons live in surprising luxury. The imagined seafarers’ accommodations look like something Roger Moore’s James Bond might blunder into on a jaunt to Morocco, complete with wooden latticing, red curtains and soft lighting. To the rear of this soothing scene, Andrew Snelling, the organisation’s research geologist, sat down to chat. Snelling disputed the science that suggested the Earth is 4.5bn years old, citing testing Answers in Genesis had conducted. “I know I’m rowing against the tide,” he acknowledged. “And I’m regarded as not a real scientist because I believe in creation, I believe in the flood.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ken Ham says the Ark Encounter will create jobs ‘outside of the ark’. Photograph: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images In this area of Kentucky, there is a particularly large number of fossils, Snelling said. “We’ve got limestone layers underneath the ark here and they’re full of marine fossils, clams, corals, those sort of shallow water marine invertebrates,” he said, which suggested that at some point there had been a global flood. “So if you think about it, today we’re a thousand feet above sea level and we’re 500 miles from the ocean. “Why aren’t the marine creatures buried in the oceans? That’s where they lived. But they’re actually buried up on the continents.”

– A massive, $100 million replica of Noah's Ark will open Thursday in Kentucky to—its builders hope—"undo the brainwashing" done to children by science, the Courier-Journal reports. According to the Guardian, the Ark Encounter, which was built by Answers in Genesis, is 510 feet long and seven stories tall. Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, tells the AP he hopes it will prove that the Bible is true. The ark is filled with testaments to Answers in Genesis' beliefs: the Earth was created in six days and is only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs coexisted with humans, and Noah fit the ancestors of modern animals onboard. That last item has led to the replica's animal pens being filled with bizarre creatures, such as a house cat with a lion's head and some sort of hornless rhino. “In a world that we see becoming very secularized before our eyes, it’s really time for Christians to do something of this size,” Ham tells the Courier-Journal. Meanwhile, the paper states many people see the ark as an "embarrassing, entertainment-cloaked attack on science that uses tax incentives in violation of the separation of church and state.” A judge ruled Ark Encounter could get $18 million in tax incentives despite having a "strict religious test" for employees, who must be Christians and pledge to oppose same-sex marriage and pre-marital sex. The project was announced in 2010 but had trouble raising funds. Strangely, Bill Nye may have saved the ark by inadvertently drawing attention to it when he agreed to debate Ham about evolution. The noted Science Guy says he's "heartbroken and sickened" by Ark Encounter.

Story highlights Survivor says he owes Breivik "a punch in the face" Breivik's lawyer says it is important to his client that he be seen as sane Prosecutors play a recording of a call for help during the shooting spree Breivik is accused of killing 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage The man accused of killing 77 people in a bomb-and-gun rampage in Norway last summer said his actions were justified to save the country from multicultural forces as he went on trial Monday. Anders Behring Breivik raised his arm in a fascist-style salute -- a symbol of "strength, power and defiance against Marxist tyrants," to quote the 1,500-page manifesto attributed to him -- as soon as his handcuffs were removed in court Monday. "I acknowledge the acts but do not plead guilty," he told the court. His trial on charges of voluntary homicide and committing acts of terror is expected to last up to 10 weeks. He is accused of setting off a bomb in central Oslo that killed eight people, then fatally shooting 69 people at a youth camp run by the ruling Labour Party on nearby Utoya Island. Dressed in a black suit and sporting a jawline beard, Breivik listened impassively as prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh read the charges, describing how dozens of young people were shot to death. Breivik says his rampage was meant to save Norway from being taken over by multicultural forces and to prevent ethnic cleansing of Norwegians, said his lawyer, Geir Lippestad. In his manifesto, Breivik railed against Muslim immigration and European liberalism, including the Labour Party, which he said was allowing the "Islamification of Europe." And in court, he called the trial political and objected to the judge's friendship with a former justice minister. "I do not recognize the Norwegian court. You've gotten your mandate from political parties that support multiculturalism," he said. "OK, we will make a note of that general objection," Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said curtly. Prosecutors played a recording of a terrified girl phoning for help during the shooting rampage, a recording punctuated by constant firing in the background. They also showed security camera video of the central Oslo bomb blast that killed eight people, images that participants in the trial watched with ashen faces. Breivik sat in court without restraints, behind a bulletproof glass barrier set up to protect him during the six hours of proceedings. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg vowed to double down on Norway's traditions of liberal democracy in response to the attacks, and Breivik's trial appears to be no exception. "He was so close to having a bullet between his eyes. The police were so close," said Jorn Overby, who rescued some 15 people from the waters off Utoya during the massacre. But Overby told CNN that he owes Breivik only "a punch in the face for firing at me." "He will get the treatment he needs," Overby said. Experts have given different opinions about Breivik's sanity, which will be a factor in determining what punishment he receives if convicted. Norway does not have the death penalty, and sentencing options could include imprisonment or confining him to a mental facility. But Breivik's defense will try to prove he was sane at the time of the killings, Lippestad said Monday. Lippestad told reporters after the hearing that the defendant had his reasons, but would not disclose them. It is important to Breivik that he be considered sane, Lippestad said after the hearing. Prosecutors outlined Breivik's life before the killings, showing a photo of the messy room where he lived at his mother's house, listing his six failed businesses and referring to his many hours playing the online game "World of Warcraft." Prosecutors said he had "no job, no salary, no money from the government" and was "living off his savings." The defendant smiled briefly when his "Warcraft" character was shown, one of the few times he showed emotion on Monday. He also appeared to be overcome with emotion, fighting back tears, when part of his video manifesto "Knights Templar 2083" was played in court. Lippestad declined to say why Breivik wept, citing attorney-client privilege. But lawyers for the victims said: "No one thought he was crying for the victims." A survivor of Utoya Island, Tore Sinding Bekkedal, said he was surprised to experience "a strange feeling of relief" when prosecutors switched from listing the names of the dead to those of the wounded. "It was an intense gratitude, Bekkedal said during a break in the proceedings. "It took me by surprise that I felt it, that these wonderful people are still among us, that we managed to save these ones at least." Breivik is to begin testifying Tuesday, and asked Monday for his testimony to be broadcast, claiming it as a human right. Most of the relatives of the victims do not want that to happen, according to lawyers who represent the families of victims and survivors. "It's going to be 10 weeks of hell ... to hear this man, to hear his explanation of why he did it and how he did it," said Trond Henry Blattmann, whose son was killed on Utoya Island. In November, prosecutors said psychiatrists had determined that Breivik was paranoid and schizophrenic at the time of the attacks and during 13 interviews experts conducted with him afterward. However, the court sought a second opinion because of the importance of the question of sanity to Breivik's trial. In a report released this month, two court-appointed psychiatric experts said Breivik was sane at the time of the killings. The victims on Utoya Island were among 700 mostly young people attending a Labour Party camp, the same camp Stoltenberg said he had attended every summer since 1974. "I think that one of the main messages from Norway after the tragedy ... was that we were going to protect our democracy. And part of our democracy is the divisions of responsibilities between the government and the courts. It's up to the courts to decide whether this man is going to be sentenced or not, whether he is insane or not. It's not a question which is going to be decided by politicians. That's part of our democratic society," Stoltenberg said. Tore Bjorgo, a terror expert and professor at Norwegian Police University College, said Breivik appears to be overly concerned about his self-image and sees himself in the role of a "fantastic, great person who will save Europe." "It's we who should decide what kind of a society we want; it's not the terrorists," he said. "And the logic of terrorism is to try to provoke responses to get people to act in ways the terrorists want, and it was important that we didn't do that. We didn't go down that road, and that was, I think, a big victory." ||||| The man who carried out bomb and gun attacks in Norway last year which left 77 people dead has pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial in Oslo. Anders Behring Breivik attacked a youth camp organised by the governing Labour party on the island of Utoeya, after setting off a car bomb in the capital. He told the court he "acknowledged" the acts committed, but said he did not accept criminal responsibility. The prosecution earlier gave a detailed account of how each person was killed. If the court decides he is criminally insane, he will be committed to psychiatric care; if he is judged to be mentally stable, he will be jailed. In the latter case, he faces a sentence of 21 years, which could be extended to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. The 33-year-old Norwegian was found insane in one examination, while a second assessment made public last week found him mentally competent. At the scene The prosecution presented details of the attacks on Utoeya island, which included a harrowing emergency telephone call from one of the youths there. More than 50 gunshots and screaming could be heard in the background. Breivik remained seemingly unmoved throughout. Yet earlier he broke down in tears as the prosecution screened his own propaganda video, which he posted online shortly before his attacks. A report from Norwegian TV2 said that by reading his lips he appeared to tell one of his defence team that "it was an emotional video". Breivik also showed emotion as the prosecution showed illustrations and video from the car bomb attack in Oslo city centre. While victims and their families cried as the blast could be seen, Breivik smiled on several occasions. 'Self-defence' Dressed in a dark suit, Breivik smiled as he entered the courtroom and a guard removed his handcuffs. He then gave a closed-fist salute. He later told the lead judge, Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen: "I do not recognise the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism." He also said he did not recognise the authority of Judge Arntzen, claiming she was friends with the sister of former Prime Minister and Labour party leader Gro Harlem Brundtland. The judge noted the objections, which Breivik's lawyer said were not official, and said the defence could follow up on them in their opening arguments. Breivik described his occupation as a "writer", currently working from prison. Prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh read out the charges against him and gave an extensively detailed account of how each person was killed or injured in last year's attacks. She said the attacks "created fear in the Norwegian population", adding: "The defendant has committed very serious crimes, on a scale which hasn't been experienced in our country in modern times." Breivik showed no emotion, looking down at the table in front of him. At the end of the indictment, he told the court: "I acknowledge the acts, but not criminal guilt - I claim I was doing it in self-defence." Breivik has already confessed to the attacks on 22 July. In the car bombing outside government buildings in Oslo, eight people were killed and 209 wounded. He killed 67 people and wounded 33 - most of them teenagers - in his shooting spree at the youth camp on Utoeya. A further two people died by falling or drowning. At a court hearing in February, Breivik said his killing spree was "a preventative attack against state traitors", who were guilty of "ethnic cleansing" because they supported a multicultural society. His lawyer has said his only regret is that "he did not go further". "It is difficult to understand, but I am telling you this to prepare people for his testimony," Geir Lippestad told reporters before the trial. Breivik's Norway attacks 8 people killed and 209 injured by bomb in Oslo 69 people killed on Utoeya island, of them 34 aged between 14 and 17 33 injured on Utoeya Nearly 900 people affected by attacks In pictures: Breivik trial Investigators have found no evidence to support Breivik's claims that he belonged to a secret "resistance" movement, the "Knights Templar", named after a military and religious order founded during the Crusades to fight the enemies of Christendom. "In our opinion such a network does not exist," prosecutor Svein Holden told the court on Monday. A 12-minute-long film about the evils of "multiculturalism" and "Islamic demographic warfare", which Breivik posted online on the day of the attacks, was shown in court before the trial was adjourned for lunch. As it concluded, he could be seen wiping tears from his eyes. Later, previously unreleased surveillance footage of the Oslo bombing was shown. Some of the survivors and relatives of those killed reportedly gasped after footage was played of Breivik's explosives-packed vehicle exploding, followed by scenes of panic as people fled and pieces of metal fell to the ground. But the defendant was impassive, and at times even smirked. The court later adjourned for the day. At a news conference following the adjournment, Mr Lippestad said Breivik considered he was at war and therefore felt he should be tried by a military tribunal. Asked about Breivik's tears during the first day, he said "part of the explanation" might be that his client considered his actions "necessary to prevent a war in Europe". Parts of the trial will be shown on television, but the court will not allow Breivik's testimony or that of his witnesses to be broadcast. Breivik is scheduled to take the stand for about a week, starting on Tuesday. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Oslo says that with Breivik not expected to express any remorse for his actions, his trial promises to be an ordeal for the families of those killed and for those who survived. Jorid Nordmelan, a survivor of the Utoeya massacre, told the BBC she would be in court to hear Breivik testify. "It's a historical date for Norwegians," she said. "We never had a trial like this, so we don't know what's going to happen. "Prosecutors told me they were going to make the opening statements awful, so that people can just feel what he did right there." Police have sealed off streets around the courtroom, which was specially built for the trial to accommodate more than 200 people. Glass partitions have been put up to separate the victims and their families from Breivik.

– As his trial began in Oslo today, Anders Behring Breivik told the court that the slaughter of 77 people in Norway was a matter of ... self-defense. "I acknowledge the acts but do not plead guilty, and I claim I was doing it in self-defense," he said. Upon entering the courtroom, he smiled then held up his fist in a salute; he told the judge he doesn't "recognize the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism." While the court detailed the killings of dozens, he appeared emotionless, CNN reports. He did, however, shed tears after the court showed an anti-immigration video he posted on the Internet on the day of the tragedy, the BBC reports. The question of Breivik's sanity remains open following conflicting exams; his punishment hinges on the decision. Meanwhile, "it's going to be 10 weeks of hell," says the parent of a victim, "to hear this man, to hear his explanation of why he did it, and how he did it."

who in continuing to attack those who oppose Common Core The following appeared on the Facebook page of Gretchen Moran Laskas, whose son attends school in Fairfax County VA, and is crossposted here with her permission: I've talked a bit about my son Brennan, and his struggles in school. This was a child he was what they call a "late bloomer. By the standards of the curriculum in place now, throughout most of his life, he was often considered a "failure" (let alone brilliant) by many people in the school system. I had a speech pathologist tell me that he would never learn to speak clearly because I hadn't enrolled him in early intervention speech before kindergarten. I had a case worker tell me to my face that I "need to accept that he isn't college material." I had a school counselor as late as eighth grade try and tell me that she was "legally barred" from putting him in honors classes. (That was a flat out lie and let's just say that was a HUGE mistake on her part.) Now here's the thing. Brennan has every advantage you can think of. He's white. He's upper-middle class. He has hyper-involved parents. He is in one of the best school districts in the country. And most importantly, for every idiot who told me something like I mention above, he had TEN teachers, administrators, case workers, counselors and people in his life who worked 150% for him. And for that, I will be forever grateful. But the tighter we make the noose, the more children like Brennan, who do NOT have those advantages will fall through the cracks. I don't fight the Common Core because I think my child is brilliant, but because I'm tired of these one size fits all educational solutions. We've done that all through Brennan's educational life, and I'm just not willing to take the chance that we're going to do a better job through Katja's just because it's being proposed through a Democratic President rather than a Republican one. This goes beyond politics -- this is about my kids. So yes, I'm opposed. Not because I don't understand it. Not because I think it will make my children look bad. But because I know that children already look bad -- and by the time they might get it together and look good the way Brennan could, it might be too late. Because Brennan is just fine, thank you. The kid who would never speak clearly just finished his role in the fall play. The kid who wasn't college material is very much going to college. And the kid who was legally barred from taking honors classes just got a 4.1 GPA this quarter while taking four IB classes. Maybe Arne Duncan should have a talk with him. ||||| By Michelle Malkin • November 18, 2013 02:28 AM Ohhhh yes, the red blood underneath my brown skin is boiling. This Obama educrat has stepped in it. Big time. Race card-wielding Education Secretary Arne Duncan is nothing but a corrupt and bankrupt bigot. We’ll get to his diatribe in a moment. But first, let’s step back for some perspective, reflection, and background on this pivotal moment in the battle against Common Core. In January, I launched the first in my ongoing blog and column series on the perils and pitfalls of Common Core. Grass-roots parents, educators, analysts, and activists had been working hard at the local and state levels to turn back the top-down, Big Government/Big Business. I vowed at the beginning of the year to do everything in my power to spread the news of their work and to add my own voice because this battle is near and dear to my heart. It’s not just “business” for me. It’s personal. Here’s what I wrote on January 23 when I kicked off my project: This year, I’ll be using my syndicated column and blog space to expose how progressive “reformers” — mal-formers — are corrupting our schools. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to provide you in-depth coverage of this vital issue that too often gets shunted off the daily political/partisan agenda. While the GOP tries to solve its ills with better software and communications consultants, the conservative movement — and America — face much larger problems. It doesn’t start with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student. This is the first in an ongoing series on “Common Core,” the stealthy federal takeover of school curriculum and standards across the country. As longtime readers know, my own experience with this ongoing sabotage of academic excellence dates back to my early reporting on the Clinton-era “Goals 2000″ and “outcome-based” education and extends to my recent parental experience with “Everyday Math”. The good news is that grass-roots education and parental groups, brave teachers, and professors are fighting back. And they’re winning. Big time. Over the last 10 months, Common Core has imploded under withering scrutiny from the tax-paying public, informed parents and educators, and more national media. States under both Republican and Democrat governors have adopted moratoria on the untested standards, withdrawn from the costly testing consortia, and retreated from partnerships with Common Core-promoting educational software data-miners like inBloom. There’s much more to the fight than simple left-right divisions. The Common Core peddlers include meddling, Fed Ed Republicans from Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee to progressive billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates to Newscorp. media giant Rupert Murdoch and dozens of educational corporate special interests that stand to gain billions from the Common Core testing/textbook/data-mining boondoggle. The Stop Common Core movement includes social conservatives, libertarians, teachers’ union members, charter school advocates, Catholic school principals, urban and suburban parents, New York City Democrats, Tea Party Republicans, homeschoolers, and concerned activists from all parts of the political spectrum concerned about the feds’ encroachment on family and student privacy. As I’ve reported, the nationwide revolt against Common Core’s constitutionality, costs, dubious quality, threat to local control, and privacy invasions has proponents in a panic. They’ve resorted to demeaning dissenting parents and educators and abusing their power to stifle all challenges to their authority. Now, along comes Obama education secretary Arne Duncan to inject poisonous race-baiting and class warfare into the debate. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about? In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core State Standards — which were approved by 45 states and the District of Columbia and are now being implemented across the country (though some states are reconsidering) — Duncan has repeatedly noted that the standards and the standardized testing that goes along with them are more difficult than students in most states have confronted. The preposterousness of Duncan’s tirade is outweighed only by its arrogance and falsehood. As a brown-skinned suburban mom opposed to Common Core, I can tell you I’ve personally met moms and dads of ALL races, of ALL backgrounds, and from ALL parts of the country, who have sacrificed to get their kids into the best schools possible. They are outraged that dumbed-down, untested federal “standards” pose an existential threat to their excellent educational arrangements — be they public, private, religious, or homeschooling. Duncan’s derision betrays the very control-freak impulses that drive Common Core. He presumes that only technocratic elites in Washington can determine what quality standards and curricula look like. He pretends that minority parents and students in inner-city charter and magnet schools with locally-crafted, rigorous classical education missions simply don’t exist. A textbook liberal racist, Duncan whitewashes all minority parents and educators who oppose Common Core out of the debate. And he condescendingly implies that the only reason “white suburban moms” object to Common Core is that their children are too dumb to score well on tests that are…a complete and utter mess. As Brittany Corona noted earlier this summer, educators in New York and Kentucky outlined multiple problems with the assessments that Duncan champions: Earlier this month, 49 New York principals wrote a letter to New York education commissioner John King explaining the problems teachers are finding with the Common Core assessments. While the principals state that they agree with Common Core in theory and are “are committed to helping New York realize the full promises of Common Core,” they write that its implementation has been haphazard: Because schools have not had a lot of time to unpack Common Core, we fear that too many educators will use these high stakes tests to guide their curricula, rather than the more meaningful Common Core Standards themselves. And because the tests are missing Common Core’s essential values, we fear that students will experience curriculum that misses the point as well. The New York principals reported problems with the assessments, including: Difficult and confusing questions (some on unrelated topics). Unnecessarily long testing sessions—“two weeks of three consecutive days of 90-minute periods”—that require more “stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam.” Field-test questions that do not factor into a child’s score but take up time. Confusing directions for the English language arts sessions. Math problems that repeatedly assess the same skill. Multiple choice questions that ask the student to choose from the right answer and the “next best right answer.” The fact that teachers report disagreeing about which multiple-choice answer is correct in several places on the English language arts exams indicates that this format is unfair to students. Kentucky, the first state to implement Common Core, has experienced similar testing problems. Last month, the Kentucky Department of Education “discontinued scoring for all constructed-response questions in each of the four CCSS-aligned high school end-of-course exams.” Leaders said that the slow turnaround times for scoring and lack of diagnostic feedback on how scores are determined would cause the results to be delayed past the end of the school year. In two states in which the Common Core assessments have been tried, they have posed problems. Both New York and Kentucky should be red flags for states moving forward with Common Core implementation. If Arne Duncan thinks his comments are going to tame and marginalize the Stop Common Core movement, he’s got another thing coming. As I noted earlier this month, Common Core is a sleeper ballot box issue that will shake both sides of the aisle for months and years to come. The Davids are exercising their freedoms of speech and association to beat back the deep-pocketed Goliaths at their schoolhouse doors. Stop Common Core moms of all colors have done their homework, brought their arguments and evidence to their school boards and state legislatures, and acted responsibly to protect their children’s best interests. By contrast, education demagogue Arne Duncan and his Big Government/Big Business cronies invoke race, employ divisive class rhetoric, and attack active, involved, and informed moms and their children as academic failures — while Common Core’s own failings pile up like Obamacare website 404s. Arne Duncan, I will continue to do everything in my brown-skinned suburban mom power to keep your smug, grubby hands off my kids’ education. I know I’m not alone. *** Related: New Facebook page — Moms Against Duncan Colorado Department of Education cuts ties with inBloom Previous: Big news in fight against Common Core: InBloom-peddling Jefferson County CO superintendent resigns tonight; school board severs ties with inBloom How NOT to argue with parents about Common Core Jeb Bush’s latest Common Core snit fit More parents stand up to educrats, face no-trespass and gag orders Rotten to the Core: Jeb Bush’s Crony Republicans Against Higher Standards Rotten to the Core, Part 1: Obama’s War on Academic Standards Rotten to the Core, Part 2: Readin’, writin’ and deconstructionism Rotten to the Core, Part 3: Lessons from Texas and the Growing Grassroots Revolt Rotten to the Core, Part 4: The Feds’ Invasive Student Tracking Database Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket Rotten to the Core: Reader feedback from the frontlines My child’s Common Core-aligned Algebra book is crap Rotten to the Core: Conservatives spearhead drive at RNC meeting to stop Common Core Today: Twitter rally to stop Common Core Who’s tracking your children? *** More resources: Stop Common Core Twitter list Fight Common Core Truth in American Education EAGNews Common Core tracker Freedom Works – Stop Common Core resources Heritage Foundation – Lindsey Burke – Reject Common Core Home School Legal Defense Fund Association’s new white paper on Common Core Do the math — Common Core = a massive, risky experiment on your kids Related education posts: Fuzzy math: A nationwide epidemic Everyday Math = junk Obama’s Sputter-nik moment: Cash for Education Clunkers January 2005: NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, ACT II February 2005: THE REVOLT AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND Stupid education fad of the day: “Mayan Math” ||||| Social media and even mainstream media appear poised to leap on Secretary Arne Duncan with both feet due to his swipe at white suburban moms. The nearly universal sweeping outrage—some with a level of glee that must not be ignored—calls for close consideration itself. First, rejecting Duncan’s comments about white suburban moms and Common Core critics is completely valid. I join hands with the education community in rejecting Duncan’s claims, his discourse, and his efforts to discredit a significant, credible, and growing resistance to CC that should not be trivialized and marginalized as Duncan does. However, I find the magnitude and swiftness of the responses to this “white suburban moms” incident disappointing in the larger context of Duncan’s entire tenure as Secretary of Education. In the first moments of Obama’s administration, Duncan has personified and voiced an education agenda that disproportionately impacts black, brown, and poor children in powerfully negative ways. And the entire agenda has been consistently cloaked in discourse characterizing these policies as the Civil Rights issue of the day. As well, Duncan has perpetuated and embraced “no excuses” narratives while directly and indirectly endorsing education reform and policies that target and mis-serve high-poverty students, African American and Latina/o students, and English Language learners—charter schools, Teach for America, accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing. Public commentary that highlights that education reform under Obama and Duncan fails the pursuit of equity in the context of race and class in the U.S. tends to fall on deaf ears. The same urgency witnessed in the responses to Duncan’s “white suburban moms” contrasts significantly from the silence surrounding challenges to Duncan’s discourse and policies that are classist and racist, policy designed for “other people’s children.” The problem is not that educators and scholars have failed to identify that education reform under Obama and Duncan have continued and increased federal and state education policy creating two inequitable education systems—one for the white and affluent, another for minorities and the impoverished—because these important messages have been raised. The problem is that rejecting education reform discourse and policy based on race and class concerns doesn’t resonate in the U.S. As I have asked numerous times, what would the political and public support for TFA be if the organization was providing recent college graduates with no degrees in education and only five weeks of training to teach Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes filled with affluent white students? (A similar question about KIPP raises the same issue.) Indirectly, from the response to Duncan’s “white suburban moms” comments, now we know. The measure of a people must not come from how we flinch when the privileged suffer; the measure of a people must come from how we tolerate (or ignore) the conditions that impact the impoverished and the powerless. If white outrage is the only outrage that counts in the U.S., any victory won from that outrage is no victory at all. For Further Reading First They Came For Urban Black and Latino Moms (For Arne Duncan), Jose Vilson “the archeology of white people” Advertisements ||||| Story highlights In remarks to CNN, Duncan apologizes for his choice of words The "white suburban moms" comment came in a meeting with state education chiefs He was talking about the Common Core State Standards, a controversial effort Writes one commentator: "This Obama educrat has stepped in it. Big time" Proving once again that any controversy will be intensified -- if not illuminated -- by random references to race, class, and gender, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has ignited a storm of protest by noting opposition from "white suburban moms" to one of his prized educational initiatives. In a meeting with state education chiefs Friday, Duncan said some opposition to the Common Core State Standards -- a controversial effort to standardize education -- has come from parents displeased that test results have exposed local weaknesses. Duncan said he found it "fascinating" that opponents include "white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- (discovered that) their child isn't as bright as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were." Duncan apologized for the remark Monday afternoon. Speaking to CNN, he said: "My wording, my phrasing, was a little clumsy and I apologize for that." Duncan said his point was that the goal is to prepare U.S. students for a "globally competitive work force" and to challenge education leaders to better explain to parents why higher standards are needed and what it takes to achieve them. "I didn't say them perfectly, and I apologize for that," he added. "My point is that children from every demographic across this country need a well-rounded, world-class education and frankly we have challenges not just in our inner cities but in our suburban areas, too, and we need to have honest conversations about that." The "white suburban moms" remark was first reported Friday by Politico, which later reported that Duncan backpedaled, saying that he "didn't say it perfectly." The incident, if nothing else, is thrusting Common Core State Standards into red-hot glare of politically oriented social media. Duncan has pushed the initiative, which seeks to establish a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through high school for math and English. Advocates say the standards are essential to improve student skills, prepare them for college, and make the United States competitive with other nations. But opponents say the standards instill students with elitist values and rob communities of local control of schools. The remarks triggered a barrage of online comments, and a WhiteHouse.gov petition. As of noon Monday, 1,800 people had signed the petition to remove Duncan as secretary of education. A separate '"National Don't Send Your Child to School Day," protest over the standards has gained thousands of supporters on its Facebook page, though the number of children who were kept from school is unclear. Conservative commentator and Common Core foe Michelle Malkin scolded Duncan. "Ohhhh yes, the red blood underneath my brown skin is boiling. This Obama educrat has stepped in it. Big time. Race card-wielding Education Secretary Arne Duncan is nothing but a corrupt and bankrupt bigot," Malkin wrote. Tweeted Randi Winegarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers: "Arne-if u are reading- you shld walk this back..very insensitive-and not right-moms care abt their kids!! One Virginia-area mother posted a personal response on the left-leaning DailyKos arguing that Duncan missed the point. She said her own son was late to focus and achieve, and standardized testing would have marginalized him. "I don't fight the Common Core because I think my child is brilliant, but because I'm tired of these one size fits all educational solutions," wrote Gretchen Moran Laskas. "So yes, I'm opposed. Not because I don't understand it. Not because I think it will make my children look bad. But because I know that children already look bad -- and by the time they might get it together and look good the way (my son) could, it might be too late." A Department of Education official said in an e-mail that, in making his remarks, Duncan was encouraging state education chiefs to better communicate why higher standards are so important. "The far right and far left have made up their minds," spokesman Massie Ritsch wrote. "But there's angst in the middle -- which includes many open-minded suburban parents -- that needs to be addressed." "Arne -- a white suburban dad married to a white suburban mom, with two kids in public schools -- has always been clear that test scores are an imperfect measure of student achievement and school quality, but tests are an indicator nonetheless," Ritsch wrote. "And when that indicator conflicts with parents' notions of their child's abilities or their school's quality, it's understandable that some parents would be concerned." The White House spokesman also defended Duncan, though Jay Carney said he had not seen all the comments. "His point was that we need to be honest with kids and parents -- all can agree on that," Carney said on Monday.

– Education Secretary Arne Duncan—who upset a few people with his "white suburban moms" remark on Friday—fully back-peddled today and apologized for his "clumsy" phrasing, CNN reports. To recap, Duncan said he was fascinated by opposition to his plan for standardized testing because his opponents included "white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—[discovered that] their child isn't as bright as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were." Well, his new opponents include people who aren't white, suburban, or moms—and a few who are: "This Obama educrat has stepped in it. Big time. Race card-wielding Education Secretary Arne Duncan is nothing but a corrupt and bankrupt bigot," writes conservative commentator Michelle Malkin. "Arne-if u are reading- you shld walk this back..very insensitive-and not right-moms care abt their kids!!" tweets Randi Winegarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "I don't fight the Common Core because I think my child is brilliant, but because I'm tired of these one size fits all educational solutions," writes Gretchen Moran Laskas, a Virginia-area mom, at Daily Kos. Furman University professor PL Thomas blogs that he is upset over the overwhelming reaction to Duncan's "white moms" remark, when Duncan's agenda "disproportionately impacts black, brown, and poor children in powerfully negative ways." Education Department spokesman Massie Ritsch rose to Duncan's defense over the testing policy, Common Core State Standards, which is designed to make US students more competitive. "The far right and far left have made up their minds," Ritsch writes. "But there's angst in the middle—which includes many open-minded suburban parents—that needs to be addressed."

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. / Updated By Jeremy Hsu A radioactive plume of water in the Pacific Ocean from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, will likely reach U.S. coastal waters starting in 2014, according to a new study. The long journey of the radioactive particles could help researchers better understand how the ocean’s currents circulate around the world. Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137 released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016. Luckily, two ocean currents off the eastern coast of Japan — the Kuroshio Current and the Kuroshio Extension — has diluted the radioactive material so much that its concentration fell well below the World Health Organization’s safety levels within four months of the Fukushima incident. But it could have been a different story if nuclear disaster struck on the other side of Japan. “The environmental impact could have been worse if the contaminated water would have been released in another oceanic environment in which the circulation was less energetic and turbulent,” said Vincent Rossi, an oceanographer and postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in Spain. Fukushima’s radioactive water release has taken its time journeying across the Pacific. By comparison, atmospheric radiation from the Fukushima plant began reaching the U.S. West Coast within just days of the disaster back in 2011. [Fukushima Radiation Leak: 5 Things You Should Know] Tracking radioactivity’s path The radioactive plume has three different sources: radioactive particles falling out from the atmosphere into the ocean, contaminated water directly released from the plant, and water that became contaminated by leaching radioactive particles from tainted soil. This computer projection shows the estimated extent of the Fukushima spill's plume of radioactive water in 2014. The extent of U.S. coastal waters is indicated by a black line, with a black box enclosing Hawaii. Rossi et al. / Deep-Sea Research I The release of cesium-137 from Fukushima in Japan’s more turbulent eastern currents means the radioactive material is diluted to the point of posing little threat to humans by the time it leaves Japan’s coastal waters. Rossi worked with former colleagues at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Australia to simulate the spread of Fukushima’s radioactivity in the oceans — a study detailed in the October issue of the journal Deep-Sea Research Part 1. Researchers averaged 27 experimental runs of their model — each run starting in a different year — to ensure that the simulated spread of the cesium-137 as a "tracer" was not unusually affected by initial ocean conditions. Many oceanographers prefer using cesium-137 to track the ocean currents because it acts as a passive tracer in seawater, meaning it doesn't interact much with other things, and decays slowly with a long half-life of 30 years. “One advantage of this tracer is its long half-life and our ability to measure it quite accurately, so that it can be used in the future to test our models of ocean circulation and see how well they represent reality over time,” Rossi told LiveScience. “In 20 years' time, we could go out, grab measurements everywhere in the Pacific and compare them to our model.” Journey across the Pacific Rim The team focused on predicting the path of the radioactivity until it reached the continental shelf waters stretching from the U.S. coastline to about 180 miles (300 kilometers) offshore. About 10 to 30 becquerels (units of radioactivity representing decay per second) per cubic meter of cesium-137 could reach U.S. and Canadian coastal waters north of Oregon between 2014 and 2020. (Such levels are far below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s limits for drinking water.) By comparison, California’s coast may receive just 10 to 20 becquerels per cubic meter from 2016 to 2025. That slower, lesser impact comes from Pacific currents taking part of the radioactive plume down below the ocean surface on a slower journey toward the Californian coast, Rossi explained. A large proportion of the radioactive plume from the initial Fukushima release won't even reach U.S. coastal waters anytime soon. Instead, the majority of the cesium-137 will remain in the North Pacific gyre — a region of ocean that circulates slowly clockwise and has trapped debris in its center to form the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — and continue to be diluted for approximately a decade following the initial Fukushima release in 2011. (The water from the current power plant leak would be expected to take a similar long-term path to the initial plume released, Rossi said.) But the plume will eventually begin to escape the North Pacific gyre in an even more diluted form. About 25 percent of the radioactivity initially released will travel to the Indian Ocean and South Pacific over two to three decades after the Fukushima disaster, the model showed. You can follow Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @jeremyhsu. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ||||| Story highlights TEPCO found high radiation readings Saturday It said the highest levels measured were so-called beta radiation There's been a sharp spike in radiation levels measured in the pipes and containers holding water at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. But the company in charge of cleaning it up says that only a single drop of the highly contaminated water escaped the holding tanks. Tokyo Electric Power Company said it is confident it can provide safety for workers dealing with the problem. "We will find out the cause of this issue and make proper counter measures immediately, and continue to make every effort to secure safety of workers," the company said in a statement released Sunday. TEPCO found high radiation readings at the contaminated water storage tanks and pipe Saturday. The four locations are the bottom of three tanks and a pipe connecting tanks in separate area. JUST WATCHED Nuclear crisis in Japan Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Nuclear crisis in Japan 03:21 JUST WATCHED Fukushima plant 'house of horrors' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Fukushima plant 'house of horrors' 03:15 JUST WATCHED How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH How dangerous is Japan's nuclear leak? 03:07 The highest reading as 1800 millisieverts per hour at the bottom fringe of the tank. 220 and 70 mSv were measured at the bottom of other two tanks. And TEPCO said they found a dried stain under the pipe with 230 mSv/h radiation measurement. One drop of liquid fell when a staff member pressed on insulation material around the pipe. But TEPCO said no contaminated water leak is expected as there were no change in the water level in tanks. The enormous tanks are identical to the container that was announced last week to have leaked 300 tons of highly toxic water and sparking a hike to the threat level to "serious." TEPCO will investigate the cause and look further if there were any leakage. But TEPCO also took issue with reporting by some news outlets that the new radiation levels were high enough to cause death after several hours of exposure. It said the highest levels measured were so-called beta radiation, which quickly dissipates over short distances and is easily shielded through the use of thin sheets of metal and foil. "Since beta radiation is weak and can be blocked by a thin metal sheet such as aluminum, we think that we can control radiation exposure by using proper equipments and cloths," the company added.

– New tests at Fukushima have found radiation levels around its tanks are up to 18 times worse than previously thought—high enough to kill someone within four hours of exposure, reports the BBC. What's caused the alarming spike? More accurate measuring equipment, says plant operator TEPCO. The previous equipment could only read up to 100 millisieverts an hour. Its estimation of the radiation level at the time? 100 millisieverts an hour. The new equipment recorded readings of up to 1,800 millisieverts an hour. TEPCO also says there was a recent leak in one of the tanks—but insists only a single drop of radioactive water escaped. It says the drop fell when someone pressed the insulation around the pipe at the bottom of the tank, CNN reports. The tank is identical to the one that has already leaked 300 tons of water. In related news, a new study estimates that the radioactive plume of water released by the 2011 disaster will hit US waters in early 2014 and peak in 2016, reports NBC News. Fortunately, ocean currents will have diluted the radioactive material down to safe levels by then.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian health officials said on Thursday they have confirmed two cases of transmission of Zika through transfusions of blood from donors who had been infected with the mosquito-borne virus that is spreading rapidly through the Americas. A technician of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) inspects an Aedes aegypti mosquito in Recife, Brazil, January 27, 2016. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino Marcelo Addas Carvalho, director of the Blood Center at the Sao Paulo state University of Campinas, said genetic testing confirmed that a man who received a blood transfusion using blood from a donor with Zika in March 2015 became infected with the virus, although the patient did not develop symptoms. Earlier, the health department of Campinas, an industrial city near Sao Paulo, said a man with gunshot wounds became infected with Zika after multiple blood transfusions in April 2015 that included blood donated by an infected person. Carvalho said the infection of the wounded man was most probably caused by the transfusion but genetic tests have not yet been conducted to confirm it. He said it was very unlikely the infection was caused by a mosquito bite because the patient was in a hospital intensive care unit for three months. The patient later died from his gunshot wounds and not the Zika infection, local health officials and Carvalho said. “The two cases can be considered transmission of the virus through blood transfusion, with greater certainty in the first because we did genetic sequencing comparing the virus in the donor and to the virus in the recipient,” he said by telephone. Zika is usually contracted via mosquito bites, so transmission of the illness through blood transfusions adds another concern to efforts to contain the outbreak. Some countries have tightened procedures for blood donations, to protect blood supplies. Zika has been reported in 30 countries since it first appeared in the Americas last year in Brazil, where it has been linked to thousands of babies being born with microcephaly. This is a condition where infants have abnormally small heads and often have underdeveloped brains. Brazil’s Health Ministry, leading efforts to contain a public health emergency in the country worst hit by the virus, emphasized in a statement that the recipient died of his wounds and not from the Zika infection. It said it was reinforcing instructions to blood banks that people infected with Zika or dengue not be permitted to donate blood for 30 days after full recovery from the active stage of Zika infection. On Tuesday, the American Red Cross urged prospective donors who have visited Zika outbreak zones to wait at least 28 days before giving blood, but said the risk of transmitting the virus through blood donations was “extremely” low in the continental United States. The agency asked donors who give blood and subsequently develop symptoms consistent with Zika within 14 days to notify the Red Cross so the product can be quarantined. Also causing concern is the possibility of transmission through sexual contact. Health officials in Texas reported on Tuesday that a person in Dallas became infected after having sex with another person who had traveled in Venezuela, where the virus is circulating. ||||| Health officials in Brazil reported that two cases of the Zika virus were transmitted through blood transfusions, the latest challenge in the global battle against the fast-spreading mosquito-borne epidemic. Photo: Reuters SÃO PAULO—Health officials in Brazil reported two cases of the Zika virus being transmitted through blood transfusions, the latest challenge in the global battle against the fast-spreading mosquito-borne epidemic. Both cases were reported by health officials in Campinas, a wealthy industrial city of about one million people an hour northwest of São Paulo, the country’s largest city. A...

– First mosquitoes; then sex; now blood transfusions. On Thursday, officials in Brazil announced two cases of patients receiving the rapidly spreading Zika virus through donated blood, Reuters reports. According to the Wall Street Journal, the first case was in March after a patient received a blood transfusion during a liver transplant. The second case was in April after the patient was shot and needed multiple transfusions. “The capacity of Zika to spread through blood transfusions needs to be evaluated, as well as the blood protection measures that should be adopted based on the new findings,” Brazil's Health Ministry says. A Brazilian infectious disease specialist tells the Journal "there is no reason for panic." A number of countries are issuing stricter rules for blood donations in the face of the Zika outbreak. The Health Ministry is reiterating that blood banks shouldn't accept any donations from people who've had Zika until 30 days after they've fully recovered. And the American Red Cross says people who've been to Central or South America, Mexico, or the Caribbean should wait 28 days before donating blood. Still, the Red Cross states the risk for Americans receiving blood transfusions is "extremely low." Zika first appeared in Brazil last year. Since then, it's infected an estimated 500,000 to 1.5 million Brazilians and popped up in 30 countries. The virus only rarely causes serious symptoms in those who contract it, but it has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly in Brazilian babies.

For the latest updates on this story, click here. A 19-year-old West Side woman was found dead inside a walk-in freezer at a Rosemont hotel Sunday morning, about a day after she had gone missing from a party she attended with friends, police and her family said. Kenneka Jenkins was discovered after an hours-long search and was pronounced dead at 12:48 a.m. Sunday, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, said police told her Jenkins apparently let herself into the freezer while inebriated and died inside. An autopsy was performed Sunday but it wasn't immediately clear whether foul play was suspected, according to Becky Schlikerman, spokeswoman for the medical examiner's office. The cause and manner of the teen's death remained undetermined. Speaking to reporters outside the hotel Sunday morning, Martin said she was having trouble understanding what happened. "(I'm) horrified," she said. "It's something that no one could ever imagine. It's unbelievable." According to Martin and police, Jenkins left her house in the 2100 block of West Warren Boulevard around 11:30 p.m. Friday to attend a party with friends in a hotel room at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel & Conference Center in Rosemont. Gary Mack, a spokesman for the village of Rosemont, said Jenkins' sister last spoke to her around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Mack said witnesses told police they saw Jenkins at a party on the ninth floor of the hotel. Martin said her daughter's friends called her after 4 a.m. Saturday to say they had lost track of Jenkins in the hotel and left after they were unable to find her. The friends said they were in the car Martin had lent her daughter for the night and they had Jenkins' cellphone, Martin said. Martin said she headed to the hotel around 5 a.m. Saturday to try to find her daughter. Hotel staff told her they needed a missing persons report from police before they could start reviewing surveillance video of the premises. Martin said she then called the Rosemont Police Department and was told to wait a few hours before filing the report to see if Jenkins turned up. Jenkins' older sister, Leonore Harris, filed a missing persons report with Rosemont police later that morning, Mack said. Authorities notified the hotel about the missing teen around 1:15 p.m. Saturday. The 11-hour search for Jenkins included all public areas and the ninth floor, where she was last seen by witnesses, Mack said. "The hotel staff and management (were) actively canvassing the area at that time," Mack said. Martin said around 3 or 4 p.m. Saturday, police viewed some of the hotel video footage and said they did not see Jenkins pictured. The family left and came back a third time around 6 p.m. Saturday, Martin said, at which point relatives started knocking on room doors to see if any guests knew anything. The hotel called the police to complain about the knocking, Martin said. One of those responding officers listened to the family's plight and agreed to view the video footage again, Martin said. Around 10 p.m. Saturday, police told Jenkins' relatives they had spotted her on video from about 3:20 a.m. that day, "staggering" drunk near the front desk, according to Martin. Martin said the family members stayed at the hotel until after 1 a.m. Sunday, when police informed them they had discovered Jenkins' body in the walk-in freezer. Kenneka Jenkins, 19, was pronouced dead early Sept. 10, 2017, after she was found in a walk-in freezer at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Rosemont. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office released photos on Oct. 6, 2017, related to the cause and manner of death for Jenkins. (Tribune and Cook Co. Medical Examiner's Office photos) (Tribune and Cook Co. Medical Examiner's Office photos) It was not clear who located Jenkins' body, but Mack said the hotel was doing some construction in the area where she was found. Martin said she was told the freezer Jenkins was in was turned on and cold but was not being used to store food. "I just happen to know there's work being done on some new facilities over there, so there is some construction activity where a new restaurant is being built, and (she was found) in that vicinity," Mack said. "This is not an area where anyone would typically be who was a guest in the hotel." It is not clear whether the construction area was blocked off in any way. Martin said Jenkins told her she was "going to the show and bowling" Friday. Martin said she only learned about the hotel party when Jenkins' friends called to say they couldn't find her and were heading back with the car. The friends told her the three were getting set to leave the party but realized Jenkins had left her phone and car keys back in the room. Jenkins stayed in the hallway while the friends said they retrieved her stuff. When they got back to the hall she was gone, Martin said they told her. But Martin said she questioned the friends' accounts, saying their "stories changed over and over." Martin also said she had a hard time believing the police account that Jenkins got into the freezer on her own, saying if her daughter was drunk she would have had difficulty opening the heavy freezer doors. Jenkins would have realized the freezer doors weren't the doors to an elevator or a hotel entrance, Martin said. "Those were double steel doors, she didn't just pop them open," she said. Martin was angry about what she said was hotel workers' lack of urgency in the face of her pleas for help finding her daughter Saturday morning, directing her to the police rather than immediately reviewing hotel footage. Daniel Pena, a manager at the hotel, referred questions about the incident to Rosemont police Sunday. "Anyone can understand how a parent can feel distraught over the loss of a child and feel the need to lash out due to the tremendous pain they're feeling, and we can certainly understand that," Mack said. "But people can rest assured Rosemont is one of the top, highest trained, most respected police departments in the state of Illinois and does a good job at what they do. "Every situation has a lot of variables, and certainly this one did," he said. "The hotel has probably never seen anything like this, either, I would imagine." Martin said she thought Rosemont police also failed to heed the family's frantic attempts to figure out what happened to Jenkins. "If they had taken me seriously and checked right away, they could have found my daughter much sooner and she might have been alive," Martin said. [email protected] [email protected] ||||| A 19-year-old Chicago woman was discovered dead early Sunday inside a freezer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, police said.Kenneka Jenkins was last seen Saturday morning and reported missing at about 1:15 p.m. She was attending a party Friday night on the ninth floor of the hotel.Her family said that police told them that Jenkins was intoxicated when she walked into the freezer.However, the family believes there is more to the story.Her mother Tereasa Martin said she is horrified."It's something that no one could ever imagine. It's unbelievable," Martin said.Jenkins' sister told police that Jenkins was seen leaving her Chicago home at 11:30 p.m. Friday for a party at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 5440 North River Road. The sister said that she had received a text message from Jenkins at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday.After being contacted by Rosemont police, the staff of the Crowne Plaza searched the hotel and Jenkins was discovered inside a freezer early Sunday morning. Police said her body was beyond resuscitation and was pronounced dead at the scene.The Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel and Conference Center released a statement saying, "The Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel and Conference Center holds the safety, security and well-being of our guests and employees as our top priority and concern. We are saddened by this news, and our thoughts are with the young woman and her family during this difficult time. The hotel staff will continue to cooperate fully with local authorities. All further questions should be directed to the Rosemont Police Department."

– The family of a young Chicago woman who was found dead inside a hotel freezer is questioning the police account of how she got there. Kenneka Jenkins, 19, was found dead on Sunday, one day after she had wandered away from a party in a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, the Chicago Tribune reports. Police told Jenkins' mother, Tereasa Martin, her daughter walked into the freezer while drunk, but a "horrified" Martin says she's not buying it. Martin says she doubted her daughter, if impaired, could have opened the freezer's double steel doors. "She didn't just pop them open," Martin says. Jenkin's sister adds, per ABC7, that the police theory doesn't "add up." Jenkins' family rushed to the hotel near O'Hare Airport at 5am Saturday, after Martin got a call from her daughter's friends saying she had gone missing. The family's last contact with Jenkins was a text message she sent her sister at 1:30am, per the Tribune. Hotel staff rebuffed the family's initial pleas to review security camera footage, saying they needed a missing persons report from police. It took Martin several hours to get one after police told her to wait in case Jenkins came home. A search of the hotel didn't begin until after 1pm on Saturday. An initial review of surveillance video didn't turn up images of Jenkins, but Martin says a second look after the family complained turned up pictures of her daughter "staggering" near the front desk. Jenkins was finally found in a walk-in freezer at 12:48am on Sunday, in an area of the hotel undergoing renovation. "It's something that no one could ever imagine," says Martin. "It's unbelievable."

We're sorry, but this page is not available. Try typing the web address again, or using our search feature at the top of the page to find similar content. You may also be interested in learning more about: ||||| The new guidelines, formulated by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology and based on a four-year review of the evidence, simplify the current complex, five-step process for evaluating who needs to take statins. In a significant departure, the new method also counts strokes as well as heart attacks in its risk calculations, a step that will probably make some additional people candidates for the drugs. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It is not clear whether more or fewer people will end up taking the drugs under the new guidelines, experts said. Many women and African-Americans, who have a higher-than-average risk of stroke, may find themselves candidates for treatment, but others taking statins only to lower LDL cholesterol to target levels may no longer need them. The previous guidelines put such a strong emphasis on lowering cholesterol levels by specific amounts that patients who did not hit their target levels just by taking statins often were prescribed additional drugs like Zetia, made by Merck. But the new guidelines say doctors should no longer prescribe those extra medicines because they have never been shown to prevent heart attacks or strokes. Zetia has been viewed with increasing skepticism in recent years since studies showed it lowered LDL cholesterol but did not reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease or death. Still, it is among Merck’s top-selling drugs, earning $2.6 billion last year. Another drug, Vytorin, which combines Zetia with a statin, brought in $1.8 billion in 2012, according to company filings. And in May, Merck won approval for another drug, Liptruzet, which also contains the active ingredient in Zetia and a statin, a development that surprised many cardiologists because of questions about its effectiveness. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The new guidelines are part of a package of recommendations to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke that includes moderate exercise and a healthy diet. But its advice on cholesterol is the flash point, arousing the ire of critics who say the authors ignored evidence that did not come from gold-standard clinical trials and should also have counted less rigorous, but compelling, data. Advertisement Continue reading the main story For example, Dr. Daniel J. Rader, the director of the preventive cardiovascular medicine and lipid clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, points to studies of people with genes giving them low LDL levels over a lifetime. Their heart attack rate is greatly reduced, he said, suggesting the benefits of long-term cholesterol reduction. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Committee members counter his view, saying that cholesterol lowered by drugs may not have the same effect. Photo Critics also question the use of a 10-year risk of heart attack or stroke as the measure for determining who should be treated. Many people will have a lower risk simply because they are younger, yet could benefit from taking statins for decades to keep their cholesterol levels low, they say. Dr. Rader and other experts also worry that without the goad of target numbers, patients and their doctors will lose motivation to control cholesterol levels. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Experts say it is still unclear how much the new guidelines will change clinical practice. Dr. Rader suspects many cardiologists will still strive for the old LDL targets, at least for patients with heart disease who are at high risk. “They are used to it and believe in it,” he said. 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 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. Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said he thought it would take years for doctors to change their practices. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The process of developing the guidelines was rocky, taking at least twice as long as in the past. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute dropped out, saying that drafting guidelines was no longer part of its mission. Several committee members, including Dr. Rader, also dropped out, unhappy with the direction the committee was going. The architects of the guidelines say their recommendations are based on the best available evidence. Large clinical trials have consistently shown that statins reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, but the committee concluded that there is no evidence that hitting specific cholesterol targets makes a difference. No one has ever asked in a rigorous study if a person’s risk is lower with an LDL of 70 than 90 or 100, for example. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dr. Neil J. Stone, the chairman of the committee and a professor of preventive cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said he was surprised by what the group discovered as it delved into the evidence. “We deliberated for several years,” he said, “and could not come up with solid evidence for targets.” Dr. Nissen, who was not a member of the committee, agreed. “The science was never there” for the LDL targets, he said. Past committees “made them up out of thin air,” he added. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Department of Veterans Affairs conducted its own independent review and came to the same conclusion. About a year ago, the department, the nation’s largest integrated health care system, dropped its LDL targets, said Dr. John Rumsfeld, the V.A.'s national director of cardiology. “It is a shift,” he acknowledged, “but I would argue that it is not a radical change but is a course correction.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dr. Paul M. Ridker, the director of the center for cardiovascular disease prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, said he worried the new guidelines could easily lead to overtreatment. An older man with a low LDL level who smokes and has moderately elevated blood pressure would qualify for a statin under the new guidelines. But what he really needs is to stop smoking and get his blood pressure under control. Dr. Stone said he hoped doctors would not reflexively prescribe a statin to such a patient. Doctors are supposed to talk to their patients and realize that, with a man like the one Dr. Ridker described, the real problem was not cholesterol. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We are taking people out of their comfort zone,” Dr. Stone said. “Instead of being reassured that reaching this number means they will be fine, we are asking, ‘What is the best therapy to do the job?’ ” ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology have released new guidelines today to try and prevent heart attacks and strokes. They focus on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, a new way to assess risk and a healthy lifestyle. (No AP The updated recommendations for treating cholesterol are "a huge, huge departure" from doctors' usual procedure. People take the statin Lipitor for lowering blood cholesterol. (Photo: Mel Evans, AP) Story Highlights According to the new criteria, 31% of adults are good candidates for statins, compared with 15.5% now Some experts worry about exposing more people to statins' side effects, including higher risk of diabetes The guidelines eliminate benchmark numbers for cholesterol readings Twice as many Americans will be eligible for cholesterol-lowering drugs, based on controversial new heart guidelines from two of the USA's leading cardiovascular associations. The number of adults considered likely to benefit from statins will rise from about 15.5% today to 31%, according to the new criteria, developed by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, in collaboration with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. While statins have been widely prescribed to reduce the risk of heart attacks, the new guidelines recommend that they also be considered for people at high risk of stroke. STORY: New guidelines for treating obesity, too That advice could lead doctors to prescribe statins to millions more people, says Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, who wasn't involved in the new guidelines. "It's going to cause a huge conversation," says Mariell Jessup, president of the heart association. "It may be very controversial — which is fine. Controversy means discussion." Authors of the new guidelines say they hope to get statins to more patients who need them, while avoiding unnecessary prescriptions for people unlikely to benefit. The guidelines also call for doctors to work closely with patients to improve their diets and increase exercise. Rita Redberg, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco, says she is concerned about exposing more patients to statins' side effects, which include an increased risk of diabetes, as well as muscle pain. The average patient is likely to notice two major changes in the way that doctors manage their cholesterol, experts say. For years, doctors often prescribed statins based on patients' cholesterol levels, especially their LDL, known as "bad" cholesterol. The new guidelines advise doctors to base their decisions on a patient's overall risk, rather than just their cholesterol. Nissen notes that even patients with normal cholesterol can have heart attacks. "It's a huge, huge departure from the way that people have been thinking about cholesterol and heart disease," says Harlan Krumholz, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. "Doctors today are obsessed with numbers." The guidelines identify four high-risk groups who could benefit from statins: people with pre-existing heart disease, such as those who have had a heart attack; people ages 40 to 75 who have diabetes; patients ages 40 to 75 with at least a 7.5% risk of developing cardiovascular disease over the next decade, according to a formula described in the guidelines; and patients with the sort of super-high cholesterol that sometimes runs in families, as evidenced by an LDL of 190 milligrams per deciliter or higher. These changes will help doctors to focus not just on "lab values," but on the whole patient, including a patient's weight, blood pressure, use of tobacco, diet, physical activity and other considerations, Krumholz says. Doctors have focused heavily in recent years on using drugs to reduce LDL to certain benchmark levels: under 130 for most people; 100 for people at high-risk; under 70 for those at the highest risk, such as those who have just survived a heart attack. Doctors have raised or lowered medication doses to help patients meet these targets, Nissen says. The new guidelines get rid of these targets, says Carl Orringer, a cardiologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. Instead, doctors are encouraged to put patients on doses proven to work. The expert panel decided to eliminate these benchmarks because no one has ever tested them in a randomized, controlled trial — the gold standard for medical evidence, Nissen says. While studies clearly show that lower LDL is better, there's really no data to support using one cutoff or another. Getting doctors to change their practices could be difficult, Nissen says. That's because numbers are easy to understand, both for busy physicians and patients without a medical background. Having a "target" cholesterol in mind has seemed helpful to many doctors and patients, because it has given them goals to work toward. About 600,000 Americans die from heart disease every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contributing: Nanci Hellmich Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ckPEiz ||||| The nation's first new guidelines in a decade for preventing heart attacks and strokes call for twice as many Americans _ one-third of all adults _ to consider taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. FILE - This undated photo provided by by Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., shows Atorvastatin Calcium tablets, a generic form of Lipitor, which is being sold under a deal with Pfizer. The nation's first new... (Associated Press) The guidelines, issued Tuesday by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, are a big change. They use a new formula for estimating someone's risk that includes many factors besides cholesterol, the main focus now. They take aim at strokes, not just heart attacks. And they set a lower threshold for using medicines to reduce risk. The definition of high cholesterol isn't changing, but the treatment goal is. Instead of aiming for a specific number, using whatever drugs get a patient there, the advice stresses statins such as Lipitor and Zocor and identifies four groups of people they help the most. "The emphasis is to try to treat more appropriately," said Dr. Neil Stone, the Northwestern University doctor who headed the cholesterol guideline panel. "We're going to give statins to those who are the most likely to benefit." Doctors say the new approach will limit how many people with low heart risks are put on statins simply because of a cholesterol number. Yet under the new advice, 33 million Americans _ 44 percent of men and 22 percent of women _ would meet the threshold to consider taking a statin. Under the current guidelines, statins are recommended for only about 15 percent of adults. Some doctors not involved in writing the guidance worry that it will be tough to understand. "It will be controversial, there's no question about it. For as long as I remember, we've told physicians and patients we should treat their cholesterol to certain goal levels," said the Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Steven Nissen. "There is concern that there will be a lot of confusion about what to do." The government's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute appointed expert panels to write the new guidelines in 2008, but in June said it would leave drafting them to the Heart Association and College of Cardiology. New guidelines on lifestyle and obesity also came out Tuesday, and ones on blood pressure are coming soon. Roughly half the cholesterol panel members have financial ties to makers of heart drugs, but panel leaders said no one with industry connections could vote on the recommendations. "It is practically impossible to find a large group of outside experts in the field who have no relationships to industry," said Dr. George Mensah of the heart institute. He called the guidelines "a very important step forward" based on solid evidence, and said the public should trust them. Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. High cholesterol leads to hardened arteries that can cause a heart attack or stroke. Most cholesterol is made by the liver, so diet changes have a limited effect on it. Millions of Americans take statins, which reduce cholesterol dramatically and have other effects that more broadly lower the chances of heart trouble. The patents on Lipitor, Zocor and other statins have expired, and they are widely available in generic versions for as little as a dime a day. One that is still under patent protection is AstraZeneca's Crestor, which had sales of $8.3 billion in 2012. Despite a small increased risk of muscle problems and accelerating diabetes in patients already at risk for it, statins are "remarkably safe drugs" whose benefits outweigh their risks, said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, preventive-medicine chief at Northwestern. Current guidelines say total cholesterol should be under 200, and LDL, or "bad cholesterol," under l00. Other drugs such as niacin and fibrates are sometimes added to statins to try to reach those goals, but studies show they don't always lower the chances of heart problems. "Chasing numbers can lead us to using drugs that haven't been proven to help patients. You can make someone's lab test look better without making them better," said Yale University cardiologist Dr. Harlan Krumholz, who has long urged the broader risk approach the new guidelines take. They say statins do the most good for: _People who already have heart disease. _Those with LDL of 190 or higher, usually because of genetic risk. _People ages 40 to 75 with Type 2 diabetes. _People ages 40 to 75 who have an estimated 10-year risk of heart disease of 7.5 percent or higher, based on the new formula. (This means that for every 100 people with a similar risk profile, seven or eight would have a heart attack or stroke within 10 years.) Aspirin _ widely used to lower the risk of strokes and heart attacks _ is not addressed in the guidelines. And many drugs other than statins are still recommended for certain people, such as those with high triglycerides. Patients should not stop taking any heart drug without first checking with their doctor. The guidelines also say: _Adults 40 to 79 should get an estimate every four to six years of their chances of suffering a heart attack or stroke over the next decade using the new formula. It includes age, sex, race, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and smoking. If risk remains unclear, doctors can consider family history or three other tests. The best one is a coronary artery calcium test, an X-ray to measure calcium in heart arteries. _For those 20 to 59, an estimate of their lifetime risk of a heart attack or stroke can be considered using traditional factors like cholesterol and blood pressure to persuade them to change their lifestyle. _To fight obesity, doctors should develop individualized weight loss plans including a moderately reduced calorie diet, exercise and behavior strategies. The best ones offer two or three in-person meetings a month for at least six months. Web or phone-based programs are a less-ideal option. _Everyone should get at least 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise three or four times a week. _People should eat a "dietary pattern" focused on vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Include low-fat dairy products, poultry, fish, beans and healthy oils and nuts. Limit sweets, sweet drinks, red meat, saturated fat and salt. "I don't like the concept of `good foods' and `bad foods,'" said Dr. Robert Eckel, a University of Colorado cardiologist who worked on the guidelines. "We really want to emphasize dietary patterns." ___ Online: Risk formula: http://my.americanheart.org/cvriskcalculator Guidelines on cholesterol: http://bit.ly/1j2hDpH Lifestyle: http://bit.ly/16ZnV7e Overweight: http://bit.ly/1bsdFG2 Risk Assessment: http://bit.ly/19hzaV9 Cholesterol info: http://tinyurl.com/2dtc5vy Heart facts: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/127/1/e6 ___ Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP ||||| Story highlights New guidelines could double the number of folks eligible for medication, experts say These guidelines call for a focus on risk factors, not just cholesterol levels The policy say it's important how patients lower "bad" cholesterol If you're not on medicine to lower your cholesterol yet, you might be soon. In what's being called a tectonic shift in the way doctors will treat high cholesterol, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology on Tuesday released new treatment guidelines calling for a focus on risk factors rather than just cholesterol levels. The new guidelines could double the amount of people on medication to lower their cholesterol, experts say. "This is an enormous shift in policy as it relates to who should be treated for high levels of cholesterol," said Dr. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. The biggest change from the old guidelines, he says: Ignore the numbers. "For many years, the goal was to get the 'bad' cholesterol levels -- or LDL levels -- below 100," Nissen said. "Those targets have been completely eliminated in the new guidelines, and the threshold for treatment has been eliminated." JUST WATCHED Report: More Americans should take statins Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Report: More Americans should take statins 03:22 JUST WATCHED Test your cholesterol knowledge Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Test your cholesterol knowledge 01:15 JUST WATCHED Know your cholesterol numbers Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Know your cholesterol numbers 01:33 In their place, the guidelines suggest using specific risk factors to determine who should be treated with cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, and who should simply make lifestyle changes. Among the four questions to ask to determine risks: Do you have heart disease? Do you have diabetes (Type 1 or 2)? Do you have a bad cholesterol level more than 190? And is your 10-year risk of a heart attack greater than 7.5%? According to the new guidelines, if you answered yes to any of those four questions, you should be on a statin. Period. New drugs could drop cholesterol to extreme lows For those who do not fit those criteria, the committee behind the new policy says lifestyle and behavior management should be sufficient to help manage high cholesterol. "The focus for years has been on getting the LDL low," said Dr. Neil Stone, committee chairman. "Our guidelines are not against that. We're simply saying how you get the LDL low is important. Considering all the possible treatments, we recommend a heart-healthy lifestyle and statin therapy for the best chance of reducing your risk of stroke or heart attack in the next 10 years." Calculating risks So how do you and your doctor determine if your 10-year risk of a heart attack is above 7.5% and you should be put on a statin? A simple calculation, said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, chairman of the committee that developed the equation. "We were able to generate very robust risk equations for both non-Hispanic white men and women as well as African-American men and women," Lloyd-Jones said. "Those equations factor in age, sex, race, total and HDL ('good') cholesterol levels, blood pressure levels, blood pressure treatment status as well as diabetes and current smoking status." Each of those factors is assigned a numerical value and can be used to determine individual risk percentage using an online calculator. The hope, Lloyd-Jones said, is that by doing these calculations, patients can be more informed about their risks when going to see doctors. "The greatest strength behind these guidelines is that they hit at the heart of prevention -- which is that lifestyle, rather than treating isolated risk factors, is the key to reducing risk of chronic disease," said Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University, in an e-mail. "We tend to focus on 'quick fix' answers such as a pill ... whereas the risk reduction from lifestyle changes, such (as) exercise three-four days a week, reduces risk nearly double to that from any one of the medication interventions." Double the prescriptions By changing the way doctors evaluate a patient for statin therapy, Nissen said these new guidelines will effectively double the number of Americans eligible for statin therapy, bringing the total to about 72 million. How to boost your 'good' cholesterol So does this mean big bucks for the pharmaceutical companies? Nissen said no -- and in fact, it may mean a downturn in their business. "Now, except for Crestor, they're virtually all generic -- you can get a three-month supply for $10," he said. "So there's really no money to be made with statins anymore." He goes on to say that while prescriptions for these drugs will increase dramatically, the guidelines all but shunned other cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Zetia, a big moneymaker for Merck & Co. Aside from the financial aspects of medicating 35 million more Americans, using statins in a much broader population has been controversial. Some people, such as cancer expert Dr. David Agus, advocate giving everyone older than 45 a statin, due both to cholesterol-lowering properties and potential benefit in reducing cancer. Others say that with the potential side effects from statin use -- muscle pains and soreness, a potential moderate increase in liver disease and a risk for developing Type 2 diabetes -- they should be used with care. Nissen, who strongly disagrees with Agus' suggestion on statins, said a measured approach is best. "If you have a young woman who is otherwise healthy, giving (her) a statin doesn't make any sense at all," Nissen said. "I do believe the evidence is solid that if you have risk, that statins are enormously beneficial." Other recommendations In addition to the guidelines on evaluating cholesterol risk, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology released two other sets of guidelines relating to overall heart health. One report gives guidelines for eating a heart-healthy diet, including reducing saturated and trans fats as well as limiting sodium to 2,400 milligrams per day -- 30% less than the average American consumes on a daily basis. Cholesterol levels: What numbers should you aim for? The other report dealt with treatment guidelines for physicians on managing weight loss in their patients. They include a call to create individualized weight loss plans and recommend counseling with a dietitian or other certified weight loss professional for at least six months. That report also goes on to suggest that doctors should begin offering bariatric surgery as a potentially viable option to improve health for patients with a body mass index over 40, or those with a BMI over 35 and other complicating factors.

– Two leading heart groups have announced changes being described as "tectonic" and "profound" in the way doctors prescribe cholesterol-lowering statins. The shift from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology means that doctors will no longer focus on a patent's level of "bad cholesterol"—or LDL— and automatically prescribe statins when it reaches a certain level. Instead, they will focus on a range of overall health factors. "This is an enormous shift in policy as it relates to who should be treated for high levels of cholesterol," the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic tells CNN. "For many years, the goal was to get the 'bad' cholesterol levels—or LDL levels—below 100," says Dr. Steven Nissen. "Those targets have been completely eliminated in the new guidelines, and the threshold for treatment has been eliminated." So who will be taking statins? People who have a history of heart trouble or diabetes, and—in the one exception to the notion of ignoring LDL levels—those who have dangerously high levels of 190 or more, reports the New York Times. Beyond that, the guidelines say anyone who has a 7.5% risk of developing heart disease, based on a new formula (the site is slow, apparently bogged down) also should take them, reports USA Today. In yet another major shift, the guidelines now apply to people at risk of stroke as well as a heart attack, reports AP. That change alone could double the number of people on the drugs, which are currently prescribed to 25% of Americans older than 40.

A felon sought in a shooting and fiery crash that killed three people on Las Vegas' main boulevard was taken into custody Thursday in Los Angeles, police said. This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Ammar Harris in a booking photo from a 2012 arrest in Las Vegas. Police have identified Harris as a suspect in a shooting that... (Associated Press) Ammar Harris was arrested by a team of police and federal agents in North Hollywood, Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones said. The 26-year-old Harris is a self-described pimp who was the subject of a multi-state manhunt following the Feb. 21 gunfire and chain-reaction crash, Police say he fired at least five shots from a sports utility vehicle into a Maserati sports car, killing a self-promoted rapper who he argued with earlier in the valet area of a Las Vegas Strip resort. The Maserati slammed into a taxi, killing the driver and a businesswoman. Earlier in the day, police said they had found and talked with all three women who were in the SUV with Harris. Late Wednesday, police found SUV passenger Tineesha Lashun Howard in another state, and Jones said for the first time that police previously found and interviewed two other women who were with Howard in Harris' black Range Rover during the shooting. Jones wouldn't release the names of the other passengers in Harris' SUV, but said none of the three passengers had been charged with a crime. Police are concerned about their safety, the police captain said. Howard, a 22-year-old from Miami with a history of prostitution arrests, also uses the names Yenesis Alfonzo or Yani. She was identified by police on Tuesday as a person of interest in the case who might have been in danger. Las Vegas police also sought Thursday to stop the circulation of several photos the department issued Tuesday and Wednesday in the search for Harris. Police said they depict people other than Howard. Harris was arrested last year in Las Vegas in a 2010 prostitution case using the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris. He was charged with robbery, sexual assault, kidnapping and coercion with a weapon, and police sought charges of pandering by force and felon in possession of concealed weapon. Court records show that case was dismissed last June. Harris was convicted in South Carolina in 2004 of felony possession with intent to sell a stolen pistol and convicted that same year in Atlanta of a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge. ||||| DA might seek death penalty for Strip-shooting suspect arrested in LA GENE BLEVINS / Los Angeles Daily News Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said the suspect in the Strip shooting that left three dead demonstrated “reckless disregard for human life,” and would not rule out seeking the death penalty after the man’s arrest Thursday in Los Angeles. After a weeklong, nationwide manhunt, Ammar Harris, 26, was found at an apartment complex in Studio City, where Los Angeles Police Department officers and FBI agents converged around noon. Harris surrendered peacefully, Metro Police Lt. Ray Steiber said. Harris faces three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, plus counts of discharging a firearm into a vehicle and discharging a firearm out of a vehicle, according to a criminal complaint filed last week by Clark County prosecutors. The murder charges ultimately may be changed to capital murder. At the news conference announcing the arrest Thursday, Wolfson said his office would follow its usual procedure in determining whether Harris would face the death penalty. The decision to file capital murder charges is determined by a committee of prosecutors in the D.A.'s office. But, Wolfson said, "I can tell you that Mr. Harris’ behavior is like none other that I've seen, and I've been in law enforcement for 32 years." "I can’t imagine anything much more serious than firing a weapon from a moving vehicle into another moving vehicle on a corner such as Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo. That is reckless disregard for human life, and there are certain consequences when you engage in that kind of behavior," Wolfson said. After his arrest, Harris was transported to the LAPD Metro Detention Center. "He's in the process of being booked. We'll see if he waives extradition," Steiber said during a 4 p.m. media conference. Metro detectives were on their way to Los Angeles to interview Harris, Steiber added. Harris, 26, had been identified by Metro as the person who fired gunshots from a Range Rover into a Maserati sports car in the early-morning hours of Feb. 21 as the vehicles made their way up the Las Vegas Strip. Kenneth Cherry Jr., the driver of the Maserati, and a passenger were hit in the shooting. Cherry’s wounds caused him to lose control of the car, which ran a red light at Flamingo Road and crashed into a taxi. The impact triggered an explosion in the cab. Three people were killed: Cherry; the cab driver, Michael Boldon, 62, of Las Vegas; and cab passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, a businesswoman from Maple Valley, Wash. The criminal complaint filed against Harris identified the passenger who survived as Freddy Walters. Cherry’s family expressed elation after learning of Harris’ arrest. But the timing of the news on the day of Cherry’s funeral in Oakland made the news bittersweet, the family said in a statement through their attorney, Bob Beckett. Cherry’s father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., expressed hope that the district attorney would seek the death penalty for Harris. “It is consoling to know that the state of Nevada has the death penalty,” Cherry Sr. said in the statement. An argument between Cherry and Harris reportedly occurred before both men left Aria early in the morning of Feb. 21, but detectives do not believe they knew each other previously, Steiber said. Harris had eluded authorities since the shooting. The Range Rover was found Saturday in the parking lot of an apartment complex where Harris lived, not far from the shooting scene. Harris was said to have been from South Carolina and spent time in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Miami. Authorities said earlier this week that their search for him stretched from Maine to California. “(Harris) left Las Vegas shortly after this event occurred … He did leave Las Vegas pretty rapidly,” Steiber said. Steiber did not give details about how police located and closed in on Harris. The FBI told the Los Angeles Daily News that Harris was arrested around noon at a fourth floor apartment on Arch Drive, where he was staying with a friend. Harris’ friend lived in the Archview Apartments, the newspaper reported. FBI special agent Scott Garriola told the Los Angeles paper that the friend was detained for questioning but was not thought to be involved in the incident. Earlier Thursday, Metro Capt. Chris Jones reported three witnesses who had been with Harris the morning of the shooting had been located and interviewed. One, Yenesis Alfonso, also known as Tineesha Lishun Howard, was found outside Nevada and interviewed Wednesday evening after being named as a person of interest in the case. Alfonso and the other two witnesses were cooperative and were not considered suspects, Jones said. Harris was arrested in 2010 in Las Vegas on charges of pandering, kidnapping, sexual assault and coercion. He is also known by the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, and uses the nickname Jai’duh. Alfonso’s arrest history includes soliciting prostitution, trespassing, possession of a stolen vehicle and grand larceny, trick roll, according to Metro Police. On a networking website for models and photographers, someone who appears to be Harris posted a profile under the name Jai’duh. The profile says Jai’duh is a fashion photographer looking for models, and includes samples of his work. The profile, created June 15, 2008, states: “Just relocated to Las Vegas from Atlanta. … So I’m fresh out here.” Attempts to contact models who appeared to have worked with Harris were unsuccessful. Harris had at least two twitter feeds, @NY and @jaiduh. The former was used more frequently and was deleted after the shooting, while the latter was seldom used and remains active but is a private account. On social media, Harris flaunted a lavish lifestyle, posting videos of him counting $100 bills and partying in Miami and elsewhere. A Lockerz.com account that appears to belong to Harris includes pictures of stacks of cash harnessed by rubber bands, expensive luxury cars and a Carbon 15 .223 caliber pistol. In one photo that looks to be a screen capture of an instant message conversation, someone tells Harris: “A ho with no instructions, will fail in self-destruction.” Harris also posted a picture of a credit card for “AMG Lifestyle” with the caption “Filing taxes on em lol,” and identified himself as AMG Management on his Twitter account. A business entity search in Florida found an AMG Lifestyle Inc. registered to Alfonso. Harris is scheduled to appear Monday morning in an L.A. courtroom on a fugitive warrant, Los Angeles County District Attorney Sandi Gibbons told Los Angeles Daily News. Next for Harris will be extradition back to Nevada, Metro indicated, where a warrant charging him with three counts of murder was issued Friday. News of his arrest was greeted warmly. “The Desert Cab family is just absolutely elated,” said Sandy Shaver, general manager of Desert Cab, the company whose taxi was involved in the collision that resulted in the deaths of Boldon and Sandra Sutton-Wasmund. “It was so irritating that he was still out there. We couldn’t be happier right now,” Shaver said. Shaver said word of the arrest spread rapidly on two-way radios used by drivers in their cabs. “Nothing in the 20 years I’ve worked here has put such a weight on the company more than the loss of Michael (Boldon) and his passenger,” Shaver said. “It’s a big relief to us that he has been caught.” ||||| What started the tension between a boastful pimp and an aspiring rapper at a posh Strip resort that culminated in three deaths on the iconic Strip last week remains unclear, but the multistate manhunt for the fugitive gunman ended Thursday with his arrest near Los Angeles, authorities said. On the morning of Feb. 21, Ammar Harris and Kenneth Cherry Jr. only had a 15-minute window in which they crossed paths, a Las Vegas police report said. During their brief encounter at Aria at CityCenter, Harris, 26, became so angry with Cherry, 27, that he took his rage to the streets as the two men pulled out of the resort's valet in their luxury vehicles. Harris fired at least five rounds from the driver's seat of his Range Rover at Cherry's Maserati on Las Vegas Boulevard near Flamingo Road, the report said. The shooting ignited a domino-effect crash in which a fatally wounded Cherry drove into a taxicab, causing a fireball explosion. The chaos ended with three deaths and launched a search for Harris, who sped away with three women in the Range Rover. Although the police report didn't say what Harris and Cherry argued about, law enforcement sources said the beef was over a working girl. "It was all prostitution stuff," a source said. Harris was arrested about noon Thursday in Studio City in Los Angeles. During his arrest, he was at an apartment with a woman believed to be a prostitute, a source said. He was taken into custody peacefully at the Archview luxury apartment complex near the Hollywood Freeway and the Los Angeles River, at 4150 Arch Drive. Harris was arrested by a team of FBI agents and police. Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said during an afternoon press conference that Harris' arrest was a "multi-agency approach" between his department's homicide unit, and the Criminal Apprehension Team fugitive task force, as well as Los Angeles police and the FBI. Gillespie said three people died because of Harris' "senseless act." Cherry was killed by a gunshot. Cabdriver Michael Boldon, 62, and his passenger, Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, of Maple Valley, Wash., died in the explosion. Freddy Walters, 26, the passenger in Cherry's Maserati, was grazed by a bullet and treated at University Medical Center. He cooperated with police. Three other people also were injured. Gillespie said Thursday's arrest was about more than detaining Harris. It was about keeping Southern Nevadans and tourists safe. "I hope anyone out there watching understands clearly, if you live in this city, if you work in this city or you visit this city and you act like this person, we will find you. We will prosecute you and we will send you to prison," Gillespie said while speaking of Harris. NEW DETAILS OF INCIDENT The police report said Harris arrived at the Aria about 1:30 a.m. with three women. They were escorted into the Haze nightclub. Cherry and Walters arrived shortly before 4 a.m., and were in Cherry's Maserati leaving the valet only 15 minutes later. Harris approached the driver's door of Cherry's Maserati, paused for a second or two, and then continued into the Aria lobby, the report said. At 4:16 a.m., Harris drove out of the Aria valet and then east on Harmon Avenue toward Las Vegas Boulevard. The report said Harris and Cherry next saw each other at a traffic light on eastbound Harmon near the Strip. A taxicab's video caught Harris' Range Rover as it pulled in front of Cherry's Maserati when the vehicles prepared to turn north on Las Vegas Boulevard. Harris then began unleashing his anger toward Cherry. "The driver of the Ranger Rover (Harris) rolled his window down and began yelling at the driver of the Maserati (Cherry)," the report said without detailing the exchange. The taxi camera recorded the sounds of two gunshots at 4:19 a.m. Shortly after, three more gunshots are heard on the video. The single, fatal shot to Cherry struck his left shoulder, and perforated his chest, the report said. He died at UMC less than 30 minutes after the shooting. Cherry, went by the rap persona "Kenny Clutch." He rapped on YouTube videos about a life of drugs, guns and pimping. But Cherry's father told the Review-Journal his son was an innocent victim. Kenneth Cherry Sr., 52, said Thursday through an attorney he was elated by Harris' arrest. He buried his son Thursday. Cherry Sr. said last week his son was a good kid who was only playing a tough guy in his amateur videos. He said his son was not a bad guy. "It's like somebody took my heart and snatched it out of my chest," said the tearful father. "This has touched home in a way I wouldn't wish on nobody." Child custody documents in Clark County family court paint a different picture of Cherry Jr., showing a violent man who chased down the mother of one of his children and beat her so hard that she started to see "stars." The allegations were made in September 2011 in an affidavit that stems from a child custody dispute. FAMILY RELIEVED BY ARREST Family members of other victims were relieved Harris was arrested, saying they planned to attend Harris' court hearings. "I'm ecstatic," said Tehran Boldon, 50, on Thursday. He bid farewell to his brother Wednesday at a church in North Las Vegas, where Michael Boldon, the cab driver, was carried away in a silver casket. "The sooner they caught him the better. And I'm really happy that they got him alive. That was really important to me and my family. Now he's going to have to face the music, and it won't be rap, either." From Maple Valley, Wash., Sue VanRuff, a good friend of Sutton-Wasmund, said the entire community is "heartbroken," but that at least now there might be some justice. "I'm glad the police caught up with him," said VanRuff, executive director of the Greater Maple Valley-Black Diamond Chamber of Commerce, where Sutton-Wasmund worked as an independent contractor. "And we look forward to justice." Sutton-Wasmund was in Las Vegas attending a trade show. THE MANHUNT A massive search ensued for the shooting suspect, a felon and proclaimed pimp. Billboards went up in Las Vegas as police sought the public's help in catching Harris, who bragged about his lifestyle openly on Twitter. Investigators submitted an arrest warrant for Harris on three counts of murder last week. Harris, under the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, was arrested in Las Vegas for a 2010 prostitution case. He faced multiple charges, including robbery, sex assault, kidnapping and coercion with a weapon, in that case. It was dismissed in June 2012. In 2004, Harris was convicted in South Carolina on a felony charge of possession with intent to sell a stolen pistol. After the Strip shooting, the Range Rover was caught on Venetian surveillance video heading toward Koval Lane. Police found the SUV on Saturday at The Meridian, the Las Vegas condominium complex where Harris lived. Before the shooting, Harris openly boasted about his life as a pimp on social media websites, where he instructed his prostitutes and recruited new girls. In a Twitter feed spanning several years, Harris flashed stacks of $100 bills and high-powered guns. He flaunted expensive cars - a Bentley, an Aston Martin and a BMW - and reveled in luxury homes in two of the country's most glamorous cities. He didn't just celebrate his birthday; he planned a boat party on the Atlantic Ocean, with a $1,000 bikini contest and a poster featuring beautiful women. His Twitter account, deleted Tuesday after the Review-Journal reviewed a year's worth of tweets, paint a picture of an ambitious, controlling man who demeaned women and was undaunted by police, the courts or the dangers of his lifestyle. PASSENGER NO LONGER SOUGHT Harris' arrest came after Las Vegas police announced Wednesday night that a passenger in his car, 22-year-old Yenesis Alfonzo, also known as Tineesha Lashun Howard, was no longer being sought as a person of interest. A source told the Review-Journal that Alfonzo was on a bus when she was stopped by authorities Wednesday somewhere in the southwestern United States. She was headed home to Miami, the source said. Police said they spoke to three female passengers in Harris' Range Rover and none were expected be prosecuted. Alfonzo has an arrest record that includes soliciting prostitution, trick roll, grand larceny and possession of a stolen vehicle. The Los Angeles Times reported at least one other woman inside Harris' Range Rover had a similar record. Las Vegas investigators suspected Harris may have fled to California when they discovered his phone records showed he was communicating with people in the state, the Times also reported. Las Vegas police said they were in touch with FBI and Los Angeles authorities throughout their search for Harris. Hundreds of tips were investigated by detectives, police said. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Harris, who is facing nearly a dozen charges including three counts of murder, won't be given any leniency. He called Harris' actions "reckless," with no regard for human life. "I can't imagine anything more serious than firing a weapon from a moving vehicle into another moving vehicle on a corner such as Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo," Wolfson said. "Thank God only three people lost their lives. ... It could have been worse." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Antonio Planas at aplanas@reviewjournal. com or 702-383-4638. Contact reporter Tom Ragan at [email protected] or 702-224-5512. Contact reporter Mike Blasky at [email protected] or 702-383-0283.

– The multi-state manhunt after last week's shooting spree on the Vegas Strip is over. Police in Los Angeles today arrested 26-year-old Ammar Harris, reports the Las Vegas Sun. Harris is accused of firing at a vehicle driven by aspiring rapper Kenneth Cherry, which caused Cherry's car to slam into a taxi. Three people, including Cherry, were killed. Police named Harris as a suspect a few days ago, and he faces three counts of murder. Cops say three women were in Harris' Range Rover at the time of the shooting, but all have been located and none face charges, reports AP. Harris himself has a lengthy criminal history and has long boasted about his life as a pimp, literally, on Twitter, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The paper pulled a year's worth of tweets before the account got yanked, complete with images of Harris flashing wads of cash, guns, and fancy cars. The tweets depict "an ambitious, controlling man who demeaned women and was undaunted by police, the courts or the dangers of his lifestyle," says the R-J story.

Fresh analysis of a reptile fossil is helping scientists solve an evolutionary puzzle - how snakes lost their limbs. The 90 million-year-old skull is giving researchers vital clues about how snakes evolved. Comparisons between CT scans of the fossil and modern reptiles indicate that snakes lost their legs when their ancestors evolved to live and hunt in burrows, which many snakes still do today. The findings show snakes did not lose their limbs in order to live in the sea, as was previously suggested. Scientists used CT scans to examine the bony inner ear of Dinilysia patagonica, a 2-metre long reptile closely linked to modern snakes. These bony canals and cavities, like those in the ears of modern burrowing snakes, controlled its hearing and balance. They built 3D virtual models to compare the inner ears of the fossils with those of modern lizards and snakes. Researchers found a distinctive structure within the inner ear of animals that actively burrow, which may help them detect prey and predators. This shape was not present in modern snakes that live in water or above ground. The findings help scientists fill gaps in the story of snake evolution, and confirm Dinilysia patagonica as the largest burrowing snake ever known. They also offer clues about a hypothetical ancestral species from which all modern snakes descended, which was likely a burrower. The study, published in Science Advances, was supported by the Royal Society. Dr Hongyu Yi, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led the research, said: "How snakes lost their legs has long been a mystery to scientists, but it seems that this happened when their ancestors became adept at burrowing. The inner ears of fossils can reveal a remarkable amount of information, and are very useful when the exterior of fossils are too damaged or fragile to examine." Mark Norell, of the American Museum of Natural History, who took part in the study, said: "This discovery would not have been possible a decade ago - CT scanning has revolutionised how we can study ancient animals. We hope similar studies can shed light on the evolution of more species, including lizards, crocodiles and turtles." ### ||||| EDINBURGH, Scotland, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Comparisons between modern snake skulls and the 90 million-year-old fossil suggest snakes lost their limbs in order to burrow on land. Using CT scans to study the inner ear cavity of the fossilized Dinilysia patagonica skull, scientists at the University of Edinburgh found the structure of the canal is similar to modern burrowing serpents, but not those that live above ground or in water. The findings suggest the Dinilysia patagonica, at two meters long, is the largest burrowing snake ever known. "How snakes lost their legs has long been a mystery to scientists, but it seems that this happened when their ancestors became adept at burrowing," lead researcher Dr. Honguy Yi of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences said in a press release. "The inner ears of fossils can reveal a remarkable amount of information, and are very useful when the exterior of fossils are too damaged or fragile to examine." The study is published in Science Advances and was sponsored by the Royal Society in Scotland. Scientists at Yale concluded earlier this year snakes indeed evolved on land, not in water like once assumed. Through analysis of snake genomes, anatomy and fossils, the researchers constructed a family tree of serpents suggesting the most recent common ancestor of today's snakes had lost its forelimbs but still had tiny hind limbs some 128 million years ago. "It would have first evolved on land, instead of the sea," said the Yale study's co-author Daniel Field of the world's earliest snakes. "Both of those insights resolve longstanding debates on the origin of snakes." ||||| Abstract Modern snakes probably originated as habitat specialists, but it controversial unclear whether they were ancestrally terrestrial burrowers or marine swimmers. We used x-ray virtual models of the inner ear to predict the habit of Dinilysia patagonica, a stem snake closely related to the origin of modern snakes. Previous work has shown that modern snakes perceive substrate vibrations via their inner ear. Our data show that D. patagonica and modern burrowing squamates share a unique spherical vestibule in the inner ear, as compared with swimmers and habitat generalists. We built predictive models for snake habit based on their vestibular shape, which estimated D. patagonica and the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes as burrowers with high probabilities. This study provides an extensive comparative data set to test fossoriality quantitatively in stem snakes, and it shows that burrowing was predominant in the lineages leading to modern crown snakes. Keywords crown snake origin HRCT inner ear bony labyrinth virtual model building geometric morphometrics functional morphology ancestral state reconstructions INTRODUCTION More than 3000 species of extant snakes share a limbless or limb-reduced body plan and distinct sensory systems (1, 2). It is often held that the unique anatomy of snakes evolved through habitat specialization early in the group’s evolution, perhaps associated with their origin from other reptiles (3). Recent studies show conflicting results about whether snakes evolved from marine (4, 5) or terrestrial ancestors (6–9). For stem snakes—fossils that are more basal than all modern species—ecological traits are reconstructed conventionally from depositional environment or qualitative morphological characters (10, 11). Here, we provide quantitative analyses of the inner ear to reconstruct the habit of lineages closely related to the origin of crown snakes, including the Cretaceous fossil Dinilysia patagonica (12, 13) and the hypothetical ancestor of all modern snakes. We hypothesize that D. patagonica was a burrower and that crown snakes originated from burrowing ancestors. For an ecomorphic indicator for snake habits, we used the shape of the inner ear instead of anatomical features that are not often preserved in fossils. For example, trunk/tail ratio is an ecomorphic indicator for habitat preferences in living species (14), but fossil snakes rarely preserve complete vertebral series. The inner ear is the hearing and balance organ of all snakes (15). We used x-ray computed tomography (CT) to build three-dimensional models that are virtual endocasts of the bony inner ear labyrinth (Fig. 1, A to D). Our sample includes 34 species of modern and fossil snakes, and 10 species of lizards and amphisbaenians (table S1). The habit of D. patagonica was estimated by comparing its inner ear with modern snakes in three habit groups: aquatic, terrestrial generalists, and burrowing. We also tested the putative burrowing habit of the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes, as reconstructed from a snake evolutionary tree. Fig. 1 Modern snakes originated as burrowers, based on their inner ear morphology. (A) Snake skulls in right lateral view, showing that the inner ear (orange) locates inside the braincase and opens to the stapes (blue) in the middle ear. Ear and skull models are not to scale. (B) Inner ear of Laticauda colubrina, an aquatic species. (C) Ptyas mucosa, terrestrial generalist. (D) Xenopeltis unicolor, a burrowing species. (E) Hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes, predicted as burrowing with 70.1% probability. (F) D. patagonica, predicted as burrowing with 93.4% probability. (G) Phylogeny of all snakes and lizards in this study, adapted from Gauthier et al. (8), Pyron et al. (19), and Yi and Norell (20). RESULTS D. patagonica shares with modern burrowing squamates a large spherical vestibule, large foramen ovale, and slender semicircular canals in the inner ear (Fig. 2, A to C). The vestibule occupies most of the space defined by the three semicircular canals and contacts the lateral semicircular canal in a horizontal plane. Our data show that a spherical vestibule is a morphological signature for burrowing, because it only appears in squamates that actively burrow underground (Fig. 1D and fig. S1, taxa 26 to 28, 32, 34, and 39 to 43). Some terrestrial generalists burrow when disturbed (16). Their vestibule may be expanded but does not have a spherical shape. Nor does it almost entirely occupy the space enclosed by the semicircular canals (fig. S1A, taxon 8, Lampropeltis getulus). No aquatic species have a spherical vestibule contacting the lateral semicircular canal (Fig. 1B and fig. S1A, taxa 1 to 6). Fig. 2 The braincase and inner ear of D. patagonica (MACN-RN 1014). (A) Braincase of D. patagonica, showing the right otic region in lateral view. (B) X-ray CT model of MACN-RN 1014, with the inner ear highlighted in blue. (C) Bony inner ear of D. patagonica. FO, foramen ovale; LR, lagenar recess; SC, semicircular canal; V, vestibule. Scale bars, 5 mm. We represent the vestibule and lateral semicircular canal with 28 landmarks and semilandmarks placed in horizontal cross sections (fig. S2). The landmark and semilandmark coordinates were standardized using generalized Procrustes analysis to extract shape information independent of specimen size, position, and orientation (17). Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) of Procrustes coordinates found significant difference among the three habit groups (P = 0.01; table S2). On the other hand, phylogenetic signal is insignificant, according to a permutation test of Procrustes coordinates on the cladogram (Fig. 1G) (P = 0.09, iteration = 10). This indicates that habitat, rather than phylogeny, is the overarching driver of inner ear shape differences among living snakes. Principal components analysis of the Procrustes coordinates demonstrates that aquatic and burrowing species differ in the degree of vestibular expansion (Fig. 3). Principal component 1 explains 47% of total variance. At its positive end, the shape exhibits a reduced vestibule that is well separated from the surrounding semicircular canals, particularly the lateral semicircular canal (Fig. 3A). At the negative end, the shape exhibits an expanded and spherical vestibule that almost entirely occupies the space enclosed by the semicircular canals (Fig. 3B). Burrowing species have an average negative score on principal component 1 (−0.097), whereas aquatic species have an average positive score (0.212). Linear correlation was insignificant between centroid size of Procrustes coordinates and species distributions in principal component 1 (P = 0.28 for a slope differing from zero; fig. S3). This indicates that vestibular shape, rather than size, is represented by the species distribution in the morphospace. Fig. 3 Principal components analyses of the vestibular shape. (A and B) The inner ear of X. unicolor (A) represents the shape on the negative side of principal component 1 (PC1), whereas the inner ear of L. colubrina (B) represents the positive side. (C) D. patagonica clusters with modern active burrowers. (D) The hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes clusters with modern burrowers and limbless generalists. We listed the species of each data point in fig. S4. Ear models are not to scale. In the morphospace of the first two principal components, D. patagonica clusters with modern active burrowers, regardless of body size and phylogenetic affinity (Fig. 3). We define active burrowers as species that dig into the substrate (sometimes with modified snouts) instead of using rock cracks or other animals’ burrow (16). These species, in our analysis, range from 40 to 160 cm in adult size (16), but they all have a spherical vestibule. We predict the habit group of D. patagonica using linear discriminant function analysis because its ecology cannot be inferred using extant phylogenetic bracketing (18). Scores of the first two principal components (table S3) were submitted to linear discriminant function analyses. The first analysis included all samples but D. patagonica, which correctly predicted 67% of predefined habit groups (table S4). This serves as a statistical base for predictions of other samples with unknown habit. Second, D. patagonica was incorporated with no predefined habit group and predicted as a burrower with a 93.4% probability (Fig. 1F and table S5). It is noteworthy that incorrect predictions happen only between the generalist group and two specialist groups; there were no incorrect predictions between burrowing and aquatic groups (table S4). A virtual model of the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes was reconstructed using a phylogeny compiled from recent studies (Fig. 1G) (8, 19, 20). The Procrustes shape of the hypothetical ancestor resembles a burrower’s ear with the vestibule expanded in the horizontal plane (fig. S4A). Principal components analysis including the hypothetical ancestor found it clustering with living sand swimming snakes, burrowing lizards, and limbless lizards that hide in leaf litter or rock cracks (fig. S5A). Linear discriminant function analysis predicted the hypothetical ancestor as a burrower with a probability of 70.1%; aquatic habitat was highly unlikely for the hypothetical ancestor with a predicted probability of 0.02% (Fig. 1E and table S5). We also reconstructed the morphology of the ancestral node without D. patagonica (fig. S4B). This gave almost identical results in the principal components analysis and linear discriminant function analysis (fig. S5B and table S6). To further test the robustness of the predictions of habit groups, we mapped the Procrustes coordinates on an alternative phylogeny that has mosasaurs as the sister group to all snakes (fig. S7) (7). Using this alternative inner ear shape reconstruction, we predicted the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes as a burrower with 64.0% probability (table S7). DISCUSSION With a snout-tail length exceeding 1.8 m (measured in MACN-RN 976), D. patagonica is the largest known burrowing snake, living or extinct (Fig. 4). Most modern burrowing snakes are smaller than 1 m (16, 21). This includes scolecophidians, cynlindrophiids, uropeltids, and bur???rowing caenophidians (for example, Simoselaps) (16). The largest burrowers in extant snakes, X. unicolor and L. bicolor, can grow up to 1.6 m (16). D. patagonica probably used the same foraging strategies as X. unicolor and L. bicolor that hunt for buried eggs of other reptiles (22) and small vertebrates aboveground (16). Fig. 4 Total body size of D. patagonica compared with extant snakes. Loxocemus bicolor is the largest extant burrowing snake, growing up to 160 cm (16); Leptotyphlops carlae is the smallest extant snake (21). The large spherical vestibule of D. patagonica is a morphological signature of burrowing. In modern burrowers, the spherical vestibule usually contains a large saccular otolith (23), or an “ear stone,” that transfers substrate vibrations to the brain. Mathematical modeling has shown that the optimal vibration frequency decreases when the otolith increases in size and mass (24). Previous experimental data have exhibited that species with large otoliths are more sensitive to ground vibrations with lower frequencies than airborne sound (25). The otolith also performs as an accelerometer in the skull to perceive head movements. Species with a large saccular otolith are more sensitive to angular rotations in the vertical plane of the skull, but they can only process a narrow range of constant speed when the animal moves (24). MACN-RN 1014 preserves a cast of a large saccular otolith; this indicates that D. patagonica was sluggish, yet sensitive to ground vibrations. Basal lineages of crown snakes share a spherical vestibule that facilitates fossoriality (fig. S1, taxa 26 to 28, 30, 32, 37, 40, and 41). However, the most basal lineage among living snakes, blind snakes, does not represent the ancestral morphology of the inner ear. Blind snakes have a small vestibule and very stout semicircular canals (fig. S1, taxa 29 and 35). These are lineage-specific apomorphic morphologies. D. patagonica holds a critical position in the origin of modern snakes. In recent snake phylogenies using large data sets, D. patagonica is recovered as the sister taxon to all crown-group snakes (6, 8, 12), in a basal position within crown-group snakes (5, 26, 27), or as a sister taxon to crown snakes with unresolved relationships among other Mesozoic snakes (28). Regardless of this phylogenetic uncertainty, the hypothetical ancestor of modern snakes—reconstructed with or without D. patagonica in our analyses—is predicted as a burrower in the linear discriminant analysis. Including D. patagonica increases the probability of the hypothetical ancestor being fossorial (59.3 to 70.1%). CONCLUSIONS A burrowing life-style predated modern snakes, but it remained as the main, if not exclusive (6), habit for basal lineages among crown snakes. Both D. patagonica and the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes have a large vestibule that is associated with low-frequency hearing. This suggests that ancestrally, crown snakes were able to detect prey and predator via substrate vibrations. MATERIALS AND METHODS Experimental design We sampled 44 species for inner ear morphology (fig. S1). Digital endocasts of the bony labyrinth is built using x-ray CT data. Virtual models of the inner ear are deposited in MorphoBank (29) Project 2170 in PLY format. We used six type 2 landmarks (17) and 22 semilandmarks placed along the lateral surface of the vestibule and the medial surface of the lateral semicircular canal (fig. S2). Statistical analysis The 28 landmarks and semilandmarks are superimposed using generalized Procrustes analysis implemented in the R package Geomorph V 1.1-5 (30). We also performed MANOVA test and principal components analysis in Geomorph V 1.1-5 (30), using Procrustes coordinates as input. To test between-group shape separation, linear discriminant analysis was performed among the three habit groups using scores of the first two principal components of all extant species. We used standard statistical software (Minitab 17) for the linear discriminant function analysis. We mapped the shape coordinates on the phylogenies using squared-change parsimony, implemented in MorphoJ (31). For the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes, shape coordinates of the inner ear were reconstructed with and without D. patagonica. An additional phylogeny (fig. S7) was also used to address the phylogenetic uncertainty of mosasaurs. We listed the details of Materials and Methods in the Supplementary Materials. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1/10/e1500743/DC1 Materials and Methods Fig. S1. Vestibular shape of all samples. Fig. S2. Placement of shape variables. Fig. S3. Regression of centroid size to scores of principal component 1. Fig. S4. Distribution of shape variables reconstructed for the hypothetical ancestor of crown snakes. Fig. S5. Principal components analyses of vestibular shape. Fig. S6. Missing data in shape variables. Fig. S7. An alternative phylogeny for all samples. Table S1. Taxon sampling in the three habitat groups. Table S2. MANOVA test of Procrustes coordinates among the three habitat groups. Table S3. Scores of the first two principal components. Table S4. Accuracy of the linear discriminant function analysis. Table S5. Habit predictions for D. patagonica and the hypothetical ancestor of modern snakes. Table S6. Habit predictions for D. patagonica and the hypothetical ancestor of modern snakes. Table S7. Habit predictions for D. patagonica and the hypothetical ancestor of modern snakes. Table S8. CT scanning parameters*. Reference (32) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

– "How snakes lost their legs has long been a mystery to scientists," Dr. Hongyu Yi says in a press release from the University of Edinburgh. But that mystery may have finally been solved thanks to a 90 million-year-old skull and advanced CT scan technology. It's been long theorized that the ancestors of modern snakes lost their limbs when they evolved to live in the sea. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh determined that's not quite right when they used a CT scan to create a detailed 3D model of the skull of a Dinilysia patagonica—a close relative of modern snakes—and compared it to those of modern reptiles. What they found was a unique structure in the inner ear that controls balance and hearing and is shared only by burrowing animals. Modern snakes that live in water don't have it. Using that information, researchers determined the ancestors of modern snakes actually lost their limbs in order to hunt and live in burrows, per the press release. "The inner ears of fossils can reveal a remarkable amount of information, and are very useful when the exterior of fossils are too damaged or fragile to examine," Yi says. The study also confirmed the 6.5-foot-long Dinilysia patagonica as the largest burrowing snake ever. The results were published Friday in Science Advances. The study confirms a Yale study from earlier this year that found snakes evolved on land and not in water, UPI reports. That study used genomes, fossils, and more to determine the ancestors of modern snakes lost their front legs approximately 128 million years ago, though they still had tiny hind legs. (Here's how boa constrictors really kill their prey.)

Paris authorities have begun draining the Canal St-Martin , a waterway that has become the French capital’s hipster epicentre but which critics say has become an urban rubbish dump for uncouth revellers. Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned the picturesque canal in 1804 to provide the capital with both goods and fresh water. Today Parisian “bobos”, its cultured and moneyed trendsetters, are prepared to pay €10,000 (£7,300) per square metre for a place overlooking the canal’s famed iron footbridges, tree-lined cobbled towpaths and trendy bars and restaurants. The drainage operation requires emptying a two kilometre-long stretch of 90,000 cubic metres of water to collect piles of rubbish and renovate its four double locks. It will cost the city €9.5 million and turn the waterway into a dry ditch for three months. Workers began by allowing most of the water to escape via sluice filters while leaving 50cm to fish out an estimated 4.5 tons of trout, carp and bream hiding in its greenish depths. These are being transferred to another part not under renovation. Photo: Reuters Once all the water is drained on Thursday, workers will begin dredging the canal and removing myriad objects thrown in over the past 14 years. The last time the waterway was drained in 2001, some 40 tons of rubbish was recovered. Among the objects were bicycles, motorbikes, two empty safes, gold coins, a pallet truck, two wheelchairs, a toilet bowl and two 75mm shells from the First World War. A pistol has already been fished out in the first few hours of this year’s clean-up operation and has been handed to police. Workers also expect to find quite a few of the city's popular Velib’ hire bikes as well as mountains of beer cans and bottles. Cutting through northeast Paris, the Canal Saint Martin starts by the Place de la Bastille but its most frequented stretch is just east of the Place de la République. Its grittier pre-war past was immortalised in Hôtel du Nord, Marcel Carné's 1938 iconic film where artists, gangsters and prostitutes cross paths at the hotel, now a waterfront restaurant. More recently, its quaint footbridges were captured in the feel good Parisian film Amelie. In the summer months, picnickers with baguettes, beer bottles and wine turn up in their thousands in search of a shady spot to while away a balmy evening without having to pay a fortune for the privilege of sitting in an upmarket Parisian terrace. But its popularity has led to complaints that it has become a grimy open-air toilet. Some appalled residents even launched a social media campaign to raise awareness over uncouth behaviour, posting a series of Instagram images depicting vomit-stained quays and smashed or empty beer bottles. In others, the canal’s ducks are hard-pushed to find a way past cigarette butts, crisp packets, beer cans and plastic bags. Calls for people to take responsibility for the trash they leave behind have largely been ignored. A few of the residents even tried pinning up notices on their doors beseeching people not to urinate on them. One notice read: "This door is the entrance to our building. Be nice and go and urinate elsewhere." Célia Blauel, deputy mayor in charge of the environment and canals, called on Parisians to respect the canal once its makeover is complete. “If everyone mucks in and avoids throwing anything in the water, we might be able to swim in the canal in a few years, as in numerous other European cities,” she told Le Parisien. ||||| The French capital’s Canal Saint-Martin is being dredged for the first time in 15 years – and the mysterious objects emerging from the sludge unmask the area’s secret life Curious crowds had gathered on the arched footbridges that criss-cross Paris’s favourite hipster hang-out, the Canal Saint-Martin, craning to get a look at the oddities poking out of the mysterious brown sludge below. “Bloody hell, it’s a giant dustbin,” said Marie, a local office-worker, taking photos of the mountains of old wine-bottles, scores of office chairs, bikes, rolled-up carpets, wheelie suitcases and street signs stranded in the muddy pit. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scores of the city’s Vélib hire bikes are among the items littering the bottom of the canal. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA Paris’s picturesque Canal Saint-Martin, completed in 1825 but commenced on the orders of Napoleon, who wanted to reinforce the city’s drinking water supply, has in recent years become known as the favoured spot of Paris’s “Bobos” – bourgeois bohemians – wealthy, urban, young leftwingers who love to gather for summer evening aperitifs on the pavements along its banks. The canal is drained and cleaned once every 10–15 years, but when it happens, the bizarre items found at the bottom are one of the most curious and intriguing sights in the city, throwing up the mud-caked mysteries of Paris life. Facebook Twitter Pinterest An old ghetto blaster awaits its rescue. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA On Monday, when workers began to slowly empty 90,000 cubic metres of water into the river Seine in a multimillion-euro cleaning operation that will last three months, they found one gun and police are poised for more. The last time the canal was drained, in 2001, the haul included two 75mm shells from the first world war, safes, gold coins, washing machines, at least one car and 40 tonnes of rubbish. In one earlier cleaning, 56 cars were fished out. The full inventory is yet to be done – the fish have been evacuated and tractors will be brought in to drag away the vast number of items at the bottom. But the view from the bridges already reveals an extraordinary amount of debris that has been tipped into the canal in the past decade. There are scores of Paris’s Vélib hire bikes, lots of other bikes, myriad chairs of all descriptions, at least one motorbike, supermarket trolleys, shopping caddies, public dustbins, a fire-extinguisher, a children’s doll’s pushchair marooned in the middle of the canal, street signs, umbrellas and wheelie suitcases. Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the many scooters found in the canal. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters “It’s like some kind of weird submarine treasure,” said Marc, 45, a self-employed local resident. “I just can’t believe the quantity of Vélibs in there. I guess they were stolen and thrown in afterwards. It’s bizarre,” he shrugged. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A vintage camera sits on the bottom, amid hundreds of discarded mussel shells. Photograph: SIPA/Rex/Shutterstock Paris city hall, apart from warning people to resist trying to climb in to look for lost possessions that might have dropped in in recent years, are using the exercise to warn against littering the canal. Bernard, 54, a public-sector worker, who had also been on the bridge to witness the last dredging in 2001, was aghast at the mountains of mud-caked wine-bottles and cans. “That’s Paris for you, it’s filthy,” he sighed. “The last time, I don’t remember seeing so much rubbish in it. I despair. The Bobos are using it as a dustbin.” ||||| A woman inspecting the goods in the emptying canal. Photo: AFP Bikes, scooters, shopping trolleys... and a gun? The mammoth cleaning job on the Canal Saint-Martin is turning up some interesting finds. See them here. As you may have already noticed, the famed Canal Saint-Martin has almost been emptied. It's part of a huge cleaning project, the like of which hasn't been seen for 14 years. Engineers erected a small and unspectacular dam at the top of the canal by Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad on Monday, and around 90,000 cubic metres of water have since been emptied gradually into the River Seine. If you want to know more about why and how they're doing it, click here. The draining has already revealed several pieces of intrigue, including a handgun spotted by The Local on Monday afternoon (see pictures below). Police arrived soon after to take the weapon. Further along the canal, curious Parisians are flocking to the bridges to see for themselves what the canal-bed is hiding. Here's a closer look at what's turned up so far, including many a Velib' bicycle, several scooters, and thousands of empty wine bottles. Story continues below… ||||| For the first time in fourteen years, Paris authorities on Monday began draining the Canal Saint-Martin, a popular waterway that attracts tourists and revellers in the French capital’s trendy northeastern 10th arrondissement. The complex operation involves emptying the three-mile-long canal of 90,000 cubic metres of water – and moving more than four tonnes of fish to their new home in the River Seine – before workers can repair the locks and collect the inevitable piles of rubbish. It will cost the city €9.5 million and turn the waterway into a dry ditch for three months. “We do this, on average, every 12 to 14 years,” said Célia Blauel, who is in charge of the city’s waterways and environmental policies. “It’s necessary to dredge the canal, repair its walls and renovate the locks,” she told FRANCE 24. Napoleonic origins The picturesque waterway was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 to provide the capital with both goods and fresh water. {{ scope.counterText }} {{ scope.legend }} © {{ scope.credits }} It survived the decline in boat traffic after the two world wars and has since found a new raison d’être as a magnet for tourists, youths and families. Most of the canal’s nine locks were modernised in 2008 and are now controlled remotely. Joseph Tomasi, who has worked the locks for 25 years, said he missed the “good old days” when he was solely in charge. “We knew all the people in the neighbourhood, some would even bring us croissants,” he told FRANCE 24. “We were at the heart of Parisian life.” Tomasi still had plenty to do on Monday as he opened the first lock upstream, marking the start of the great canal clean-up. “By the end of the day the canal will be all but empty, leaving a shallow pool of water to collect the fish,” said Julien Gaidot, who is in charge of draining operations. A team of around a dozen fishermen will have three days to complete their catch, before the canal is fully emptied on Thursday. Junked bikes, tubs and WWI shells In all likelihood the workers will be catching a lot more than just fish. The downside of the canal’s increasing popularity is the surge in rubbish thrown into its murky waters. The last clean-up in 2001 revealed some 40 tonnes of detritus, including bicycles, motorbikes, bathtubs and two 75mm shells dating from World War I. This year the workers are expecting to find several of the city's popular Velib’ hire bikes as well as a mountain of beer cans and bottles. “And I’m not even talking about the dead animals!” joked Tomasi, pointing at a huge rat the size of a cat racing across the lock. Blauel, the environmental official, said the city ultimately planned to make the Villette basin upstream of the canal fit for swimming. The basin, which connects the Canal Saint-Martin with the larger Canal de l’Ourcq, is currently banned to swimmers – although Parisians regularly brave the ban in the hot summer months. But Tomasi has no plans to go for a dip. “Down there you can barely see 10 inches in front of you,” he said.

– It has been 15 years since Paris last cleaned the Canal Saint-Martin—long enough for the bottom of the waterway to accumulate thousands of wine and beer bottles, dozens of bikes, and at least one gun. The scenic area along the canal has become what the Telegraph calls the French capital's "hipster epicenter," though residents complain that partyers have turned the canal commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte more than 200 years ago into a garbage dump. Ahead of this week's cleanup, authorities had to drain a major portion of the canal and evacuate what turned out to be tons of fish, reports the Local, which notes that Parisians have been amassing on bridges to see what kind of mud-covered treasures the canal yields. The last cleanup, in 2001, yielded unexploded shells from WWI, gold coins, and safes amid around 40 tons of trash, the Guardian reports. The current cleanup is still underway, but authorities have already found tons more trash, including signs, suitcases, carpets, and, for some reason, a huge number of chairs. Residents say there seems to be more trash than ever this time around, and they blame the increase on the hip young newcomers they have nicknamed "Bobos." "That's Paris for you, it's filthy," a 54-year-old man who was there for the last cleaning tells the Guardian. "The last time, I don't remember seeing so much rubbish in it. I despair. The Bobos are using it as a dustbin." (Speaking of Napoleon ... here's how a neurosurgeon contributed to his undoing.)

The last time Kelsey Berreth was seen she was wearing a white shirt, grey sweater and blue pants. It was Thanksgiving day, but before she and her family could dig into the turkey, she was gone. The 29-year-old flight instructor from Woodland Park, in Teller County, has been missing for more than two weeks. As the search continues, her family grows more worried about her safety and urges anyone with information to contact police. “She’s not the kind that runs off,” Berreth’s mother, Cheryl, said Monday at a news conference. “This is completely out of character.” Cheryl Berreth reported her daughter missing just after noon on Dec. 2, Woodland Park Police Chief Miles De Young said at the news conference. When asked whether investigators considered the disappearance suspicious, De Young said, “I have nothing to indicate other than that it is a missing persons case.” Kelsey Berreth texted her employer, Doss Aviation in Pueblo, on Nov. 25 to say she would not be at work the following week. She also texted her fiancé, Patrick, that day. He told police that he had not seen Berreth since Thanksgiving, when they exchanged custody of their 1-year-old daughter, De Young said. The girl is with her father, who has cooperated with investigators. Video footage from cameras at a local Safeway grocery store showed Berreth shopping with her daughter at about noon on Nov. 22. That was the last time she was seen publicly, De Young said. Berreth’s phone pinged a tower near Gooding, Idaho, at 5:13 p.m. Nov. 25, De Young said. According to information posted on a Facebook page set up to track the search, Berreth has family in Idaho and Washington. Investigators have searched Berreth’s home and work and have not identified anybody as a suspect in the missing persons case, De Young said. There was no indication she had flown away in a Doss Aviation aircraft or any record that she and her fiancé were having relationship issues, he said. Berreth had lived in the 7,600-person mountain town about 80 miles south of Denver since 2016, De Young said. “Kelsey, we just want you home,” her mother said at the news conference, her voice wavering. “Call us if you can and we won’t quit looking.” More than 13,000 people are following the Facebook page set up to help spread images and information about Berreth. While the messages have spread far and wide on social media, little new information has yet to lead investigators to the missing woman. Berreth’s brother held a vigil in Tacoma, Wash., for his missing family member. Friends and family sang “Silent Night” by candlelight as they hoped for Berreth’s safe return, a video of the vigil showed. Last week, a church in Idaho held a day of prayer and fasting in honor of the family and their difficult situation, a Facebook post said. Anyone with information about Berreth is asked to call Woodland Park police at 719-687-9262. ||||| Close Get email notifications on Debbie Kelley daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. Whenever Debbie Kelley posts new content, you'll get an email delivered to your inbox with a link. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. ||||| A cellphone belonging to the Colorado mom who vanished after Thanksgiving was used to send a pair of mysterious texts three days after she was last spotted in public with her 1-year-old daughter, cops said Tuesday, as the search for the woman intensified. Kelsey Berreth was reported missing by her mother 10 days after she was last seen or heard from. Surveillance video shows Berreth buying groceries with her daughter inside a Safeway supermarket in Woodland Park on Thanksgiving Day, and her fiancé, Patrick Frazee, then met her to pick up the couple's daughter. Authorities on Monday revealed one of the text messages sent after she was last seen indicated Berreth planned to be gone the week after Thanksgiving — but she never returned home. The last location her cellphone pinged was in Gooding, Idaho, nearly 700 miles away from her home. Berreth’s text to her employer at Doss Aviation — a company that provides flight training for the U.S. military and international armed services — stated she wouldn’t be at work the following week. “Kelsey’s phone gave a location near Gooding, Idaho on November 25th at 5:13 p.m.,” Woodland Park Police Chief Miles De Young said. Another text message was sent to Berreth’s fiancé, Patrick Frazee, though it’s unclear what was said and it's not clear Berreth was even the person sending the messages. SEARCH FOR KELSEY BERRETH, MISSING COLORADO WOMAN, INTENSIFIES AS MOTHER SAYS ‘SOMEONE KNOWS WHERE SHE’S AT’ Berreth’s mother, Cheryl Berreth, put out a public plea Monday for the 29-year-old’s safe return. “Kelsey we just want you home. Call us if you can. Someone knows where she’s at,” Cheryl Berreth said in a news conference on Monday afternoon. “She’s not the kind that runs off. This is completely out of character.” Cheryl added: “Kelsey loves her God. She loves her family and friends and she loves her job. She’s reliable, considerate and honest." The concerned mother said her family has relatives in Idaho, but they said Kelsey never showed up at their homes. Kelsey also never indicated any intention to visit those relatives, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported. All of Berreth’s belongings, besides her purse, were still at her Woodland Park home after her disappearance. Her two cars remain in Colorado, puzzling investigators as they search for the 29-year-old. When asked if Berreth’s fiancé is a suspect, De Young said Frazee is the “father of Kelsey’s daughter and we’re going to leave it at that.” "This is a missing persons case,” he added. Anyone with information on Berreth is urged to call the tip line at 719-687-9262. ||||| The family of a Colorado mother who vanished nearly three weeks ago is asking the public to help bring her home. Kelsey Berreth was last seen Thanksgiving Day shopping with her 1-year-old daughter. She was reported missing 10 days later. When investigators searched her home they found her cars, her clothes, her toothbrush, even cinnamon rolls apparently untouched since Thanksgiving. On Monday, Berreth's mother choked back tears as she appealed for her daughter's safe return. "Kelsey, we just want you home. Call us if you can, and we won't quit looking," Cheryl Berreth said. "Someone knows where she's at ... She's not the kind that runs off. This is completely out of character." The 29-year-old was last seen at a Safeway on November 22 where surveillance cameras captured her shopping with her daughter, Kaylee, shortly before Patrick Frazee, Berreth's fiancé and Kaylee's father, picked up the 1-year-old. On November 25, three days after the Woodland Park, Colorado, resident disappeared, police say her cellphone pinged near Gooding, Idaho, nearly 800 miles away. That same day, two text messages were apparently sent from the device. One told her employer – Doss Aviation, where she was a flight instructor – she would not be showing up to work the following week. The second message was sent to Frazee. Woodland Park Police Chief Miles De Young said it was Berreth's mother who reported her missing December 2, more than a week after those texts were sent, prompting questions about why her fiancé didn't report her missing. De Young said he is unaware of any reports of domestic violence involving the couple. Frazee's home has not been searched and police describe him as cooperative. He declined to appear at the press conference Monday. "We are treating Kelsey's disappearance as a missing person's case at this time. We have not identified anyone as a suspect, and are asking the public for any information that might help us find her," De Young said. Berreth's family has created a Facebook page called "Missing Mother - Kelsey Berreth." Police said all the planes at the flight school where she worked are accounted for. Frazee, who has been caring for Kaylee, has not responded to our requests for comment.

– Kelsey Berreth wasn't reported missing until Dec. 2, but she was last seen in public on Nov. 22—and police recently revealed that text messages were sent from the 29-year-old Colorado mom's phone three days later. Berreth's last known location was a Safeway in her city of Woodland Park where she was captured on surveillance video shopping with her daughter, Kaylee, at 12:22pm on Thanksgiving Day, CBS News reports. Patrick Frazee, her fiancé and Kaylee's father, met her there to pick up the 1-year-old. Berreth hasn't been seen since, but on Nov. 25 her cellphone pinged almost 700 miles away, near Gooding, Idaho. Two texts were sent: one to Frazee and one telling her employer, Doss Aviation, that she wouldn't be at work the following week. It's not clear whether it was actually Berreth who sent the texts, Fox News reports, but she hasn't been heard from since. Authorities who searched Berreth's apartment found both her cars still there along with all of her belongings except her purse; there were cinnamon rolls on the counter that had apparently remained untouched since Thanksgiving. Berreth, who moved to Woodland Park in 2016, does have relatives in Idaho, which was the last place her cellphone pinged, but her mother says she had no plans to visit them nor did she show up at any of their homes, the Gazette reports. It's not clear why Frazee, who never lived with Berreth, did not report her missing; asked whether he is a suspect, the police chief said, "At this point, he is the father of Kelsey’s daughter and we’re going to leave it at that." He added that Frazee has been cooperative and that police will "look into" the possibility of searching his home; per the Denver Post, he said there is no indication the couple was having problems. It's not clear what the text from Berreth's phone to Frazee said; both Fox and the Gazette describe the texts as "mysterious." A nationwide search is in progress, and Berreth's family has started a Facebook page with updates.

SANAA The Air Force flew some U.S. diplomatic personnel out of Yemen on Tuesday and Washington told nationals to leave the country immediately after warnings of potential attacks that pushed the United States to shut missions across the Middle East. Yemen, one of the poorest Arab countries, is the base for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active branches of the network founded by Osama bin Laden, and militants have launched attacks from there against the West. U.S. sources have told Reuters that intercepted communication between bin Laden's successor as al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the Yemen-based wing was one part of the intelligence behind their alert last week. Britain, which has already advised for more than two years that its citizens in Yemen should "leave now", announced it was temporarily evacuating all its embassy staff. Yemen is one of a handful of countries where Washington acknowledges targeting militants with strikes by drone aircraft. In the latest strike on Tuesday, a U.S. drone fired five missiles at a car travelling in the central Maarib province killing all four of its occupants, local tribal leaders said. Yemen's state news agency Saba said four al Qaeda militants were killed in the attack. The U.S. State Department's announcement urging Americans to leave the country follows a worldwide travel alert on Friday which prompted Washington to shut diplomatic missions across the Middle East and Africa. Some of its European allies have also closed their embassies in Yemen. "The Department urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and those U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart immediately," the statement posted on its website said. "On August 6, 2013, the Department of State ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks," it added. Previous U.S. travel warnings to Yemen had also advised citizens not travel to the country, but the language of the latest announcement appeared to reflect a more imminent threat. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said U.S. relations with Yemen remained strong despite the measures taken. "So this was, again, just to reiterate, a response to an immediate specific threat, but we continue to work with them on a number of issues," Psaki told journalists at a news briefing in Washington. Britain also said on Tuesday it had withdrawn all staff from its embassy in the capital Sanaa, adding there was "a very high threat of kidnap from armed tribes, criminals and terrorists". The Netherlands advised its citizens to leave Yemen as a matter of urgency, local news agency ANP reported. France said it had not changed its previous advisory asking citizens to "be very cautious and to move around as little as possible," Helene Conway-Mouret, junior Minister for French nationals abroad, told BFM TV. EVACUATION Restoring stability to Yemen - a country close to major shipping lanes and torn by regional and sectarian separatism and tribal violence as well as the al Qaeda insurgency - has been a priority for the United States. In a statement issued in Washington, Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. Air Force "transported personnel out of Sanaa, Yemen, as part of a reduction in emergency personnel" in response to a request by the State Department. He did not specify which types of personnel were involved or where they were taken. "The U.S. Department of Defense continues to have personnel on the ground in Yemen to support the U.S. State Department and monitor the security situation," the statement said. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi criticized the measures but said they would not affect relations with the United States. "Unfortunately, these measures, although they are taken to protect their citizens, in reality they serve the goals that the terrorist elements are seeking to achieve," Qirbi told Reuters. "Yemen had taken these threats seriously and had taken all the necessary measures to protect all the foreign missions in the country," he added. The country's Supreme Security Committee issued a statement saying it had information al Qaeda was plotting attacks during Eid al-Fitr, this week's Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month. The committee also published a list of 25 senior al Qaeda militants it said were being sought by security forces and offered a bounty of 5 million Yemeni riyals ($23,000) for information leading to their capture. "Information has become available that terrorist elements of the al Qaeda network were planning to carry out terrorist acts targeting public installations and facilities, especially in a number of Yemeni provinces, in the latter days of the holy month of Ramadan and during the Eid al-Fitr holiday," it said. STABILITY Long-serving leader Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down following months of protests against his rule in 2011, part of Arab uprisings that toppled three other heads of state. His replacement, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, met U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington last week. Yemen is home to 56 of the 86 detainees still being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and security in Yemen is a key element of any deal to send them back so that Obama can fulfill a pledge to close the U.S. prison camp. Washington's warnings last week concerned possible attacks in the region, based on intelligence including intercepted communication between al Qaeda leaders. Some officials pinpointed Yemen as the main concern. No figures on the number of Americans in Yemen were immediately available. Washington had consistently cautioned citizens against travelling to Yemen since the protests in early 2011 that eventually forced Saleh to step down. Al Qaeda's Yemen-based branch AQAP has been behind plots against Western targets and neighboring Saudi Arabia. It claimed responsibility for a failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a Detroit-bound trans-Atlantic airliner with explosives hidden in his underwear on Christmas Day, 2009. The United States has acknowledged killing Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and al Qaeda preacher, in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The Obama administration's policy allowing the killing of a U.S. citizen has been controversial. (Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Tabassum Zakaria, Susan Cornwell, Paul Eckert and Lesley Wroughton in Washington, Ingrid Melander in Paris, Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Peter Graff and Mike Collett-White) ||||| The White House has warned the terror alert which forced US embassy closures across the Middle East and Africa could continue for another four weeks as it revealed its intelligence indicated an ongoing threat "from now until the end of August". It was widely reported on Monday that the closures follow an intercepted communication between al-Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri and the chief of the terrorist organization's Yemeni affiliate. Supporters of the NSA's surveillance tactics have used the latest threat to justify their opposition to reining in the agency's domestic spying activities. But the information related to the latest threat was collected overseas under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – not the bulk surveillance programs disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden. White House spokesman Jay Carney distanced himself from those linking the scare to recent debates about the agency's surveillance power in the US. The White House and State Department also both sought to downplay the impact of the shutdown on the effectiveness of US diplomacy in the region, stressing the embassy closures should not be seen as indefinite. "This is a temporary measure and it is out of an abundance of caution," said Carney. "We are engaged around the world and that engagement creates some risk. This decision is designed to reduce that risk but our engagement will continue." In contrast to NSA supporters who have been quick to link the surveillance debate with the current scare, the White House sought to downplay any political implications. "I am not going to blend those two stories together," added Carney. "We have a threat that we have advised the public about and we have a set of issues regarding the unauthorised disclosure of classified information that has led to a debate about the balance between protecting our security and maintaining privacy – I wouldn't blend the two issues." The White House did however re-iterate its threat to boycott a planned bilateral summit with President Putin in Moscow in retaliation for its decision to grant temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Asked if there was any relationship between the embassy alerts and the recent NSA controversies, Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, said "I can assure that in no way, at all, period, affects" the State Department's threat assessment. While the administration did not make the link, others did. On Sunday, Rebublican senator Saxby Chambliss said the NSA had identified threats that were the most serious for years and akin to levels of "terrorist chatter" picked up before 9/11. "These [NSA] programs are controversial, we understand that," he told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. "But they are also very important … If we did not have these programs, then we simply would not be able to listen in on the bad guys." Critics of the NSA surveillance programs were measured in their responses. Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democract who has been a longstanding voice against the bulk collection of phone records, said the latest threat was "serious". As a member of the Senate intelligence committee, Wyden receives classified briefings, but he added: "While I can't go into specific details, the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee noted yesterday that this information was collected using section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, rather than the Patriot Act. I still haven't seen any evidence that the NSA's dragnet surveillance of Americans' phone records is providing any unique value to American counterterrorism efforts." Privacy campaigners criticised the linking of the latest terror alerts with the debate over the domestic powers of the NSA. Amie Stepanovich, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said: "The NSA's choice to publish these threats at this time perpetuates a culture of fear and unquestioning deference to surveillance in the United States." News of the fresh terror alert came as Congress looked increasingly likely to pursue fresh attempts to limit the NSA's domestic powers when it returns in September. "The NSA takes in threat information every day. You have to ask, why now? What makes this information different?" added Stepanovich. "Too much of what we hear from the government about surveillance is either speculation or sweeping assertions that lack corroboration. The question isn't if these programs used by this NSA can find legitimate threats, it's if the same threats couldn't be discovered in a less invasive manner. This situation fails to justify the NSA's unchecked access to our personal information." US embassies have been closed temporarily in response to similar perceived terrorist threats, but rarely for this long. Four embassies were closed for the first anniversary of 9/11 in 2002; six African embassies were closed for 3 days in June of 1999; and 38 embassies shut for 2 days in December 1998. "I don't want anyone to think we're leaning toward indefinite closure," Harf said, emphasizing that many of the embassies would largely have been closed or on relaxed hours due to the Eid holiday. Harf said the threat "looks credible" in response to a question about whether it might have been a decoy once revelations of NSA surveillance became public. "We continue to refine our assessment of the threat," Harf said. ||||| A suspected U.S. drone killed four alleged al-Qaida members in Yemen on Tuesday, as the U.S. and British embassies evacuated staff amid reports of a threatened attack by al-Qaida that has triggered temporary shutdowns of 19 American diplomatic posts across the Muslim world. Yemeni officials have suggested al-Qaida threats to multiple potential targets in the Arabian Peninsula country in recent days, including foreign installations and government offices in the capital Sanaa as well as to the strategic Bab al-Mandeb straits at the entrance to the Red Sea to the south. It is not clear if these reports are the same as the intelligence that led to the embassy shutdowns, reportedly instigated by an intercepted message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack. The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to leave the country. The department said in a travel warning that it had ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks" and said U.S. citizens in Yemen should leave immediately because of an "extremely high" security threat level. Britain's Foreign Office also said it has evacuated all staff from its embassy in Yemen due to increased security concerns. The Foreign Office said the British Embassy staff were "temporarily withdrawn to the U.K." on Tuesday. It declined to comment further. Meanwhile, there has been a spike in apparent U.S. drone strikes against al-Qaida leaders. The attack Tuesday was the fourth in two weeks. Yemen officials say the drone fired a missile at a car carrying four men in the al-Arqeen district of Marib province, setting it on fire and killing all of them. They believed that one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member. To the west, in the capital Sanaa, residents awoke to the sound of an aircraft buzzing overhead. Officials said it was an American, and photos posted on Instagram appeared to show a P-3 Orion, a manned aircraft used for surveillance. All officials spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to brief the media. The rare overflight of the capital came shortly before the announcements of the evacuations. Yemeni authorities released the names of 25 wanted al-Qaida suspects on Monday, saying they were planning terrorist attacks in the capital, Sanaa, and other cities across the country. A statement from Yemen's Interior Ministry said the suspects were going to target foreign offices and organizations, as well as Yemeni government installations in the impoverished Arab country. It said security was beefed up around embassies, ports, airports, oil installations and power stations. Officials say potential U.S. targets in Sanaa could include the embassy and other buildings used by the United States to house personnel, as well as a military camp a few kilometers (miles) outside used by U.S. aircraft. The Yemeni statement said security forces will pay $23,000 to anyone who comes forward with information that leads to the arrests of any of the wanted men. They included allegedly senior figures in al-Qaida's Yemen branch, including Saudi nationals Ibrahim Mohammed el-Rubaish and Ibrahim Hassan el-Assiri. El-Rubaish was released from Guantanamo in 2006 and is believed to have played significant roles in al-Qaida's expanding offshoot in Yemen. He is a theological adviser to the group and his writings and sermons are prominent in the group's literature. Military officials meanwhile said the threat may be related to the Bab al-Mandeb, pointing to a visit by Defense Minister Gen. Mohammed Nasser Ahmed on Sunday to Yemeni military forces positioned at the Red Sea entrance some 276 kilometers (171.5 miles) south of Sanaa. Officials said that the visit came after intelligence that al-Qaida could be targeting foreign or Yemeni interests at the vital Red Sea corridor, which is a main thoroughfare for international shipping but also a crossing point of for smuggled weapons and illegal immigrants between east Africa and Yemen. Ahmed urged the forces to stay "on alert against any sabotage operations aiming at destabilizing the country," according to officials. They also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Washington considers the al-Qaida branch in Yemen to be among the terror network's most dangerous branches. The United States has also assisted Yemen's military in fighting the militants who, at one point during the country's recent political turmoil, had overrun large sections of land in the south. The group has also carried out bold assassination attacks on Yemeni security forces, killing hundreds over the past two years.

– American concern about the threat of an al-Qaeda attack is only intensifying. The State Department today ordered all non-essential government employees to leave Yemen, and it urged all American citizens there to do the same, reports Reuters. The development comes after news reports revealed that one of the key pieces of intelligence prompting all this concern were intercepted messages between al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri and the leader of Yemen affiliate al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wuhayshi. Other developments: Drone strike: A suspected American drone strike killed four members of al-Qaeda traveling in a car in central Yemen overnight, reports the BBC. Buzzing the capital: A manned US surveillance plane was spotted flying over the capital of Sanaa, a rarity for the relatively quiet city, reports the AP. Not reopening soon: The US might keep some of its embassies and consulates closed for the entire month of August, reports the Guardian. Red Sea threat? The AP also reports that Yemeni officials are particularly concerned about an attack on the Ba al-Mandeb straits at the entrance to the Red Sea. The straits are vital to international shipping.

If you look up the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for the DCEU, prepare yourself. Really, it’s not all that pretty. All of the films rank well under 60% to clinch a ‘rotten rating’ with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice sitting at 27%. Even the much-anticipated Suicide Squad has earned at 34% rating, and frankly, fans are fed up with the site’s reporting. In fact, they’re so fed up that they’ve started a petition to make Rotten Tomatoes shut down. With just 413, the petition has one goal in mind: get rid of Rotten Tomatoes. Hosted by change.org, the petition’s description sums up its mission succinctly: “We need this site to be shut down because It's Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews, Like 1- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016 [,] 2- Suicide Squad 2016 and that Affects people's opinion even if it's a really great movies.” Should you scroll down to read comments left on the petition, fans have flooded them with their sympathetic views. Many agree the site does offer biased reviews for DC’ films and think it's pathetic that people would try to intentionally make the studio's cinematic universe fail. Other fans reference Marvel Studios and their films’ higher ratings, insisting the difference is due to Hollywood’s double-standards. However, it looks as if some of these fans aren't quite sure of how Rotten Tomatoes work. As the website only aggregates externally published reviews to create its ratings, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t actually award frivolous reviews on their own. To put it simply, the just do the math based on other outsourced reviews. But, of course, there are fan who’re accusing the site of selectively collecting certain reviews that further their ‘diabolical’ plot to ruin the DCEU. ||||| Don't shoot the messenger. Some DC Comics faithful aren't pleased with the poor reviews Suicide Squad has been receiving ... and they are blaming Rotten Tomatoes, a site that famously aggregates reviews into a Tomatometer score, but does not review films itself. Currently, Suicide Squad sits at 35 percent on the Tomatometer, giving it a "rotten" score. Neither of Warner Bros.' two previous entries in the DC Extended Universe have been certified "fresh," with 2013's Man of Steel sitting at 56 percent and March's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice pulling the lowest of them all with 27 percent. The Change.org petition, made by a fan who says he lives in Egypt, argues Rotten Tomatoes should be shut down because its critics "always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews," and that this affects people's opinions, even if the films are "great." As of Tuesday night, more than 5,000 people had signed the petition, but plenty of comments have questioned the validity of trying to shut down Rotten Tomatoes, considering the site does not review films. The petition organizer shared a statement to address those criticisms on Tuesday, saying that he understands the site will not be shut down. Rather, he hopes the petition will send a message to critics that a lot of people "disagree with their reviews," adding the petition is just "a way to express our anger." Ironically, Warner Bros. has a history with Rotten Tomatoes. The site — along with DC Entertainment — falls under the Time Warner corporate umbrella. Until earlier this year, Rotten Tomatoes was a property of Warner Bros. Entertainment. It was sold to Fandango in February. ||||| We need this site to be shut down because It's Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews, Like 1- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016 2- Suicide Squad 2016 and that Affects people's opinion even if it's a really great movies

– Batman v Superman has a Tomatometer score of just 27%, and there are people out there who believe that is the result of a Rotten Tomatoes conspiracy, not the result of the superhero flick being what Chris Klimek at NPR calls a "ponderous, smothering, over-pixelated zeppelin crash of a movie." A Change.org petition with 9,000 supporters and counting calls for Rotten Tomatoes to be shut down for giving "unjust reviews" to movies set in the DC Comics universe, including upcoming release Suicide Squad, which has a Tomatometer score of 35%, reports ComicBook.com. The post notes that some petition supporters appear not to understand that Rotten Tomatoes collects reviews instead of creating them, while others are accuse the site of ignoring positive reviews. Accusations of a conspiracy against Warner's DC movies are fairly widespread online, and the attitude isn't limited to comic books or movies, writes Devin Faraci at BirthMoviesDeath. "It feels like we live in an era where anytime something doesn't go our way—whether it be a movie review or a presidential primary—the first reaction is to cry out conspiracy, to find ill will and mysterious forces moving behind the scenes," he writes. "The reality, nine times out of ten, is that other people just didn't like the thing or the candidate you liked." The Hollywood Reporter notes that the petition starter has updated the "Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes" page to say he knows that a petition can't shut down the site, and "it's just a way to express our anger."

The seed for this crawl was a list of every host in the Wayback Machine This crawl was run at a level 1 (URLs including their embeds, plus the URLs of all outbound links including their embeds) The WARC files associated with this crawl are not currently available to the general public. ||||| The happy couple in Hawaii on June 28 andtied the knot late last week in Hawaii, a source tellsexclusively! “They had a fairly large wedding, but there were clearly more security people than guests!” the insider tells Star. “They had so many security people that they had to call in local security because the hotel security alone wouldn’t do. It was very hush hush. Everyone was sworn to secrecy.” The location of the wedding — which took place Thursday or Friday — was the Four Seasons Hualalai at Historic Ka'upulehu on the big island of Hawaii. The hotel has many amenities like a golf course and a spa. The hotel is known for throwing big, A-list weddings. “The place is perfect for a Hollywood wedding,” says the source. “It’s very romantic and scenic. Megan and Brian had already been there for a few days. It seemed like a spur of the moment thing. I don’t think it had been planned long.” And the couple has been in no rush to leave. “Megan and Brian are still there at the hotel, relaxing,” says the source. “They’re now celebrating their honeymoon." Just days earlier Megan had lost her two-carat diamond engagement ring from Excalibur jewelry store in Beverly Hills in the Hawaiian sand after Brian re-proposed. After much searching the ring was not found. Megan and Brian have been dating since 2004. They got engaged in 2007 then broke it off in Feb. 2009. Shortly thereafter they rekindled their relationship. Their reps confirmed that they got engaged again on June 1. Photo by Splash News

– Well, that was a quick re-engagement. Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green already got hitched, TMZ reports, in a very small ceremony at the Four Seasons in Hawaii last week. “There were clearly more security people than guests,” a source tells Star. “It seemed like a spur of the moment thing. I don’t think it had been planned long.” It's the first marriage for both; they have been dating since 2004.

French skipper Francois Gabart reacts after his world record, in the Brest harbor, western France, Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017. Gabart has broken the record for sailing around the world alone, circumnavigating... (Associated Press) French skipper Francois Gabart reacts after his world record, in the Brest harbor, western France, Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017. Gabart has broken the record for sailing around the world alone, circumnavigating the planet in just 42 days and 16 hours. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (Associated Press) BREST, France (AP) — French sailor Francois Gabart broken the record Sunday for sailing around the world alone, circumnavigating the planet in just 42 days and 16 hours. That is more than six days faster than the last record, set by fellow Frenchman Thomas Coville last year. The organizers, tracking his journey by satellite, tweeted that 34-year-old Gabart reached the finish line near Ouessant island off France's western coast on his trimaran called "Macif" before dawn Sunday. Dozens of vessels swarmed around the victory vessel, accompanying Gabart as he waved torches. Supporters waited to fete him in nearby Brest, a historic port city and sailing capital from where he departed Nov. 4 and where residents have been following his travels. "It's a crazy pleasure ... all this human energy," Gabart said later. "I'm a solitary sailor but this is a pleasure." ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption François Gabart was welcomed back to France by a flotilla of local boats escorting him home A French sailor has set a new world record for the fastest solo round-the-world navigation, beating the previous time by more than six days. François Gabart finished his circuit of the globe early on Sunday, in a time of 42 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes and 35 seconds. He completed the journey non-stop, confined to his trimaran sailing yacht since 4 November. Gabart broke the record set by his countryman Thomas Coville last year. The record was held at one stage by British national Dame Ellen MacArthur. Gabart's new record has yet to be verified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council, which will check the ship's GPS data before confirming the result. Image copyright AFP Image caption Gabart celebrated aboard his trimaran as he reached port in Brest He crossed the finish line near the western limit of the English Channel at about 01:45 GMT, before turning his ship homeward. Capturing the drama just ahead of the finish, Gabart said in a video recorded in front of an on-board computer monitor: "The little blue bit is us, the red line is the finish. We should cross it any time now, the computer says 30 seconds." Then he reported: "I've just crossed the finish line. It's pretty crazy. It's pretty unreal. I'm a bit overwhelmed. Just now I couldn't move I was at such a loss about what to do next. I'm in the dark. There are cargo ships and fishing boats around me. It's a pretty weird atmosphere and at the same time it's pretty extraordinary... "I'm proud and happy to have made this pretty voyage around the planet." As he arrived in the town of Brest in France's north-west several hours later, his yacht was escorted into port by a host of local boats in celebration of his accomplishment. Gabart's success is partly down to good luck with weather, which can dramatically influence sailing speeds. Image copyright AFP Image caption François Gabart spent 42 days alone on his ship AFP news agency reports that, while chasing the global speed record, Gabart broke several others for solo racing, including the fastest navigation of the Pacific and the longest distance covered in 24 hours - 1,575km (851 miles). But his 30m (98ft) boat was also custom-designed for the purpose, using the latest technology, and reached speeds of 35 knots (65km/h) during the journey, it said. Gabart posted photos and video on social media frequently during his 42 days at sea, sharing his sunset views or his success at fishing with fans. Well-known sailor Michel Desjoyeaux told the AFP news agency it was not surprising that Gabart had broken Coville's record. "The one thing we can be sure of is that Francois has a faster boat than Thomas had and if they raced head-to-head then he would be faster," he said. "And he has spent a great deal of time on a multi-hull and is completely unafraid of high speeds."

– If it seems like just last year that a sailor beat the record for sailing around the world solo with a "mind blowing time," well, let us introduce you to the new record-holder: Frenchman Francois Gabart completed the feat on Sunday with a time of 42 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes, and 35 seconds, reports the BBC. If that doesn't exactly seem blazing, consider that he beat the previous record, set just last year by fellow Frenchman Thomas Coville, by more than six days, reports the AP. Gabart, 34, hit the finish line off France's western coast before dawn Sunday, where he was greeted by dozens of boats and supporters. "It's a crazy pleasure ... all this human energy," Gabart said. "I'm a solitary sailor, but this is a pleasure."

(TNS) -- A small band of cyber jihadi hunters — including former members of the hacktivist group Anonymous — has been quietly feeding the feds online intel that’s foiled more than 10 terror plots and identified scores of ISIS recruiters and websites, on a mission that’s acquired new urgency in the wake of the Paris attacks. “We felt enough wasn’t being done, so we wanted to put our skills to good use,” said the executive director of Ghost Security Group, who only goes by the online hacker name DigitaShadow after numerous ISIS death threats. “We’re completely independent. We survive off donations alone.” Ghost Security Group has provided valuable information since June, according to Michael S. Smith II, co-founder of defense contractor Kronos Advisory and a former adviser to a Congressional terrorism task force. Smith said he became the de facto middleman between the hackers and the feds after members of Ghost Security Group saw him quoted in a newspaper article about cyber terrorism earlier this year and reached out for help because they weren’t sure their data was getting through the FBI’s tip line. “When they first reached out, I wasn’t sure if they were just enthusiastic people who wanted to help,” Smith told the Herald. “I was soon pleasantly surprised.” Ghost Security Group sent him screen shots several weeks later with communications about a plot targeting British and Jewish bystanders at an open-air market in Tunisia popular with tourists. The information was used to disrupt a terror cell and prevent a July 4 terrorist attack, Smith said. “When you look at what happened with the Tunisia data, they literally saved lives,” said Smith. “That’s what’s remarkable — that a small group of people can have that kind of impact.” In July, Smith said he showed authorities the group’s information on planned suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia. Smith said it’s unclear how the authorities used or shared that data, but within 24 hours, Saudi forces arrested hundreds of ISIS members in a sweep. The group has also identified dozens of ISIS recruiters and provided pivotal data showing terrorists moving from Twitter to the Telegram messaging app, according to Smith. “It’s not that the government is incapable of doing this,” said Smith. “The use of the Internet by the Islamic State is so unprecedented in scope, so prolific that it’s frankly overwhelmed the system. There’s a need for more eyes than are available inside government at this point. I would say they are receptive to help.” The FBI declined the Herald’s request for comment on the group. DigitaShadow says he works 16-hour days and his group has taken down more than 100,000 Twitter accounts, nearly 150 websites and 6,000 videos connected to ISIS. They also vet tips on ghostsecuritygroup.com. Ghost Security Group first tries to alert companies whose servers may unwittingly host terrorist websites. “If they don’t listen to us within a week, we shut it down by force,” he said. “Anything with intelligence value, we leave intact.” The group formed in January after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Some members of Ghost Security Group met through Anonymous — although DigitaShadow stresses they have since broken all ties with Anonymous and operate under a set leadership structure. He said the 14 members, who work from the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, are men and women ages 25 to 50. Some have military backgrounds. The group also quietly alerts the feds when they go undercover in ISIS forums, Smith said — a distinction that sets it apart from Anonymous, the loosely organized underground group that also stepped up its war against the Islamic State this week. “Anonymous may go out and do the same thing — create handles and engage with Islamic State members online — and they are going to be misidentified as terrorists,” said Smith. “And the federal authorities are going to waste time and money monitoring Anonymous when they could be spending time on others.” ©2015 the Boston Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ||||| In July, a threat emerged from an ISIS-associated Twitter account with few followers. The account alluded to an upcoming terror attack at a beach resort in Tunisia. Just a month before, a similar attack left 38 dead. It may have gone undetected if it weren't for a rogue hacker group called Ghost Security Group. The group, which is made up of counterintelligence officials and computer specialists, had been monitoring the Twitter account for a month. While the under-the-radar account only had a handful of followers, many of them were high-profile ISIS members. The hacktivist group immediately looked for intelligence contractors who could relay the info to the authorities. They found terrorist analyst Michael S. Smith II through Twitter. Smith, who works at defense consulting firm Kronos Advisory, serves as a counterterrorism adviser to members of Congress and was responsive to Ghost Security. He became the group's conduit to authorities. According to Smith, investigators used Ghost Security's info to identify a target site, who they were targeting, and how they would execute the attack. The investigation ended with the arrest of more than a dozen terror suspects, Smith said. "Without a doubt, this group has saved lives. At least into the dozens," Smith told CNNMoney. "There are people working in the national security community in the United States, Europe, the Middle East ... who will never be credited with that." FBI Director James Comey has repeatedly said that ISIS' use of social media is unprecedented in terms of how aggressively it engages with people in the West. Its members are essentially overwhelming the system, Smith said, which means there's room for outside support from groups like Global Security. But in order for these groups to be effective, they have to coordinate with those who "have the mandates ... to find, finish and fix the enemy," said Smith. (The FBI would not comment on Ghost Security's involvement in digitally tracking terrorists.) Related: Top questions asked on the ISIS help desk Ghost Security differentiates itself from the vast and often disjointed hacktivist collective Anonymous, which has also declared war on ISIS and claims to have taken down pro-ISIS Twitter accounts. A handful of members were previously part of Anonymous, including one of the leaders, who goes by the name "DigitaShadow." He says Ghost Security is small and more focused. "We have structure and leadership," he told CNNMoney. "We also have a lot of counterterrorism experience. We have translators, linguists, research analysts on hand to analyze all the data that we receive." DigitaShadow has taken on the role of executive director and helps organize and assign tasks to the 14 members of Ghost Security who are scattered around the world. He also provides electronic equipment for the group. Ghost Security also works with another group, CtrlSec, which helps monitor the social media of terrorists. Ghost Security was formed following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last January. DigitaShadow said it's a full time job for the members, who are scattered around the world. Even though they're just volunteers, they work an average of 16 hours a day. "We realized for the first time, you could be [attacked] in the streets of Paris and attacked in [your] hometown in America," DigitaShadow said. "Everybody could become a victim. So we wanted to do what we could to help slow them down." Related: Terrorists hide plans by 'going dark' DigitaShadow says Ghost Security has taken down 149 Islamic State propaganda sites, 110,000 social media accounts, and over 6,000 propaganda videos since it formed. Following the most recent attacks in Paris, the crew is trying to gather intel on the attackers' digital footprints and identify social media accounts involved in the attacks. (CNN could not independently confirm this information.) Ghost Security claims to have created automated software that identifies ISIS social media accounts. DigitaShadow says the collective has also infiltrated private ISIS communications, taken over ISIS social media accounts and pulled IP information to help identify and locate ISIS members. Ghost Security is primarily focused on bringing down ISIS, but they also target other Islamic extremists. According to Smith, the group also identified and traced two brothers in Saudi Arabia who filmed themselves executing someone to demonstrate their support for ISIS. The group was able to take control of the Twitter account that uploaded the execution video and find information about the mobile device, which allowed authorities to locate the killers. (The two brothers were killed before U.S. intelligence acted on the information, according to Smith.) After connecting with Smith this summer and funneling information to officials, the group changed some of its tactics to operate more lawfully -- it now sees itself as gathering valuable data to send to authorities. While Smith says operations are done legally, there's a fine line. "Is hacking illegal? Absolutely," DigitaShadow said. "Is fighting ISIS to try to stop threats and stop their propaganda -- would that be considered illegal? It falls into a giant gray area." The Ghost Security team is working around the clock. They aren't compensated but do receive some bitcoin donations. Despite struggling to make ends meet, DigitaShadow says they won't stop. "If we were to stop now, lives would be at risk. It's not a choice, it's more of a way of life for us now."

– Anonymous is making good on its threats to launch a "cyber war" on ISIS, hacking into the group's sites and accounts and warning people about possible attacks. But there's a smaller group that says Anonymous is going about it the wrong way—and claims that its own methods are more effective, the BBC reports. "They [Anonymous] don't have any counterterrorism experience whatsoever," the executive director of Ghost Security Group scoffed to the BBC in a phone interview. GSG—made up of volunteer counterterrorism and computer experts, some of whom used to belong to Anonymous and who say they put in an average of 16 hours a day, per CNNMoney—operates mainly by checking out purported ISIS member social-media accounts and snooping on message boards, then sharing info it gathers with law enforcement, the BBC notes. That methodology contrasts with Anonymous' preferred method of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks that take jihadi websites offline. "I don't think DDoS attacks do a huge amount of damage to Islamic State," the GSG director notes. He tells the Boston Herald that "if they don't listen to us within a week, we shut ... down [suspected terror websites] by force. [But] anything with intelligence value, we leave intact." The group says it helped stop a follow-up attack to this summer's Tunisian beach massacre by monitoring Twitter, per the BBC. The security firm CEO who's the middleman between GSG and authorities tells the broadcaster that "these people have saved lives." An Anonymous member offered a virtual eye-roll at the GSG being in bed with the law, telling the BBC its own shutdown method "stops [ISIS] from recruiting young kids that have no place to go or people [who] are sick in the head." But the GSG director says, "We can't do anything with that data unless we work with the US government. They have the guns and the boots on the ground [to] disrupt terrorist operations." (ISIS has a menacing message for Anonymous.)

Christopher Rivas and his colleagues were about to turn their fishing boat for home when they noticed the half-submerged hull of the yacht Sajo sitting in the water about 60 miles off the coast of the southern Philippines. It had been more than a year since anyone had heard from the 40ft Sajo’s 59-year-old German skipper, Manfred Fritz Bajorat. It did not take long for Mr Rivas to discover why as he scrambled on board to help. Warning: graphic image below The Filipino fisherman found Mr Bajorat’s body sat next to the vessel’s bank of radio transmitters. Such had been the dry, salty conditions since the unexplained death of the German sailor that his corpse had been mummified in its final position, slumped over a table used for charts with the transmitter handset just inches away. Police in the port of Barobo, about 700 miles south of Manila, where Mr Rivas towed the Sajo, said that a post-mortem examination had found no evidence of foul play and it was believed Mr Bajorat had died of natural causes, possibly from a heart attack. His identity had been established using documentation, including dozens of photographs, found on board the yacht, which it is believed had been drifting for months in the Pacific Ocean before Mr Rivas and his fellow fishermen came upon the wreck. Shape Created with Sketch. World news in pictures Show all 50 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. World news in pictures 1/50 2 November 2018 A Salvadorean migrant with a girl walks next to Guatemalan policemen as they approach the Guatemala-Mexico international border bridge in Ciudad Tecun Uman. Accoring to the Salvadorean General Migration Directorate, over 1,700 Salvadoreans left the country in two caravans and entered Guatemala Wednesday, in an attempt to reach the US AFP/Getty 2/50 1 November 2018 Google employees hold signs outside 14th street park after walking out as part of a global protest over claims of sexual harassment, gender inequality and systemic racism at the tech giant Reuters 3/50 31 October 2018 The "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India Reuters 4/50 30 October 2018 A scavenger collects recyclable materials along the breakwater amid strong waves as weather patterns from Typhoon Yutu affect Manila Bay. Fierce winds sheared off roofs and snapped trees in half, after thousands were evacuated ahead of the powerful storm's arrival AFP/Getty 5/50 29 October 2018 Rescue team members collecting the remains of the crashed plane at Tanjung Priok Harbour, Indonesia. A Lion Air flight JT-610 lost contact with air traffic controllers soon after takeoff then crashed into the sea. The flight was en route to Pangkal Pinang, and reportedly had 189 people onboard EPA 6/50 28 October 2018 A supporter of Workers' Party presidential candidate Fernando Haddad embraces a fellow weeping supporter, after learning that rival Jair Bolsonaro was declared the winner in the Brazil presidential runoff election. Addressing supporters in Sao Paulo, Haddad did not concede or even mention Bolsonaro by name. Instead, his speech was a promise to resist AP 7/50 27 October 2018 First responders surround the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a shooter opened fire, wounding three police officers and killing eleven AP 8/50 26 October 2018 Broward County Sheriff's office have released a photo of Cesar Sayoc, the suspect who was arrested in connection with the pipe bombs that have been sent to several high profile Democrats and critics of President Trump over the course of this week AP 9/50 25 October 2018 East Island in Hawaii has been swallowed by the sea following Hurricane Walaka US Fish and Wildlife Service 10/50 24 October 2018 Police officers stand outside the home of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after a "functional explosive device" was attemptedly delivered to the couple AP 11/50 23 October 2018 Turkey's President Erdogan today accused Saudi Arabia of plotting the 'savage' murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi AP 12/50 22 October 2018 Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison (C) delivers a national apology to child sex abuse victims in the House of Representatives in Parliament House in Canberra on October 22, 2018. - Morrison on October 22 issued an emotive apology to children who suffered sexual abuse, saying the state had failed to protect them from "evil dark" crimes committed over decades AFP/Getty 13/50 21 October 2018 A derailed train in Yian, eastern Taiwan. At least 17 people died after the derailment CNA/AFP/Getty 14/50 20 October 2018 US President Donald Trump waves as he boards Marine One after a "Make America Great" rally in Mesa, Arizona on October 19, 2018. - US President Donald Trump said Friday, October 19, 2018, that he found credible Saudi Arabia's assertion that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi died as a result of a fight AFP/Getty 15/50 19 October 2018 A Palestinian youth runs past a rolling burning tire during clashes with Israeli forces following a demonstration after the weekly Friday prayers, in the centre of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron AFP/Getty 16/50 18 October 2018 Honduran migrants heading in a caravan to the United States, leave Guatemala City. US President Donald Trump threatened to send the military to close its southern border if Mexico fails to stem the "onslaught" of migrants from Central America, in a series of tweets that blamed Democrats ahead of the midterm elections AFP/Getty 17/50 17 October 2018 Smoke billows following an Israeli air strike around the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Israel launched raids against targets in the Gaza strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian territory that caused damage in a southern city, the Israeli army said AFP/Getty 18/50 16 October 2018 Ecuador has issued a list of rules to Julian Assange, the famous resident of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The list included cleaning the bathroom, not commenting on foreign political affairs online and taking better care of his cat (pictured). The document states that failure to comply with these rules “could lead to the termination of the diplomatic asylum granted by the Ecuadorian state” Reuters 19/50 15 October 2018 Israeli soldiers hurl tear gas grenades during clashes following Israeli order to shut down the al-Lubban/al-Sawiyeh school near the west bank city of Nablus, 15 October 2018. According to local sources, 20 Palestinians were wounded during clashes as dozens try to defiance the Israeli order to shut down the school EPA 20/50 14 October 2018 Serbia's Novak Djokovic kisses the trophy after winning his men's final singles match against Croatia's Borna Coric at the Shanghai Masters. Djokovic, who has now won four titles this season, will move up one ranking spot to No. 2, pushing Roger Federer back to No. 3 AFP/Getty 21/50 13 October 2018 Demonstrators raising red painted hands and a placard reading "we must change the system not the climate" referring to the need to stop climate change during a march in Bordeaux, southwestern France AFP/Getty 22/50 12 October 2018 Spanish Unionist demonstrators carry Spanish flags during a demonstration on Spain's National Day in Barcelona Reuters 23/50 11 October 2018 Russia has halted all crewed space flights following the failed launch of the Soyuz MS-10 rocket (pictured). Investigations in to the rocket's malfunction are ongoing Reuters 24/50 People look on at a damaged store after Hurricane Michael passed through Panama City, Florida. A Category 4 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, was the most powerful storm ever to hit the Florida Panhandle Getty 25/50 9 October 2018 The Darul Muttaqien Mosque was the heart of the community for many in Palu. A lot of the victims were inside their homes or at the mosque when the quake struck. Magareb prayer for many, was their last. Paddy Dowling travelled with UK based charity Muslim Aid to the disaster areas of North Sulawesi to witness the scale of Indonesia’s earthquake & tsunami. They are the only British NGO delivering aid out in Palu through local partners Paddy Dowling 26/50 8 October 2018 People take part in a candle-light vigil in memory of Bulgarian TV journalist Viktoria Marinova in Ruse Reuters 27/50 7 October 2018 Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, presidential candidate with the Social Liberal Party, celebrate in front of his house during the general elections in Rio. The far-right congressman, who waxes nostalgically about the dictatorship, won the vote but not an outright victory. The second-round-run-off will be between Bolsoanro and the leftist Workers' party Fernando Haddad AP 28/50 6 October 2018 Demonstrators hold a banner that reads "freedom of the press, not allowed to be trampled" and "shame on the governments vindictive move" past a symbolic 'political red line' during a protest after Hong Kong immigration authorities declined a visa renewal for senior Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet, outside the immigration department building in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's decision to effectively blacklist a senior Financial Times journalist required an "urgent explanation", the UK said AFP/Getty 29/50 5 October 2018 Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad announced as the winners of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. The pair were awarded the honour “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” AFP/Getty/Reuters 30/50 4 October 2018 Dutch security services expel Russian spies over plot targeting chemical weapons watchdog. This picture shows the four GRU officers who entered the Netherlands at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on April 10, travelling on official Russian passports. On April 13 they parked a car carrying specialist hacking equipment outside the headquarters of the OPCW in The Hague. At that point the Dutch counter-terrorism officers intervened to disrupt the operation and the four GRU officers were ordered to leave the country PA 31/50 3 October 2018 Quake survivors make their way past a washed out passenger ferry in Wani, Indonesia's Central Sulawesi, after an earthquake and tsunami hit the area on September 28. Nearly 1,400 people are now known to have died as UN officials warned the "needs remain vast" for both desperate survivors and rescue teams still searching for victims AFP/Getty 32/50 2 October 2018 US first lady Melania Trump holds a baby during a visit to a hospital in Accra, Ghana. The first lady is visiting Africa on her first big solo international trip, aiming to make child well-being the focus of a five-day, four-country tour Reuters 33/50 1 October 2018 Indian school children dressed like Mahatma Gandhi perform yoga during a event at a school in Chennai ahead of his birth anniversary. Indians all over the country celebrate Gandhi's birthday on October 2 AFP/Getty 34/50 30 September 2018 An Albanian man casts his vote at a polling station in the village of Zajas on September 30, 2018, for a referendum to re-name the country. - Macedonians cast ballots on September 30 on whether to re-name their country North Macedonia, a bid to settle a long-running row with Greece and unlock a path to NATO and EU membership AFP/Getty 35/50 29 September 2018 Residents trying to salvage belongings from their homes which collapsed after an earthquake and tsunami hit Palu on Sulawesi island on September 29, 2018. - Nearly 400 people were killed when a powerful quake sent a tsunami barrelling into the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, officials said on September 29, as hospitals struggled to cope with hundreds of injured and rescuers scrambled to reach the stricken region. AFP/Getty 36/50 28 September 2018 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a press conference in Berlin. Erdogan's official state visit has been met with protests EPA 37/50 27 September 2018 Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters AP 38/50 26 September 2018 Members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) search for victims after a building collapsed in New Delhi killing five people, the latest incident highlighting India's poor urban planning and construction AFP/Getty 39/50 25 September 2018 US golfer Tiger Woods tees off during a practice session ahead of the 42nd Ryder Cup at Le Golf National Course at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, south-west of Paris AFP/Getty 40/50 24 September 2018 President Donald Trump and US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, talk with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres during the General Assembly at UN Headquarters AP 41/50 23 September 2018 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has claimed that his country is "ready to confront America", following an attack on a military parade in Ahvaz in which 25 people were killed. The attack has been blamed by Iranian government and military officials on gulf states that are allied with the US AP 42/50 22 September 2018 Pakistan has invited Saudi Arabia to become a partner in the Beijing funded Belt and Road scheme that will improve and expand Pakistan's infrastructure. The invite comes at the end of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's two day trip to the Middle Eastern country, where he met with Saudi King Salman EPA 43/50 21 September 2018 A boat has capsized killing at 136 people in Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Rescue operations are ongoing AFP/Getty 44/50 20 September 2018 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe celebrates after the ruling liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership election at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on September 20, 2018. - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won re-election as leader of his ruling party on September 20, setting him on course to become Japan's longest-serving premier and realise his dream of reforming the constitution. AFP/Getty 45/50 19 September 2018 Los Angeles has moved to ban the sale of fur within its city limits. Speaking at a news conference today, councillor Bob Blumenfield said “this is something that is not just a good legislative win, it’s a moral win”. LA will be the biggest city in the US to ban the sale of fur, as it follows San Francisco, Berkley and others AP 46/50 18 September 2018 South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wave during a car parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, Reuters 47/50 17 September 2018 Australia has launched a nationwide investigation into needles being hidden in strawberries. Sewing needles have reportedly been found in strawberries in all 6 Australian states and the market is suffering from the resultant fear EPA 48/50 16 September 2018 Typhoon Mangkhut has made landfall in China, bringing winds of 100mph to coastal areas and storm surges of 10 feet in Hong Kong. Pictured here are the smashed windows of an office tower in Hong Kong. Reuters 49/50 15 September 2018 German Police have begun evicting activists from the Hambacher Forest where a protest to protect the remaining section of the ancient forest has been ongoing for the past 6 years. Dozens of activists have been living in treehouses, but are now being forced out after tensions rose between them and energy company RWE, which plans to expand its coal mine further into the remaining woodland AFP/Getty 50/50 14 September 2018 Speaking in Malmo today, the Dalai Lama stated "I think Europe belongs to Europeans" and suggested that refugees should focus on returning home and developing their home countries Reuters 1/50 2 November 2018 A Salvadorean migrant with a girl walks next to Guatemalan policemen as they approach the Guatemala-Mexico international border bridge in Ciudad Tecun Uman. Accoring to the Salvadorean General Migration Directorate, over 1,700 Salvadoreans left the country in two caravans and entered Guatemala Wednesday, in an attempt to reach the US AFP/Getty 2/50 1 November 2018 Google employees hold signs outside 14th street park after walking out as part of a global protest over claims of sexual harassment, gender inequality and systemic racism at the tech giant Reuters 3/50 31 October 2018 The "Statue of Unity" portraying Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India, during its inauguration in Kevadia, in the western state of Gujarat, India Reuters 4/50 30 October 2018 A scavenger collects recyclable materials along the breakwater amid strong waves as weather patterns from Typhoon Yutu affect Manila Bay. Fierce winds sheared off roofs and snapped trees in half, after thousands were evacuated ahead of the powerful storm's arrival AFP/Getty 5/50 29 October 2018 Rescue team members collecting the remains of the crashed plane at Tanjung Priok Harbour, Indonesia. A Lion Air flight JT-610 lost contact with air traffic controllers soon after takeoff then crashed into the sea. The flight was en route to Pangkal Pinang, and reportedly had 189 people onboard EPA 6/50 28 October 2018 A supporter of Workers' Party presidential candidate Fernando Haddad embraces a fellow weeping supporter, after learning that rival Jair Bolsonaro was declared the winner in the Brazil presidential runoff election. Addressing supporters in Sao Paulo, Haddad did not concede or even mention Bolsonaro by name. Instead, his speech was a promise to resist AP 7/50 27 October 2018 First responders surround the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a shooter opened fire, wounding three police officers and killing eleven AP 8/50 26 October 2018 Broward County Sheriff's office have released a photo of Cesar Sayoc, the suspect who was arrested in connection with the pipe bombs that have been sent to several high profile Democrats and critics of President Trump over the course of this week AP 9/50 25 October 2018 East Island in Hawaii has been swallowed by the sea following Hurricane Walaka US Fish and Wildlife Service 10/50 24 October 2018 Police officers stand outside the home of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after a "functional explosive device" was attemptedly delivered to the couple AP 11/50 23 October 2018 Turkey's President Erdogan today accused Saudi Arabia of plotting the 'savage' murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi AP 12/50 22 October 2018 Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison (C) delivers a national apology to child sex abuse victims in the House of Representatives in Parliament House in Canberra on October 22, 2018. - Morrison on October 22 issued an emotive apology to children who suffered sexual abuse, saying the state had failed to protect them from "evil dark" crimes committed over decades AFP/Getty 13/50 21 October 2018 A derailed train in Yian, eastern Taiwan. At least 17 people died after the derailment CNA/AFP/Getty 14/50 20 October 2018 US President Donald Trump waves as he boards Marine One after a "Make America Great" rally in Mesa, Arizona on October 19, 2018. - US President Donald Trump said Friday, October 19, 2018, that he found credible Saudi Arabia's assertion that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi died as a result of a fight AFP/Getty 15/50 19 October 2018 A Palestinian youth runs past a rolling burning tire during clashes with Israeli forces following a demonstration after the weekly Friday prayers, in the centre of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron AFP/Getty 16/50 18 October 2018 Honduran migrants heading in a caravan to the United States, leave Guatemala City. US President Donald Trump threatened to send the military to close its southern border if Mexico fails to stem the "onslaught" of migrants from Central America, in a series of tweets that blamed Democrats ahead of the midterm elections AFP/Getty 17/50 17 October 2018 Smoke billows following an Israeli air strike around the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Israel launched raids against targets in the Gaza strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian territory that caused damage in a southern city, the Israeli army said AFP/Getty 18/50 16 October 2018 Ecuador has issued a list of rules to Julian Assange, the famous resident of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The list included cleaning the bathroom, not commenting on foreign political affairs online and taking better care of his cat (pictured). The document states that failure to comply with these rules “could lead to the termination of the diplomatic asylum granted by the Ecuadorian state” Reuters 19/50 15 October 2018 Israeli soldiers hurl tear gas grenades during clashes following Israeli order to shut down the al-Lubban/al-Sawiyeh school near the west bank city of Nablus, 15 October 2018. According to local sources, 20 Palestinians were wounded during clashes as dozens try to defiance the Israeli order to shut down the school EPA 20/50 14 October 2018 Serbia's Novak Djokovic kisses the trophy after winning his men's final singles match against Croatia's Borna Coric at the Shanghai Masters. Djokovic, who has now won four titles this season, will move up one ranking spot to No. 2, pushing Roger Federer back to No. 3 AFP/Getty 21/50 13 October 2018 Demonstrators raising red painted hands and a placard reading "we must change the system not the climate" referring to the need to stop climate change during a march in Bordeaux, southwestern France AFP/Getty 22/50 12 October 2018 Spanish Unionist demonstrators carry Spanish flags during a demonstration on Spain's National Day in Barcelona Reuters 23/50 11 October 2018 Russia has halted all crewed space flights following the failed launch of the Soyuz MS-10 rocket (pictured). Investigations in to the rocket's malfunction are ongoing Reuters 24/50 People look on at a damaged store after Hurricane Michael passed through Panama City, Florida. A Category 4 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 155 mph, was the most powerful storm ever to hit the Florida Panhandle Getty 25/50 9 October 2018 The Darul Muttaqien Mosque was the heart of the community for many in Palu. A lot of the victims were inside their homes or at the mosque when the quake struck. Magareb prayer for many, was their last. Paddy Dowling travelled with UK based charity Muslim Aid to the disaster areas of North Sulawesi to witness the scale of Indonesia’s earthquake & tsunami. They are the only British NGO delivering aid out in Palu through local partners Paddy Dowling 26/50 8 October 2018 People take part in a candle-light vigil in memory of Bulgarian TV journalist Viktoria Marinova in Ruse Reuters 27/50 7 October 2018 Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, presidential candidate with the Social Liberal Party, celebrate in front of his house during the general elections in Rio. The far-right congressman, who waxes nostalgically about the dictatorship, won the vote but not an outright victory. The second-round-run-off will be between Bolsoanro and the leftist Workers' party Fernando Haddad AP 28/50 6 October 2018 Demonstrators hold a banner that reads "freedom of the press, not allowed to be trampled" and "shame on the governments vindictive move" past a symbolic 'political red line' during a protest after Hong Kong immigration authorities declined a visa renewal for senior Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet, outside the immigration department building in Hong Kong. Hong Kong's decision to effectively blacklist a senior Financial Times journalist required an "urgent explanation", the UK said AFP/Getty 29/50 5 October 2018 Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege and Yazidi campaigner Nadia Murad announced as the winners of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. The pair were awarded the honour “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” AFP/Getty/Reuters 30/50 4 October 2018 Dutch security services expel Russian spies over plot targeting chemical weapons watchdog. This picture shows the four GRU officers who entered the Netherlands at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on April 10, travelling on official Russian passports. On April 13 they parked a car carrying specialist hacking equipment outside the headquarters of the OPCW in The Hague. At that point the Dutch counter-terrorism officers intervened to disrupt the operation and the four GRU officers were ordered to leave the country PA 31/50 3 October 2018 Quake survivors make their way past a washed out passenger ferry in Wani, Indonesia's Central Sulawesi, after an earthquake and tsunami hit the area on September 28. Nearly 1,400 people are now known to have died as UN officials warned the "needs remain vast" for both desperate survivors and rescue teams still searching for victims AFP/Getty 32/50 2 October 2018 US first lady Melania Trump holds a baby during a visit to a hospital in Accra, Ghana. The first lady is visiting Africa on her first big solo international trip, aiming to make child well-being the focus of a five-day, four-country tour Reuters 33/50 1 October 2018 Indian school children dressed like Mahatma Gandhi perform yoga during a event at a school in Chennai ahead of his birth anniversary. Indians all over the country celebrate Gandhi's birthday on October 2 AFP/Getty 34/50 30 September 2018 An Albanian man casts his vote at a polling station in the village of Zajas on September 30, 2018, for a referendum to re-name the country. - Macedonians cast ballots on September 30 on whether to re-name their country North Macedonia, a bid to settle a long-running row with Greece and unlock a path to NATO and EU membership AFP/Getty 35/50 29 September 2018 Residents trying to salvage belongings from their homes which collapsed after an earthquake and tsunami hit Palu on Sulawesi island on September 29, 2018. - Nearly 400 people were killed when a powerful quake sent a tsunami barrelling into the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, officials said on September 29, as hospitals struggled to cope with hundreds of injured and rescuers scrambled to reach the stricken region. AFP/Getty 36/50 28 September 2018 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a press conference in Berlin. Erdogan's official state visit has been met with protests EPA 37/50 27 September 2018 Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters AP 38/50 26 September 2018 Members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) search for victims after a building collapsed in New Delhi killing five people, the latest incident highlighting India's poor urban planning and construction AFP/Getty 39/50 25 September 2018 US golfer Tiger Woods tees off during a practice session ahead of the 42nd Ryder Cup at Le Golf National Course at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, south-west of Paris AFP/Getty 40/50 24 September 2018 President Donald Trump and US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, talk with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres during the General Assembly at UN Headquarters AP 41/50 23 September 2018 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has claimed that his country is "ready to confront America", following an attack on a military parade in Ahvaz in which 25 people were killed. The attack has been blamed by Iranian government and military officials on gulf states that are allied with the US AP 42/50 22 September 2018 Pakistan has invited Saudi Arabia to become a partner in the Beijing funded Belt and Road scheme that will improve and expand Pakistan's infrastructure. The invite comes at the end of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's two day trip to the Middle Eastern country, where he met with Saudi King Salman EPA 43/50 21 September 2018 A boat has capsized killing at 136 people in Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Rescue operations are ongoing AFP/Getty 44/50 20 September 2018 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe celebrates after the ruling liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership election at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on September 20, 2018. - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won re-election as leader of his ruling party on September 20, setting him on course to become Japan's longest-serving premier and realise his dream of reforming the constitution. AFP/Getty 45/50 19 September 2018 Los Angeles has moved to ban the sale of fur within its city limits. Speaking at a news conference today, councillor Bob Blumenfield said “this is something that is not just a good legislative win, it’s a moral win”. LA will be the biggest city in the US to ban the sale of fur, as it follows San Francisco, Berkley and others AP 46/50 18 September 2018 South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wave during a car parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, Reuters 47/50 17 September 2018 Australia has launched a nationwide investigation into needles being hidden in strawberries. Sewing needles have reportedly been found in strawberries in all 6 Australian states and the market is suffering from the resultant fear EPA 48/50 16 September 2018 Typhoon Mangkhut has made landfall in China, bringing winds of 100mph to coastal areas and storm surges of 10 feet in Hong Kong. Pictured here are the smashed windows of an office tower in Hong Kong. Reuters 49/50 15 September 2018 German Police have begun evicting activists from the Hambacher Forest where a protest to protect the remaining section of the ancient forest has been ongoing for the past 6 years. Dozens of activists have been living in treehouses, but are now being forced out after tensions rose between them and energy company RWE, which plans to expand its coal mine further into the remaining woodland AFP/Getty 50/50 14 September 2018 Speaking in Malmo today, the Dalai Lama stated "I think Europe belongs to Europeans" and suggested that refugees should focus on returning home and developing their home countries Reuters The discovery signifies a sobering end to what had started as a life of adventure for Mr Bajorat and his wife, Claudia. The couple had begun sailing around the globe about 20 years ago, but their marriage did not survive their travels and they broke up in 2008. Two years later, Claudia died from cancer while on the French island of Martinique. Mr Bajorat posted a tribute online to his former wife, saying: “Thirty years we’ve been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live.” The mariner, from the Ruhr region of Germany, continued his voyages alone, sailing between Europe and the Pacific. Reports in German media said that Mr Bajorat had taken to the waves to avoid central Europe’s bitter winters, which he disliked. Photographs found on board the £130,000 yacht showed carefree family moments – a sea-water damaged picture of picnic with friends or relatives, a Polaroid of a visit to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and an image of children playing in the snow. Two other documents chronicled a journey taken by the Bajorats on board a large container ship with certificates recording their crossing of the Equator, naming Manfred as “Tiger Shark” and Claudia as “Angel Fish”. Mr Bajorat, who is believed to leave behind a daughter who works as the captain of a freight vessel, is not thought to have been in contact with anyone since he sent a birthday message to a friend on Facebook a year ago. Police are investigating whether Mr Bajorat may have been trying to send a mayday message at the time that he died. A police spokesman said: “We have no evidence of a second person aboard and no weapon was found on the yacht.” ||||| 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. ||||| Man walks down street with huge SICKLE in the sid Woman's bungee cord was too long as she falls int Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email The mummified body of a German adventurer has been discovered on his abandoned yacht - which silently drifted around the world for years. Manfred Fritz Bajorat, 59, was found by two fishermen at the weekend off the coast of the Philippines. His body was discovered near the radio telephone on the 40ft yacht called Sayo, as if he was trying one last desperate mayday call. The tragic sailor has also penned a haunting final message to his wife Claudia, who died from cancer in 2010. The note read: "Thirty years we're been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. "You're gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred." (Photo: Barobo Police handout) (Photo: Facebook / Barobo Police Station) It is not clear how long he had been dead and for how many years his yacht had been drifting, but no reported sightings of him have been mentioned since 2009. Inside the cabin were found photo albums, clothes and tins of food strewn all over the interior. He was floating nearly 40 miles from the coast of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean when the fishermen spotted the drifting vessel and boarded it. Read more: Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun "spontaneously combusted" The mast was broken and much of the cabin was underwater, but what killed the skipper is unclear. Dry ocean winds, hot temperatures and the salty air helped preserve his body. He was identified by paperwork found on the vessel. (Photo: EPA) (Photo: Facebook / Barobo Police Station) It is unclear how long he has been dead. Police are trying to retrace his last voyages and find the last people to speak with him. He broke up with his wife in 2008, who had been on his travels with him, and she later died from cancer. In 2009 in Mallorca he met another world sailer called Dieter who told Germany's BILD newspaper: "He was a very experienced sailor. I don't believe he would have sailed into a storm. "I believe the mast broke after Manfred was already dead." (Photo: EPA) (Photo: Facebook / Barobo Police Station) His body was taken for an autopsy in Butuan City, the yacht was towed for a police inspection into the port of Barobo. Police spokeswoman Goldie Lou Siega in the Philippines said; "We have no evidence of a second person aboard and no weapon was found on the yacht." Dr Mark Benecke, a forensic criminologist in the city of Cologne, told BILD: "The way he is sitting seems to indicate that death was unexpected, perhaps from a heart attack." The German embassy in Manila is working with local officials to trace his family in Germany. It is believed he has a daughter called Nina who works as the captain of a freight vessel. ||||| WARNING: Graphic images. THE mummified body of a German adventurer has been discovered inside an abandoned yacht. The grisly discovery came after two fishermen off the coast of the Philippines alerted authorities to a drifting vessel. The body, found slumped near the boat’s radio telephone, has been identified as 59-year-old Manfred Fritz Bajorat. Inspector Mark Navales said the cause of death was unclear, but there were no signs of foul play. “It is still a mystery to us,” said Navales, adding it looked like Bajorat “was sleeping”. It is yet unclear how long Bajorat had been missing, but sightings of him have not been reported since 2009. It was unclear how long Bajorat had been dead on the yacht, which was found on Thursday by fishermen in the Philippine Sea about 100 kilometres from Barabo. Items inside the yacht were scattered, according to Navales, who said the man’s wallet was not found but that the yacht’s radio, GPS and other valuable items were still there. Local police spokeswoman Goldie Lou Siega in the Philippines said: “We have no evidence of a second person aboard and no weapon was found on the yacht.” Decomposing body of German found inside yacht 0:33 The decomposing body of a German national was found inside a yacht in Surigao del Sur, Philippines. Courtesy: YouTube/ABS-CBN News. Dr Mark Benecke, a forensic criminologist in the German city of Cologne, told BILD newspaper: “The way he is sitting seems to indicate that death was unexpected, perhaps from a heart attack.” Officials said dry ocean winds and the salty air helped to preserve his body. As authorities tried to put together the circumstances of Bajorat’s death, details of his private life have started to emerge, according to The Sun. He began his travels with his wife in 2008, but the couple subsequently split up. She later died from cancer. FOUND DEAD PERSON-About 4:00 in the afternoon of February 26, 2016, personnel of Barobo PS received information from... Posted by Barobo Police Station on Friday, February 26, 2016 In 2009 Bajorat is said to have met another sailor, identified only as Dieter, who told BILD that Bajorat was an “experienced sailor.” “I don’t believe he would have sailed into a storm,” he said. “I believe the mast broke after Manfred was already dead.” The German embassy in the Philippine capital, Manila, has been notified and is now working on locating Bajorat’s family. He is believed to have a daughter who works as the captain of a freight vessel. Here are photos that were taken when Bajorat's boat was found. Photos of the interior of his boat as well as a photo album he had on board. Posted by GHOST of Florida Paranormal Society on Monday, February 29, 2016 — With The Sun.

– Fishermen spotted a yacht with a broken mast drifting near the Philippines on Feb. 26 and discovered the owner inside, but the story doesn't have a happy ending. Manfred Fritz Bajorat, 59, was slumped beside the ship's radio telephone, long dead and apparently mummified by the ocean's hot temperatures and salty, dry winds, the Mirror reports. What police found pointed to a life of adventure and a marriage that collapsed along the way. What isn't clear is how or when Bajorat died: "It is still a mystery to us," a detective on Mindanao Island tells the Telegraph. Police say there's no evidence of another person on board and no weapon was in the partly flooded cabin. Neither was Bajorat's wallet, but expensive items like a GPS system were still on board the $180,000 yacht, Australia's News Network reports. A doctor suggests he might have died suddenly of a heart attack. Documentation and recovered photos helped authorities identify Bajorat, a German adventurer who began sailing the world with his wife, Claudia, 20 years ago, the Independent reports. Photos of them picnicking and visiting the Arc de Triomphe in Paris indicate a carefree life, but they split in 2008 and Claudia died of cancer two years later. "Thirty years we've been together on the same path," wrote Bajorat in an online tribute. "Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live." Bajorat continued sailing between the Pacific and Europe, and his final position indicates he might have been seeking help by radio. "He was a very experienced sailor," says a fellow seaman. "I don't believe he would have sailed into a storm. I believe the mast broke after Manfred was already dead." An autopsy is pending. (Japanese cab drivers reported "ghost passengers" after the tsunami.)

Caffall showed off gun collection on Facebook Posted: Monday, August 13, 2012 11:11 PM EST Updated: Monday, August 13, 2012 11:27 PM EST A man is charged with aggravated arson after police say he intentionally poured gasoline on a man and set him on fire. A man is charged with aggravated arson after police say he intentionally poured gasoline on a man and set him on fire. Donnell Goodbread, 34, appeared before a judge on Thursday afternoon. Witnesses Police came up empty-handed after responding to an alleged bomb threat at Florence Mall. Police came up empty-handed after responding to an alleged bomb threat at Florence Mall. Investigators say an anonymous individual called security officials at Florence Mall around 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon. The Kentucky Senate has passed a bill that would ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors. FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Kentucky Senate has passed a bill that would ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors. Republican Sen. Paul Hornback says his bill is aimed at protecting youngsters from Cincinnati is about to start its pothole blitz. Beginning March 4, the city will have a 30-day pothole blitz. The city does this every year but this year officials anticipate it being a more labor-intensive project. The city will be having additional public works crews dealing with all the potholes. Cincinnati is about to start its pothole blitz. Beginning March 4, the city will have a 30-day pothole blitz. The city does this every year but this year officials anticipate it being a more labor-intensive A contentious Kentucky bill that would enact a statewide ban on smoking in shared public spaces and places of employment is dead, the sponsor says. FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - A contentious Kentucky bill that would enact a statewide ban on smoking in shared public spaces and places of employment is dead, the sponsor says. Democratic Rep. Susan Westrom (RNN) - Thomas Caffall's Facebook page paints him as an avid gun collector. Caffall posted several photographs of his weapons collection, including antique guns and semi-automatic weapons. A post from June 2011 read "No, it's not an AK. It's a Czech vz. 58. Just picked it up today. Can't wait to try it out on the range," he wrote. Another post reads "I just got a new toy. It's a Russian Mosin Nagant that looks like it might not have been fired in 80 years, but was extremely well preserved … I'll be at the gun range as much as I can." ||||| HOUSTON - A man who killed a constable serving an eviction notice, a civilian and wounded two others was described by relatives Monday as a "ticking time bomb." Police named 35-year-old Thomas Caffall as the man who shot and killed a constable, another man and wounded several others during a 30 minute gun battle. Caffall opened fire in the 200 block of Fidelity in College Station shortly before 12:30 p.m., just as Brazos County Precinct 1 Constable Brian Bachmann was serving an eviction notice. After Bachmann was shot, College Station police officers responded to the scene and one of them was shot. Two other officers were hurt while responding to the scene, but they were not shot, police said. Two civilians were also shot. One of them, 43-year-old Chris Northcliff, was killed. A 55-year-old woman, who sources identified as Barbara Holdsworth, was in critical condition after undergoing surgery. KPRC Local 2 investigative reporter Robert Arnold tracked down Caffall's family on Monday afternoon, and Richard Weaver, his stepfather, said he was not shocked that Caffall was involved. "We are devastated for the families that this SOB killed," said Weaver. "He was a ticking time bomb." Arnold asked Weaver if he had any indication that something like this was coming. "He was crazy as hell," Weaver said. "At one point, we were afraid that he was going to come up here and do something to his mother and me." "We were hoping he'd kill himself before doing something like this," said Weaver. "We are just devastated for the families this SOB killed." Weaver could not elaborate on exactly what pushed Caffall to this point, but did say he was aware of the eviction. Weaver said Caffall had not spoken to his mother in several months. Weaver said Caffall quit his job about nine months ago and proclaimed he would never work for anybody again. On Caffall's Facebook page there were several photos of rifles, but no direct mention that something like Monday's event was brewing in his life. Caffall was divorced. Caffall was killed during the shootout with College Station police.

– The gunman who killed two people near the Texas A&M campus before he was fatally shot by police yesterday was a gun fanatic who was battling mental illness. Thomas Caffall's stepdad called the gunman a "ticking time bomb." He was "crazy as hell," Richard Weaver told local TV station KPRC. Caffall, whose deadly rampage was triggered as he was about to be evicted from his College Park home, posted several photos of sophisticated weapons on his Facebook page. "It's not an AK-47. It's a Czech vz. 58. Just picked it up today. Can't wait to try it out on the range," he wrote in June. In another post spotted by Fox 19, he notes: "I just got a new toy. It's a Russian Mosin Nagant that looks like it might not have been fired in 80 years, but was extremely well preserved. I'll be at the gun range as much as I can." Caffall, 35, also lists snipers as "inspirational people," and notes: “I am pulling a cross between Forrest Gump and Jack Kerouac (without the drugs). I'm on the road, permanently.” Caffall was suffering from increasingly serious mental issues, his mother, Linda Weaver, told the Huffington Post. "The minute I saw the TV I knew it was him," said Weaver. "I've been that worried about him." Weaver said she had been estranged from her son for months. "We are just devastated," she said. "He's been very deeply troubled. If you are going to commit suicide, why take all these other people with you?"

Jennifer Hudson and fiancé David Otunga have ended their relationship after 10 years. “They have been in the process of ending their relationship for a number of months,” Hudson’s rep tells PEOPLE exclusively in a statement. “Today, Jennifer requested and received a protective order against her ex-fiancé. Jennifer’s actions are solely taken in the best interest of their son,” the statement concluded. Hudson, 36, and Otunga, 37, are parents to 8-year-old David Daniel Otunga Jr. Otunga’s attorney, Tracy M. Rizzo, released a statement to PEOPLE on behalf of the former pro wrestler following the split news. Kevin Mazur/WireImage “Mr. Otunga has never abused or harassed Ms. Hudson or their son, and it is unfortunate, especially in today’s climate, that she would feel the need to make these false allegations against him. Mr. Otunga looks forward to his day in court and in being awarded the residential care of the parties’ only child,” a part of the statement read. Former pro wrestler Otunga proposed to Hudson in September 2008 after less than a year of dating. The couple welcomed their only child nearly a year later in August 2009. About a month after becoming engaged, Hudson’s mother, Darnell Donerson, and her brother, Jason Hudson, were found fatally shot in a Chicago home. Her 7-year-old nephew, Julian King, was found dead in the backseat of a car. Hudson’s former brother-in-law William Balfour was convicted of the murders in 2012. ||||| Jennifer Hudson Cops Throw David Otunga out of Family Home After She Gets Order of Protection Jennifer Hudson Gets Order of Protection Claiming David Otunga is Threat to Her and Child EXCLUSIVE Jennifer Hudson had the cops come to her Chicago-area home Thursday night and throw baby daddy David Otunga out ... TMZ has learned. Sources familiar with the case tell TMZ, Hudson went to court Thursday without telling Otunga and got an order of protection, claiming he is a risk to both her and their 8-year-old son, David Jr. The police came, allowed Otunga to pack a bag and ordered him out. Sources tell TMZ the catalyst for the order of protection is turf and custody war. Our sources say the couple has been broken up for several months ... after David allegedly found out Hudson was dating someone else. David stayed in the family home -- which is owned by Jennifer -- partly because he's been the primary caregiver since she's on the road a lot. We're told the couple has been negotiating a custody arrangement for the last few weeks, but the negotiations broke down after both David and Jennifer dug in ... each wanting primary physical custody of their son. Our sources say Jennifer demanded that David leave the home, and when it became apparent he wasn't going to comply she went to court for the order of protection. She's also filed a petition for full physical custody. ||||| Jennifer Hudson may not have her fairytale ending with David Otunga after all. The couple have broken up and ended their relationship after 10 years, E! News confirms. "[They] have been in the process of ending their relationship for a number of months," Jennifer's rep tells E! News. "Today, Jennifer requested and received a protective order against her ex-fiancé. Jennifer's actions are solely taken in the best interest of their son. Please respect her privacy at this time." David's attorney would also release a separate statement to E! News. "David Otunga has been trying to negotiate the terms of an amicable parenting agreement with Ms. Hudson for several weeks now. However, when it became apparent to Ms. Hudson that Mr. Otunga would be the parent granted residential care of the child, as a result of Mr. Otunga being the child's primary caregiver while Ms. Hudson pursues her career all over the world, Ms. Hudson decided to file a meritless Petition for Order of Protection in an effort to gain an unfair advantage in the custody dispute," Tracy Rizzo explained. "As a result of Mr. Otunga's career in the WWE, Ms. Hudson felt that she could give an award winning performance in court to portray herself as the victim. Mr. Otunga has never abused or harassed Ms. Hudson or their son, and it is unfortunate, especially in today's climate, that she would feel the need to make these false allegations against him. Mr. Otunga looks forward to his day in court and in being awarded the residential care of the parties' only child."

– Jennifer Hudson has split from the fiance she once said "saved her life" after her mother, brother, and nephew were murdered—and she also got a protective order against him. Hudson, 36, and former pro wrestler David Otunga, 37, have been together a decade, got engaged in 2008, and had a son together in 2009. "They have been in the process of ending their relationship for a number of months," Hudson's rep tells People. "Today, Jennifer requested and received a protective order against her ex-fiancé. Jennifer’s actions are solely taken in the best interest of their son." Per TMZ, police ordered Otunga to leave the couple's Chicago-area home, which Hudson owns, Thursday night. But a rep for Otunga says the couple had been attempting to work out a custody arrangement for weeks, and only when it became apparent that Otunga would be granted residential care of their son because he is "the child’s primary caregiver while Ms. Hudson pursues her career all over the world," per a statement given to E!, did Hudson file for a protective order. "Mr. Otunga has never abused or harassed Ms. Hudson or their son, and it is unfortunate, especially in today’s climate, that she would feel the need to make these false allegations against him," the statement continues. As for what was behind the initial split, TMZ's sources say Hudson started dating someone else.

Michael Jackson's daughter collapsed in tears during chaotic resuscitation efforts: bodyguard Al Seib/POOL, Joel Ryan/AP Michael Jackson's assistant, Michael Amir Williams (pictured Wednesday in court), said he concocted a lie to keep Dr. Conrad Murray out of the singer's mansion. LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson's daughter collapsed in tears as she and her older brother caught glimpses of chaotic resuscitation efforts from just outside the singer's bedroom the day he died, a bodyguard testified Wednesday. "Paris was on the ground balled up crying. And Prince, he was just, he was just standing there, he was just in shock, slowly crying," bodyguard Faheem Muhammad told jurors on the second day of Dr. Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial. "They weren't quite inside the room," he said of daughter Paris, 13, and son Prince, 14. Muhammad told jurors he ran inside Jackson's rented Bel-Air mansion on June 25, 2009 and saw a "sweating" and "very nervous" Murray performing CPR shortly after another bodyguard called 911. Jackson's personal assistant Michael Amir Williams earlier told jurors that he received the doctor's first distress call, but that Murray only described a "bad reaction" and never asked him to call 911. He also said Murray wanted a ride back to Jackson's mansion shortly after the pop icon's death to retrieve a mysterious cream. Williams said he found the request "odd" and concocted a lie that police had confiscated his keys. Prosecutors contend Murray, 58, wanted to cover his tracks. Murray's defense lawyer tried to discredit Williams, saying it took him two months to relay the alleged cream conversation to police. Lawyer Ed Chernoff also suggested Williams didn't react appropriately to Murray's first call for help. "When I hear a 'bad reaction,' I don't think anything fatal, me personally. And I wasn't asked to call 911. I did what he instructed me to do. Get someone up there immediately," Williams responded. Prosecutors say Murray injected Jackson with the hospital-strength anesthetic propofol, "abandoned" his bedside and then took more than 20 minutes to call 911. Murray's camp contends Jackson self-administered enough extra propofol to create a "perfect storm" that killed him "so instantly he didn't even have time to close his eyes." [email protected] ||||| Kathy Jorrie -- AEG Attorney Testifies Updated 9/28/11 at 9:15 AM AEG attorney Kathy Jorrie took the stand this morning -- describing the contract she drafted between AEG, Dr. Murray, and Michael Jackson. According to Jorrie, Murray had a laundry list of demands -- including $150,000 a month, even while "This Is It" was on hiatus. Jorrie testified, Murray also demanded a CPR machine for MJ while he performed in London. Jorrie claimed, when she asked Murray why he would need a CPR machine... Murray responded, he didn't want to take chances with MJ's age and the strenuous nature of the show. * Jorrie says she spoke to Murray on June 24th. Murray told her he had seen Michael perform and that he was in "perfect health." This was a day before he died. * She also said the contract was never signed by all parties, and no payment was ever made to Murray by AEG. ||||| When he called Murray back a couple of minutes later, the doctor said Jackson had a "bad reaction" and asked him to go to the house, Williams testified. "Call me right away, please, call me right away, thank you," Murray said in the recording played during the testimony of the assistant, Michael Amir Williams. And after Jackson stopped breathing, Murray told the singer's personal assistant Jackson had “a bad reaction” and never asked for 911 to be called, the assistant told jurors. Before the singer’s death, Murray assured concert promoters that Jackson was in perfect health when, in fact, he was dependent on nightly doses of a dangerous surgical anesthetic to sleep, witnesses said in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday. Michael Jackson’s personal physician waged a coverup regarding the singer’s health in the weeks leading up to, and the minutes following, his death, according to testimony on the second day of Dr. Conrad Murray's manslaughter trial. "At no time during that call he asked you to call 911?" Deputy Dist. Atty. David Walgren asked. "No sir," he responded. Williams testified that he called security personnel at the house and asked them to see what was going on. By the time Williams arrived at the Holmby Hills mansion from his downtown L.A. apartment, Jackson was being brought out on a gurney, he said. Murray seemed frantic, he recalled. "I knew it was serious," Williams said. After Jackson was pronounced dead, Murray asked Williams to drive him from the hospital back to the singer's mansion to retrieve something, Williams testified. Murray said he needed to get "some cream that Michael wouldn't want the world to know about," Williams said. Williams said he found the request so odd that he lied to the doctor, saying police had taken his car keys, and told a security guard of his plans to deceive Murray to avoid taking him back. Williams then called security personnel at the home and told them not to allow anyone into the home, "just for the simple fact that Dr. Murray asked to go back," Williams testified. Before Williams took the stand Wednesday morning, an attorney for the company producing Jackson's comeback shows testified that Murray had asked for a CPR machine and a second physician as part of his contract to care for the pop singer. When AEG Live attorney Kathy Jorrie remarked that resuscitation equipment was already likely to be at the London venue where Jackson was to perform, Murray said he “wouldn’t want to take a chance,” she testified. Murray said “he will be putting on an extraordinary performance,” she recalled. “Because of that, given his age and the strenuous performance he was putting on, he needed to be sure if something went wrong, he [would have] a CPR machine.” He also said he needed a second doctor in case he was tired or unavailable, she testified. When she asked for Murray’s help in collecting Jackson's medical records from the last five years for insurance purposes, Murray said he had been the singer’s personal physician for three years, but the volume of records would be “very tiny” because of how stellar the singer's health was, Jorrie testified. Earlier, Jorrie said Murray called her twice as she drafted his $150,000-a-month contract with Jackson 10 days before Jackson died, asking for a "number of revisions." Murray was to be paid retroactively beginning in May 2009 and through March 2010, Jorrie said. Murray did not want to be required to refund any portion of his monthly payment if Jackson changed his mind or canceled the tour, she said. During the contract negotiations and drafting, Murray repeatedly offered that Jackson was "perfectly healthy" and in "excellent condition," she testified. Jorrie's testimony came after AEG Live executive Paul Gongaware testified that he was on the lookout for any drug use by Jackson because he was concerned about how it would affect the "This Is It" tour. Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter and administering the fatal dose of the surgical anesthetic propofol that caused Jackson's death. RELATED: Audio: Michael Jackson's haunting voice echoes in trial Michael Jackson: Doctor's trial begins with emotion and drama Conrad Murray: Jackson doctor makes frantic call, but not to 911 -- Victoria Kim and Harriet Ryan at L.A. County Superior Court Photo: Michael Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, right, arrives at court Wednesday. Credit: Jason Redmond / Associated Press

– Michael Jackson's personal assistant took the stand today in the Conrad Murray trial, and talked about a mysterious cream he says the doctor wanted to retrieve right after the singer's death. Michael Amir Williams testified about the day Jackson died, saying "we were making small talk about how horrible it was, just tearing (up)." The doctor then said "there's some cream in Michael's room or house that he wouldn't want the world to know about … so he requested I or someone else give him a ride back to house to get it." The New York Daily News reports that Williams says he lied to get his way out of complying with Murray's "odd" request: He told the doctor that police had taken his car keys, and then he ordered Jackson's security team to lock down the house. Other key moments from court today: TMZ reports that Kathy Jorrie, the attorney for concert promoter AEG, testified that Murray requested a CPR machine be present during Jackson's London "This Is It" performances. When she asked why, he cited the strenuous nature of the concerts and Michael's age. The day before Jackson died, however, Murray told her the singer was in "perfect health." The Los Angeles Times also reports on Jorrie's testimony, and notes that she says she asked Murray to help her collect Jackson's medical records for the last five years for insurance reasons. Murray told her that the records from the three years he had been treating the singer would be "very tiny" because Jackson was in such excellent health.

FEC Clears Campaigns to Solicit Bitcoins By Eliza Newlin Carney The Federal Election Commission has unanimously ruled to permit the use of bitcoins for political contributions, a move that lends legitimacy to the virtual currency but leaves unclear how valuable or useful bitcoins will prove to be in elections. The commission approved bitcoin campaign contributions 6-0 Thursday in response to an advisory opinion request from the Make Your Laws PAC, which promotes direct citizen participation in the legislative process. The FEC had deadlocked on a previous, similar request submitted last year. Make Your Laws had asked the FEC for permission to collect bitcoin contributions no larger than $100 per election, per donor. It was not immediately clear whether, in giving the Make Your Laws PAC the green light, the FEC was approving only bitcoin donations capped at $100, or whether larger virtual contributions would be permitted. The FEC also approved the PAC’s request to purchase bitcoins, but only if it sells the virtual currency and converts it into dollars before depositing and spending it. The FEC also stressed the PAC’s obligation to ensure safeguards to obtain and report the identities of its donors, given the anonymous nature of bitcoin transactions. Bitcoins have grown increasingly popular with political committees and candidates, most notably libertarians, who have forged ahead in collecting them even in the absence of approval or guidance from the FEC. Candidates and committees collecting bitcoins include Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, who lost his primary challenge to Sen. John Cornyn in March, and the Livingston County Libertarians in Michigan. A campaign that collects bitcoins that then increase in value would enjoy a windfall, but the currency comes with risks as well. Created in 2009, bitcoins are privately issued outside the normal banking system and are transferred digitally among participating investors and merchants. In a recent Investor Alert, the Securities and Exchange Commission cites the risk of Ponzi schemes, unlicensed sellers and unsubstantiated promises of high returns in bitcoin transactions. ||||| Updated at 12:49 p.m. The Federal Election Commission on Thursday gave a green light to donating bitcoins to political committees, one of the first rulings by a government agency on how to treat the virtual currency. In a 6-to-0 vote, the panel said that a PAC can accept bitcoin donations, as well as purchase them, but it must sell its bitcoins and convert them into U.S. dollars before they are deposited into an official campaign account. The commission did not approve the use of bitcoin to acquire goods and services. After the vote, however, individual commissioners offered sharply divergent views on whether their decision limits bitcoin donations to small amounts -- creating more uncertainty about how much of the Internet currency that political committees can accept. The FEC had deadlocked on a similar question in the fall, with the three Democratic appointees saying they wanted the agency to take more time to study the issue and develop a formal policy to govern the use of bitcoins in campaigns. At the time, some commissioners expressed concern that the virtual currency could be used to mask the identity of donors. On Thursday, the panel’s vote was swift. The decision came in the form of guidance to Make Your Laws PAC, not an official rule or regulation. But it opens the door to the use of bitcoins by any federal political committee. In its advisory opinion request, the Make Your Laws PAC said it is seeking to accept bitcoin donations in increments up to $100. That low sum assuaged the concerns of several commissioners about the risks of the virtual currency, said Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee. "The $100 limit was really important to us," she said. "We have to balance a desire to accommodate innovation, which is a good thing, with a concern that we continue to protect transparency in the system and ensure that foreign money doesn't seep in." Because the commission only approved the acceptance of bitcoin as specifically described in the request by the Make Your Laws PAC, the decision does not permit contributions of more than $100, she said. But FEC Chairman Lee Goodman, a Republican appointee to the panel, disagreed. He said that the advisory opinion treats bitcoin donations as in-kind contributions -- not official currency -- meaning that the only limits that apply are the federal caps on all forms of accepted donations. Those limit individuals to giving $2,600 to a candidate per election and $5,000 to a political action committee. Individuals and corporations can give unlimited sums to super PACs. "To me, the opinion that the commission approved today supports the right of bitcoin users to contribute as they would all other kind things of value," he said, such as silver dollars and works of art. "This advisory opinion in no way established the outer limit," Goodman added. The panel was in agreement on the need for transparency about who makes the bitcoin donations. The Make Your Laws PAC pledged to obtain the name, address, occupation and employer of all bitcoin contributors -- even though those details are only required of donors who give $200 and more to federal campaigns. The FEC advisory opinion also said that committees accepting bitcoin must report their value based on the exchange rate the day the contribution is made. Bitcoin prices were hovering near $440 on Thursday, down from roughly $530 nearly a month ago. In its decision, the FEC concluded that bitcoins fit the definition of “money or anything of value” that political committees may accept under federal law, while noting that other government agencies, as well as the courts, are still grappling with the question of whether bitcoins should be treated like money. “The Commission expresses no opinion regarding the application of federal securities law, tax law, or other law outside the Commission’s jurisdiction,” the election commission panel stressed in its advisory opinion. Goodman said the FEC needed to weigh in on the debate, even though it remains unclear how the government will deal with bitcoin broadly. "Just philosophically, I think it's important for the FEC to embrace technology and innovation, and that’s what we did today," he said. Brian Fung contributed to this report. ||||| Mike Caldwell, a software engineer, holds a 25 bitcoin token at his shop in Sandy, Utah in May of last year. Caldwell mints physical versions of bitcoins. (Photo: Rick Bowmer, AP) WASHINGTON — Bitcoin, the fast-growing digital currency, is coming to political campaigns. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) unanimously approved its use as a political donation Thursday, after months of debate on the issue. Commissioners imposed several conditions. Among them: No anonymous bitcoin contributions will be allowed, and campaign treasurers must scrutinize the donations for "evidence of illegality." Jim Harper, global policy counsel of the industry's Bitcoin Foundation, said the FEC's move lends further legitimacy to the computer-generated currency. "It's another part of the growing body of regulation that establishes bitcoin as a co-equal part of the financial services system," he told USA TODAY. Rep. Jared Polis, a liberal Democrat from Colorado and a bitcoin backer, immediately announced his campaign would begin accepting the digital money. He praised the FEC for its "forward-looking stance" to recognize "the rights of individuals seeking alternatives to government-backed currencies to participate in our democratic political process." However, it's not clear how quickly the currency will spread through the election landscape. Officials with the campaign committee working to elect House Democrats said they had no immediate plans to begin accepting bitcoin. Other Democratic and Republican committees did not immediately respond to interview requests. Political observers say they expect bitcoin's use to be embraced first by candidates cultivating voters in libertarian-leaning and tech-savvy circles where the currency first gained acceptance. "You may not see a lot of establishment candidates in the parties" rushing to accept the currency just yet, said Michael Toner, a Washington campaign-finance lawyer and a former FEC chairman. Even without the formal approval of regulators, the Libertarian Party began accepting bitcoin about a year ago and has collected the equivalent of about $10,000, party executive director Wes Benedict said Thursday. Many Libertarians would prefer a gold-backed currency and contributing bitcoin "shows a little bit of protest against Federal Reserve policies," he said. At the state level, Texas' Republican attorney general Greg Abbott announced last month that he would accept the virtual currency as an "in-kind" contribution to his bid for state governor. A fellow Texas Republican, Rep. Steve Stockman, accepted the currency in his failed Senate bid. The commission is the latest federal agency to offer guidance on the digital currency, which operates independently of governments and banks. The IRS recently said it would tax bitcoin as property, not currency. The FEC's action came in response to a request brought by a single political action committee, Make Your Laws PAC, which pledged to accept no more than $100 worth of bitcoin from each contributor per election. The commissioners, who often are sharply divided along party lines, issued dueling statements after the vote in which they disagreed about the size of bitcoin contributions that will be allowed. Democrats on the panel said bitcoin donations should not exceed $100, the current cap on cash contributions in federal campaigns. Lee Goodman, a Republican who serves as commission chairman, said bitcoin contributions are more like in-kind donations, such as securities or a painting, and are subject to higher contribution limits. Toner said he expected more back-and-forth on the matter from the commission. Dan Backer, a conservative lawyer who unsuccessfully asked the FEC to approve bitcoin use last year, said he's not waiting for a final answer. He intends to start making contributions larger than $100 to House and Senate candidates through BitPAC, a political action committee he founded. Follow @fschouten on Twitter. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1kW6KWU ||||| The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is leery of bitcoin. The agency issued a lengthy warning to investors on Wednesday about risks it sees in bitcoin and virtual currencies, much of which has been already iterated by bitcoin advocates or other regulators. But the SEC, which is the top regulator for U.S. securities markets, also took a dig at bitcoin’s short existence as another negative. “As a recent invention, Bitcoin does not have an established track record of credibility and trust,” the agency wrote in its advisory. The statement perhaps conflates the pure technology of the bitcoin protocol that transfers the virtual currency, which has been vetted by cryptography experts as solid, with the nearly innumerable thefts, scams and failures of bitcoin-related businesses. Bitcoin, which launched in 2009, has seen a fair share of challenges, including vacillating exchange rates and regulatory restrictions in countries such as China. To back up its claim of bitcoin’s track record, the SEC cited the February collapse of Mt. Gox, the Japan-based exchange that said it lost some 650,000 bitcoins and US$28 million in cash, confirming suspicions the exchange that once dominated bitcoin trading was in trouble. Law enforcement and the SEC may also have trouble investigating bitcoin-related cases, the warning said, since banks are not involved with bitcoin transactions and there is no central authority to obtain information on users. The SEC must rely on other sources for information in such cases, such as bitcoin exchanges or users. Seizing and freezing proceeds that are in bitcoin can also be difficult, the SEC said. Of course, many of those supposed weaknesses are also what makes bitcoin attractive to certain kinds of users.

– Bitcoins just got into politics: The FEC said yesterday that people can use them to make political contributions. As far as the fine print goes, any PAC that accepts them must convert them into dollars before using the money, the Washington Post reports. Also, no anonymous donations will be allowed, and campaigns must give them a good look for "evidence of illegality," USA Today reports. The grass-roots Make Your Laws PAC that made the initial request to the FEC requested a $100 limit, but at this point it's not clear whether "the FEC was approving only bitcoin donations capped at $100, or whether larger virtual contributions would be permitted," notes Roll Call. Though not an official rule, the FEC's 6-0 vote "opens the door to the use of bitcoins by any federal political committee," observes the Post. However, the move comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission issues a warning to investors, declaring that bitcoin "does not have an established track record of credibility and trust," PC World reports.

Asiana crew 'over-relied' on automated systems, NTSB report finds Crew misunderstood systems, NTSB finds Debris from the July 2013 crash lies on the runway. The pilots were too dependent on automated systems they didn't understand, the report found. Debris from the July 2013 crash lies on the runway. The pilots were too dependent on automated systems they didn't understand, the report found. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Asiana crew 'over-relied' on automated systems, NTSB report finds 1 / 3 Back to Gallery (06-25) 16:26 PDT WASHINGTON -- The crew of the Asiana Airlines plane that crashed last year at San Francisco International Airport relied too much on automated flight controls they didn't fully understand and mismanaged the landing as it went wrong, a federal safety panel concluded Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board also found that the three-member crew flying the Boeing 777 was fatigued at the end of a cross-Pacific trip from South Korea and distracted by cockpit duties as the plane made its final approach July 6 - both of which probably contributed to their failure to notice that the jet was descending too quickly and losing speed. Based on its findings, the safety board recommended that Boeing create better training manuals and procedures for using its automatic throttle controls. It also urged Asiana to improve its training methods and give more manual flight instruction to its pilots so they will be better able to handle any confusion about automation. Crew 'mismanagement' A majority of the board, however, pinned the crash squarely on pilot "mismanagement," describing as many as 30 errors that cascaded from minor and correctable 14 miles out of San Francisco to catastrophic and irreversible moments before the crash. The three pilots on board "had multiple opportunities to recover if it wasn't going well" but failed to do so, said agency investigator Roger Cox. The plane's instrument panel puts "plenty of cues in front of you telling what you have done, but you have to look at them," he said. Investigators said the pilots "lacked critical manual flying skills." SFO's worst accident Three passengers died and nearly 200 were injured when Asiana Flight 214 hit a seawall short of the runway, broke apart and caught fire, in the worst accident ever at SFO. One passenger, a 16-year-old girl from China, was run over by two San Francisco fire rigs in the confusion of the emergency response. Much of the safety board's attention focused on whether the South Korean crew members adequately understood systems that they believed would automatically prevent the plane from losing too much speed. Christopher Hart, the board's acting chairman, said the crew "over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand." The board's investigation team said the crew's key error was a lack of knowledge about how to use the auto-throttle, which is meant to maintain a safe speed. The flying pilot, who had eight years of experience with Asiana but was a novice on the Boeing 777, had disengaged the autopilot when the plane climbed too high, putting the auto-throttle into a hold mode. He expected the auto-throttle to "wake up" if the plane's airspeed slowed too much, investigators found. However, because he had also turned off the autopilot, the auto-throttle was stuck in idle - a functional interaction of the controls that he did not know about. As a result, the plane's speed fell to 118 mph when it hit the seawall, well below the target speed of 157 mph for a landing. The pilot, Lee Kang-guk, 45, told investigators he was "astonished" upon learning that the auto-throttle didn't work as he expected. Investigators said the throttle mode was displayed on the instrument panel and that the pilots all failed to "call out" their actions to alert each other as to what each was doing. Defending crew While some safety board members sharply criticized the pilots, board member Robert Sumwalt, a former pilot, forcefully defended the crew. He said Asiana's training for using the automated throttle system was insufficient - and that there was misunderstanding even among some U.S. trainers about the system on the Boeing 777. "The errors of the pilots were not because of any incompetence," Sumwalt said. "They were because of an expectation that the autopilot auto-throttle system would do something the airplane was not designed to do." Boeing took issue Tuesday with the board's recommendation that it make the interface between the plane's automated systems and pilots more intuitive. In a statement, the company said it "respectfully disagrees" with the finding that the 777's auto-flight system contributed to the accident, saying the evidence showed that "all of the airplane's systems performed as designed." Tired pilots? Asiana Airlines issued a statement saying the safety board "properly recognized the multiple factors that contributed to this accident." One of the factors, the safety board found, was fatigue on the part of pilots landing the plane at what would have been nighttime in Seoul after a 10 1/2-hour flight. But investigators did not explain how the Asiana pilots' fatigue differed from that of any other international flight crew, and some experts dismissed the finding. "That's an absurdity," said aviation consultant Barry Schiff of Los Angeles. "Every pilot is off his time zone when he goes across the ocean. We've had to put up that since the beginning of flight. "The bottom line is the pilots failed to monitor and maintain proper flying speed, which is about as fundamental as it gets," Schiff said. "Whether the auto-throttle system functioned as it should have is irrelevant." This story has been corrected since it appeared in print editions. ||||| FILE - In this July 6, 2013 aerial file photo, the wreckage of Asiana Flight 214 lies on the ground after it crashed at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco. Nearly a year after Asiana... (Associated Press) The National Transportation Safety Board said there was confusion over whether one of the airliner's key controls was maintaining speed. The agency also cited the complexity of the Boeing 777's autothrottle and pilot training by the South Korea-based airline as contributing to the crash, which killed three passengers and injured more than 200. The plane, with 307 people on board, was too low and too slow during the landing attempt. Its tail struck a seawall and was ripped off. The rest of plane went spinning and sliding down the runway. The crash was the only fatal passenger airline accident in the U.S. in the last five years. Before the vote, Chris Hart, the NTSB's acting chairman, said that increasingly complex automated aircraft controls designed to improve safety are instead creating new opportunities for error. The Asiana flight crew "over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand," he said. Among the other issues raised by the investigation are some that long have concerned aviation officials, including hesitancy by some pilots to abort a landing when things go awry or to challenge a captain's actions. The irony of the accident is that it occurred at all. Three experienced pilots were in the cockpit on July 6, 2013. The plane, a Boeing 777, had one of the industry's best safety records. And weather conditions that sunny day were near perfect. But the wide-bodied jetliner with 307 people on board was too low and too slow during the landing. It struck a seawall just short of the runway, ripping off the tail and sending the rest of the plane spinning and skidding down the runway. When the shattered plane came to rest, a fire erupted. Despite the violence of the crash, only three people were killed - Chinese teens seated in the back who may not have been wearing their seatbelts and were thrown from the plane. One of the teenage girls survived the crash but was run over by two rescue vehicles in the chaos afterward. Nearly 200 people were injured. In documents made public by the safety board, Asiana acknowledged the likely cause of the accident was the crew's failure to monitor and maintain the plane's airspeed, and its failure to abort the landing when in trouble. The South Korea-based airline said the pilot and co-pilot reasonably believed the automatic throttle would keep the plane flying fast enough to land safely, when in fact the auto throttle was effectively shut off after the pilot idled it to correct an unexplained climb earlier in the landing. Asiana said the plane should have been designed so that the auto throttle would maintain the proper speed after the pilot put it in "hold mode." Boeing had been warned about the problem by U.S. and European aviation regulators. Asiana urged the safety board to recommend that the aircraft maker be required to include an audible warning to alert pilots when the throttle changes to a setting in which it no longer is maintaining speed. "Asiana has a point," said John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety consultant, "but this is not the first time it has happened. Any of these highly automated airplanes have these conditions that require special training and pilot awareness. ... This is something that has been known for many years and trained for many years." Boeing told the board there was nothing wrong with the plane, and the crash was caused by the failure of the pilots to maintain speed and to abort the landing when the approach had become unstable, as required by their company's policies. An unstable approach occurs when a plane's speed or rate of descent is too fast or to slow, or the plane isn't properly aligned for landing. Captain Lee Kang Kuk, 45, a veteran pilot who was new to the 777, was flying the plane. Because an airport navigational aid that helps planes land wasn't working that day, Kuk was flying a visual approach that involves lining up the jet for landing by looking through the windshield and using numerous other cues, rather than relying on a radio-based system called a glide-slope that guides aircraft to the runway. A training captain was sitting next to him in the right seat watching his performance. Kuk told transportation accident investigators that he did not immediately move to abort the landing after it became unstable because he felt only the instructor pilot had that authority. Cockpit culture in which the senior captain is viewed as supreme was identified as a factor in several South Korean airliner crashes in the 1980s and '90s. Afterward, procedures and hierarchies were overhauled in Korea and elsewhere, including the U.S. ___ Mendoza reported from Santa Cruz, California. ___ Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy and Martha Mendoza at http://www.twitter.com/mendozamartha

– A combination of factors led to last year's crash of an Asiana Airlines jet in San Francisco, but the one that tops the list of a new report is a straightforward one: "flight crew mismanagement." Federal investigators say the South Korean pilots should have realized that their automatic throttle was bringing them in too low and too slow and overridden it in time, reports the San Francisco Chronicle and the AP. The big problem is that the crew "over-relied on automated systems that they did not fully understand," says Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, therefore, wants Boeing to provide better training for its increasingly complex systems. "In their efforts to compensate for the unreliability of human performance, the designers of automated control systems have unwittingly created opportunities for new error types that can be even more serious than those they were seeking to avoid," says Hart. The report also says the pilots were fatigued at the end of the flight, which didn't help. Three people were killed in the crash, including one young woman who was hit by emergency vehicles. The report generally praised the emergency response but cites problems with training and radio communications.

To the Editor: As Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s mother, I am writing to object to any mention of his name and death in Benghazi, Libya, by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party. I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection. I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign. MARY F. COMMANDAY Oakland, Calif. ||||| John Tiegen, a U.S. Marine Corp veteran, left, and Mark Geist, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in Benghazi, speak during the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Monday,... (Associated Press) John Tiegen, a U.S. Marine Corp veteran, left, and Mark Geist, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who fought in Benghazi, speak during the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Monday, July 18, 2016. . (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill) (Associated Press) CLEVELAND (AP) — The mother of a State Department employee killed in the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, angrily lashed out at Hillary Clinton on Monday at the Republican National Convention, accusing Clinton of lying to her about her son's death. Two Marine Corps veterans who fought in Benghazi as part of a security team posted near the U.S. diplomatic compound also blamed Clinton for lax security before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador. The accusations came during the opening night of the convention, as Republicans cast Donald Trump as a strong leader who can keep Americans safe in a dangerous world. Security officers Mark "Oz" Geist and John Tiegen spoke harshly about Clinton, but did not repeat a widely debunked claim by some conservatives that high-level officials in Washington had issued a "stand down" order delaying a military rescue in Benghazi. Pat Smith, the mother of State Department employee Sean Smith, accused Clinton of lying to her by blaming the assault on an anti-Muslim video, instead of labeling it a calculated terrorist attack. Clinton was secretary of state when the attacks occurred and now is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. "I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son," Smith said in an emotional speech applauded by delegates. Smith noted that Clinton had told her daughter, Chelsea, in an email that the attacks were likely terrorism, but told Smith and other family members a different story. Clinton told the House Benghazi committee last year that "some" people had wanted to use the offensive, anti-Muslim video to "justify" the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. She rejected that justification, Clinton said. Clinton and other officials have acknowledged inadequate security in Benghazi — a point also made by numerous congressional investigations and an independent panel. Geist and Tiegen, the former Marines who fought in Benghazi, also focused on the lack of security — and blamed Clinton. The two men and Smith all support Trump for president. "Hillary failed to protect her people on the ground," said Geist, who has appeared in TV ads sponsored by the NRA in support of Trump. In a 30-minute address, Geist and Tiegen said they defied a "stand down" order by a local CIA station chief to try to rescue Stevens and others at the diplomatic outpost. "We took off and went to the consulate," Geist said in a claim also repeated in the book and movie "13 Hours." Geist and Tiegen were co-authors of the book, a detailed account of the attacks. The Senate Intelligence Committee found "no evidence of intentional delay or obstruction" of movement by the team from the CIA annex, although some members of the security team expressed frustration that they were unable to respond more quickly. U.S. military leaders told the House Benghazi committee they thought an evacuation was imminent, slowing any response. The Benghazi panel said in a report last month that Marines based more than 2,000 miles away in Rota, Spain, changed into and out of their uniforms four times as officials debated whether to launch a full military response. The attacks occurred in waves at two locations over 13 hours. Democrats accuse Republicans of exploiting the tragedy for political reasons and note that the Benghazi panel has spent more than two years and $7 million investigating the attacks. Democrats eagerly point to comments last year by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggesting that the Benghazi panel could take credit for Clinton's slumping poll numbers. The report last month by Republicans on the Benghazi panel accused the Obama administration of lethal mistakes, but produced no new evidence pointing to wrongdoing by Clinton. Clinton has said the Benghazi report "found nothing to contradict" the findings of multiple earlier investigations into the attacks. "I think it's pretty clear it's time to move on," she said last month. David M. Perry, a cousin of Stevens, accused Republicans of politicizing his death. His cousin "loved Arabic, diplomacy, internationalism. I reject politicization of his death," Perry said on Twitter. ___ Follow Matthew Daly: http://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

– Last week saw the mother of an American who died in Benghazi angrily indict Hillary Clinton in her son's death, using the Republican National Convention as her medium. Now, the mother of another American slain in the attack at the Libyan consulate, Ambassador Chris Stevens, takes to the pages of the New York Times to plead for the opposite: "As Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s mother, I am writing to object to any mention of his name and death in Benghazi, Libya, by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party," writes Mary F. Commanday in a letter to the editor. "I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection. I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign."

A day after New York City said Whole Foods was overcharging customers in what officials described as "the worst case of mislabeling" city investigators had seen in their careers, a Bronx man is suing the supermarket chain over its pricing. Joseph Bassolino filed a lawsuit Thursday in state Supreme Court. He says he's seeking damages because he bought several mispriced packages of food at Whole Foods over the last three years. Bassolino's lawsuit cites a report issued Wednesday by the city's Department of Consumer Affairs. It said Whole Foods had been routinely overstating the weight of prepackaged foods, resulting in overcharges. Whole Foods disputed that claim. It said Thursday it was unaware of the lawsuit. In his complaint, Bassolino says he wants to make the lawsuit a class action. He alleges deceptive practices, false advertising, unjust profits and breach of contract. According to the city probe, the DCA tested 80 different pre-packaged products and found that all of them had mislabeled weights. On top of that, 89 percent of the packages tested didn't meet the federal standard for the maximum amount that an individual package can deviate from its actual weight, as set by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The overcharges ranged from $0.80 for a package of pecan panko to nearly $15 more for a package of coconut shrimp. The findings point to a "systematic problem" with how the product packages at Whole Foods are weighed and labeled, the agency said. It said packages are routinely not weighed or are inaccurately weighed. Some items had all been labeled with the same weight, despite the fact that it would be practically impossible for the individual packages of the items to weigh the same amount. These products included nuts, berries, vegetables and seafood. In some cases, the labeling issue was found with the same exact products at multiple stores throughout New York City. In one case, the DCA inspected eight packages of vegetable platters that were priced at $20 per package. They found that customers who purchased the platters were overcharged $2.50 on average. Whole Foods made a $20 profit on the eight packages, the DCA said. In another case, the DCA inspected eight packages of chicken tenders, which were priced at $9.99 per pound. Consumers would have been overcharged $4.13 on average -- a profit of $33.04 for Whole Foods for those eight packages. One package was overpriced by $4.85, the DCA said. A third inspection of four packages of berries, priced at $8.58 per package, found that customers would have been overcharged by $1.15 on average. That's a $4.60 profit for the four packages. One package was overpriced by $1.84, the DCA said. “It is unacceptable that New Yorkers shopping for a summer BBQ or who grab something to eat from the self-service aisles at New York City’s Whole Foods stores have a good chance of being overcharged,” Menin said. "As a large chain grocery store, Whole Foods has the money and resources to ensure greater accuracy and to correct what appears to be a widespread problem." In a statement to NBC New York in response to the city's findings, Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra said, "We disagree with the DCA's overreaching allegations." He said Whole Foods cooperated fully with the department until it made "grossly excessive monetary demands" to settle the dispute. "Despite our requests to the DCA, they have not provided evidence to back up their demands nor have they requested any additional information from us, but instead have taken this to the media to coerce us," Sinatra said. "Our customers are our number one stakeholder and we highly value their trust in us." Sinatra said it has always been Whole Foods' policy to fully refund any items found to have been incorrectly weighed or priced, and that the company "has never intentionally used deceptive practices to incorrectly charge customers." The fine for falsely labeling a package is as much as $950 for the first violation and up to $1,700 for a subsequent violation, according to the DCA. The potential number of violations that Whole Foods faces for all pre-packaged goods in the city is in the thousands. There are nine Whole Foods stores in New York City and the company reportedly plans to open a new location in Harlem. It also recently announced plans to open a lower-priced chain of stores called 365 by Whole Foods Market, which it says will offer "a simple way to shop for healthy, high-quality food at great prices." Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York ||||| Rip-off on aisle four. The city has launched a probe of Whole Foods Markets after investigators nabbed the upscale food purveyor for routinely overcharging customers on groceries during dozens of inspections dating back to at least 2010, the Daily News has learned. The most recent spate of violations came during a sting operation the Department of Consumer Affairs conducted in the fall that specifically checked the accuracy of the weight marked on pre-packaged products. Inspectors weighed 80 different types of items at Whole Foods’ eight locations in the city that were open at the time. They found every label was inaccurate, with many overcharging consumers, agency spokeswoman Abby Lootens told The News. Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra said the Texas-based chain "never intentionally used deceptive practices to incorrectly charge customers." Sinatra said Whole Foods disagrees with the city's findings and is "vigorously defending" itself against the allegations. Sinatra also noted that the store always refunds any items found to have been incorrectly priced. Daily News reporter Reuven Blau shops at Whole Foods on Greenwich St. in Tribeca to determine the accuracy of weighted items on Tuesday. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) Whole Foods, according to the city, wasn’t the only bad apple. The sweep included 120 grocery stores citywide, and 77% were hit with one or more violations. But the notoriously pricy chain was the most egregious offender — leading DCA to open a full-blown investigation of its pricing practices last year, said Commissioner Julie Menin. "Our inspectors told me it was the worst case of overcharges that they've ever seen," Menin said. The overcharges ranged from 80 cents for a package of pecan panko to $14.84 for a container of coconut shrimp, Lootens said. Overall, the city's Whole Foods stores have received more than 800 violations during 107 separate inspections since 2010, totaling more than $58,000 in fines, a Daily News analysis of data obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request shows. Mini roast beef sandwiches were all priced at $3.49 for 3 ounces, despite their varying weights, from 4.5 to 5.1 ounces. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) Menin says the findings were particularly shocking because the chain has been fined for the same violations several times. The Columbus Circle location has the dubious distinction of being hit with the most pricing violations in the entire city — 240 during 28 inspections dating back to 2010 — The News found. The violations range from failing to display prices to overcharging at the scanner and adding tax to items that are not taxable under state law. A source familiar with the investigation said a Whole Foods store employee told a DCA inspector that the mislabeled prices were ordered by corporate honchos. The New York City probe comes after Whole Foods agreed last summer to pay $800,000 to settle a California investigation that found similar problems. In New York, some of the most common violations were for pre-packaged items that all had identical weights and prices, such as vegetable platters, chicken tenders and berries. The Daily News picked up organic chicken breasts while shopping at Whole Foods in Tribeca. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) Breaded chicken breasts were all priced at $5.99 for 7 ounces, even though the actual weights ranged from 6 to 9.2 ounces. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) The Daily News purchased granola at Whole Foods in Tribeca. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) But not all of the inaccurate weights led to cost overcharges, a News review found. The News picked up $100 worth of groceries at the Tribeca store on Tuesday and found that some identically-priced items actually led to consumer discounts. Mini roast beef sandwiches were all priced at $3.49 for 3 ounces, despite their varying weights, from 4.5 to 5.1 ounces. Similarly, breaded chicken breasts were all priced at $5.99 for 7 ounces, even though the actual weights ranged from 6 to 9.2 ounces. "Because of the volume of product that gets produced unintentional mistakes are made," said Jay Peltz, general counsel and vice president of government relations for the Food Industry Alliance of New York, which represents major food retailers and wholesalers in the city. "If a product is delivered to a store pre-packed and pre-sealed and pre-labeled the retailer does not have control over the packaging and weighting. It's not the retailer — it's the manufacturer that packed the product," he added. Daily News reporter Reuven Blau examines a pack of organic chicken breasts. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) While labeling errors afflicted all of the city's major grocery store chains, Whole Foods' pricing problems stood out as particularly systemic, a News analysis found. Eight of the city's nine Whole Foods were among the 24 supermarkets that have been hit with five or more charges for inaccurate labels since 2014, according to The News analysis. The Upper East Side location, which just opened in February, has not been nabbed breaking any rules. The Union Square location was hit with the most counts of mislabeled packages out of any supermarket in the city since 2014 — with 15 during two inspections. The Tribeca location came in second with 14 charges and the Brooklyn location third with 13 charges, both during two separate inspections. The Garden of Eden on 14th St. was fourth with 11 charges and a Whole Foods in Chelsea was fifth with eight. John Coskun, the manager at the Garden of Eden, said their problem was outside vendors who mislabeled the weight on items. "You can see some prices are really high and wonder why. I always assumed it was because they were selling something really healthy or organic," said analyst Marlena Sebunia, 29, as she exited the Whole Foods store in Tribeca. ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE. Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing!

– A blistering report alleging overpricing at Whole Foods in New York City has brought the chain more than just bad publicity—now it's facing a lawsuit from an angry customer. Joseph Bassolino filed his suit today in state Supreme Court, one day after city investigators accused Whole Foods of systematically overstating the weights of packaged goods and thus overcharging, reports NBC New York. A quote from the city's Department of Consumer Affairs provides a taste: "The overcharges ranged from [80 cents] for a package of pecan panko to $14.84 for a package of coconut shrimp," says a statement. "Our inspectors tell me this is the worst case of mislabeling they have seen in their careers," adds DCA Commissioner Julie Menin. Whole Foods denies the allegations, which resulted from an undercover operation in the fall in which investigators weighed more than 80 types of products throughout the chain's eight locations in the city, reports the Daily News. Whole Foods "never intentionally used deceptive practices to incorrectly charge customers," says a spokesperson. Still, a city investigation is underway, and Bassolino hopes to turn his lawsuit into a class-action one so others can join.

CLOSE Teva Pharmaceuticals has launched a voluntary recall into two drugs used to treat high blood pressure as more medications face concerns over a possible cancer risk. USA TODAY The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a voluntary nationwide recall of drugs made by Teva Pharmaceuticals. Some of the blood pressure medications might contain a possible human carcinogen. (Photo: Alison Young, USA TODAY) Teva Pharmaceuticals has launched a voluntary recall into two drugs used to treat high blood pressure as yet more medications face concerns over a possible cancer risk. In a statement from Teva posted by the Food and Drug Administration, the recall affects all lots of combination tablets featuring the drugs amlodipine and valsartan and another combo drug featuring amlodipine, valsartan, and hydrochlorothiazide. The drugs could contain an impurity called N-nitroso-diethylamine (NDEA), which has been classified as a possible human carcinogen, the FDA said. Patients taking either drugs should contact their doctor or pharmacist for advice or alternative treatments. Stopping the drugs immediately with no comparable alternative could pose a greater risk to patients' health, said Teva. More: Doctors: Blood pressure drug substitutes are available for patients affected by recalls More: FDA chief: Blood pressure medicine recalls reflect increased scrutiny on drug safety More: Want more news like this? Subscribe to get the Daily Briefing in your inbox. Customers and patients with questions can contact Teva by phone at 888-838-2872, or email at [email protected]. In August, the FDA announced an expanded recall of valsartan because products may contain the impurity. Last month, two more recalls were announced: one for the drug irbesartan and a second recall for losartan potassium hydrochlorothiazide tablets. During an interview in November with USA TODAY, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the blood pressure drug recalls reflect an increased focus on drug quality to ensure no impurities are present. Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23. Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/11/30/blood-pressure-drugs-two-more-medications-recalled-cancer-risk/2159850002/ ||||| Teva Pharmaceuticals has initiated a voluntary recall in the United States, to the patient level, of all lots of Amlodipine / Valsartan combination tablets and Amlodipine / Valsartan / Hydrochlorothiazide combination tablets (see table below) due to an impurity detected above specification limits in an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufactured by Mylan India. The impurity found in Mylan’s valsartan API is known as N-nitroso-diethylamine (NDEA), which has been classified as a probable human carcinogen. This chemical is typically found in very small amounts in certain foods, drinking water, air pollution, and certain industrial processes. Amlodipine/Valsartan combination tablets and Amlodipine/Valsartan/Hydrochlorothiazide combination tablets are used for the treatment of high blood pressure. To date, Teva has not received any reports of adverse events signaling a potential link or exposure to valsartan. Patients taking Amlodipine / Valsartan combination tablets or Amlodipine / Valsartan / Hydrochlorothiazide combination tablets are advised to continue taking their medication and to contact their pharmacist or physician for advice on alternative treatment. The risk of harm to a patient’s health may be higher if the treatment is stopped immediately without any comparable alternative treatment. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA is notifying its distributors and customers by certified mail and is arranging for return/reimbursement of returned recalled products. Distributors and retailers that have product that is being recalled should immediately stop distribution and quarantine any quantities remaining in their control and return the recalled product. Customers and patients with medical-related questions, information about an Adverse Event or other questions about the Teva products being recalled should contact Teva’s Medical Information by phone at: 888-838-2872, option 3, then, option 4. Live calls are received Monday-Friday, 9:00AM-5:00PM Eastern Time with Voicemail available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week or email [email protected]. Adverse reactions or other problems experienced with the use of the products may also be reported to Teva directly at 888-838-2872 or to the FDA's MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program either online, by regular mail or by fax. Complete and submit the report Online : www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm : www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm Regular Mail or Fax: Download form www.fda.gov/MedWatch/getforms.htm or call 1- 800-332-1088 to request a reporting form, then complete and return to the address on the pre-addressed form, or submit by fax to 1-800-FDA-0178 Patient safety and product quality is critical to Teva. As always, Teva will continue to partner with, and regularly update, all relevant stakeholders, including regulatory authorities, to resolve this situation. This issue is not limited to valsartan medicines manufactured and distributed by Teva. Some valsartan-containing products manufactured and distributed by other pharmaceutical companies using the same API supplier may also be affected. Lots Under Voluntary Recall The products that are part of this voluntary recall and listed below are packed in bottles. These lots were distributed nationwide to Teva’s Direct Accounts (Wholesale/Distributor/Retail/Repackagers/VA Pharmacy, et. al). Lot # Exp. Date Product Description / Strength Bottle Size NDC 23X017 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7690-98 23X018 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7690-56 23X018 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7690-98 23X019 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7690-56 23X019 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7690-98 23X020 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7690-56 23X022 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7690-56 23X023 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7690-56 23X023 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7690-98 23X024 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7690-98 24X012 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7691-56 24X012 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/160 mg 90 Count 0093-7691-98 24X013 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/160 mg 30 Count 0093-7691-56 25X028 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7692-98 25X029 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 25X029 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7692-98 25X030 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 25X031 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 25X032 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 25X035 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 25X037 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 5 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7692-56 26X036 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7693-98 26X038 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7693-98 26X039 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 30 Count 0093-7693-56 Lot # Exp. Date Product Description / Strength Bottle Size NDC 10 mg/320 mg 26X039 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7693-98 26X040 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X041 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X042 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X043 11/2018 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X044 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7693-98 26X045 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 90 Count 0093-7693-98 26X046 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X047 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X048 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X049 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X050 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 26X051 4/2019 Amlodipine and Valsartan Tablets 10 mg/320 mg 30 Count 0093-7693-56 Lot # Exp. Date Product Description/ Strength Bottle Size NDC 18X010 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 5 mg/160 mg/12.5 mg 30 count 0093-7807-56 18X010 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 5 mg/160 mg/12.5 mg 90 count 0093-7807-98 18X011 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 5 mg/160 mg/12.5 mg 30 count 0093-7807-56 20X006 11/2018 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/160 mg/12.5 mg 30 count 0093-7810-56 20X006 11/2018 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/160 mg/12.5 mg 90 count 0093-7810-98 21X006 11/2018 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/160 mg/25 mg 30 count 0093-7038-56 21X006 11/2018 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/160 mg/25 mg 90 count 0093-7038-98 21X007 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/160 mg/25 mg 30 count 0093-7038-56 22X045 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/320 mg/25 mg 30 count 0093-7809-56 22X045 2/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/320 mg/25 mg 90 count 0093-7809-98 22X046 02/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/320 mg/25 mg 30 count 0093-7809-56 22X047 02/2019 Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide Tablets 10 mg/320 mg/25 mg 30 count 0093-7809-56 ### ||||| Nov. 27, 2018 -- Two more valsartan blood pressure drugs have been recalled because of impurities in its key ingredient. Teva Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday announced a nationwide recall of all amlodipine/valsartan combination tablets and all amlodipine/valsartan/hydrochlorothiazide tablets due to a problem with the valsartan active ingredient manufactured in Mylan, India. An impurity known as N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) was found in Mylan’s valsartan. NDEA has been found to possibly cause cancer in humans. The impacted drugs are used to treat high blood pressure. Teva says no reports of illnesses have been reported. Patients taking these drugs are urged to continue and to contact their pharmacist or doctor for alternatives. The FDA in July announced the recall of five other valsartan products for NDEA contamination as well as possible contamination from a similar impurity, NDMA. Several more recalls were announced in August, while an irbesartan-based blood pressure drug was recalled earlier this month, along with another made with losartan. All of the recalled products have ingredients manufactured in either China or India. The sudden rush of recalls because of ingredients made overseas has put more scrutiny on these foreign labs and on the FDA’s ability to effectively monitor their products for safety.

– Taking blood-pressure medication? Teva Pharmaceuticals is voluntarily recalling two drugs as part of an ongoing effort to take medications off the market that might cause cancer, USA Today reports. In an FDA-released statement, Teva says it's recalling all combination tablets using valsartan and amlodipine as well as a drug combining hydrochlorothiazide, valsartan, and amlodipine. Patients using them are advised to seek medical assistance in transferring to another drug. The move follows earlier recalls this year for other valsartan products and blood-pressure drugs made with irbesartan and losartan, per WebMD. (The FDA has also recalled Kratom.)

NIGHTMARES A mother was charged with murder after her baby accidentally died while sleeping on his stomach. After a jarring return to work and some prodding from our famously eager pediatrician, my husband and I have started “cry-it-out” with our 4-month-old son—a brutal, if necessary, method where exhausted parents train their babies to sleep by ignoring their cries. Last night, after our baby cried, then quieted himself several times during a 10-hour stretch, I went to fetch him for a morning feed and felt my throat fall into my stomach. My baby had wiggled during the night and the fancy swaddle I used to wrap his arms tightly at 7 p.m. was now resting around his neck. My mind flashed with the threat I know loose bedding to be: suffocation, strangulation, death. His eyes peeked out at me through his nearly covered face. Five years ago, in the middle of another sleepless stretch with my first son, my parenting fail was by choice. I looked at my 2-month-old baby, strong enough to bust himself loose out of my swaddles yet still unable to control the tremors in his hands or the reflex that made him feel like he was falling all the time. And so, I decided to join the number of parents who hide a dark secret: I turned my baby on his belly and let him sleep, which he did, for hours longer than he ever had before. I revisited these and dozens of other errors I’ve made as a parent this morning—because around the same time I was imagining what might have happened had I not picked up my new baby when I did, The Washington Post reported another mother in Virginia had been charged with murder and child neglect for a mistake that led to the death of her son, Jahari. Candice Semidey, 25-years-old at the time, was a new mother to a 4-month-old. She fed him, swaddled him, then lay him belly-down on a makeshift bed she fashioned out of a chair cushion and a blanket, according to the Prince William County Police public information officer, Sergeant Jonathan Perok. Semidey went to sleep, but when she woke up, her baby was dead. And according to the Prince William County prosecutor, placing Jahari on his stomach to sleep this way was so negligent it was murder. Jahari’s death was unintentional, Perok told The Daily Beast. His mother wasn’t under the influence of any drugs or alcohol. Nothing else about her home concerned police or made them think the baby had otherwise been neglected, Perok said. “These actions, however unintentional, were still deemed neglectful in accordance with the code section for felony murder which states, ‘The killing of one accidentally, contrary to the intention of the parties, while in the prosecution of some felonious act,’” Perok wrote in an email. “The underlying felonious act in this case was the felony child neglect.” In the criminal complaint, the lead detective wrote that Semidey had acted in a manner “that was so gross, wanton, and culpable” that it showed “a reckless disregard for human life.” The charging documents noted that she had received proper guidance on how to put her son to sleep after his birth. Semidey pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect in July of 2015, and was given a suspended sentence of five years. She’ll stay out of prison if she completes a three-year supervised probation. Most parents used to put their babies to sleep on their tummies until the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) began telling them to put their infants to sleep on their backs. In 1994, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development began the “Back to Sleep” campaign, a federally funded push to stem fatalities from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As a result, unexplained sleep deaths in the U.S. have fallen drastically—by more than 50 percent. Still, around 3,500 infants die unexpectedly while sleeping, from SIDS or accidental suffocation. But lots of parents still eschew doctors’ advice in exchange for a good night’s sleep. In 1992, about 70 percent of babies slept on their stomachs, according to the National Infant Sleep Position Study. In 2010, that number fell to 13.5 percent. For African-American mothers like Semidey, the rate of stomach sleeping rises to 27.6 percent. Is this a crime? Clearly it is in Prince William County. 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 But to charge a grieving mother for murder, for making a mistake that millions of other mothers make every night, seems like a terrifying overreach. And Sergeant Perok told me the charge against Semidey wasn’t exceptional. “We in Prince William County don’t charge it often, but it’s not unusual,” he said. The most recent example I could find of a similar charge was in 2010, when a woman was charged with child neglect over the drowning death of her 9-month-old daughter. Julia Sumo had left her daughter in the tub to investigate a burning smell coming from the kitchen. When she returned, her daughter was dead. Sumo was “beside herself with grief” over her “grave mistake,” according to her husband, but the judge said “some recognition has to be given to the fact that a life was lost,” and imposed 60 days of jail time. Mothers are expected to be hyper-vigilant at all times, and for good reason: Tiny, vulnerable people depend on us. But every single one of us, even the best mother, has her stories. Every mother has felt the lump in her chest that comes with seeing her baby caught in blankets or finding a toddler who slipped away during the one moment she took her eye away in the supermarket. Every mother has had a moment when she realizes how close she has come to tragedy and feels relief that, this time, her baby is safe. ||||| UPDATE: According to court records, the charge of involuntary manslaughter against Adam Alexander was dismissed, and he was tried and found not guilty on the charge of child neglect. The mother of one Northern Virginia baby and the parents of another have been charged in their children’s deaths, Prince William County police said Monday. The two infants, 4-month-old Jahari Jones and 9-month-old Avarice Alexander, died in 2014. But police and prosecutors did not decide to charge the adults with killing them until this year. The charges in those two cases, which have not been previously reported, bring the number of homicide cases in Prince William in 2015 to 11, five more than in 2014. The two babies are among the youngest victims of alleged homicide across the Washington region. Of the 287 homicides that The Washington Post has tracked in its database of killings in the area this year, authorities say six other victims are younger than 10 years old. [The Post’s map of D.C.-area homicides] Jahari’s mother, Candice Christa Semidey, fed him and wrapped him in a blanket on Nov. 8, 2014, according to information provided by police spokesman Jonathan Perok on Monday in response to an inquiry by The Post. Then Semidey put Jahari down face first for a nap on a makeshift bed that she had fashioned from a chair cushion and a blanket, Perok said. She went to sleep, as well. Unable to move and lying with his face toward the blanket, the baby suffocated. Semidey woke up and found she could not stir him. First-responders pronounced him dead at home, on the 16400 block of Kramer Estate Drive in Woodbridge. Perok said Semidey, 25, did not mean to kill her child. But prosecutors concluded that the way she treated Jahari was so negligent as to be considered felony child neglect, and they charged her with felony murder — a charge for a death that occurs while a person is committing a felony, in this case the child neglect. She was arrested Jan. 19. According to court records, she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect and was sentenced to a suspended prison term of five years, which she will not serve if she completes three years of probation. Avarice died a month earlier, on Oct. 5, 2014. Police said her parents, Adam Jerell Vince Alexander and Jasmyne Alexandria Alexander, had put her in her crib the night before and had not checked on her for 16 hours. The parents, both 21, had not taken Avarice to a doctor for seven months, even when they noticed she was having difficulty breathing four weeks before her death, investigators said. Instead, the parents first called for help when they found the girl unresponsive in her crib. She also was pronounced dead at home, on the 10200 block of Aqua View Court in Nokesville. The Alexanders were charged with felony child neglect four days after their daughter’s death. In September, prosecutors indicted them on a count of manslaughter by negligence. Court records show that Jasmyne Alexander was eventually tried on the less serious charge of child neglect and found not guilty this month. Adam Alexander is scheduled to go to trial on the charges of involuntary manslaughter and child neglect Jan. 26. ||||| Page Content You can reduce your baby’s risk of SIDS and other sleep-related causes of infant death in the following ways. Printable versions of this safe sleep environment information are available below: *Visit the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission website for more information about crib safety: http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Safety-Education/Safety-Guides/Kids-and-Babies/Cribs/. ||||| "In some cases it's found to be neglect. In other cases, it's a situation where those parents are facing this tragic situation after losing their baby and then, compounding that, they face charges in something they have nothing to do with," said Blake, First Candle's CEO. "It was tragedy on top of tragedy. And there was nothing they could have done differently."

– On Nov. 8, 2014, Virginia 25-year-old Candice Christa Semidey fed her 4-month-old son, Jahari Jones, swaddled him, and put him to bed. She, too, went to sleep, only to wake up and find Jahari dead. Semidey was charged with felony murder. Why? Because she wrapped Jahari in a blanket and placed him to sleep on his stomach on what the Washington Post describes as "a makeshift bed ... fashioned from a chair cushion and a blanket." Jahari suffocated, unable to move his face away from the blanket. Police determined that Semidey didn't intend to kill the little boy, but prosecutors decided she was neglectful of safe sleep guidelines and thus should be charged. Though she was charged in January, the case was not reported until this week, as the Post tallied up the number of homicides in the Washington, DC, region in 2015. As the Prince William County police public information officer explains to the Daily Beast, nothing else in the home caused police to believe Jahari had been neglected, and Semidey was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But, as the charging documents state, she had gotten proper guidance on safe sleep guidelines (which include putting a baby down on his or her back to sleep, on a firm surface without blankets, and not swaddling a baby who is placed on his stomach), and police concluded that her conduct "was so gross, wanton, and culpable" that it showed "a reckless disregard for human life." The officer tells the New York Daily News, "This particular death isn't just about the child being placed on his stomach, but the totality of the circumstances." Semidey pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect; she must serve three years of probation to avoid going to jail for five years. (In Missouri, parents were charged in their toddler's space heater death.)

(CNN) Senator Lindsey Graham is ending his presidential campaign, he told CNN during an exclusive interview airing Monday. "I'm going to suspend my campaign. I'm not going to suspend my desire to help the country," the South Carolina senator said in a wide-ranging and candid discussion in which he acknowledged: "I've hit a wall here." He made the official announcement in an email to supporters and Youtube video posted Monday morning. Graham is known for his quick wit and famous for his one-liners (just ask Princess Buttercup about his retort from the last debate), but he was sober, serious and emotional as he described his decision to leave the race just weeks before the voting begins. One thing is clear: Graham still wants his voice heard on the direction his party is headed, especially with regard to the Middle East. "Here's what I predict. I think the nominee of our party is going to adopt my plan when it comes time to articulate how to destroy ISIL," he said. "We've fallen short here, but the fight continues. To those who are doing the fighting, I want to be your voice. To those in the Republican Party who want to win, check my plan out. Hillary, if you get to be President, I'll help you where I can. I hope you're not. But if you are, I'll be there to help you win a war we can't afford to lose." Graham's decision -- which leaves a field of 12 main GOP candidates (CNN had 13 at its last Republican debate, including Graham) -- comes just days after the CNN Republican Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, where he was widely viewed as dominating the undercard debate. "Four months ago at the very first debate, I said that any candidate who did not understand that we need more troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIL was not ready to be Commander in Chief," Graham wrote in the email. "At the time, no one stepped forward to join me. Today, most of my fellow candidates have come to recognize this is what's needed to secure our homeland." He added, "While we have run a campaign that has made a real difference, I have concluded this is not my time." JUST WATCHED Graham: 'If you want to win this war, follow me' Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Graham: 'If you want to win this war, follow me' 01:35 "My biggest problem is a lot of people like what I say, but not a lot of people hear it," he told CNN. "I don't want to be the undercard voice. I cannot tell you how frustrating it has been to have spent all this time and effort preparing myself to be Commander-in-Chief and to be put at the 'kiddie table'." His advice to his party as it relates to the debate format: "Never do this again." Graham's campaign strategy had been laser-focused on New Hampshire: Place high in that first primary state on February 9 and use the momentum to propel him forward. So why not hold out until then? Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Click through to see highlights from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham's political career: Hide Caption 1 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham; Sir Elton John, center; and filmmaker and John's husband, David Furnish, pose after testimony at a U.S. Senate hearing on the global fight against AIDS on May 6, 2015. Graham and Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont hosted John as part of their bipartisan effort to combat HIV infection. Hide Caption 2 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham rushes to the Senate chamber to vote on an attempt to override U.S. President Barack Obama's veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation March 4, 2015. Graham was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and was re-elected in 2008 and 2014. Hide Caption 3 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham listens to testimony during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting on national security strategy on January 27, 2015. According to his website , Graham continues to serve his country in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a senior individual mobilization augmentee to the judge advocate general. Hide Caption 4 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham arrives for a closed briefing of the Armed Services Committee on July 30, 2014. Before serving in the Senate, Graham was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. Hide Caption 5 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham talks to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, before a news conference on Capitol Hill on July 24, 2014. Hide Caption 6 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, right, listen as President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address on January 28, 2014. Graham was in the U.S. Air Force and logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer. Hide Caption 7 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham holds a news conference on Benghazi, Libya, at the U.S. Capitol on October 30, 2013. From left, he is flanked by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona; Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Graham has been an outspoken critic of how the Obama administration has handled the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic, in which four U.S. citizens died. Hide Caption 8 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, meets with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Graham on June 30, 2013, in Jerusalem. Hide Caption 9 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career McCain, left, and Graham speak during a news conference about Benghazi on February 14, 2013, on Capitol Hill. Hide Caption 10 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham talks with reporters before heading into the Senate Republican Caucus policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol May 8, 2012. Hide Caption 11 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham speaks to reporters after a news conference about his Social Security reform plan at the U.S. Capitol on April 13, 2011. Hide Caption 12 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career Graham, left, and McCain call on participants during a health care town hall meeting on September 14, 2009 at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. According to his website, Graham is a native South Carolinian and grew up in a blue collar family in the small town of Central, where his parents ran a restaurant and pool hall. Hide Caption 13 of 14 Photos: Lindsey Graham's political career U.S. President George W. Bush, left, stands with Graham on the steps of Air Force One at the airport in Greenville, South Carolina, in March 2002. Hide Caption 14 of 14 "I'm not trying to hold out. I'm trying to make a difference. I think the best way for me to make a difference is to think about helping somebody else," he said. In another key primary state, South Carolina, he faces a Monday December 21 deadline to keep his name off the ballot, potentially helping Graham avoid an embarrassing showing in his home state. Asked whether that fueled his decision to drop out now, Graham said no and added that he'd risk it if he saw a way to turn things around. "At the end of the day, I'm not going to be competitive in my state," he said. "I'm not going to be competitive outside my state." Asked who he would endorse, Graham demurred. "I'm going to take some time with my family. Going to think about what I should do. I have no intention of endorsing anyone right now." Later, he said that if he were to endorse, he's looking for the candidate best fit to be Commander-in-Chief and also who can win. JUST WATCHED Graham: Trump is a 'race-baiting, xenophobic' bigot Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Graham: Trump is a 'race-baiting, xenophobic' bigot 03:34 As for the candidate Graham has traded barbs with the most since he entered the race in early June, Graham struck a markedly softer tone toward Donald Trump."You're doing really well. I'm impressed with your campaign," he said. Graham -- who recently urged Republicans to tell Trump to " go to hell " -- also did not rule out accepting a Cabinet position in a Trump administration in the future. But he did offer these parting words for Trump: "We're at war. A lot of men and women are at risk overseas. Watch what you say over here." "You may wind up being the nominee of the Republican Party," he added. "The Republican Party's future may be in your hands. The future of the country will be in your hands if you're President of the United States. This is not a game show. This is not a reality show." Candidly, Graham said he has a lot of regrets looking back at his campaign. "I regret that I haven't been a better candidate. I regret that I never got on the big stage. I regret that I didn't make it to the final group. But that's just about me. I have no regrets about running for President," he said. "It has been the joy of my life to run for President of the United States." ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201512/1742/1155968404_4670117257001_4670065622001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Lindsey Graham drops out of presidential race The senator's exit puts up for grabs the support of a number of important South Carolina donors and operatives. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Monday bowed out of the presidential race after failing to attract any significant support, despite his memorable zingers and passionate commitment to pushing a hawkish foreign policy agenda. His announcement came on the same day as the deadline hit for him to remove his name from the South Carolina primary ballot, a date that had been closely watched amid speculation that Graham would want to avoid a potentially poor performance in his own state’s contest. Story Continued Below “I was hoping not to have to make this call, but I think the time has come for me to suspend my campaign,” he said as he opened a call with supporters on Monday morning. Graham, a well-respected voice in the Senate who easily won reelection in 2014 despite several attempts to unseat him by primary challengers, has nonetheless failed to gain traction in the presidential contest. The senator, who entered the race in part because he hoped to push foreign policy issues to the forefront on the debate stage, has repeatedly been relegated to undercard contests, where he has earned positive reviews but hardly any boost in poll numbers. Even with Graham dropping out, the GOP field still has 13 contenders, with a little more than a month before the Iowa caucuses. “We’ve come to a point now where I just don’t see how we grow the campaign without getting on the main stage,” he said. “One of the biggest problems we’ve had was to get our voice on equal footing with others. This second-tier debate process has been difficult for us. I think we’ve done well in the debates, it’s just hard to break through because the buzz doesn’t last very long.” Graham's latest RealClearPolitics national polling average is only .5 percent. In New Hampshire, the state in which Graham has made the biggest efforts, campaigning there as recently as this weekend with ally John McCain, Graham’s average is 0 percent. Graham’s exiting of the race comes just weeks before the next Republican presidential debate comes to his home state, on Jan. 14. By leaving now, he frees up some South Carolina donors and operatives, who had either been backing Graham or staying neutral out of respect for the state’s senior senator. “I’ll watch and see where Lindsey goes,” said Katon Dawson, the former South Carolina GOP chairman who previously supported Rick Perry, who has also left the race. “After Perry got out, in deference to Sen. Graham, I’ve been waiting to see if he stays or leaves. Now I’ll be real interested in seeing what Lindsey’s opinions are on all of them after having campaigned with them.” He added that in particular, House and Senate members and local officials will now feel more free to align with another candidate. Graham also positions himself as a kingmaker in the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary. It’s unclear whom Graham might back, but he has made his disdain known for two of the other candidates currently leading in South Carolina: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. “Sen. Graham has an incredibly strong and loyal grassroots network that will be wooed by many campaigns,” said Matt Moore, the current South Carolina GOP chair. Much of the top talent in the Republican operative class in the state comes from Graham’s world. “I think his network and Sen. Graham’s endorsement will have an impact on the race,” should he choose to make one. Graham told CNN in an interview that he doesn't have any imminent plans to endorse. "I'm going to take some time with my family. Going to think about what I should do. I have no intention of endorsing anyone right now," he said. Graham, with his signature quick wit, made a brand out of his one-liners, particularly those aimed at Trump, and also stood out in the race for his particularly hawkish foreign policy stance. He has advocated for sending 20,000 troops to fight the Islamic State, one of the most aggressive — and specific — proposals from the presidential candidates, many of whom have been quick to cite areas of agreement with Graham. The South Carolina senator received warm words after his announcement on Monday, from both Republicans and Democrats. "Nobody is more clear-eyed about ISIS than my friend @GrahamBlog. As he leaves the race I hope our party & country listen to his counsel," Jeb Bush tweeted. John Kasich also took to Twitter to say, "Enjoyed Sen. @LindseyGrahamSC's wit & respect his seriousness on nat’l security—experience matters. Best wishes to him. -John." David Axelrod, a former campaign strategist to President Barack Obama, expressed regret that Graham was stuck on the undercard stage, tweeting, "I disagree with @GrahamBlog on many things, but I deeply respect him. He lit up the undercard debates. Too bad he never made the main stage!" McCain, meanwhile, issued a statement saying it was a "pity" that the debate set-up muted Graham's message. "With Senator Lindsey Graham's announcement, Republicans lost our most qualified, thoughtful, fearless and honest presidential candidate, not to mention the candidate with the best (and it seemed sometimes the only) sense of humor," he said in a statement. Graham, during his call to supporters, said he was proud of the presidential campaign he ran. “I never went down the demagoguery trail,” he said Monday morning, in a shot at Trump. “I didn’t get into this campaign to run other people down, and to bring out the worst in who we are as a party or a country. I think what makes America great is our tolerance for each other and the fact that we respect people who are different. That’s so different than our enemies.” He went on to add, “I tried to be a voice for those fighting this war.” Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.

– One of the mainstays of the undercard GOP debates is out: Lindsey Graham tells CNN that he's suspending his campaign for president. "I've hit a wall here," says the conservative South Carolina senator. Graham has been consistently polling near the bottom of the pack and hasn't qualified for the main debate once. The likely key factor: Monday was the deadline for Graham to remove his name from the primary ballot in South Carolina, notes Politico. Being able to do so allows him to avoid the possibility of an embarrassing home-state loss. "Here's what I predict. I think the nominee of our party is going to adopt my plan when it comes time to articulate how to destroy ISIL," says Graham. "To those in the Republican Party who want to win, check my plan out. Hillary, if you get to be president, I'll help you where I can. I hope you're not. But if you are, I'll be there to help you win a war we can't afford to lose." An email to supporters was expected to go out later Monday.

Weddings, court rulings and confusion are defining a week that started with the U.S. Supreme Court denying appeals from five states seeking to retain their bans on same-sex marriage. Here's a rundown of the most recent developments: Jefferson Ruck, center, and Thomas Topovski, left react with others as they hear they can get a marriage license at the Marriage License Bureau Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014, in Las Vegas. The two were one of... (Associated Press) In this photo provided by the Las Vegas News Bureau, Antioco Carri and Theo Small hold-up their marriage license after being the first couple in line at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau in Downtown... (Associated Press) Sara Meadows, left, and Jennifer Rose, both of Charleston, S.C., fill out an application for a marriage license at the Probate Court office in Charleston, S.C., on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014. Later in the... (Associated Press) Jeff Ayers, left, the chairman of the board of South Carolina Equality, and Nichols Bleckley, who with her her partner has applied for a same-sex marriage license, read a statement from a probate judge... (Associated Press) ___ IDAHO, NORTH CAROLINA LEGAL OBSTACLES FALL Legal obstacles to gay marriage have fallen in Idaho and North Carolina. The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order Friday that appears to have cleared the way for gay marriages in conservative Idaho. Gay rights supporters are cheering in Boise as state officials were trying to determine when weddings might take place. At least one county clerk in Idaho began issuing same-sex marriage licenses. Meanwhile, a federal judge in North Carolina has struck down the state's gay marriage ban, opening the way for the first same-sex weddings in the state to begin immediately. The ruling follows Monday's announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it would not hear any appeals of cases before the 4th Circuit Court, which has jurisdiction over North Carolina. ___ GOING TO THE CHAPEL Gay couples in Las Vegas cheered at the marriage license bureau when anticipation became reality, and the county clerk began granting same-sex partners the right to wed Thursday evening. To boost awareness, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority placed a full page ad in USA Today on Friday featuring two groom cake-toppers with a view of Vegas in the background. ___ WAITING ON CINCINNATI There also is growing anticipation for a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati. A three-judge panel heard arguments two months ago on challenges to gay marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, the biggest hearing of its kind on the issue. Its eventual ruling could help determine when or even whether the Supreme Court takes up the issue. There has been no indication of a timetable by the 6th Circuit. ___ OOPS The marriage confusion tripped up even someone who should have known better. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy mistakenly blocked the start of same-sex marriage in Nevada in an order that confused state officials and disappointed couples. Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg confirmed the mix-up Thursday, saying Kennedy's order a day earlier was an error that the justice corrected with a second order several hours later. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared bans on same-sex marriage in Idaho and Nevada illegal Tuesday. Idaho quickly asked the Supreme Court for a delay, but Nevada planned to allow same-sex weddings to proceed. The trouble arose because Idaho's request to the court included a document from the appeals court that listed case numbers for both states. ___ CHRISTIE'S THOUGHTS New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says it shouldn't be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether states allow gay marriage. The Republican governor, widely viewed as a contender for president in 2016, says he believes states should decide the issue. Christie opposes same-sex marriage but dropped his administration's legal challenge last year. He says he's been upholding the law allowing gay marriage in his state since then. Christie had avoided commenting on the court's decision at a campaign stop this week. ___ MOVEMENT IN OTHER STATES — Alaska: A federal judge heard arguments Friday on the first gay marriage ban passed in the U.S., but he didn't issue a ruling. Gay couples have sued to overturn the ban. The state says the question of whether to define marriage to include gay couples should be decided by citizens, not the courts. Voters approved the ban in 1998. — Arizona: A federal judge has said a 9th Circuit ruling apparently "controls the outcome" of Arizona's gay marriage ban. The state is covered by the appellate court that struck down bans in Idaho and Nevada. Marriages have not begun in Arizona. — Arkansas: The state Supreme Court refused to delay a challenge to Arkansas' gay marriage ban, rejecting the state attorney general who had asked the court to put the case on hold. — Indiana: The University of Notre Dame told employees its granting health care and other benefits to same-sex spouses after the Supreme Court's ruling. The Catholic university's move came Wednesday, a day after the state attorney general said marriage licenses must be issued to gay couples. — South Carolina: The state Supreme Court ordered lower state courts to refrain from issuing same-sex marriage licenses until a federal judge decides whether the state constitution's ban on the unions is legal. — West Virginia: Gay couples have begun receiving marriage licenses after the state's attorney general dropped his fight opposing same-sex unions. ___ SO, HOW MANY STATES ALLOW GAY MARRIAGE? It's a little complicated. Before the Supreme Court's denial, there were 19 states that firmly allowed gay marriage. The Supreme Court's action Monday added five states, plus six others that were affected because they were in the same federal circuits that appealed. That would make 30 states allowing gay marriage, but some of them are still trying to block it or haven't yet instituted mechanisms for weddings. Court rulings in favor of gay marriage in Idaho, Nevada and North Carolina, effectively bring the total to 32, but marriages have yet to take place in Idaho or North Carolina. So, how many states allow gay marriage? About 30, give or take. ||||| RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Minutes after a federal judge in Asheville struck down North Carolina's ban on same-sex marriages, Amy Cantrell and Lauren White rushed out of a county office with their newly printed marriage license and exchanged vows on the front steps, their two children in tow. Partners Amy Litton, left, and Tonya Edge embrace each other after an announcement that there will be no marriages performed at the Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, N.C. on Friday, Oct. 10, 2014. U.S.... (Associated Press) Partners Vicki Britt and Trish Philbrook hold hands as Register of Deeds Laura Riddick announces there will be no marriages performed at the Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, N.C. on Friday, Oct. 10,... (Associated Press) Vicki Britt wipes away tears as her partner, Trish Philbrook, comforts her during the announcement that there will be no marriages performed at the Wake County Courthouse in Raleigh, N.C. on Friday, Oct.... (Associated Press) "This is it folks," exclaimed the Rev. Lisa Bovee-Kemper, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Asheville, to cheering supporters. "By the power vested in me by the state of North Carolina, I now pronounce you married." The 42-year-old Cantrell, a minister herself, was exuberant. "We've been waiting for this day for years," she said. The couple of six years have 8-month-old twins: Myla and Eleecia. "I thought I might pass out at one point," added White, 29. "Pretty typical bride stuff." U.S. District Court Judge Max O. Cogburn, Jr. issued his ruling shortly after 5 p.m. In the chaotic moments afterward, it was difficult to discern exactly who were the first same-sex couple in North Carolina to get legally hitched in their home state. In the state capital of Raleigh, the register of deeds reopened her office after hearing of the ruling and began issuing licenses to waiting couples. Wake County Sheriff's deputies Chad Biggs, 35, and Chris Creech, 46, were among the first to wed there. They have been together for eight years. "Even before this I was happy, but I think now that it's on paper and it's legal — it's a commitment between two people," Biggs said. Cogburn's ruling followed Monday's announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it would not hear any appeal of a July ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond striking down Virginia's ban. That court has jurisdiction over North Carolina. "North Carolina's laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional as a matter of law," wrote Cogburn, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama. "The issue before this court is neither a political issue nor a moral issue. It is a legal issue." Though Cogburn's federal judicial district only covers the western third of the state, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said through a spokeswoman that the federal ruling applies statewide. Cooper, a Democrat, had previously decided not to continue defending the ban after concluding that all possible legal defenses had been exhausted. He declined to be interviewed. Cogburn ruled moments after a different federal judge in Greensboro, Chief U.S. District Court Judge William Osteen Jr., put off a decision in two cases he oversees until at least next week. The delay followed a last-ditch effort by Republican leaders at the state legislature to intervene in the cases. Cogburn denied their request. House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate Leader Phil Berger said they were disappointed. Tillis is currently campaigning for U.S. Senate. "While we recognize the tremendous passion on all sides of this issue, we promised to defend the will of North Carolina voters because they — not judges and not politicians — define marriage as between one man and one woman and placed that in our state constitution," the Republican legislators said in a joint statement. A statement released by Gov. Pat McCrory's office late Friday said all state agencies would comply with the judge's ruling and change their operations accordingly. The case in which Cogburn ruled was filed by a group of clergy members seeking to marry same-sex couples, making the argument that their inability to do so under state law was an unconstitutional abridgment of their religious freedom. "We celebrate knowing that this shameful chapter in North Carolina's history has passed," said the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality. "At the same time we know that you can still be fired simply for being gay in North Carolina. Protection from discrimination in the workplace is the next step in our push for full equality." ___ Weiss reported from Charlotte. Associated Press Writer Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh contributed to this report. ___ Follow Associated Press Writer Michael Biesecker on Twitter.com/mbieseck ||||| Sharene (L) and Lori Watsen appear with lawyers and fellow plaintiffs that sued the state over a gay marriage ban hold a press conference outside of the James A. McClure Federal Building and US Courthouse in Boise, Idaho October 7, 2014. WASHINGTON County clerks in Idaho and North Carolina began issuing their states' first marriage licenses to gay couples on Friday after court actions that capped a week of victories for supporters of same-sex matrimony in America. The move came as barriers to gay marriage fell state by state this week and followed days of back-and-forth federal court actions that could soon see legal weddings for same-sex couples extended to 35 states. The U.S. Supreme Court removed a temporary hold it imposed earlier in the week in Idaho's case, giving a green light for same-sex nuptials in the mountainous state. Susan Petersen, clerk of Latah County in northwest Idaho which includes the college town of Moscow, said she issued her first license to a lesbian couple after getting guidance from county legal advisers. But there was no immediate word on whether permits were being issued elsewhere in the state. A spokesman for Idaho's attorney general said officials were awaiting a mandate from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to proceed. The state's Republican governor, C.L. "Butch" Otter, said the move to allow gay marriage ran "contrary to the values of most Idahoans" and undermined fundamental states' rights. "But we are a nation of laws," Otter said in a statement. "Idaho now should proceed with civility and in an orderly manner to comply with any forthcoming order from the 9th Circuit." The 9th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over much of the western United States, overturned gay marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada on Tuesday, although the Idaho ruling was briefly put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court at the state's request. Nevada, where officials indicated they were ready to embrace same-sex matrimony, began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples on Thursday. 'EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER' Ty Carson, 41 of Boise, said she hoped soon to marry her partner of 16 years, with whom she has three children, even as the late afternoon timing of the decision meant couples might have to wait until Tuesday to wed, after a long holiday weekend. "We've been here before," Carson said. "The reason we're going through this emotional roller coaster is so that our kids can one day laugh about how this used to be against the law." The U.S. Supreme Court action on Friday capped a week in which its nine justices played a crucial role in paving the way for gay marriage in up to 11 states where it was previously illegal. On Monday, the justices declined to hear appeals in seven different cases, leaving intact other regional appeals court rulings that struck down gay marriage prohibitions in five states, and could indirectly impact six more. In North Carolina, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn knocked down that state's ban, saying in his ruling that it was neither a political nor a moral issue. "It is a legal issue and it is clear as a matter of what is now settled law," Cogburn wrote. North Carolina's Republican Governor, Pat McCrory, said the administration will execute the court's order, and at least one county office said they will issue licenses on Friday. Drew Reisinger, the Buncombe County Register of Deeds, said it was an honor to acknowledge "the full equality and humanity" of those seeking to marry, and he said his office will stay open late on Friday to meet the expected demand. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Laura Zuckerman in Jackson, Wyoming; Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Charleston; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Marguerita Choy and Sandra Maler)

– This week's flurry of court rulings made it a little tricky to keep track of which states allow gay marriage. The upshot is that the Supreme Court's moves added seven more states to the yes column: Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, bringing the total number of states that allow same-sex marriage to 26, reports the New York Times. (That doesn't include DC, which also allows them.) But things gets a little complicated because more states were affected by the rulings, those that happened to be in the same federal circuits as other states that appealed. The Times' take: "The legal ripple effects from the various appeals court rulings the Supreme Court tacitly sustained should soon raise that number to 35." Reuters, too, goes with that number, reporting that legal weddings for gay couples could soon be "extended to 35 states." AP, meanwhile, settles for an answer of "about 30, give or take." It will take a little time for those "legal ripple effects" to play out. In North Carolina, for instance, a federal district judge struck down the state's ban on gay marriage yesterday, and couples immediately started getting married, reports AP in a separate story. North Carolina is in the same district covered by Virginia, and when the Supreme Court decided this week that it wouldn't hear an appeal of a ruling that struck down Virginia's ban as unconstitutional, that paved the way for yesterday's ruling in Raleigh. "Even before this I was happy, but I think now that it's on paper and it's legal—it's a commitment between two people," says a male sheriff's deputy in Wake County who wed a fellow male deputy.

Atlanta (CNN) -- A medical plane whisked an American infected with Ebola from Liberia to Georgia on Saturday, the latest leg of a race to save the first known patient with the deadly virus to be treated on U.S. soil. Shortly after the plane landed, an ambulance rushed Dr. Kent Brantly from Dobbins Air Reserve Base to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital. He's one of two Americans sickened by the deadly viral hemorrhagic fever last month while on the front lines of a major outbreak in West Africa. Video from Emory showed someone in a white, full-body protective suit helping a similarly clad person emerge from the ambulance and walk into the hospital. Hospital visitor: 'Oh, my God' Emory has said it will treat Brantly, 33, and fellow missionary Nancy Writebol in an isolation unit. The plane equipped with an isolation unit can only transport one patient at a time. It will now pick up Writebol in Liberia and bring her to Georgia early next week, said Todd Shearer, spokesman for Christian charity Samaritan's Purse, with which both Americans were affiliated. Brantly's wife, parents and sister cried when they saw him on CNN walking from the ambulance into the hospital, another representative of Samaritan's Purse said on condition of anonymity. His wife, Amber, later said she was relieved that her husband was back in the United States. "I spoke with him, and he is glad to be back in the U.S.," she said in statement. "I am thankful to God for his safe transport and for giving him the strength to walk into the hospital." Brantly's wife visited with him from behind a glass wall for about 45 minutes, the Samaritan's Purse representative said. Kent Brantly was described as "in great spirits and so grateful." Tennessee doctor who worked with Ebola patients quarantines self Brantly, who has ties to Texas and Indiana, and Writebol, of North Carolina, became sick while caring for Ebola patients in Liberia, one of three West African nations hit by an outbreak. Treatment in isolation This will be the first human Ebola test for a U.S. medical facility. The patients will be treated at an isolated unit where precautions are in place to keep such deadly diseases from spreading, unit supervisor Dr. Bruce Ribner said. Everything that comes in and out of the unit will be controlled, Ribner said, and it will have windows and an intercom for staff to interact with patients without being in the room. Ebola is not airborne or waterborne, and spreads through contact with organs and bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and other secretions of infected people. There is no FDA-approved treatment for Ebola, and Emory will use what Ribner calls "supportive care." That means carefully tracking a patient's symptoms, vital signs and organ function and taking measures, such as blood transfusions and dialysis, to keep patients stable. Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Ebola will go global "We just have to keep the patient alive long enough in order for the body to control this infection," Ribner said. Writebol was given an experimental serum this week, Samaritan's Purse said, though its purpose and effects weren't immediately publicized. The Ebola virus causes viral hemorrhagic fever, which refers to a group of viruses that affect multiple organ systems in the body and are often accompanied by bleeding. Early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. They later progress to vomiting, diarrhea, impaired kidney and liver function -- and sometimes internal and external bleeding. Bruce Johnson, president of SIM USA, a Christian mission organization with which Writebol also is linked, said Saturday that both were seriously ill but stable. "My last report (on Brantly) was yesterday. ... He was ambulatory, being able to talk, converse, and get up. So that was encouraging," Johnson said Saturday morning. On Writebol, Johnson said: "She's responsive, and we're encouraged at how she's doing." Emory's isolation unit was created with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based down the road. It aims to optimize care for those with highly infectious diseases and is one of four U.S. institutions capable of providing such treatment. The World Health Organization reports that the outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is believed to have infected 1,323 people and killed more than 729 this year, as of July 27. Fear, conspiracy theories As officials worked to bring the two Americans home, the idea of intentionally bringing Ebola into the United States has rattled many nerves. "The road to hell was paved with good intentions," wrote one person, using the hashtag #EbolaOutbreak. "What do we say to our kids When they get sick& die?" On the website of conspiracy talker Alex Jones, who has long purported the CDC could unleash a pandemic and the government would react by instituting authoritarian rule, the news was a feast of fodder. "Feds would exercise draconian emergency powers if Ebola hits U.S.," a headline read on infowars.com. Ribner repeatedly downplayed the risk for anyone who will be in contact with Brantly or Writebol. "We have two individuals who are critically ill, and we feel that we owe them the right to receive the best medical care," Ribner said. The fight against Ebola All concerns about the United States pale in comparison to the harsh reality in the hardest-hit areas. Even in the best-case scenario, it could take three to six months to stem the epidemic in West Africa, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. There's no vaccine, though one is in the works. There's no standardized treatment for the disease, either; the most common approach is to support organ functions and keep up bodily fluids such as blood and water long enough for the body to fight off the infection. The National Institutes of Health plans to begin testing an experimental Ebola vaccine in people as early as September. Tests on primates have been successful. So far, the outbreak is confined to West Africa. Although infections are dropping in Guinea, they are on the rise in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In the 1990s, an Ebola strain tied to monkeys -- Ebola-Reston -- was found in the United States, but no humans got sick from it, according to the CDC. Experts: U.S. health care system well-prepared for Ebola CNN's Chelsea J. Carter, Greg Botelho, Deanna Hackney, John Branch, Danielle Dellorto, Barbara Starr, MaryLynn Ryan and Ben Brumfield contributed to this report. ||||| Two Americans who had been working to treat Ebola patients in Africa have been stricken by the disease. Officials say they will be taken to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital in a tightly sealed isolation unit. The first is expected to arrive Saturday, and the other a few days later, according to hospital officials. Here are five things to know about Ebola and how it is spread: 1. THE WEST AFRICA EBOLA OUTBREAK IS NOW THE LARGEST IN HISTORY. The current outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone has sickened more than 1,300 people and killed more than 700 this year. 2. BUT SOME PEOPLE HAVE SURVIVED EBOLA. While the fatality rate for Ebola can be as high as 90 percent, health officials in the three countries say people have recovered from the virus and the current death rate is about 70 percent. Those who fared best sought immediate medical attention and got supportive care to prevent dehydration even though there is no specific treatment for Ebola itself. 3. EBOLA CAN LOOK A LOT LIKE OTHER DISEASES. The early symptoms of an Ebola infection include fever, headache, muscle aches and sore throat, according to the World Health Organization. It can be difficult to distinguish between Ebola and the symptoms of malaria, typhoid fever or cholera. Only in later stages do people with Ebola begin bleeding both internally and externally, often through the nose and ears. 4. EBOLA IS ONLY SPREAD THROUGH BODILY FLUIDS. The Ebola virus is not airborne, so people would have to come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. These include blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — making transmission through casual contact in a public setting unlikely. 5. FEAR AND MISINFORMATION THOUGH IS MAKING THINGS WORSE. In each of the affected countries, health workers and clinics have come under attack from panicked residents who mistakenly blame foreign doctors and nurses for bringing the virus to remote communities. Family members also have removed sick Ebola patients from hospitals, including one woman in Sierra Leone's capital who later died. Police had to use tear gas to disperse others who attacked a hospital in the country. ___ Online: http://www.who.int ||||| In this undated photo released by the Center for Disease Control, a Aeromedical Biological Containment System which looks like a sealed isolation tent for Ebola air transportation is shown. On Thursday... (Associated Press) Signs point toward the emergency department at Emory University Hospital as the hospital prepares to receive an American aid worker who has been diagnosed with Ebola, Friday, Aug. 1, 2014, in Atlanta.... (Associated Press) In this undated photo released by the Center for Disease Control, a Aeromedical Biological Containment System which looks like a sealed isolation tent for Ebola air transportation is shown. On Thursday... (Associated Press) An ambulance departs Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014, in Marietta, Ga. Officials at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta expect an American that was infected with the Ebola virus to... (Associated Press) This Oct. 7, 2013 photo provided by Jeremy Writebol show his mother, Nancy Writebol, with children in Liberia. Writebol is one of two Americans working for a missionary group in Liberia that have been... (Associated Press) Dr. Jay Varkey, an infectious disease specialist at Emory Healthcare, speaks with reporters, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014 in Atlanta. Varkey is part of a team of doctors who will treat the two American aid... (Associated Press) An ambulance departs Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014, in Marietta, Ga. Officials at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta expect an American that was infected with the Ebola virus to... (Associated Press) Dr. Alexander Isakov, left, executive director of Emory's Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, talks to the media following a news conference as he stands next to Dr. Bruce Ribner, Friday,... (Associated Press) This photo provided by Jeremy Writebol show his parents, David and Nancy Writebol, who are Christian missionaries in Liberia. Nancy Writebol is one of two Americans working for a missionary group in Liberia... (Associated Press) In this undated photo released by the Center for Disease Control, a Gulfsteam airplane modified to carry a Aeromedical Biological Containment System, which looks like a sealed isolation tent for Ebola... (Associated Press) Dr. Bruce Ribner, the Emory University Hospital epidemiologist who oversees the isolated unit at the hospital set up to treat patients exposed to certain infectious diseases, speaks at a news conference,... (Associated Press) ||||| Ambulance carrying the first of two Ebola virus patients leaves Dobbins Air Reserve Base for Emory University Hospital. Mike Morris/Staff. Plane believed to be carrying at least one of the two Ebola patients lands at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Cobb County. Dr. Kent Brantly is shown in this 2013 photo provided by JPS Health Network. A relief group official says Brantly is one of two American aid workers that have tested positive for the Ebola virus while working to combat an outbreak of the deadly disease at a hospital in Liberia. A spokesman said both Americans have been isolated and are under intensive treatment.(AP Photo/JPS Health Network) By Mike Morris The Atlanta Journal-Constitution An airplane carrying one of the two American aid workers stricken with the Ebola virus landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Cobb County late Saturday morning, and the patient was transferred into a Grady Memorial Hospital ambulance and transferred to Emory University Hospital. The two American aid workers affected with the virus, Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol, remain in critical condition, North Carolina-based relief group Samaritan’s Purse has said in a statement. The plane carrying Brantly landed shortly after 11 a.m. on Saturday, and the ambulance carrying the patient left the base around noon, heading to the hospital. Shortly before 12:30 p.m., Brantly got out to the back of the ambulance and walked into the hospital. The patient and the ambulance crew were all wearing white containment suits that covered their bodies from head to toe. It was not immediately clear Writebol will arrive in Atlanta. She is also expected to be flown into Dobbins. Brantly and Writebol will be treated in a separate isolation unit at the hospital. Located away from patients, the small room has two beds and special air filters. It’s one of only four such units in the nation.

– Ebola has arrived in the US, though in a carefully controlled manner. A plane carrying one of two Americans who contracted the disease in Africa arrived at a military air base near Atlanta this morning, reports the Journal-Constitution. The AP says the patient is 33-year-old doctor Kent Brantly, though hygienist Nancy Writebol is expected to arrive at some point as well. Both will be treated in isolation units at Atlanta's Emory University Hospital. It's the first time any US medical facility has had an Ebola patient, notes CNN. The disease is usually fatal, with the death toll in West Africa now above 700. (While being treated in Africa, Brantly turned down an experimental serum so Writebol could get it.)

Image caption David Cameron's renegotiation could paralyse the EU, a German MP said The popular German tabloid Bild asked today: "Is Britain destroying the EU?" The headline reflects the unease felt across Europe over David Cameron's promise to re-negotiate its EU membership. Europe now knows what it long suspected: many in Britain have a completely different vision of the EU than those on the continent. David Cameron's European idea is of a flexible, pragmatic union that focuses on trade. The question he asks is: can the EU, as it is currently structured, deliver prosperity? In the rest of Europe they believe that closer integration will build the European dream. Officials in Brussels said that Cameron was offering a "pick and mix Europe". His vision was for a Europe "a la carte", where countries chose what they liked and disliked. The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said "cherry picking was not an option". There was a similar reaction from the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "We can't have Europe a la carte," he said. "Imagine the EU was a football club; once you've joined up and you're in this club you can't then say you want to play rugby." As regards trying to repatriate powers to Westminster, the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said it would be a "drawn out and cumbersome negotiation" involving long and complex procedures. The head of the German European Affairs Committee Gunther Krichbaum said the "EU was not a multiple choice event". He compared re-negotiation to "opening Pandora's box". No special case The German foreign minister went out of his way to say that he hoped the UK would continue to play an "active" and "constructive" role in the EU. He offered a concession: he agreed that not everything decided in Brussels needed to remain at a European level. He signalled that Germany would support some regulations returning to the member states. Here's the dilemma. There are several states which believe that some measures, currently operated at EU level, could be returned to national governments. Any adjustments, however, they insist must include all 27 members. There is little support for Britain being treated as a special case. The problem for David Cameron is that he is fighting for a complete overhaul of Britain's relationship with Europe, not a tinkering at the edges. The question I heard asked time and again today was what would the prime minister do if he felt he wasn't winning enough concessions. Might he recommend leaving the EU if he didn't get a good deal? A German MP said he thought this negotiation risked "paralysing the EU for years". One German minister was asked about the risk of Britain blackmailing other states to win further opt-outs. He declined to answer. So there is great uncertainty as to what these next years will bring. One other unknown. It is far from clear whether the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will push for a major revision of the treaties in 2015. If she doesn't, that will make Britain's task of re-negotiating far more difficult. There are divided views in Europe about the referendum. One senior EU official said he welcomed Britain finally deciding whether it wanted to be in or out of Europe. "Let's settle it once and for all," he said. Others said a referendum was "highly risky". Voters might decide to punish the government by voting to leave the EU. There were lots of statements about how much Europe needs the UK - but not at any price. Some officials welcomed David Cameron's positive remarks about the EU. However, ultimately David Cameron's vision for the EU - a flexible, adaptable union - is not widely shared. The German foreign minister said: "We do not need less Europe but more integration." Nothing said today can avoid the reality that Britain and much of the EU have very different ideas about the future of the union. What is clear is that Britain will face a difficult and uphill battle if and when it starts to re-negotiate its membership. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story BRUSSELS — The French are engaged in a lonely military adventure in Africa. The Germans are preoccupied with domestic elections rather than regional affairs. Unemployment in some countries is at historic highs and economies across Europe are still mired in recession. Now Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has added to Europe’s malaise, vowing to reduce British entanglement with the European Union — or allow his people to vote in a referendum to leave the bloc altogether. The pledge from the British prompted swift retorts from France and Germany, which said no member has the option of “cherry picking” whatever European rules it wants to enforce. But it reflected a growing sense of unease, not only in Britain but across the Continent, that while the acute phase of the financial crisis has passed, the challenge to Europe’s mission and even its membership has not. Even the United States has injected itself into the matter, with an unusually public insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union, fearing that its departure would heighten centrifugal forces that would weaken Europe as a diplomatic, military and financial partner. With the threat of a sudden breakup of the euro zone appearing to recede in recent months, Europe has seen a resurgence of narrow national interests that risks swamping always-elusive common goals. The bickering is undercutting hopes in some circles that the struggle to save the euro had laid the groundwork for “more Europe.” “As pressure from the financial markets recedes and a sense of urgency lifts, the appetite for serious reform is melting away like butter in the sun,” said Thomas Klau, head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Now that markets no longer hold a knife under leaders’ throats, they are slipping back into their normal mode, which is to manage their own immediate reality.” For Mr. Cameron, with elections coming in 2015, that means heading off a challenge from the hard-right, anti-Europe United Kingdom Independence Party while shoring up support for his government, which recently admitted that its unpopular austerity program would have to be extended to 2018, analysts said. He is also anxious to avoid the sort of ruinous intraparty split over Europe that bedeviled the prime ministerships of two of his Conservative predecessors, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. That comes against a backdrop of declining favorability ratings for the European Union among the British — only 45 percent last year, down from 51 percent in 2011, in polls conducted by the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project. Mr. Cameron’s speech Wednesday in London calling for a referendum had been in the works for some time but, Mr. Klau noted, it was delivered at a moment when the European Union had begun to declare victory over doomsayers who predicted the common currency and even the whole union could crumble. This mood of calm, Mr. Klau said, has given leaders “the political space” to turn their eyes from Europe toward more pressing and, for politicians seeking re-election, far more important domestic concerns. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story The decision by President François Hollande of France to send troops to Mali to halt an advance by rebels with ties to Islamist extremists reprises a long tradition of French interventions in its former African colonies — and has bolstered the Socialist president’s previously flagging popularity. The French move has been supported by the European Union, whose member states share French fears about the spread of radicalism across the Mediterranean. But it has superseded the bloc’s own ambitions to become a serious player in global affairs and still left the French to fight mostly on their own. The union is sending some military trainers. Europe’s economic troubles, meanwhile, are far from over, with much of the Continent expected to be in recession this year. Even Germany seems to be losing momentum — its economy contracted by 0.5 percent in the final months of last year. Elsewhere, unemployment is soaring to levels that could threaten grave social unrest, with more than a quarter of working-age people in Greece and Spain without jobs. But the European Union, widely criticized as not doing enough to raise employment, has been struggling to put even its own economic house in order after leaders failed in November to agree on a long-term budget for the 27-nation bloc. Leaders will take another swipe at this divisive issue early next month. After being consumed for so long by efforts to salvage the euro zone, “leaders now think it is safe and are becoming perhaps too complacent,” said Charles Grant, director for the Center for European Reform, a London-based research unit. “The only time European leaders have agreed to take important steps is when there is a crisis. As soon as the crisis stops they relax.” Germany, he said, has now backed away from tentative support for a change in the basic European Union treaties that could help the European Union forge common policies. Already distracted by national elections next September, Germany could turn even more inward-looking as Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to overcome her party’s defeat over the weekend in a down-to-the-wire state election in Lower Saxony. She remains the dominant figure in German and European affairs, but the surprise election setback has dented her aura of invincibility. Other leaders, tightly focused on their own domestic concerns, are stalling on critical decisions about how far they want to go in engaging with the union. President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland, for example, said Wednesday that his country should delay a decision on adopting the euro until after elections in 2015. While the Polish economy, the biggest in central Europe, has been spared the tumult that has afflicted other nations, opinion polls show flagging interest in adopting the euro. Less than a third of Poles want to ditch the national currency, the zloty, according to recent surveys. Farther to the east in Latvia, which plans to join the euro zone next year, support for the common currency has slumped to under 15 percent in a sign of growing unease with a “European project” that most Latvians had eagerly embraced. Domestic politics have regularly trumped broader European concerns throughout the six-decade history of the union and its predecessor organizations, to the dismay of those who want to see Europe live up to a commitment in the 1957 Treaty of Rome for an “ever closer union.” But Mr. Cameron’s pledge to hold a referendum on European Union membership threatens to elevate national political calculations over common interests to an extent that has alarmed even countries that often share British concerns. ||||| BERLIN | BERLIN Jan 23 (Reuters) - The European Union and Britain must be prepared to make compromises, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday after British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded a radical reform of the EU and a referendum on UK membership. "Germany, and I personally, want Britain to be an important part and an active member of the European Union," Merkel told reporters. "We are prepared to talk about British wishes but we must always bear in mind that other countries have different wishes and we must find a fair compromise. We will talk intensively with Britain about its individual ideas but that has some time over the months ahead," said Merkel.

– British PM David Cameron made an impassioned case today for his country to stick with the European Union, but said it's time for Britons "to have their say" on the matter, reports the New York Times. He promised an "in-or-out" referendum as early as 2017—provided, of course, he wins reelection in 2015. The Conservative Party leader acknowledged that many Brits "feel that the EU is heading in a direction they never signed up to," citing increased regulation by the European Commission as particularly problematic. The Times notes that Cameron's move could be an attempt to pick up votes in the next election, but it is reverberating throughout the globe: "Germany, and I personally, want Britain to be an important part" of the EU, said Angela Merkel, while noting that a "fair compromise" must be found. Meanwhile, the BBC notes that Germany's Bild is running a headline that asks, "Is Britain destroying the EU?" In Washington, the Obama administration has been open about its desire to see the UK remain part of the EU. Cameron noted that an exit from the Union would be a "one-way ticket."

A La Crosse woman is jailed and facing charges that accuse her of robbing a South Side tavern at gunpoint early Monday. Heidi Thompson, 24, pointed a .22-caliber revolver at a bartender of King's Corner, 1321 S. Eighth St., about 1:50 a.m., according to La Crosse police. She asked for cash before a bar patron tried to stun her with a stun gun, police said. Thompson left with an undisclosed amount of cash before police arrested her minutes later in the 1000 block of Jackson Street. Thompson confessed to planning the robbery, prosecutors said in court. Thompson, a former employee of the tavern, faces armed robbery with use of force and disorderly conduct charges when she appears Tuesday in La Crosse County Circuit Court. She is jailed on a $10,000 cash bond. ||||| A La Crosse man is being charged with a felony. after he tried stopping an armed robbery at a local bar. News 8's Kyle Dimke joins us now with the story. Early Monday morning. Jeff Steele was at King's Korner. A bar on south 8-th street in La Crosse. It was just about closing time when a woman walked in. pointed a gun at the bartender and demanded all money. Jeff tried to stop the women. and now he's the one in trouble. Jeff: 7- I didn't think I did anything wrong by any means Jeff Steele has lived in the neighborhood surrounding King's Korner bar for about 40 years. Jeff: 4- it's not really the nicest neighborhood we live in Which is why Jeff carries a tazer. And he used it on Monday morning. Colleen: 1- I was in the cooler right over here and when I stood up she was standing in the middle of the bar with a small hand gun pointed at me Jeff: 1- I seen Colleen having to pull money out of the till, I looked over and seen the mask and somebody with a gun 24 year old Heidi Thompson was the women underneath the mask. Colleen: 2- She said, 'OK guys put your hands on your head and give me all the money, all the 20's' Bartender Colleen Hogan says when she turned around with money from the register. she saw Jeff walking towards Thompson with his tazer. Colleen: 3- I don't think he made contact because I could see it sparking, but he definitely startled her Thompson ran from the bar and was arrested minutes later by La Crosse Police. But she isn't the only one with charges following this incident. Jeff is being charged with possession of an electronic weapon. A felony. Because he doesn't have a concealed carry permit for his tazer. Lisa: 2- you can have it in your home and on your private property without a concealed carry permit, but you do need to keep a concealed carry permit to carry it out in public Jeff: 3- when I bought it off the internet it said basically that it's legal to have in the state of Wisconsin, but didn't go into any depth on it, so I assumed that it was legal to carry around, otherwise why would you buy one to leave it at home? How is it for defense then In La Crosse KD N8 The La Crosse Police Department says because Jeff tried help. that is why he wasn't immediately taken to jail. He is currently on a signature bond. It is now up to the District Attorney's office to decide wether to pursue the felony charge or not. Thanks Kyle. The women who robbed the bar is being held on a 10-thousand dollar cash bond. She is facing charges of armed robbery and disorderly conduct.

– A man who tried to stop a robbery in a Wisconsin bar has been charged with a felony because he wasn't supposed to be carrying the Taser he allegedly threatened the suspect with. According to WKBT-TV, Jeff Steele was at the King's Korner bar in La Crosse just before 2am last Monday morning when a masked woman came in, pointed a handgun at the bartender, and demanded money. Bartender Colleen Hogan says she saw Steele walking toward the woman with the Taser. She says he didn't appear to actually use it on the suspect, but the woman was apparently startled by the sight of it and took off. The suspect, a former employee of the bar, was arrested minutes later; Heidi Thompson, 24, has been charged with armed robbery, the La Crosse Tribune reports. Steele was charged with possession of an electronic weapon because he didn't have a permit to carry the Taser. "You can have it in your home and on your private property without a concealed-carry permit, but you do need to keep a concealed-carry permit to carry it out in public," a police spokeswoman tells WKBT. Steele says he bought the stun gun because he lives in a rough neighborhood; he also says when he ordered it online, he was informed that it was legal in Wisconsin, so he assumed it was legal to carry it around. WKBT notes the district attorney's office will make the call as to whether to pursue the felony charge. (Read about more weird crimes from last week.)

Newtown's children were showered with gifts Saturday _ tens of thousands of teddy bears, Barbie dolls, soccer balls and board games _ but only a portion of the tokens of support from around the world for the city in mourning. Alissa Parker, left, and her husband, Robbie Parker, center, carry their daughters, Samantha, 3, and Madeline, 4, following funeral services for their 6-year old daughter, Connecticut elementary shooting... (Associated Press) Alissa Parker carries her daughter, Samantha, 3, following funeral services for her 6-year old daughter, Connecticut elementary shooting victim Emilie Parker, Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012, at the Church of... (Associated Press) The casket of 6-year-old Emilie Parker is carried following funeral services on Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012, in Ogden, Utah. Emilie, whose family has Ogden roots, was one of the victims killed in a Dec. 14... (Associated Press) Robbie Parker, left, carries his daughter, Madeline, 4, following funeral services for his 6-year old daughter, Connecticut elementary shooting victim Emilie Parker, Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012, at The Church... (Associated Press) Volunteer Anthony Vessicchio of East Haven, Conn., helps to sort tables full of donated toys at the town hall in Newtown, Conn., Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) (Associated Press) Photos showing those killed in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are imprinted on fake roses at a memorial in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Conn., Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Seth... (Associated Press) A package, bottom, addressed to "a survivor who needs a hug" of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting sits in a bin as Dee Amin sorts through packages at the post office in Newtown, Conn., Friday,... (Associated Press) A sign against weapons is displayed at a memorial to the Newtown shooting victims in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Conn., Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012. The funerals for the victims of the school shooting... (Associated Press) A message of support hangs over a table full of donated toys at the town hall in Newtown, Conn., Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) (Associated Press) Just a little over a week ago, 20 children and six school employees were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, attacked the school, then killed himself. Police don't know what set off the massacre. Days before Christmas, funerals were still being held Saturday, the last of those whose schedules were made public, the Connecticut Funeral Directors Association said. A service was held in Utah for 6-year-old Emilie Parker. Others were scheduled in Connecticut for Josephine Gay, 7, and Ana Marquez-Greene, 6. All of Newtown's children were invited to Edmond Town Hall, where they could choose a toy. Bobbi Veach, who was fielding donations at the building, reflected on the outpouring of gifts from toy stores, organizations and individuals around the world. "It's their way if grieving," Veach said. "They say, `I feel so bad, I just want to do something to reach out.' That's why we accommodate everybody we can." The United Way of Western Connecticut said the official fund for donations had $2.6 million in it Saturday morning. Others sent envelopes stuffed with cash to pay for coffee at the general store, and a shipment of cupcakes arrived from a gourmet bakery in Beverly Hills, Calif. The Postal Service reported a six-fold increase in mail in town and set up a unique post office box to handle it. The parcels come decorated with rainbows and hearts drawn by school children. Some letters arrived in packs of 26 identical envelopes _ one for each family of the children and staff killed or addressed to the "First Responders" or just "The People of Newtown." One card arrived from Georgia addressed to "The families of 6 amazing women and 20 beloved angels." Many contained checks. "This is just the proof of the love that's in this country," said Postmaster Cathy Zieff. Peter Leone said he was busy making deli sandwiches and working the register at his Newtown General Store when he got a phone call from Alaska. It was a woman who wanted to give him her credit card number. "She said, `I'm paying for the next $500 of food that goes out your door,'" Leone said. "About a half hour later another gentleman called, I think from the West Coast, and he did the same thing for $2,000." At the town hall building, the basement resembled a toy store, with piles of stuffed penguins, dolls, games, and other fun gifts. All the toys were inspected and examined by bomb-sniffing dogs before being sorted and put on card tables. The children could choose whatever they wanted. "But we're not checking IDs at the door," said Tom Mahoney, the building administrator, who's in charge of handling gifts. "If there is a child from another town who comes in need of a toy, we're not going to turn them away." Many people have placed flowers, candles and stuffed animals at makeshift memorials that have popped up all over town. Others are stopping by the Edmond Town Hall to drop off food, or toys, or cash. About 60,000 teddy bears were donated, said Ann Benoure, a social services caseworker who was working at the town hall. "There's so much stuff coming in," Mahoney said. "To be honest, it's a bit overwhelming; you just want to close the doors and turn the phone off." Mahoney said the town of some 27,000 with a median household income of more than $111,000 plans to donate whatever is left over to shelters or other charities. Sean Gillespie of Colchester, who attended Sandy Hook Elementary, and Lauren Minor, who works at U.S. Foodservice in Norwich, came from Calvary Chapel in Uncasville with a car filled with food donated by U.S. Foodservice. But they were sent elsewhere because the refrigerators in Newtown were overflowing with donations. "We'll find someplace," Gillespie said. "It won't go to waste." In addition to the town's official fund, other private funds have been set up. Former Sandy Hook student Ryan Kraft, who once babysat Lanza, set up a fund with other alumni that has collected almost $150,000. It is earmarked for the Sandy Hook PTA. Rabbi Shaul Praver of Congregation Adath Israel is raising money for a memorial to the victims. He said one man wrote a check for $52,000 for that project. Several colleges, including the University of Connecticut, have set up scholarship funds to pay for the educations of students at Sandy Hook and the relatives of the victims. Town officials have not decided yet what to do with all the money. A board of Newtown community leaders is being established to determine how it is most needed and will be best utilized, said Isabel Almeida with the local United Way, which has waived all its administrative fees related to the fund. She said some have wondered about building a new school for Sandy Hook students if the town decides to tear the school down, but that decision has not been made. And while the town is grateful for all the support, Almeida said, it has no more room for those gifts. Instead, she encouraged people to donate to others in memory of the Sandy Hook victims. "Send those teddy bears to a school in your community or an organization that serves low income children, who are in need this holiday season, and do it in memory of our children," she said. ___ Associated Press writers Jesse Washington, Allen Breed, Chris Sullivan, Eileen Connelly, Susan Haigh and John Christoffersen contributed to this report. ||||| In classrooms, churches, and other places, bells rang out across the country while people observed a moment of silence for the victims of the Newtown, Conn. shooting. NBC's Ron Mott reports. Updated at 3:40 p.m. ET: The last of the funerals for the 26 victims of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., were held Saturday, ending a week-long procession of funerals as the final three young victims are laid to rest. On Friday morning, exactly one week after a gunman burst into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 first-graders and six educators, the nation paused for a moment of silence and tolled bells 26 times for the victims. Josephine Gay's funeral mass was held at Saint Rose of Lima Saturday morning. The first grader had just turned 7 the week of the shooting. On Monday, purple balloons — Josephine’s favorite color — sprouted from the family mailbox and those of all her neighbors. "'Joey' is a beautiful little girl, may she never be forgotten and live forever in our hearts," wrote Polly Larsen, a family friend, on Facebook. Six-year-old Ana Marquez-Greene had just moved to Newtown two months ago, in part, because of Sandy Hooks’s pristine reputation, her grandmother, Elba Marquez said. Ana's funeral was held Saturday morning at First Cathedral in Bloomfield, Conn. Ana’s father, Jimmy Greene, wrote on Facebook, "As much as she's needed here and missed by her mother, brother and me, Ana beat us all to paradise." Emilie Parker, 6, loved to make people smile and never missed a chance to draw a picture or make a card. Her father, Robbie Parker, said she loved to try new things, except for food. Related: Profiles of the victims In a press conference, Parker said he held no animosity for the gunman, even as he struggled to explain the death to his other two children, ages 3 and 4. He was sustained, he said, by the fact that the world is better for having had Emilie in it. "I'm so blessed to be her dad," Parker said. Emilie was laid to rest Saturday in Ogden, Utah, where her family lived before moving to Newtown. On Friday night her family held a memorial service in Ogden and released 26 lanterns. Emilie's dad released the final lantern, a pink one, his daughter's favorite color. Back to school: Jan. 3 As the funerals and wakes for those killed come to an end, Chalk Hill Middle School in neighboring Monroe is being refurbished into an elementary school, ready to open on Jan. 3. The first grade will be consolidated into one class, according to The Associated Press. The rooms are being repainted, the technology being upgraded and the floor being raised in the bathrooms so that the little ones can properly sit on the toilets. Chalk Hill teachers have volunteered to decorate and paint the classrooms, and the school district is offering the middle school, which has been empty for two years, free of charge. "We're going to have a lot of support for them," Newtown Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson said of the approximately 30 teachers and staff members from Sandy Hook. "Certainly, if they need more time, they can have more time. But I think many don't want their children -- they own those children -- they don't want them to be with a substitute. So I think most of them are going to try to come back." Robinson described to the AP how the morning of the shooting unfolded for her. She arrived at the Sandy Hook firehouse where families of students had gathered, but she didn’t know how many children had been killed. Then the police chief took her aside, she recalled: “He said, ‘Janet, this is much worse than you're probably thinking.’” The Associated Press contributed reporting.

– The last three funerals for victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were held today as millions of dollars in donations poured into Newtown, Conn., NBC News reports. Josephine Gay, 7, and Ana Marquez-Greene, 6, were laid to rest in Connecticut, and Emilie Parker, 6, in Ogden, Utah. Emilie's father, Robbie Parker, said at a press conference that he held no ill will toward shooter Adam Lanza but found it hard to explain the killing to his other kids, ages 3 and 4. Emilie's effect on the world was his only comfort, he said: "I'm so blessed to be her dad." Meanwhile officials were refurbishing unused Chalk Hill Middle School in nearby Monroe, Conn., to be ready Jan. 3 for children who survived the massacre. Newtown's school superintendent offered time off for Sandy Hook's teachers and staff, but said that "I think many don't want their children—they own those children—they don't want them to be with a substitute." Also today, Newtown's children were invited to a town hall to choose a toy from the tens of thousands pouring in, reports the AP. Donations at the United Way of Western Connecticut reached $2.6 million this morning.

By Jen Heger – Radar Assistant Managing Editor 11:15 a.m. EST- UPDATE: The hearing has been delayed by one day. It’s now scheduled for Thursday at 9 a.m. EST. 10 a.m. ET- UPDATE: The Associated Press reports Gloria Allred arrived at court with the former wife of Staples founder Tom Stemberg to tell a judge that she does not object to unsealing testimony given by presidential candidate Mitt Romney in her divorce case. Gloria Allred‘s October surprise for Governor Mitt Romney involves allegations about a child custody matter that the Republican presidential hopeful testified about involving his very good friend, the former CEO of Staples Tom Stemberg, and his divorce form one of his two ex-wives, RadarOnline.com is reporting. The founder of Staples, who spoke on behalf of Governor Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention in Tampa Bay, Florida last summer, has four sons from two different ex-wives, Maureen Sullivan Stemberg and Dola Hamilton Stemburg. Mitt Romney’s hedge fund, Bain Capital, was an early investor of Staples. Tom Stemberg’s sons are in their mid-teens and early twenties. PHOTOS: Take A Peek At Mitt Romney’s Many Mansions “Governor Mitt Romney gave sworn testimony about his observations of Tom’s role as a father to his four sons,” a source close to the situation told RadarOnline.com. Our source wouldn’t provide any additional information because of Governor Romney’s sworn declaration and gag order. Stemberg’s first wife, Maureen, had a documentary, The Maureen Sullivan Stemberg Story: A Portrait in Courage, which aired on Lifetime. According to a 2008 press release, “Maureen Sullivan Stemberg will provide an in-depth account in this first-time tell all tale of the interweaving relationships and strange bedfellow that business has made in her life. Such luminaries include former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney – who was the former Republican nominee in the 2008 Presidential campaign, as well as one of the first major investors for Staples while he was employed by Bain Capital, Boston, MA. This story will include the injustice of the Mass. Probate Justice system. Other heavy hitting names have yet to be released in this as of yet untold story including Dola Davis Hamilton Stemberg.” PHOTOS: Take A Peek Inside GOP Candidates Homes Tom Stemberg’s divorce attorney, Joel Kozel is expected to be at the family law courthouse in the Boston area on Wednesday morning as the Boston Globe petitions to have the court records unsealed. As RadarOnline.com was the first to report exclusively, the Boston Globe will be in court for an emergency hearing “in an attempt to obtain a court order to unseal the sworn testimony given by Mitt Romney in a prior court case and to lift a gag order so that the parties can speak about Romney. Gloria Allred will be in court representing one of the parties in the case,” a source close to the situation previously told us. PHOTOS: Political Hotties “Ms. Allred’s client feels that the public needs to know about Governor Mitt Romney’s role in this very important case. Governor Romney is running for President of the United States and this goes to a very important character issues,” the insider revealed. It’s unclear if Governor Romney will have lawyers present at the hearing on Wednesday morning. The emergency hearing will take place at the Norfolk Probate & Family Court in Canton, Massachusetts, and Justice Jennifer Ulwick will oversee the proceedings which will begin at 9 a.m. EST. PHOTOS: The Name Game – Celebs Who’ve Changed Their Names Stemberg founded Staples and was the CEO for 16 years. According to the Huffington Post, “Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Romney helped found, was one of the early investors in Staples, and the former Massachusetts governor remained on the retailer’s board for more than a decade. In claiming he helped create some 100,000 jobs in the private sector over the years, the Romney campaign has leaned heavily on the success of the office supplier, citing roughly 90,000 Staples jobs in their math.” Romney’s pal was featured at the RNC last summer and addressed the delegates and said, “He (Mitt Romney) never looked at Staples as merely a financial investment. He saw the engine of prosperity it could become. Today Staples employs nearly 90,000 people. It has over 2,000 stores, over 50 distribution centers, and it is part of a competitive industry that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses get started on their own. You have to ask yourself, why would an administration that can’t create any jobs demonize someone who did?” PHOTOS: Stars’ Most Embarrassing Moments According to a report from the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, Staples is one of the lowest wage employers in the country. During a interview with PBS’ Frontline earlier this year Stemberg said the first time he met Romney, “when you first walked in and saw Mitt, he looked like a guy who ought to be president of the United States. This guy, he looked perfect; he dressed perfect; he spoke perfectly. He asked the most poignant questions in a very, very nice way and didn’t make you feel defensive and really drew the best or worst out of you. He was just really, really good.” PHOTOS: Stars Who Look Like Other Stars Stemberg also said that Mitt Romney was no shrinking violet and wasn’t concerned about his friend entering politics when he decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. “Nobody pushes Mitt Romney around. Having said that, if there’s one person whom he will almost always defer to, it’s Ann Romney,” Stemberg told PBS. Most polls indicate that the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is a statistical dead heat. PHOTOS: The Obamas Meet The Royals Gloria Allred, Tom Stemberg, and representatives for Governor Mitt Romney didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on this story. Stay tuned to RadarOnline.com for developments on this story. RELATED STORIES: Trumped-Up Charges? Republicans Rejected Man’s Claims That Obama Sold Cocaine In College Donald Trump Ready To Drop ‘Gigantic’ Bombshell About President Obama, Claims It Could Swing The Election Did Bob Schieffer Say ‘Obama’ Bin Laden During Presidential Debate? Republicans Try To Stop Gloria Allred As Mitt Romney ‘October Surprise’ Drama Builds ||||| The ex-wife of Staples founder Tom Stemberg is in probate court in Massachusetts to tell a judge she's OK with unsealing testimony that former Gov. Mitt Romney gave in her divorce case. Maureen Stemberg Sullivan appeared in court Wednesday with lawyer Gloria Allred. The Boston Globe has asked a judge to lift an impoundment order on Romney's testimony in the case from the 1990s. Romney attorney Robert Jones told the judge he has no position on the request. Stemberg has been a surrogate for Romney, now the Republican presidential nominee, and spoke on Romney's behalf at the GOP convention. Staples was founded with backing from Romney's firm, Bain Capital. Allred says she does not object to the newspaper's motion to modify a confidentiality order that prevents parties in the divorce from discussing it.

– Gloria Allred and the Boston Globe are in court this morning trying to unseal testimony Mitt Romney gave more than a decade ago, and TMZ thinks it has the scoop on what's in that testimony. The testimony came during a divorce hearing for Staples founder Tom Stemberg, a good friend of Romney's who has stumped for the candidate. Sources tell the gossip site that Romney, whose Bain Capital was an early investor in Staples, told the court that Staples was almost worthless, and that he "didn't place a great deal of credibility in the company's future." Thanks in part to that testimony, Stemberg's wife, Maureen Stemberg Sullivan, got a relatively stingy settlement, while the sources say that Romney and Stemberg cashed in big on their Staples shares just weeks later. The sources also allege that years later, while Stemberg was a health care adviser for Romney, he cut off Sullivan's health insurance; she suffers from MS and has had multiple bouts with cancer. Other sources vary on the content of the testimony, however; Radar reports that Romney simply testified as to Stemberg's ability as a father. The AP reports that Sullivan appeared in court today with Allred to support the unsealing of the testimony. Romney's attorney has said he has no position on the request.

I fired up some music as I sat down to write this review, and what in the world of coincidental appropriateness should be the first song but, I Need a Lover that Won't Drive Me Crazy, by Pat Benatar. If that's not a serendipitous shuffle, I don't know what is. It put a smile on my face, or would have, if Beyond Heaving Bosoms: A Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels hadn't already pasted a smile there from the very first page. What joy this book has been to read! A few points: -Chapter names of AWESOMENESS Right from the start, BHB begins as it means to go on by kicking chapter numbers to the curb and giving us chapter names made of pure brilliance. From chapter Cleavage through chapters Secret Cowboy Baby and Love Grotto, I loved them all. My favorite, however, had to be chapter Phallus, not just for the name (though, c'mon) but for its content, part of which was a serious look at the inner working of the genre and the ways in which it hamstrings itself in the larger publishing world. Which brings me to... -Niceness and what it means for policing one's own genre I stand firmly with the Smart Bitches on this one, plagiarism is not sexy. Nor is it something to overlook or gloss over in the name of "Can't we all just get along?". This isn't a Ladies Aid Society meeting in 1810, people. It's not about making nice in order to save face in society. Your work had better be your own goddamn work, and your attributions regarding the work of others had better be writ large and unambiguous. In a genre that's long been under siege as worthless trash, nothing signals the larger literary world that you STILL aren't ready for the big kids' table than circling the wagons around an obvious plagiarist. And no amount of, "the author didn't know better" or "if it's on the Internet, (or public domain) it's not really stealing" will change that. Plagiarism isn't new. You know what you've written and what you haven't, full stop. And saying that things published online are fair game for poaching is like saying that pilfering your neighbor's outdoor holiday decorations is acceptable because, "they were out there in public, so that must mean they're free to take." It's bullshit and everyone knows it. -Old school romance, its lingering stigma and romance as a denigrated genre This is where I admit that, while I used to read romance novels for the pure fun of finding the sex scenes amid the implausible plot devices, I stopped reading them in my early 20s. I stopped because that was the heyday of the Rapist Hero and after a time I just found the idea of rape-is-a-gateway-to-romance all too oppressive and vile. Sadly, that image of romance novels persists to this very day. It's part of the easy dismissal the genre gets from, well, pretty much every other genre out there. "Hey, I my read ______," the reader says. "But at least I don't read crappy bodice rippers/lady porn/your epithet here." As if implausible plots and sex scenes only existed in one genre. Happily, the Smart Bitches are here to exorcise the ghosts of plot devices past, and boy do they ever. -It's okay to love books about love, sex and sexuality Really, it is. Like the old school Hero rampaging across the Heroines personal landscape, the common idea is that emotions are weak, therefore anything that celebrates emotions (or emotionally charged human pursuits like sex) must be correspondingly weak. The Smart Bitches drag those dusty old notions out into the yard for a good beating in the fresh air. They point out that, unlike any other genre, romance novels alone focus on female sexuality as pivotal, not only to the plot, but to the heroine as a fully realized human being. They give us a view of romance not as the unloved step-child of publishing, but as the subversive renegade, daring to openly embrace what everyone privately knows but refuses to admit in polite company. And ain't that just the best thing ever? -And finally, a quibble If I had one quibble with this book (and I did) it was the lack of editorial oversight with regard to the use of there's vs. there're. Yes, I know it's common vernacular now to default to there's in all situations. I also know that language is fluid, that it changes as society changes. But damn it all, common or not, it's still incorrect, and what I can forgive in conversation I cannot in print. Not yet, anyway. You kids, get out of my yard. There you have it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Smart Bitches and their guide to romance novels; part academic treatise, part adolescent snicker-fest, both sides of my brain reached the last page highly satisfied. ||||| Enlarge By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY Amish romances are set among serene farms and tranquil scenery, much like this rural road in Lancaster County, Pa. EXCERPT EXCERPT Hearing Dat and Adam called a cheerful "Willkumm" to Yonnie outside, she assumed he'd come to borrow a tool. She shook off the image of handsome Yonnie sitting in his buggy, nonchalantly holding the reins. True, she'd enjoyed his company quite a lot before Henry Stahl had started seeing her regularly. But that was back last year, when Yonnie and his family had first arrived from Indiana, and Yonnie had only asked to go walking after Singing a few times. From The Missing by Beverly Lewis SPIRITUAL SISTERS SPIRITUAL SISTERS The Amish aren't the only religious group finding their way into romance novels: The Shakers. In The Seeker by Ann Gabhart (Revell, $14.99), a young Kentucky woman follows her ex-fiance to a Shaker community in 1860. Mormons. The Sister Wife by Diane Noble (Avon Inspired, $12.99), set in the turbulent 1840s, centers on a young Mormon convert who must share her beloved husband with another woman. Baptists. In Holy Rollers by ReShonda Tate Billingsley (Gallery, $15), three African-American Houston women -- lifelong pals who have spent their 20s dating pro athletes -- attend a conference for Baptist ministers looking for soul mates. It's plain and simple: The Amish inspirational is one of the fastest-growing genres in romance publishing. For many readers today, it's all about the bonnet. In our sex-soaked society, nothing seems to inflame the imagination quite like the chaste. In popular series such as Beverly Lewis' Seasons of Grace, Wanda Brunstetter's Indiana Cousins and Cindy Woodsmall's Sisters of the Quilt,the Amish fall in love while grappling with religious taboos and forbidden temptations. And it all happens in über-quaint settings brimming with hand-sewn quilts, horse-drawn buggies and made-from-scratch Pennsylvania Dutch specialties such as shoofly pie. "It's a huge, huge, huge trend," says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels. Who are the Amish? In a 21st-century world, the strictest among them live a 19th-century lifestyle. They are a religious, Christian-based farming community that shuns most modern conveniences such as phones and TVs, and they travel by horse and buggy. They marry among their own faith; the women wear bonnets and modest, drab clothing, the men wear brimmed hats and grow their beards. Children are taught in one-room schoolhouses, and education ends in the eighth grade. Traditional courtship rituals include "Sunday evening singing" group gatherings, where boys and girls can meet. Premarital sex is verboten. So what is their appeal to modern readers? Remember when Kelly McGillis' modest Amish beauty enraptured Harrison Ford's homicide detective in the 1985 hit Witness? His tough contemporary cop, who pretended to be Amish to protect the widow Rachel Lapp and her young son, saw a whole new world when he lived amid the closed community of barn-raisers and farmers. With Amish inspirationals, which are shelved under "religious fiction" in bookstores like Barnes & Noble, "readers get to peer inside the Amish community, and it is not like our own community," says McDaniel College English professor Pamela Regis, author of A Natural History of the Romance Novel. "Simplicity is a hallmark of that community, and simplicity is powerful." Longing to connect The original creators of the Real Simple life were a group of 16th-century European Protestants who embraced the biblical injunction to turn away from the world. Their descendants are often called "The Plain People." The largest Amish communities in the USA are in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio. While more liberal Amish and Mennonite groups allow members to drive, the Amish inspirational novels focus on the strictest of the strict — the no-car, no-electricity crowd. And that low-tech lifestyle creates a small-town atmosphere, which has deep appeal for readers who may find Wi-Fi-only connections emotionally isolating. "Even within your own neighborhood, you feel alone," says Jane Little of the influential romance blog Dear Author. In an Amish inspirational, "we're all one big family," she says. Professor Regis points out that since the 19th century, American women have devoured sentimental novels celebrating faith and family, hearth and home. But unlike, say, Little House on the Prairie, fans don't need to time- travel to see the Amish. They only need visit tourist-friendly Lancaster, Pa., to witness the Amish in action, which adds to the genre's allure. "Here you have this agrarian society that is closed to outsiders right in the middle of the Northeast," says Wendell. "It's both historical and contemporary." And popular: On Sept. 7, Beverly Lewis, queen of the genre, will launch a series called The Rose Trilogy with The Thorn (Bethany House, $14.99). Set in Lancaster, the series follows two very different sisters. An impulsive marriage to the non-Amish Brandon has thrust Hen into the modern world, from whose alien, materialist values she wants to shield her young daughter. Meanwhile, dutiful Rose is torn between two suitors. More titles on the way Also hitting stores: •Cindy Woodsmall's The Bridge of Peace (WaterBrook, $13.99, Aug. 31). Book 2 in Woodsmall's Ada's House series focuses on dedicated Amish schoolteacher Lena Kauffman as she struggles to help a rebellious male student. Meanwhile, an Amish husband named Grey Graber tries to mend a marriage grown cold. •Wanda Brunstetter's Lydia's Charm (Barbour, $14.99, Sept. 1). After the death of her husband, an Amish woman moves to Charm, Ohio, to help her mother care for her grandfather. Gifts from a mysterious admirer begin to arrive on her porch. •Shelley Shepard Gray's Autumn's Promise (Avon Inspired, $12.99, in stores). A 24-year-old Amish man and a 19-year-old "English" (what the Amish call the non-Amish) woman with a past fall in love. Harlequin has three Love Inspired Amish titles coming: Two from Patricia Davids —The Doctor's Blessing (a non-Amish M.D. and Amish nurse-midwife clash) and An Amish Christmas— plus Courting Ruth by Emma Miller. For many readers, the novels' appeal is what they don't include — things like graphic violence and profanity. "A lot of people say I just want to get away to a place where it's quiet, where people are thoughtful and respect each other, where they go to bed when the sun goes down," says Steve Oates, vice president of marketing at Bethany House, which publishes Lewis. Another thing Amish inspirationals lack: sexual content. Even the Marquis de Sade might blush at some of today's more frisky romance covers, but combine romance and Amish? Forget "bonnet rippers" with bearded love studs and rocking buggies — a shy girl in a white cloth cap is the traditional inspirational jacket fare. For Beverly Lewis, pushing the envelope means writing about an unmarried Amish woman letting her hair down in front of a man. But with 12 million of her Amish novels in print, she hardly lacks for fans. "Discretion can be pretty powerful," says the Colorado writer. Lewis started the craze for all things Amish in 1997 when she published The Shunning. The novel was inspired by the true story of Lewis' grandmother, who broke with her strict Old Order Mennonite family to marry a Bible College student. (The Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonites.) To date, The Shunning (the title refers to the ostracizing of Amish who rebel against the sect's strictures) has sold more than 1 million copies. Lewis has written more than 80 books, including 23 Amish novels. Her most recent Amish novel, The Telling, made its debut in April at No. 33 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. The daughter of an Assembly of God minister, Lewis grew up in Lancaster. Although not Amish, Lewis says that because of her extended family, "I have deep roots in the Plain community." (Almost none of the authors writing these books are Amish.) Lewis says "readers tell me my books make them feel less stressed. It's a slower-paced world ... where people know how to talk to each other." Even more exotic to most secular Americans are the values the Amish cherish: humility, obedience and pacifism. (The Amish are conscientious objectors.) "It's about submission to God, the church, the bishop, your father, your family, then to each other in a community setting," says Lewis. And if you are a woman, "it means surrendering your will to your older brother and to your husband if you marry." "They take their Scripture straight up," says Lewis, pointing out how in 2006 the Amish astonished the world by forgiving the gunman who shot and killed five little girls at a one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa., then reached out to the killer's widow and family. Outsider view With their spiritual focus and emphasis on turning away from the secular world, Amish inspirationals are enormously popular with evangelical Christian readers. "These books affirm the importance of living a Godly life," says Dear Author's Little. Little is not a fan of the books, believing that they inaccurately romanticize Amish culture. She's not alone. In Ohio, some Amish leaders have banned members from reading the books. Out of respect for the Amish, Lewis' novels are not sold on amishbooks.org, says general manager David Bercot. While Bercot is not Amish, he has friends who are. "They feel her novels do not present a realistic portrayal of the Amish way of life and way of thinking," he says. The problem isn't the idea of Amish romance — his website sells Linda Byler's Amish romance novels, for instance. Rather, it's Lewis' "English," or outsider, perspective, that's an issue. But whether Amish communities like it or not, "it's a genre that is here to stay," says Bethany's Oates. And now mystery writers are boarding the best-seller buggy. Hitting stores Sept. 28 is P.L. Gaus' Blood of the Prodigal the first in a six-book Amish-Country Mysteries series being reissued by Plume. In December, look for Marta Perry's Murder in Plain Sight. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more

– Getting tired of True Blood? If sex-soaked entertainment has lost some of its punch, you might look to the pure, simple pleasures of Amish life and love. That's right: Amish romance novels are flying off the shelves as readers find that nothing scintillates like the chaste. "It's a huge, huge, huge trend," says one expert on romance fiction. Popular series like Beverly Lewis' Seasons of Grace and Cindy Woodsmall's Sisters of the Quilt are set in the hardcore Amish communities that shun driving and electricity. For those writers, pushing the envelope is a scene in which an unmarried Amish woman lets down her hair in the presence of a man. "Readers get to peer inside the Amish community, and it is not like our own," an English professor tells USA Today. "Simplicity is a hallmark of that community, and simplicity is powerful."

A Manhattan man’s weekly black licorice fix gave him heart disease, the sweet-toothed 73-year-old claims in a new lawsuit that blames the Hershey Company for making the irresistible treats. David Goldberg is a “healthy individual who is not obese” and “has never had any heart conditions,” he says in Manhattan Supreme Court papers. see also Black licorice is bad for your heart, FDA warns Black licorice can be more of a trick than a... But he’s got a weakness for black licorice-flavored Twizzlers, “consuming at least one standard size bag per week” of the twisty-chewy ropes for “years,” he admits in the suit. The one-pound bags contained no warnings “that consumption of the black licorice product can lead to heart conditions” so Goldberg munched away. But in October 2017 the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning that glycyrrhizin — which occurs naturally in black licorice — could prompt heart problems for adults over 40. “Defendant knew for years that its black licorice candy posed a health threat,” yet didn’t warn consumers, the suit says. Last year Goldberg was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and put on medication. He “has stopped eating black licorice, however his condition has not improved,” the suit says. So he’s suing Hershey’s for unspecified damages. A spokesman for the confectioner said, “We are not going to comment on the specific claims as this is pending litigation, but all of our products are safe to eat and formulated in full compliance with FDA regulations, including the agency’s regulation affirming the safety of licorice extract for use in food.” ||||| Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter / Source: TODAY By Aly Walansky Many people have a weakness for a certain type candy, but one man is claiming that his affinity for black licorice likely contributed to him getting heart disease — and now he’s suing one of the world's largest candy companies. David Goldberg, a 73-year-old man from New York City, has filed a lawsuit against the Hershey Company (the parent company of Twizzlers), alleging that although he is an otherwise healthy individual, he was not properly warned about the potential dangers of frequently consuming his favorite candy: black licorice. The lawsuit states that while Goldberg had been “consuming at least one standard size bag [of black licorice candy] per week” for years, the bags contained no warnings of potential health risks and “that consumption of the black licorice product can lead to heart conditions.” Black licorice is one of the most divisive candies out there. Shutterstock stock Goldberg claims in the suit that while he stills suffers from heart issues today, he is otherwise a “healthy individual who is not obese” and “has never had any heart conditions,” according to documents filed in Manhattan's Supreme Court in October. Though Hershey's products may not contain any visible warnings, in October 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did issue a warning that glycyrrhizin, a naturally occurring ingredient in black licorice, does put older adults at risk for heart issues. At the time, the FDA stated, "If you’re 40 or older, eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks could land you in the hospital with an irregular heart rhythm or arrhythmia." The lawsuit blames the Hershey Company for failing to disclose this information to consumers stating, “Defendant knew for years that its black licorice candy posed a health threat,” but did not warn consumers they were putting themselves at risk by buying and eating it. In 2017, Goldberg was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and put on medication. The suit claims that since his diagnosis, the plaintiff “has stopped eating black licorice, however his condition has not improved." But is the licorice really to blame here? "The ingredients are listed on the package so that consumers are aware of what they are putting into their bodies," Emily Clarke, a registered nurse who works at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, (and has not treated Goldberg) told TODAY Food. "It's our responsibility to research those ingredients, educate ourselves and understand healthy food choices." In Clarke's opinion, the licorice alone was likely not enough to cause the condition. She added that "one food choice doesn't cause heart disease. It would take a string of poor consumption choices and possibly genetics, along with a handful of other factors about this man's lifestyle." When reached via email, a representative for Hershey's provided TODAY Food with the following statement: "We are not going to comment on the specific claims as this is pending litigation, but all of our products are safe to eat and formulated in full compliance with FDA regulations, including the agency’s regulation affirming the safety of licorice extract for use in food." Hershey's black licorice does contain licorice extract, which the company says is derived from a "natural flavor obtained from the root of the licorice plant." Regardless of health concerns, licorice still remains a divisive candy across social media, with many either loving or hating its pungent anise flavor. Litigation connecting food to potential health risks continues to make headlines. LaCroix has recently been sued over claims that its "natural" sparkling water contains insecticides and Canada Dry has been sued over its Ginger Ale not actually containing pure ginger root.

– Should black licorice come with a warning label? According to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, consumption of the candy is responsible for a case of heart disease. David Goldberg, 73, is suing the Hershey Company, claiming that his weekly habit of eating "at least one standard size bag per week" of the candy maker's black licorice Twizzlers for years is responsible for his atrial fibrillation that was diagnosed last year, the New York Post reports. After all, the FDA has warned that glycyrrhizin, a compound present in licorice, can cause a variety of heart issues. "[Hershey] knew for years that its black licorice candy posed a health threat" but didn't warn anyone, claims Goldberg, who is on medication and has since kicked the licorice habit, "however his condition has not improved." At lease one nurse, who is unrelated to Goldberg's case, is dubious about his claims. "One food choice doesn't cause heart disease," RN Emily Clarke of University Hospital in Newark, N.J., tells Today. "It would take a string of poor consumption choices and possibly genetics." And, she adds, the ingredients are on the package — "It's our responsibility to research those ingredients." As for Hershey, which does concede that Twizzlers contains licorice root extract, "We are not going to comment on the specific claims as this is pending litigation." But, the company says, its products are safe to eat. If you're a lover of licorice, check out the FDA's safe eating recommendations here. (Pregnant women might want to stay away from licorice, too.)

America's Next Top Teen Model? Tyra Banks announced her latest modeling competition -- the first-ever "fiercely real" plus-sized teen model search. The talk show host, 36, made the announcement on The Tyra Show on Monday and put out a call for women between the ages of 13 and 19 to enter. The only requirements? The teens must have a dress size of 12 to 20 and stand 5'9"- 6'1" tall, she told UsMagazine.com in a statement. See modeling shots of Angelina Jolie when she was only 16 years old! "I've always felt it was my mission to expand the narrow perceptions of beauty," she told Us. "Through America's Next Top Model, True Beauty and The Tyra Show, I challenge industry and universal standards by featuring and celebrating non-traditional beauty, and stressing that true beauty is both inside and out." Banks said she was unhappy that the term "plus-sized" has such a "negative connotation" in today's society. See photos of another variety of plus-sized models -- pregnant supermodels! "I want young girls to realize that what's considered plus-sized is the average American woman," Banks said. "That woman is healthy, fit and beautiful. Adolescence is such an impressionable time in a young woman's life, and I hope this contest helps teen girls discover their own beauty from the inside out." Look back at contestants from America's Next Top Model The finalists will be introduced on the March 2 episode of her talk show, and the winner of the Fiercely Real Teen Model Search will be crowned the following day. The winner will receive a one-year modeling contract and a spread in a major fashion magazine. For more information, check out The Tyra Show's official site. ||||| Tyra Banks might be ending her talk show, but that doesn’t mean she’s out of ideas. Tyra recently announced her latest project—a modeling competition for plus-size teens only, called the Fiercely Real Teen Model Search. “I’ve always felt it was my mission to expand the narrow perceptions of beauty ... I challenge industry and universal standards by featuring and celebrating non-traditional beauty, and stressing that true beauty is both inside and out,” she told Us Weekly. So TyTy is calling on teens between the ages of 13 and 19 to enter her modeling competition. The contestants must wear a dress size of 12 to 20. And shorties need not apply—only teens who are between 5 feet 9 inches and 6 feet 1 inch tall will be considered. Tyra will announce the finalists on the March 2 episode of the “The Tyra Show,” and the winner will be revealed the next day on the talk show. This competition is her way of eliminating the negative connotations associated with “plus-size.” “I want young girls to realize that what’s considered plus-sized is the average American woman,” she added. “That woman is healthy, fit and beautiful. Adolescence is such an impressionable time in a young woman’s life, and I hope this contest helps teen girls discover their own beauty from the inside out.” If that were really true, why hasn’t Tyra done a full season of plus-size models on “America’s Next Top Model”? Plus-size teens can enter the competition here.

– Tyra Banks is jumping on the plus-size model bandwagon with a new modeling competition—the Fiercely Real Teen Model Search. “I've always felt it was my mission to expand the narrow perceptions of beauty,” she tells Us. Teens with dress sizes between 12 and 20 who stand 5'9" to 6'1" tall are eligible to compete for a one-year modeling contract and a spread in a major fashion magazine. “I want young girls to realize that what's considered plus-sized is the average American woman,” Banks says. “That woman is healthy, fit, and beautiful.” For more details, including how to enter, click here.

The railgun, a futuristic electromagnetic weapon that can fire a projectile at seven times the speed of sound, made its public debut at the the U.S. Navy's Science and Technology Expo. (Reuters) First it mounted a laser aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf. Now the Navy has publicly unveiled another futuristic weapon: the electromagnetic “rail gun.” In development for years, the weapon would be able to fire a projectile at Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound, hitting targets 110 miles away. (By comparison, a Hellfire missile travels a little over Mach 1.) Instead of gunpowder as a propellant, it uses electromagnetic pulses, and the projectiles hit with such overwhelming force that they don’t need to be armed with explosives. The impact from traveling at such amazing speeds is enough, thank you very much. Lasers sizzle rather than go boom, as some have said. The rail gun definitely has one heck of a boom. The gun made its debut at the Navy’s Future Force Science and Technology Expo at the Washington Convention Center this week. One top Navy official recently likened the impact to “a freight train going through the wall at a hundred miles an hour.” The lack of gunpowder and explosive warheads eliminates some significant safety hazards for Navy crews, officials say. By the way, here’s video of that laser: The Navy is unveiling a laser weapons capability that can be used aboard ships at sea. (U.S. Navy) [RELATED: With photos and video, Navy shows how its new laser gun works at sea] ||||| The Navy and Marine Corps’ new ‘Star Wars’-style weapon made its debut in the nation’s capital this week. The Electromagnetic Railgun, developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with BAE Systems, has the potential to revolutionize naval warfare. The weapon was on display to the public for the first time at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology EXPO at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Wednesday and Thursday. The biennial event showcases the latest advances in power projection and force protection, including this year’s star - the EM Railgun. To defend ships, conduct surface warfare against enemy vessels and support U.S. Marines and ground forces, EM Railgun-armed ships will be able to fire hypervelocity projectiles giving US forces even greater reach and lethality. The EM Railgun is one immensely powerful weapon. How does it work? The EM Railgun launcher is a long-range weapon that uses electromagnetic energy, instead of conventional chemical propellants, to fire projectiles. The ship generates electricity and this electricity is stored over several seconds in the pulsed power system and an electric pulse is sent to the railgun. It gets its name from its use of rails. High electrical currents accelerate a sliding metal conductor between two rails and this creates magnetic fields to launch projectiles. The electromagnetic force is so powerful that it launches the projectile up to Mach 6, firing projectiles farther and faster than current options. These projectiles reach an amazing 4,500 mph and precisely hit targets more than 100 miles away. Mach 6 is more than six times the speed of sound. To put how fast that is in context, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has built the fastest manned airplane, the Blackbird, and that flies around Mach 3. Once launched, the projectile uses its extreme speed, the kinetic energy, rather than conventional explosives to destroy targets on land, at sea or in the air. And to put the improved distance in perspective, the current Mk 45 naval gun mount has a range of about 13 nautical miles with conventional ammunition. What does it fire? With ONR, BAE Systems is developing the next-generation HVP, Hyper Velocity Projectile, that can be fired by the EM Railgun and future models of railguns. The HVP will also be compatible with current weapons systems like the Navy 5-Inch Mk 45, and Navy, Marine Corps, and Army 155-mm Tube Artillery systems. It’s designed to be a guided projectile with low drag for high-velocity, maneuverability and decreased time-to-target. It has advanced guidance electronics and in flight, the HVP will be 24 inches long and weigh 28 pounds. The ammunition will be easy to handle and transport. The Navy’s EM Railgun will fire 10 of these rounds per minute. When fired with an Mk 45 the HVP will be 20 rounds per minute and extend range to 50 nautical miles. What are the advantages? Railguns are a smart alternative to current large artillery and this weapon represents significant advances in U.S. Navy and Marine Corps capabilities. It also provides additional benefits like enhancing safety aboard surface ships while greatly reducing cost. Since this system that does not use gunpowder or propellant to fire the projectile, it reduces the need for high explosives to be carried on ships and the related hazards in doing so. Off the ship, the EM Railgun will improve safety as well. Since it uses its extreme speed on impact, the danger of unexploded ordnance on the battlefield will be reduced. Another key advantage is cost. Railgun projectiles are a mere fraction of the cost of those currently used in missile engagements – possibly even one percent of the cost of today’s missile systems. Achieving this “Star Wars” - style weapon has not been easy. For years, many programs have sought to build such a powerful weapon, but a design that works, and works on a practical level, has been incredibly difficult to crack. Generating the power necessary to accelerate rail gun projectiles and creating materials capable of resisting the extreme temperatures generated are just two of the enormous obstacles a successful railgun needs to overcome. Development of ONR’s Electromagnetic Railgun began about ten years ago. Phase I focused on developing the launcher, pulsed power, and risk reduction for the projectile. In 2012, Phase II began further advancing the technology, such as a firing rate of 10 rounds per minute. What’s next? The railgun program continues to perform impressively and is on track for its scheduled at-sea testing next year. Ballet dancer turned defense specialist Allison Barrie has traveled around the world covering the military, terrorism, weapons advancements and life on the front line. You can reach her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @Allison_Barrie.

– The Navy's latest weapon is an electromagnetic "railgun" designed to fire projectiles fast and far without using gunpowder as a propellant, the Washington Post reports. Unveiled at a Navy expo this week, the weapon uses electromagnetic impulses to shoot projectiles at up to seven times the speed of sound, creating a force so powerful that no explosive warheads are needed. The impact is like "a freight train going through a wall at a hundred miles an hour," says a top Navy official. It's also far cheaper than other missile engagement systems, and should reduce risk on surface ships because explosives aren't required, Fox News reports. How it works: The railgun draws electricity from a ship and fires projectiles using electromagnetic energy. Under the hood, a sliding metal conductor accelerated by an electrical current runs along the weapon's two metal rails, charging up magnetic fields that fire projectiles. But the gun requires 34 mega joules of power to launch a single 23-pound projectile more than 100 miles at Mach 7, and most destroyers don't have that kind of power in reserve yet, the Navy Times reports. What's more, engineers will need months or even years to link the railgun to the combat system on cruisers and destroyers. The Navy plans to give the weapon its first sea-test next year. The Navy's other cool new toy is a laser that it fired from a vessel for the first time in December.

A stranger’s incredible reaction to a same-sex marriage proposal has melted the internet’s ice cold heart. Jessica Rodriguez proposed to her long-term girlfriend, Chelsea Miller, this weekend at an art gallery in Chicago. Rodriguez had arranged to have the public proposal captured on camera, but she could never have planned the epic reaction from an older woman who was sitting nearby. The woman, who was sat in a chair reading when the proposal took place, was snapped holding her heart and gasping delightedly. ||||| A proposal photo blew up across the internet on Saturday thanks to a happy bystander pictured in the photo's background. Carlos Jair, a Twitter user from Houston, Texas, shared a photo of the moment his sister proposed to her girlfriend at the Art Institute of Chicago. In his tweet, he drew attention to the delighted older woman smiling at the happy couple. My sister proposed to her GF today and look at that older woman's reaction pic.twitter.com/ifFl3mJNAr — Carlos🖤Shook (@AreYouShook) December 18, 2016 His sister Jessica tells news.com.au that she and the photographer were looking over photos taken the day of the proposal when they noticed the woman's sweet reaction. "It really made that photo even more special," she told news.com.au. Carlos's tweet garnered more than 276,000 likes, more than 89,000 retweets and even drew a congratulatory note from Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James. Everything about this photo FTW. #LoveIsLove Congratulations to your sister and her GF @AreYouShook https://t.co/F45DE74PuG — E L James (@E_L_James) December 18, 2016 A few hours after Carlos posted the photo, Jessica shared the couple's proposal video. Our Proposal Video at The Art Institute of Chicago #LoveIsLove @areyoushook https://t.co/rGP0PV3D2f — Jess R (@Its_Jess_Rdgz) December 18, 2016 She's also asked for Twitter's help in finding the woman who made their photo such a massive success. I think someone knows the woman in our photo. If you do please give her our thanks! She made our photo much more special 😍❤️😍❤️😍❤️#FramingIt — Jess R (@Its_Jess_Rdgz) December 19, 2016 ||||| This crawl of online resources of the 114th US Congress was performed on behalf of The United States National Archives & Records Administration (NARA).

– Sometimes it's the honest, unedited reaction to a moment that gets the greatest applause. Such is the case in a proposal photo now being widely shared. Carlos Jair took several pictures of his sister Jessica Rodriguez proposing to her long-term girlfriend Chelsea Miller at the Art Institute of Chicago last weekend. It was a dressy affair, a knee bent, a ring presented, people cheered—but in looking at his photos later, Jair and his sister noticed one image in particular, which captures a third woman's reaction in the background, reports Mashable. Her mouth is wide open, her right hand reaching toward her heart. She looks utterly delighted. Says Rodriguez: "It really made that photo even more special." Jair posted the photo to Twitter with the caption: "My sister proposed to her GF today and look at that older woman's reaction." It's been retweeted more than 105,000 times and liked more than 330,000. A video of the proposal posted to YouTube has more than 50,000 views, and only eight thumbs down. Reactions range from "most stylish couple ever" to "I'm crying" and even "this gave me life." Many noted the "lady in pink" in particular, with one woman writing: "The lady in the pink represents us, the silent and loving majority of Sr Citizens. We are there for you. Congratulations." And the Huffington Post summed it up this way: The third woman's reaction "melted the internet’s ice cold heart." (See what happened when two nuns fell in love.)

Stocks plunged again Wednesday as investors turned their attention back to the weak economy and Europe's debt problems. More than half of the big gains that followed a Federal Reserve pledge to extend super-low interest rates vanished. Trader Peter Tuchman works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Associated Press) Trader Robert Vella works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Associated Press) In this Aug. 8, 2011 photo, Jason H. Cristino works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in New York. A pledge by the Federal Reserve to keep extremely low interest rates for another couple of... (Associated Press) Gordon Charlop, center, works with fellow traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Associated Press) Specialist Stephen Steinthal works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) (Associated Press) The Dow Jones industrial average fell 232 points, or 2.1 percent, to 11,007 in afternoon trading. The average plummeted more than 300 points within minutes of the opening bell and was down as many as 468 points by late morning. On Tuesday, the Dow gained 429 points after the Fed said it planned to keep interest rates extremely low at least through the middle of 2013. It was the first time the Fed announced such a timetable. But the day's gains were likely just a blip caused by computerized trading based on programs that dictate when to buy or sell, some investors and analysts said. The rally was "so unbelievably fast, it's as though every computer on Wall Street hit the point where the program said `buy, buy, buy, buy, buy'," said Daniel Alpert, managing partner of investment bank Westwood Capital. "Machines don't read Fed announcements, people do _ and they were reacting in a negative way." That was more evident Wednesday, as investors focused on the Fed's pessimistic assessment of the economy: The central bank expects it to stay weak for at least two more years. "Now it gets back to the fundamentals" of the economy, said Mark Lamkin, founder of Lamkin Wealth Management, which manages $250 million. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 13 points, or 1.1 percent, to 1,160. The Nasdaq fell 24, or 1 percent, to 2,458. Gold rose above $1,800 per ounce for the first time as money poured into investments considered safe at a volatile time for the financial markets. Gold was up $41.70 per ounce to $1,784.90 in afternoon trading after earlier climbing as high as $1,801. The 10-year Treasury note, which has also served as a haven, also rose sharply. Its yield fell to 2.20 percent from 2.26 percent late Tuesday. It had reached a record low of 2.03 percent on Tuesday. A bond's yield falls when its price rises. Investors have bought U.S. government debt even after S&P stripped the United States of its top credit rating, AAA, late last week. On top of concerns about the U.S. economy, attention is still on Europe, where investors worry that Italy and Spain may be the next countries unable to repay their debts. The European financial system has been battered by fears about banks' holdings of bonds issued by heavily-indebted countries, such as Greece and Portugal. This week, those concerns have evolved into fears about banks' exposure to other banks, analysts say. Societe Generale, France's second largest bank, was down more than 20 percent at one point. "It's the same game of Old Maid playing out in Europe that was played out here during the subprime mortgage crisis," said Quincy Krosby, an economist and market strategist with Prudential financial. As the contagion hits ever-larger countries, such as France, "the ramifications for the banks are more detrimental," Krosby said. In Asia, the concern is that higher inflation in China could lead to slower growth. China, Brazil and other less-developed countries have provided the strongest economic growth since the world began to recover from recession in 2009. Financial stocks led the U.S. market lower. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. fell 6.8 percent after it said it will cut 1,500 jobs, or about 3 percent of its global work force, to lower costs. As a group, financial stocks in the S&P 500 fell 5.4 percent, the biggest decline of the 10 industries that make up the index. One big reason: investors don't know how exposed U.S. banks are to the European financial system, via their ownership of debt of European countries and banks, Krosby said. From a trader's perspective, "at the end of the day, if there's one cockroach, there's a million," she said. Europe accounts for about 17 percent of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s revenue and 21 percent of its assets, the bank's CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC. Its stock is down 2.2 percent. Dimon also said he expected leaders in Europe to resolve the debt crisis without harm to the bank's investments. Stocks have dropped so much that six companies have withdrawn plans to sell their stocks this week on U.S. markets for the first time, according to Dealogic. That brings the total number of withdrawn initial public offers, or IPOs, to 65 so far this year. That's the most through Aug. 10 for any year since 2001. On Tuesday, the Dow swung 600 points in the final 90 minutes of trading, from a 205-point decline to the 429 point gain, after the Fed announcement, which also said the central bank was considering "policy tools" to help the economy. It was the Dow's 10th-best point gain. But on Tuesday the central bank acknowledged that the temporary factors it has said slowed growth _ like high gas prices and disruption to manufacturers following Japan's March earthquake _were only part of the reason that the economy grew at its slowest pace in the first half of this year since the recession ended in June 2009. The statement "was essentially a full admission that the Fed had not fully gotten their arms around the permanence to the weak trends in the economy," William O'Donnell, head of U.S. Treasury strategy at RBS Securities, wrote in a report. Economists have become more pessimistic about the U.S. recovery in the last month. Manufacturing is barely growing, people are spending less, and the job market isn't expanding fast enough to significantly bring down unemployment. Concerns about the global economy have overshadowed strong corporate earnings. On Wednesday, the parent of Macy's and Bloomingdale's said profits were 64 percent higher than a year ago because of strong sales. Quarterly profit was up 52 percent at Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. Cree Inc., a maker of products used in light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, rose 14.9 percent after it reported earnings late Tuesday that were better than analysts expected. And the Walt Disney Co. said late Tuesday that profit rose 11 percent last quarter. Stronger revenue from its ESPN sports television network and theme parks made up for lackluster box-office results. Its stock fell 9.6 percent. ---- AP Business Writers Sarah DiLorenzo and Daniel Wagner contributed to this report. ||||| Financial stocks led the decliners Wednesday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to an 11-month low. Citigroup fell $3.33, or 10%, to $28.49; Bank of America was off 83 cents, or 11%, to 6.77; J.P. Morgan Chase was down 2.03, or 5.6%, to 34.37; and American Express shed 3.30, or 7.2%, to 42.80. Investors were squeezed between fears of further contagion among European banks and the Federal Reserve's gloomy economic outlook. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to an 11-month low as investors were squeezed between fears of further contagion among European banks and the Federal Reserve's gloomy economic outlook. Paul Vigna has details. The blue-chip Dow fell 519.83 points, or 4.62%, to 10719.94 on Wednesday, more than reversing the previous day's exuberant gains. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index slid 51.77 points, or 4.42%, to 1120.76 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 101.47 points, or 4.09%, to 2381.05. The major indexes' declines off their April 29 highs now exceed the magnitude of the losses during the summer of 2010. The S&P 500 has fallen 18%, more than the S&P fell between late April and early July 2010. On Wednesday, all 30 the Dow components and all 10 of the S&P 500 sectors were in negative territory, with just 11 of the S&P 500 components finishing in positive territory. In a reflection of investor concern, the CBOE Market Volatility Index, the "fear gauge" known as the VIX, surged 23%. "The market can go from euphoria to depression at the flick of a switch," says Chris Brown, portfolio manager of the Pax World Balanced Fund, with $2 billion in assets under management. "People are concerned about France's ratings, and the banks are under an extreme amount of pressure." Walt Disney was the steepest decliner among the Dow components for most of the day, tumbling 3.16, or 9.1%, to 31.54 after the blue-chip media and entertainment conglomerate reported results that topped analyst expectations, but raised analyst concerns about decelerating advertising-rate growth. "This is a market run on emotions and headlines, and the price moves are exacerbated by high frequency traders," said Sal Arnuk, co-head of equity trading at Chatham, N.J., brokerage Themis Trading. "It's definitely not for those with a weak stomach—all those clichés stand." "We just have not built any confidence," said Jeffrey Friedman, senior market strategist at MF Global. "The Fed came out yesterday and tried to appease everyone and say we're on top of this, we'll give you a date, we'll keep interest rates low for two years. But that means nothing. People have lost confidence in Washington, D.C. This is a rejection of that Bernanke statement." The stock declines fall follows several days of volatile trading, including the biggest day of Dow gains in over two years on Tuesday. The blue-chip index had rallied sharply in the final hour to close Tuesday up 430 points after the Federal Reserve said it would leave rates exceptionally low through mid-2013. Associated Press Specialist Stephen Steinthal works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Aug. 10. Stocks wiped out the previous day's gain, with the morning of Aug. 10 starting with sell-offs. The focus is also turning to Europe as questions emerge over France's credit rating. (Photo: AP Photo.) Initially, though, the Dow slumped to an 11-month low as the Fed said economic growth had been "considerably slower" than expected. Kelli Hill, portfolio manager at Sentinel Investments, said that even hopes of a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, may not be enough to help market sentiment. "Nothing seems to be working—we had QE1, QE2, interest rates have been at zero, and yet nothing seems to work," she said. "The market has become addicted to this constant stimulus and as an addict, you crave more and more." Russell Investment Chief Markets Strategist Stephen Wood explains the factors driving Wednesday's steep stock market selloff and what we might expect in the days and weeks ahead. In corporate news, shares of Polo Ralph Lauren gained 5.43, or 4.5%, to 125.28 to lead the short list of S&P 500 gainers. The high-end clothing company reported a 52% gain in fiscal first-quarter earnings amid better-than-expected sales. It also offered a rosy revenue forecast for the current quarter and the full year. Capital One Financial edged up 28 cents, or 0.7%, to 41.05 after the company said it would buy HSBC Holdings' U.S. credit-card business for a premium of around $2.6 billion. Small-cap Motricity tumbled 2.69, or 59%, to 1.86 after the mobile internet services company missed earnings expectations and provided a disappointing outlook. Write to Jonathan Cheng at [email protected] ||||| NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks toppled again Wednesday, continuing a manic trend that has had the Dow industrials swinging 400 points each day this week. Intensifying worries about Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis had Wall Street more than erasing the prior day’s rally. “The turmoil that now envelopes global financial markets has come upon us with a frightening suddenness,” said David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. Less than three weeks ago, on July 22, the S&P; 500 /quotes/zigman/3870025 SPX +1.03% closed at 1,345, up almost 7% for the year, noted Kelly. At Wednesday’s close, the S&P; 500 was off nearly 11% for the year. Treasurys climbed for a third day; bank stocks were slammed in the U.S. and Europe; the U.S. dollar gained and the euro lost ground. The Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/zigman/627449 DJIA +0.91% fell 519.83 points, or 4.6%, to 10,719.94. On Tuesday the blue-chip index closed with a 429.92-point gain. On Monday, it lost 634.76 points. The three-session stretch of 400-plus moves in either direction last occurred November 2008. “Fears of a ‘repeat of 2008’ have led many individual investors to sell stocks and other risky assets,” said Kelly. But, the selloff may well be overblown, given the market has already priced in an outcome that is not yet clear. “Over the next few weeks we will get a much clearer idea about whether the economy has the resilience to stay on a growth path,” Kelly said. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 51.77 points, or 4.4%, to 1,120.76, with financials slammed the hardest and utilities faring the best of its 10 major industry groups. Read more about financials. Bank of America Corp. /quotes/zigman/190927/quotes/nls/bac BAC +3.13% shares slid 11% after Brian Moynihan, its chief executive officer, told a conference call the lender is positioned to perform even in a slower recovery, but also said economic fundamentals have improved for the country and his bank from a year ago. The Nasdaq Composite Index /quotes/zigman/123127 COMP +1.29% shed 101.47 points, or 4.1%, to 2,381.05. For every stock on the rise two fell on the New York Stock Exchange, where nearly 2.2 billion shares traded. Composite volume neared 8.3 billion. “Investors have been poking at the euro, saying they have to have a legitimate solution, they are not looking for papering over the problem, and they won’t rest until they figure out a way to devalue the euro or allow constituent countries to go back to their respective currencies,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank. Click to Play Tech sector caught in plunge The tech sector drops, with shares of Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Intel and IBM posting sizable losses. MarketWatch's Dan Gallagher reports. The benchmark indexes came off session lows after Societe Generale, the second biggest bank in France, issued a broad denial of all market rumors following speculation about the nation’s credit worthiness, which sent the expense of insuring French government debt to a high. “I think this is investors’ indictment of central governments. I thought maybe central banks commanded a bit more respect, but investors worry that we’re going to enter a downturn without the assistance of fiscal stimulus,” said Ablin. The Federal Open Market Committee on Tuesday said it would keep benchmark interest rates near zero to help prop up a recovery that is progressing slower than the central bank had anticipated. On Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met at the White House, one of a series of meetings on the economy after the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating and partisan battle over the debt ceiling.

– Yesterday's big market gains vanished and then some today as investors worried about Europe's debt problems and the weak US recovery, reports MarketWatch. Dow: Down 520 points, or 4.6%, to 10,719 S&P 500: Down 52 points, or 4.4%, to 1,121 Nasdaq: Down 101 points, or 4%, to 2,381 "Markets are having an extremely difficult time here—volatility is rising and the speed and voracity of these declines is so rapid I don't think anyone can wrap their heads around this," a market strategist at Banyan Partners tells the Wall Street Journal. At one point, gold rose above $1,800 an ounce for the first time as people looked for safe havens, notes AP.

Browning developed a technique that compares the genomes of many modern people, and looks for stretches of DNA that are unusually varied, relative to their neighboring segments. These varied stretches are likely to have been inherited from ancient hominins like Neanderthals, Denisovans, or as-yet-undiscovered groups. Browning can then compare these segments to the genomes of those ancient hominins to work out exactly which group the DNA came from. In the genomes of people from Japan and China, Browning found several segments that closely match the genome of the Denisovan woman whose pinky was found in the Altai Mountains. But to her surprise, she also found segments that were clearly Denisovan in origin, but were much weaker matches to the Altai female. “They’re close enough that we’re sure they’re Denisovan, but they’re not as close,” she says. This suggests that modern humans inherited DNA from two separate groups of Denisovans. The way Browning sees it, the ancestors of today’s Melanesians encountered Denisovans as they expanded through South Asia and the Malay Peninsula. The two groups interbred, with the result that 5 percent of modern Melanesian DNA has a Denisovan origin. At roughly the same time, the ancestors of today’s East Asians were taking a more northerly route through the continent, and met a different group of Denisovans, perhaps somewhere close to that Altai cave. Again, there was sex. Again, Denisovan DNA infiltrated the human genome. But this contribution was much smaller, and today’s East Asians retain much less Denisovan ancestry than Melanesians do—just 0.2 percent of their genome. “Maybe it was a large group of East Asians meeting a small number of Denisovans,” Browning speculates. And complicating matters further, some Melanesians likely migrated north and mixed with East Asians, uniting the two waves of Denisovan ancestry in one lineage. “Once I found two Denisovan waves, I thought we’d see something similar in the Neanderthals,” Browning says. To her surprise, she didn’t. People from Eurasia can trace around 2 percent of their DNA to Neanderthals, and it seems that this legacy comes from a single wave of interbreeding with one particular group—one that likely lived in the European part of their range. That goes “somewhat against the grain of current knowledge,” says Emilia Huerta Sánchez, from the University of California at Merced. Some scientists have suggested that several groups of Neanderthals donated DNA to modern humans, which might explain why East Asians contain considerably more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans do. Browning and her colleagues argue otherwise, “and they have a considerable level of evidence to support their conclusions,” Huerta Sánchez says. That seems counterintuitive, especially since we know that Neanderthals lived throughout Europe and Asia, whereas Denisovans have only been found in a single Siberian cave. But that picture might be deceptive. Scientists have sequenced the genomes of two Neanderthals—one from Vindija Cave, in Croatia, and another from the Altai region, in Siberia—and the differences between them are smaller than between the two Denisovan populations Browning identified in her work. “Maybe the Neanderthals were more nomadic and their populations were mixing a lot, while the Denisovans stayed in particular places and didn’t mix,” she says. It’s also possible that Denisovans were more widespread than their limited bones suggest. “They may have overlapped in range with Asians and Papuans, as these populations had multiple encounters,” says Priya Moorjani, from University of California, Berkeley. “Since we only know about Denisovans from genetic material from one cave, any additional insights are exciting.” We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]. ||||| Ruslan Olinchuk / Alamy Stock Photo Our ancestors mated with another species of ancient hominins, the Denisovans, on at least two occasions. The discovery suggests that Denisovans were widely across Asia, and apparently co-existed happily with modern humans, to the point of having children with them in two different parts of the ancient world. The Denisovans were unknown until 2010, when researchers described a fragment of a girl’s finger bone found in Denisova cave in Siberia. Soon afterwards, researchers sequenced its genome from the surviving DNA. The DNA did not belong to any known hominins, such as Neanderthals, so it had to be something new. What’s more, around 5 per cent of the DNA of some Australasians – particularly people from Papua New Guinea – is Denisovan. Humans evidently mated with Denisovans 50,000 or more years ago. Advertisement But this posed a puzzle: why were the present-day descendants of Denisovans so far from the Denisovans’ Siberian home? The simplest explanation was that Denisovans lived throughout much of Asia, including South East Asia, not just Siberia. Sharon Browning of the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues have now found evidence of a second instance of human-Denisovan interbreeding – on the Asian mainland. Hidden in the genes Browning’s team used a new technique to trawl for segments of ancient DNA in the genomes of 5600 living humans from Europe, Asia, America and Oceania. The chunks of older DNA stand out because they are unusually rich in mutations, which would have built up for hundreds of thousands of years in the genomes of Denisovans, but would not have been present in the human lineage. So when humans and Denisovans mated, their children would inherit these mutation-rich regions of DNA. After Browning had isolated the ancient DNA, she then used the reference genomes of Denisovans and Neanderthals to establish where it came from. She found that some East Asians carry Denisovan DNA, especially Han Chinese, Chinese Dai and Japanese people. But this Denisovan DNA is distinct from that carried by Australasians. It is more closely related to the Denisovan sample. “Although the Papuans ended up with more Denisovan ancestry, it turns out to be less similar to the sequenced Denisovan,” says Browning. The upshot is that Denisovans bred with modern humans in at least two places: in east Asia, and further south-east in Indonesia or Australasia. “Our research demonstrates that there were at least two distinct populations of Denisovans living in Asia, probably somewhat geographically distant,” says Browning. Even more interbreeding “The fact that two episodes of interbreeding occurred suggests that at least in some instances, Denisovans and modern humans were willing to live in proximity and interact,” says Browning. As well as mating with Denisovans, there is strong evidence that humans interbred with Neanderthals, which were a sister species to the Denisovans. “This new work is important because for the first time it unambiguously demonstrates a third interbreeding [of modern with ancient hominins],” says David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston. “Up to this point, we only had data for two.” There have been claims of a second, earlier instance of interbreeding with Neanderthals, but not everyone is convinced. Tantalisingly, breeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans may not be the end of our ancestors’ promiscuity. A quarter of the chunks of ancient DNA that Browning found in living humans didn’t match either Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA. So we may have also had children with other, unidentified hominins. “At this point, we have no way of knowing if these derive from an as-yet-unknown archaic group, or are simply false positives,” says Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Journal reference: Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.02.031

– Ancient humans weren't against knocking boots with other species: We know they had sex with Neanderthals. We also know they mated with the mysterious Denisovans, as some Australasians (those from Papua New Guinea in particular) have 5% Denisovan DNA. But a "breakthrough" study shows the interbreeding wasn't limited to those two instances. While looking for ancient DNA in the genomes of 5,600 living humans, a team at the University of Washington in Seattle came across evidence of a third interbreeding event, reports New Scientist. A smaller contribution of Denisovan DNA in Han Chinese, Chinese Dai, and Japanese people—about 0.2% of their genome—suggests humans mixed with a distinct population of Denisovans in not one but two locations: Indonesia or Australasia and East Asia. Though the only four Denisovan fossils that have been found come from the same cave in Siberia, the research published in the journal Cell shows Denisovans were spread across Asia and "suggests that at least in some instances, Denisovans and modern humans were willing to live in proximity and interact," lead author Sharon Browning says. Her research also backs the theory that there was a single "wave" of interbreeding between humans and one population of Neanderthals, reports the Atlantic. But Browning couldn't link other ancient DNA found in living humans to Neanderthals or Denisovans, suggesting humans may have mated with hominins we haven't even discovered yet. Harvard geneticist David Reich, who was not involved in the research, says the finding of "a definite third interbreeding event" makes this "a breakthrough paper," per the Washington Post. (Here's how a bit of cave dirt changed archaeology.)

ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Georgia’s special election will be a nail-biter all the way to the finish line Tuesday, as President Trump looms large over an election that has huge stakes for both Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2018 midterms. Democrats have zeroed in on the suburban Atlanta district as their best chance this year to flip a House seat and are looking to Jon Ossoff to be the face of the anti-Trump resistance. But if Ossoff comes up short, his loss will deal a major blow to their newfound momentum and political activism. The stakes are just as high for the GOP. If it loses the seat left open by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Trump will likely shoulder the blame and Republicans could start defecting from his agenda. ADVERTISEMENT On the other hand, a victory for Republican Karen Handel will signify that opposition to Trump might not win Democrats the House in 2018. In the final days of the race, Ossoff and Handel have sought to steer clear of national politics, with each candidate barely uttering Trump’s name. Both have also downplayed the national implications of the race, even though it has been a magnet for attention and tens of millions of dollars. The total spending in the race is estimated to be around $60 million. Ossoff, who launched his campaign months ago by urging voters to “Make Trump Furious,” has tempered his rhetoric when it comes to the president. While he needed to win Democrats in the jungle primary, he now needs to appeal to more moderate voters in a district that has been a deep shade of red for decades. But when hyping up his supporters over the weekend as they launched more canvasses, Ossoff still made indirect references to Trump, saying that “fear and hate” won’t be tolerated in the state. “Let’s send a message across this country that fear and hate and division are not welcome in Georgia,” Ossoff said at his Sandy Springs office on Saturday, “that Georgians stand up instead for unity and for progress.” When asked about Trump directly, Ossoff didn’t shy away from saying that he’ll stand up to the president where there are major differences, but he also said he’d work with him on issues where they can find common ground. “I’ve consistently said I’ll stand up to President Trump if he embarrasses us or threatens our interests and that I’m willing to work with him on issues of mutual interest,” Ossoff told reporters on Sunday, adding that there has been an increase in concerns lately over the administration’s “integrity and competence.” Ossoff’s ground game has grown into a massive operation of more than 12,000 volunteers, helped along by canvassing and phone banking from various national and local groups. The campaign’s emphasis on the ground game illustrates how important turnout will be for Ossoff in a GOP-leaning district. Trump only carried the district by less than 2 points, but Price still handily won reelection. Ossoff will need to turn out his base — particularly voters in northern DeKalb County and black voters — and make some inroads with independents and even GOP voters still lukewarm on Trump. Handel has also had to strike a difficult balance when it comes to the president. She didn’t mention him once at any of her events or rallies in the final days of the race, and notably neglected to bring him up while campaigning with Price and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, a former Georgia governor. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from weighing in. He tweeted his support for Handel Monday morning and followed up later in the day with another tweet attacking Ossoff for living outside the district. Trump also recorded a robocall for Handel earlier this month. When told that Trump tweeted about her, Handel only briefly remarked, with some laughter: “I heard that, I heard, yes.” Handel’s decision to keep her distance from Trump risks alienating Trump’s supporters, a part of the GOP base that she still needs. But GOP strategists believe she has still shown enough support for Republicans’ legislative agenda in Washington. “Karen has to sort of walk a fine line, but I don’t think she’s shied away from talking about those core Republican issues that Republican leaders in Washington have focused on,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a lobbyist and Georgia state finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. Tanenblatt and Handel previously worked together for Perdue. Handel’s campaign has looked to keep pace with Ossoff’s. The Georgia Republican said they knocked on 6,000 doors on Saturday, while national groups and a super PAC tied to House GOP leadership have funneled GOP money into the race. In a nod to the closeness of the race, Handel and Ossoff got some last-minute help Monday from other politicians. While Handel was meeting potential voters in Alpharetta, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) swung by her event. Handel’s primary rival Bob Gray also stopped by, telling The Hill he’s been rallying his Trump loyalist base for Handel. Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander (D) also stopped by Ossoff’s two canvassing events on Monday. Kander gained some national attention after running a close race for Senate in Missouri last year. While Ossoff and Handel have publicly balked at playing up the race’s national significance, Kander reminded supporters that all eyes in politics would be on Georgia when polls close at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night. “You know the whole country’s watching,” he said. ||||| President Donald Trump tweeted his support of Karen Handel, the Republican candidate in Georgia's special election, on election day morning. | Getty Trump slams Dem Ossoff as Georgia voters head to the polls President Donald Trump began his last minute pitch to Georgia voters just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, warning them that Democrat Jon Ossoff wants to raise taxes and is “weak on crime and security” while his GOP opponent, Karen Handel, is just the opposite. “Democrat Jon Ossoff, who wants to raise your taxes to the highest level and is weak on crime and security, doesn't even live in district,” Trump wrote on Twitter early Tuesday morning, the start of a two-post flurry. “KAREN HANDEL FOR CONGRESS. She will fight for lower taxes, great healthcare strong security-a hard worker who will never give up! VOTE TODAY.” Story Continued Below Voters in Georgia’s sixth Congressional district will choose Tuesday between Ossoff and Handel, the two candidates vying for the suburban Atlanta seat left vacant by Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of health and human services. Tuesday’s election is a runoff that follows one last April in which Ossoff finished well ahead of a multi-candidate GOP field but did not hit the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to win the seat outright without a runoff. Price won the seat last November by more than 23 percentage points, but Democrats, eager to win a seat last held by a member of the president’s cabinet, have poured money into the race, making it the most expensive House election on record. Polls show the race essentially even heading into Election Day, with Handel holding a lead of less than a quarter of a point according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. Playbook PM Sign up for our must-read newsletter on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. Ossoff, running for office for the first time at 30-years-old, has faced criticism from Trump and others that he does not live in the sixth district, a situation the Democrat has explained by saying that he is currently living with his girlfriend while she completes medical school at Emory University just outside the district’s borders. He has said he intends to move back into the district once his girlfriend’s studies are complete, an explanation that has not insulated him from attacks from the president, who has noted Ossoff’s residency issue more than once in posts to Twitter. Ossoff: The congressional baseball shooting has 'no place' in an attack ad poster="https://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201706/642/1155968404_5477665602001_5477653751001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true “Karen Handel's opponent in #GA06 can't even vote in the district he wants to represent because he doesn't even live there!” Trump wrote on Twitter Monday evening. “He wants to raise taxes and kill healthcare. On Tuesday, #VoteKarenHandel.” Ossoff said on Tuesday morning that he thinks the competency and integrity concerns of the Trump administration have increased and that this a matter of public interest. “It speaks to a greater need of accountability on effective congressional oversight,” Ossoff said. “I won’t hesitate to stand up to him if he threatens our interests or values.” Diamond Naga Siu contributed to this report.

– The House race that has become much more than a House race will be decided Tuesday in Georgia, and President Trump shot off some early tweets to support the GOP candidate. Republican Karen Handel, he wrote, "will fight for lower taxes, great healthcare," and "strong security," while opponent Jon Ossoff "wants to raise your taxes to the highest level and is weak on crime and security, doesn't even live in district," he tweeted. On the last point, the 30-year-old has explained that he's currently living with his med-student girlfriend but will move back into the district in suburban Atlanta when she's done at Emory University, reports Politico. With polls showing a statistical dead heat, political analysts have essentially morphed the race into a referendum on Trump. That explains why advocates on both sides have pumped more than $50 million into the contest, making it the most expensive House race in history. The seat has long been held by Republicans, with Tom Price vacating it upon Trump's win to become his Health and Human Services secretary. Both candidates have sought to downplay the national implications, notes the Hill, but it's widely seen as a barometer for the president's agenda and for control of the House in 2018.

A corny musician joke about drummers came to life for Belle & Sebastian’s Richard Colburn this week, when the group’s bus driver looked around, said, “yup, everyone’s here,” and pulled out of the parking lot of a Walmart in Dickinson, North Dakota, leaving Colburn behind. “I was coming out of the Walmart, and he was coming into the Walmart, and he was waving very happily, in a good mood,” frontman Stuart Murdoch tells The Current. “And that was the last time that we saw him.” It seems that it took a while for Murdoch and company to notice Colburn was gone. Murdoch first tweeted about his disappearance from Maple Grove, Minnesota, which according to Google Maps is a seven-hour drive from Dickinson: Shit, we left Richard in North Dakota. Anyone want to be a hero and get him to St Paul, Minnesota somehow. The gig hangs in the balance..😳 — stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) August 15, 2017 Since Colburn went into the Walmart without his phone and it was late at night, he apparently sat there for four hours waiting for someone to come get him before saying ”fuck it” and checking into a nearby hotel. Eventually, someone responded to Murdoch’s SOS and gave Colburn a ride to the Bismarck airport, where he caught a flight to Minneapolis. He even made it on time to the gig at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul that night: It was a great relief to hear in between songs for @thecurrent that Richard was on a plane heading this way. The show will go on! pic.twitter.com/D3Lfyh8fpD — belle & sebastian (@bellesglasgow) August 15, 2017 While this might seem like an act of twee passive aggression—The Current host Mary Lucia even jokes about it in her interview with Murdoch, saying, “that’s one way to get rid of a drummer”—Murdoch says it was simply a whimsical accident. And to be fair, Belle & Sebastian has more members than your average band, “so it’s maybe not surprising that something like this happened,” as Murdoch puts it. Anyway, steps have been taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again: A new sign appeared on our bus. Should be ok now..😉 pic.twitter.com/mrGvBgq5ca — stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) August 16, 2017 Belle & Sebastian’s new single, “Someone Is Off The Bus, Please Heed My Sign,” is presumably forthcoming. [via Stereogum] Submit your Newswire tips here. ||||| Talking to The Current's Mary Lucia, Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch explains how the band's drummer, Richard Colburn, got left behind in North Dakota as the band were making their way to a gig in St. Paul, Minn. Interview Transcript MARY LUCIA: 89.3 The Current, I am happy to be sitting here, chatting with Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian, who's had quite a morning. STUART MURDOCH: It's been a morning. It feels like a whole day that we've had already. MARY: Just give us the little synopsis version of what went down. STUART: Well, when I woke up a few hours ago, we realized we left our drummer in North Dakota. MARY: Yeah, that happens. STUART: What happens, or what? MARY: That's just one way to get rid of a drummer, I'm thinking. STUART: I'm kind of partially to blame because we were in a Walmart, we were just leaving town, Dickinson, North Dakota — not the other side of North Dakota! And we stopped for water, and I was coming out of the Walmart, and he [drummer Richard Colburn] was coming into the Walmart, and he was waving very happily, in a good mood. And that was the last time that we saw him. MARY: And naturally, it should be said that when one runs in to use a restroom or whatever, you're not necessarily thinking, "Do I have my passport with me? And my phone? A urine sample and all that?" So basically, you did leave him with nothing. STUART: He had a credit card, but he still sat in Walmart for four hours, but the thing is, he was probably thinking that we were — somebody was going to notice, but the trouble is everybody went to bed. I mean, there used to be a system. There used to be a system, but because we all have mobile phones these days, everybody's got a little bit blasé about it. It used to be that it was the pass on the passenger seat — you used to leave a pass for the last person, and that's how the driver knew. So Richard didn't have his phone with him, and we were all talking about all the different things he could've done, but he checked into a hotel and went to sleep! MARY: What's the funniest observation someone has made about this today? STUART: Everything up to this point didn't seem too funny. All I knew, personally my experience was I went into kind of "daddy" mode or something like that, and I just remember there was an episode of The West Wing where the President's daughter went missing, and I thought, "What did they do then?" And the word was, "Get the word out there!" With a missing person, it's better to get the word out there, you know, so that something will happen, because we didn't know how we were going to get him from there, from that kind of desolate spot, to St. Paul, so we tweeted, and lots of kind people tweeted me back, saying, "I'm in Fargo, maybe I could get there," "I'm in Bismarck, you know, maybe we could work something out." I even had a friend who was driving down from Winnipeg on the way to the show here. So currently we have him in a car driving to Bismarck, and the only question is, "Will they let him on the plane?" MARY: With no ID. STUART: And in his pyjamas. MARY: Well, PJs … he won't seem much of a threat, I think, when you're in your jammies. You know? STUART: That's true. MARY: I think the answer lies in microchipping the band in the future, like you do your dog. STUART: We were just talking about that! Our manager two managers ago, our first manager, Neil Robertson, I swear to god, he wanted to have us chipped in the neck. And this was — I'm talking 15 years ago. Because with a band our size, I mean, there used to be more of us. With the string players, it was like 12, 13 of us. And it's like herding cats. So it's maybe not surprising that something like this happened. MARY: Yeah, if you see a wandering musician in Fargo, North Dakota, just bring him into the nearest vet, and they can just see if he's chipped. STUART: Oh, god, now you say "Fargo" — I hope he doesn't end up upside-down in a wood chipper. MARY: He's fleeing the interview! Epilogue Thanks for your help folks. We have Richard on a plane now, so everything is ok. He's in his pyjamas, sitting with a mimosa 😉🍸 — stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) August 15, 2017 Resources Related Stories Belle & Sebastian perform an acoustic set in The Current studio Finding themselves temporarily missing drummer Richard Colburn, Belle & Sebastian creatively pivot and perform an acoustic set in The Current's studio, playing a selection of songs from three different albums. Belle & Sebastian - official site

– Belle & Sebastian managed to leave its drummer in a North Dakota Walmart this week, and the rest of the band apparently didn't notice until about seven hours later. "S---, we left Richard in North Dakota. Anyone want to be a hero and get him to St Paul, Minnesota somehow. The gig hangs in the balance," reads a tweet from the band's frontman, Stuart Murdoch, Tuesday. It seems that when the band's tour bus stopped at the Walmart, drummer Richard Colburn went into the store without his phone. The driver apparently thought everyone was back on board and left. Murdoch's tweet was sent from Maple Grove, Minn., which the AV Club notes is a seven-hour drive from the Dickinson, ND, Walmart. Murdoch described the situation to the Current radio show Tuesday, explaining that when everyone woke up that morning, they realized Colburn was missing. Colburn waited in the Walmart for four hours, assuming someone would realize he was gone and the bus would come back for him, "but the trouble is everybody went to bed" after leaving the Walmart, Murdoch says. The drummer eventually checked into a hotel and someone who saw the band's social media plea gave him a ride to the Bismarck airport; he was able to fly from there to Minneapolis and make it to the show in St. Paul. "A new sign appeared on our bus. Should be ok now," Murdoch tweeted Wednesday along with a photo of a sign meant for the bus driver's seat reading, "SOMEONE IS OFF THE BUS."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called US sanctions against Iran violent, but also added Iran is open to talks that would resolve the nuclear dispute. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports. NEW YORK — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that his country poses "absolutely no threat to the world," and sanctions that have crippled its economy are "violent — pure and simple." In his first address to the world body, hours after President Barack Obama spoke, Rouhani also said he is prepared to engage in "time-bound" talks to resolve the dispute over Tehran's nuclear program. Rouhani’s closely watched visit to the United Nations followed a series of diplomatic overtures the centrist-leaning cleric has made to the West since he was elected to replace hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he stressed his moderate credentials. He also blasted "brutal oppression of the Palestinian people," criticized the use of drones, and said the biggest threat in the Middle East is chemical weapons falling into the hands of "extremist terrorist groups" — a nod to the crisis in Syria, a close ally. While the speech was far more toned-down than the invective-filled addresses Ahmadinejad has given, Rouhani had strong words for the "intrinsically inhumane" sanctions imposed because of his country's nuclear activities. "It is the common people who are victimized by these sanctions," he said. He insisted that Iran's atomic energy program is "exclusively peaceful" and that he is ready to engage "immediately in time-bound and results-oriented" talks with the West but expects to be treated with "mutual respect" by the U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the U.N. Tuesday about Iran's nuclear program and recent statements made by President Hassan Rouhani. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday suggested Iran's diplomatic overtures to the West on its nuclear program were a ploy in order to continue pursuing atomic weapons. "Iran thinks that soothing words and token actions will enable it to continue on its path to the bomb," Netanyahu said after Rouhani's speech, adding that Israel would welcome a diplomatic solution that dismantled Iran's capacity to develop nuclear weapons. The Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination, issued a statement calling Rouhani’s debut UN speech “more of the same platitude and denials” and said he was playing the “victim’s card” by claiming Iran was being persecuted by the international community While Obama had encouraging words for his Iranian counterpart during his address, it appears a much buzzed-about meeting between the two leaders won't happen during the General Assembly. Two senior administration officials told White House reporters that a meeting — even a handshake, even on the sidelines — proved “too complicated” for Rouhani back home. As a result, Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with his own Iranian counterpart, scheduled for Thursday, will be the highest-level encounter between the two countries at the U.N. Foreign affairs experts had speculated that Obama and Rouhani might shake hands at a luncheon for world leaders on Tuesday, where the menu included tuna tartar and veal osso bucco — or that they might at least eat in the same room. An Obama-Rouhani handshake would have been a historic moment in U.S.-Iranian relations, which have been frosty at best for three decades. President Obama at a luncheon for heads of states at the 68th session of the General Assembly. But a U.N. handler told White House reporters that Iran would not be represented at the luncheon. She said that Iran did not RSVP, and added that many delegations skip the lunch. PhotoBlog: Small gestures with big meanings: Historic presidential handshakes Before lunch, Obama told the General Assembly that that the United States and Iran could start down a “long road towards a different relationship — one based on mutual interest and respect.” Obama stressed that the U.S. is determined not to let Iran have a nuclear weapon. But he suggested that two recent statements, including Rouhani’s saying that his country will never develop a nuclear weapon, represent crucial progress. “We should be able to achieve a resolution that respects the rights of the Iranian people, while giving the world confidence that the Iranian program is peaceful,” he said. He said that he was directing Kerry, working closely with European allies, Russia and China, to pursue an agreement with the government of Iran. “The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested,” Obama said. President Barack Obama gives a toast to the U.N. secretary general, while delivering remarks to world leaders at Tuesday's U.N. luncheon in New York City. He spoke of deep mistrust between the United States and Iran since the revolution there: Iranians have complained of U.S. interference, while Americans see a country that has taken Americans hostage, killed American troops and threatened Israel. “I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight — the suspicion runs too deep,” he said. “But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road towards a different relationship — one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.” Before Rouhani spoke, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the world "should not be fooled" by signs of moderation from Tehran. President Barack Obama tell the U.N. Tuesday that anyone who suggests that Bashar al-Assad did not carry out a chemical weapons attack in August is insulting the "legitimacy of this institution." Netanyahu voiced deep skepticism about Iran's new outreach to the West, saying it is merely a ploy to ease international sanctions while secretly building a nuclear weapon. “Iran thinks soothing words and token actions will enable it to continue on its path to the bomb,” he said. Netanyahu said that he welcomed Obama’s efforts to engage Rouhani in dialogue. But he said that Iran’s conciliatory words must be matched by actions. On the crisis in Syria, Obama called on the U.N. to pass a strong resolution to verify that Syrian leader Bashar Assad lives up to his commitment to get rid of his chemical weapons. “If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws,” he said. “On the other hand, if we succeed, it will send a powerful message that the use of chemical weapons has no place in the 21st century, and that this body means what it says.” The president said that it was an “insult to human reason and the legitimacy of this institution” to suggest that anyone other than the forces of Assad used chemical weapons in an Aug. 21 attack in the Syrian civil war. President Barack Obama addresses the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians Tuesday at the U.N. The United States says it has overwhelming evidence that loyalist forces sent sarin-gas rockets into a rebel neighborhood and killed 1,400 people, including civilians and more than 400 children. Alluding to Americans’ disinclination to get involved in another Middle East conflict, Obama said that it would be a danger for the United States to “disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill.” “I believe that would be a mistake,” Obama said. “I believe America must remain engaged for our own security. I believe the world is better for it. Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional — in part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all.” The mention of American exceptionalism seemed a reference to an Op-Ed published last week in The New York Times by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He wrote that it was “extremely dangerous” to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional. Obama had threatened a military strike to enforce the nearly worldwide ban on chemical weapons. The attack was averted when the United States and Russia struck a deal under which Syria must hand over and ultimately destroy its chemicals by next year. In his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Obama said that he made the threat because “it is in the security interest of the United States and the world to meaningfully enforce a prohibition whose origins are older than the U.N. itself.” He spoke of the memories of soldiers suffocated in the trenches of World War I, of Jews slaughered in Nazi gas chambers and — pointedly — of the tens of thousands of Iranians poisoned to death in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. Outlining American policy in the Middle East, Obama said Tuesday that the United States was committed to using “all elements of our power, including military force, to secure our core interests in the region.” He said that the United States would confront aggression against allies, and ensure the flow of energy to the world. He also vowed to dismantle terror networks that threaten Americans, and said that the U.S. would not tolerate weapons of mass destruction. Reuters contributed to this report. This story was originally published on ||||| Article Excerpt UNITED NATIONS—Iran's new President Hasan Rouhani pledged on Tuesday that his government will remove "all reasonable concerns" about Tehran's nuclear program, but insisted that the West recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium. In his first major appearance on the world stage, Mr. Rouhani sought to reinforce an image as a moderate voice, saying he was ready to engage in "time-bound and results-oriented" nuclear talks and would look to improve ties with the U.S. However diplomats said Mr. Rouhani's half-hour speech to the United Nations General Assembly offered no major breakthrough. Although he spoke just a few hours after President Barack ... ||||| Iran's President Hassan Rouhani is shown on video monitors as he addresses the 68th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, September 24, 2013. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani talks to a United Nations official as he departs after concluding his address to the 68th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 24, 2013. UNITED NATIONS Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, expressed hope on Tuesday that U.S. President Barack Obama would not be swayed by "warmongering pressure groups" at home in dealing with the Iranian nuclear dispute and called for a consistent voice from Washington on the issue. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly hours after Obama addressed the annual gathering of world leaders, Rouhani said he was prepared to engage in "time-bound and results-oriented" nuclear talks and did not seek to increase tensions with the United States. "I listened carefully to the statement made by President Obama today at the General Assembly," he said. "Commensurate with the political will of the leadership in the United States and hoping that they will refrain from following the short-sighted interest of warmongering pressure groups, we can arrive at a framework to manage our differences." "To this end, equal footing, mutual respect and the recognized principles of international law should govern the interactions," he said. "Of course, we expect to hear a consistent voice from Washington." A potential encounter at the United Nations between Obama and Rouhani failed to take place on Tuesday as the Iranians indicated it was too complicated, senior Obama administration officials said. U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo was seated at the U.S. table while Rouhani spoke. Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was present for Obama's speech. While his speech lacked the strident anti-Western rhetoric of predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's U.N. speeches, Rouhani offered no concessions. He repeated Tehran's position that Iran is not interested in atomic weapons. "Nuclear weapon and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran's security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethical convictions," he said in his first U.N. speech since taking office in August. While he avoided any suggestion that Israel had no right to exist, he sharply criticized the treatment of the Palestinians - albeit without naming Israel directly. "Palestine is under occupation," he said. "The basic rights of the Palestinians are tragically violated, and they are deprived of the right of return and access to their homes, birthplace and homeland." He also blasted the international sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program, which Western powers and their allies fear is aimed at developing the capability to produce atomic weapons. "Contrary to the claims of those who pursue and impose them, it is not the states and the political elite that are targeted, but rather, it is the common people who are victimized by these sanctions," Rouhani told the 193-nation assembly. "Let us not forget millions of Iraqis who, as a result of sanctions covered in international legal jargon, suffered and lost their lives, and many more who continue to suffer all through their lives," he said. Iran is under U.S., European Union, U.N. and other sanctions due to its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Rouhani warned that attempts to force Iran to abandon nuclear technology will fail because of the country's high level of technical know-how and scientific expertise. "Nuclear knowledge in Iran has been domesticated now and the nuclear technology, inclusive of enrichment, has already reached industrial scale," he said. "It is, therefore, an illusion, and extremely unrealistic, to presume that the peaceful nature of the nuclear program of Iran could be ensured through impeding the program via illegitimate pressures." (Reporting by Matt Spetalnick, Louis Charbonneau, Yeganeh Torbati, Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jim Loney)

– An Iranian president addressed the UN General Assembly today, and for a change there was no talk of 9/11 conspiracies, Holocaust hoaxes, or the US delegation walking out. Instead, Hasan Rouhani—the more moderate successor of Mahmoud Ahmandinejad—said his nation wants to ease tensions with the US and take part in "timebound and result-oriented" talks on its nuclear program, reports the Wall Street Journal. But Rouhani insisted again that Tehran had only peaceful aims for its nukes, demanded that it be allowed to enrich uranium, and called the current sanctions against the country "violent—pure and simple," reports NBC News. "The negative impact is not nearly limited to the intended victims of sanctions," he said, complaining that innocent citizens were suffering. Rouhani added that his nation presents "absolutely no threat to the world" and that he hoped President Obama would not be influenced by "war-mongering pressure groups" in the US, reports Reuters. Earlier, Obama used his speech to press for renewed talks between the two nations. Despite signs of a thaw, however, he and Rouhani didn't arrange to shake hands.

Matthew & Camila McConaughey Expecting Third Child Andreas Rentz/Getty Baby makes five! A month after marrying, Matthew and Camila McConaughey are set to expand their family once again, the couple announced via Twitter Wednesday. “Happy birthday America, more good news, Camila and I are expecting our 3rd child,” the actor, 42, Tweeted. “God bless, just keep livin.” His wife, 29, Tweeted the same message just 20 minutes before. The couple, who wed June 9 at their home in Texas, are already parents to daughter Vida, 2½, and son Levi, who turns 4 this week. Asked on their wedding weekend about their dreams for the future, the couple told PEOPLE: “More of the same — and more family!” Looks like they got their wish. – Sarah Michaud with reporting by Elizabeth Leonard ||||| Randy Brook/WireImage Her so-called life just got a little happier! Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy are expecting their first child, her rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively. “There’s definitely a chance, no plans yet,” the Homeland star, 33, told PEOPLE last fall when asked if a baby could be on the way shortly. “But yeah, that’d be fun.” Danes, who won a Golden Globe in January, wed Hannibal star Dancy, 37, in a private ceremony in France in 2009. While there was no official comment from Homeland‘s production company, Fox 21, a spokesman says that Danes’ pregnancy is not expected to impact the production of season two — which premieres on Showtime Sept. 30 — in any way. – Jennifer Garcia with reporting by Lesley Messer

– Time to raise a glass to Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy: They're expecting their first baby, Danes' rep confirms to People. Just last fall, Danes said the couple had "no plans yet" to procreate, but admitted, "that'd be fun." In other baby news, you can add "apparently very fertile" to "frequently shirtless" when it comes to phrases that describe Matthew McConaughey: He and new wife Camila Alves are expecting their third child. They already have daughter Vida, 2½, and son Levi, turning 4 this week.

(CNN) From half a world away, Maritha Strydom was following her daughter's progress on Mount Everest last week through a series of satellite "pings" from the climber's phone. Then the pings stopped. And soon after Strydom got the news every parent dreads -- not through a phone call, she says, but by reading a news article online. Her daughter, Maria Strydom, had died of altitude sickness in the arms of her husband, Robert Gropel, Saturday as the couple attempted to climb the world's tallest peak to prove that vegans can do anything. She was one of four climbers who died on Everest in a grim span of four days. "I was worried when the pings stopped, and we started calling but no one could give us any answers," Strydom told CNN in an interview from Brisbane, Australia. "So my other daughter ... Googled and found in the Himalayan Times that my daughter had passed away." Strydom still wants answers. She believes her daughter, known by friends and family as Marisa, was in the "death zone" for too long. The death zone refers to altitudes higher than 8,000 meters (about 26,200 feet), where the risk of dying significantly climbs. There is little oxygen here, so altitude sickness is common and can be deadly. Temperatures tumble, winds intensify and frostbite can hit any exposed part of the body. The ground is icy, so falls are not uncommon. "No one is supposed to stay in the death zone longer than 16 to 20 hours. If you stay there longer you will be dead," Strydom told CNN. South African-born Maria Strydom, 34, worked as a finance professor with the Monash Business School in Melbourne, Australia. She had told the school in an interview that she and Gropel had decided to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents -- the so-called "seven summits" -- to prove that vegans are strong. The couple reached Everest's South Summit on Friday but decided to turn around and descend when Strydom began feeling poorly, according to an online post by exhibition leader Arnold Coster . Several Sherpas and her husband struggled to carry her down the mountain, but she collapsed the next morning, Coster said. Gropel was evacuated to Kathmandu the next day by helicopter. "She felt weak and decided to turn around ... What Rob knows is that she felt ill, she got medication, she looked a bit better, and when he tried to get her down to camp 3, she suddenly collapsed," Strydom said. "There's a massive gap in between the last ping where she turned around and where the story continues, and no one can tell me what happened in between yet, and I don't think I'll find out before Rob is better and, you know, he can tell us what happened," Strydom said, adding that Gropel was still suffering from altitude sickness. "I am very, very concerned. I'm concerned about a lot of things," she added. "In their itinerary it was suggested they would sleep over at camp 3 for their acclimatization. They didn't." Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Photos: Exploring Mount Everest The journey to the summit of Mount Everest is a challenge an increasing number have taken on since the summit was first reached in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Until the late 1970s, only a handful of climbers per year reached the summit. By 2012 that number rose to more than 500. Hide Caption 1 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Explorers are seen in 1922 at Camp II on the East Rongbuk Glacier. That same year, seven Sherpas were killed when they were caught in an avalanche during an expedition led by George Mallory. Hide Caption 2 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest George Mallory and Edward Felix Norton reach 27,000 feet on the northeast ridge of Everest in 1922. They failed to reach the summit. Hide Caption 3 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Mallory returns to Everest In June 1924. He's seen here with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine at base camp. This is the last photo of the the two before they disappeared on the mountain. Mallory's body was found 75 years later, showing signs of a fatal fall. Hide Caption 4 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Mountaineers are seen preparing to leave their camp during one of Eric Shipton's early expeditions on Everest in the 1930s. While Shipton never made it to the summit, his exploration of the mountain paved the way for others. Hide Caption 5 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Shipton leads an expedition exploring the Khumbu Glacier icefall in November 1951. Hide Caption 6 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Shipton is also known for discovering and photographing footprints of an unknown animal or person, like this one taken in 1951. Many attributed these to the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman. Hide Caption 7 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Edmund Hillary sits at base camp in May 1953 before heading out on what would become the first successful ascent to the top of the world. Hide Caption 8 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Hillary and Nepalese-Indian mountaineer Tenzing Norgay climb beyond a crevasse on Mount Everest in 1953. Upon meeting George Lowe, who had climbed up to meet the descending duo, Hillary reportedly exclaimed, "Well George, we knocked the bastard off!" Hide Caption 9 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Members of a U.S. expedition team and Sherpas are shown with their climbing gear on Everest. The team, led by Jim Whittaker, reached the top on May 1, 1963, becoming the first Americans to do so. Hide Caption 10 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Whittaker's team members climb Everest's West Ridge in 1963. Hide Caption 11 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest On April 5, 1970, six Sherpas died in an avalanche at the Khumbu Icefall. The icefall, at the head of the Khumbu Glacier, seen here in 2003, is one of the more treacherous areas of the ascent. Hide Caption 12 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest British Army soldiers and mountaineers John "Brummie" Stokes and Michael "Bronco" Lane above the icefall at the entrance to the West Col (or western pass) of Mount Everest during their successful ascent of the mountain. The joint British-Nepalese army expedition reached the summit on May 16, 1976. Hide Caption 13 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest In 1978, Reinhold Messner makes the first ascent without supplemental oxygen. Messner is seen here at Munich Airport showing reporters his frozen thumb after climbing to the top of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, alone and without an oxygen mask. Hide Caption 14 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest French climber Jean-Marc Boivin becomes the first person to paraglide from Everest's summit in September 1998. Hide Caption 15 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest The 1996 climbing season was one of the deadliest, when 15 people died on Everest, eight in a single storm in May of that year. Hide Caption 16 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Francys Distefano-Arsentiev became the first American woman to reach Everest's summit without bottled oxygen on May 23, 1998. However, she and her husband, Sergei Arsentiev, never made it off the mountain. They died after becoming separated while attempting to descend in the dark. At least one climbing party found Francys barely conscious, but there was nothing they could do to save her. Her husband's body was found years later. It is believed he fell while trying to save his wife. Hide Caption 17 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Pemba Dorje Sherpa and Moni Mulepati became the first people to get married on Everest's summit, on March 30, 2005. The couple are seen here waving from base camp on June 2, 2005. Hide Caption 18 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Sherpa climbers pose at Everest Base Camp after collecting garbage during the Everest cleanup expedition on May 28, 2010. A group of 20 Nepalese climbers collected nearly two tons of garbage in a high-risk expedition to clean up the world's highest peak. Hide Caption 19 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Mountaineer Ralf Dujmovits took this image of a long line of climbers heading up Everest in May 2012. Hide Caption 20 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Jordan Romero became the youngest person to reach the summit, at age 13, on May 22, 2013. Jordan, right, is seen here on the summit with one of the Sherpas who helped him make the ascent. Hide Caption 21 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Yuichiro Miura, became the oldest person to summit Everest, on May 23, 2013, at the age of 80. Hide Caption 22 of 23 Photos: Exploring Mount Everest Malavath Poorna, left, holds up her national flag on May 24, when the 13-year-old daughter of poor Indian farmers became the youngest girl to climb Everest. Hide Caption 23 of 23 Strydom also is upset that she had to learn of her daughter's death on the Internet. "For two, three days not a word," she said. Someone finally called her on Tuesday, she said. Now Strydom is focused on retrieving Marisa's body from Everest and returning her to Australia. "We are totally devastated. Everything we did was to get her body back, because they just abandon bodies on the mountain if they're dead. If you're alive, they try to rescue you, like they did with Rob. If you didn't survive they leave you on the mountain. So our whole fight was just to get her off that mountain and back home," she said. "I don't know how I'm going to live without her, but if she was abandoned on that mountain, I know I wouldn't have made it," she said. "It's the toughest thing that ever happened to me. Such a lovely girl, so talented so giving, and a life wasted." ||||| Rajan Pokhrel KATHMANDIU: Mt Everest witnessed another casualty after an Australian woman climber died near the Camp IV on Nepal side on Saturday, officials confirmed. Dr Maria Elizabeth Strydom lost her life after she suffered from snow blindness followed by stroke, according to Shiva Bahadur Sapkota, a liaison officer deputed by the Department of Tourism at the Everest base camp. The Australian national was accompanied by her husband during the expedition. A Finance lecturer at Monash Business School under Monash University, Dr Strydom (34) was heading to the world’s highest peak when she was taken ill, according to Mingma Sherpa, the owner of Seven Summit Treks, which locally managed their expedition. Dr Strydom had already climbed Mt Denali in Alaska, Mt Aconcagua in Argentina, Mt Ararat in eastern Turkey, and Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa, among other peaks. Earlier in the wee hours of Saturday, Eric Arnold, who hailed from Rotterdam of the Netherlands, died at the Camp IV after suffering from altitude-related sickness. READ ALSO: Foreign climber who perished on Mt Everest is Dutch Follow The Himalayan Times on Twitter and Facebook ||||| Maria has been an invaluable member of St Michael’s Netball Club for 10 years. She was an incredibly generous person who volunteered her time and expertise as club treasurer on our committee. It is because of people like Maria that community run clubs like ours are able to function. She was a leader, our team mate and most importantly our friend. With the blessing of her husband Rob and her family, we began collecting money to support their efforts to retrieve and repatriate Maria’s body. We achieved our goal Maria was repatriated to Melbourne and was farewelled by her family and friends at a memorial service on 8th June 2016 at the Monash University Religious Centre, Clayton Campus.

– The mother of a vegan who died trying to climb Mount Everest is demanding answers—about whether the climb was conducted safely and why, for days, no one informed her that her daughter was dead. Speaking from Australia, Maritha Strydom tells CNN she was following satellite "pings" of daughter Maria Strydom's climb last Saturday when the signal blanked out. "I was worried when the pings stopped, and we started calling but no one could give us any answers," says Maritha. "So my other daughter ... Googled and found in the Himalayan Times that my daughter had passed away." What's more, Maritha and her daughter heard "not a word" about the tragedy—one of four Everest deaths over a four-day span—until they received a call on Tuesday. Maritha also says guides let Maria and husband Robert Gropel stay too long in the so-called "death zone," an oxygen-poor area around 26,200 feet where altitude sickness and frostbite are common dangers. Maria "felt weak and decided to turn around," her mom says, but when Maria got medication and tried climbing back down, "she suddenly collapsed." Now Maritha is trying retrieve her daughter's body from the mountain, where survivors are often rescued and victims get left behind (here's the fundraising page to pay for her return to Australia). Seems Maria and her husband each paid $34,500 for the climb in a pretty sketchy, unregulated market: "You [can] have a circumstance of unskilled people leading other unskilled people in the most dangerous mountain environment you can get," veteran climber Andrew Lock tells the Australian. (Maria was trying to prove that a Vegan could climb Everest.)

The US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has launched an investigation into whether drinks company Diageo has been shipping excess stocks to customers to boost results. Sending customers more cases than they had ordered would allow Diageo to report higher sales than were placed. Diageo said it was "working to respond fully to the SEC's requests for information in this matter". Shares in Diageo closed down 2.1% at £18.66 following the news. The US market accounts for nearly $18bn of Diageo's annual sales. But sales in the region have been falling since 2011. Diageo - which makes drinks including Smirnoff vodka, Guinness and Johnnie Walker whiskey - saw its share price surge last month on reports of a possible £50bn takeover bid from the Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann and his private equity partners. In the second half of last year the world's biggest distiller of Scotch whisky reported a sharp fall in sales in some of its key markets. Diageo said profits fell by 18% to £1.7bn, while overall sales were down 1%. Trading conditions in parts of Europe and Russia, described as "tough" at the start of the year by the company, are thought to remain difficult. ||||| The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Diageo DEO 0.06% PLC has been shipping excess inventory to distributors in an effort to boost the liquor company’s results, according to people familiar with the inquiry. By sending more cases to distributors than wanted, the British-based owner of Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker would be able to report increased sales and shipments, according to these people. Diageo confirmed Thursday to The Wall Street Journal that it received an inquiry from the SEC regarding its distribution in the U.S. “Diageo is working to respond fully to the SEC’s requests for information in this matter,” a company spokeswoman said. Diageo’s American depositary receipts fell 5% Thursday afternoon, following the Journal’s report on the inquiry, and ended the day down $4.99, or 4.2%, to $114.67. The inquiry coincides with a period of tumult in Diageo’s executive ranks. The company announced in June that North American President Larry Schwartz would be retiring by the end of the year. Since then, the company has also announced the departures of its chief marketing officer for North America and a president of national accounts in the U.S. It recently named Deirdre Mahlan, currently chief financial officer, as president of Diageo North America. The North American region is the largest and most important to Diageo’s bottom line. It accounted for about a third of the company’s $15.9 billion in sales in 2014 and around 45% of operating profit. Volume in the region decreased 1% last year, but price increases helped sales rise 3% to about $5.34 billion. Diageo—which reports full-year results next week—has suffered through a period of slumping sales in the U.S. The company raised prices under former Chief Executive Paul Walsh, and its U.S. market share declined every year between 2011 and 2014, according to Exane BNP Paribas. Diageo’s blockbuster Smirnoff brand struggled as consumers grew tired of flavored vodka. Interest in Captain Morgan has also waned, and the rum hasn’t been popular as a shot, a trend that has grown in popularity of late. Diageo also lost market share last year in Canadian whisky as its Crown Royal brand adapted to the flavored whiskey trend later than rivals. In the U.S., liquor producers follow a three-tier system to market. Producers like Diageo ship to wholesalers, who then ship to retailers. Liquor companies can record shipments as sales when they ship them to the wholesaler. Diageo Chief Executive Ivan Menezes said during a call with analysts in January that the company has shifted its focus from shipments, which reflect sales to distributors, to depletions, which reflect sales by distributors to retailers. He said the company was reducing the level of inventory distributors carry to get “better visibility on customer depletions.” Diageo CEO Ivan Menezes Photo: Bloomberg News Pernod-Ricard , the world’s second-largest publicly traded liquor company, emphasizes depletions during earnings reports and uses that as a benchmark for performance. Brown-Forman Corp. , the largest publicly traded U.S. spirits company, measures its volume performance with depletions. Diageo has about a 20% share of the U.S. spirits market, according to the industry tracking service Impact Databank. It became the market leader after Mr. Menezes’s predecessor, Paul Walsh, exited businesses like Burger King and Pillsbury and focused on alcohol, scooping up Seagram Co. brands Captain Morgan and Crown Royal in a $5 billion deal. Write to Tripp Mickle at [email protected] and Saabira Chaudhuri at [email protected] ||||| Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker drinks giant Diageo is reportedly being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations it tried to artificially boost sales figures by shipping excess inventory to distributors. Sending more cases to distributors than they have ordered could potentially have allowed Diageo to report increased sales and shipments. The British company, the world’s largest producer of spirits, confirmed to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, that it was cooperating with the SEC on an investigation. “Diageo has received an inquiry from the US Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its distribution in the United States. Diageo is working to respond fully to the SEC’s requests for information in this matter,” the company said in a statement. The SEC declined to comment. The inquiry comes at a sensitive moment for Diageo. Last month the company’s shares soared after reports that Brazil’s richest man, billionaire deal-maker Jorge Paulo Lemann, was considering a takeover. Lemann has led a series of ever larger brewery takeovers culminating in 2004’s merger of Brazil’s AmBev with Belgium’s Interbrew to create the world’s largest beer company. Diageo owns Guinness as well as its portfolio of spirits and wine brands. The takeover rumour coincided with the announcement that North American president Larry Schwartz would be retiring by the end of the year. Diageo has since announced the departures of its chief marketing officer for North America and a president of national accounts in the US. North America accounts for about a third of Diageo’s $17.58bn in sales and around 45% of operating profit. Sales have been in decline in the region since 2011. Next week the company will release its second-quarter results and is likely to be quizzed further by shareholders and analysts about the SEC inquiry.

– British booze giant Diageo is feeling the burn in the US: The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating claims that company sent American distributors more inventory than they requested, which would have allowed it to record a false spike in sales, the Guardian reports. Diageo tells the Wall Street Journal it has received an "inquiry" and is "working to respond fully to the SEC's requests for information in this matter." Diageo, which makes Smirnoff, Guinness, Captain Morgan, and Johnnie Walker, among others, has about a 20% share of the American spirits market; about a third of the company's $15.9 billion in sales last year came from North America. The BBC reports sales have been falling in the US since 2011.

Story highlights The case would be against a homeowner's association, says attorney Daryl Parks Demonstrations are held in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Florida Zimmerman's lawyer and former Gov. Jeb Bush say "stand your ground" doesn't apply in this case Police say evidence and testimony on the night prohibited an arrest Attorneys for the family of an unarmed Florida teen shot to death last month plan to pursue a civil case against a homeowner's association, the family's lawyer said Saturday. Daryl Parks, attorney for the family of Trayvon Martin, spoke to board members of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) about the case. He said there is evidence that the Twin Lakes homeowner's association told residents who saw suspicious activity to call George Zimmerman if they could not contact the police, according to an NABJ statement. Martin, 17, was killed February 26 as he walked to his father's fiancee's house in Sanford, Florida, after a trip to the convenience store. Police say he was shot by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who says he was acting in self-defense. Martin was unarmed, carrying a bag of Skittles candy and an iced tea, according to police. Protesters upset about Martin's death took to streets in cities across the country Saturday, with some questioning why Zimmerman has not been arrested. Other protests are planned for Sunday. "There are inconsistencies in our U.S. laws that allow people to claim self-defense as a way to get away with murder," said CNN iReporter Jarvis Matthews. A student at Georgetown University, he sent video from a march in Washington, D.C. Another demonstration was staged alongside a busy road in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where many of the protesters wore hooded sweatshirts like the one Martin had on when he was shot. "In a nutshell I think this case is not being handled properly -- that is why we have so many protests. It was a senseless situation," said CNN iReporter Ron Campbell. And in Sanford, Florida, a handful of members from the New Black Panther Party rallied and offered a $10,000 reward for Zimmerman's "capture." "It's time for us, as black men, to take justice in our own hands. If you won't give us justice, we will have to take justice," said Florida organizer Mikhail Muhammad. "An eye for an eye. A life for a life." The New Black Panther Party, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a "virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization," is distinct from the better-known Black Panther Party, founded in the late 1960s. The city of Sanford responded to the bounty offer by calling for "calm heads and no vigilante justice." "Attempts by civilians to take any person into custody may result in criminal charges or unnecessary violence," it said in a statement. Meanwhile, a lawyer for the man at the center of the death investigation said Florida's "stand your ground" law doesn't apply to the shooting that killed the teen. "In my legal opinion, that's not really applicable to this case. The statute on 'stand your ground' is primarily when you're in your house," said Craig Sonner, Zimmerman's attorney. "This is self-defense, and that's been around for forever -- that you have a right to defend yourself. So the next issue (that) is going to come up is, was he justified in using the amount of force he did?" The 2005 law allows people to use deadly force anywhere they have a right to be if they have reasonable fear an assailant could seriously harm them or someone else. It also eliminated a long-standing "duty to retreat" in the face of imminent harm, asserting that would-be crime victims have the right to "stand their ground" and "meet force with force" when attacked. The case has sparked a national debate over the Florida law and concerns about racial profiling. Martin was black and Zimmerman is white Hispanic. Florida Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor, Angela Corey, to look into the case. She said her office will decide whether to charge Zimmerman, clear him or send the case to a grand jury. The case has also prompted a U.S. Justice Department investigation, which is in the fact-finding stage. The Sanford Police Department said officers were prohibited from arresting Zimmerman the night of the shooting because physical evidence and testimony supported his claim that he acted in self-defense in accordance with Florida law. The police department gave the explanation to City Manager Norton Bonaparte, who included it in a letter to the community about the case, posted on the city's website. Sonner said he and Zimmerman have not discussed what happened the night Martin was shot, though he said Zimmerman has talked with authorities -- unaccompanied by counsel -- whenever they have asked him to do so. Zimmerman said he was driving in his gated community when he saw Martin walking and called 911 to report a suspicious person. Zimmerman told the dispatcher he was following the boy, but the dispatcher told him that wasn't necessary. Moments later, several neighbors called 911 to report a commotion outside, and police arrived to find Martin dead of a gunshot wound. Sonner says his client was injured that night and went to the hospital with a broken nose and a serious cut on the back of his head. JUST WATCHED Florida lawmaker on Martin case: It's racial Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Florida lawmaker on Martin case: It's racial 04:18 JUST WATCHED Who is George Zimmerman? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Who is George Zimmerman? 03:24 JUST WATCHED Friend: Zimmerman not racist Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Friend: Zimmerman not racist 02:41 JUST WATCHED Did Martin shooter use slur? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Did Martin shooter use slur? 00:10 "This is not about self-defense," the Rev. Al Sharpton told a crowd in New York on Saturday. "This is about a man deciding somebody, based on who he was, was a suspect and that he would take matters into his own hands." Sharpton, who attended a rally in Sanford earlier this week, promised a "spring offensive of non-violent protests" nationwide about the case. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who signed the "stand your ground" bill into law, said Friday that he does not believe it applies to the case. "Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn't mean chase after somebody who's turned their back," Bush said while visiting a university campus in Texas. Sanford police said Zimmerman did not indicate a chase, telling them instead that "he had lost sight of Trayvon and was returning to his truck to meet the police officer when he says he was attacked by Trayvon," the police said in the letter posted by Bonaparte. Sonner said he believes Zimmerman's life is in danger and has advised him to keep a low profile. "This case is spinning out of control," he said. "I hope there's a way to rein things in so it doesn't become an issue of a racial battle. I hope that things come back so that there can be a time for justice and for healing and not for just skipping the whole judicial process and going straight to sentencing." ||||| The shooter was once a Catholic altar boy — with a surname that could have been Jewish. His father is white, neighbors say. His mother is Latina. And his family is eager to point out that some of his relatives are black. There may be no box to check for George Zimmerman, no tidy way to categorize, define and sort the 28-year-old man whose pull of a trigger on a darkened Florida street is forcing America to once again confront its fraught relationship with race and identity. The victim, we know, was named Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager in a hoodie. The rest becomes a matter for interpretation. The drama in Florida takes on a kind of modern complexity. Its nuances show America for what it is steadily becoming, a realm in which identity is understood as something that cannot be summed up in a single word. The images of Zimmerman — not just his face, but the words used to describe him — can confound and confuse. Why are they calling him white, wondered Paul Ebert, the Prince William County commonwealth’s attorney who knew Zimmerman’s mother, Gladys, from her days as an interpreter at the county courthouse. Zimmerman’s mother, Ebert knew, was Peruvian, and he thought of her as Hispanic. Looking at Zimmerman’s photograph made Darren Soto, a Florida state legislator, think he might be Latino. But he just as easily might have been Italian or French, he thought. “It’s all over the place in Florida,” said Soto, who represents a statehouse district in Orlando, a 20-minute drive from the gated subdivision in Sanford where Martin died. “You have people with Anglo first and last names who speak perfect Spanish and are from Puerto Rico. And you’ve got a third- or fourth-generation Joey Gonzalez from Tampa who can’t speak a word of Spanish.” The focus in Florida, where thousands gathered Thursday night in Sanford for an emotional rally, has primarily been on complaints that Martin may have been targeted because of his race. The uproar led Thursday to the temporary resignation of Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, who has been accused by demonstrators of bungling the case and criticized for not arresting Zimmerman. In Manassas, where Zimmerman lived in the 1980s and 1990s with his parents and two siblings, neighbors tended to define the family based on their spiritual profile. “Very Catholic . . . very religious,” their neighbor Jim Rudzenski recalled Thursday. The children attended All Saints Catholic School on Stonewall Road through the eighth grade before going to Osbourn High School. George became an altar server and evening receptionist at All Saints Catholic Church. The Zimmermans “were known and respected in the community for their dedication and service,” said Robert Cilinski, pastor of All Saints Catholic Church. The father, Robert Zimmerman Sr., is a retired military man. He could be strict. And the children’s grandmother, who lived with the family, also kept a watchful eye, said Kay Hall, who lived across the street from the Zimmermans in a neighborhood just west of Sudley Road for about 20 years. George and his siblings “didn’t play with the neighborhood kids,” Rudzen­ski said. “They had to stay home and play.” It was always “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” Hall said. Zimmerman’s life was not without difficulties. In 2001 — when he was 17 or 18 — he was the victim of a minor criminal assault, said Manassas police Sgt. Eddie Rivera. The city’s computer records do not provide details of the crime. In school, Zimmerman hinted at ambitions in the business world. He joined a Future Business Leaders of America club. And in his senior yearbook, he wrote: “I’m going to Florida to work with my godfather who just bought a $1 million business.” In Florida, Zimmerman shifted his plans, enrolling in Seminole State College with hopes of becoming a law enforcement officer. He became the self-appointed protector of the streets around his home, although his neighborhood watch organization was not officially registered. He called the police department at least 46 times since 2004 to report everything from open garages to suspicious people. In 2005, according to police records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel and other news organizations, Zimmerman was twice accused of either criminal misconduct or violence. He had a concealed-weapon permit and had a black Kel-Tec semiautomatic handgun and a holster the night Martin died. Zimmerman’s father has sought to emphasize his family’s diversity in hopes of saving his son from condemnation as a racist. While images of protests from across the country skitter past on television screens, the elder Zimmerman has tried to do what others have been doing, in various ways, for days: define his son. George is “a Spanish-speaking minority,” the father wrote in a letter delivered to the Orlando Sentinel. “He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever.” George, the father insisted, was more like the boy he killed than people thought. George was a minority — the other — too. But the argument that the father is making feels hollow and self-serving to Michaela Angela Davis, an African American writer and activist who lives in New York. In her eyes, George Zimmerman’s Hispanic roots don’t give him cover. “You being a minority doesn’t make you immune to racist beliefs,” she said in an interview Thursday. Davis sees a pervasive cultural imprint, reinforced by media and entertainment imagery: the black man as a symbol of “violence, fear and deviant behavior.” A young man could be susceptible to the influence of that image whether his “mother is from Peru or Norway.” Hispanics and black Americans have a shared history of discrimination in the United States. But they also have a shared history of tension — in neighborhoods, schools, even prisons. In Latin America, including Peru, Afro Latinos have frequently complained of a lack of political representation, economic disenfranchisement and the virtual absence of their image in popular culture, such as soap operas, an issue they attribute to racial exclusion. Zimmerman’s legal fate could rest on examinations of possible motives that will be pieced together from clues, including snatches of audiotape, and from inquiries into whether he muttered a racial slur before the shooting. Zimmerman’s family background doesn’t invite a racial motive, but it doesn’t discount one either, said Luis Martinez-Fernandez, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Central Florida. Hispanics are an ethnic group, but within that group there are different ­races. There are black Dominicans and Cubans, for instance. “Who is Hispanic and who’s not is not as clear as other ethnic groups,” said Martinez-Fernandez. “There’s no such thing as a Hispanic race. It has to do with origin, culture and race. Some people argue that language should be a part. All this complicates identity.” Hispanics make up the nation’s largest ethnic group at more than 13 percent of the population, while African Americans are the largest racial group, with more than 12 percent of the population. In the 2010 Census, more than half of people who identified as Hispanic said they were white, and only 3 percent said they were black. “There’s a sense that one group has been harmed historically more than the other,” Martinez-Fernandez said. “There’s been a history of the dominant group in power pitting one group against the other. I think we have not fought together. There have been few instances of that.” But there have been some signs in Florida that Hispanics and African Americans are forging a bond, said Soto, the state legislator. During ongoing redistricting debates in Florida, the two groups have “stuck together very solidly,” he said. If not for a quirk of fate, Martin and Zimmerman might never have encountered each other, sparing the nation a painful episode. Several years ago, Zimmerman returned to his old neighborhood and showed up unannounced at the house across the street. He came back two more times to see George Hall, a retired Presbyterian minister. Zimmerman told him that he had plans. He wanted to move back to Virginia. He wanted to be a police officer, but he needed a letter of recommendation that Zimmerman could give to prospective employers. “I told them he was a great guy,” Hall recalled. “We never did hear what happened with that.” Staff writers Brady Dennis, Sari Horwitz, Josh White and Jeremy Borden contributed to this report.

– The man who shot Trayvon Martin in what he says was a case of self-defense is keeping out of the public eye, but George Zimmerman's lawyer went on CNN last night to rebut the notion that his client is racist. Zimmerman and his wife mentored two black teens, even after the official mentoring program folded, and also helped a black church raise money, said lawyer Craig Sonner. "I do not believe that's the indication of a person who's a racist." (The Washington Post notes that Zimmerman's father is white and his mother Latino, providing "no tidy way" to categorize him, and an Orlando Sentinel profile includes a quote from his dad strenuously rejecting the "racist" label as well.) Another big issue in the case revolves around Florida's "stand your ground" law, but Sonner doesn't think it's relevant here. "In my legal opinion, that's not really applicable to this case," he told Anderson Cooper. "The statute on 'stand your ground' is primarily when you're in your house. This is self-defense, and that's been around for forever—that you have a right to defend yourself. So the next issue (that) is going to come up is, was he justified in using the amount of force he did?" The Dallas Morning News spoke to Jeb Bush, the governor who signed the measure into law, and he, too, thinks it's irrelevant. "This law does not apply to this particular circumstance," he said. "Stand your ground means stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn't mean chase after somebody who's turned their back."

Nobukazu Kuriki, who lost all his fingertips to frostbite three years ago, was trying to be the first person to summit Everest since its worst disaster A Japanese climber who lost all his fingertips to frostbite and was trying to become the first person to conquer Mount Everest since its worst disaster has abandoned his attempt to reach the summit because of poor weather. Nobukazu Kuriki, 33, gave up his attempt about 700 metres (2,300ft) below the the 8,850-metre summit. 'We have nothing': survivors of Nepal's second quake left beyond hopeless Read more “I tried my best, but I judged that I would not be able to come back alive if I went any further given the strong winds and deep snow,” Kuriki wrote on his Twitter account after descending some way on Thursday. Climbers usually scale Everest and other Himalayan peaks in May, just before the rainy season sweeps in from the south, bringing snow at high altitude. But there is also a short climbing season in the autumn, after the summer rains ease. Members of the climbing community in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, said Kuriki’s summit attempt so late in the year was too dangerous, with the increased risk of avalanches and high winds capable of blowing people off the mountain. Nepal quake: Everest base camp 'looked like it had been flattened by bomb' Read more It was his first attempt to climb Everest since losing all of his fingertips on the mountain three years ago after spending two days in a snow hole at 8,230 metres in temperatures below -20C. Even without fingertips, he can grip an ice axe with one hand and pin it with the other. “I am grateful to everyone’s support from the bottom of my heart,” he said. Kuriki had became an unlikely face of Nepal’s efforts to revive its climbing industry after at least 18 mountaineers were killed in the Everest region in avalanches triggered by a big earthquake in April. The earthquake in April, and a second big one in May, killed nearly 9,000 people across the poor Himalayan nation. ||||| Over 9, 000 people died in April 2015 from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu. And no one summited Everest – from either side, from any camp. Summits don’t matter. As has been my custom since 2002, I will summarize the season but this time from my first hand experience as I was climbing Lhotse which shares 80% of the route with Everest. I was between Camps 1 and 2 when the 7.8 magnitude earthquake reached the Western Cwm. This summary, while about the Everest season, is also about a human tragedy where thousands lost their lives, multiples of that are now homeless and many no longer have a way to make a living. Earthquakes are mean beasts, natural disasters, that strike with no warning, destroy at random. I spent one evening this week speaking with helicopter pilots and people who have just returned from the earthquake epicenter regions. They say there are villages flattened, with landslides and down trees seemingly erasing entire villages off the trail systems – these are areas trekkers seldom touch, nor apparently relief agencies at the moment. There are many, many small, individual efforts to reach these villages in addition to the large scale multi national efforts – the progress is not for lack of trying but it all seems to be moving too slowly. The largest organizations with resources to hire helicopters, deliver food and medicine are making a real difference. If you want to make a donation where your money makes an immediate difference in Nepal, these are a few suggestions Cholera is a growing concern with dead animals, and humans not being cremated or buried. Once this takes hold, the fear is the death toll will sky rocket. For an excellent overview of impact on Nepal as of 3 May 2015, please see this article on the Economist. High/Low Expectations The Everest 2015 season began with much trepidation, and attention. The number of permits issued surprised even the most jaded Everest observer: 358 individuals for Everest 114 for Lhotse and 56 for Nuptse – these were record numbers. With 16 mountain workers killed after an ice serac fell onto the Khumbu Icefall and over 40 trekkers killed in a snowstorm in the Annapurna region last autumn, many in Nepal feared the industry would take a hit with lower numbers. Some thought Everest climbers would prefer to climb from Tibet or trek in Bhutan. However, history shows us once again that it is a fine predictor of the future. After record deaths in 1996, 2006 and 2012, the following year delivered record climbers on Everest; 2015 was no different. Even on Everest from Tibet for 2015, records permits were issued, over 200 foreigners . The Everest Machine continued to be strong. Including the foreign permits, local Sherpa, Tibetans, cooks, cook boys, porters, over 1200 people were gathered on both sides of the world’s tallest peak, awaiting their turn for the summit. The human psyche is an interesting phenomenon. Migrating towards EBC Thus in early April people streamed into Kathmandu, flying to Lukla or driving to Chinese Base Camp on the north. The weather was, interesting. A few weeks earlier, Sherpas from the largest teams had already visited Everest Base Camp (EBC) at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall to mark spots for their teams and reported deep, wet snow everywhere – 3 feet of the white stuff. The trails were filled, as were the teahouses; trekkers and climbers alike jammed into the stone and wooden structures, staff short tempered trying to meet the need. The promise of Wifi, fell short with schemes and technical problems thwarting the promise of Facebook selfies or emails back home. Yes, a first world problem in a third world country. Capturing the Moment Video cameras were as common as Dzos and yaks. It was reported that eight major film crews were on the south side this year, all waiting for some kind of Everest disaster so they could capture the human drama, package for television and make a name for themselves, until the next reality show. The only question was, if they could be at the right place at the right time. Writers and reporters from newspapers to magazines to websites, called contacts to get their background stories pre-written as early as February. Many published a soon to be annual article on April 18, the anniversary of the Sherpa deaths in the Icefall. A week later it would be worse. Arriving at EBC, it was stark, rolling glacial hills covered in white powder, and it was cold, extremely cold. Mid April is supposed to be somewhat warm. The traditional weather patterns for the past decade: clear, cool mornings changing to afternoon light snow showers changing to crisp clear nights – 2015 was full of harsh cold and heavy snow. The “New” Everest Route The team of specialized Sherpas, aka the Icefall Doctors, had arrived in mid March, aerial photographs in hand with expert consulting from some of the Everest climbers around, their remit was to find a “new, safe route” through the Khumbu Icefall. Last year’s route hugged the West Shoulder of Everest, putting each person in the direct fall line of the hanging serac. The consequences were deadly when it released. For 2015, they wanted to return it more towards the center, or near Nuptse, climber’s right, to reduce this exposure. As teams got settled at EBC, everyone wanted to know about the route. Where was it, was it safer, how many ladders? The early reports said shorter and safer. But when the first westerners entered the Icefall, there was a huge surprise. The lower section was in fact almost direct, no ladders until half way, or higher; it was fast. But the top section had an obstacle, some call it an aid, that would stop both foreigners and Sherpas alike: two vertical snow walls near the top had ladders, six to be exact, lashed together with nylon ropes, that would provide access to the Western Cwm. The Docs had put one ladder on each of these sections but it was taking the world’s Sherpas five to ten minutes to overcome each. With hundreds of individuals each day, this was a bottleneck waiting to happen. More to the point this section would prove pivotal two weeks later in the 2015 Everest story. With the feedback, the Docs promised to add more ladders plus a rope to used to rappel or abseil, down. This should reduce the congestion. However, the weather hit again, hard. A week of cold and snow stopped all activity. Everest 2015 was falling behind schedule. Since 2005, the route to the summit from the Southeast Ridge was either finished or had all the needed ropes and anchors positioned at the South Col by May 1. It was now April 25 and the thin nylon safety line was only set to Camp 1 at the base of the Lhotse Face, over 7,000 feet short. All the needed rope and anchors were still at EBC. It would take 80 Sherpas loads just to move this mass of gear to Camp 2, much less get the line set to the summit. The Expedition Operators Association had implored the Nepal Ministry of Tourism to let them use helicopters to move this safety equipment higher thus keeping the Sherpas safe from what was viewed as unnecessary work. But their request had been denied. This was not new, the same ask and deny cycle had been going on for many years, led by Russell Brice and Guy Cotter. But after the deaths in 2014, they thought they had a good case – it appeared not to be true. On April 19, the weather took a turn – for the better, it was like mid April should be. Teams took advantage of this break to make their first climbs into the Icefall, hone skills near base camp or just pack and repack for their first acclimatization rotations to the Cwm. It finally felt like the Everest climbing season had started on the south side. Our team left at 2:00AM on April 23 – presumably to get ahead of the rumored crowds heading up that same day. While additional ladders had been installed by the Docs, the chance of waiting was too high not to loose a few hours of sleep in order to miss it. We started higher by headlamp, a clear sky overhead, Sherpa trains going up and down. It felt good Kami and I reached the upper ladders just after sunrise. I looked around to take it all in. I saw the horseshoe ice serac hanging from Everest’s West Shoulder, similar ice cliffs off Nuptse and Pumori, the 21,000 foot snow cone, was just behind base camp. This was part of why I climb, the feeling of freedom, rarefied air, teammates along with a shared purpose. Yes, this was it. Satisfaction at Camp 1 We reached Camp 1 where we would spend two nights. It was business as usual as the site situated at the top of the Khumbu Icefall filled up with expedition tents. The quiet was replaced by hissing stoves, chatter and the occasional small avalanche that always welcomed humans to this place. On Saturday, April 25, we left for Camp 2. The prior day we had taken an hour walk up the Cwm to further our acclimatization as we knew the route. As we walked this day, the clouds moved in and it was lightly snowing – no worry as it should only take a few hours to make the traverse. Our teams began to spread out like normal. Then it happened. Avalanche! Near the front, I stopped in my tracks as a huge avalanche announced it’s arrival to my right, off Nuptse. It was a crushing sound. I looked right. A few seconds later, an equally loud rush of snow, ice and air was delivered off the West Ridge of Everest. It was almost impossible to see what was unfolding as the low clouds and snowfall obscured any clear view – but we knew they were avalanches, and they were close. Garrett screamed out “pull up your buffs!” This was to keep the snow out of our mouths, in other words to keep us breathing and alive. We stood helpless in the Valley of Silence as the Western Cwm is oft called but it was nothing but silent this Saturday, 4 minutes before noon. I caught a glimpse of avalanching snow and pointed it out just as I heard over our radios, “Earthquake.” It was Billie, few hundred yards behind us, moving alone in the middle of the pack. Just then, my world dropped out from underneath my feet, and simultaneously throughout this part of Nepal. Earthquake! Everyone has a slightly direct recall of that moment, but I felt the snow floor drop two inches underneath my feet. I stumbled to maintain my balance, then it happened again. That was the moment I knew I was in a huge earthquake while in the Western Cwm staring at Lhotse ahead and Everest to my left. I felt helpless, totally vulnerable; at the full mercy of planet earth, with no options. As my head cleared, a new thought entered: what of the fragile Khumbu Icefall, base camp, how far did this earthquake reach – the north side, Kathmandu? I had questions and no answers. Soon the reality set in, delivered in short sound bites over what radio transmitters still worked, the news was devastating. We moved faster towards Camp 2 where part of our Sherpa team was waiting. Faces were bleak, no smiles, little emotion. The news was dire – first reports said Everest Base Camp was decimated – moved west by hundreds of meters on liquefied snow and ice – everything was gone – there were casualties. We sat quietly as the news sank in. We had no way of vetting the stories and no reason to doubt them. Then, the crushing blow, our base camp doctor, Eve, was in critical condition from a head injury. We sat quietly, heads lowered, staring at our 8000 meter boots. Two hours later, around 3:00pm, the earth moved again. A day later, a second earthquake delivered another blow. We knew the icefall was ruined, how could it not be? The ladders across the crevasses were tenuous at , the vertical ladders attached to snow with screws and aluminum pickets – they were never constructed to handle a major earthquake. The crevasses has become spokes on a huge gear, spinning slowly, without concern for what was in its teeth, crushing anyone or anything that dared to test its strength. Reality I never considered taking a helicopter back to EBC, not once, but soon the harsh reality set in – the Khumbu Icefall is a fragile set of house sized ice blocks leaning against one another – all moving in slow motion but moving nonetheless. If one moves, something else has to move – it was real life dominoes. They had moved, everything had moved. To enter it now would be risky, fool hardy, even suicidal – more than the normal risk everyone accepted when climbing it. We were safe at Camp 2, food, and fuel to survive many days – but not forever. The route from Camp 1 to Camp 2 had changed, crevasses had closed, new ones had opened; the ladders we had used were swallowed up, disappeared – perhaps one day to be spit back up 2,500 feet lower at base camp. The power of the glacier, the earth was on full display. I had felt tiny on the summit of Everest in 2011 but now felt minute, insignificant – in the wrong place. The radios chattered. Guides from several commercial teams were making their effort to fix the route – a few from base camp and a few from camp 1 – the hopes of 170 people now in the Western Cwm lay on their shoulders to repair the ladders, find a new route or pull a rabbit out of the glacier hat that would allow us to down climb to base camp. The crevasses were large this year near the top of the Icefall. Perhaps as a result of the new route of just a function of 2015 – but they were too wide to cross without aid, too deep to climb out of without unique skills, ice axes, ropes and specialized gear – the Khumbu Icefall had been transformed into a series of death traps that few expert climbers would enter, much less the 170 people in the Western Cwm. “We are coming back – too warm, no route.” Was all that was said on the radio from the expert climbing guides. And with that we knew the remaining option was to consider the helicopters. They had tried their to no avail, the warming temperatures of mid day plus another aftershock had taken them as far as anyone would expect, and more. Now re was the better part of valor. This was not time for ego, pride or vanity – this was serious. Down climbing was not an option – for anyone -guides, foreigners, Sherpa or Nepali cook boys. No one would reenter the Khumbu Icefall in 2015, even the vaunted Icefall Doctors. Helicopters The helicopter business had been good this spring. Flight sight seeing was in full motion, teams flying gear in and out of base camp, some of those who did the technique of acclimatizing at home in altitude tents, took the chopper almost to base camp to save time. At times I felt like I was camping at an airport and the flights began promptly at 7:00am and stopped only when the clouds moved in late afternoon. I cussed them but now knew that were our path back to base camp – or what was left of it. On Monday, April 27 we left Camp 2 for Camp 1 and the makeshift helicopter pad. The Western Cwm route we had ascended was unrecognizable. It was a new terrain. I kept looking up at the steep walls surrounding the Valley of Silence. Camp 1 was in a more precarious location that Camp 2, closer to the walls, exposed to direct hits from avalanches. Some people had their brush with them a few days earlier, others had died from them a few years earlier. With the instability, this was not a place to linger, everyone waiting anxiously for the “womph, woomph, woomph” of helicopter rotors beating against the thin air. There were two makeshift landing pads scooped out of the snow. 50 people stood at one, about 25 at the other – more were to come. There was order to the chaos. Again, commercial guides did traffic control, most everyone followed their instructions. Some teams choose to skip the first wave of flights, wanting to see if the route could be repaired, they surrendered to the inevitable the next day. The pilots showed their skills as they approached the pad, hovered momentarily as the passengers positioned to jump on board as soon as the skids touched down – it was a high altitude ballet that was unthinkable a few years earlier. In a few hours, 150 people were moved freeing up the choppers to help others in need. Two by two, foreigners, Sherpas, Nepalis were saved that day. Base Camp Horrors I stepped off the helicopter to familiar faces from other climbs, they shook my hand, suggested I get something to eat and drink before heading higher to my base camp. Expectations had already been set – there was nothing left and Eve had died. I went in search of my Colorado climbing mate, Jim but failed to find him. I knew he had taken a previous flight down from Camp 1 so I knew he was safe, but I wanted to see him. I slowly walked from the lower end of EBC towards the center, ground zero if you will. The earthquake had shook loose decades, perhaps centuries old ice cliffs off Pumori and the steep ridge that led to Lintgren. These cliffs had released before but only gently sprayed base camp with a soft puff of cold snow – there was nothing gentle or soft about what had just happened. As the mountains moved, and in fact the ground near the epicenter rose by three feet, the cliffs were pulled down by a deadly combination of gravity and plate tectonics. It sped down, gaining terminal velocity until it hit a small dip in the landscape that usually protected base camp from such release. But the volume was too great, it gained speed when compressed in the dip, picking up speed it also picked up loose rocks, boulders – they became projectiles hitting anything, and anyone in their way. It was a F5 tornado combined with IEDs all in an environment of nylon tents. The only place to hide was behind a larger rock, even then there was no certainty. The carnage was large, measurable and deadly. Doctors from expeditions and the medical volunteers at EverestER created a MASH unit at one untouched camp. Soon, the injured were carried on the shoulders of others across snow, ice and rock. Blood dripped from the plastic tarps, on the arms, and heads of the living. For many of the doctors this was the second year in a row they served such duty, but this time instead of dealing with suffocation, they dealt with blunt force trauma. I’m not sure their training prepared them for such triage but they performed well, they were once again heroes in an unannounced war. Home? As the aftershocks relented, the hundreds at base camp began to breathe again. Thoughts drifted to home, loved ones. The Sherpas tired to call using the cell phone system ubiquitous throughout Nepal and the Khumbu, the connection didn’t go through. They used the satellite phones of expeditions and individuals with the same result. Some left for the walk back home, no one ever complained and sent them off with hugs. Most stayed to be with their charges, no questioned asked, the loyalty was extraordinary and unexpected given the circumstances – and appreciated. I moved slowly towards our camp, expecting to find nothing – my tent platform scrapped out of the glacier a few weeks earlier. I spotted a huge rock builder, twice as tall as myself – I called it Cell Phone Rock as it was the only place near our camp I could get a signal. I climbed towards it. Our puja alter was still standing – the 3 inch thick puja pole – a tree trunk really, was broken like a twig two feet above the top of the alter, the prayer flags that strung across our camp were gone. All the large tents we used for cooking, eating, communications, storage – tents that stood 10 feet high, 15 feet wide, 30 feet long were gone – no trace. I walked in with a few of my teammates. I passed a shoe, a playing card – the two of hearts – a crushed laptop computer; a picture. Extreme Loss I saw my tent, slightly above our camp proper. A few weeks earlier, I commented to Kami that my tent, being next to the dining tent, was very noisy. He took it upon himself to move me to a quieter spot. By chance it was behind a 15 foot bump on the glacier – that proved to protect half my tent from the directly blow. I lost nothing, my computer nestled in my sleeping bag where I left it, my other gear wet but safe in duffel bags. Kami’s gear had the same good fortune as did most of our team. Sadly, there was looting just after the avalanche, many people found their climbing gear but not money, passports credit cards. But we had lost a dear teammate, Marisa Eve Girawong. She brought smiles, compassion and skills to our camp as our doctor and base camp manager. It was her face I could only see as I sat crossed leg in my pile of “stuff” envisioning the moment she must have experienced; and that of 18 others that Saturday – and the tens of thousands through central Nepal – and the millions who are now homeless. Yes, I was lucky, I know that. I am grateful. We collected our gear and left for the closest village. I was determined not to leave a scrap behind. I picked up the odd piece of trash as I walked. The Indian Army was staying behind to help – they are an incredible asset to Nepal – a good friend. I walked slowly to Gorak Shep, alone in deep thoughts. The Housewives of the Khumbu A few days later I approached Pangboche where Kami (Ang Chhiring Sherpa) lived with his wife. He invited me to visit his home – an honor. We had been through a lot together with summiting Everest in 2011 and K2 last summer, now this. I call him my guardian angel in the mountains. He calls me his father due to lack of hair and gray beard but I’m only eight years older than him! Alone, the rest of the group had gone on to Dubuche for the night, I walked slowly as the sun set and the clouds moved in. How could this happen to such gentle people, such a poor country as measured in money, such a giving culture? I knew where his home was, he had showed me after we had our blessing from Lama Geshi. I entered the trees that decorated his village – it was like moving into a different reality – a refreshing sense of life, peace and hope. A young girl passed me with a basket of potatoes on her back supported by a tumpline around her forehead. “Namaste” she said with a smile on her face. I smiled back, chocking back the emotion from this simple greeting. “Alan”, by now I was familiar with this call as Kami often called to me on the big Hills when he thought I needed help – which was often. Once gain, without knowing it, he was watching out for me. He was standing outside his stone walled home, adorned with a green metal roof. I waved. He waved back. I climbed over a rock wall, designed to keep the pesky yaks out of the vegetable garden and walked the dirt path towards him. We shook hands, then embraced. “Come in, come in.” He took my pack, ice axe still affixed. I walked into a very dark room, serving as the lower part of his home. A soft “Mooo” greeted me, a baby cow sat on fresh grass chewing her cud. The lower part of a Sherpa’s home is for the animals, the upper part of people – nothing goes to waste in the Khumbu. I climbed the steep wooden stairs to the next level. His wife, Lhapka Dicki Sherpa met me. Her huge grin, her smile, her presence set me both at ease and filled me with joy. She hugged my stomach as her head reached my chest. “Lucky, lucky, lucky” she repeated in her Khumbu accent. She held on tight and she looked up at me. Kami stood by with an equally big grin. I moved from the small room that served as a kitchen to the main room, perhaps 20 feet by 40 feet, that served as guest room, living room, bedroom and monastery. On the far wall, wooden bookcases with glass doors, held Tibetan prayer books. Once a year, Kami had a Lama come to his home and spend days praying and blessing his home and family. Before each expedition, he did the same. I was grateful. Lhapka brought us black tea and chang – an obnoxious Khumbu moonshine. I sipped mine but she kept filling the mug to the rim. Kami just smiled. Kami wanted me to meet his mother, she lived next door in a similar arrangement. Once again, I navigated the black space of the lower level only to find her along with Kami’s sister and two neighbors, chatting away in the “kitchen” sitting next to the fire. Their smiles were large, laughs relaxed as Kami introduced me. What they were saying will be a secret forever – I had no idea. Each one hugged my belly as I held their hands tightly – they were tough, strong yet smooth after a life of hard work, love and prayer. The prayer beads, close to their sides, were well worn. Kami’s mother began to talk. He told me (as translated by Kami) how happy she was when her sons were home, away from the mountains – you could see the worry in her eyes, and the joy at having Kami back home. Her friends smiled and nodded in agreement. As I left, Kami talked to me about the next climb …. Kathmandu The flight from Lukla left as much on time as anything does in Nepal. I landed just as the sun was warming up the capital. It was quiet on this Saturday morning, a week after the quake. I noticed a few rock walls strewn across the streets but nothing like I expected, similar to the suggested damage in the Khumbu, but thankfully very different. To be sure there was damage throughout Nepal just not where I had been. The airport was crowded – with rescue helicopters from India, UN planes, cargo full of food, tents, tarps — emergency supplies crying out to get delivered to the remote villages near the epicenter. But the bureaucracy of Nepal had everything at a life threatening halt. The demanded each time had to be inspected, they had waived taxes on the imports, but the logjam was costing lives every second. I walked the streets as the city awoke. People milled about as heavy helicopters flew above. I hope their missions were successful. Everest Almost immediately after the earthquake, climbing teams made plans to return to Kathmandu, but a few individuals, no organized teams ever seriously considered attempting the summit, stayed on hoping the Icefall Doctors would return, they had some injured members but no deaths as had been widely reported. On May 3, the Nepal Ministry of Tourism said “Everest is closed” (source) due to the Icefall being impassable, then on the following day (source) they said it was officially open and anyone with a permit may attempt the mountain. As of this writing no one remained at EBC with the intention to climb. For the first time since 1974, Everest would have no summits by any route, from any camp, by any means. The China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) had already declared climbing closed from Tibet and all permits would be honored for three additional years. Nepal took 364 days to confirm the 2014 permits would be honored through 2019 in a stunning display of indecision. There are requests for Nepal to honor this years permits, thus the waiting games begins anew. Sadly, the government seems to be incapable of having a clear vision of how to manage their mountains, leaving climbers and trekkers continuously questioning policies. All their promises of improvements from weather forecasts, GPS systems, rescue teams, actual liaison officers – none materialized. With the earthquake, the situation will only get worse as the government struggles with the larger national issues. Perhaps it is time for the world’s climbers to focus on other countries. Aftermath It will take years for Nepal to recover, just like Haiti or another third world country. Money will flow in from well meaning people, some of it will reach those in need. NGOs will do their as will the UN and other global agencies charged with helping countries when a natural disaster overwhelms them. As for climbing, well frankly who cares? Climbing really only matters to those who make a living from it, guides, Sherpas, porters, teahouse house owners – governments. For the rest of us, it is a sport, sometimes a deadly one. If no one ever summited Everest again, it would certainly destroy a lot of dreams but more importantly, would impact the livelihood of many; that said, summits don’t matter. My passion is climbing mountains, it keeps me alive and feeds my soul, but it is not worth lives. The deaths at base camp were part of a larger disaster, actual a tiny part in the overall tragedy; but the loss was real, shattering families. I know death happens daily around the globe in uncountable ways; these deaths were close to home, close to me and many who will never forget the experience. Yes hundreds will probably return next spring to attempt Everest. Some operators will shift to the north, quietly, or in some case loudly, saying it is safer. People with nothing more than a Kilimanjaro summit will claim to have the proper experience – until something goes wrong. Guides will continue to save lives, doing what they do; and the Everest machine will continue even though it is clear it is time to let Nepal recover. I don’t know when Kami will climb Everest again, his mother hopes never, I kind of agree. Memories are Everything Alan Share with your Friends: Tweet Email Like this: Like Loading... ||||| Not one person managed to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2015, for the first time since 1974. Last year also saw the highest death toll ever on earth’s highest mountain (8,848m), with as many as 24 people killed in a single day in April when a 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal causing a huge avalanche. It is the deadliest day in Everest history, surpassing the day in April 2014 when 16 were killed by an avalanche. Estimates vary for the death toll on the mountain last April, with the number of dead ranging from 18 to 24. The Nepal earthquake killed more than 8,000 people across the country and injured more than 21,000. The failure of any climbers to reach the Himalayan summit in 2015, the first time this has happened in 41 years, is in part down to the fact that the mountain was all-but shut after the earthquake. "Earthquakes are mean beasts, natural disasters, that strike with no warning, destroy at random" Climber Alan Arnette The Nepalese government was initially keen for mountaineers not to cancel their expeditions after the avalanche, but broken ladders on the mountain and a second quake in early May meant these plans were abandoned. Everest’s death toll now stands at 289, though estimates on this figure vary too. • Sixty fascinating Everest facts There have been several years when the annual death toll has exceeded 10: 1982 (11 dead), 1996 (15); 2006 (11) and 2014 (16). Photo: Getty Writing on his annual summary blog, professional climber Alan Arnette said of 2015: “This summary, while about the Everest season, is also about a human tragedy where thousands lost their lives, multiples of that are now homeless and many no longer have a way to make a living. Earthquakes are mean beasts, natural disasters, that strike with no warning, destroy at random.” He entitled his post, Summits Don’t Matter. Prior to 1974, the summit was reached seven of the 22 years since 1953. • Mount Everest: the trip of a lifetime In 1974 six people were killed by an avalanche. The mountain reopened to tourism in August, with just one climber permit awarded to Japanese mountaineer Nobukazu Kuriki, who had tried four times to reach the summit, losing all his fingers to frostbite in the process. He failed on his fifth attempt in October, giving up 700 metres from the summit.

– For the first time in 41 years, not a single person stood on the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest peak at 29,029 feet, during an entire calendar year. But that's not even close to the worst of what 2015 brought, as famed climber Alan Arnette reports in his year-end blog summary titled "Summits Don't Matter." After a record 358 permits were issued to individual climbers at the start of the year, a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck Nepal in April, claiming 8,000-plus lives across the country and a record 18 (or 24, the numbers vary) on the mountain, reports the Telegraph. The deadliest day in the mountain's history came almost exactly one year after the previous record, when an avalanche claimed 16 lives in April 2014. Everest "inspires humility," the Takeaway reports, but every year the ante is raised as more climbers try to reach the summit and more Sherpas and their families come to rely on mountaineering and trekking tourism. As such the government of Nepal at first hesitated to shut down the mountain following the disaster in April 2015, but another earthquake in May, as well as broken ladders, forced them to issue no more permits until the end of the summer, when famed Japanese climber Nobukazu Kuriki, who'd lost all his fingers during one of his previous four bids on the mountain, gave it another go. He abandoned his campaign just 2,300 feet from the summit in late September, the Guardian reported at the time, and the mountain let no one else through. (A Google exec was among the dead in 2015.)

In two months, Christine Royles, a young mother from South Portland, will have a kidney transplant. Her search for a donor was a unique one. 'Call or text': Young mom solicits kidney via car When Christine Royles, 23, passes you on the road, there’s something that might catch your eye: A sign on the back of her car pleading for a kidney. More Click here to watch the report She used the back window of her car as a mobile billboard. A young father from Windham, Josh Dall-Leighton, saw her ad and recently found out he is a match. "I looked at my wife, and I said text her. I want to try, I need to try," said Dall-Leighton. Dall-Leighton, a new father of twin boys -- one with special needs -- said it was the right thing to do. His twin boys, Christopher and Mason, were born at 29 weeks and had medical conditions of their own. "We did find out at 1-month-old that one of our sons did have a brain condition and life could be pretty tough," Ashley Dall-Leighton said. The surgery is schedule for May 19. Video: Watch previous story "It sounds like it will be kind of a hard recovery, but I think it's worth it in the end if it saves her life," Josh Dall-Leighton said. The community is rallying in support with a GoFundMe account for when Dall-Leighton is out of work. As of Wednesday morning, more than $21,000 has been raised A GoFundMe account has also been created to help Royles as well. As of Wednesday morning, more than $2,000 has been raised. The pair said the whole experience will be an example for the kids, that good deeds will go far. "It's more acts of kindness that will show other people that you can do it too ,and it can change the world," Ashley Dall-Leighton said. ||||| They were driving near the Maine Mall when they saw the message written in bright yellow paint on the rear window of another car: “Looking for someone to donate me their kidney. Must have type O blood.” There was a phone number. “I looked over,” says Ashley Dall-Leighton, “and I go, ‘Oh, my God, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever read.’ And he’s like, ‘What?’ And I read it out loud, and he said, ‘Did you get the number? Text her right now.'” And that’s how Josh Dall-Leighton, a 30-year-old corrections officer from Windham with three children, came to offer one of his kidneys to a woman he’d never met. ••• Christine Royles of South Portland was diagnosed with lupus in December of 2013. A few months later, doctors discovered she had a second autoimmune disease, ANCA vasculitis. They also told her that her kidneys were failing. Only 23, she joined a waiting list of more than 100,000 people in the United States who need kidney transplants, according to the National Kidney Foundation. Fewer than 17,000 receive one each year, with about a third of the kidneys coming from living donors. In 2013, 4,453 patients died while waiting for kidney transplants. Christine didn’t like those odds. She decided to take matters into her own hands. “I saw a story about this old man in a different state who was asking for a kidney for his wife,” says Christine, now 24. “He stood on the side of the road with a sign.” Instead of standing on the side of the road, she decided to turn her car into a rolling billboard. “My fiancé thought it was kind of weird,” she says. But it worked. ••• Kidneys are bean-shaped organs, each about the size of a fist, that sit in the rear of the abdominal cavity. Their job is to filter waste from the bloodstream. Humans are born with two, but it’s possible to lead a healthy life with one. “You can live with one kidney,” says Jen Dalton, the clinical coordinator at Maine Nephrology Associates, “because that one kidney essentially takes over the job of two.” People who need transplants are put on the national waiting list, but they can bypass it by finding a living donor themselves. Most living donors are family members, friends and acquaintances. But more and more, people are expanding the search. “We see people using social medial or putting ads out for altruistic donors,” says Sean Roach, the public relations manager for the National Kidney Foundation. “It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there like that.” Finding a willing candidate is only the first step. A recent study presented to the American Society of Nephrology found that fewer than half of Americans meet the criteria to donate; those who aren’t eligible have health conditions such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes. Many others simply can’t afford to take the time off from work; the average donor stays in the hospital for at least two days and takes three to six weeks to recuperate. A person who donates a kidney is generally able to lead a full, healthy life afterward but should be tested regularly for signs of potential kidney damage. They are advised to keep their weight and blood pressure down, but don’t require special diets or medication. “In absolute numbers,” says Dr. John Vella, director of the Maine Transplant Program, “the chance of a kidney donor needing dialysis at some point is very much less than 1 percent.” ••• Josh, who works as a corrections officer at the Southern Maine Re-Entry Center in Alfred, says he didn’t think twice after seeing the sign on Christine’s car. “I just looked at my wife and said, ‘I have to try,'” he says. “I think it was the fact that I have three kids of my own, and that really resonated with me. If (my wife) needed a kidney and I couldn’t provide for her, I would hope that somebody else would kind of step up and help her out.” The Dall-Leightons’ twins, Mason and Christopher, are 10 months old. Their brother, Hayden, is 5. Christine put Josh in touch with Maine Medical Center’s Transplant Program. After undergoing extensive tests this winter, Josh learned last month that he is a strong potential match. He and Ashley texted Christine with the news. “I started crying,” Christine says, “because, oh, my God, I can’t believe he’s gonna do this for me.” Ashley was wary at first about the prospect of her husband donating a kidney, but quickly put her concerns aside. “(Josh) just told me all along that this is what he needs to do, and if this is what he needs to do, then I support him 100 percent,” she says. ••• Christine and the Dall-Leightons, who had been getting to know each other through texting and Facebook, finally met for the first time Tuesday. Christine drove to Windham and knocked on the couple’s door, holding the hand of her 2-year-old son, Talan. Josh, holding 10-month-old Christopher in his arms, opened the door and gave her a hug. She told him it’s hard to find the words to say thank you. But Josh said it isn’t necessary. “I just want you to get better,” he says. “I just want to hear that donating helped you.” For now, Christine continues to live a life consumed by her disease: weekly doctors’ appointments, trips to the hospital, mountains of medication. Every night, after she gets home from her job waitressing at Applebee’s and reads a bedtime story to Talan, she tethers herself for 10 hours to the portable dialysis machine that keeps her alive. Because Christine has permanent kidney failure, Medicare is covering the cost of the transplant, which averaged roughly $262,000 in 2011, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website. Final testing on Josh should be completed in the next few weeks, and the transplant surgery is tentatively scheduled for mid-May. He expects to be out of work, on unpaid leave, for about a month. Christine is now trying to raise money to help the family that’s helping to save her life. “I’m shocked that someone is going to do this for me,” Christine says. “The fact that someone with a young family is going to take time off work to help some random person is unbelievable to me.” But Josh says his gift to her isn’t a debt to be repaid. It’s simply the right thing to do. As he talks, his twin sons squirm in his lap. “I want these boys to know that if somebody needs help, you do whatever you can to help them,” he says. “I want them to know these aren’t just words I’m telling them. That I actually did something to help somebody.” Share Want the news vital to Maine? Our daily headlines email is delivered each morning. Email * Newsletter Choices * Daily Headlines Breaking News Business Headlines High School Sports Real Estate * I understand the Terms of Service. Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. 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– It's not everyone who appeals to strangers they pass on the road to give them an organ, and it's definitely not everyone who spots such an appeal, turns to his wife, and says, "Did you get her number? Text her right now." But two such strangers found each other on a road in Maine, reports the Portland Press Herald, after 24-year-old Christine Royles scrawled this plea on her car window: "Looking for someone to donate me their kidney. Must have type O blood." Diagnosed with lupus-related kidney failure early last year, Royles went on a waiting list of 100,000; of those, some 17,000 a year get transplants. Not liking her chances, Royles tried her unusual approach. "My fiance thought it was kind of weird," she says. Josh Dall-Leighton did not; he got in touch with Royles, and has since been identified as a potential match. "I started crying," Royles says of getting the news, "because, oh, my God, I can’t believe he’s gonna do this for me." Not only is the 30-year-old dad of three sons doing it—surgery is set for May—he's going to be on unpaid leave for about a month afterward. Dall-Leighton shrugs it off as the right thing to do; he notes that his own twins were born premature and had medical problems, WMTW reports. "I want these boys to know that if somebody needs help, you do whatever you can to help them," he says. "I want them to know these aren’t just words I’m telling them. That I actually did something to help somebody." A GoFundMe account is seeking to raise money for Dall-Leighton while he's out of work. (There are some nice people out there giving away their kidneys.)

The letter ''B'' of the signage on the Barclays headquarters in Canary Wharf is hoisted up the side of the building in London July 20, 2012. U.S. prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to people familiar with a sweeping investigation into the rigging scandal. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have recently contacted lawyers representing some of the suspects to notify them that criminal charges and arrests could be imminent, said two of those sources, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is ongoing. Defense lawyers, some of whom represent suspects, said prosecutors have indicated they plan to begin making arrests and filing criminal charges in the next few weeks. In long-running financial investigations it is not uncommon for prosecutors to contact defense lawyers before filing charges to offer suspects a chance to cooperate or take a plea, these lawyers said. The prospect of charges and arrests means prosecutors are getting a fuller picture of how traders at major banks allegedly sought to influence the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, and other global rates that underpin hundreds of trillions of dollars in assets. The criminal charges would come alongside efforts by regulators to fine major banks, and could show that the alleged activity was not rampant at the lenders. "The individual criminal charges have no impact on the regulatory moves against the banks," said a European source familiar with the matter. "But banks are hoping that at least regulators will see that the scandal was mainly due to individual misbehavior of a gang of traders." In Europe, financial regulators are focusing on a ring of traders from several European banks who allegedly sought to rig benchmark interest rates such as Libor, said the European source familiar with the investigation in Europe. The source, who did not want to be identified because the investigation is ongoing, said regulators are checking emails among a group of traders and believe they are close to piecing together a picture of how the suspects allegedly conspired to make money by manipulating rates. The rates are set daily based on an average of estimates supplied by a panel of banks. "More than a handful of traders at different banks are involved," said the source familiar with the investigation by European regulators. There are also probes in Europe concerning Euribor, the Euro Interbank Offered Rate. It is not clear on which individuals and banks federal prosecutors are most focused. A top U.S. Department of Justice lawyer overseeing the investigation did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters previously reported that more than a dozen current and former employees of several large banks are under investigation, including Barclays Plc, UBS and Citigroup, and have hired defense lawyers over the past year as a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., continues to gather evidence. Activity in the Libor investigation, which has been going on for three years, has quickened since Barclays agreed last month to pay $453 million in fines and penalties to settle allegations with regulators and prosecutors that some of its employees tried to manipulate key interest rates from 2005 through 2009. Barclays, which signed a non-prosecution agreement with U.S. prosecutors, is the first major bank to reach a settlement in the investigation, which also is looking at the activities of employees at HSBC, Deutsche Bank and other major lenders. HSBC declined to comment. Officials at Citigroup and UBS were not available for comment. The Barclays settlement sparked outrage and a series of public hearings in Britain, after which Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond announced his resignation from the UK bank. The revelations have raised questions about the integrity of Libor, which is used as a benchmark in setting prices for loans, mortgages and derivative contracts. Adding to concerns are documents released by the New York Federal Reserve Bank this month that show regulators in the United States and England had some knowledge that bankers were submitting misleading Libor bids during the 2008 financial crisis to make their financial institutions appear stronger than they really were. Among other details, the Fed documents included the transcript of an April 2008 telephone call between a Barclays trader in New York and Fed official Fabiola Ravazzolo, in which the unidentified trader said: "So, we know that we're not posting um, an honest Libor." The source familiar with the investigation in Europe said two traders suspended from Deutsche Bank were among those being investigated. A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment. The Financial Times said on Wednesday that regulators were looking at suspected communication among four traders who had worked at Barclays, Credit Agricole, HSBC and Deutsche Bank. Credit Agricole said it had not been accused of any wrongdoing related to the attempted manipulation of Libor by Barclays, but had responded to requests for information from various authorities related to the matter. Beyond regulatory penalties and criminal charges, banks face a growing number of civil lawsuits from cities, companies and financial institutions claiming they were harmed by rate manipulation. Morgan Stanley recently estimated that the 11 global banks linked to the Libor scandal may face $14 billion in regulatory and legal settlement costs through 2014. In the United States, the regulatory investigation is being led by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has made the Libor probe one of its top priorities. (Reporting by Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan in New York and Philipp Halstrick in Frankfurt, with additional reporting by Emily Flitter in New York and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Alwyn Scott, Maureen Bavdek and Dale Hudson) ||||| Article Excerpt Several groups of traders are under investigation by regulators around the world for allegedly banding together to rig interest rates, people close to the probe said. The continuing criminal and civil scrutiny includes more than a dozen traders from at least nine banks, often allegedly working together in small groups to target different interest rates on separate continents, the people said. The emerging details about traders suggest to investigators a widespread conspiracy that continued for several years and cascaded around the world. As a result, the banks where the traders worked are under growing pressure to explain what they knew ... ||||| Regulators from Stockholm to Seoul are re-examining how benchmark borrowing costs are set amid concern they are just as vulnerable to manipulation as the London interbank offered rate. Stibor, Sweden’s main interbank rate, Sibor, the leading rate in Singapore, and Tibor in Japan are among rates facing fresh scrutiny because, like Libor, they are based on banks’ estimated borrowing costs rather than real trades. In some cases they may be easier to rig than Libor as fewer banks contribute to their calculation, according to academics and analysts. “Many of the ingredients which would make it easy to manipulate Libor and collude are common in other benchmarks,” said Rosa Abrantes-Metz, an economist with consulting firm Global Economics Group and an associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Regulatory agencies are starting to take a look at those and there is a growing sense they need to change.” Barclays Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest bank, was fined a record 290 million pounds ($450 million) last month for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, its equivalent in euros, to appear more healthy during the financial crisis and boost earnings before it. At least 12 banks including Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Deutsche Bank AG are being investigated for manipulating Libor. Beyond Libor Regulators and industry groups are now turning their attention to whether other benchmark rates were manipulated in the same way. Sweden’s central bank, the Japanese Bankers Association, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission have all announced probes into how their domestic rates are set. Libor is determined by a daily poll carried out on behalf of the British Bankers’ Association that asks banks to estimate how much it would cost to borrow from each other for different periods and in different currencies. Three-month dollar Libor was 0.453 percent on July 19. Derivatives traders at Barclays asked colleagues who inputted the rate each day to amend their submissions to benefit their trading positions. They also contacted traders at other banks to ask them to do the same. Traders at Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Societe Generale SA and Credit Agricole SA are under investigation for interest-rate manipulation, a person with knowledge of the matter said. With 18 banks on the panel for U.S. dollar Libor and 43 banks for Euribor, only small moves can be achieved by making deliberately high or low submissions. Manipulation becomes easier when fewer banks are contributing, according to Abrantes- Metz at Global Economics. Collusion Ability “Collusion typically occurs in markets with just a few players,” Abrantes-Metz said. “All else being equal, the smaller the group, the easier it is to collude.” Stibor, the Stockholm interbank offered rate, is set by five banks after RBS pulled itself off the panel on April 30. It is calculated by Nasdaq OMX Stockholm every day for eight maturities. Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, said in its biannual Financial Stability Report published June 1 that market participants were concerned about Stibor, the basis for 40 billion Swedish krona ($5.8 billion) of loans and financial contracts. Stibor Questions “Many market participants state in the Riksbank’s latest risk survey that there are problems with the Stibor,” the report stated. ”This refers to incentives for the banks to set the Stibor at fair levels, the opinion that too few banks determine the Stibor and the insufficient transparency of the Stibor and its framework.” The central bank was unavailable for comment because they are on vacation, said spokeswoman Cecilia Roos Isksson. Nibor, the Norwegian rate, is set by a panel of six banks. Cibor, the Copenhagen rate, is based on a group of eight lenders. Tibor, the Tokyo interbank offered rate, is set by the Japanese Bankers Association based on submissions from 16 banks for yen and 15 lenders for euroyen, according to the industry group’s website. The association yesterday asked the banks to answer questions on how they make their submissions, said spokesman Hisanao Aoki. The reference banks, including lending units of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. (8306), JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas SA, must reply by Aug. 10. Citigroup, UBS Citigroup Inc. (C) and UBS AG (UBSN) were ordered to suspend some operations in Japan last December after the Financial Services Agency found their employees attempted to influence Tibor to a “favorable level” for derivatives trading. Citigroup was banned from trading tied to Libor and Tibor for two weeks, and UBS received a one-week suspension. Association officials today met with the ruling Democratic Party of Japan’s finance committee, headed by former Morgan Stanley banker Tsutomu Okubo, to explain how Tibor is set. “Barclays’s fine is enormous and far above the rate of such penalties typically imposed on Japanese financial institutions for wrongdoing,” Okubo said at the meeting. “We must strengthen investors’ trust in Tokyo’s financial market.” Association Chairman Yasuhiro Sato, who is also chief executive officer of Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411), said today that while the process for setting Tibor is sound, he is open to making changes based on the review. South Korea’s antitrust agency this week expanded a probe to see whether a key money-market rate was kept artificially high. The Fair Trade Commission inspected 10 brokerages and nine banks to determine if there was collusion on certificate of deposit rates, the agency said in an e-mailed statement. Under Pressure The country’s 91-day certificate of deposit rate is a benchmark for bank lending and borrowing as well as for interest-rate swaps. Quotes are collected twice a day by the Korea Financial Investment Association from 10 brokerages. “Korea is a relatively insulated system where the leading banks are influential in the local market and were under pressure to maintain their soundness and their profit margins during the crisis,” said David Marshall, an analyst at research firm CreditSights Inc. in Singapore. Manipulation in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong is less likely, he said. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said yesterday it will look into how banks are setting “key market interest rate benchmarks” amid similar reviews by regulators in several markets. The Association of Banks in Singapore sets Sibor based on submissions by 12 lenders. RBS said this week it decided to withdraw from the panel following the January announcement of changes to the Edinburgh-based lender’s strategic priorities. It has also withdrawn from the Tokyo and Hong Kong interbank offered rate-setting panels this year. Hong Kong In Hong Kong, the performance of banks in contributing to set the benchmark Hibor rate is “reviewed regularly,” the Hong Kong Association of Banks said in an e-mailed statement today. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it hasn’t observed “any anomaly” over the past 20 years and will monitor the industry group’s review, according to an e-mailed statement. Hibor is set daily based on quotations provided by 20 lenders, according to the association’s website. Barclays Plc (BARC), Britain’s second-biggest lender by assets, said this month it would pull out of the group of 12 banks in the United Arab Emirates whose quotes determine the interbank lending rate in the second biggest Arab economy. Dutch lender Rabobank last month withdrew from the panels that set Libor in Japanese yen, the Canadian dollar, the Swiss franc, the Danish krone and the Swedish krona. It continues to contribute toward Libor in U.S. dollars, euros and pounds. To contact the reporters on this story: Liam Vaughan in London at [email protected]; Gavin Finch in London at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Evans at [email protected]; Chitra Somayaji at [email protected]

– Looks like Barclays wasn't the only one gaming the Libor system. Investigators are looking into an alleged conspiracy in which traders around the world worked together to rig Libor to boost their personal profits, the Wall Street Journal reports. Several different groups were allegedly working to rig the rate from 2005 to 2011, with the practice spreading as traders switched banks. One cabal alone involved six of the 16 banks that set the daily yen Libor rate. Prosecutors in the US and Europe are close to arresting a number of traders over the scandal, sources tell Reuters—indeed, some of the suspects' lawyers have already been notified of impending arrests. The arrests could take pressure off the banks, making the rate-fixing look more like individual malfeasance than systematic corporate wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that regulators from Switzerland to South Korea to Japan are looking into the possibility that their rates might be vulnerable to foul play.

Over the years, a $1 million reward and a search in the Tioga Mine Pit failed to yield the stolen slippers, one of several pairs worn by Grand Rapids native Judy Garland in the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz." Only four pairs of the famous ruby slippers are known to be in existence, the News Tribune reported in 2015. Besides the stolen pair, the other three sets reside in the Smithsonian Institution, a Los Angeles museum and a private collection. The ruby slippers were nearly at the end of a 10-week loan to the Judy Garland Museum when they were stolen sometime in the overnight hours of Aug. 27-28 in 2005. In the days following the theft, police said the emergency exit door window had been broken. A glass case containing the ruby slippers was broken and the slippers were removed, according to police. The museum had an alarm system, but the private security firm that operated it didn't receive a signal that any doors or windows were opened. It was discovered in the days afterward that the alarm system hadn't been set to alert the security firm that night. Michael Shaw, the slippers' owner who loaned them to the museum, told the News Tribune in 2005 that the theft was "the worst nightmare for me." Kelsch said at the time that he was "devastated" by the theft. "The slippers are a major attraction for our museum. It's our hope that the slippers can be recovered immediately," Kelsch said in 2005. But the theft of the ruby slippers has remained an open police case for 13 years. Divers from the Itasca County Sheriff's Office took a look around the Tioga Mine Pit in 2015, based on the rumor that the slippers were sealed with a weight in Tupperware and tossed into the pit's water. The ruby slippers weren't found during the dive, but a small duffel bag and a partially deteriorated tin can were found and turned over to the Grand Rapids Police Department. A $1 million reward was offered on the 10th anniversary of the theft in 2015 by an anonymous Arizona-based fan, and the Grand Rapids Police Department received more than 40 tips about the stolen slippers. The leads came from as far away as Arizona, the East Coast and the United Kingdom and included tips that the slippers were seen at garage sales, given away in radio station contests and stapled on a restaurant wall. But the deadline to collect the reward came and went without any credible leads or the return of the ruby slippers. The Judy Garland Museum also hired Twin Cities private investigator Rob Feeney, who told the News Tribune in 2015, "We're never going to stop looking for these things. I know the public is never going to stop having an interest in it until they're actually recovered." The stolen ruby slippers were featured in July on the Discovery Channel show "Expedition Unknown," in which host Josh Gates visited the museum during the winter and conducted his own underwater search for the slippers with quips about northern Minnesota's weather. "Grand Rapids may be freezing, but this case is anything but cold," Gates concluded. ||||| The thief left behind bits of broken glass and a single red sequin on the floor. So began a 13-year-old mystery filled with wild tips and offers of lavish rewards in the hunt for two ruby slippers snatched from a museum in Judy Garland’s hometown of Grand Rapids, Minn. Now homecoming heel clicks are ahead: Investigators have found the stolen slippers, bringing closure to an Oz-sized search for the most famous pair of shoes in movie history. There’s no place like home. Authorities were announcing Tuesday afternoon that they’ve recovered the shoes. The slippers filched from the Judy Garland Museum were one of several pair donned by Garland in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” and one of only four known surviving pairs from the movie production that launched Garland’s meteoric fame. North Dakota U.S. Attorney Chris Myers says though the recovery was made, authorities are still looking for who is responsible for the theft. They are still seeking the public's help moving the investigation forward. The tip that led to the recovery came last summer, and the slippers were found in Minneapolis in August. Before the crushing theft in August 2005, the size 5 ½ slippers were on loan to the museum from Hollywood memorabilia collector Michael Shaw. Shaw told the Star Tribune in 2005 that he bought the slippers and other “Wizard of Oz” collectibles at an MGM auction, calling it “the deal of the millennium.” Someone broke into the museum on Aug. 28, snatched the slippers and fled. Nothing else was taken. Museum officials said at the time that an emergency exit had been tampered with. Over the years, the hunt spurred pleas from surviving film performers and an offer of a $1 million reward on the 10th anniversary of the theft. Divers from the Itasca County Sheriff’s Office have even plunged into a watery quarry in their search for the shoes. The slippers’ disappearance dealt a body blow to the small museum in Garland’s hometown, about 200 miles north of the Twin Cities. Garland, born Frances Gumm, lived in Grand Rapids until she was 4 ½, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She died of a barbiturate overdose in 1969. The museum bills itself as offering the world’s largest collection of Garland and “Wizard of Oz” collectibles. Museum officials say many of the thousands of visitors drawn there each year still ask what happened to the sparkling burgundy footwear. “They’re the symbol of the longing for home — a symbol of a sense of place,” John Kelsch, the museum’s executive director, said in a 2016 interview. “Of any artifact from the movie, they touch that emotion in people.” At the time of the theft, the slippers had been insured for a slick $1 million. “France has the ‘Mona Lisa.’ America has ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” Kelsch told the Star Tribune. “It’s our national masterpiece, so much a part of the American experience.” ||||| A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and stolen from the actress’ namesake museum in Minnesota more than a decade ago has been recovered, the FBI announced today. The iconic sequined shoes, known as the “traveling pair”—one of at least four pairs used in the film that are still in existence—were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005 and recovered earlier this summer during a sting operation. But the case is far from over. “From the outset,” said Special Agent Christopher Dudley, who led the investigation from the FBI’s Minneapolis Division, “our top priority was the safe recovery of the slippers.” Although multiple suspects have been identified, Dudley said, “we are still working to ensure that we have identified all parties involved in both the initial theft and the more recent extortion attempt for their return. This is very much an active investigation.” At a press conference in Minneapolis to announce the recovery, the FBI, along with the Grand Rapids Police Department, asked for the public’s assistance. “There are certainly people out there who have additional knowledge regarding both the theft and the individuals responsible for concealing the slippers all these years.” Dudley said. “We are asking that you come forward.”

– It required more than three clicks of the heel to get these ruby slippers home—it took 13 years. Law enforcement officials announced Tuesday that the shoes stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minn., in late August 2005 have been found—but no thief has been apprehended. The Minneapolis Star Tribune cites North Dakota US Attorney Chris Myers as saying authorities are still looking for the person responsible; no suspects were mentioned. The FBI reports in the summer of 2017, the company that insured the shoes for $1 million was contacted by an individual with a tip; officials are vague on details beyond that but say the slippers were ultimately recovered during a sting operation in Minneapolis. The Smithsonian didn't just confirm the slippers were the genuine article, per the FBI: They realized the stolen pair and the one at the museum are "mismatched twins." The Duluth News Tribune reports the pair in question, one of four known to exist, wasn't to remain at the Judy Garland Museum but were on a 10-week loan from owner Michael Shaw. In the wake of the slippers' disappearance, police learned that an emergency exit door window was broken and that the museum's alarm system was never triggered as it hadn't been set on the evening in question. The oddest turn in the case came in 2015, when divers with the Itasca County Sheriff's Office followed up on a rumor the shoes had been put in Tupperware and tossed into the water that filled the Tioga Mine Pit; divers found only a small duffel bag and an old tin can.

Enlarge A Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar is arranged among Reese's Pieces, also a Hershey Co.… more A Columbia man had a small win Wednesday, when a federal judge denied The Hershey Co.'s motion to throw out his case, KCUR reports. At issue? Empty space. When Robert Bratton purchased boxes of Reese's Pieces and Whoppers candies from a Columbia grocery store, he was surprised by the amount of empty space when he opened the boxes. The size of the packaging made him think he was getting more product. Enlarge A Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar is arranged among Reese's Pieces, also a Hershey Co.… more In industry speak, the empty space is known as "slack-filled," and according to his suit, the Reese's Pieces packing was comprised of 29 percent empty space, while the Whoppers packaging had 41 percent empty space. Bratton originally filed the case in state court, but it has since moved to federal court. His case is tied to a state law created to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices. He's hoping to gain class-action status, but a federal judge has deferred that decision. Leslie covers entrepreneurs and technology, retail, and marketing. ||||| Sure, it’s vaguely annoying that boxes of candy aren’t full all the way to the top, but most people don’t file federal class actions over a lack of peanut butter candies. A man in Missouri has done exactly that, claiming that boxes of Reese’s Pieces and Whoppers that he purchased were dramatically under-filled. The case is about “slack fill,” which is the empty space in a package. Sometimes this serves a purpose, like the extra air in a bag of cookies or chips that protects the contents. Sometimes it’s produced when the contents of a package settle during shipment. READ MORE: When Does The Extra Space In Your Potato Chip Bag Go From Annoying To Deceptive? “Consumers are well aware of the fact that substantially all commercial packaging contains some empty space,” Hershey’s attorneys argued. Yes, that’s true, but how much empty space is reasonable to protect the product inside without wasting resources on extra packaging? In his complaint [PDF], the plaintiff accuses Hershey of under-filling the Reese’s box by around 29%, and the Whoppers box by 41% to mislead shoppers and make them believe that the box is more full than it is. How under-filled is that? The complaint includes handy visual aids. The extra space isn’t necessary to protect the candy, since both products are also sold in flimsy plastic bags. Why are the boxes so under-filled? Hershey, of course, doesn’t answer that question. The company sees nothing wrong with this packaging, because the number of candies and the weight are printed right on the outside, and shoppers can pick the box up and feel its weight. “It is not possible to view the product packaging without also seeing the net weight and quantity disclosures,” the company’s motion to dismiss the case [PDF] argues. Besides, Hershey argues, an under-filled box of candies rattles. “Any consumer would recognize immediately upon picking up a box of Reese’s Pieces or Whoppers that its contents rattle noticeably and audibly with every movement,” the company notes. Hershey’s arguments did not persuade the judge, who noted in her opinion [PDF] that cases cited by Hershey’s attorneys did not apply in the state of Missouri, and that such cases often depend on “reasonableness” and what decision the typical shopper would make. The case was not dismissed. Perhaps Hershey will eventually have to explain what purpose that empty space in the box serves. (via KCUR) ||||| What would Elliot, dear friend of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, say? When Elliot scattered a trail of Reese’s Pieces for his alien friend in Stephen Spielberg’s classic movie, he probably wasn’t thinking about the candy’s packaging. But Columbia, Missouri, resident Robert Bratton was. Bratton bought several boxes of Reese’s Pieces and Whoppers malted milk balls at a Gerbes grocery story in Columbia for $1 apiece. He says he was influenced by the size of the opaque boxes, which led him to believe he was buying more candy than he did. Turns out the boxes, as is commonplace in the industry, had a lot of “slack-filled” — or empty — space. So Bratton did what any candy-loving American would do: He sued the maker of the candies, The Hershey Company. The class-action lawsuit, originally filed in state court last year, was moved by Hershey to federal court. And in a setback for the company on Wednesday, the judge denied its motion to throw out the case. Although surviving a motion to dismiss is a fairly low bar – Bratton only had to allege facts stating a plausible claim for relief – it means that Bratton may yet get his day in court. Bratton sued Hershey under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act (MMPA), a 50-year-old law aimed at protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices. In her 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey found that Bratton had “plausibly alleged, at minimum, that the packaging unfairly suggests the boxes contain more product than they actually do, or tends to or has the capacity to mislead consumers or to create a false impression, which is sufficient for purposes of alleging an unlawful practice under the MMPA.” “The Court cannot conclude as a matter of law and at this stage of the litigation that the packaging is not misleading,” Laughrey wrote. Laughrey made her finding even as she noted that the boxes specifically list their net weight, the number of pieces per serving (51 in Reese’s Pieces’ case, 18 in Whoppers’ case) and the number of servings per container (“about 3” in Reese’s Pieces’ case, “about 3.5” in Whoppers’ case). But as Bratton complained, about 29 percent of the Reese’s Pieces boxes and about 41 percent of the Whoppers boxes consisted of “slack-filled,” or empty, space. That, he said, led him to suffer “an ascertainable loss” because “the actual value of the Products as purchased was less than the value of the Products as represented.” Hershey joins several other candy makers, including Nestle USA Inc. Mondelez International Inc., that have been sued recently for allegedly under-filling their candy boxes. Hershey can take some consolation in Tuesday’s ruling. Laughrey deferred a decision on whether Bratton could pursue his claims for unjust enrichment on behalf of others. And unless Laughrey decides to certify the case as a class action, it’s unlikely Bratton will be able to pursue it as an individual case. That’s because his individual damages would likely be so miniscule as to make it economically unfeasible. Dan Margolies is KCUR’s health editor. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.

– Hell hath no fury like a sweet tooth scorned. Consumerist reports a Missouri man disappointed with the amount of candy in his boxes of Reese's Pieces and Whoppers is suing Hershey's. According to KCUR, Robert Bratton bought a number of boxes of each candy at a grocery store in Columbia for $1 each. But he says he would have been less likely to spend that money if he knew how under-filled the boxes would be. Bratton's lawsuit claims the boxes of Reese's Pieces were under-filled by about 29% and the boxes of Whoppers by about 41%. His lawsuit argues shoppers are being misled. But Hershey's counters that customers are "well aware" of the concept of "slack fill," by which packages contain some empty space either due to settling or to protect their contents. Besides, the company argues, the total weight and number of candies is printed on each box. Finally, Hershey's says the empty space shouldn't be a surprise to customers as the boxes rattle when picked up. A judge denied Hershey's motion to dismiss the case this week but also deferred on Bratton's desire to turn it into a class-action suit, the Kansas City Business Journal reports. It remains to be seen how much slack fill is too much slack fill, legally speaking, when it comes to our favorite candies. (In related news: Your favorite Hershey's treats may be shrinking soon.)

She had been reported missing by her husband, Robert Durst, now 57, a scion of a family that, like the Trumps and Rudins, has long held royal stature in New York's real estate world. Mr. Durst told the police that he last saw his wife on a Sunday night boarding a train in Westchester, bound for their penthouse apartment in Manhattan. They had spent the weekend at their cottage in South Salem, he said, but his wife had headed back to the city, where medical school appointments awaited. Mrs. Durst never made those appointments, and the mystery of the medical student with a gleaming smile who either abandoned or was denied a life of wealth and accomplishment captivated New York. Headlines trumpeted developments. Friends tried to retrace her steps. The police found three witnesses who said they thought they had seen or heard from Mrs. Durst in the 24 hours after she boarded the train. But leads dwindled. Detectives retired. And though a photograph of Mrs. Durst remained on file with the New York Police Department Missing Persons Squad, the case languished. Until Timothy Martin appeared. After his arrest in the series of lewd acts, he told investigators a tale he said he had heard from others. Mrs. Durst, he said, never made it to Manhattan, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation. She had been murdered, he said, and buried in Westchester. Much of Mr. Martin's story did not check out. But the state police investigator who interviewed him, Joseph C. Becerra, and the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro, nonetheless decided that his story warranted a review of the Durst case. ''And when we had a look back at the file,'' Ms. Pirro recalled, ''we said: 'My, my. Isn't this interesting.' '' Advertisement Continue reading the main story Beginning with the odd facts and nagging questions found in the old case notes, investigators have explored gaps and discrepancies in the accounts of witnesses, and they have focused new scrutiny on whether Mr. Durst played a role in his wife's disappearance, law enforcement officials said. Investigators have traveled coast to coast, talking to doormen in Manhattan and housekeepers in South Salem, and tracking leads not fully explored in 1982. The last sightings of Mrs. Durst in Manhattan, which once served as the bedrock for police theories of her disappearance, now seem anything but ironclad, the officials said, and one of those eyewitnesses now says he was mistaken. Investigators have also encountered intrigue and peculiarities. Two friends who had been given confidential financial records by Mrs. Durst for safekeeping, shortly before she vanished, have said the paperwork was stolen in burglaries. And a close friend of Mr. Durst's, who had served as his spokeswoman after the disappearance, was found dead in a homicide in Los Angeles on Dec. 24, 2000, just as the police made plans to interview her. But after more than a year of study, investigators still appear to have more questions than answers, conflicting evidence endures, and the city police still list the disappearance as a missing persons case. ''The fact that we are actively involved in this case means we are looking for some resolution,'' Ms. Pirro said. ''What that resolution is we still don't know.' Mr. Durst has declined to be interviewed by investigators on the advice of his lawyer, according to people involved in the case. Neither he nor his lawyer, Joel Cohen, would comment for this article. But he has repeatedly said he had no role in his wife's disappearance. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ms. Pirro does not call him a suspect. ''I am not ruling him in or ruling him out,'' she said. But people involved in the case said her office was intrigued by his official accounts and by evidence of turmoil in the Durst marriage. The Hippie Life in Vermont Robert and Kathie Durst met when she lived in a Durst-owned building in Manhattan. She was a bright and ambitious dental hygienist from Long Island, who went on to nursing and medical school. He was the athletic, droll, faintly reclusive oldest son of Seymour Durst, the patriarch of the Durst real estate empire. They married in 1972, moved to Vermont and opened a health food store called All Good Things. ''They started out as two people who really cared for each other, living a hippie life in Vermont,'' said Eleanor Schwank, a friend of Mrs. Durst's. Seymour Durst, however, did not like the idea of his son as a shopkeeper, relatives say, and persuaded him to return to New York to help expand a portfolio that included some of the city's best-known skyscrapers. By 1980, though, the marriage was dissolving, and Mrs. Durst hired a lawyer in 1981 and considered divorce. Court records in a subsequent proceeding over control of her estate show that she told friends and family that Robert Durst had beat her, and three weeks before she disappeared, she said he had punched her, forcing her to seek treatment. Mr. Durst denied hitting his wife, asserting that she invented the assaults to increase a possible settlement. Longtime friends of the couple also said in interviews that they never saw Mrs. Durst with injuries. But friends said it was clear that Mrs. Durst distrusted her husband. Two friends told investigators that she had given them confidential information about Durst holdings for safekeeping during her estrangement. Those files were later stolen from their homes in burglaries that occurred within a year of the disappearance. 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. One friend, Kathy Traystman, said the file was taken from her dresser drawer at the same time that a stereo and jewelry were stolen. The other, Gilberta Najamy, said her file was stolen when two boxes of items relating to the disappearance were taken from her home in Newtown, Conn. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A Sudden Disappearance On the evening of Sunday, Jan. 31, 1982, Mrs. Durst attended a party at Ms. Najamy's home. Ms. Najamy says she remembers that Mr. and Mrs. Durst argued on the phone that day, and then Mrs. Durst said something chilling before heading home in her Mercedes-Benz: ''Promise me, Gilberta, if something happens you will check it out. I am afraid of what Bobby will do.'' Mr. Durst told the police in 1982 that when his wife arrived that night at their stone cottage overlooking Lake Truesdale, they shared a meal. Then he drove her to the 9:15 p.m. train at the Katonah station. After returning, he said, he had a drink with neighbors, and later called his Riverside Drive apartment, and said he spoke to his wife while she was watching the late news on television. Law enforcement officials say that investigators, then and now, developed serious questions about Mr. Durst's account. In 1982, when the police interviewed Mr. Durst, a state trooper noted that any calls to Manhattan would be reflected in phone records for the South Salem house. But Mr. Durst said he had actually called from a pay phone while walking his dog. Investigators were skeptical because, they said, the nearest pay phone was several miles away, and the night was rainy and cold. Mrs. Durst's family said at the time that Mr. Durst gave them a different account. He told them, the family said, that he had placed the call to Manhattan from a restaurant in South Salem. In a second discrepancy noted by investigators in 1982, the neighbors in South Salem did not remember having had a drink with Mr. Durst. They remembered, though, seeing a blue light they had never seen before emanating from an earthen crawl space under his house the next night. But in 1982 there were indications that Mrs. Durst had made it to Manhattan. Eddie Lopez, her building's elevator operator, told the police that he saw Mrs. Durst that night when he escorted a man to her apartment. She opened the door in her nightgown to let the man in, he said. The building superintendent also told the police he thought he had seen Mrs. Durst walking along West 76th Street the next morning. ''At the time, one or two of them were believable that they had seen her,'' said Michael Struk, the detective, now retired, who led the 1982 investigation. Also, Albert Kuperman, a dean at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which Mrs. Durst attended, told the police in 1982 that he had spoken to her on the phone that Monday when she called in sick. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Consequently, detectives said they were confident Mrs. Durst had disappeared from Manhattan, not Westchester. So they never searched the South Salem house, a decision that some of Mrs. Durst's friends and relatives now view as a glaring oversight. ''There were always a lot of unanswered questions, but we had to move on because I did not have the luxury of working one case,'' said Mr. Struk, who has helped in the current investigation. Perhaps the most significant development in the current investigation is the erosion of confidence in those eyewitness identifications, law enforcement officials said. The elevator operator now says he does not think it was Mrs. Durst he saw. And the superintendent, law enforcement officials say, only saw Mrs. Durst from behind and largely based his identification on his recognition of her beige coat. Dr. Kuperman, though, said in a recent interview that he still thought that the woman who called him was Mrs. Durst. ''It never occurred to me that it wasn't her,'' he said. The Investigation Begins Mr. Durst reported his wife missing at the 20th Precinct headquarters in Manhattan on Feb. 5, five days after he said he had seen her boarding the train. The case was assigned to Detective Struk, who had recently solved the murder of a violinist at the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Durst said he did not get in touch with the police earlier because occasionally the couple went days without contact. But investigators, both then and now, have tried to track how he spent that time. Law enforcement officials said they were particularly interested in collect calls that were placed to Mr. Durst's office during this time from pay phones at the Jersey Shore, outside a self-service laundry and a motel. Mr. Durst was known to call his office collect, but investigators have not determined who placed those calls or whether Mr. Durst had gone to the shore. In the days after his wife vanished, Mr. Durst posted a reward for help in finding her. Many friends recall him as anguished, and said they never considered that he might have had a role in her disappearance. ''Bobby didn't kill Kathie,'' said Nick Chavin, a close friend. ''He loved her.'' At times, friends recalled, Mr. Durst speculated that his wife, an occasional cocaine user, might have been killed by a drug dealer. At one point, his lawyer took cocaine to detectives, saying it had been found in the apartment. At other times, as in a 1982 newspaper interview, Mr. Durst said his wife, unhappy with her life, might have just run away. ''I think Kathie's alive,'' he said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But the Family Differs Mrs. Durst's family and friends had a darker view. In 1983, during a surrogate proceeding, her sister, Mary Hughes, said in an affidavit, ''that the questionable circumstances surrounding my sister's disappearance and her husband's behavior and reactions following this event strongly suggest that my sister may have been murdered, and that Robert Durst is either directly responsible for her death or privy to information concerning her disappearance.'' She contended that Mr. Durst had refused to take a police lie detector test and had quickly disposed of some of his wife's possessions. Mr. Durst's lawyer branded the allegations fiction. In his own affidavit, Mr. Durst said: ''I am not privy to any information concerning Kathie's disappearance which I have not disclosed to Kathie's family, to the Police Department and to those who, at my own expense, I have engaged to investigate her disappearance.'' A decade later, Mr. Durst abruptly left the family business when it became clear that his younger brother, Douglas, would become the head of the company. He then largely dropped out of sight, although he keeps homes in New York and California. Kathie Durst's family was overjoyed last year when investigators began taking another look at the case. ''This whole issue has been just below the surface for 20 years,'' said her brother, James McCormack. Investigators with dogs have now repeatedly searched the South Salem house, and they removed a piece of an interior wall for testing. The searches were prompted by Mr. Martin's account, but investigators have declined to discuss the results in detail. Mr. Martin, who officials said was related by marriage to a former Durst housekeeper, ultimately pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child. He could not be reached for comment. Mr. Becerra would not comment on the matter. Investigators have also refused to discuss why they sought to question Susan Berman, the friend of Mr. Durst's who was found murdered in her Los Angeles home just as they made plans to interview her. The murder remains unsolved, but Los Angeles detectives have said they do not see a connection between the cases. New York investigators have gone there to seek leads in their case and have reviewed information obtained from Ms. Berman's computer. After 19 years, Ms. Pirro said investigators are still determined to solve the mystery. ''This woman was a vibrant young medical student,'' she said. ''For her to disappear off the face of the earth just doesn't make any sense.'' ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. / Updated By Andrew Blankstein, Robert Dean and Tracy Connor The so-called secret witness in the Robert Durst case was revealed Wednesday to be an advertising executive who was introduced to him through a mutual friend — the woman Durst is accused of murdering. Nick Chavin, 72, took the witness stand at a pretrial hearing and testified that he had met "Bobby" more than three decades ago through his pal, writer Susan Berman, and became such good friends that Durst was the co-best man at his wedding. Durst, 73, a scion of a massive real estate empire, is charged with murdering Berman in Los Angeles in 2000. Prosecutors claim that he was worried that she would implicate him in the death of his first wife, Kathie, who vanished in 1982. Durst denies killing either woman. Chavin — who told the New York Times in 2001 that "Bobby didn't kill Kathie" — testified Wednesday that Kathie told him that she was physically afraid of her husband. Durst, meanwhile, described Kathie as "impossible," Chavin testified. "It was always a strange relationship," he said, adding that Durst said he had an open marriage and would go to bars with Chavin hoping to meet women. Related: Durst Hearing Focuses on Mystery of 1982 Phone Call Chavin also testified about Durst's close relationship with Berman, saying there was nothing she would not have done for him. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin asked Chavin whether he ever discussed with Berman whether Durst might have been involved in his wife's disappearance, but the defense objected to the question. Chavin, who arrived in court with two armed security guards, is back on the stand Thursday for what's expected to be the final day of the hearing. Prosecutors requested the hearing to get early testimony from several witnesses who they said were in danger of falling ill or dying or were scared that Durst could harm them — even though he is serving a seven-year sentence on a gun possession charge. Chavin's identity was not revealed until he took the stand. Earlier, the judge heard from a woman who worked for Chavin, met Durst through him in 2002 and became what she called his "closest friend." Susan Giordano testified that she visited Durst in Texas while he was jailed for the 2001 death and dismemberment of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black. She also said that, over time, Durst gave her $350,000 in gifts and loans — of which she repaid $2,000 — and that at one point she discussed with Durst and his lawyers the possibility of getting money from him for the rest of her life. She said that although she and Durst had a platonic relationship, they talked about having a "love nest," and she said she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Related: The Millionaire Drifter Who Can't Run From His Past Giordano was called to the stand because she had stored boxes full of Durst's personal papers — and allowed producers of the HBO program "The Jinx" to go through them before they were seized by police in 2015. The defense claims that the contents of the boxes were privileged and should not be used as evidence at Durst's trial, but prosecutors contend that Durst waived that privilege when he gave "The Jinx" producers access. "The Jinx" examined Durst's ties to his wife's disappearance and Berman's death, as well as the 2001 death and dismemberment of Black. The series ended with Durst blurting out on a hot microphone that he "killed them all." ||||| 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 bizarre story of Robert Durst took a new turn this week as the much-talked-about "secret witness" emerged with details on Durst's first marriage. Per NBC News, 72-year-old Nick Chavin showed up at the real estate heir's pretrial hearing for his murder case Wednesday—through a back door for security reasons, CBS News reports—saying he was once extremely close to the man he calls "Bobby" and that they were introduced through writer Susan Berman, the woman Durst is accused of killing. Chavin, who said he considered Durst one of his best friends, shed some light on Durst's marriage to Kathie Durst, who disappeared in 1982 (and whom Durst is also suspected of killing). Prosecutors think Berman was murdered because Durst feared she'd link him to Kathie's death. Chavin, who told the New York Times in 2001 that Durst hadn't killed Kathie, offered testimony in a somewhat different tone Wednesday, noting Kathie had confided in him she feared Durst (though she'd never said Durst had hurt her) and that her husband was "impossible," the Los Angeles Times reports. Chavin described the Dursts' marriage as "strange," per NBC, noting Durst told him it was an open relationship and would go with Chavin to clubs looking to hook up. CBS notes Chavin's testimony was part of a "rare proceeding" in which testimony is gathered from older witnesses who might not live till the trial, as well as witnesses who fear for their safety. A woman named Susan Giordano also testified, per NBC, claiming she'd become Durst's "closest friend" after meeting in 2002 and had wanted to spend her life with him. (Durst says he was on meth during The Jinx filming.)

(CNN) Three more women came forward on September 30 to accuse Bill Cosby of sexually inappropriate behavior, creating yet another wave of allegations that the comedian abused his power by drugging and assaulting women. One woman was a cocktail server at a jazz club in Redondo Beach, California, in the 1970s. She accused Cosby of stealing her panties after drugging her and assaulting her in her car while she was unconscious. Another was a former model and actress who appeared as an extra on "The Cosby Show." She said Cosby told her she'd better sleep with him if she wanted to make it in the entertainment industry. After years of silence, the women said, allegations against Cosby from other women emboldened them to come forward. "After 35 years of living with these shameful memories in secret, I was finally encouraged by all the other women who have recently told their stories," said Sharon Van Ert, the former waitress. Accusations from more than 40 women More than 40 women have publicly accused Cosby of sexual misconduct over the past 40 years. The comedian has never been criminally charged and has vehemently denied wrongdoing. Cosby's representatives declined to comment on the latest claims. Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? More than 50 women have spoken out to various media outlets about allegations of sexual misconduct by Bill Cosby. Here are 25, in chronological order, who have spoken with CNN, spoken on camera about their allegations or been the subject of responses from Cosby's attorneys. Read more on the allegations and Cosby's denials. Hide Caption 1 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? In January 2004, Andrea Constand, then a 31-year-old staffer for the women's basketball team at Temple University -- Cosby's alma mater -- was at the comedian's Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, home when Cosby provided her medication that made her dizzy, she alleged the next year. She later woke up to find her bra undone and her clothes in disarray, she further alleged to police in her home province of Ontario, Canada, in January 2005. She was the first person to publicly allege sexual assault by Cosby. The comedian settled a civil suit with Constand that alleged 13 Jane Does had similar stories of sexual abuse. On December 30, 2015, Cosby was charged with sexual assault in relation to the 2004 accusation, Costand's attorney Dolores Troiani confirmed to CNN. That ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked in June 2017, but prosecutors immediately announced they would retry the case. Hide Caption 2 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Janice Dickinson alleged she and Cosby had dinner in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in 1982 and he gave her a glass of red wine and a pill she believed was for menstrual cramps. "The last thing I remember was Bill Cosby in a patchwork robe, dropping his robe and getting on top of me. And I remember a lot of pain," she told "Entertainment Tonight." Cosby's attorney said in a statement that Dickinson's allegation was a "fabricated lie" that contradicted what she wrote in her autobiography and what she said during a 2002 New York Observer interview. Hide Caption 3 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Heidi Thomas says she met Cosby in 1984 and visited him at a house outside of Reno, Nevada, for "coaching." At the time, she was a 24-year-old aspiring actress and model known as Heidi Johnson. Thomas says Cosby offered her a glass of Chablis, and she later woke up with Cosby next to her in bed, naked, and "forcing himself in my mouth." A representative of Cosby did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thomas' allegation. Hide Caption 4 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Cindra Ladd, longtime wife of Oscar-winning film producer Alan Ladd Jr., alleges Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1969 when she was single and 21. Cosby's representatives did not respond to CNN's repeated requests for comment. Hide Caption 5 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? The now-wife of "The Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno, Carla Ferrigno, told CNN that Cosby forcibly kissed her at his home in 1967. Carla Ferrigno said she told her husband, whom she married in 1980, about the incident about five years ago and he advised her to stay silent. Hide Caption 6 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Kristina Ruehli was a secretary for a talent agency in 1965 that had Cosby as a client. She said she was invited to a party to celebrate a taping of "Hollywood Palace." Ruehli said she and an actress were the only attendees at the party. She said she became unconscious after consuming drinks and later woke up to find Cosby attempting to force her mouth onto his pubic area. She said she pulled away to vomit and drove herself home. It was the last time she would see Cosby, she told CNN. Hide Caption 7 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Linda Brown was a 21-year-old model in 1969 when, she alleges, Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in Canada near her hometown. She says she was introduced to the comedian by her then-manager, had dinner with Cosby and was later served a soft drink by Cosby at an apartment. "I took a sip and blacked out," Brown said at a press conference with her attorney in February. "When I awakened, I was naked in the bed beside him." Hide Caption 8 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Joan Tarshis was a 19-year-old actress in 1969 when, she said, she met Cosby in Los Angeles. The two became friendly. One night after taping his sitcom, he invited her back to his bungalow and fixed her a "redeye" (a Bloody Mary topped with beer), she alleged. "The next thing I remember was coming to on his couch while being undressed," she told Hollywood Elsewhere. "I was sickened by what was happening to me and shocked that this man I had idolized was now raping me. Of course I told no one." It was the first of two similar incidents, said Tarshis, who is now a journalist and publicist. Hide Caption 9 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Linda Joy Traitz said Cosby offered her a ride home while she was working as a waitress at a restaurant in Los Angeles that he co-owned in 1969. On the way, they detoured to the beach. They parked and he offered her drugs "to relax," she alleged. After refusing "he kept offering me the pills," she alleged, and it made her feel uncomfortable. She claimed he then groped her chest, pushing her down in the seat and toward the door, and tried to lie on top of her. She got out of the car and ran, she said. She added that she was "absolutely not" raped. He tried to calm her, she said, then drove her home in silence. Traitz has a criminal record in Florida and spent time in prison on a conviction for drug trafficking, according to state records. Cosby's lawyer passed on her lengthy rap sheet. Traitz spoke openly about her record to CNN. Hide Caption 10 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Playboy bunny Victoria Valentino said her friend Francesca Emerson first introduced her to Cosby hoping to help her get work on his show "I Spy" in the late '60s. Valentino said after an interview in his trailer, Cosby invited her and a different friend to dinner, where they drank red wine and Cosby offered her pills to "cheer up," she said. She said she felt "stoned," slurring her words. They then went with him to what she described as a "ballers pad," an office-like space in an apartment building, with two loveseats and no working phone. Valentino said she was feeling "totally out of it" when she saw Cosby attempting to advance on her passed-out friend. She said she began reaching out to Cosby to pull him off her friend when he pushed her down, first pushing himself near her mouth, before turning her around and raping her. Hide Caption 11 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Famed model Beverly Johnson alleged that Bill Cosby drugged her in the 1980s at his Manhattan brownstone, where she'd gone to rehearse lines. During the meeting, Johnson said, Cosby was "very insistent" she drink a cup of cappuccino he had made for her. "After that second sip, I knew I had been drugged," she alleged. "It was very powerful, it came on very quickly." Johnson said she then confronted and cursed at the comedian, claiming, "I wanted him to know he had drugged me." She alleged that Cosby got angry, grabbed her, took her outside and flagged down a taxi for her. Cosby's attorney didn't immediately return a CNN call for comment on Johnson's allegation, which she first made in a Vanity Fair article. Hide Caption 12 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? In 1970, Tamara Green was an aspiring model in her early 20s. She alleged an incident occurred during a working lunch with Cosby and others. Green told Matt Lauer of the "Today" show that at the lunch, she was suffering from the flu and Cosby "produced two capsules." She said they made her feel "great" at first, but then left her "almost literally face down on the table of this restaurant." Cosby took her to her apartment and started "groping me and kissing me and touching me and handling me and you know, taking off my clothes," Green said. Green further detailed her allegations in a defamation lawsuit against Cosby filed in December. Hide Caption 13 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Judy Huth has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court claiming sexual battery and infliction of emotional distress during an incident at the Playboy Mansion, according to court documents. The alleged sexual assault took place in 1974 when Huth was 15 years old. According to court documents, Huth and a 16-year-old friend met with Cosby and eventually went to the Playboy Mansion with him. "He then proceeded to sexually molest her by attempting to put his hand down her pants and then taking her hand in his hand and performing a sex act on himself without her consent," according to the documents. Cosby's lawyer said Huth's claims are "absolutely false" and he accused her of engaging in extortion after Cosby rejected her "outrageous demand for money in order not to make her allegations public." Hide Caption 14 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? P.J. Masten was a Playboy bunny in her 20s and met Cosby while working as a server at one of Playboy's establishments. He asked her to lunch one afternoon in Chicago, then later called to invite her to dinner, she told CNN. Before the dinner, attended by four other men at the Whitehall Hotel, Masten said, Cosby poured her a drink. "And the next thing I know, it was 4 o'clock in the morning," Masten said. "I woke up in a bed naked, bruised. He was lying next to me, and I slithered out of the bed, my clothes all over the floor. ... I got myself together, I went downstairs, I got in a cab and I went home." Masten recalled "hurting really bad." As to why, she alleged: "There were bruise marks all over me. I knew I was raped by him." Hide Caption 15 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? In a statement released through lawyer Gloria Allred's office, Helen Hayes alleged that Cosby followed her and two friends "around all day" at a summer 1973 celebrity tennis tournament in Pebble Beach, California, hosted by actor Clint Eastwood. Hayes claimed she and her friends tried to avoid Cosby, but he caught up with them in a restaurant, "approached me from behind and reached over my shoulder and grabbed my right breast." "I was stunned and angry, because he had no right to do that and I did not know why he would behave that way," Hayes said. "His behavior was like that of a predator." Hide Caption 16 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Louisa Moritz, seen here in a 1971 episode of "Love, American Style," told TMZ she was in the green room of the "The Tonight Show" at NBC in New York when Cosby paid her a visit. He offered to turn her into a "major star through his direction." Then he forced himself on her, she alleged. Hide Caption 17 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Donna Motsinger, 73, one of the Jane Does in the civil suit with Constand, said she met Cosby while working in a restaurant in Sausalito, California. According to Motsinger, Cosby invited her to join him for his show and she accepted. On the way, they stopped for gas and had a drink. After becoming ill, Motsinger said Cosby gave her what she thought was an aspirin. "After that there was some conversation and laughing and stuff, but then the next thing I remember ... he's next to me, he's got his hands on me and I look up I see the lights of the city. I could see it clear as a bell in my mind right now, the lights of the city coming back and it was all blurry, kind of the lights, and I passed out again," she said. Hide Caption 18 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Florida nurse Therese Serignese, 57, told ABC's "20/20" that she was a 19-year-old model visiting Las Vegas when Cosby handed her pills in a private dressing room after a performance. "Take these," Cosby told her, according to Serignese. After consuming the pills, she remembered "feeling drugged, and I was kind of leaning forward, and he was behind me having sex with me. And I -- I remember it because it was not good." Hide Caption 19 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Jewel Allison was a model and aspiring actress in her late 20s when she met Cosby in the late 1980s. She said he offered to help her, inviting her to his home. When she arrived, no one else was there besides Cosby, Allison said. At one point, after taking a few sips of wine, she began to feel "out of it." "I realized that something sexual was going on, but I was unable to stop it," Allison told CNN. Hide Caption 20 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Barbara Bowman was a 17-year-old model and actress who met Cosby in Denver in 1985. Bowman told Newsweek that Cosby visited her numerous times, giving her acting lessons and "flying me around to major cities to events." After she turned 18, Cosby "assaulted (me) a number of times," she said. In an incident in New York, Bowman "had one glass of wine and then I blacked out. I woke up throwing up in the toilet. ... I was wearing a white T-shirt that wasn't mine, and he was in a white robe." Hide Caption 21 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Lise-Lotte Lublin was a 23-year-old model in 1989 when, she alleges, Cosby gave her two shots of alcohol that caused her to black out in the Elvis suite of the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas. Her next memory was waking up at home, unable to remember what happened in the interim, she says. Hide Caption 22 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Identifying herself only by a first name during a news conference with lawyer Gloria Allred, Chelan said she was a 17-year-old aspiring model who worked at the Las Vegas Hilton when her father's wife sent pictures of her to Cosby. She said Cosby arranged to meet her at the Vegas Hilton "to introduce me to someone from the Ford modeling agency." During that meeting, she said, Cosby gave her "a blue pill, which he said was an antihistamine, with a double shot of Amaretto." She alleged that Cosby lay down next to her on the bed and began touching her sexually and grunting. Hide Caption 23 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Helen Gumpel, a model and actress known as Helen Selby professionally, appeared in a bit part in a late-1980s "Cosby Show" episode. A short time later, her agent got a call that Cosby wanted to meet with her. In a statement, Gumpel said that, after Cosby hugged and kissed her in front of onlookers at a New York studio, she was asked back to his dressing room. There, she found Cosby "wearing a loosely tied robe" and then -- with the robe still on -- he put "his crotch area in my face," Gumpel alleged. The comedian touched her shoulders then tried repeatedly to get Gumpel to have a drink he'd made, she said. After her refusals, Gumpel said, "Cosby turned his back to me and walked to the door. Cosby looked at me and his face clouded up, as if he was frustrated and angry, and he told me to leave." Hide Caption 24 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Beth Ferrier told media outlets in 2005 that she met Cosby in Denver in the mid-'80s. He mentored her for a time, but one night, she said, he gave her a drugged cappuccino. "I woke up in my car in the parking lot with my clothes all a mess," she said. "I wondered, I still wonder, 'What did he do with me? Why was my bra unhooked?'" The two later conducted an "on-and-off consensual affair" that lasted several years, she alleged to People magazine. "He kept luring me in," Ferrier told the magazine. "I felt like I couldn't say no." At the time, Cosby's publicist told People he had no comment. Hide Caption 25 of 26 Photos: Who are Cosby's accusers? Chloe Goins told the Los Angeles Police Department on January 14 that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 2008 during a party at the Playboy Mansion, when she was 18. Spencer Kuvin, Goins' attorney, said his client may be the first accuser to have a case that falls within the statute of limitations for bringing criminal charges. Cobsy's lawyer, Martin Singer, denied the accusation and said the comedian was not in California on August 8, 2008, the night of the "Midsummer Night's Party." Hide Caption 26 of 26 The latest allegations come amid news this week that three universities -- Marquette, Fordham and Brown -- stripped Cosby of honorary degrees "Mr. Cosby has nobody to blame but himself for his choices and his actions," the women's lawyer, Gloria Allred, said Wednesday in her Los Angeles law office. "There should be serious consequences for anyone who intentionally harms or endangers the health, safety or life of innocent women and girls." 'Everything became a blur' Pamela Abeyta said she kept her story to herself for more than three decades because she felt that she was to blame. Pamela Abeyta "I believed that it was my fault for putting myself in that position," she saidWednesday. "It took me many months to come forward because of the shame it might cause my family, but then I realized I am the victim and how much this has bothered me all of these years." Abeyta was 25 when she met Cosby's producer in 1979 through a friend. She said she met him at an Orange County residence, hoping "it might lead to an opportunity with Playboy" because Cosby knew Hugh Hefner. During the meeting, the producer called Cosby and said they would be on the "next flight to Las Vegas," she said. Abeyta and the producer met Cosby in a dressing room at the Las Vegas Hilton after he finished a show, she said. Cosby brought her to the Elvis Presley suite in the hotel and showed her to her own room, she said. They went downstairs, and he gave her $200 to spend on gambling while he mingled with others. She went back to the suite about 1 a.m. After she awoke the next day, Cosby told her to buy an evening gown for the "champagne dinner" during his show. She spent $2,500 on clothing, shoes and a clutch bag for the event, charging it to his room, she said. At the show, she remembers having food and drinks before blacking out. "Everything became a blur," she said. "I believe that someone put something in my drink." She remembers waking up twice in Cosby's bed and seeing him once before allegedly blacking out again. She woke up the next day in her own room in the suite and left soon after, she said. "I got up and left the hotel the next morning, not even knowing what went on through the night. I barely remember how I got to the airport or even how I got home. I know I flew home, but it was all in a fog," she said. 'You owe me' Former model and actress Lisa Christie said she was 18 when she met Cosby on the set of "The Cosby Show." He chose her out of a line of models and took an interest in her career, paying for her to attend theater classes at Buffalo State College, including transportation costs from New York to Buffalo, she said. Lisa Christie The relationship lasted about two years, from 1987 to 1989, before he tried to pressure her into sex in a hotel room, she alleged. At the time, she says, she considered him a "father figure." Now, she believes he "waited" for her because he knew she was a virgin. After college, she says she was offered a co-host position for an NBC affiliate show called "Wedding Magazine." Cosby flew her to Chicago to see whether she should pursue a career as a television actor. He also told her he wanted her to audition for his film "Ghost Dad." Under the pretense of an "acting exercise," Cosby told her to close her eyes before leaning in to kiss her "like a boyfriend," she said. When she resisted, he told her "you owe me," she said. When she rebuffed his advances, he retreated to his room, telling her: "This is your last chance. If you want to make it in this business, you have to sleep with me." Christie apparently described the ordeal in a book she released last year -- but did not name Cosby. She read from the book at the news conference. In that passage, Christie describes an incident with a man who propositioned her. She wrote that the man's son died a week later. Cosby's son died in 1997. But at the news conference, she said Cosby propositioned her in the late 1980s. Allred said the book had a mistake, which she blamed on clumsy editing that will be corrected. "I was one of the fortunate ones. Now I'm here to support all the victims," Christie said. 'Mr. Cosby started getting fresh' Sharon Van Ert was a cocktail server at Concerts by the Sea, a jazz club in Redondo Beach, when she met Cosby. Sharon Van Ert One night after a few drinks with co-workers and customers post-closing time, she said, Cosby walked her to her car. She remembers feeling dizzy as she got into the car and Cosby asked if she was capable of driving home. She got in the driver's seat to regain composure, she said, and Cosby got in the passenger's seat. "After a while, Mr. Cosby started getting fresh. He was touching me and rubbing my leg. The next thing I remember was waking up in my car, my head hanging down from the seat, alone," she said in between tears. "I knew I was drugged because I threw up, and I never threw up or drank too much. I believe that he must have put something in my drink while we were closing up the place." When she got home, she realized she was missing her panties. "I believe that Mr. Cosby took them after he assaulted me." Fallout continues The fallout from the controversy over the sex assault allegations against Cosby has been swift. Reruns of "The Cosby Show," his landmark 1980s sitcom, have been pulled from the airwaves, and other projects and tour dates have been scrapped. Allred noted Wednesday that statute of limitations prevents Cosby from facing criminal charges. But a California judge ordered Cosby in August to give a sworn deposition in a civil suit alleging he sexually abused a teenage girl more than 40 years ago. Cosby is scheduled to answer questions under oath from the accuser's legal team on October 9. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. 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– Bill Cosby has three new accusers to add to the growing list of more than 40. In a Wednesday news conference with lawyer Gloria Allred, Sharon Van Ert said Cosby walked her to her car after she left a California jazz club in 1976, reports Reuters. She says she blacked out and suspects Cosby drugged and assaulted her, then stole her underwear. Pamela Abeyta alleges she was drugged while out with Cosby in 1975. She says she woke up in his bed and remembers seeing "naked people" nearby, per the Los Angeles Times. Lisa Christie, an extra on The Cosby Show and former Mrs. America, met Cosby at 18. Two years later, she says he tried to coerce her into sex, saying, "If you want to make it in this business, you have to sleep with me." She says she thought of Cosby as a "father figure" and now believes he "waited" for her because she was a virgin, per CNN. "Shame on you, Mr. Father Figure of America," she says. "After 35 years of living with these shameful memories in secret, I was finally encouraged by all the other women who have recently told their stories," says Van Ert, though the statute of limitations means there can be no criminal legal action. Cosby has been ordered to give an Oct. 9 deposition in a civil suit brought by Allred client Judy Huth, who accuses the comedian of sexually abusing her at the Playboy Mansion in 1974. Before that date, a court will decide whether to approve Cosby's request for a protective order limiting the public release of the deposition, which Allred opposes. "There should be transparency," Allred says. "Mr. Cosby has nobody to blame but himself for his choices and his actions."

Lehigh University has booted a sorority from its campus for hosting a scavenger hunt that involved drugs, alcohol and sexual activity, school officials said. The sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, lost its organizational status as of March 5, according to the Lehigh Greek Community blog which is published by the university. The group will remain banned from campus until May 2020. During that time, the sorority may not use the Lehigh University name or any university facilities, according to the post. The ban came after Alpha Chi Omega hosted a scavenger hunt in December called the Road Rally. Participants were given a list of tasks that involved “the use of drugs and alcohol, sexual activity and other activities that violate Lehigh University policy,” according to the post. On Dec. 12, the chapter was placed on interim suspension and ordered to cease and desist all activities until a committee could complete an investigation, the post states. During that probe, the chapter turned over a complete scavenger hunt list as well as lists of members’ completed tasks. At a March 5 hearing, Alpha Chi Omega was found to be responsible for hazing and other offenses after a university committee found the entire chapter was aware of the event and it was endorsed by chapter leadership. The sorority’s National Council in Indianapolis, Ind., announced Monday that, after an internal investigation, it has expelled a large number of its Lehigh members for their “disturbing” actions. “Following our initial review, we immediately rescinded the membership of nearly one-third of the members of the chapter – those women who were most directly involved with this incident,” said Erin K. Witt, who provided the statement from the national Alpha Chi Omega organization. “Furthermore, we continued to cooperate fully with Lehigh’s investigation. Taking into account additional information we have received, and in parallel with the continued proceedings of the university judicial process, the National Council will make a final decision soon about the future of this chapter on Lehigh’s campus.” The Lehigh committee called the scavenger hunt “reprehensible” and “morally questionable.” The acts outlined in the scavenger hunt may not have been required to belong to the sorority, but they “are clearly considered a rite of passage and a consistent part of membership in AXO,” the committee said. “This event did not only take place this year, but there is credible information that this event has been going on for years,” the committee said. “The panel is deeply concerned about the escalated nature of the content of this year’s list, and we are unconvinced that this escalation wouldn’t continue.” “This type of behavior is simply unacceptable considering the current climate on college campuses,” the committee added. Alpha Chi Omega may appeal the decision. [email protected] Twitter @emilyopilo 610-820-6522 ||||| Lehigh University has kicked a sorority off its campus after it organized a scavenger hunt a university disciplinary panel called 'a significant and reprehensible event.' Alpha Chi Omega's Theta Chi chapter has lost its Lehigh campus recognition for two years, starting March 5 of this year until May 31, 2020. The sorority, which can appeal the finding, must vacate its sorority house once the disciplinary process resolves. The sorority held a scavenger hunt (road rally) on Dec. 8, which "involved the use of drugs and alcohol, sexual activity, and other activities that violate Lehigh University policy," according to the university's Lehigh Greeks blogs. The chapter was placed on interim university suspension on Dec. 12 and its national headquarters also directed it to "cease and desist all activities," according to the posting. Lehigh's Title IX Coordinator Karen Salvemini launched an investigation that culminated in a March 5 disciplinary hearing where the sorority was found responsible of hazing and related offenses. Alpha Chi Omega cooperated with the investigation, turning over the scavenger hunt list and documented examples of member's completed tasks, according to Lehigh. But the disciplinary panel found the sorority had violated many university rules. While members may have willingly joined in the hunt, that does not stop it from being considered hazing under Lehigh's Code of Conduct, the university found. "AXO created a situation that occurred on and off campus involving morally questionable quests such as a scavenger hunt, treasure hunts, etc.," the university writes on the blog. "The acts described may not have been required for affiliation into the organization, but are clearly considered a rite of passage and a consistent part of membership in AXO." By the time the sorority can resume operations at Lehigh, all of the current members, who are aware of the tradition, will have graduated, which was intentional, the university notes. "This incident was a significant, reprehensible event that the entire chapter was aware of and leadership endorsed. This event did not only take place this year, but there is credible information that this event has been going on for years," the university found. "The panel is deeply concerned about the escalated nature of the content of this year's list and we are unconvinced that this escalation wouldn't continue." The university found that the sorority's current track record did not lead the panel to have confidence in the chapter's ability to act in a manner that shows care and concern for the health and safety of its members. "This type of behavior is simply unacceptable considering the current climate on college campuses," the university found. The sorority can apply to the university's Dean of Student Offices in 2020 to start the recognition process again. The national organization conducted its own on-campus investigation in December that resulted in probationary terms for the chapter and individual punishments. Sara K. Satullo may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

– A "reprehensible" sorority scavenger hunt that "involved the use of drugs and alcohol, sexual activity, and other activities that violate Lehigh University policy" counts as hazing even if participants took part willingly, the university has decided. The Alpha Chi Omega has lost its status and been booted off the Pennsylvania campus until May 2020 at the earliest after being found responsible for hazing and other offenses, reports the Morning Call. In a blog post, the university says the dubious acts involved in December's "Road Rally" scavenger hunt may not have been "required for affiliation into the organization, but are clearly considered a rite of passage and a consistent part of membership." Alpha Chi Omega will be ordered to vacate its sorority house and the university says that by the time the sorority can resume operations on campus, all the current members will have graduated, breaking a link with the tradition, Lehigh Valley Live reports. "This incident was a significant, reprehensible event that the entire chapter was aware of and leadership endorsed," says the university blog post, which accuses sorority leadership of creating "a situation that occurred on and off campus involving morally questionable quests." Alpha Chi Omega, which cooperated with the investigation by turning over scavenger hunt lists, will be allowed to appeal the decision.

Knowledge of ancient viruses is limited due to their low concentration and poor preservation in ancient specimens. Using a viral particle-associated nucleic acid enrichment approach, we genetically characterized one complete DNA and one partial RNA viral genome from a 700-y-old fecal sample preserved in ice. Using reverse genetics, we reconstituted the DNA virus, which replicated and systemically spread in a model plant species. Under constant freezing conditions, encapsidated viral nucleic acids may therefore be preserved for centuries. Our finding indicates that cryogenically preserved materials can be repositories of ancient viral nucleic acids, which in turn allow molecular genetics to regenerate viruses to study their biology. Abstract Viruses preserved in ancient materials provide snapshots of past viral diversity and a means to trace viral evolution through time. Here, we use a metagenomics approach to identify filterable and nuclease-resistant nucleic acids preserved in 700-y-old caribou feces frozen in a permanent ice patch. We were able to recover and characterize two viruses in replicated experiments performed in two different laboratories: a small circular DNA viral genome (ancient caribou feces associated virus, or aCFV) and a partial RNA viral genome (Ancient Northwest Territories cripavirus, or aNCV). Phylogenetic analysis identifies aCFV as distantly related to the plant-infecting geminiviruses and the fungi-infecting Sclerotinia sclerotiorum hypovirulence-associated DNA virus 1 and aNCV as within the insect-infecting Cripavirus genus. We hypothesize that these viruses originate from plant material ingested by caribou or from flying insects and that their preservation can be attributed to protection within viral capsids maintained at cold temperatures. To investigate the tropism of aCFV, we used the geminiviral reverse genetic system and introduced a multimeric clone into the laboratory model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. Evidence for infectivity came from the detection of viral DNA in newly emerged leaves and the precise excision of the viral genome from the multimeric clones in inoculated leaves. Our findings indicate that viral genomes may in some circumstances be protected from degradation for centuries. ||||| Treatments Ancient Viruses Lurk In Frozen Caribou Poo i itoggle caption Courtesy of Brian Moorman Courtesy of Brian Moorman A careful examination of frozen caribou poop has turned up two never-before-seen viruses. The viruses are hundreds of years old: One of them probably infected plants the caribous ate. The other may have infected insects that buzzed around the animals. The findings prove viruses can survive for surprisingly long periods of time in a cold environment, according to Eric Delwart, a researcher at Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco. "The DNA of viruses is preserved extremely well under cold conditions," he says. Delwart's day job at Blood Systems is to find new viruses that could contaminate the blood supply. But he enjoys looking in odd places too. He got interested in ice cores from high mountain regions, after reading about all the interesting old things the ice contained. "Things like old shoes and arrowheads," he says, "and then I realized this is nature's freezer, which should also contain organic remains." Delwart had one particular type of organic remains in mind: caribou poop. Just about everything an animal eats can be infected with a virus. And that makes animals, including humans, virus vacuums that suck up every virus in their path. "I mean we're constantly shoving viruses down our throat and if you look at poo samples from humans and from animals you will find a lot of viruses," he says. Caribous hang out on ice, so these pristine ice cores are actually full of poo. And as scientists go through layer after layer of ice, the poo gets older and older. Delwart examined poop from northern Canada that was 700 years old. The result, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the discovery of these two viruses. The DNA was so well-preserved that Delwart's collaborators could even reconstitute one virus and use it to infect a plant in the lab. As far as Delwart can tell, these viruses aren't dangerous, which is good. As the North warms and ice melts, more caribou poo infected with ancient viruses will be finding its way into the modern ecosystem.

– If trekking into the wilds of northern Canada, drilling samples out of the ice core, and analyzing caribou poop to find a pair of really old viruses sounds like your idea of a hot Friday night, well, we present you Eric Delwart. As NPR reports, the viral researcher did just that with 700-year-old caribou scat after it occurred to him that the ice "is nature's freezer, which should also contain organic remains." And given that animals of all kinds are "constantly shoving viruses down our throat ... if you look at poo samples from humans and from animals you will find a lot of viruses," he reasoned. Delwart's theory panned out, and he found two previously undiscovered viruses. His results, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that DNA in one of the viruses was in such great shape that it could be used to infect a plant. And while Delwart doesn't think either is dangerous, NPR offers up this cautionary coda: "As the North warms and ice melts, more caribou poo infected with ancient viruses will be finding its way into the modern ecosystem." (Speaking of things perhaps best left alone, a lab has revived history's deadliest flu virus.)

Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A gigantic secret Nazi weapons factory where a NUCLEAR BOMB may have been developed has been discovered in Austria. The 75-acre facility, located near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, is believed to have been used to create and test weapons of mass destruction and was deemed so important to the Nazis that the head of the SS and Hitler's right hand man Heinrich Himmler, even oversaw its development. The complex, which experts believe was the "biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich", was discovered by Andreas Sulzer, an Austrian documentary maker who found reference to the bunkers in the diaries of an old Austrian physicist. They were so well hidden though that bulldozing equipment was to needed to cut away massive granite plates the Nazis had used to hide the entrance shaft in 1945. Ground penetrating radar was also required to confirm reports of how large the facility was. The facility is believed to be linked to the nearby B8 Bergkristall underground factory that produced the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter, that posed a brief threat to allied air forces in the war's closing stages. (Image: German Federal Archives) Mr Sulzer told The Times: "This was a gigantic industrial complex." And similar to the Bergkristall factory, it relied on slave labour from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Up to 320,000 inmates are said to have died because of the brutal conditions in the subterranean labyrinth. In order to fully discover the meaning behind the secret facility Mr Sulzer assembled a crack team of historians and found further evidence of scientists working on the secret project, which was managed by the feared SS General Hans Kammler. Kammler, known to be a ruthless leader, was in charge of Hitler's missile programmes, including the V-2 rocket used against London in the latter stages of the war. He was also the man who signed off blueprints for the gas chambers that killed millions of Jews. Rainer Karlsch, a historian who worked with Mr Sulzer, said: "The SS leadership aspired to create a combination of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. "They wanted to equip the A4 [a variant of the V-2] missile, or more advanced rockets, with poison gas, radioactive material or nuclear warheads." Later the Russian army plundered Bergkristall removed all the technology and then destroyed and filled in the bunkers. The second part of the site, which Sulzer has discovered, seems to have remained unnoticed by both the Americans and the Russians. Sulzer's excavation was stopped last Wednesday by local authorities, who demanded a permit for research on historic sites. But he is confident that digging can resume next month. "Prisoners from concentration camps across Europe were handpicked for their special skills — physicists, chemists or other experts — to work on this monstrous project and we owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth," said Sulzer. Artwork by former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler: ||||| A secret underground weapons stronghold, built by the Nazis to test new advanced weaponry has been uncovered in Austria. The surprise finding was discovered underground near the town of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, Austria, near the Bergkristall factory where the Messerschmitt Me 262 – the first operational jet-powered fighter – was invented. The discovery of the site came after Andreas Sulzer, an Austrian documentary maker noticed a reference to the bunkers in the diary of Austrian physicist who was recruited by the Nazis. Sulzer, alongside a team of historians, began to investigate the idea of the bunkers, receiving funding from several German broadcasters to document his discoveries. Sulzer, one of the excavations' coordinators, spoke proudly of the discovery: "This was a gigantic industrial complex and most likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich." He acquired aerial photographs from RAF plane that showed outlines of the complex's concrete structure. Prior to their downfall, the Nazis went to great lengths to conceal the weapons facility, covering the entrances with thick layers of earth and slabs of granite. The vast underground network of tunnels were built by inmates at the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. It is believed that an estimated 320,000 inmates died building the labyrinth of concrete tunnels and shafts. It is believed to be the location of a secret weapons programme, led by SS General Hans Kammler. Kammler is thought to have lived on the site during the war. Rumours continue to surround his death, with some suggesting he was given a new identity by the US government in exchange for details on Nazi weapons research. The deadly V-2 rocket which struck at London during the final months of the World War II was tested at the complex. It is also thought that scientists experimented with the use of radioactive material and chemical gas. The new excavations have had a setback, after local authorities ordered them to be halted until Sulzer obtains a proper permit for the research of historical sites. ||||| Vast secret Nazi ‘terror weapons’ site uncovered The newly found site may be connected to the B8 Bergkristall factory (RAHD) A SECRET underground complex built by the Nazis towards the end of the Second World War that may have been used for the development of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear bomb, has been uncovered in Austria. The vast facility was discovered last week near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen. It is believed to be connected to the nearby B8 Bergkristall underground factory that produced the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter, that posed a brief threat to allied air forces in the war’s closing stages. Although the Bergkristall factory was examined after the war, the Nazis went to much greater lengths to conceal the newly discovered bunkers apparently used for weapons research. Declassified intelligence documents as well as testimony from witnesses helped excavators identify the concealed entrance. Heavy equipment was deployed to cut away thick layers of soil as well as large ||||| A huge, secret, underground Nazi weapons factory, believed to have been built for the development and planned manufacture of nuclear weapons and other WMDs, has been uncovered in Austria. Now scholars want to know if the SS general who oversaw it was brought to America after the war to help the US with its weapons programs. The vast weapons facility was uncovered last week near the town of St. Georgen an der Gusen by a team led by Austrian documentary- maker Andreas Sulzer, who said it was “likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich.” The 75-acre industrial complex is located close to a second subterranean factory, the B8 Bergkristall facility where the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter, was produced toward the end of World War II, London’s Sunday Times reported (paywall). Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up The existence of the facility was mentioned in the diaries of an Austrian physicist who worked for the Nazis, and Sulzer used ground-penetrating radar technology to pinpoint its location. His team cut away layers of earth and granite slabs with which the Nazis had sealed the entrance shaft. “Declassified intelligence documents as well as testimony from witnesses helped excavators identify the concealed entrance,” The Times said. Work on the excavation was halted last week by local authorities who required that he get new permits for the dig, but is set to resume next month. “Previous research had found increased levels of radiation around the St Georgen site, apparently giving credibility to longstanding claims that Nazi scientists experimented with nuclear weapons in the area, which was under the exclusive command of the SS,” the Times reported. It quoted Rainer Karlsch, a historian working with Sulzer, saying: “The SS leadership . . . aspired to create a combination of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. They wanted to equip the A4 [a variant of the V-2] missile, or more advanced rockets, with poison gas, radioactive material or nuclear warheads.” “The facility, like the Bergkristall factory, relied on slave labor from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp,” the Sunday Times said. “Up to 320,000 inmates are said to have died because of the brutal conditions in the subterranean labyrinth.” “Prisoners from concentration camps across Europe were handpicked for their special skills — physicists, chemists or other experts — to work on this monstrous project,” Sulzer told the British newspaper, “and we owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth.” Sulzer, whose work is being partly funded by German state TV network ZDF, is also seeking to establish what became of SS General Hans Kammler, who managed the project and reported to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. “Kammler was in charge of Hitler’s missile programs, including the V-2 rocket used against London in the latter stages of the war. He was known as a brilliant but ruthless commander, who had signed off the blueprints for the gas chambers and crematoria at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex in southern Poland,” The Times reported. “Rumors persist that he was captured by the Americans and given a new identity after the war.” In the post-war Operation Paperclip, some 1,500 scientists, technicians and engineers from Nazi Germany and other countries — who were believed capable of contributing to US weapons programs, and whose expertise the US did not want going to the Russians — were brought to America. Nazi party participants, activists and supporters were supposed to have been excluded from this program, but this restriction was circumvented, and recruits included rocket scientist Wernher von Braun — the central figure n Nazi rocket development. Kammler is believed to have lived at the St. Georgen site, and was headquartered in an area captured by the US Army in May 1945. “Kammler was officially said to have committed suicide after the war. But according to John Richardson, supported by declassified documents from the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), he was interrogated by Richardson’s father and then taken to America as part of Operation Paperclip,” the newspaper reported. Donald Richardson worked for the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA.

– Suspiciously high radiation levels around the Austrian town of St. Georgen an der Gusen had long fueled theories that there was a buried bunker nearby where Nazis had tested nuclear weapons during WWII. Those suspicions came one step closer to being confirmed last week after the opening of a 75-acre underground complex was dug out from below the earth and granite used to seal off the entrance, the Times of Israel reports. The excavation team was led by Austrian filmmaker Andreas Sulzer, who says the site was "likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich"—a facility that probably relied on forced labor from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and may have even been the testing location for a nuclear bomb, the Daily Mirror reports. The weapons facility was believed to have been manned by SS General Hans Kammler and situated near the B8 Bergkristall factory, where the first working jet-powered fighter was created, International Business Times reports; Sulzer first got wind of the site after seeing references to it in an Austrian physicist's diary. "Up to 320,000 inmates are said to have died because of the brutal conditions in the subterranean labyrinth," Sulzer tells the Sunday Times, per the Times of Israel. Those inmates were chosen for skills in physics, chemistry, or other sciences that would advance the Nazis' quest for WMD, Sulzer says. Digging at the site was halted by local officials who demanded a permit, but Sulzer says excavation will restart next month. "We owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth," he says, per the Mirror. (The US is still keeping nuclear warheads around to fight … asteroids?)

Federal prosecutors this week released a trove of documents bolstering their argument that a crumbling marriage and secrecy about finances led Lewis Bennett to murder his wife, Isabella Hellmann, at sea and stage the suburban Delray Beach woman’s death to look like an accident. At Bennett’s trial this fall on a second-degree murder charge, prosecutors hope to introduce statements from Hellmann that they say will show Bennett wanted out of the marriage so badly that he plotted her death and arranged to move to Australia with their daughter. Documents also detail the financial distress the suburban Delray Beach couple was facing at the time of their sailing trip to the Caribbean on which Hellmann disappeared in the Bahamas on May 15, 2017. RELATED Family of missing Delray woman talks with baby for first time since mom vanished They show Hellmann telling Bennett the couple owed $2,412 in property taxes and faced the cutoff of electricity to their condominium. The couple also were paying the minimum on thousands of dollars in renovations Hellmann had to finance with her credit cards. Hellmann also complained Bennett wanted her to end her maternity leave and returned to work. Another document contends Hellmann told a friend she had no idea how much money Bennett had or how he earned it. Yet Bennett – a dual citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom — somehow had $214,186 to transfer between international accounts from 2014 to 2017. And he had about $36,000 in stolen coins on him when he was rescued in the Atlantic on May 15, 2017, hours after Hellmann disappeared off the Bahamas. + HANDOUT/U.S. Coast Guard HANDOUT/U.S. Coast Guard × Lewis Bennett's upside-down catamaran, Surf into Summer, as photographed by the U.S. Coast Guard in May 2017. Bennett claimed he awoke early on May 15 to find his catamaran had struck something and his wife was gone. A search turned up nothing. The couple’s daughter, now 2, is believed to be with Bennett’s parents in England. “The stolen silver coins,” prosecutors wrote, “were inside the Defendant’s life raft when he was rescued, while Hellmann was not.” GLOBE-TROTTING: Follow an interactive map of Isabella Hellmann’s story Bennett’s trial is due to begin Dec. 10 in federal court in Miami. He was arrested in August 2017 on a related charge of knowingly transporting the stolen coins. He later pleaded guilty. In February, he was minutes away from being sentenced to seven months in prison in the coins case when federal prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder. Another document says Hellman told a relative a friend of Bennett had stolen something worth about $10,000. Prosecutors contend that refers to the stolen coins and they allege Bennett might have feared Hellmann would be furious if she learned he was hiding the coins at a time the couple was in severe financial stress. In fact, prosecutors said, a discovery by Hellmann of the coins “could have potentially led to an intense argument resulting in Hellmann’s murder.” + Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post × Investigators searched the suburban Delray Beach condo of Isabella Hellmann and her husband Lewis Bennett Friday, June 16, 2017. Hellmann vanished ... read more Hellmann’s relatives shared her suspicions of Bennett, documents show, and even admitted to authorities that, soon after Hellmann’s disappearance, they secretly placed two listening devices in the couple’s condo. Authorities recovered the bugs when they raided on June 16, 2017, and want to play at trial two audio recordings of Bennett talking to the relatives. Prosecutors say the devices’ contents are fair game because the family, not law enforcement, installed them. A judge has yet to rule on whether they can be played. Just two weeks after his wife vanished, and without telling her family, Bennett bought one-way tickets to the United Kingdom for himself and the couple’s infant daughter, Emelia. Within days, he began asking about obtaining citizenship for her. He also began renovating a home in the UK and booked a doctor’s visit in Prague concerning his eyes, prosecutors said. The documents filed by prosecutors depict a stressed marriage. Hellmann said Bennett often was an absent dad. When he was away, often in St. Maarten and other Caribbean islands, he rarely would call. And at home, he slept in a separate room from his wife and child. Three months after the child was born, and despite the couple’s financial straits, Bennett flew to Thailand to attend a boxing academy. Hellmann admitted that during one argument she struck Bennett. And in April 2017, just a month before she vanished, she texted him: “Went to St Marteen (sic) and never told me. Not good. I though we are not going to have secrets.” Earlier, in November 2016, Hellmann had texted Bennett: “My heart is broken. If we don’t change, we have to take separate ways.” ||||| This article is over 4 months old Prosecutors argue that Lewis Bennett, from Dorset, and his wife, Isabella Hellman, were ‘consistently’ rowing British man accused of murdering wife in Caribbean to inherit her estate A British sailor murdered his wife and deliberately sank their catamaran in the Caribbean to inherit her estate, prosecutors in the US have alleged. Lewis Bennett, of Poole, Dorset, was smuggling rare stolen coins when he was rescued alone off the coast of Cuba without his wife Isabella Hellmann in May 2017. Hellmann’s body has not been found and the FBI have charged Bennett with her murder. Court papers filed in the US this week alleged that Hellmann’s family bugged her apartment in Delray Beach, Florida, to listen to Bennett’s conversations because they suspected him in her disappearance. FBI arrests Briton over disappearance of wife from yacht Read more The newlyweds were sailing towards their home in America last year when Bennett made an SOS call saying the 41-year-old former estate agent was missing and the vessel was sinking. Prosecutor Benjamin Greenberg asked a Florida judge to admit into evidence conversations with loved ones where Hellmann is said to have discussed rows over a mooted move to Australia, their dire finances and the raising of their daughter. He argued they show the pair were “consistently” rowing, with “potentially one of the arguments ultimately resulting in the murder of Hellmann”. “Hellmann’s murder would remove the marital strife from the defendant’s life, allow the defendant to live his life as he pleased, and would enable him to inherit money from Hellmann’s estate, all of which provide strong circumstantial proof that the defendant had a strong motive to murder Hellmann,” Greenberg continued. If Hellmann is declared to be dead – as Bennett, 41, has requested – he would inherit her apartment and the contents of her bank account. Prosecutors also alleged she may have discovered he was in possession of the gold and silver coins stolen from his former employer in St Maarten – action that could have made her an accomplice in the crime. This “potentially led to an intense argument resulting in Hellmann’s murder”, Greenberg wrote. The FBI accused the Briton, who also has Australian citizenship, of intentionally scuttling the 37ft vessel. He is serving a seven-month jail term after admitting transporting the coins worth $38,480 (£29,450). Bennett is due to go on trial accused of second degree murder in December.

– Prosecutors say a British sailor initially arrested on charges he was smuggling gold and silver coins while on a voyage to Cuba now includes murder charges. The FBI believes Lewis Bennett killed his wife, Isabella Hellman, as they plied the Atlantic last year, the Guardian reports. After Bennett was rescued alone, he faced theft and attempted smuggling charges for allegedly stealing gold and silver coins authorities say belonged to a former employer in St. Maarten. As the Palm Beach Post reports, Bennett was just about to be sentenced to seven months in jail for the crimes when prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder. While Bennett told police following his rescue that he awoke on his 37-foot catamaran May 15, 2017, to a loud thud and went on deck to find his wife gone, prosecutors have outlined a more sinister chain of events. They have suggested a fight may have occurred between the husband and wife, possibly concerning the coins, that led Bennett to kill her. The couple's daughter is reportedly in England with Bennett's parents. He is slated to appear in a Miami federal court on the new charges Dec. 10.

The pastor of St. Aloysius church on Springfield’s north end has been granted a leave of absence after he called 911 from the rectory and told a dispatcher that he needed help getting out of handcuffs. “I’m going to need help getting out before this becomes a medical emergency,” Father Tom Donovan told a dispatcher who sounds a bit incredulous during the Nov. 28 call. “You’re stuck in a pair of handcuffs?” the dispatcher asks. “(I was) playing with them and I need help getting out,” Donovan responds. Donovan told the dispatcher that he was alone in the rectory. It’s not clear exactly how he ended up in handcuffs or why he feared a medical emergency. His voice sounds garbled or muffled on the tape, and sources say that police discovered some sort of gag on the priest when they arrived. The diocese has been tight-lipped about the matter, saying only that Bishop Thomas Paprocki granted Donovan’s request for a leave of absence at some point before Christmas. The diocese knows about the incident, given that Brad Huff, an attorney for the diocese, has been given a copy of the 911 tape by the Sangamon County Emergency Telephone System Department. Kathie Sass, spokeswoman for the Diocese of Springfield, said that the diocese also has a copy of a police report on the matter. Sass would not disclose Donovan’s whereabouts or say whether he is staying at a church-affiliated location. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you where Father Donovan is,” Sass said. “There’s a matter of privacy there.” Sass said that Donovan approached Paprocki after the incident and asked for help. “He came to the bishop before anyone was aware of the incident,” Sass said. “He came to the bishop and asked for help and was granted leave.” Paprocki reviewed the police report after speaking with Donovan, and the police account jibed with what the priest told the bishop, Sass said. Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected]. ||||| Father Tom Donovan as seen in his Linked-In profile Related: Related: Springfield, IL — A Catholic priest from the Springfield diocese headed by Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, who testified against Illinois' marriage equality bill, is on administrative leave after calling 911 to report that he was unable to remove a pair of handcuffs he'd been "playing with.""I'm going to need help getting out before this becomes a medical emergency," Father Tom Donovan told a dispatcher during the Nov. 28 call."You're stuck in a pair of handcuffs?" the dispatcher asks."(I was) playing with them and I need help getting out," Donovan responds.His voice on the 911 tape released Friday by police sounds garbled or muffled. When police arrived at the St. Aloysius church, they discovered Donovan in the church's rectory where he was also wearing a gag.Donovan told the dispatcher that he was alone in the rectory when he was gagged and cuffed. There has been no explanation as to how Donovan handcuffed and gagged himself.St. Aloysius church is under the Diocese of Springfield headed by Bishop Paprocki since June 2010. Paprocki lead a group of three that testified against Illinois' gay marriage bill on Thursday."The pending bill would radically redefine what marriage is for everybody," Bishop Paprocki said before a Senate Executive Committee. "Laws have long-term consequences because laws teach—they tell us what is socially acceptable, and what is not."Bishop Paprocki and the diocese have remained tight-lipped about the matter. Kathie Sass, spokeswoman for the Springfield diocese, would not disclose Donovan's whereabouts to the Illinois Times or say whether he is staying at a church-affiliated location."There's a matter of privacy there," she said.Bishop Paprocki made national headlines in September 2012 when he told parishioners that voting for Democrats, "makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."Source: Illinois Times

– An Illinois priest made a very awkward 911 call back in November that's just now coming to light: Father Tom Donovan told the dispatcher he needed help getting out of a pair of handcuffs he had been "playing with." "I'm going to need help before this becomes a medical emergency," he says in a garbled voice in the recording obtained by the Illinois Times. When police arrived at the church, where Donovan was alone in the rectory, they found the priest was also gagged. Not surprisingly, the diocese doesn't have much to say on the matter, but it did acknowledge that Donovan was granted a leave of absence sometime before Christmas. He approached Bishop Thomas Paprocki before the incident became news. "He came to the bishop and asked for help and was granted leave," a spokesperson says.

'Wreck-It Ralph': Game on! James Rocchi, Special to MSN Movies Our title character, voiced by John C. Reilly, is a bit player in a retro video game called "Fix-It Felix Jr." -- the heel, the bad guy, the destroyer. When we plug a quarter into the cabinet, Ralph and the game's other residents spring to work. Off duty, they're kind of like us, but not. Tired of his endless task of breaking a building only so hero Felix will repair it, and then shut out from an anniversary party for, and by, the game's other blocky residents, he's had it. And so he sets out to be a different person in a world with very different rules than ours, where who you are is literally part of the game's program. Directed by "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" veteran Rich Moore, "Wreck-It Ralph" is fun and warm and bright and terrific. There are moments in it a little too ornate for me both in the comedy and the plot, but it also earns every good feeling it gets. Search: More on John C. Reilly | More on Sarah Silverman Ralph is an unlikely hero, and on his unlikely heroic journey he travels to the worlds inside the other game machines at Litwak's Arcade and makes friends in his travels, like jut-jawed knockout Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) from the violent first-person shooter "Hero's Duty" or the goofy, giddy, glitchy Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), an exile without honor in the candy-themed racing game "Sugar Rush." Ralph even comes to understand, and be understood by, Felix (Jack McBrayer) himself. Broad in shoulder and a tad inarticulate, Ralph also comes to understand himself, and it is here that John C. Reilly's work as a narrator and as a character transcends just entertainment. The entire voice cast, for that matter, is excellent, with Silverman a standout in what may be, yes, the finest acting work she's ever done as the annoying but heartbroken Vanellope. And Moore's direction of Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee's screenplay fizzes like the Mentos-and-diet-cola hot springs that waits, in "Sugar Rush"'s candy land, like a Mordor of stickiness. There are great jokes, but also great jokes about character, like when McBrayer makes a jailbreak gag strike at the heart of Felix's digital soul with real emotion, a singularly brilliant character moment with a deft touch that's still the work of many hands. Moore's direction and the film might be a little too ambitious, with a switch too far perhaps in the finale. But the film is as fast and strong and determined as Ralph himself as it jumps between pop culture references that go from the ancient Greeks in Ralph's Sisyphus-like task to the next iteration of "Halo" in another great character moment for Sgt. Calhoun. At one point, Ralph, inside "Hero's Duty," screams, "When did video games become so violent and scary?" That line alone is smarter and funnier and more savvy about video games than all of "Tron: Legacy." Alan Tudyk's wacky but dictatorial King Candy, who rules "Sugar Rush" with an iron fist inside a four-fingered velvet glove, has the vocal tone and tenor of Ed Wynn's Mad Hatter in 1951's "Alice in Wonderland." Moore's work on "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" has given him years of experience in what it takes to pull off broad silly jokes and big clever references, with the added benefit of playing both brows against the middle. And yet as clever as the writing is, as fast and fleet the direction is, as bright and bouncy as the worlds inside the games at Litwak's are (especially in 3-D), these things matter thanks to the heart and soul of Ralph and Reilly's performance as him. Ralph comes to help Vanellope in her fondest wishes at first out of blackmail and eventually because he recognizes that helping her break the rules of her game's program is helping him change the rules of his life, and making him change how he sees them. Ralph wants to be a different program; he winds up a different person. "Wreck-It Ralph" is a serious contender for the title of best animated film of the year, and while it might seem speedy and stuffed to bursting, all of the story and craft and cleverness never overwhelm the sincere and rewarding heart of a computer-animated film with real joy and humanity in it. Want more Movies? Be sure to like MSN Movies on Facebook and follow MSN Movies Twitter. James Rocchi's writings on film have appeared at Cinematical.com, Netflix.com, AMCtv.com, IFC.com, SFGate.com and in Mother Jones magazine. He was also the on-air film critic for San Francisco's CBS-5 from 2006 to 2008. He now lives in Los Angeles, where every ending is a twist ending. ||||| Dozens of films have failed at bringing established video game properties to the movie screen, but for their latest piece of feature-length digital animation Disney has borrowed a page from fun flicks like Tron, The Last Starfighter, and Wargames. It may be difficult to translate an existing video game into film form, but based on those three ’80s classics and the new-fangled Wreck-It Ralph, it’s not that tough to make an entertaining movie about video games. Described on various twitter accounts as “Tron meets Toy Story,” the endlessly colorful Wreck-It Ralph tells the story of a video game villain who yearns for a life outside of the cruel monotony of the video game cabinet. Ralph (voiced wonderfully by John C. Reilly) might be a bruising bully when his game, Fix-It Felix Jr., is on, but when the lights go out in the arcade, the poor schlub dreams of a destiny in which he isn’t typecast as a clumsy jerk who sleeps on a giant pile of bricks. After trying to be social and earning nothing but disdain from his co-workers in return, Ralph escapes from his video game and begins a quest to become a “good guy.” And of course all PG-rated heck breaks loose. Wreck-It Ralph is that rare animated feature that may appeal more to the parents than to the under-12-year-olds that follow them around all the time. The key to much of Wreck-It Ralph’s charm lies in simple and affectionate nostalgia — “hey, I remember that video game!” will pop into your head quite frequently — but a film cannot coast by on nostalgia alone, and Wreck-It Ralph also boasts high marks in the essential departments of warmth, character, adventure, novelty, and humor. Like the best Disney features, Wreck-It Ralph has a generous parcel of sweet and effective “life lessons” for the younger audience members, but (like the best Disney features) they don’t get in the way of the action, the wit, and the strangely adorable characters. Reilly’s slightly exasperated but kind-hearted voice does wonders for the Ralph character, and the actor is flanked by some great co-stars. Jack McBrayer (as Felix), Sarah Silverman (as a ditzy little race car driver who befriends Ralph), and Jane Lynch (as an RPG game commando who somehow gets caught up in the lunacy) are simply great. It’s not just “gimmick casting” with well-known performers; each actor brings something fun or fresh to their character. And a special mention has to go to the always-affable Alan Tudyk, who is usually a likable presence in any film, but here gets to play a villain with an Ed Wynn voice, and the guy does a simply fantastic job of it. Set to a wonderfully clever Henry Jackman score, boasting more “groan/giggle-worthy” puns than you’ll know what to do with, knee-deep in video game nostalgia but not slavishly beholden to the past, and effortlessly smooth, slick, and silly from beginning to end, Wreck-It Ralph is one of the best animated features of the year, and we’ve already had several darn good animated features this year. In addition to being 95 consecutive minutes of smart, family-friendly fun, Wreck-It Ralph stands as a welcome reminder that while most video game movies stink, movies about the world of video games can be a treat for kids of all ages, provided the filmmakers approach the material with experience, affection, and a strong sense of humor. ||||| It's not just the joystick junkie in me that admires "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney's wacky new comic adventure with a lovable lug of a video game character at its center. The movie's subversive sensibility and old-school/new-school feel are a total kick. Its 3-D animation antics are colored by an '80s-era arcade look that is retro deluxe, while its antihero's destructive tendencies have him working a very au courant 12-step program. John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch and Jack McBrayer voice the anarchy that is about to hit one particular arcade in capital fashion. Though the film is theoretically set in present day, everything about it evokes the not-too-distant past when a quarter would buy a kid a lot of time on a computer game and the arcade was still considered a cool hangout by the adolescent set. PHOTOS: Familiar 'Wreck-It Ralph' baddies A bit like "Tron," the film exists mostly within the games themselves. The various good guys and bad guys live ordinary lives when the kids aren't there making the moves. The film is far more clever in playing off our connection to everything that is wired in this world — a kid's crushing disappointment when a game is on the fritz is a classic moment. But "Wreck-It" digs deeper, without getting too heavy, about the ways in which the electronic world has redefined human interaction — the isolation it can breed, the inculcation of a winner/loser class divide, the very social strata that turn out to be remarkably fragile when someone resists. Consider the games that define "Wreck-It Ralph." The action shifts through three, each with a distinctive visual style and cultural subtext. It starts with Ralph's (Reilly) home base, a simple one called "Fix-It Felix Jr." that is built around the big guy's demolition skills and Felix's (McBrayer) mess-fixing magic hammer. Even the character design is working-class — Ralph bulked up, Felix smaller but equally efficient. MOVIE REVIEWS: What's playing this weekend Not far away is the hyper-violent, and hyper-styled, war game "Hero's Duty." Here all the bodies are hard, especially Sgt. Calhoun's (Lynch), a svelte soldier in skin-tight fatigues who has never met a man she didn't want to order around. And then there's the movie's sweet spot — the anime-influenced "Sugar Rush" — a go-cart extravaganza built out of mouth-watering confections so enticing it will make your teeth hurt. There lives a spunky little glitch (think of it as a computer version of a character flaw) named Vanellope von Schweetz that Silverman milks for all it's worth. She wants her shot at winning a race, but the game won't allow "glitches" to compete and there's a mean-girl group around to make her life miserable. Vanellope keeps pixelating at the most inopportune times — maddening when it's happening on your laptop, genius in the way it keeps the story rocking. She's about to enlist Ralph in her game-changing efforts and a fragile friendship will be born. The testing of their bond does much to shape events in the film, but it will take Ralph a little time to get there. Ralph's journey begins, as so many do these days, with a little soul-searching during a support group session with other arcade villains. After 30 years in the demo game he's having second thoughts. Destruction is only his day job, but at night Ralph is still on the outside looking in. He feels miscast and misunderstood. So he sets out for a game that he can win, and a gold medal that he can claim — certain that's the key to acceptance back home. His going rogue sets in motion all sorts of problems with Felix and Sgt. Calhoun in hot pursuit — "hot" being the operative word for their surprisingly sizzling connection. There is great attention to detail in the creation of Ralph's universe — both in design and in intent. Take the transit system that runs through the electric cords — not only does it look cool, it allows the characters to break out of their own boxes. And who doesn't need that on occasion? Game Central Station — grand and meticulously conceived — is the gateway to the inner-arcade world. Echoes of a certain New York City Beaux-Arts terminal are surely intended and is but one of many delicious visual allusions. The ever-present fear for the game pieces is that a bug will corrupt their system, a fear that soon threatens to become reality. From the invading bug and the way it spreads to the computerized innards of the games, the animators have had a field day. Despite "Wreck-It Ralph's" mind-boggling visual range, the film's major asset is its humanity. First-time feature animation director Rich Moore never loses sight of that as he revs up this fast-moving film. Guess those years spent on "The Simpsons" didn't hurt. Written by Phil Johnston, whose first feature was last year's smart real-people comedy "Cedar Rapids," and Jennifer Lee making her feature debut, the script never sacrifices the central story for a joke either. That choice makes room for a lot of heart to work its way in around the comedy with Reilly and Silverman, both excellent, doing the heavy lifting on that front. More culturally connected and a tad racier than we usually see in the Disney brand, "Wreck-It Ralph" does a terrific job of providing enough oomph and aaaahs for adults and plenty of giggles for kids inside its artfully wrapped animation package. Whether the presence of Pixar's John Lasseter at the studio's animation helm or the new kids on the filmmaking block are responsible, the film blows in like a fresh 21st century breeze. --- MPAA rating: PG for some rude humor and mild action violence Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Playing: In general release [email protected]

– Disney's new animated movie Wreck-it Ralph is rocking Rotten Tomatoes with an 85% rating, and some critics say it's the best animated movie of the year. The laffer features the voices of Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly as video game stars in an 8-bit arcade world. A few quotes from the critics: The movie mixes a retro look and slapstick gags with a sense of humanity, writes Betsey Sharkey at the LA Times. Looking at how technology influences social lives, the movie shows "the isolation it can breed, the inculcation of a winner/loser class divide, the very social strata that turn out to be remarkably fragile when someone resists." The movie delivers nostalgia, wit, and strong characters with a "generous parcel of sweet and effective 'life lessons' for the younger audience members," writes Scott Weinberg at GeekNation. Michael O'Sullivan doesn't quite agree at the Washington Post. He credits the movie's premise but says it ultimately "emphasizes action and eye-popping visuals over emotion," with a narrative that "is overly busy, noisy, and unengaging." James Rocchi says the whole cast is excellent, and Sarah Silverman's portrayal of a heartbroken but irritating game character might be her best performance ever. "The story and craft and cleverness never overwhelm the sincere and rewarding heart of a computer-animated film with real joy and humanity in it," he writes at MSN Movies.

Police try to calm a man at the scene of a shooting in Liege, Belgium, Tuesday, May 29, 2018. A gunman killed three people, including two police officers, in the Belgian city of Liege on Tuesday, a city... (Associated Press) Police try to calm a man at the scene of a shooting in Liege, Belgium, Tuesday, May 29, 2018. A gunman killed three people, including two police officers, in the Belgian city of Liege on Tuesday, a city official said. Police later killed the attacker, and other officers were wounded in the shooting.(AP... (Associated Press) LIEGE, Belgium (AP) — A knife-wielding prison inmate on a 48-hour leave stabbed two police officers Tuesday in the Belgian city of Liege, seized their service weapons and shot them and a bystander to death before being mowed down by a group of officers, setting off a major terror investigation into the country's most savage assault since 2016 suicide attacks. Prime Minister Charles Michel acknowledged the assailant, who had a lengthy criminal record that included theft, assault and drug offenses, had appeared in three reports on radicalism but was still allowed to take a leave from prison. "Is our system working when we see that these kind of people are running free?" asked vice premier Alexander De Croo, echoing the thoughts of many in a nation where armed police and gun-toting soldiers still patrol the streets in the wake of the March 2016 attacks that left 32 people dead at the Brussels airport and subway system. Tuesday's attack happened outside a cafe in the eastern city of Liege when the assailant crept up on the two female officers from behind and stabbed them repeatedly. "He then took their weapons. He used the weapons on the officers, who died," the Liege prosecutor's spokesman, Philippe Dulieu, told reporters. Dulieu said the attacker then shot and killed a 22-year-old teacher in a vehicle that was leaving a parking lot outside a nearby high school. He then took two women hostage inside the school before confronting police massed outside. "He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead," the spokesman said, adding that the hostages escaped unharmed. Justice Minister Koen Geens described the assailant as a repeat offender who had been incarcerated since 2003 and was due for release in two years. Police Chief Christian Beaupere said "the goal of the attacker was to target the police." He identified the slain officers as 45-year-old Lucile Garcia and 53-year-old Soraya Belkacemi. He said Belkacemi was the mother of 13-year-old twin daughters who earlier lost their father, also a police officer. Four other officers were wounded in the attack, one seriously with a severed femoral artery. Belgian media identified the suspect as Benjamin Herman, a Belgian national born in 1982, though in keeping with standard procedure authorities declined to confirm his identity. Interior Minister Jan Jambon said authorities were also investigating the suspected killing on Monday of an old acquaintance of the assailant and said there could be a link. "It is a serious hypothesis," he told the VRT network. Asked about a video from close to the scene in which someone appeared to be shouting "Allahu Akbar!" in the din, Jambon said: "My reaction is that in many terror acts, it is the last thing they shout." But, he added, it is up to federal investigators to determine if Tuesday's attack was terrorism. "The investigation judge must find out if we talk about terror. Because terror also has to do with someone who gives the order, ISIS or someone else, if others are involved. We need to look at all these elements," Jambon said. Michel said the suspect in Tuesday's attack was indirectly mentioned in state security reports on radicalization. But, the prime minister added, the reference was "in notes that did not primarily target him, but others or other situations," and he was not on a list of suspects maintained by the main OCAD anti-terror assessment group. Asked about reports that the assailant was radicalized in prison, Geens, the justice minister, said it "was not a clear-cut case." "He certainly was not someone who could clearly be qualified as radicalized. Otherwise he would have been known as such by all services," Geens said. But a senior official at the federal prosecutor's office told The Associated Press that "there are indications it could be a terror attack." He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. Nevertheless, Belgium's crisis center said the country's terror threat alert would not be raised and remained at level 2 out of 4. It briefly stood at a maximum 4 shortly after the 2016 attacks. Belgium's King Philippe, Michel and the country's justice and interior ministers traveled to Liege to confer with local officials. "I want to offer my government's support for the victims, for the victims' families," Michel said. It's not the first time Liege has been hit by a violent attack. In December 2011, a man with a history of weapons and drug offenses hurled hand grenades into a square filled with Christmas shoppers then opened fire on those who tried to escape. Five people were killed, including the assailant. ___ Cook and Casert reported from Brussels. ||||| LIEGE, Belgium/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility on Wednesday for an attack the previous day in the Belgian city of Liege in which two policewomen and a bystander were killed, but provided no proof. The militant group said in an online statement that a “soldier of the caliphate” had carried out what Belgian police called a terrorist attack. It has previously claimed similar “lone wolf” acts thought to be Islamist-inspired, often without providing evidence. Belgian authorities meanwhile faced questions over why the attacker, a prison inmate who was suspected of links to radical Islamists in jail, was let out for a day. He was shot dead by police at a school near the scene. Interior Minister Jan Jambon said authorities were still examining the motives of Benjamin Herman, a 31-year-old Belgian drug dealer who had been in jail for years but was let out for two days on Monday to prepare for an eventual release in 2020. Herman had shouted “Allahu Akbar”, the Muslim affirmation of faith, during his attack and he had had contact with Islamist radicals in jail in 2016 and early 2017. He also appeared to have followed online exhortations from Islamic State to stab police officers and use their service weapons to shoot others, prosecutors said. A cleaning woman at the school who found herself “nose to face with the killer” told public broadcaster RTBF that he spared her because she was Muslim. While he briefly held her hostage, he told her he wanted the police to “writhe; I want to make them stew”. Justice Minister Koen Geens told RTBF radio he was having pangs of conscience over whether the man should have been allowed the furlough. Still reeling from the attack, residents of Belgium’s third biggest city lay flowers and candles at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday, and officials held a moment of silence. A policewoman reacts during a minute of silence in Liege, Belgium May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman “We had all of the little ones from the high school who were evacuated,” said an emotional nursery school teacher, Joelle Chalon. “I walk this way to work every day.” Authorities praised the quick-wittedness of the cafe owner outside whose bar Herman had killed the two policewomen, aged 54 and 44. By the time the killer, wielding two police pistols, came in looking for more victims, the cafe proprietor had got all of his customers into hiding. Jambon described Herman as a psychologically unstable man who might have been on drugs, pointing to his murder of an acquaintance 50 km (30 miles) away on Monday night. “There are signs he was radicalized in prison but is it that radicalization which drove him to commit these acts?” Jambon said, adding that although Herman was flagged up in security reports in 2016 and early 2017, he had been a fringe figure. JAIL TO JIHAD? In and out of jail for a variety of crimes since 2003, Herman may have found a path to violence that has heightened concerns that Europe’s prisons are incubators for jihadism. It was the 14th time since his detention that he was granted temporary leave, Geens said. “Everyone in Belgium is asking the same question: how is it possible that someone convicted of such serious acts was allowed to leave prisons?” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander de Croo was quoted as saying. The national crisis center, on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell helped kill 130 people in Paris in 2015, did not raise its alert level, indicating no follow-up attacks were expected. “I think it was just one individual who completely snapped,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a specialist on jihadism. “I don’t think it was an organized attack.” Convicts have been behind several Islamist militant attacks in Europe. In Belgium, around 450 prisoners are deemed radical, including 46 that are seen as a threat of radicalizing others, according to lawmaker George Dallemagne, who sits on several Belgian parliamentary security committees. “We have a tragic experience in Belgium, with people entering prison as petty criminals and leaving as terrorists,” he told Reuters. Slideshow (15 Images)

– A knife-wielding prison inmate on a 48-hour leave stabbed two police officers Tuesday in the Belgian city of Liege, seized their service weapons, and shot them and a bystander to death before being mowed down by a group of officers, setting off a major terror investigation into the country's most savage assault since the March 2016 attacks that left 32 people dead at the Brussels airport and subway system. Prime Minister Charles Michel acknowledged the assailant, who had a lengthy criminal record that included theft, assault, and drug offenses, had appeared in three reports on radicalism but was still allowed to take a leave from prison, the AP reports. "Is our system working when we see that these kind of people are running free?" asked Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. The suspect is also believed to have killed an acquaintance the day before the Liege attack. Tuesday's attack happened outside a cafe when the assailant crept up on the two female officers from behind and stabbed them repeatedly. "He then took their weapons. He used the weapons on the officers, who died," the Liege prosecutor's spokesman, Philippe Dulieu, told reporters. Dulieu said the attacker then shot and killed a 22-year-old teacher in a vehicle that was leaving a parking lot outside a nearby high school. He then took two women hostage inside the school before confronting police massed outside. "He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead," the spokesman said, adding that the hostages escaped unharmed. Sources tell Reuters that the suspect was Benjamin Herman, an inmate who converted to Islam and became radicalized in prison.

U.S. employers pulled back on hiring in April for the second straight month, a sobering reminder that the economy remains weak. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, but only because more people gave up looking for work. The Labor Department says employers added 115,000 jobs in April. That's below March's upwardly revised 154,000 jobs and far fewer than the pace from earlier this year. The unemployment rate has fallen a full percentage point since August to a three-year low. But last month's decline was not due to job growth. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively looking for work. In April, the percentage of adults working or looking for work fell to the lowest level in more than 30 years.. ||||| National Archives Yes, it’s that time again, folks. It’s the first Friday of the month, when for one ever-so-brief moment the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Main Street are all aligned on one thing: Jobs. A fresh update on the U.S. employment situation for April hits the wires at 8:30 a.m. New York time, offering one of the most important snapshots on how the economy fared during the first month of 2012. Expectations are for 168,000 new jobs to be created, according to economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires, compared to 120,000 jobs added in March. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 8.2%. Here at MarketBeat HQ, we’ll be offering color commentary and tracking the markets before and after the data crosses the wires. Feel free to weigh-in yourself, via the comments section. And while you’re here, why don’t you sign up to follow us on Twitter. Enjoy the show.

– The unemployment rate fell to 8.1% in April, the lowest it’s been since January 2009, the Wall Street Journal reports. But that still gets an "ouch" from blogger Steven Russolillo since just 115,000 jobs were added, when as many as 168,000 had been expected. "It fell below expectations and even came in under the so-called 'whisper numbers,'" which were around 125,000, he writes. Plus, Paul Vigna adds, the unemployment rate has fallen in part because more people are "dropping out of the labor force," with the participation rate falling to 63.6%. The better news: Jobs for March and February were both revised upward, to 154,000 and 259,000, respectively. Even so, the AP points out, this is the second consecutive month of slow hiring, proving that the economy is still weak.

The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in April by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in April by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in April by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in April by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. Several viewers asked us to investigate some of the agency's trips, so our Community Watchdog started asking questions and requesting documents months ago. Several viewers asked us to investigate some of the agency's trips, so our Community Watchdog started asking questions and requesting documents months ago. Several viewers asked us to investigate some of the agency's trips, so our Community Watchdog started asking questions and requesting documents months ago. Several viewers asked us to investigate some of the agency's trips, so our Community Watchdog started asking questions and requesting documents months ago. More than a dozen law enforcement officers, including 11 in North Carolina, have been arrested in a government sting that included the FBI, the government announced last week. WRAL-TV reported on Wednesday that each of the NC officers who were indicted have since confessed, according to prosecutors. More than a dozen law enforcement officers, including 11 in North Carolina, have been arrested in a government sting that included the FBI, the government announced last week. WRAL-TV reported on Wednesday that each of the NC officers who were indicted have since confessed, according to prosecutors. More than a dozen law enforcement officers, including 11 in North Carolina, have been arrested in a government sting that included the FBI, the government announced last week. WRAL-TV reported on Wednesday that each of the NC officers who were indicted have since confessed, according to prosecutors. More than a dozen law enforcement officers, including 11 in North Carolina, have been arrested in a government sting that included the FBI, the government announced last week. WRAL-TV reported on Wednesday that each of the NC officers who were indicted have since confessed, according to prosecutors. In a new round of tests that crashed seven popular mid-size SUVs, the Nissan Murano came out on top. The tests were conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In a new round of tests that crashed seven popular mid-size SUVs, the Nissan Murano came out on top. The tests were conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In a new round of tests that crashed seven popular mid-size SUVs, the Nissan Murano came out on top. The tests were conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In a new round of tests that crashed seven popular mid-size SUVs, the Nissan Murano came out on top. The tests were conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in May by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in May by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in May by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. The following are mugshots of individuals arrested on a variety of charges in May by local authorities in Northeast Tennessee. School officials told Herrell that while the dated lunch meat was not served at Joseph Rogers, the lunch meat was served to students at Cherokee High School last week. When the complaint was brought to the attention of Hawkins County Director of Schools Steve Starnes last Thursday, he said they took immediate action and looked into the claim. Hawkins County Commissioner Michael Herrell said he received a picture of the expired lunch meat from someone at Joseph Rogers Primary School. Meat dating back as far as 2009 with what was described as a horrible smell was served to Hawkins County students just last week. Hawkins County Commissioner Michael Herrell said he received a picture of the expired lunch meat from someone at Joseph Rogers Primary School. The county reportedly told Herrell that the meat was not served at Joseph Rogers, but said it was served at other schools. Herrell said anyone who knows anything about pork, knows it's like fixing chicken, “ you've got to get it, fix it and be done with it.” But as Herrell learned late last week, there was pork in schools throughout the county that dated back to 2009. “Here in Hawkins County, we have a lot of kids that go to school and that might be the only meal they get all day long. It just upsets me that these kids are going to school to get that meat,” Herrell said. School officials told Herrell that while the dated lunch meat was not served at Joseph Rogers, the lunch meat was served to students at Cherokee High School last week. Herrell said a cafeteria worker inside the high school told him “that it smelled so bad they made gravy to put over the meat.” He said Cherokee is not the only school he's heard where the out-of-date meat was served. “I heard that McPheeter's Bend, cooked the meat there (and) that the smell was so bad the school had the smell all through the school,” Herrell said. But, the principal at McPheeter's Bend contacted News Channel 11 Thursday morning and said that information was not correct. When the complaint was brought to the attention of Hawkins County Director of Schools Steve Starnes last Thursday, he said they took immediate action and looked into the claim. “There was some meat that was in our freezers with dates of 2009, 2010, 2011,” Starnes said. An inventory of all food served to students will be taken throughout the school system and some new ground rules will be put in place, which will include cafeteria managers notifying child nutrition supervisors of any food in the school that's within three months of the labeled expiration date. School board leaders want to address the situation and make sure this does not happen again. There will be a meeting open to the public at the Charles A. Fuller Board Room, known to locals as the 'bus depot'. It's located at 1722 East Main Street in Rogersville, TN. Copyright 2015 WJHL. All rights reserved. ||||| ROGERSVILLE (WATE) – The Hawkins County school system is responding to the revelation that children were served old meat at school cafeterias. The meat had been in the freezer for several years before being served last week. It’s not clear if it was tainted. Michael Herrell is a concerned parent and Hawkins County commissioner. He received a picture on Thursday of pork roast from a cafeteria cook at Joseph Rogers Primary School, the only school in the county that didn’t serve the pork roast to students that had a date from 2009. “They go to school, and that might be the only meal they get all day long, and it just very upsets me that these kids are going to school to get that meal. It just didn’t go over well with me when I heard we were feeding these kids meat that’s dated 2009,” said Herrell. Herrell says a cook at Cherokee High School also told him the meat was bad, but was told by the manager to cover it with gravy to give it a better taste. The USDA guidelines for quality and taste for roast are between four and 12 months. Steve Starnes, Hawkins County director of schools, says they plan to follow these guidelines and implement new procedures. “We also began inventory on all of our frozen food items to make sure. We’re not only going to be incorporating the package date, but also the delivery date on our inventory items to make sure we know exactly when those items came in,” said Starnes. Starnes also says from this point on, each school will have random inspections quarterly. He says inspections will take place at two schools at a time to make sure inventory is running properly and this incident doesn’t happen again. Starnes says he’s unsure how meat that old was still in all schools freezer, but inventory started Wednesday, checking all frozen food items. He also says there have been no complaints of any student getting sick ||||| School officials for a Tennessee county school district said they are trying to figure out why meat that was frozen more than five years ago was served to students at multiple schools. A pork roast was served at schools in Hawkins County on April 22, even though it was frozen in 2009, a county official said. Steve Starnes, the school director for Hawkins County told ABC affiliate WATE-TV in Knoxville that the school was now running inventory on food to ensure no years-old meat will be served again. "We also began inventory on all of our frozen food items to make sure. We're not only going to be incorporating the package date, but also the delivery date on our inventory items to make sure we know exactly when those items came in," Starnes told WATE-TV. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as long as the meat remained entirely frozen it can be safe to eat indefinitely. “Food stored constantly at 0 °F will always be safe,” the USDA reports on their website. “Only the quality suffers with lengthy freezer storage. Freezing keeps food safe by slowing the movement of molecules, causing microbes to enter a dormant stage.” For quality and taste reasons pork roasts should be thawed and eaten within four to 12 months, according to the USDA. Starnes told WATE-TV he wasn't sure why the meat from 2009 had been served at multiple schools and that schools would now be inspected quarterly to ensure food quality. Michael Herrell, a county commissioner, said he was alerted to the use of the years-old frozen meat after the husband of a cafeteria worker sent him a picture of the thawed meat that was dated 2009 and served on April 22. Herrell told ABC News today that he brought up the issue with a local principal and then the school director because he was acting as a concerned parent. "Students in Hawkins County -- that one meal makes a difference in their day," said Herrell, referring to the fact that the county is not affluent and many students rely on free or reduced lunch at school for their nourishmen. He explained he was concerned that younger children wouldn't be able to tell if something was amiss with the food. "These smaller kids ... they think it's alright if they're being served," Herrell said. No students had been reported ill due to the meat, Starnes told WATE-TV. He did not immediately respond to requests for further comment from ABC News. Herrell said his children didn't eat the pork roast served at their middle school and high school that day, and that despite the incident, he expects to allow his children to eat the school cafeteria food in the future. "I think it will get fixed," Herrell said, noting that he hopes ingredients "don't fall through the crack again."

– If the Hawkins County school system in Tennessee had kept its meat in the freezer much longer, the meat might have been older than some of the students it was served to. The county says it's changing its procedures after students at many schools were served pork roast that turned out to have been frozen in 2009, ABC News reports. The US Department of Agriculture says it's safe to keep frozen meat almost indefinitely—though taste and quality will go downhill after four months to a year. According to WJHL, some cafeteria workers say the elderly lunch meat served up to students smelled so bad it stunk up entire schools, and cooks had to slather the meat in gravy to disguise its age. County officials say they're now carrying out an inventory to make sure no old meat is still lurking in school freezers. County Commissioner Michael Herrell went to officials after a cafeteria cook sent him a picture of the meat served on April 22, WATE reports. Herrell says the poor-quality meat is especially upsetting because it's a poor area where many kids get free or discounted meals and some rely on cafeteria food for nutrition. "They go to school, and that might be the only meal they get all day long, and it just very upsets me that these kids are going to school to get that meal," he tells WATE. "It just didn't go over well with me when I heard we were feeding these kids meat that's dated 2009." He tells ABC he worries that younger kids wouldn't be able to tell if there was something wrong with the food they were served. No illnesses have been reported related to the incident. (You won't find any meat, frozen or otherwise, at America's first all-vegan school.)

The ongoing divorce between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, his wife of one year, has taken a bitter turn, after a number of allegations about the couple and their relationship appeared in the press. It has been claimed that Depp's family disliked Heard and believed that she was with the A-list star only to further her own career. Some sources have also intimated that Heard's social life and love of Hollywood glamour may have played a part in the break-up. "Their relationship turned sour almost immediately," an "insider source" told Page Six. "She’s really young and affected by the industry and 'the scene' at times. Don’t get me wrong; she’s a cool chick, but Johnny doesn’t tolerate that." ||||| Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s May-December marriage was on the rocks after just three months, sources exclusively tell Page Six — but the starry couple agreed to give their shaky union a year before calling it quits. Depp, 52, and Heard, 30, tied the knot in February of last year, but by May it was all but over, we hear. They decided to give themselves “a year” in hopes of patching things up and avoiding the embarrassment of a three-month marriage. Sources close to the former couple told Page Six that grizzled star Depp quickly grew tired of Heard’s enchantment with Hollywood glitz. “Their relationship turned sour almost immediately. She’s really young and affected by the industry and ‘the scene’ at times,” said an insider, adding, “Don’t get me wrong; she’s a cool chick, but Johnny doesn’t tolerate that.” We’re told Heard’s bisexual past also proved a problem. By Heard’s birthday in April last year, “she went to meet him to work on damage control,” we’re told, because her close friendship with photographer Io Tillett Wright, an activist in the gay and lesbian community, was causing drama in their marriage. We were told back then that Depp “doesn’t like Io” and believed they “were spending too much time together for it to be comfortable.” Wright was staying in Depp’s guest house and moved out. “He started making her travel with him,” said an insider of Depp and Heard, “and she started distancing herself from her lesbian friends.” The debacle with her dogs also helped sink the relationship. During an April 2015 trip to Australia, when Depp was shooting “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” Heard was infamously charged with illegally bringing along two terriers, Pistol and Boo — a drama that ended with a much-mocked video in which the couple awkwardly apologized. “[It] made him look so stupid and it was her fault,” sniffed another source. Meanwhile, hard-partying and -working Depp is beginning to show his age. Another insider said, “Amber was like, ‘What am I doing with this old man who used to look like Johnny Depp?’ ” Amber Heard is way more interesting than Johnny Depp:

– Johnny Depp and Amber Heard married in February 2015 and were ready to split up by May of the same year—but in order to avoid "the embarrassment of a three-month marriage," they agreed to give it a year before throwing in the towel, sources tell Page Six. Heard, 30, is "really young and affected by the industry and 'the scene' at times," says one source. "Don't get me wrong; she's a cool chick, but Johnny [who is 52] doesn't tolerate that." Interestingly, Depp himself addressed the length of the marriage in a statement issued Thursday, the Telegraph reports: "Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation, and lies about his personal life," it says. "Hopefully the dissolution of this short marriage will be resolved quickly." So, if things have been on the rocks for a year, does that mean they made that awkward dog apology video together begrudgingly? It would seem so. The video "made [Depp] look so stupid and it was her fault," adding to their marriage troubles, another source tells Page Six. One of the Sun's sources echoes that: "Johnny felt humiliated by the whole ordeal and believes Amber made him look like a fool. It just doesn't fit with his serious image and he hated being mocked. The dogs are Amber's so she should really have done the thorough checks." There are so many more amusing quotes where those came from, with sources also claiming "party girl" Heard was annoyed to have ended up with Depp at a "boring," not to mention what the Sun calls a "portly," time of his life. Plus, some sources are saying Depp's family never liked Heard.

Abstract Objective: To examine whether the presence of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is associated with an earlier age at mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer disease (AD)-dementia onset in participants from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort. We also examined whether continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) use is associated with delayed onset of cognitive decline. Methods: From the ADNI cohort, 3 subsets with progressively stringent criteria were created in a step-wise manner. Age at MCI or AD-dementia onset was the main outcome variable. Analyses were performed separately for each subset in untreated SDB+ vs SDB− and untreated SDB+ vs CPAP+ groups. Chi-square and t tests were performed to examine between-group differences. Survival analyses were performed using the Kaplan–Meier method, compared by the log-rank test, and assessed by multivariate Cox regression adjusting for potential confounders. Results: SDB+ patients had a younger age at MCI onset in all subsets (MC1: 72.63 vs 83.67; MC2: 72.15 vs 83.45; MC3: 77.40 vs 89.89; p < 0.01). SDB+ patients had a younger age at AD-dementia onset only in our most conservative subset (AC3: 83.46 vs 88.13; p < 0.05). In a combined outcome analysis, SDB+ patients had a younger age at onset to MCI or AD-dementia in all subsets. In subsets 1 and 2, CPAP use delayed the age at MCI onset (CMC1: 72.63 vs 82.10; CMC2: 72.11 vs 82.10; p < 0.01). ||||| MINNEAPOLIS - Heavy snoring and sleep apnea may be linked to memory and thinking decline at an earlier age, according to a new study published in the April 15, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The research also suggests that treating the disorders with a breathing machine may delay the decline. "Abnormal breathing patterns during sleep such as heavy snoring and sleep apnea are common in the elderly, affecting about 52 percent of men and 26 percent of women," said study author Ricardo Osorio, MD, with the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. For the study, the medical histories for 2,470 people ages 55 to 90 were reviewed. Participants were categorized as either free of memory and thinking problems, in early stages of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers also looked at people with untreated sleep breathing problems versus those without the sleep breathing problems and also untreated versus treated people with sleep breathing problems. The study found that people with sleep breathing problems were diagnosed with MCI an average of nearly 10 years earlier than people who did not have sleep breathing problems. For example, when researchers examined only people who developed MCI or Alzheimer's disease during the study, those with sleep breathing problems developed MCI at an average age of 77, compared to an average age of 90 for those who did not have sleep breathing problems. Among that group, those who had sleep breathing problems also developed Alzheimer's disease five years earlier than those who did not have sleep breathing problems, at an average age of 83 versus 88. The researchers found that people who treated their sleep breathing problems with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine were diagnosed with MCI about 10 years later than people whose problems were not treated, or at age 82 instead of age 72. "The age of onset of MCI for people whose breathing problems were treated was almost identical to that of people who did not have any breathing problems at all," Osorio said. "Given that so many older adults have sleep breathing problems, these results are exciting--we need to examine whether using CPAP could possibly help prevent or delay memory and thinking problems." Osorio noted that more research is needed. "These findings were made in an observational study and as such, do not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship," said Osorio. "However, we are now focusing our research on CPAP treatment and memory and thinking decline over decades, as well as looking specifically at markers of brain cell death and deterioration." ### The study was supported by Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the National Institute of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the Foundation for Research in Sleep Disorders and James B. Kuhn. To learn more about brain health, please visit http://www. aan. com/ patients . The American Academy of Neurology, an association of more than 28,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit http://www. aan. com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. Media Contacts: Rachel Seroka, [email protected], (612) 928-6129 Michelle Uher, [email protected], (612) 928-6120

– If you're prone to heavy snoring or sleep apnea, you could also be prone to something a lot more serious: memory and mild cognitive decline, including Alzheimer's, at a much earlier age. So say researchers out of New York University in the journal Neurology. They studied 2,470 people with an average age of 73 and found that those with breathing disorders during sleep experienced some form of cognitive decline more than a decade before those without the breathing problems (at age 77 instead of age 90). "We need to increase the awareness that sleep disorders can increase the risk for cognitive impairment and possibly for Alzheimer's," the lead author tells the New York Times. But all is not lost: Those who treated their breathing disorders with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine, however, were able to delay mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's by roughly 10 years, the researchers report in a press release. "The age of onset of (mild cognitive impairment) for people whose breathing problems were treated was almost identical to that of people who did not have any breathing problems at all," says the author. "Given that so many older adults have sleep breathing problems, these results are exciting." (Snoring and sleep apnea are linked to these health problems, too.)

Mother-of-two recovering from breast cancer dies in fall from horse as she attempted bucket list task of galloping along a beach Geraldine Jones, 51, had just been given the all-clear from breast cancer After diagnose in 2010, she promised herself she would gallop on a beach Mother-of-two died from her injuries after she was thrown off the horse By Lucy Osborne Tragedy: Geraldine Jones, 51, had just beaten breast cancer when she died after falling off a horse at a beach in South Wales It was her dream to ride a galloping horse along a beach with the wind in her hair. Breast cancer sufferer Geraldine Jones promised herself she would achieve her goal if she survived the disease – and finally got her chance when she was given the all-clear after four years. But the 51-year-old’s longed-for moment turned into bitter tragedy when she was thrown off her horse and died. Her friend – an experienced rider – and a passing jogger administered first aid and a coastguard rescue team was sent to the scene. But despite their efforts, Mrs Jones was pronounced dead in an air ambulance. While undergoing treatment for cancer, the mother-of-two is thought to have written a list of things she wanted to do when she beat the illness – a twist on the ‘bucket lists’ prepared by those with a terminal condition. After learning that she was free of cancer, Mrs Jones started her bid to tick off all the items on her list. She began by going on holiday to Gower in south Wales last Sunday to visit a friend and ride horses together along the picturesque Llangennith Beach. Another friend said: ‘Riding on the sand was something Geraldine was really looking forward to. We’ve been told there was a huge smile on her face as she walked down to the beach.’ Mrs Jones’s husband Tim, 53 – with whom she had two sons, Olly, 16, and 12-year-old Henry – was too distraught to speak yesterday at home in Fownhope, Herefordshire. A neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘He has been inconsolable ever since. She had faced this cancer battle and they had overcome it together … And then this goes and happens. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more tragic in my life. ‘She has always wanted to ride a horse on the beach … It was part of her bucket list … Our hearts just go out to her husband and two young boys.’ Accident: Mrs Jones was fulfilling her dream of riding down a beach on horseback when she was thrown off, suffering fatal injuries Scene: The incident took place at Llangennith Beach on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales, last Sunday Fighter: Mrs Jones, is survived by her husband, Tim, and her two sons Oliver and Henry The neighbour added: ‘Her experience of cancer, the uncertainty at the time and the news that treatment had been successful, created a heightened appreciation of the smallest things and a greater determination in her that she would live life to the full, be a successful businesswoman and spend quality time with her family.’ Mrs Jones, who had been the head of marketing and communications at St Michael’s Hospice near Hereford, was first diagnosed with cancer in 2010. She ended her seven years at the hospice to become a freelance communications consultant 12 months ago. Hospice staff were said to be in tears after the news of her sudden death was announced. Chief executive Nicky West said: ‘Geraldine was a much-loved member of staff at St Michael’s Hospice and her former colleagues have been devastated by the news. ‘Geraldine’s vibrant personality and zest for life made an enormous contribution to St Michael’s. Her exceptional writing skills and empathy for patients and families helped create thought-provoking articles about our work here. ‘Geraldine’s love of life brought joy to the people she spent time with. Her sudden death is a shock, leaving friends and former colleagues saddened and in tears.’ Mrs Jones, who was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, was an experienced rider but had never galloped on sand before. Swansea coroner’s office said it would not make a decision on whether to open an inquest until the results of a post-mortem examination were known. Steve Jones, Swansea coastguard’s manager, added: ‘[The riders] were not doing anything wrong. They were just enjoying the day, as everyone was.’

– After four years of chemo in facing down—and recently beating—breast cancer, 51-year-old Geraldine Jones set out to fulfill a "lifelong dream" of riding a horse on her favorite stretch of beach in South Wales as a way to "appreciate every moment," a close friend tells the Telegraph. But that dream was cut short when she fell from her horse and, in spite of her helmet, sustained a fatal head injury. Though her experienced rider friend and a passing jogger both administered first aid, she was pronounced dead on the coast guard flight to a nearby hospital. "He has been inconsolable ever since," a neighbor says of Jones' husband in an interview with the Daily Mail. "She had faced this cancer battle and they had overcome it together … And then this goes and happens. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more tragic in my life." Jones, who had been communications director at a hospital in Wales until she turned to freelance PR consulting a year ago to spend more time with her family, is also survived by her two teenage sons. "They were not doing anything wrong," a member of the coast guard said of the riders. "They were just enjoying the day, as everyone was." (See what another cancer survivor elected to do with his time.)

Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (Associated Press) Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (Associated Press) NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — His Hollywood career and good-guy image in ruins, Bill Cosby was led away to prison in handcuffs Tuesday at age 81 for perhaps the rest of his days, sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his gated estate. The punishment made him the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison and completed the dizzying, late-in-life fall from grace for the comedian, TV star and breaker of racial barriers. "It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come," Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said. He quoted from victim Andrea Constand's statement to the court, in which she said Cosby took her "beautiful, young spirit and crushed it." Cosby declined the opportunity to speak before the sentence came down, and afterward sat laughing and chatting with his defense team. His wife of 54 years, Camille, was not in court. Constand smiled broadly upon hearing the punishment and was hugged by others in the courtroom. In a blistering statement, Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said the comic was subjected to "most racist and sexist trial in the history of the United States." Among other things, Wyatt said all three of the psychologists who testified against Cosby were "white women who make money off of accusing black men of being sexual predators," and he accused prosecutors of using a doctored recording of a telephone conversation between Constand's mother and Cosby. Cosby's lawyers asked that he be allowed to remain free on bail while he appeals his conviction, but the judge appeared incredulous over the request and ordered him locked up immediately, saying that "he could quite possibly be a danger to the community." The comedian — who is legally blind and uses a cane — removed his watch, tie and jacket and walked out in a white dress shirt and red suspenders, his hands cuffed in front of him. He must serve the minimum of three years before becoming eligible for parole. "For decades, the defendant has been able to hide his true self and hide his crimes using his fame and fortune. He's hidden behind a character created, Dr. Cliff Huxtable," Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said at a news conference, referring to Cosby's best-known role. But "now, finally, Bill Cosby has been unmasked, and we have seen the real man as he is headed off to prison." Constand stood at Steele's side but shook her head to say she had no comment. Former model Janice Dickinson, who was among the 60 or so women who have come forward to accuse Cosby of drugging and violating them over the past five decades, looked at him in the courtroom and said: "Here's the last laugh, pal." Another accuser in the courtroom, Lili Bernard, said: "There is solace, absolutely. It is his fame and his fortune and his phony philanthropy that has allowed him to get away with impunity. Maybe this will send a message to other powerful perpetrators that they will be caught and punished." The punishment, which also included a $25,000 fine, came at the end of a two-day hearing at which the judge declared Cosby a "sexually violent predator" — a modern-day scarlet letter that subjects him to monthly counseling for the rest of his life and requires that neighbors and schools be notified of his whereabouts. The comic once known as America's Dad for his role on the top-rated "Cosby Show" in the 1980s was convicted in April of violating Constand, Temple University women's basketball administrator, at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. It was the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era. Constand testified that Cosby gave her what she thought were herbal pills to ease stress, then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized on a couch. Cosby claimed the encounter was consensual, and his lawyers branded her a "con artist" who framed the comedian to get a big payday — a $3.4 million settlement she received over a decade ago. Five other accusers took the stand at the trial as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray him as a predator. Cosby faced anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison. His lawyers asked for house arrest, saying Cosby is too old and vulnerable to do time in prison. Prosecutors asked for five to 10 years behind bars, saying he could still pose a threat to women. The sentencing came as another extraordinary #MeToo drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexual misconduct more than three decades ago. Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women of New York, credited Cosby's accusers with helping pave the way for the #MeToo movement. "Bill Cosby seeing the inside of a prison cell sends a strong message that predators — no matter who they are, from Hollywood to Wall Street to the Supreme Court — can no longer be protected at the expense of victims," she said. The judge ruled on Cosby's "sexually violent predator" status after a psychologist for the state testified that the entertainer appears to have a mental disorder that gives him an uncontrollable urge to have sex with women without their consent. Steele said Cosby could be sent to Laurel Highlands, a state prison for lower-risk inmates on the other side of the state, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It serves inmates with special needs and has separate housing units for geriatric prisoners and programs for sex offenders. In a statement submitted to the court and released Tuesday, Constand, 45, said that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt. She said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people. "When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement. "Now, almost 15 years later, I'm a middle-aged woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward." She also wrote of Cosby: "We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over." The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, which Constand and other accusers have done. Constand went to police a year after waking up in a fog at Cosby's estate, her clothes askew, only to have the district attorney pass on the case. Another DA reopened the file a decade later and charged the TV star after stand-up comic Hannibal Buress' riff about Cosby being a rapist prompted other women to come forward and after a federal judge, acting on a request from The Associated Press, unsealed some of Cosby's startling, decade-old testimony in Constand's related civil suit. In his testimony, Cosby described sexual encounters with a string of actresses, models and other young women and talked about obtaining quaaludes to give to those he wanted to sleep with. Cosby's first trial in 2017 ended with a hung jury. He was convicted at a retrial that opened months after the #MeToo movement had taken down such figures as Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein, NBC's Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey and Sen. Al Franken. Cosby, whose estimated fortune once topped $400 million, broke barriers in the 1960s as the first black actor to star in a network show, "I Spy." He went on to superstardom as wise and understanding Dr. Cliff Huxtable on "The Cosby Show," a sitcom that showed America a new kind of black TV family: a warm and loving household led by two professionals, one a lawyer, the other a doctor. He also found success with his Saturday morning cartoon "Fat Albert," appeared in commercials for Jello-O pudding and became a public moralist, lecturing the black community about young people stealing things and wearing baggy pants. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom and countless Emmys, Golden Globes and Grammy awards. As the allegations mounted, his career all but collapsed, "Cosby Show" reruns were taken off the air, and one college after another stripped him of his honorary degrees. ___ Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report. ___ For more coverage, visit: https://apnews.com/tag/BillCosby ||||| NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby, who for years dodged accusations that he had preyed on women while brightening America’s living rooms as a beloved father figure, left a courtroom in handcuffs on Tuesday after he was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in his home. The sentence capped Mr. Cosby’s stunning fall from a towering figure in popular culture to an 81-year-old convicted sex offender. “It is time for justice,” Judge Steven T. O’Neill said as he announced the term. “Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The day has come. The time has come.” Acknowledging the impact that the case has had on Mr. Cosby’s legacy, Judge O’Neill added: “Fallen angels suffer most.” Mr. Cosby, who has said he will appeal the conviction, was denied bail and ordered to prison immediately. ||||| “I have often asked myself why the burden of being the sole witness in two criminal trials had to fall to me. The pressure was — enormous. I knew that how my testimony was perceived — that how I was perceived — would have an impact on every member of the jury and on the future mental and emotional well-being of every sexual assault victim who came before me,” Constand wrote. ||||| Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (Associated Press) Bill Cosby arrives for his sentencing hearing at the Montgomery County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, in Norristown, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) (Associated Press) NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — His Hollywood career and good-guy image in ruins, an 81-year-old Bill Cosby was sentenced Tuesday to three to 10 years behind bars for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman, becoming the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison. The punishment all but completed the dizzying, late-in-life fall from grace for the comedian, former TV star and breaker of racial barriers. "It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come," Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said. He quoted from victim Andrea Constand's own statement to the court, in which she said Cosby took her "beautiful, young spirit and crushed it." Cosby declined the opportunity to speak before the sentence came down, and afterward he sat and chatted with his spokesman and a lawyer, seemingly in good spirits. His wife of 54 years, Camille, was not in court. Constand smiled upon hearing the punishment and was hugged by others in the courtroom. Cosby's lawyers asked that he be allowed to remain free on bail, but the judge appeared incredulous over the request and said he would not treat the celebrity any differently from others. The punishment came at the end of a two-day hearing at which the judge declared Cosby a "sexually violent predator" — a modern-day scarlet letter that subjects him to monthly counseling for the rest of his life and requires that neighbors and schools be notified of his whereabouts. The comic once known as America's Dad for his role on the top-rated "Cosby Show" in the 1980s was convicted in April of violating Constand, Temple University women's basketball administrator, at his suburban Philadelphia estate in 2004. It was the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era. Cosby faced a sentence of anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison. His lawyers asked for house arrest, saying Cosby — who is legally blind — is too old and vulnerable to do time in prison. Prosecutors asked for five to 10 years behind bars, saying he could still pose a threat to women. Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele rejected the notion that Cosby's age and infirmity entitle him to mercy. "He was good at hiding this for a long time. Good at suppressing this for a long time. So it's taken a long time to get there," Steele said. The sentencing came as another extraordinary #MeToo drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexual misconduct more than three decades ago. The Cosby case "really raised awareness of the pervasiveness of ... sexual misconduct against subordinates and against women of relatively less power," said Daniel Filler, dean of Drexel University's law school. "For jurors, I think it's inherently changed the credibility of the accusers." In the years since Constand first went to authorities in 2005, more than 60 women have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, though none of those claims have led to criminal charges. The judge ruled on Cosby's "sexually violent predator" status after a psychologist for the state testified that the entertainer appears to have a mental disorder that gives him an uncontrollable urge to have sex with women without their consent. When the ruling came down, a woman in the courtroom shot her fist into the air and whispered, "Yessss!" In a statement submitted to the court and released Tuesday, Constand, now 45, that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt. She said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people. "When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement. "Now, almost 15 years later, I'm a middle-aged woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward." She also wrote of Cosby: "We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over." The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, which Constand and other accusers have done. Constand went to police a year after waking up in a fog at Cosby's gated estate, her clothes askew, only to have the district attorney pass on the case. Another district attorney reopened the file a decade later and charged the TV star after stand-up comic Hannibal Buress' riff about Cosby being a rapist prompted more accusers to come forward and after a federal judge, acting on a request from The Associated Press, unsealed some of Cosby's startling, decade-old testimony in Constand's related civil suit. In his testimony, Cosby described sexual encounters with a string of actresses, models and other young women and talked about obtaining quaaludes to give to those he wanted to sleep with. Cosby's first trial in 2017 ended with a hung jury. He was convicted at a retrial that opened months after the #MeToo movement had taken down such figures as Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein, NBC's Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey and Sen. Al Franken. Constand said Cosby gave her what she thought were herbal pills to ease stress, then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized on a couch. Cosby claimed the encounter was consensual, and his lawyers branded her a "con artist" who framed the comedian to get a big payday — a $3.4 million settlement she received over a decade ago. Five other accusers took the stand at the trial as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray him as a predator. Cosby, whose estimated fortune once topped $400 million, broke barriers in the 1960s as the first black actor to star in a network show, "I Spy." He went on to superstardom as wise and understanding Dr. Cliff Huxtable on "The Cosby Show," a sitcom that showed America a new kind of black TV family: a warm and loving household led by two professionals, one a lawyer, the other a doctor. He also found success with his Saturday morning cartoon "Fat Albert," appeared in commercials for Jello-O pudding and became a public moralist, lecturing the black community about young people stealing things and wearing baggy pants. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom and countless Emmys, Golden Globes and Grammy awards. As the allegations mounted, his career all but collapsed, "Cosby Show" reruns were taken off the air, and one college after another stripped him of his honorary degrees. ___ Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report. ||||| NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Bill Cosby was sentenced on Tuesday afternoon to three to 10 years in state prison for sexually assaulting a woman at his Philadelphia home back in 2004 — the final step in his downward spiral from America’s Dad to convicted felon. Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill denied Cosby’s request for bail pending his appeal. Cosby took off his suit jacket, watch, and tie in the courtroom as two deputy sheriffs handcuffed him and transported him to county jail. He will then will be transferred to a state facility, where he will be evaluated, and sent to a state prison — probably one in a rural part of Pennsylvania for old and infirm inmates. Cosby showed no visible reaction to the sentence, which was close to the maximum that could be imposed. He remained seated in the courtroom, chatting quietly with his lawyers and two friends during a recess. Under Pennsylvania law, Cosby will have to serve the full minimum of three years before he can be eligible for parole. The maximum possible sentence was five to 10 years behind bars. “This is a serious crime,” said O’Neill, who rejected the defense request for house arrest, partial confinement, and even a chance to serve the sentence in the county jail as opposed to state prison. O’Neill said he gave substantial weight to the impact of the sexual assault on victim Andrea Constand, who was seated in the courtroom when the sentence was announced. “I put a high degree of weight on the impact of the crime on the victim and her family,” said O’Neill. Related Gretchen Carlson on How Her Roger Ailes Lawsuit Affected the Cosby Case Why Janice Dickinson Laughed at Bill Cosby When He Was Sentenced (Guest Column) Cosby’s publicist, Andrew Wyatt, denounced the outcome in a statement outside court. “This has been the most racist and sexist trial in the history of the United States,” he said, laying the blame at the feet of “white women who make money off of accusing black men of being sexual predators.” “They persecuted Jesus and look what happened,” Wyatt added. “Mr. Cosby is fine. He’s holding up well. Anyone who wants to say anything negative, you’re a joke as well.” Cosby’s wife Camille, through a spokeswoman, issued a statement blasting the prosecutors for using “falsified evidence.” At a news conference, District Attorney Kevin Steele said Cosby is no Cliff Huxtable (his “Cosby Show” character), but rather someone who used his acting skills to prey on women. Justice, he said, has finally been served with the prison term. “It’s been a long time coming,” said Steele. Steele credited Constand for reporting the attack to police and testifying. “This assault changed her life,” said Steele as Constand stood nearby. “She’s been a rock. She’s done the right thing.” Steele said it was no “cause for celebration” for Cosby to be led off in handcuffs. “We take very seriously the taking of somebody’s liberty,” but, he went on, “Our job is to separate the predators from the good people of our community, and that happened today.” Among the women who accused Cosby of assault, the sentence was accepted with a mix of emotions, though mostly relief. There was a former supermodel, an ex-Playboy bunny, and the former wife of Alan Ladd. Several of the women who testified at trial, to show a pattern of similar conduct by Cosby, were also there. “We’re just thrilled to death,” said Victoria Valentino, a former Playboy bunny who attended both trials. “It’s just a matter of having that final curtain call so we can have some real serious feelings of closure.” Former entertainment executive Cindra Ladd, now 70, said she has been dealing with the emotions of having been sexually assaulted since approximately 1969. She added that she was grateful to O’Neill for “making sure justice was served.” “I really wanted to be here, especially with some of my other survivor sisters,” Ladd, who used to be married to producer Alan Ladd, said. “It was important for me to see him.” Earlier in the day, O’Neill declared the former TV star a “sexually violent predator.” The designation means that Cosby, who is legally blind, will be subject to a lifetime of reporting requirements, meaning he will have to advise law enforcement authorities of where he is residing. Steele asked O’Neill to impose the maximum sentence of five to 10 years in state prison, and to reject defense arguments that Cosby should be allowed to serve any sentence under house arrest. “This should be a state prison sentence,” said Steele. Green rejected the prosecution’s contention that Cosby should be considered dangerous, saying he couldn’t recall any instance in which an 81-year-old, blind defendant had been sent to state prison. Cosby was found guilty in April of molesting Constand, who had been operations manager of the women’s basketball team at Temple University, where Cosby had been a major supporter and donor. It was the first sentencing of a celebrity in the passionate atmosphere of the #MeToo movement, and the case provided a backdrop not just for Constand’s allegation, but for some of the dozens of other women who accused Cosby of assaulting them, and faithfully attended the court proceedings. But only Constand’s allegation was the focus of a criminal trial, and she was in court for the sentencing, telling O’Neill she was asking only for “justice as the court sees fit.” Constand, who is now a massage therapist in Canada, testified during the trial in April and in an earlier trial last year that ended with a hung jury, that she had become friends with Cosby, and viewed him as a mentor. She testified that she took three blue pills Cosby offered her during a visit to his home outside Philadelphia in early 2004 because she trusted Cosby and believed they were some kind of an herbal relaxant. But then, she testified, she soon became incapacitated and felt his fingers inside of her, but “couldn’t fight him off.”

– "Mr. Cosby, this all circles back to you. The day has come. The time has come." So said Judge Steven O’Neill in sentencing Bill Cosby to three to 10 years in state prison on Tuesday in connection with the 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand, reports the Los Angeles Times. It notes the 81-year-old opted not to address the courtroom in Norristown, Pa.; Variety adds Cosby "showed no visible reaction" to the sentence. The AP reports that "afterward he sat and chatted with his spokesman and a lawyer, seemingly in good spirits." His wife, Camille, was not present for the sentencing. The latest on the downfall of America's Dad: How the AP describes that downfall: "His Hollywood career and good-guy image in ruins, an 81-year-old Bill Cosby ... [became] the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison." O'Neill "appeared incredulous" as he turned down Cosby's lawyers' request that the comedian remain free on bail pending appeal, per the AP. The New York Times reports the lawyers pushed the point further, and O'Neill withdrew to his chambers to consider the request. But he ultimately rejected the request, and Cosby was led away to prison in handcuffs, per the AP. He must serve a minimum of three years before being eligible for parole. He was processed at Montgomery Correctional Facility in Eagleville, Penn., before being moved to State Correctional Institution at Phoenix; at the state prison, his health and other needs will be evaluated for a period of weeks to months as officials determine which prison he will ultimately be sent to. Cosby, who was also fined $25,000 plus the costs of prosecution, now has a mug shot, which was released Tuesday afternoon.

The Death of Eric Cartman Original Air Date: 04.13.2005 Butters is freaked out when he thinks he can communicate with the dead. Although his parents have made it clear to him there is no such things as ghosts, Butters is sure one is haunting him. Butters knows he has to give up his ghost pal or be put into a mental institution. ||||| UPDATE: New Scientology internal documents about the investigation of Parker and Stone leaked. See our new story here. Also, Scientology responds to this story, and we decode their response for you. NEW: filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman confirms that he was asked about Trey Parker and Matt Stone by Scientology's Eric Sherman in 2006. And Mark Ebner adds more confirmation that OSA followed people who worked on the 2005 South Park episode. Also, a private investigator describes sifting trash for the Church of Scientology. Another interesting revelation at Marty Rathbun's blog this morning: Rathbun released what he said was an internal Scientology document which suggests that the church targeted Trey Parker and Matt Stone for a classic OSA investigation in retaliation for the infamous South Park episode that exposed the religion's bizarre upper-level teachings. Rathbun tells me this initial document is just the beginning of a trove that describes how Scientology investigated Parker and Stone over a significant period after the duo deeply embarrassed the church with its 2005 episode, "Trapped in the Closet." Marty Rathbun himself was once a powerful executive in Scientology who defected in 2004, and since 2009 has been criticizing church leader David Miscavige at his blog. At various times this year, Rathbun has made public similar documents which reveal the covert operations of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs. The document he revealed today suggests that Scientology had identified Parker and Stone's close friends, and was examining public records on those people, looking for a vulnerability. "To find a direct line into Stone and Parker some of their friends have been identified," reads the document, which reads like a typical OSA report on an ongoing investigation. The church's information allegedly was coming from Eric Sherman, a film consultant who Rathbun identifies as a Scientologist (the Voice is attempting to reach him), and who had talked with Troma Studio's Lloyd Kaufman for information about Parker and Stone. Several friends to the South Park duo are then identified: writer Matthew Prager (That's My Bush), actor John Stamos, actress Rebecca Romijn, and writer David Goodman. "These connections are being PRC'd," reads the document, and Rathbun explains that the acronym stands for "public records check." Scientology's standard procedure would be to put its private eyes on a complete check of these people and their property, legal, and other public records. If they owed taxes, or had been in messy divorces, or had been arrested, Scientology would soon know about it. "There are some strings that will be pulled on the PRC on Stone," the document reads, suggesting that investigators had already found something about Matt Stone in public records that would make him vulnerable. "Otherwise the special collections will be debugged in order to get some viable strings that can be pulled," the document then reads, and Rathbun explains that "special collections" is Scientology's code for trash digging. I asked Rathbun what kind of things OSA's operatives would be looking for in the trash of Parker and Stone and their friends. "Phone records. Bank records. Personal letters that expose some kind of vulnerability. They'll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you're drinking and how much. Prescriptions. They'll figure out your diet. They can find out a lot about you through your trash," he told me this morning by phone from his home in South Texas. "You can see that the commanding officer is pissed off and not enough is getting done," he says about the final lines from the OSA document. But additional documents show that the investigation did get going in a big way, and we'll have more about that soon. The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology #1: L. Ron Hubbard #2: David Miscavige #3: Marty Rathbun #4: Tom Cruise #5: Joe Childs and Tom Tobin #6: Anonymous #7: Mark Bunker #8: Mike Rinder #9: Jason Beghe #10: Lisa McPherson #11: Nick Xenophon (and other public servants) #12: Tommy Davis (and other hapless church executives) #13: Janet Reitman (and other journalists) #14: Tory Christman (and other noisy ex-Scientologists) #15: Andreas Heldal-Lund (and other old time church critics) #16: Marc and Claire Headley, escapees of the church's HQ #17: Jefferson Hawkins, the man behind the TV volcano #18: Amy Scobee, former Sea Org executive #19: The Squirrel Busters (and the church's other thugs and goons) #20: Trey Parker and Matt Stone (and other media figures) #21: Kendrick Moxon, attorney for the church #22: Jamie DeWolf (and other L. Ron Hubbard family members) #23: Ken Dandar (and other attorneys who litigate against the church) #24: David Touretzky (and other academics) #25: Xenu, galactic overlord Tony Ortega is the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice. Since 1995, he's been writing about Scientology at several publications. [email protected] | @VoiceTonyO | Facebook: Tony Ortega Keep up on all of our New York news coverage at this blog, Runnin' Scared SCIENTOLOGY IN THE VILLAGE VOICE [All recent stories] | [Top 25 People Crippling Scientology] | [Commenters of the Week] [Thursday 2pm Stats!] FEATURED INVESTIGATIONS [Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis secretly recorded discussing "disconnection"] [Benjamin Ring, LA deputy sheriff, wants you to spend your 401K on Scientology] [Scientologists: How many of them are there, anyway?] [Scientology hates clean ice: The "Fair Game" operation that should turn your stomach] [Scientology hates clean ice, part 2: Another target, and the web as weapon] MARTY RATHBUN AND THE SIEGE OF SOUTH TEXAS [Scientology has Rathbun arrested] | [Rathbun and Mark Bunker reveal surprising ties] In Germany with Ursula Caberta: [Announcing plans] | [Press conference] | [Making news about Tom Cruise, Bill Clinton, and Tony Blair] | [Post-trip interview] The Squirrel Busters: [Goons with cameras on their heads] | [Rathbun's open letter to neighbors] | [Ingleside on the Bay, Texas rallies to Rathbun's cause] | [Squirrel Buster's claim to be making a "documentary"] | [VIDEO: "On a Boat"] | ["Anna" sent to creep out Monique Rathbun] | [Squirrel Busters go hillbilly] | [A videographer blows the whistle on the goon squad] | [Ed Bryan, OT VIII, shows the power of Scientology's highest levels] SCIENTOLOGY SPYING AND "FAIR GAME" [Secret Scientology documents spell out spying operation against Marc Headley] [Scientology's West U.S. spies list revealed] | [Scientology's enemies list: Are you on it?] Spy operation against Washington Post writer Richard Leiby: [Part 1] | [Part 2] [A Scientology spy comes clean: Paulien Lombard's remarkable public confession] [Scientology advertises for writers in Freedom magazine] [Accidental leak shows Scientology spy wing plans to "handle" the Voice] [Lori Hodgson and Disconnection: "No one's going to take my eternity away"] SCIENTOLOGY AND CELEBRITIES ["Tom Cruise told me to talk to a bottle"] | [Tom Cruise likes coconut cake] | [Tom Cruise has a sense of humor] | ["Tom Cruise not a kook!"] | [Paulette Cooper on Tom Cruise] [Paul Haggis, director of Crash, issues an ultimatum, leaves the church] [Character actor Jason Beghe defects noisily] | [Actor Michael Fairman reveals his "suppressive person" declaration] | [Michael Fairman talks to the Voice] [Giovanni Ribisi as David Koresh: Scientology-Branch Davidian link makes sense] [Russell Brand weds ex-Scientologists in wild ceremony] | [Skip Press on Haggis] [Placido Domingo Jr.: Scientology's retaliation is "scary and pathetic"] Grant Cardone, NatGeo's "Turnaround King": [Doing Scientology's dirty work?] | [Milton Katselas complained about Cardone's smear job] | [Cardone runs to Huffpo] [Philip Boyd, Saving Grace actor, rips "the business that is Scientology"] JANET REITMAN'S INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY [Our review of Inside Scientology] | [An interview with Janet Reitman] | [A report from Reitman's first book tour appearance] | [At the Half-King: Reitman not afraid] [Scientology doesn't like Inside Scientology] | [Q&A; at Washington Post] [A roundup of Reitman's print reviews, and why isn't she on television more?] HUGH URBAN'S THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY [A review of Urban's scholarly history of the church] | [An interview with Hugh Urban] EX-SCIENTOLOGISTS SPEAK OUT [Marc Headley: "Tom Cruise told me to talk to a bottle"] | [The Nancy Many interview] [Sympathy for the Devil: Tory Christman's Story] | [Jeff Hawkins' Counterfeit Dreams] [86 Million Thin Dimes: The Lawrence Wollersheim Saga] | [Mike Rinder on spying] OVERSEAS NEWS [Scientology dodges a bullet in Australia] | [Scientology exec Jan Eastgate arrested] [All hell breaks loose in Israel] | [Scientology sees fundraising gold in the UK riots] [Aussie former rugby pro Chris Guider calls David Miscavige "toxic" and "violent"] [Stephen Cox, UK church newbie, pledges 20K pounds] | [Biggi Reichert: A German Lisa McPherson?] | [The Birmingham trove: 7,000 internal e-mails] ODD VIDEOS AND ODDER NEWS [Scientology singalong, "We Stand Tall"] | [Captain Bill Robertson and "Galactic Patrol"] [Scientology wins a major award!] | [Scientology wants your money: Meet Dede!] [Birmingham in the House! The "Ideal" dance mix] | [Scientology and the Nation of Islam] [When Scientology was hip] | [Sad: David Miscavige makes fun of his own fundraisers] [Freedom magazine parodies The New Yorker. Hilarity ensues.] [Scientology surf report: Anonymous parties outside the New York "org"] THE VIEW INSIDE THE BUBBLE [A scientologist's letter to the Voice and its readers] | [Scientology silent birth] [Tad Reeves: Scientology might listen to this guy] | [More Tad Reeves and family] [Scientology never forgets: A heartwarming telemarketing holiday miracle] [Scientology High School, Dating and Super Powers!] Sponsor Content

– South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker may gleefully skewer anyone and everyone with scatological abandon, but apparently the Church of Scientology is one target unwilling to take its licks. The church investigated Stone and Parker in retaliation for their 2005 South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet," which ridiculed high-level church beliefs and prominent celebrity believers, such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, reports the Village Voice. "You can see that the commanding officer is pissed off, and not enough is getting done," said Marty Rathbun, a former Scientology executive who unearthed the internal document that describes the church's move. In what Scientology analysts call a "classic" investigation, the church reportedly identified Stone's and Parker's friends, performed public records checks, and went through their trash, all in an effort to dig up dirt on the pair. Why their trash? Rathbun explains, "Phone records. Bank records. Personal letters that expose some kind of vulnerability. They'll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you're drinking and how much. Prescriptions. They'll figure out your diet. They can find out a lot about you through your trash." Click to read the entire piece.