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NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cypriot officials are baffled by reports that a meteor streaking across the nighttime sky may have exploded overhead with a thunderous bang that some said made the ground shake.
Police said eyewitnesses reported seeing a blue glow emanating from the object that raced over the east Mediterranean island's Troodos mountain range shortly before midnight Thursday.
Cyprus Geological Department official Iordanis Demetriades told The Associated Press Friday that there's no indication the object struck the ground and that it probably "exploded in the sky."
A police official who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity in line with police rules said numerous reports spoke of "a loud explosion" followed by "the ground shaking."
Authorities are looking for possible remnants of the object. ||||| There were no reports of casualties or damage from the phenomenon which was reported across a wide area of the south of the Mediterranean island between midnight and 1 am.
Authorities are now searching for space rock debris from any meteorite fall.
"We have yet to confirm that it was in fact a meteorite but it is more than likely that it was," police spokesman Andreas Angelides said.
"We have had many witness reports of a flash of light in the sky, a series of loud noises that were especially loud and heard in the districts of Nicosia and Limassol."
Police said they had received hundreds of calls from the south coast of the island and some inland areas.
They said they would continue to investigate.
The civil aviation authority said that there had been no reports of anything untoward in the skies from pilots and all flights had operated normally in the island's air space during the pre-dawn hours.
Meteors are pieces of comet or asteroid from outer space that create a fireball as they hit the Earth's atmosphere.
Those that survive the intense heat and friction and reach the surface without breaking up are known as meteorites and are sought after by scientists for the information they can give about the early solar system. | – Officials in Cyprus are baffled by reports that a meteor streaking across the nighttime sky exploded overhead with a thunderous bang. Police say eyewitnesses reported seeing a blue glow emanating from the object that raced over the east Mediterranean island's Troodos mountain range shortly before midnight Thursday, per the AP. "We have yet to confirm that it was in fact a meteorite but it is more than likely that it was," says police spokesman Andreas Angelides, per AFP. A Cyprus Geological Department official says that there's no indication the object struck the ground and that it probably "exploded in the sky." The police official says numerous reports spoke of "a loud explosion" followed by "the ground shaking." (This YouTube video shows a bright flash.) Authorities are looking for possible remnants of the object. |
Mr Putin's surprise appearance on a music channel to hand out awards came as a shock even to the journalists his minders handpick to follow him around not to mention the audience of baseball cap-wearing adolescents.
Dressed in a polo-neck jumper and a sports jacket, Mr Putin, 57, looked distinctly awkward among a crowd of head-bobbing hand-waving teenagers. As the crowd around him writhed to a noisy rap song, he stood motionless with his hands stiffly at his sides while his security detail mingled among the audience "in youth disguise".
Mr Putin then took to the stage himself and spoke out against drugs and vodka, doing his best to show he knew about what he called "mass youth culture". "
Rap, even urban rap and street rap, is kind of crude, but is already filled with social content and addresses the problems of youth," he told an open-mouthed audience. "Graffiti is becoming a real art form – refined and polished. Break dancing is something completely unique."
One rapper later called an embarrassed looking Mr Putin "a legend and our idol," saying he dreamed of performing a rap duet with the Russian strongman. But the outing did not garner Mr Putin his usual rave reviews. ||||| Vladimir Putin Relates to Russian Youth
In what one Moscow newspaper called "a desperate move" to appeal to Russia's youth, Vladimir Putin presented an award on a music channel this weekend and kind of made a fool of himself. Doing his best to look cool, in a turtleneck and windbreaker, Putin warned his young friends about the hazards of drugs and vodka. Then he weighed in on some pressing issues of the day:
"Rap, even urban rap and street rap, is kind of crude, but is already filled with social content and addresses the problems of youth. Graffiti is becoming a real art form - refined and polished. Break dancing is something completely unique."
So, that's how the Russian president prime minister feels about hip-hop, graffiti and break dancing. You were wondering, right?
Vladimir Putin turns to rap and break-dancing [Telegraph] | – While it would have been infinitely more entertaining had Vladimir Putin actually tried to freestyle, his appearance at a music awards show this weekend still made newspapers titter. Putin, who first stood around looking awkward while his “youth disguised” security mingled with the dancing crowd, handed out an award and offered his thoughts on rap ("addresses the problems of youth"), graffiti ("a real art form"), and, yes, break-dancing, the Telegraph reports. He looked “less than slick,” tee-hees Andrew Osborn in the Telegraph, dubbing him “stiff,” “awkward,” and “embarrassed,” before quoting a Moscow newspaper that called it “a desperate move” to increase his popularity. Putin was “doing his best to look cool, in a turtleneck and windbreaker,” adds Adam K. Raymond in New York. The stunt apparently worked on one rapper, who says he dreams of performing a duet with Putin. |
New research shows that for women who eat apples, there might be more to that old adage about the forbidden fruit's health effects than previously thought. According to a recent study in Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics, women who consume apples on a regular basis tend to experience greater overall sexual function, reporting higher levels of arousal and satisfaction.
Researchers analyzed the apple-eating habits of 731 sexually active Italian women over the course of seven months, polling participants between the ages of 18 and 43 with no history of sexual dysfunction. The women were classified into two groups -- those who ate one to two apples daily and those who ate none -- and asked to fill out the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), which includes more than a dozen questions regarding desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction and pain. All in all, Group A (the apple-eaters) totaled higher FSFI scores than their non-apple-eating counterparts, indicating increased lubrication and general sexual function.
The researchers are quick to point out that while their results are "intriguing," they should be taken with caution. The study's small sample size makes it difficult to categorize too broadly, although the positive correlation between apples and better sex they found seems to speak for itself. Possible explanations for the link include the multiple antioxidants and other pharmacologically active substances (like phytoestrogens and polyphenols) present in apples, which have been associated with positive sexual effects before. The fruit shows similar sexual benefits as red wine and chocolate, but with other added health effects as well.
It's also possible that the sexual health benefits come more from apple peels -- which have high concentrations of helpful phenolic compound -- than from the apples themselves. This study included only women who did not peel their apples before eating them, but the researchers speculate that it "might be interesting to evaluate" whether apple peels play a more specific role in female sexuality. We'll wait for that future study -- while snacking on some unpeeled apples.
(h/t Huffington Post) ||||| It's been said that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but new research suggests it can do a lot more than that.
A new study published in Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics suggests that eating more apples leads to better sex for women.
Researchers analyzed 731 sexually active Italian women aged 18 to 43 with no history or complaint of sexual disorder. Women taking prescription drugs or suffering from depression were excluded from the study as well.
Participants were separated into two groups: regular apple consumption (one to two apples a day) and no apple consumption (0 to 0.5 apples per day). The women then filled out the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), which is comprised of 19 questions about sexual function, sexual frequency, orgasm, lubrication and overall sexual satisfaction.
Researchers found that "daily apple use is associated with higher FSFI scores in sexually active female patients, thus increasing their lubrication and overall sexual function."
So why apples?
The researchers hypothesize that apples may improve sexual function because, like red wine and chocolate, they contain polyphenols and antioxidants that can stimulate blood flow to the genitalia and vagina, thus helping with arousal.
Not only that, researchers says apples contain phloridzin, a common phytoestrogen that is structurally similar to estradiol -- a female sex hormone -- and plays a huge role in vaginal lubrication and female sexuality.
Of course, the study has its limitations. It's a relatively small sample size and it's difficult to separate correlation from causation. However, the researchers note the results are "intriguing," to say the least.
Now excuse us while we go eat some apples.
Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Divorce on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter here. ||||| INTRODUCTION:
Even if some evidence exists of a positive correlation between regular intake of phytoestrogens, polyphenols, antioxidants and women's sexual health, there is not a study addressing the potential correlation between daily apple consumption and women's sexual function. We aim to assess whether there is a tie between daily apple intake and sexual function in a sample of healthy young sexually active Italian women, not complaining of any sexual disorders.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Seven hundred and thirty-one women (mean age 31.9, range 18-43) were enrolled in this cross-sectional study (from September 2011 to April 2012). All participants completed anonymously the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and were asked to report on their amount of daily apple consumption and their eating habits. On the basis of apple consumption all women were split into two groups: Group A--regular daily apple consumption, Group B--no regular apple consumption (<1 apple/day). The main outcome measure was the FSFI questionnaire result.
RESULTS:
Three hundred and forty-three women reported a regular daily apple intake and were classified in Group A, while 388 were included in Group B. Group A had a significantly higher total (p = 0.001; Cohen's d = 3.39) and lubrication domain (p = 0.001; Cohen's d = 3.02) FSFI scores than participants in Group B. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that daily apple intake must be considered as an independent parameter (p = 0.002) in predicting a better score at questionnaire examination.
DISCUSSION: | – Eating the forbidden fruit of an apple tree may be even racier than the Bible says. Women who eat one to two apples a day experience a better sexual quality of life than women classified as having "no regular apple consumption," according to a new study in the Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Scientists followed 781 Italian women aged 18 to 43 with no history of sexual disorder and who were not taking prescription meds or suffering from depression, and learned that those who eat apples regularly had better "lubrication and overall sexual function." The researchers didn't establish causation—it's possible, for instance, that women who eat more apples are healthier overall, which contributes to better sexual function. But, like chocolate and red wine, apples contain polyphenols and antioxidants, which can increase blood flow to the genitalia, as well as phloridzin, a type of estrogen similar to the female sex hormone estradiol that improves vaginal lubrication, reports the Huffington Post. Some of these benefits may lie only in the peel of the apple, and researchers say it "might be interesting to evaluate" what role apple peels play in female sexuality, reports Salon. (Click to read about another unusual sex-related study.) |
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Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg
Burning discarded clothing from retail chain Hennes & Mauritz AB is helping a Swedish power plant replace coal for good.
The combined heat and power station in Vasteras, northwest of Stockholm, is converting from oil- and coal-fired generation to become a fossil fuel-free facility by 2020. That means burning recycled wood and trash, including clothes H&M can’t sell.
“For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the 54-year-old plant about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”
While Sweden prides itself on an almost entirely emission free-power system thanks to its hydro, nuclear and wind plants, some local municipalities still use coal and oil to heat homes and offices during cold winter days. By converting old plants to burn biofuels and garbage, the biggest Nordic economy is hoping to edge out the last of its fossil fuel units by the end of this decade.
Malarenergi has a deal with the neighboring city of Eskilstuna to burn their trash, some of which comes from H&M’s central warehouse in the same city. The refuse wasn’t specified as clothing until it was highlighted in a Swedish national television program on Tuesday.
“H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use,” Johanna Dahl, head of communications for H&M in Sweden, said by email. “However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed.”
The Vasteras plant burned about 15 tons of discarded clothes from H&M so far in 2017, compared with about 400,000 tons of trash, Neren said. Malarenergi has deals with several nearby cities to receive rubbish and even imports waste from Britain to fuel its main boiler.
The facility, which supplies power to about 150,000 households, burned as much as 650,000 tons of coal at its peak in 1996.
On Tuesday, the last coal ship docked in Vasteras to supply the plant’s two remaining fossil-fuel generators from the 1960s with enough supplies to last until 2020. That’s when a new wood-fired boiler will be added to supplement the facility’s existing biofuel and trash burning units. ||||| Nearly 100% of all used clothing and household textiles can be re-used or recycled: 45% are re-used as apparel; 30% are converted into industrial polishing/wiping cloths and 20% are processed into fiber to be manufactured into new products. 95% of all used clothing is recyclable, only 5% is unusable due to mildew or other contamination.
Companies in the textile reuse and recycling industry consist of collectors, processors and distributors of all types of used clothing, textiles and secondary materials.
Collectors are companies that collect used clothing and other household textiles from the public. In addition, recycled textile collectors gather materials from industrial laundries, healthcare institutions, hotels, and other businesses that utilize large amounts of textile products. Another source of textile products that is directed into the recycling stream by "collector" companies is textile waste from clothing manufacturers.
Collectors bale and sell these clothing products "as is" to clothing graders or other dealers. Used clothing "graders" sort the items assign a "grade" and re-sell the graded product. The activities of collectors, graders, and used clothing brokers are instrumental in diverting solid waste from landfills.
Processors sort, grade and reprocess used clothing and household textiles during the recycling process. At the facilities where the collected clothing and textiles are sorted, the items are then made into large bales to be re-sold. The newly created bales of used clothing may be re-sold within the United States, although most often the products are shipped overseas to developing markets in Asia, Africa, Europe, or Central and South America.
Textile processors also collect items from industrial laundries that are deemed to be unfit to be used by the laundry's clients. These items are sorted and bleached to make them more absorbent before they are cut into wiping cloths.
Some companies re-process used clothing back into their original fiber. These companies create blends of fiber that are sold in bales to companies that re-manufacture the fiber content into new products. These products include: home insulation (made from the denim of reprocessed blue jeans), stuffing for furniture, athletic equipment, pet bedding, automotive soundproofing, and carpet padding among many other new products.
Distributors take the used clothing or textiles that are cut or converted into wiping products and then sold to industrial, manufacturing, retail, and other end-use clients. Broker companies fall within the distributor category as well. These businesses facilitate the transactions between collector companies, grader companies and buyers. Materials that are brokered within the used clothing industry include institutional mixed used clothing, clothing gathered by collector companies and materials that have been sorted by grader companies. The clients of brokers are often foreign businesses located in Africa, Asia, Europe, or South America. On occasion, brokers also facilitate transactions among companies within the United States, depending on the needs of their client companies. ||||| A Swedish power plant that aims to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2020 has taken to burning recycled wood and garbage—including clothes from H&M;’s central warehouse, as first reported on Swedish public television.
“For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, which owns and operates the plant in Vasteras, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”
According to Bloomberg, the plant has burned about 15 tons of discarded clothing from H&M; so far in 2017, making it a minuscule percentage of the 400,000 tons of trash it has burned to supply power to about 150,000 households. The clothes, according to H&M;’s head of communications, Johanna Dahl, are burned because they’re unsafe for wearing.
“It is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed,” Dahl told Bloomberg.“H&M; does not burn any clothes that are safe to use.”
While Sweden is a leader in eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the fast fashion cycle encouraged by brands such as H&M; is far from sustainable, as 15 tons of discarded clothing from a single warehouse would indicate.
Beyond the staggering resources required to produce H&M;’s hundreds of millions of products globally each year, fast fashion encourages an environmentally catastrophic cycle that sees manufacturers producing ever-increasing quantities to meet rising demands in markets such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. According to a 2016 McKinsey study, clothing production worldwide doubled between 2010 and 2014, and from 2000 to 2011 the average number of annual collections produced by European apparel companies rose from two to five.
It’s a lot of material for one planet to handle. Plus, when clothes are so cheap, customers value them less, making them even likelier to end up in landfills—if they’re not in an incinerator first.
🌍 Quartz is running a series called The Race to Zero Emissions that addresses the challenges and opportunities of climate action. Sign up here to be the first to know when stories are published. ||||| What does it mean for textiles to get recycled? While almost half of donated clothing gets worn again, a large portion of it is recycled in the traditional sense—ground down and re-formed into things like insulation and carpet padding—and a slightly smaller portion is turned into industrial rags.
Figuring out the proper way to dispose of old clothes can be perplexing; if these bins were to be taken off the sidewalks, few people would know where to put their used clothing. On top of that, Americans still think of old clothes as charitable donations, which explains the outrage over news that the Viltex bins actually belong to a for-profit company.
Those in the textile-recycling industry are now trying to clear up the confusion. "What we need to do is change the dialogue to, 'You're not just donating, you're reusing and recycling,'" says Jackie King, executive director of the Secondhand Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, a trade group. "It's an issue of communicating that and getting people to understand that if they want to use a charitable organization to reuse or recycle clothing, great. If not, let's make it convenient for people to dispose of it elsewhere."
Most recycling, from bottles to cans to newspapers, is done by for-profit companies. In a nation that churns out an ungodly amount of waste, this amounts to big business. Take plastic: The U.S. exported more than $940 million worth of plastic scrap in 2010. The value of used clothing, moreover, has been in its own inflationary bubble since the recession, as more people are cash-strapped and opting to buy used.
Of course, castoff clothing differs from a bottle or a newspaper in that almost half of it can be reused as secondhand clothing; it needn't be ground down into a pulp to make a new product, as is the case with plastic or glass. But the other half—the ripped, the torn, the busted—is recyclable.
Charities have been our de facto national textile recyclers going back to the early 20th century, and Goodwill started providing bins for clothing donations as early as the 1940s. But this system was set up in a pre-consumerist America, when we had neither a landfill crunch nor a waste crisis: Americans now buy five times as much clothing as they did in 1980, according to Mattias Wallander, CEO of USAgain, a textile-recycling company. And between 1999 and 2009, the volume of textile trash rose by 40 percent. Particularly due to the advent of cheap, disposable clothing, charities have seen themselves transformed into dumps that accept clothes of varying condition in ever-increasing volumes.
King says there is quite a lot of public misinformation about what exactly happens to clothing when it’s donated to charities. "People think when they are giving to, say, a Salvation Army or Goodwill, that all of that is going to be resold in their stores, and it's just not, because they don't have enough room for that," she says. In fact, according to King, there's only a 15 or 20 percent chance that a piece of clothing you've donated is being worn by someone in your community, as charities receive far too many donations to sell them all. | – H&M's fashions are on fire—literally, that is, in Vasteras, Sweden. A heat and power station that powers 150,000 homes there has a mandate to stop burning fossil fuels like coal and oil by 2020. Its path to achieving that involves burning "only renewable and recycled fuels," which in its case, includes recycled wood and "trash" from an H&M warehouse in the neighboring city of Eskilstuna. Bloomberg reports it was only last week that the trash was specified as clothing, and a rep for H&M in Sweden explains the company "does not burn any clothes that are safe to use." What's being torched—year to date, about 30,000 pounds' worth—are ones that may "contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals." The alternative would seemingly be a landfill, which is where a staggering amount of our clothing ends up. The Atlantic in 2014 reported that Americans toss about 10.5 million tons of clothing a year. That's about 85% of what we get rid of, with the other 15% recycled—either ultimately worn by someone else, turned into industrial rags, or "ground down" and repurposed as items ranging from insulation and furniture stuffing to pet bedding, per the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association. The Sourcing Journal cites the Environmental Protection Agency's concern over the situation: The agency recorded a 38% jump in textile waste between 2000 and 2011. Quartz points to a 2016 McKinsey study that found that over that same period, European clothing companies increased their number of annual collections from two to five. |
A Florida police officer last weekend bought a replacement engagement ring from J.C. Penney for an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's who apparently had hers stolen, WSVN.com reported.
"I came in the morning, and I'm holding her hand, talking to her, and the ring is gone," Arthur Wagner, the woman's husband, told the police officer. Wagner, who spent $400 on the ring in 1946, said that the ring stayed on his wife's finger for 67 years.
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Betty Wagner would wear two rings: her wedding ring and engagement ring. Judging by the bruises on her finger, it appears that someone pulled off the two rings, taking the engagement ring and leaving the wedding band.
Plantation Police Officer Laurie Graber was sent to investigate, and learned the story about the couple's relationship.
"After 67 years of that ring being on her finger, she still looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor," Graber told WSVN.com.
She purchased the ring and told the nurses to deliver it.
"A promise kept for 67 years is worth something," Graber said. Police are investigating the robbery.
Click for more from WSVN.com ||||| Officer replaces elderly woman's engagement ring after theft at hospital Posted: Monday, June 23, 2014 11:03 PM EDT Updated: Monday, August 18, 2014 11:03 PM EDT
PLANTATION, Fla. (WSVN) -- A police officer made a generous gesture and helped an elderly hospital patient who lost something dear to her in a heartless crime.
When Arthur Wagner asked Betty to be his bride in the summer of 1946, he said, "She said, 'Yes.' I remember I bought it at Zales jewelry. I paid $400 for it," said Wagner.
The engagement ring and wedding band was placed on Betty's left finger and has been there for 67 years, until last Saturday when her yellow gold diamond engagement ring went missing. "I came in the morning, and I'm holding her hand, talking to her, and the ring is gone," said Wagner.
Weak with advancing Alzheimer's, Betty was sedated in a hospital bed at Westside Regional Medical Center in Plantation. "From the bruises on her finger that looked like both rings were pulled off, and the wedding band was put back on," said Wagner. "I just tear up. It was tough."
Plantation Police sent over officer Laurie Graber to investigate the case. "After 67 years of that ring being on her finger, she still looked at him like he was her knight in shinning armor, and he looked at her like she was still his young bride," said Graber.
Wagner and Graber felt helpless after Betty's ring was stolen and in the hands of a thief. "I just couldn't imagine what kind of depravity you would have to have to take something off of someone so vulnerable," said Graber.
Graber felt something needed to be done so, "I went to J.C. Penney, and I bought a small ring, and I took it back to the hospital, and I left a little note."
"The nurses at the nurse station they come and they said, 'The officer that was here yesterday, she left you this,'" said Wagner. "A promise kept for 67 years is worth something."
Betty's original engagement ring is gone, but Wagner is still at her bedside along with her new ring.
Wagner said the new ring has helped ease the pain.
Plantation Police is checking the hospital's surveillance video to see if they can catch anyone in the act.
If you have any information on this theft, call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS. Remember, you can always remain anonymous, and you may be eligible for a reward. |||||
A Florida police officer went above and beyond the call of duty after she met an elderly woman whose engagement ring had been snatched right off her hand in the hospital.
7 PHOTOS Police officer replaces old woman's stolen ring See Gallery Police officer replaces elderly woman's stolen ring Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE A Florida police officer went above and beyond the call of duty after she met an elderly woman whose engagement ring had been snatched right off her hand in the hospital. Fox News reports, "With little hope of finding the ring, a Florida police officer took the matter into her own hands, replacing it with her own money."
WPLG spoke with Arthur Wagner, whose wife, Betty, has advancing Alzheimer's and is currently being kept sedated in a hospital. "That ring went on there when she was a 20-year-old," says husband Arthur Wagner. He spent $400 on it years ago.
Now, 67 years later, someone grabbed that engagement ring right off Betty's finger. And WOGX says she has the bruises on her finger to prove it. Her wedding band was still intact, though.
Local police sent over Officer Laurie Graber to talk to Arthur about the stolen ring. She says her heart broke when she heard what happened. WOFL says, "She still looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor ... he looked at her like she was still his young bride. I went to JCPenney, and I bought a small ring."
Graber purchased this heart-shaped diamond ring for Betty and went back to the hospital and left it with the nursing staff, leaving behind only a signed note: "It's not much, it's not the same. But 67 years of a promise kept should be recognized."
Graber says she purchased the ring because it was right thing to do, not because she wanted any attention. Police are still searching for Betty's missing ring, which is now valued at around $4,500 in today's economy.
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Sons cost parents more money in the long run | – A classy move by a Florida cop is making headlines: Laurie Graber, an officer in Plantation, got the call for a particularly low-level crime—someone had ripped the engagement ring off the finger of an 87-year-old woman bedridden with Alzheimer's in a hospital, reports Fox News. By the bruises on Betty Wagner's finger, it wasn't an easy job, and no wonder—the ring had been there for 67 years. "I just couldn't imagine what kind of depravity you would have to have to take something off of someone so vulnerable," Graber tells WSVN. Upon leaving the hospital, Graber went to JCPenney and shelled out for a replacement ring with her own money. She brought it back to the nurses' station with a note, reports AOL.com: "It's not much, it's not the same. But 67 years of a promise kept should be recognized." Husband Arthur, who placed the original on his soon-to-be wife's hand in 1946, says the gesture has helped him deal with the theft. (Another Florida officer bought groceries for a mom caught shoplifting.) |
Screenshot: Saturday Night Live
“Our lives are short and love is rare, now we do the turkey dance.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [comedy, drama, now comedy again?] star!”
The big news that all the kids will be buzzing about is that rumored reboot of The Office that some people apparently really want and tonight’s host Steve Carell says wouldn’t work anyway, for some reasons having to do with “today’s climate.” In his opening monologue, Carell got the old “unexpected questions from the audience” treatment, as former The Office-mates Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, and Jenna Fischer all stood up to urge their former TV boss to sign on so they can get paid, already. (Kenan wants it, too, responding to Carell asking if he’s Kenan or a “fake audience member” by telling Carell, “If I was acting, you would know.”) That was pretty much the only laugh in the bit, as Carell played straight man to the same-y jokes about how he’s being a dick (Fischer’s words), and how his actual wife and kids don’t really need him around as much as he thinks. He did tease the audience by inviting his Office pals up on stage to guarantee . . . that it would be a great show. (It wasn’t.)
The other joke hammered all week has been how Steve Carell is a big drama guy now, something the show didn’t so much refute as remind viewers of how funny Steve Carell would have been if he were given any decent sketches to act in. Woof, this was a congested wheeze of an episode, packed with sketch after sketch of unimaginative premises, indifferently executed. And that goes for Carell, too, frankly, who seemed listless and uncommitted most of the time. A couple of musical sketches offered him the chance to really belt out some silly material with the confident abandon he’s justifiably renowned for, but, in each, he matched the dullness of the writing in performance. In his third time hosting, Carell and SNL both seemed to be just running out the clock in what was the most deeply disappointing episode of a very uneven season so far.
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Weekend Update update
After last week’s news-grabbing, feel-good official apology for a nothing joke (to a newly elected congressman with some seriously questionable views himself), it’s like SNL decided to play defense this week. Or maybe play dead, hoping for the national, not-at-all-manufactured outrage cycle to die down through the upcoming off week. Che and Jost sped past some fairly innocuous political material (Che’s references to the brazen spree of criminal Republican voter suppression tactics aside) in favor of some lame Amazaon jokes. Jost mocking New Yorkers’ complaints about the new Queens Amazon HQ for bringing “25,000 jobs” takes the laziest laugh line from what is a complicated issue, something SNL has long been prone to, but that Jost and Che have occasionally risen above. This, coupled with the other big Amazon piece tonight (see below) smacks of the sort of corporate coziness that just makes SNL look bad, especially with the big news story of Amazon’s move taking place in the show’s backyard, and the attendant controversies.
Tossing to the big post-election satirical landscape, SNL scanned the trees and brought back—Bigfoot porn. The fact that newly elected Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman apparently is way into Bigfoot-themed erotica has predictably dominated media coverage of his campaign. And, sure, that’s some funny stuff right there. But he’s also been allegedly associated with some avowed white supremacists, which is both less funny and more relevant, satirically speaking. So trotting out Mikey Day to portray Riggleman nearly talking himself off to his own Sasquatch porn with some relatively graphic supposed excerpts and even more disturbing grunting noises is picking the lowest-hanging fruit of a satirical target and heavy-breathing on it. Again, if SNL is going to choose to do politics, then it’s going to be judged (by me, at least) on the choices it makes in how to approach the jokes. There are a myriad premises to be plucked from the recent midterm elections. That this was the best they got this week is embarrassing.
Kenan came on again as overbearing and hyperbolic NBA dad LaVar Ball, which is always pleasantly silly. Here, Kenan’s Ball maintained his self-promoting, reality-averse egomania, even as he slipped in the fact that Lakers star LeBron James supposedly has a restraining order against him (They have brunch, “always a respectable 500 feet away” from each other), and bragging about his younger sons’ dad-financed Latvian b-ball careers. (They feast on “the briniest cabbage this side of Bucharest!”) I love Kenan, and this is the sort of thing he’s wonderful at.
Best/worst sketch of the night
On a night like tonight, it’s a matter of picking out kernels (or “cornels”) of ideas or performances than whole decent sketches, of which none were in evidence. In what was a mostly disastrous ten-to-one (but one) sketch, astronauts having space Thanksgiving with their alien hosts ate screaming purple corn (or “kern”) on the cob. Complete with dropped props, a failed chroma key effect, Pete Davidson’s sped-up corn screams, flubbed lines, and either unwritten or abandoned ending, the debacle played like something infamously intransigent SNL legend Michael O’Donoghue might have written during his ill-fated 1981 head writing stint under Lorne Michaels’ replacement producer Dick Ebersol, when the show was alternately a vehicle for the notoriously uncompromising Mr. Mike’s bizarro visions or his legitimate attempt to turn the floundering post-Lorne enterprise into “a Viking death ship.”
There was a similarly dark, throwback vibe to the space station sketch, too, with Carell’s mission commander attempting to tell stilted astronaut jokes and fun facts to Skyped-in school kids, only for a malfunction to flood the camera feed with dead, frozen monkeys, a cat with its face sucked inside out, and, finally, Kate McKinnon’s very deceased cosmonaut floating rigidly outside the ISS’ bubble window. It didn’t all work—again, Carell never seemed filly into his third hosting gig. But there was some real effort in the physical acting of the bit—apart from the dead McKinnon, Carell, Leslie Jones, and Mikey Day did some fine fake floating, and SNL has room for some darkness in it. After we hear about the unfortunate fate of the poor station kitty, there’s a moment where the beast floats into view with its back to us before it—very slowly—rotates to show just what the vacuum of space can do to a cat-face. That, plus some rictus-frozen, space-suited monkey puppets felt energizingly transgressive, in a way that SNL could stand to risk more often.
The “Beauty School Drop Out” parody musical number had a scrap of a funny idea in that Carell’s apparently heavenly, permed guardian angel is actually teenager Aidy Bryant’s dad, interrupting her 1950s sleepover to croon to her high school dropout friend. The concept that Carell’s dad has been touring the country for six weeks with a carful of sexy backup singer-dancers busting into teenage girls bedrooms has a nice, loony energy to it, and Aidy’s horrified reactions are good. (“God, what a small man you are.”) Throughout the episode, there was a refreshing attempt at doing some self-contained, conceptual sketches, but this one just didn’t ever lift off.
The Thanksgiving song sketch should have worked better. It, too, took an odd little idea—dinner guests Carell and Cecily Strong maintain there’s a famous Thanksgiving rock song which they proceed to sing in all its specifically inappropriate, boner-shrinking glory—that has the potential to soar along with the musical conceit. But then it, too, just didn’t, as Carell’s seeming diffidence sapped the momentum. It’s not a total loss—the turn that no one actually knows Strong’s character goes from Carell’s conviction that she was some sort of spirit to the revelation that she’s stolen everyone’s car keys and stabbed Beck Bennett’s host is more ambitiously weird than expected. But this one should have been a show-stopper, with everyone eventually remembering the song’s lyrics about a pair of lovers, a shy penis, and a cameo-ing squirrel and joining in the song, so its just-okay aftertaste is a bummer.
Chris Redd and Pete Davidson’s pro-Ruth Bader Ginsburg rap is the sort of thing they (especially Redd) have done better before, with the paean to the ailing but hopefully indestructible Supreme Court justice never expanding appreciably past its premise. It gave Kate McKinnon a chance to wheel out her RBG for some of her signature gyrating as “the one lady holding the whole damn thing together,” but it’s unlikely to garner another musical SNL Emmy for Redd and company.
The RV sketch, in which Heidi Gardner’s wife unsuccessfully hides how miserable she is since husband Carell cashed out to make her live out his cross-country camper fantasy worked to the extent that it did because Gardner, once more, showed what a fine actress she is on SNL. The sketch had slack pacing, no ending, another blah turn by Carell as the clueless husband, and a very nervous-looking great dane. But it also had Gardner’s peerless squeaking, eyes-averted denial to power it, with her secretly stewing wife not complaining about having to ride in the back (the dog gets carsick), sleep sitting up at the camper’s cramped table, and being in charge of emptying the vehicle’s septic tank before she finally explodes.
By dint of it being the first sketch after the monologue, I’m disinclined to cut the clueless dad sketch much slack. Of all its worst instincts, Saturday Night Live’s need to over-explain a premise is more damaging than musical monologues, game- and talk show sketches, and recurring characters combined. Here, dad Carell’s 5 a.m. announcement that he’s taking his four kids to Disney World sees his progeny immediately asking “Oh my god, does he not know?,” “Oh no, is our dad dumb?,” and “How can we know all this and our dad has no idea?” to let us know that Carell’s dad character is dumb and doesn’t know stuff. (Namely that their mom/his wife is sleeping with his boss, has left and moved to Arizona, and two of the kids aren’t his.) Carell, coming out for his first character work of the night, tentatively sets up the sketch-deadening explanatory lines, which leave viewers asking exactly how slow SNL thinks we are.
“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report
LaVar Ball, Ingraham Angle. Speaking of . . .
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
We got another Ingraham Angle cold open tonight, with Kate McKinnon mugging it up as Fox News’ smirking white supremacist and, as she translates from Telemundo’s nickname for her, “La madre del diablo,” Laura Ingraham. McKinnon’s impression is more about pitch-perfect sneering contempt than vocal verisimilitude, but it’s still a decent vehicle to mock Ingraham’s ongoing campaign against facts, actual reporting, and anything darker than eggshell. Still, this showed the writing already letting the air out of the Alec Baldwin-replacing opening bit, as Ingraham’s breathless report on nonexistent Democratic voter fraud made eye-rolling jabs at Tyler Perry and Eddie Murphy showing up as Madea and the entire Klump family, respectively, to vote multiple times. The joke about Ingraham still scrambling for advertisers willing to sponsor someone who mocked school shooting survivors and, well, lots of other stuff is the sharpest weapon SNL wielded here, with Ingraham happily shilling for the likes of a bejeweled catheter (“Ouch.”), teeny, tiny turkeys (because you’ve alienated your entire family in time for Thanksgiving), and Volkswagen (“You know why.”) Cecily Strong made a welcome reappearance as Fox News legal shouter Jeanine Pirro. (“I hate them Laura!” “Who?” “Sorry, that’s my vocal warmup.”) And Alex Moffat continued the show’s questionable choice to portray Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg as being somewhere on the autism spectrum as the whole joke, although him finally blurting, “When I do bad things, I get money” at least addressed the most(?) recent Facebook disinformation scandal obliquely. It wasn’t outstanding, but if it keeps Baldwin’s dull and obvious Trump offscreen for another week, I’ll allow it.
Carell’s biggest showcase was in the filmed Amazon piece, where his bald-capped Jeff Bezos smugly outlined all the ways the online behemoth’s new ventures are in no way intended to merely troll Donald Trump. You know, even with drones topped with bad wigs (instead of shaving their heads “like a real man would”), new headquarters in Trump’s home town and Washington-area residence (and Florida resort vicinity), and the Bezos-owned Washington Post featuring stories like “Immigration Lawyers Suing for Apprentice tapes of Trump using the N-Word.” Carell digs in to the part more than anywhere else on the episode, serenely jabbing at Trump being approximately 100 times less wealthy than he is, or how Trump’s book is so heavy to ship because “it has four Chapter 11s.” (As the commercial chirpily concludes, “This has been a sick burn by Jeff Bezos.”) Fair enough stuff. But, as with Jost’s Update material, there’s a simplistic sameness to the joke here as—while Carell’s Bezos glides over the fact that his new HQs are pleasing everyone “except for the people who live there, and the people who live in all the places we didn’t choose”—the pandering Trump-burning here ignores the parallel dynamic of two rich assholes screwing with people’s lives for petty reasons. If people are going to clap at the idea of Bezos using the Post to attack Trump, it undermines the Post’s actual journalism as just the grimy sniping of one said asshole at another. The crowd erupted in groans at the joke that Amazon’s Arlington National Cemetery-adjacent HQ will allow the company to pay tribute to the nation’s war dead “even when it’s raining,” but, well, Trump made such jokes fair game recently. It’s just that satire works better (or at all) if it isn’t deliberately or through laziness ignoring the whole picture.
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I am hip to the musics of today
Ella Mai has a pretty vibrato and some serviceable slow jams. Plus, she got to use the stage fog left over from Carell’s sleepover sketch for her second number.
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Seemingly not content to continue keeping Ego Nwodim on the bench, the episode actually reduced her in size, as she was one of the students in the ISS sketch, asking her question from a tiny box in the corner of the screen.
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Nobody rose above this listless episode enough to warrant the top spot. Tough, but fair.
“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report
After the space corn fiasco (which, for or because of its faults, should have been the last sketch), the “GP Yass” commercial that actually ended the show fizzled out badly. The joke that you can set your default GPS voice to “drag entertainer” sort-of enchants car passengers Steve Carell and Heidi Gardner, who express enjoyment of the “sassy” directions and traffic warnings with a square deadpan that aims for . . . something? Honestly, it feels like a cut-for-time piece that was only plugged in because the actual ten-to-one sketch crapped out so badly. Directionless is as good a place to get off of this review as any.
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Stray observations
In addition to being Mrs. Steve Carell/monologue prop (along with their kids), Nancy Carell (née Walls) was a cast member on SNL from 1995-1996. (Something her husband was not.) Kind of strange the show wouldn’t make mention/comedic use of that.
“You can’t dismiss that idea simply because it isn’t true and sounds insane.”
Gardner’s dog-hating mom, feigning love for the huge new pet crowding her out of the RV: “Did you know that a dog can punch you?”
Che, suspiciously eyeing the picture of a handful of smiling black men standing with Trump as he announces some suspiciously not-racist-seeming prison reform legislation, states that, whenever he sees such a gathering, he thinks, “Oh lord, how much they sell us for?”
We’re off next week, gang. See you back on December 1 for host Claire Foy, with musical guest and copy editor’s nightmare Anderson .Paak.
||||| Aaaaaaaaaaaah! NBC
Is there anything funnier than an unexpected corpse? Comedians have wrestled with the question since the dawn of time, or at least since Arsenic and Old Lace, but it wasn’t until 2016 that Saturday Night Live found an answer: The only thing funnier than an unexpected corpse is the unexpected corpse of a parasailing instructor gently drifting back and forth with the currents outside the window of an underwater honeymoon suite. And this week, the show announced another scientific breakthrough: The only thing funnier than the unexpected corpse of a parasailing instructor gently drifting back and forth with the currents outside the window of an underwater honeymoon suite is the unexpected corpses of a bunch of flash-frozen monkeys plus one extremely dead cosmonaut, floating around gracefully in the zero-gravity environment of the International Space Station:
It’s hard to say if Taran Killam back in 2016 or Kate McKinnon this week did a better job of playing a dead body, but one thing is clear: they’re fighting over third place, well behind the icicled monkey props featured in this sketch. Besides the monkeys, the other clear improvement in corpse-floating-outside-the-window technology is the addition of Steve Carell, who hosted this week. Carell has had an effortless command of the voice of bland, oblivious authority since his Daily Show days, and he puts it to great use here, particularly in the moment when he regains his composure after Snowpiercer-ing a monkey’s arm. In retrospect, it’s surprising that this is the first time Steve Carell has been asked to put a brave face on a space station full of dead monkeys for an audience of schoolchildren. Calling it now: It will not be the last. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
By Phil Helsel
More fake news about the midterm blues. "Saturday Night Live" took to the airwaves to poke fun at conspiracy theories about voter fraud following the midterms, using a parody of conservative commentator Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show.
The sketch featured Kate McKinnon as Ingraham teasing an upcoming segment about how "celebrities in California are whining about some tiny wildfires, while our heroic president is under constant attack — from rain."
Cecily Strong played firebrand Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro warning about what McKinnon’s Ingraham called "rampant voter fraud that allowed Democrats to literally steal the election."
"Some have claimed that suburban women revolted against the Republican Party — but doesn’t it feel more true that all Hispanics voted twice?" McKinnon’s Ingraham said. "You can’t dismiss that idea simply because it isn’t true and sounds insane."
More "feel facts" designed to pander to the stereotypical Fox News crowd followed, like "Santa is Jesus's dad," "blackface is a compliment" and "If the Earth is so warm, then why are my feet cold?"
Strong’s Pirro offered up examples that included one person being able to impersonate many — holding up Eddie Murphy’s "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" — and a "huge increase in what people call stacking, where multiple children will stack on top of each other, under a trench coat and then vote as an adult." (The segment later posted online by the show dropped the Murphy reference.)
The sketch also lampooned parody advertisers on the faux-Fox show, including a fashion catheter company, the manufacturer of baptism kits for dogs and a brand of "whites only" eggs — "it's just egg whites, and it’s just for us." A parody of a derided real-life "vape god" segment also made an appearance.
"SNL" was hosted by Steve Carell, the boss from the hit show "The Office," who returned to host for the third time.
He started his monologue by trying to talk about the movies he’s been in since his TV role — only to be interrupted by former cast members Ed Helms, Jenna Fischer and Ellie Kemper, who pleaded with Carell to accept a reboot of the program.
"Do you remember the last words that Pam secretly whispered to Michael as she left for Denver?" Fischer, who played Pam in the series, asked.
When Carell responded he did not, Fischer replied: "She said: ‘Steve, don’t be a d--k, do the reboot.”
The crowd cheered the suggestion, and Carell brought the actors on stage. But fans who expected a new series were left wanting: He instead said "I am proud to announce, officially, that ... we have a great show tonight!” (The band did play the theme song from the show).
Carell hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2005 and 2008. The musical guest Saturday was Ella Mai. ||||| Saturday Night Live saved its best Donald Trump jokes for guest host Steve Carell.
While the latest episode's cold open sketch ripped Trump's favorite propaganda network, Fox News, Carell put on a bald cap and transformed himself into Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos.
His three-minute message is ostensibly a broad overview of where Amazon is at now that its HQ2 locations in New York and northern Virginia have been selected. But really, this video is just an extended string of Trump burns, targeting his hair, his Twitter addiction, his bullying behavior, and his repeated failures as a businessman. | – Saturday Night Live again deployed Kate McKinnon as Laura Ingraham to lampoon Fox News in its Cold Open, reports NBC News, lamenting how "celebrities in California are whining about some tiny wildfires, while our heroic president is under constant attack—from rain." Steve Carell stopped by to host his third time, in what the AV Club calls "a congested wheeze of an episode, packed with sketch after sketch of unimaginative premises, indifferently executed." Slate, however, likes a sketch in which Carell broadcasts from the space station as corpses float by a window in the background. And Mashable highlights a sketch of Carell as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which is "just an extended string of Trump burns, targeting his hair, his Twitter addiction, his bullying behavior, and his repeated failures as a businessman." Highlights in the gallery. |
Organised crime believed to be behind coordinated raids across stores in Japan
Members of an international crime syndicate are suspected of stealing more than 1.4bn yen (US$12.7m) from cash machines in Japan in the space of less than three hours, in an audacious heist that involved thousands of coordinated withdrawals.
Police believe that as many as 100 people, none of whom have been apprehended, worked together using forged credit cards containing account details illegally obtained from a bank in South Africa.
Who invented the cash machine? I did – and all I earned was £10 Read more
The culprits used the fake cards at 1,400 convenience store automated teller machines on the morning of 15 May, according to police. Each made withdrawals of 100,000 yen at a time – the maximum allowed by the cash machines – and there was a total of 14,000 withdrawals.
The thieves targeted cash machines in the capital Tokyo and 16 other prefectures, according to Kyodo News.
Japanese police have asked the authorities in South Africa, via Interpol, to establish how the credit card information was obtained.
Transaction data retrieved from the cash machines suggests that the criminals used information for 1,600 credit cards issued by the South African bank, which has not been named.
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the withdrawals began just after 5am last Sunday, with the last one made just before 8am the same day.
Reports suggest that members of the gang may no longer be in Japan. By using cards that were issued in a different country from the one in which the fraud took place - and on a day of the week when banks were closed - they were probably able to buy themselves enough time to leave the country before their crime was discovered.
Japan is the latest victim of a string of ATM heists using credit cards forged using leaked data. In one case, thieves withdrew 4.5bn yen in 26 countries, including Japan, in 2012 and 2013, the Yomiuri said.
||||| In a heist reminiscent of the blockbuster film 'Ocean's Eleven,' some 100 thieves managed to steal $12.7 million from ATMs in Japan in just three hours. The incredible feat is believed to be the work of an international crime syndicate.
The thieves worked together to withdraw the huge sum of money in coordinated withdrawals at 1,400 convenience store ATMs throughout Tokyo and 16 other prefectures, police said, as cited by Kyodo News.
Read more
Using forged credit cards containing account details illegally obtained from Standard Bank in South Africa, around 100 different people are believed to have made a single withdrawal of 100,000 yen (US$913) – the maximum allowed by cash machines – in each of the 14,000 transactions attempted.
The withdraws took just three hours to complete, with the first one made just after 5am on May 15, and the last made just before 8am, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported. All of the ATMs were located at 7-Eleven stores.
No one has been arrested in connection with the heist, and local media reports suggest that the thieves – believed to be part of an international crime syndicate – may no longer be in Japan.
Police are currently examining CCTV footage to identify the suspects, and have asked South African authorities to investigate how the credit card information was obtained.
Standard Bank, which has estimated its losses at $19.25 million, has described the heist as a “sophisticated, co-ordinated fraud incident" involving a "small number" of fake cards.
It stressed, however, that its customers had not suffered any losses, and that it has “taken swift action to contain the matter.”
It's not the first time that a sophisticated ATM heist has hit Japan. In a spree spanning 2012 and 2013, thieves using forged credit cards managed to withdraw $41 billion in 26 countries, including Japan, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun. | – A purported organized-crime incident in Japan put the emphasis on "organized" in a crime that RT.com is labeling "Ocean's 100." Cops believe that more than 100 thieves took part in a spree in Tokyo and 16 other prefectures on May 15, cleaning out 7-Eleven ATMS of nearly $13 million in less than three hours, the Guardian reports. Just after 5am that day, the mass withdrawals started, with the meticulous money-nabbers making a total of 14,000 or so transactions, each one reaping about $915 (the maximum allowed per ATM), before wrapping things up right before 8am. Investigators think the suspects, believed to be part of an international gang, were able to access customer accounts by using fake credit cards with account details stolen from a South Africa bank. No suspects have been caught, and officials fear they may have all fled the country. (A $1 billion bank heist was thwarted by a typo.) |
Donald Trump. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Hours after British Prime Minister Theresa May announced the UK will expel 23 Russian diplomats as punishment over the nerve agent attack against a former spy on British soil, President Donald Trump has yet to weigh in.
"This will be the single biggest expulsion for over thirty years and it reflects the fact that this is not the first time that the Russian State has acted against our country," May said. "For those who wish to do us harm, my message is clear. You are not welcome here."
May also said that Russians under suspicious would have their assets frozen, and that the British Royal Family and government ministers would not attend the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Meanwhile, Trump's silence on the matter since he briefly acknowledged the chemical attack Tuesday has been deafening to former US diplomats, many of whom wonder why the US hasn't been steadfast since the beginning in backing its closest international ally on the matter.
May announced Monday that it was "highly likely" the Russian government ordered an assassination attempt against Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who later became a double agent for the UK, in Salisbury, England earlier this month.
Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were both hospitalized and remain in critical condition after being exposed to Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
Shortly after May said Russia was the likely culprit in Skripal's case, the White House called the attack "reckless, indiscriminate, and irresponsible" but declined to specifically name Russia, saying the details still needed to be sorted out. That evening, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took a more hardline stance, saying Russia was "clearly" behind the attack. Tuesday morning, Trump fired Tillerson via Twitter.
While answering questions about Tillerson's firing, Trump said of the chemical attack on Skripal, "As soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be." Referring to the UK's findings, he added, "It sounds to me like they believe it was Russia, and I would certainly take that finding as fact."
On Wednesday, after May announced the expulsion of the 23 Russian diplomats — the largest number ejected by the UK since the Cold War —multiple US officials, including the US ambassador to the UN and White House staff, said the US stands in solidarity with the UK.
However, the president himself has not come out and publicly made that clear since his brief mention on Tuesday.
'Judgment day for Donald Trump'
President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May react during a ceremony at the new NATO headquarters before the start of a summit in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
"Judgment day for Donald Trump," R. Nicholas Burns, a former US ambassador to NATO, tweeted after the UK announced the measures it was taking to penalize Russia. "Will he support Britain unequivocally on the nerve agent attack? Back #NATO sanctions? Finally criticize Putin? Act like a leader of the West?
Richard Kauzlarich, the former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European Affairs, said the White House should have backed the British from the beginning.
"When you have the British come out as clearly and decisively as they did about who was responsible, the logic and gravity of the situation would require the president to say something in solidarity," he said.
"It should be almost automatic, especially with an ally this close to the US."
Edward Price, the former senior director of the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, echoed that view.
"For years, we heard from voices on the political right that America couldn't possibly confront its adversaries without first clearly naming them," he said. "And [on Monday], we heard the White House Press Secretary condemn the act but very deliberately skirt the actor, which, by all accounts, appears to be Moscow in this case."
He added that not only did the US effectively hang the UK "out to dry" by not staying in lockstep with the ally from the start, it was also signaling to Russian President Vladimir Putin that "he is free to act with impunity, including by carrying out deadly acts in the UK."
The Skripal attack is perhaps the most high-profile case of its kind since former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, a vocal Putin critic, was murdered in the UK in November 2006. A public inquiry into Litvinenko's death found in 2016 that Russian intelligence officials were responsible for the assassination, and that Putin was "probably" behind it.
Moscow scoffed at the UK's latest accusations linking it to the Skripals' attempted assassination, dismissing them as a "circus show." After the UK announced the expulsion of nearly two dozen Russian diplomats on Wednesday, Russia called it a "very serious provocation" and a "hostile action."
Meanwhile, Trump's silence since May's remarks on Wednesday morning mark yet another incident in which the president, "for whatever reason, is not prepared to put Russia on the spot," Kauzlarich said. "And Russia will draw the conclusion that anybody would: that if this president, for reasons no one can understand, will not criticize Russia on something this blatant, what will it take?"
"All of us who have been around the block find it bizarre that we would not be 100% behind the Brits on this," he added. "They've earned it. Russia hasn't." ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
/ Updated By Daniel Arkin
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday the United States believes Russia is responsible for the attempted assassination of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain — and the U.N. Security Council should hold the Kremlin "accountable."
"The United States believes that Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a military-grade nerve agent," Haley said at a Security Council meeting in New York.
Haley said the United States stood in "absolute solidarity" with Britain after the country expelled 23 Russian diplomats in response to the chemical attack last week on the ex-spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia.
Related: U.K. to expel 23 diplomats in retaliation for spy poisoning
She called on the U.N. to take action action, saying that the "credibility of this Council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable."
"If we don't take immediate, concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used," Haley said, referring to the English city where Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious on a bench.
Russia has denied any involvement in the assassination attempt.
Haley's remarks echoed those of Rex Tillerson, the ousted secretary of state who this week called the nerve agent attack "a really egregious act" that appears to have "clearly" come from Russia.
President Donald Trump, for his part, has not pinned the blame on the Kremlin, saying this week that "as soon as we get the facts straight," the United States would "condemn Russia or whoever it may be."
British Prime Minister Theresa May, however, has blasted Russia in the wake of the March 4 attack, saying it was "highly likely" that the government of Vladimir Putin was responsible.
"There is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr. Skripal and his daughter — and for threatening the lives of other British citizens in Salisbury," May said on Wednesday.
Related: How can U.K. respond to Russia-linked spy attack?
Britain moved to expel the Russia diplomats on Wednesday after Moscow ignored a midnight deadline to explain how its nerve weapon was used in the attack. The expulsions — the largest in three decades — "will fundamentally degrade Russian intelligence capabilities in the U.K. for years to come," May said.
Skripal, the 66-year-old ex-spy targeted with the nerve agent, is a former Russian military officer who was sentenced to 13 years in prison after being convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain. He passed the identity of dozens of spies to the U.K.'s foreign intelligence agency, according to news reports.
He was freed in 2010 as part of a U.S.-Russian spy swap that also included spy Anna Chapman, who was arrested in New York earlier that year. ||||| (CNN) US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday the Trump administration "stands in absolute solidarity with Great Britain" following a nerve agent attack against a Russian double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury last week.
In the strongest statement yet from the US administration on the affair, Haley said Washington shared the UK's assessment that the Russian state was behind the poisoning and demanded a firm international response.
"The United States believes that Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a military-grade nerve agent," Haley said in her remarks at a UN Security Council emergency session, blasting the Russian government for flouting international law.
"If we don't take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used," said Haley. "They could be used here in New York or in cities of any country that sits on this council."
The United Kingdom believes Russia was behind the attempted murders of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia because the nerve agent used, Novichok , was developed in the Soviet Union and could not be replicated by non-state actors. London announced Wednesday it would expel 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow failed to meet a UK deadline to give a "credible response."
Russia has dismissed the accusations as "fairy tales" and denied any involvement in the attack which landed the Skripals, along with a British police officer, in the hospital.
Moscow's ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, even suggested the UK might have been responsible for the attack in an attempt to smear Russia. "In the Russian Federation, no scientific research or development work under the title Novichok were carried out," he told the Security Council.
"The most probable source origin this chemical are the countries which have since the end of the 90s been carrying... out intensive research on these kinds of weapons, including the UK."
But Haley laid the blame firmly at Russia's door. Highlighting Moscow's support of the Assad regime in Syria following that government's use of chemical weapons against civilians, Haley told fellow diplomats the world had reached "a defining moment."
"Time and time again, members states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance," said Haley. "Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable."
Presenting Britain's case, Deputy UK Ambassador to the UN Jonathan Allen called the attack "an unlawful use of force" and invited representatives from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to conduct an independent investigation of the incident.
Nebenzia, Russia's envoy, reaffirmed his government's denial of involvement in a lengthy and colorful response.
He called on the UK government to offer proof that Novichok was used and that Russia was responsible, and slammed UK Prime Minister Theresa May for making "completely irresponsible statements" and "threats."
In questioning London's allegations, Nebenzia cited the English fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his "hapless" Scotland Yard counterpart, Inspector Lestrade.
"Lestrade latches on to something that is on the surface of a crime and is in a hurry to provide banal conclusions only to be overturned by Sherlock Holmes, who always finds what is behind the crime," Nebenzia said. "I do think we could all stand to benefit from having a Sherlock Holmes with us today."
With apparent sarcasm, Nebenzia also suggested the UK government should look inward to determine why Russian nationals in the country so often find themselves in mortal peril, and mocked Haley's credibility as "an experienced chemist."
The White House later backed up Haley's comments at the UN, saying it shared the British assessment of Russia's culpability in the Salisbury attack. "The United States stands in solidarity with its closest ally, the United Kingdom," the statement read.
"This latest action by Russia fits into a pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rules-based order, undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes." | – Nikki Haley came out strong against Russia and in support of the United Kingdom on Wednesday following the nerve agent attack that left a former Russian spy and his adult daughter in critical condition in England, CNN reports. "The United States believes that Russia is responsible for the attack," the US ambassador to the UN told the Security Council, adding the White House "stands in absolute solidarity with Great Britain." "Time and time again, member states say they oppose the use of chemical weapons under any circumstance," Haley said. "Now one member stands accused of using chemical weapons on the sovereign soil of another member. The credibility of this council will not survive if we fail to hold Russia accountable." It was by far the most forceful statement out of the Trump administration. Rex Tillerson had said Russia was "clearly" responsible for the attack on Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia but was shortly fired by Trump, NBC News reports. When asked about Tillerson's firing Tuesday, Trump said "as soon as we get the facts straight" the US would "condemn Russia or whoever it may be." According to Business Insider, former US diplomats have expressed confusion about why the White House hasn't done more to back its ally Great Britain, which has expelled 23 Russian diplomats. Nicholas Burns calls it "judgment day" for Trump. "Will he support Britain unequivocally on the nerve agent attack?" the former US ambassador to NATO says. "Back NATO sanctions? Finally criticize Putin? Act like a leader of the West?" |
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. ||||| Why We Haven't Heard the Last of Michelle 'Bombshell' McGee
Email This It looks as if
"Initially, McGee sold her original story to InTouch magazine for $30,000," a magazine insider reveals, "and is now looking to make even more money by pitching additional scandalous information, including X-rated photographs, more texted messages and intimate details about what Sandra's husband likes to do in bed." It looks as if Sandra Bullock 's nightmare has no end in sight now that Michelle "Bombshell" McGee has decided she will tell even more about her 'relationship' with Jesse James ... for the right price."Initially, McGee sold her original story to InTouch magazine for $30,000," a magazine insider reveals, "and is now looking to make even more money by pitching additional scandalous information, including X-rated photographs, more texted messages and intimate details about what Sandra's husband likes to do in bed."
I won't know for sure until tomorrow if any weekly magazines decide to pay Miss McGee the $100k sources tell me she is asking for her 'Kiss & Tell: Part 2,' but I do know that Naughty But Nice won't be spending one cent on any magazine that does.It's time Miss McGee shut up and stop embarrassing herself and the one person who has done nothing wrong in this entire situation, Miss Sandra Bullock. | – More Nazi photos, more stripping, more custody fights: The Jesse James-Sandra Bullock mess beats on. The latest, courtesy of TMZ and Radar: James’ own Nazi photo, which both gossip sites have seen, is being shopped. In the 2-year-old image, he’s reportedly wearing an SS hat, making the Nazi salute, and holding two fingers under his nose in what appears to be an imitation of Hitler’s mustache; there’s a model airplane in the background that looks like the kind flown by the Third Reich. James’ ex-wife, Janine Lindemulder, decided to ramp up her custody battle again since the cheating allegations came out. James and Bullock initially won full custody of 6-year-old daughter Sunny, but Lindemulder thinks Bullock will file for divorce—leading a judge to perhaps grant Lindemulder partial custody. McGee has gone back to her roots—stripping. TMZ has a video of her dancing at a San Diego nightclub last week. Don't expect McGee to stop talking about James anytime soon. Sources say she's looking for a $100,000 payday in exchange for another story—for more on what she might reveal, click here. |
Mandela: the three syllables not only refer to the legendary anti-apartheid leader and former President of South Africa, but serve as a modern synonym for equality, freedom and revolution. Nelson Mandela's legacy continues to endure in hearts and history books, and his ideals will continue to serve as inspiration in popular music.
Mandela's Death: Artists React on Twitter | Bono Pens Moving Essay
Today (Dec. 5), the iconic figure died at 95 in his Johannesburg home with his family at his side. From Public Enemy to Youssou N'Dour to Santana to U2, some of music's biggest stars have tipped their caps to the revered statesman in their songs, albums and even poems. Check out these 10 particularly memorable musician tributes to Nelson Mandela:
U2, "Ordinary Love"
U2 made this heartfelt song for the newly released film "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom," a biopic on the man himself. When "Ordinary Love" dropped weeks ago, it was first new material from the rock band since 2010's "Soon," premiered on the "U2 360 at the Rose Bowl" soundtrack. With lyrics like, "We cannot reach any higher/ If we can't feel ordinary love," Bono tried to embody what Mandela stood for.
Hugh Masekela, "Mandela (Bring Him Back Home)"
Masekela, a Grammy-nominated jazz musician from South Africa, recorded this track in 1987, and sings that he "wants to see him (Mandela) walking down the streets of South Africa tomorrow."
The Special A.K.A., "Free Nelson Mandela"
Unlike most protest songs, "Free Nelson Mandela" moves to a celebratory beat and a cheerful chorus -- but the message is still a plea for the imprisoned Mandela to be released. "His body abused, but his mind still free" is sung of Mandela, who had been serving 21 years in prison at the time the song was written. Produced by Elvis Costello, the single was performed on the "Top of the Pops" in 1984.
Youssou N'Dour, "Nelson Mandela"
N'Dour is one of Senegal's most famous cultural icons, and his genre-bending repertoire has found him collaborating with Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, and Wyclef Jean. In 1986, N'Dour released an album entitled "Nelson Mandela," as a tribute to the future President of South Africa.
Public Enemy, "Prophets of Rage"
One of the most influential hip-hop groups in history, Public Enemy was never short on righteous political messages -- and it should be no surprise that one of their most iconic tracks name-checked Mandela. In "Prophets of Rage," Chuck D raps "We have a reason why to debate the hate," while Mandela is mentioned in the company of other prominent leaders in the anti-segregation movement.
Santana, "Mandela"
Unlike most tribute songs in pop, this1988 Carlos Santana cut was written as an instrumental, and was also performed at Mandela's 70th Birthday Celebration. The song obviously does not nod to Mandela explicitly, the unmistakable guitar tone and Latin percussion act as an enduring paean from the multi-platinum musician.
Simple Minds, "Mandela Day"
Simple Minds is best remembered for its 1985 hit "Don't You (Forget About Me)," which became a classic after it was used in the "Brat Pack" favorite "The Breakfast Club." Three years later, the group performed this tribute track at Mandela's 70th Birthday Celebration at Wembley Stadium. The song served as a banner of hope as the band sang, "The tears are flowing wipe them from your face I can feel his heartbeat moving deep inside."
2pac, "Just a Breath of Freedom (4 Nelson Mandela)"
Tupac Shakur's poem acts as a letter of praise to Mandela for his decades of struggle in the name of equal rights. "Held captive 4 your politics/ They wanted 2 break your soul/ They ordered the extermination of all minds they couldn't control," Pac writes about Mandela's journey.
Tracy Chapman, "Freedom Now"
Soon after Tracy Chapman rose to fame for her No. 1 self-titled album in 1988, she found herself writing and performing this Mandela protest song at his 70th Birthday Celebration. A constant spokeswoman for social change, Chapman's song speaks against a society that kills and destroys that which it doesn't understand. The most memorable verse from the track reads, "Soon must come the day/ When the righteous have their way/ Unjustly tried are free/And people live in peace I say/ Give the man release/ Go on and set your conscience free/ Right the wrongs you made/ Even a fool can have his day."
Johnny Clegg, "Asimbonanga"
Written as a mix of Zulu and English, the title of this Mandela freedom track is Zulu for "We have not seen him"; at that point, no one had seen Mandela outside of prison for more than two decades. Hailing from South Africa, Clegg stirred up controversy for not only writing this protest hit, but for also having bandmates of different races during the days of Apartheid. In 1999, the band was joined onstage by Mandela during a performance of "Asimbonanga." ||||| President Barack Obama Thursday eulogized Nelson Mandela as “a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”
Obama, speaking shortly after South African President Jacob Zuma announced Mandela’s death, called the man for so long known as Prisoner 46664 as “one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this earth.”
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“We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again — so it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love, to never discount the difference that one person can make, to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.”
(VIDEO: Nelson Mandela, a look back)
The president is expected to travel to South Africa for the state funeral, which has not yet been scheduled. National security staff told Obama in the Oval Office of Mandela’s death shortly before 5 p.m. EST, White House officials said.
Obama ordered American flags lowered to half staff through Monday in recognition that “the United States has lost a close friend, South Africa has lost an incomparable liberator, and the world has lost an inspiration for freedom, justice, and human dignity.”
He reiterated these sentiments to Zuma in a phone call Thursday evening, offering his condolences on behalf of the nation, and speaking of “how profoundly Mandela’s extraordinary example of moral courage, kindness, and humility influenced his own life” and of the deep relationship between the United States and South Africa, the White House said.
(PHOTOS: Nelson Mandela’s life and career)
Mandela is the father of modern South Africa, and Obama addressed part of his remarks to the people of that nation as well, praising them for being an example to the world of “renewal and reconciliation and resilience.”
Beginning his statement at the White House by reading a quote from Mandela, the president spoke for just a few minutes, reflecting on Mandela’s impact on the world — and on him personally. Obama spoke of how reading Mandela shaped his thinking about who he was and who would want to be, recalling that his own entry into politics was a speech at an anti-apartheid, South African divestment rally.
“I am one of the countless millions who drew inspirations from Nelson Mandela’s life,” Obama said. “I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set. So long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him.”
The two met just once, and briefly — in Washington in 2005, when the just-elected Senator Obama pushed for a meeting with the former president, and was initially rebuffed — but did produce a well-known photo of Obama leaning over a seated Mandela, holding his hand, one in the shadow, one in the light.
Obama did not meet with him when he traveled to South Africa a year later, but Mandela sent Obama a letter after his election calling it a measure of what was possible in the world, and the two spoke occasionally over the phone in the years since.
A Mandela health scare halted plans for a possible meeting when Obama returned to South Africa this past summer. But Obama visited Mandela’s old cell at Robben Island and met with Mandela’s family, and in a speech while in the country, praised the leader for showing “us that one man’s courage can move the world.”
Carrie Budoff Brown contributed. ||||| Counting himself among the millions influenced by Nelson Mandela, President Barack Obama on Thursday mourned the death of the anti-apartheid icon with whom he shares the distinction of being his nation's first black president.
"He no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages," Obama said in a somber appearance at the White House.
"I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life," he continued. "And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set."
Mandela died earlier Thursday at 95. He had spent much of the year in and out of the hospital, and his illness prevented a meeting with Obama when the U.S. president visited South Africa this summer.
However, the former South African president's legacy hung over Obama's trip. The U.S. president made an emotional visit with his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters to the prison at Robben Island, where Mandela was in captivity. The Obamas also met privately with members of Mandela's family. | – President Obama today paid homage to Nelson Mandela shortly after the former South African leader's death was announced, reports Politico and AP. "He no longer belongs to us," said Obama. "He belongs to the ages." Some other highlights: Mandela was “a man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.” “We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again—so it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love, to never discount the difference that one person can make, to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice." “I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set. So long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him.” Other tributes: Music: Billboard rounds up 10 musical salutes to Mandela, from Bono to Public Enemy. Jimmy Carter: "His passion for freedom and justice created new hope for generations of oppressed people worldwide, and because of him, South Africa is today one of the world's leading democracies." Tony Blair: "Through his dignity, grace, and the quality of his forgiveness, he made racism everywhere not just immoral but stupid." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon: "Only because of such a great man like Nelson Mandela is it possible that particular people in Africa and elsewhere are able to enjoy freedom and human dignity." |
Story highlights Source says Broadwell is unlikely to be prosecuted for release of classified info
"He wants to maintain a distance and focus on his family," ex-aide says
Petraeus to testify Friday before the House Intelligence Committee, says aide
Contact continued between Petraeus and Broadwell after they split 4 months ago, says ex-aide
Former CIA Director David Petraeus has not been following the media firestorm that erupted in the wake of his resignation last week after admitting to having had an affair, a former aide said Wednesday.
"He wants to maintain a distance and focus on his family at this time," said retired Col. Peter Mansoor, who added that he had spoken earlier in the day with Petraeus. "He realizes it was a severe and morally reprehensible action, but he violated no laws," Mansoor said.
The affair between the married former military man and his married biographer, Paula Broadwell, ended about four months ago, Mansoor said, though the two remained in contact afterward. "Mostly in a professional capacity, where she's still trying to get her dissertation done and he was still trying to help her with that," he said.
Asked how Petraeus, 60, was holding up, Mansoor said, "He describes it as putting one foot in front of the other, and then repeating the process. So it's going to be a long, long road of healing for them. He understands that and he's focusing on it."
Mansoor's remarks came hours after President Barack Obama declined Wednesday to join congressional voices calling for an investigation into why the FBI did not notify the White House and other political leaders sooner about the investigation into the affair that led to Petraeus' resignation.
"I am withholding judgment with respect to how the entire process surrounding Gen. Petraeus came up," Obama told reporters at the White House. "We don't have all the information yet, but I want to say I have a lot of confidence generally in the FBI. So I'm going to wait and see."
Obama said he agreed with Petraeus' decision to resign after acknowledging an affair, but praised his service to the country.
"From my perspective, at least, he has provided this country an extraordinary service," Obama said.
He also said he had seen no evidence of any potentially damaging breach in national security stemming from the affair.
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"I have no evidence at this point from what I've seen that classified information was disclosed that in any way would have had a negative impact on our national security," Obama said.
In Congress, lawmakers from both parties have complained about not having been notified sooner of the investigation that led to the resignation or about potential security breaches.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said he was increasingly concerned about the potential fallout from the affair and any national security implications, including possible links to the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Graham has called for a special select committee to investigate the attack.
FBI Director Robert Mueller joined Deputy Director Sean Joyce and acting CIA Director Mike Morell in briefing the lawmakers.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said Tuesday that she had "many questions about the nature of the FBI investigation, how it was instituted."
"And we'll be asking those questions," she said.
But the committee's ranking Republican member, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said Wednesday the group would not look into questions about the FBI investigation and how congressional leaders learned about it until after the bureau concludes its work.
Petraeus has been scheduled to testify this week in private hearings on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi attack. Some Republicans have criticized the administration's response to the attack and have speculated that the timing of Petraeus' departure may have been linked to the congressional inquiry.
But Petraeus offered Wednesday through his chief of staff to testify on Benghazi, Mansoor said. "He did not like the conspiracies going around that somehow he had something to hide on Benghazi," he said. "I think his offer to testify crossed with the Congress' request to him to testify. But anyway, he looks forward to that."
Petraeus will testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, a senior aide said. Feinstein said Tuesday that she hoped Petraeus would address her Senate panel as early as Friday.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Wednesday defended his request to withhold the nomination of Gen. John Allen to NATO commander pending an investigation into his contacts with Jill Kelley, whose complaints about anonymous, harassing e-mails led to the discovery of the affair between Petraeus, 60, and Broadwell, 40.
Broadwell's government security clearance has been suspended pending the outcome of investigations, two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the move told CNN Wednesday.
Defense officials announced Tuesday that the FBI had referred information to them indicating Allen may have exchanged potentially inappropriate e-mails with Kelley, who was a volunteer at MacDill Air Force Base.
Kelley's access to MacDill without an escort has been suspended, a Defense Department official said Wednesday.
She had been given access to the base because of her position as a booster and promoter of programs to help U.S. troops, the official said.
A U.S. official familiar with the e-mails Allen sent to Kelley described them as warranting the investigation.
"If they got out, John Allen would be very embarrassed by them," said the official, who added that there was no evidence of physical contact between the two.
The official said that the e-mails under investigation are from Allen.
But a senior official close to Allen told CNN on Tuesday that the e-mails contained nothing pointing to sex or anything of a romantic nature. Allen may have said, informally, "thanks sweetheart" in an e-mail, the official close to Allen said.
"Anyone who knows him knows his style; he has a habit of replying to every single e-mail (he is sent). Kelley would e-mail his business and personal accounts," the official said.
It will be up to the Defense Department's inspector general to decide if the e-mails' content represents conduct unbecoming an officer, said a third source, a senior U.S. official.
Allen has yet to be questioned by Defense Department inspector general staff, but that could be completed in days, a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation said.
Allen, who was once stationed at the base, has denied wrongdoing, a senior defense official said. In a statement, Col. John Baker, the chief defense counsel of the Marine Corps, said Allen "fully intends to cooperate" with the inspector general's investigators.
Broadwell's anonymous e-mail to Allen was sent after May, perhaps in June, the official said.
The e-mail, which had also been sent to a number of other officers, bore the handle "kelleypatrol -- or something similar," the official said.
He described the e-mail as "a warning that Kelley was a seductress or something along those lines" and said it was vaguely threatening, but above all weird.
"Allen did not know it was (from) Broadwell," the official said.
The official also said it was unclear when Kelley went to the FBI or whether Allen's warning to her was the trigger, but that Allen saw nothing in the e-mail's wording to warrant referral by him to the FBI.
Kelley's version differs from one offered by the senior official close to Allen, who said it was Allen who received an anonymous e-mail about Kelley, and tipped her off that someone was threatening her.
One of the sources familiar with Kelley said she first mentioned the alleged harassment in a casual conversation with an FBI agent whom she knew socially. She did not seek him out for action on the matter, but he was happy to help, the source said. The source added that Kelley did not know at first that the e-mails led to Petraeus.
A source familiar with Kelley's version of events said the anonymous e-mails traced to Broadwell began in June. It wasn't until two months later that the FBI told Kelley who had sent the e-mails, said the source, adding that Kelley does not know Broadwell.
The general counsel for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association identified Frederick Humphries as the agent initially contacted by Kelley about the anonymous e-mails.
The counsel, Lawrence Berger, said Humphries and his wife had been friends for years with Kelley and her husband.
Berger said Humphries took Kelley's concerns over the e-mails to the "appropriate components" at the FBI to investigate. "He reported it to the proper channels and had no further part on the case."
Kelley, 37, and her husband have released a statement saying they have been friends with Petraeus and his family for more than five years and asked for privacy.
A source close to Kelley said Wednesday that Kelley said she had not had a sexual relationship with Petraeus or Allen.
In mid-May, Allen got the first anonymous e-mail from someone using the handle "Kelleypatrol" that maligned Kelley and warned him to be wary of her, the source said.
Allen forwarded it to Kelley, thinking she might have sent it as a joke, but she told him she had not, the source continued.
The move to delay Allen's nomination was "a prudent measure until we can determine what the facts are, and we will," Panetta told reporters Wednesday. "No one should leap to any conclusions."
He said Allen "certainly has my continued confidence to lead our forces," a view shared by Obama, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
That Allen remains in command in Afghanistan suggests that there is no criminal issue, a U.S. official told CNN. But the official said the Defense Department's inspector general could still find evidence of criminal conduct.
Kelley has not responded publicly to the latest news.
Both Allen and Petraeus appear to know Kelley's sister, Natalie Khawam. The men wrote letters in support of the sister in a custody battle, court records show.
On Monday, FBI agents were at Broadwell's home in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to spokeswoman Shelley Lynch. She declined to say what the agents were doing there.
A senior law enforcement official close to the Broadwell investigation said Wednesday night that it appeared unlikely she would be prosecuted for any unauthorized release of classified information.
The official told CNN National Security Contributor Fran Townsend that investigators were reviewing materials taken Monday from Broadwell's home, but that the information in question did not appear to be substantial; there may have been a technical violation but, if so, it was not egregious.
Broadwell had previously turned over a computer to investigators.
The official said Broadwell agreed to the search of her home but that officials also had secured a search warrant.
The official stressed the decision whether to prosecute rests with the Justice Department.
A source told CNN that Broadwell was acting as Petraeus' archivist and that the FBI had gone to her house to look for any documents she might have.
As a commissioned officer in the military reserves, Broadwell would have had "secret" or "top secret" security clearance, military officials said.
Access to information would have depended on what she needed to know to carry out an assigned task, said the officials, who would not go on the record about an ongoing investigation.
Broadwell has said that she was working on a second book about Petraeus. Her LinkedIn profile lists her as "Archivist/Biographer for General (Retired) David Petreaus." Her first book, "All In," was about Petraeus' leadership.
Broadwell has spoken about how she had to deal with sensitive information in the course of researching the first book.
"I had to follow very clear lines of non-disclosure and sign non-disclosure agreements, like my colleagues. I felt like I was almost held to a higher level of accountability because I could lose my clearance," Broadwell said in a speech last year. "I think it was important to inform my writing, but I knew there was a clear line that I couldn't cross when I was writing it out."
Petraeus has said he never shared classified information with Broadwell, said retired military officer John Nagl, who cited conversations in recent days with Petraeus.
Broadwell, a military intelligence reservist, is assigned to West Point, the Army's military academy, according to her service record, which lists her assignment as "United States Military Academy Staff & Faculty." In August, she was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
Last month, during a speech at the University of Denver, Broadwell suggested the Sept. 11 attackers in Libya were targeting a secret prison at the Benghazi consulate annex, raising unverified concerns about possible security leaks.
"I don't know if a lot of you have heard this, but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to get these prisoners back," she said.
A senior intelligence official said no prisoners had been held at the annex. Broadwell did not provide a source for her information, and no evidence has emerged that it came from Petraeus.
Administration officials have said the Benghazi assault was a terrorist attack. ||||| FILE POOL - In this July 9, 2011 file photo, USMC Gen. John Allen, left, and Army Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and incoming CIA Director, greet former CIA Director and new U.S.... (Associated Press)
FILE POOL - In this July 9, 2011 file photo, USMC Gen. John Allen, left, and Army Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and incoming CIA Director, greet former CIA Director and new U.S.... (Associated Press)
Former CIA Director David Petraeus will testify before the House Intelligence committee Friday on events that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in an attack on the U.S. Consulate at Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11.
Spokesmen for the committee say the hearing will be closed to the public.
Petraeus resigned from the CIA last week after acknowledging an extramarital affair. The liaison was discovered during an FBI investigation of harassing emails allegedly sent by Petraeus' biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell, to Tampa socialite Jill Kelley. Broadwell allegedly saw Kelley as a rival.
The probe expanded to include Kelley's copious communications with the top U.S. commander In Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen. | – David Petraeus will indeed testify on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi attack, reports AP. The former CIA chief will appear before the House Intelligence committee on Friday, though the hearing will be closed to the public. Petraeus visited Libya secretly last month, and lawmakers are antsy to hear his own report about the trip. CNN, meanwhile, quotes one of the general's former aides as saying Petraeus is largely avoiding the media coverage of his affair and resignation, and instead focusing on his family. "He describes it as putting one foot in front of the other, and then repeating the process," says retired Col. Peter Mansoor. "So it's going to be a long, long road of healing for them. He understands that and he's focusing on it." |
Hillary Clinton joins the race for president today. If you believe the leaks from her staff, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t, she’ll do it in a video released at noon as she herself flies high above the nation in a chartered plane. She and her top advisors, all smart people, must think it’s a good idea. It doesn’t feel like one.
For months Clinton has run a front-porch campaign -- if by porch you mean Boo Radley’s. Getting her outdoors is hard enough; when she does get out it’s often to give paid speeches to people who look just like her: educated, prosperous and privileged. Needing desperately to connect with the broader public, she opts for the virtual reality of a pre-taped video delivered via social media. Go figure.
Her leakers say she’ll head out on a listening tour like the one that kicked off her first Senate race. They say listening to real people talk about real stuff will make her seem more real. This too may be a good idea, but it made more sense when she was a rookie candidate seeking a lesser office in a state she barely knew. Running for president is different. So are the times. Voters are more desperate now, and in a far worse mood. If you invite their questions, you’d better have some answers. I’ll return to this point shortly.
Her leakers say she’ll avoid big events, rallies, stadiums, that sort of thing. This is about 2008, when she and her tone-deaf team seemed to be planning a coronation. This time they say she doesn’t want to come off as quite so presumptuous. Yet next week she keynotes a ‘Global Women’s Summit’ cohosted by Tina Brown and the New York Times, at which “world leaders, industry icons, movie stars and CEOs convene with artists, rebels, peacemakers and activists to tell their stories and share their plans of action.” Orchestra seats go for $300.
Clinton personifies the meritocracy that to an angry middle class looks increasingly like just another privileged caste. It’s the anger captured best by the old ‘Die Yuppie Scum’ posters and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s on the rise. Republicans love to paint Democrats as elitists. It’s how the first two Bushes took out Dukakis, Gore and Kerry -- and how Jeb plans to take out Hillary. When she says she and Bill were broke when they left the White House; when she sets her own email rules and says it was only for her own convenience; when she hangs out with the Davos, Wall Street or Hollywood crowds, she makes herself a more inviting target.
During its long ramp-up, Democrats searched for signs that this Clinton campaign would be better than the last, a seething cauldron of rivalries and resentments run by D.C. consultants who made their real livings from corporate clients. Things do look better at the top. The chief of staff is John Podesta, a man whose core competency is competency. Pollster Joel Benenson is a huge step up from the fiercely anti-populist Mark Penn.
Still, the leaks are a bad sign. All campaigns fall prey to them and it’s sometimes a good thing for the First Amendment that they do. All White House staffs leak to settle scores or advance agendas and careers. Bill Clinton’s White House added a new wrinkle -- leaks that elevated the leaker at Clinton’s expense. Often the leaker wanted only to prove his insider status and savvy; the result was to frame everything Clinton did as political even before he did it. Every modern president polled as much as Clinton but none was so scorned for it. Leakers had a lot to do with that.
All political reportage is full of insider tales about how every link of sausage is made. When House Democrats resumed their push for a minimum wage hike, staff framed the initiative not as sound policy but as clever politics. Even if authorized, nearly all such leaks harm the principle. On Friday, Clinton’s campaign let slip its aim to raise $2.5 billion; maybe that's not the best way to say hello to a struggling middle class. Someone gabbed about the message of Hillary’s planned sit downs with average families, a sure fire way to make the families look and feel like props -- and to make the whole, hollow exercise look and feel like a hollow exercise.
There are three problems that go far deeper than Hillary’s image or her campaign’s operations. Each is endemic to our current politics; all are so deeply connected as to be inseparable. You already know them. The first is how they raise their money. The second is how they craft their message. The third pertains to policy.
To get the money they think they need candidates who crook the knee to moneyed interests. They spend vast sums on polls, focus groups and data mining to find out what messages to send and to whom, and vaster sums to send them. The need to serve their donors keeps them from solving real problems. With so little to show for their service, they must rely even more on paid propaganda. The emptier their ads, the more of them they need.
The first thing to know about this system is how well it works for Republicans, most of whom would back the status quo with or without the money. Since they can’t afford to be too honest about policy anyway, consultants’ metaphors and themes suit them fine, as do the strict limitations of texts, tweets and ads.
The opposite is true for Democrats. When they truckle to the status quo, they break sacred vows. Their base feels most betrayed ,but everyone notices and no one likes what they see. Convinced by their consultants that politics is all about metaphors and emotion, they treat issues as landmines and do everything possible to avoid stepping on one. They skip real debates to pursue what Obama consigliere David Axelrod calls ‘the politics of biography.’ Trading real reform for public policy vaporware, they lose all sense of purpose -- and eventually stop making sense.
On Friday, Clinton’s campaign began the quick, quiet buildup to her Sunday announcement by placing a new epilogue to her last memoir in the Huffington Post. It’s mostly about how being a grandmother gives her new energy and insight. At the end of the piece she says it also inspires her to work hard so every child has as good a chance in life as her new granddaughter has. Her recent speeches, even those her leakers tout as campaign previews, say little more than that.
Barring a Jeremiah Wright-level crisis, a presidential candidate gets just two or three chances to make her case to a big audience. Her announcement is often her best shot. That Hillary passed on hers is unsettling. If she thinks she doesn’t have to make her case real soon she’s wrong. If she thinks she can get by on the sort of mush Democratic consultants push on clients she’s finished. On Thursday the Q poll released three surveys. In two states, she now trails Rand Paul. In all three a plurality or majority said she is ‘not honest or trustworthy.’ You can bet the leak about her $2.5 billion campaign will push those negatives up a notch.
Clinton seems as disconnected from the public mood now as she did in 2008. I think it’s a crisis. If she doesn’t right the ship it will be a disaster. In politics it’s always later than you think. Advisors who told her voters would forget the email scandals probably say this too will pass. If so, she should fire them.
Leaders as progressive as Howard Dean and Barney Frank urge Democrats to circle the wagons and spare the party the bloodshed of a real contest, but this party needs to get its blood moving. Clinton needs a real challenge and a real debate, not just a sparring partner; not some palooka to dance her around the ring for a couple of rounds, but a real fighter. She needs the debate. We all do. But who will bring it?
Underdogs always need to get an early start, so it’s surprising that Clinton beat all of her prospective primary opponents into the race. Some seem to be auditioning for the second spot on her ticket. Others may not make the race. If no champion emerges, progressives must mount their own debate and relearn some of the skills they applied so successfully back in the days before everybody had a PAC.
The Democrats' third problem is policy. They don’t really have clear policies to deal with our biggest problems. It’s why Hillary won’t have the answers those Iowa families seek and why so few Democrats do. It’s why we need a real debate. It is Clinton’s misfortune to find herself master of a dying system.
If she raises all that money it will ruin her. Fundraising nearly ruined her husband in 1996. He didn’t need all the money he raised then and God knows she doesn’t need all the money she wants to raise now. Even if raising the money doesn’t land her in hot water, if she spends it the way most Democrats do, that will ruin her.
Like Bill Clinton’s 1992 race, this election is about the economy. But this one’s about how to reform the economy, not just jumpstart it. Our political system isn’t set up to debate whether or not our economic system needs real reform. It will take a very different kind of politics, and leader, to spark that debate. We’ll soon know whether anyone is ready, willing and able to fight.
Bill Curry Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism. MORE FROM Bill Curry • FOLLOW BillCurryct Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.
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in your inbox every day Sign up for our free newsletter • • • ||||| There’s already plenty of bad punditry regarding the chances of Hillary Clinton — who officially announced her candidacy on Sunday — to become the 45th president. You can find Democrats boasting about their “blue wall” in the Electoral College and how hard this will make it for any Republican to win. Or Republicans warning that the Democratic Party rarely wins three elections in a row.
Most of this analysis is flimsy. So is the commentary about the ups-and-downs in early swing state polls. And when you see some pundit declaring a minor misstep to be a “game changer,” find someone else to follow on Twitter.
The truth is that a general election win by Clinton — she’s very likely to become the Democratic nominee — is roughly a 50/50 proposition. And we’re not likely to learn a lot over the rest of 2015 to change that. Here’s why:
Incumbency and Obama’s Approval Rating. Start with the fact that there’s no incumbent president running. There actually haven’t been a lot of cases that precisely meet the circumstances voters will face next year: Barack Obama, assuming he serves out the rest of his term, will become just the fifth president limited by the 22nd Amendment from seeking an additional term in office. Still, the evidence we have from presidential elections and from other contexts like gubernatorial elections is that these cases default to being toss-ups.
Clinton’s chances will be affected by Obama’s popularity as he exits office. The relationship between the popularity of the previous president and the performance of the new nominee from his party isn’t perfect — Al Gore (narrowly) lost in 2000 despite Bill Clinton’s popularity, for example — but it certainly matters some, especially given that Clinton served in Obama’s cabinet.
However, Obama currently has an approval rating of about 45 percent, and a favorability rating of 48 percent — about average, in other words. If those numbers decline into the low 40s or climb into the 50s, they could matter more, producing either a “hangover effect” or “halo effect” for Clinton. But don’t bet on this: Obama’s approval ratings have been extraordinarily stubborn for most of his presidency, rarely deviating much from the mid-40s.
The Economy. I’d warn against simplistic economic “fundamentalism,” the notion that the economy is pretty much the only thing that matters. We’ll save the technical discussion for later, but because of a problem known as overfitting, statistical models that claim to make remarkably precise predictions about election outcomes from economic variables alone (without looking at polls) have a mediocre track record.
Still, the economy will matter a lot to voters, and a better economy will help Clinton, the candidate from the incumbent party. As Byron York points out, you should be wary of claims that 2016 will be a “foreign policy election.”
Like Obama’s approval ratings, however, the performance of the American economy has been about average recently. GDP grew by 2.4 percent in 2014, adjusted for inflation, close to the historical average. Furthermore, we know relatively little about what economic growth will look like a year from now, when the general election campaign heats up. Historically, economists have shown almost no ability to predict the rate of economic growth more than six months in advance.
The Electoral College And The “Emerging Democratic Majority.” What about that “blue wall” — the supposed advantage that Democrats hold in the Electoral College?
Mostly, the “blue wall” was the effect of Obama’s success in 2008 and 2012, not the cause of it. If the economy had collapsed in the summer of 2012, Obama would probably have lost the election, and most of those blue states would have turned red.
It’s true that in both elections, the “tipping-point state” (in both years it was Colorado) was slightly more Democratic than the country as a whole. That implies Obama would have won if the popular vote had been very close. But it would have had to be very close indeed — within a percentage point or two.
That advantage is small enough that it might have been the result of circumstances peculiar to Obama and his campaign. If Clinton has an ever-so-slightly different coalition — say more working-class whites vote for her but fewer African-Americans — this small advantage could evaporate or reverse itself. (The Electoral College favored Republicans as recently as 2000, after all.) The same might be true if she isn’t as effective as Obama at mobilizing voters in swing states.
Another theory — the so-called “Emerging Democratic Majority” — holds that demographic trends favor the Democratic Party. We’ll have a lot more to say about this theory between now and next November, but it’s probably dubious too. As Sean Trende has pointed out, it relies on a selective reading of the evidence — emphasizing 2012, 2008 and 2006 but ignoring 2014, 2010, and 2004. Perhaps more important, predictions made on the premise of “emerging” majorities have a miserable track record: Republicans were bragging about their “permanent” majority in 2004, for instance, only to get their butts kicked in 2006 and 2008.
Clinton and the Republican Candidates. The factors I’ve described so far are sometimes referred to as the “fundamentals” — those things that matter regardless of the candidates and their campaigns. The closer these basic factors are, the more difference the candidates could make.
Nonetheless, the candidates matter less in U.S. presidential elections than in just about any other type of electoral contest. The reason is that the arduous, 50-state nomination process (and the “invisible primary” before it) screens out most candidates who would be huge liabilities to their party. An underqualified or unvetted or politically extreme or profoundly unpopular candidate might win one primary or caucus, but voters and the political parties will move to stop him in his tracks after that, as Republicans did to Newt Gingrich in 2012.
Consider the three measurable factors that our U.S. Senate model uses to evaluate candidates. One of them is their qualifications on a 4-point scale as measured by their highest elected office, where the highest rating goes to those candidates previously elected as governors or senators. Almost all presidential candidates — including Hillary Clinton and the viable Republican candidates this cycle — rate as extremely well qualified by that standard.
Another factor is fundraising, which is important unto itself, but also as a proxy for a candidate’s organizational strength. We’re not breaking any news here, but Clinton and the Republican nominee are going to raise oodles of money — probably in excess of $1 billion each, beyond what Obama and Mitt Romney did in 2012. That’s well past the point of diminishing returns. The candidates may struggle to make good use of all the money they’ve raised, in fact, and if one brings in 10 or 20 percent more than the other, it’s not likely to matter very much at the margin.
The third factor is a candidate’s ideology as measured on a left-right scale. “Extreme” candidates (like Barry Goldwater) suffer an electoral penalty, while moderate ones (like Dwight Eisenhower) usually perform well.
But nominees like Goldwater (or George McGovern) are rare. So are those like Eisenhower, for that matter. Usually a party nominates a candidate closer to the median of its voters and elected officials.
That’s part of why Clinton is such a safe bet to be the Democratic nominee. Her political positions are essentially those of a “generic Democrat.” She’s neither a true centrist, nor extremely far to the left, so she’s not especially vulnerable to a challenge from either flank of her party.
Republicans have a choice between more moderate and more conservative candidates. Jeb Bush’s positions might be just moderate enough to give Republicans a slight advantage next November, other factors held constant, while Scott Walker’s might be conservative enough that they could harm Republicans.
But the positions of the Republican candidates are likely to converge toward one another. Bush, in the primaries, will seek to prove his conservative credentials, while Walker, should he become the frontrunner after the first few primaries and caucuses, will work to reassure GOP elites that he’s an “electable” alternative and not the next Goldwater. By next November, the difference might boil down to the equivalent of couple of percentage points on the general-election ballot. It could matter in an a close election, but not one where the fundamentals have shifted strongly to one party by then.
Finally we can look at what the polls say right now. If you’re going to do this, you should take the polls with whole tablespoons full of salt. And it’s probably best to look at the favorability ratings for each candidate rather than head-to-head polls, since favorability polls allow voters to say they don’t know enough about the candidates to have formulated an opinion. (Head-to-head polls taken this far out from the election will tend to favor candidates like Clinton with strong name recognition, by contrast.)
In the chart below, I’ve compiled favorability rating averages for each candidate based on polls conducted since Jan. 1. The chart plots the candidates in two dimensions: the vertical axis indicates how popular the candidate is (how much the candidate’s favorable rating exceeds his or her unfavorable rating) while the horizontal axis plots how well-known the candidate is.
Hillary Clinton is extremely well-known, but her favorability ratings are now only break-even: 46 percent favorable and 45 percent unfavorable. These are nearly identical to President Obama’s ratings, which are 48 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable.
Clinton’s ratings are down sharply from her tenure as Secretary of State. However, as we’ve been warning Democrats for a long time, a lot of this was predictable. Clinton’s numbers have often been about break-even when she’s been a highly partisan figure — during the early stages of the 2008 campaign, for example — and better only when she’s been above the fray of day-to-day partisan politics.
Break-even favorability ratings don’t look so bad, however, when compared to some of the alternatives. Vice President Biden’s are net-negative, for instance. On the Republican side, Walker and Marco Rubio aren’t all that well-known yet, but their ratings are also about break-even. Chris Christie’s are terrible (28 percent favorable, 46 percent unfavorable). Jeb Bush’s are quite poor too. His unfavorable rating is already as high as Clinton’s, 45 percent, but his favorable rating is just 31 percent.
Clinton is so well-known, in fact, that it’s almost as if voters are dispensing with all the formalities and evaluating her as they might when she’s on the ballot next November. About half of them would like to see her become president and about half of them wouldn’t. Get ready for an extremely competitive election.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to reflect Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy this afternoon. ||||| Hillary Clinton, probably your 45th president. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election. The United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate.
Of course, not everybody who follows politics professionally believes this. Many pundits feel the Democrats’ advantage in presidential elections has disappeared, or never existed. “The 2016 campaign is starting on level ground,” argues David Brooks, echoing a similar analysis by John Judis. But the evidence for this is quite slim, and a closer look suggests instead that something serious would have to change in order to prevent a Clinton victory. Here are the basic reasons why Clinton should be considered a presumptive favorite:
1. The Emerging Democratic Majority is real. The major disagreement over whether there is an “Emerging Democratic Majority” — the thesis that argues that Democrats have built a presidential majority that could only be defeated under unfavorable conditions — centers on an interpretive disagreement over the 2014 elections. Proponents of this theory dismiss the midterm elections as a problem of districting and turnout; Democrats have trouble rousing their disproportionately young, poor supporters to the polls in a non-presidential year, and the tilted House and Senate map further compounded the GOP advantage.
Skeptics of the theory instead believe that the 2014 midterms were, as Judis put it, “not an isolated event but rather the latest manifestation of a resurgent Republican coalition.” Voters, they argue, are moving toward the Republican Party, and may continue to do so even during the next presidential election.
It has been difficult to mediate between the two theories, since the outcome at the polls supports the theory of both the proponents and the skeptics of the Emerging Democratic Majority theory equally well.
A Pew survey released this week gives us the best answer. Pew is the gold standard of political polling, using massive surveys, with high numbers of respondents and very low margins of error. Pew’s survey shows pretty clearly that there was not a major change in public opinion from the time of Obama’s reelection through the 2014 midterms:
Of course, Pew is not surveying actual voters. It’s surveying all adults. But that is the point. What changed between 2012 and 2014 was not public opinion, but who showed up to vote.
2. No, youngsters are not turning Republican. The Emerging Democratic Majority thesis places a lot of weight on cohort replacement: Republicans fare best with the oldest voters, and Democrats with the youngest, so every new election cycle incrementally tilts the electoral playing field toward the Democrats.
Skeptics have pushed back by claiming that the youngest voters — the ones entering their voting years since 2008 — are turning back toward the Republican Party. Their main evidence has been pollings of millennial voters by the Harvard Institute of Politics. Conservatives have given these results a great deal of attention — it suggests that the youngest voters, disillusioned by the Obama administration, have abandoned the liberal tendencies of their older brothers and sisters. But Harvard’s polling has not held up well; it predicted millennial voters would support a Republican Congress in 2014, which turned out to be extremely inaccurate.
Pew’s more recent survey combs through the data and throws more cold water on the “younger millennials” thesis. As Nate Cohn notices, younger millennials lean Democratic at nearly the same rate as older ones:
(Cohn does note that younger nonwhite millennials seem less Democratic than older nonwhite millennials, but young whites are far more Democratic than older ones, making the trade somewhat of a wash.)
3. Clinton isn’t that unpopular. A more recent line of thought has settled on Clinton’s limits as a candidate. It is probably true that she lacks Obama’s talents as a communicator and a campaign organizer. A recent Quinnipiac poll showing her struggling in Iowa and Colorado attracted wide media attention and seemed to confirm that the email scandal has tarnished Clinton’s national image.
It is true that Clinton has, inevitably, lost much of the popularity she won when she was serving as secretary of State and largely removed from partisan politics. Nonpartisan figures can attract broad support, while people engaged in political fights tend to revert toward the mean. Clinton’s support is, as it has been through most of her career, closely divided:
On the other hand, Republicans are much less popular. Jeb Bush, who is probably the best known of the Republican contenders, has much worse favorable ratings:
So there is little reason to think Clinton’s personal unpopularity will hold her back in a race against a Republican who is likely to have no more personal appeal, and possibly a lot less.
4. Obama is trending up. One major question looming over the next election is whether the public feels satisfied with the Democrats’ policy direction or wants to give Republicans a chance. Importantly, President Obama’s job approval ratings have recovered since the midterm elections, when his net approval stood at minus ten, to about minus three. His approval ratings on handling the economy have risen even more sharply. Approval of Obama’s economic job performance has actually reached parity with disapproval for the first time since 2009:
If the economy continues to expand between now and the 2016 election, Obama’s approval rating will probably rise a little higher. In the modern political world, strong popularity is not necessary to win; Obama won reelection with approval ratings below 50 percent. Voters make comparative choices, and all a candidate needs is to be superior to the alternative. But the economy is currently on a course, barring a slowdown, to leave the incumbent party in a stronger position.
5. Is it time for a change? The one remaining ground for Republican optimism is the possibility that voters will decide three straight presidential terms for the Democratic Party is too much. Many political scientists (such as Alan Abramowitz) believe this exhaustion factor is real; after a second term, voters grow increasingly restless with the in-party and are more likely to decide it’s time for a change. If this is true, Clinton may face headwinds even in an otherwise favorable landscape.
It may well be true. But there are reasons to doubt it. One reason is that models that detect voter impatience are based on a very small number of data points. Since World War II, there have been eight presidential elections in which the incumbent party has held office for two terms or more. It’s hard to draw definitive conclusions from such a limited number of events.
A second reason is that nearly all of those elections took place in a very different kind of party system. The 20th century was a time of loose-knit parties with a great deal of ideological overlap. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, which created large constituencies to swing back and forth. Democrats won more than 60 percent of the vote in the 1964 election, and then Republicans did the same eight years later. That made sense in a world where the two parties seemed to share a lot of common assumptions. Voters who supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964 weren’t crazy to switch to Richard Nixon in 1972; Nixon had established the Environmental Protection Agency and supported universal health care and a basic income.
The polarized electorate of today is a different place, and voters may not act the same way as they used to. There are fewer swing voters, and therefore conditions like a third straight term, or even a severe recession, may not budge as many of them from their normal partisan habits. We don’t know how deeply the partisan split has hardened into place; each party seems to be able to count on the support of at least 45 percent of the voters regardless of what is happening in the world.
6. There’s no alternative. All of the above brings us back to the central challenge facing Clinton. She cannot promise her supporters a dramatic change or new possibilities; she is personally too familiar, and the near certainty of at least one Republican-controlled chamber of Congress suggests continued legislative stalemate. Her worry is that ennui sets in among the base and yields a small electorate more like the kind that shows up at the midterms, which is an electorate Republicans can win.
The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party’s barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority. | – New York magazine doesn't beat around the bush: "Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election." But not everyone agrees. A sampling of what the pundits are saying: In New York, Jonathan Chait argues that "the United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate." That should put Clinton in the White House, though it's not guaranteed. "She cannot promise her supporters a dramatic change or new possibilities," Chait notes. "Her worry is that ennui sets in among the base and yields a small electorate more like the kind that shows up at the midterms, which is an electorate Republicans can win." But at Salon, a former aide for Bill Clinton is concerned about his wife's strategy so far. "Republicans love to paint Democrats as elitists. It’s how the first two Bushes took out Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry—and how Jeb plans to take out Hillary," Bill Curry writes. And Clinton isn't helping herself. "When she says she and Bill were broke when they left the White House; when she sets her own email rules and says it was only for her own convenience; when she hangs out with the Davos, Wall Street, or Hollywood crowds, she makes herself a more inviting target." Meanwhile, statistician Nate Silver acknowledges that Clinton is "very likely to become the Democratic nominee." As for the general election, he writes at FiveThirtyEight, it could go either way. Silver questions the so-called "Emerging Democratic Majority" that plays a role in Chait's thinking. Right now, Clinton's favorability ratings are "break-even," and she's "so well-known … that it’s almost as if voters are dispensing with all the formalities and evaluating her as they might when she’s on the ballot next November. About half of them would like to see her become president and about half of them wouldn’t. Get ready for an extremely competitive election." While the pundits debate, Clinton is heading out on the trail in a van named "Scooby." |
Letter of Resignation from the Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commission
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Dear City Council Members and Palo Alto Residents,
This letter serves as my official resignation from the Planning and Transportation Commission. My family has decided to move to Santa Cruz. After many years of trying to make it work in Palo Alto, my husband and I cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family here. We rent our current home with another couple for $6200 a month; if we wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7M and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That’s $146,127 per year — an entire professional’s income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer.
It’s clear that if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders, and service workers are in dire straits. We already see openings at our police department that we can’t fill and numerous teacher contracts that we can’t renew because the cost of housing is astronomical not just in Palo Alto but many miles in each direction. I have repeatedly made recommendations to the Council to expand the housing supply in Palo Alto so that together with our neighboring cities who are already adding housing, we can start to make a dent in the jobs-housing imbalance that causes housing prices throughout the Bay Area to spiral out of control. Small steps like allowing 2 floors of housing instead of 1 in mixed use developments, enforcing minimum density requirements so that developers build apartments instead of penthouses, legalizing duplexes, easing restrictions on granny units, leveraging the residential parking permit program to experiment with housing for people who don’t want or need two cars, and allowing single-use areas like the Stanford shopping center to add housing on top of shops (or offices), would go a long way in adding desperately needed housing units while maintaining the character of our neighborhoods and preserving historic structures throughout.
Time and again, I’ve seen dozens of people come to both Commission meetings and Council meetings asking Council to make housing its top priority. The City Council received over 1000 signatures from Palo Alto residents asking for the same. In the annual Our Palo Alto survey, it is the top issue cited by residents. This Council has ignored the majority of residents and has charted a course for the next 15 years of this city’s development which substantially continues the same job-housing imbalance this community has been suffering from for some time now: more offices, a nominal amount of housing which the Council is already laying the groundwork to tax out of existence, lip service to preserving retail that simply has no reason to keep serving the average Joe when the city is only affordable to Joe Millionaires.
Over the last 5 years I’ve seen dozens of my friends leave Palo Alto and often leave the Bay Area entirely. I’ve seen friends from other states get job offers here and then turn them down when they started to look at the price of housing. I struggle to think what Palo Alto will become and what it will represent when young families have no hope of ever putting down roots here, and meanwhile the community is engulfed with middle-aged jet-setting executives and investors who are hardly the sort to be personally volunteering for neighborhood block parties, earthquake preparedness responsibilities, or neighborhood watch. If things keep going as they are, yes, Palo Alto’s streets will look just as they did decades ago, but its inhabitants, spirit, and sense of community will be unrecognizable. A once thriving city will turn into a hollowed out museum. We should take care to remember that Palo Alto is famous the world over for its residents’ accomplishments, but none of those people would be able to live in Palo Alto were they starting out today.
Sincerely,
Kate Downing
UPDATE: Thank you so much for the outpouring of interest and support. While we are leaving Palo Alto, the organization I co-founded that is working to invest in housing and transportation will continue on its work so that maybe in the future we can have a more inclusive community. If you’d like to learn more, go here.
If you’d like to look into the belly of the beast, read the comments on our local paper: Palo Alto Online. The loudest voices in the community feel that the desire to create more affordable housing is spoiled entitlement. Until renters, younger people, and people of more modest means organize, this problem will continue throughout the Bay Area. ||||| Property Type House Condo Townhouse Multi-family Land Other Include MLS-listed homes MLS-listed homes MLS-listed foreclosures include: All listings Only non-foreclosures Only foreclosures For-sale-by-owner homes For-sale-by-owner homes Foreclosed homes Foreclosed homes Sale records Sale records
for: Last 1 week Last 1 month Last 3 months Last 6 months Last 1 year Last 2 years Last 3 years All Schools Home Facts Baths: No min 1+ 1.25+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6+ Square feet: No min 500 750 1,000 1,250 1,500 1,750 2,000 2,250 2,500 2,750 3,000 3,500 4,000 5,000 7,500 to No max 500 750 1,000 1,250 1,500 1,750 2,000 2,250 2,500 2,750 3,000 3,500 4,000 5,000 7,500 Lot size: No min 2,000 sq ft 4,500 sq ft 6,500 sq ft 8,000 sq ft 10,890 sq ft / .25 acres 21,780 sq ft / .5 acres 1 acre 2 acres 3 acres 4 acres 5 acres 10 acres 40 acres 100 acres to No max 2,000 sq ft 4,500 sq ft 6,500 sq ft 8,000 sq ft 10,890 sq ft / .25 acres 21,780 sq ft / .5 acres 1 acre 2 acres 3 acres 4 acres 5 acres 10 acres 40 acres 100 acres Parking: No min 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ Has garage Year built: No min 2012 2011 2010 2005 2000 1995 1990 1980 1960 1940 1920 1900 to No max 2012 2011 2010 2005 2000 1995 1990 1980 1960 1940 1920 1900 Remarks: e.g. 'pool,' 'office,' or 'fireplace.' Learn more
Listing Facts Days on Redfin: No max New listings (since yesterday) Less than 3 days Less than 7 days Less than 14 days Less than 30 days More than 7 days More than 14 days More than 30 days More than 45 days More than 60 days More than 90 days More than 180 days Status: Active listings Active + under contract/pending Only under contract/pending Price reduced: In the last day In the last 3 days In the last 7 days In the last 14 days In the last 30 days More than 30 days More than 60 days More than 120 days Any time Exclude short sales Include Only* New listings Open houses
This weekend Any time New construction Has view Fixer-upper Waterfront *Only listings which match all the criteria will be shown. Reset Search Options ||||| For the past two years, Kate Downing has been one of Palo Alto's most passionate advocates for building more affordable housing.
As one of the founding members of the citizens group Palo Alto Forward and a member of the city's Planning and Transportation Commission, she also has been a vehement critic of the city's recent tilt toward slow-growth policies, and its failure to address a housing shortage that many in the community and some on the City Council believe has reached a crisis level.
Kate Downing Kate Downing
"Time and again, I've seen dozens of people come to both Commission meetings and Council meetings asking Council to make housing its top priority," Downing wrote. "The City Council received over 1,000 signatures from Palo Alto residents asking for the same. In the annual Our Palo Alto survey, it is the top issue cited by residents.
"This council has ignored the majority of residents and has chartered a course for the next 15 years of this city's development, which substantially continues the same job-housing imbalance this community has been suffering from for some time now: more offices, a nominal amount of housing, which the Council is already laying the groundwork to tax out of existence, lip service to preserving retail that simply has no reason to keep serving the average Joe when the city is only available to Joe Millionaires."
In her resignation letter, Downing pointed to the city's difficulties in filling job openings in the Palo Alto Police Department and renewing contracts with the local teachers because of the "astronomical" cost of housing, not just in Palo Alto but "many miles in each direction."
It is clear, she wrote, that "if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders, and service workers are in dire straits."
Downing herself is facing similar challenges, despite the fact that she is a corporate attorney and her husband is a software engineer at Palantir. For several years, they have been renting a home in the Ventura neighborhood. Now, they are preparing to move to Santa Cruz.
In her resignation letter, Downing wrote that "After many years of trying to make it work in Palo Alto, my husband and I cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family here."
"We rent our current home with another couple for $6,200 a month; if we wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7M and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes and insurance," Downing wrote. "That's $146,127 per year -- an entire professional's income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer."
Downing also noted that over the last five years, she'd seen dozens of her friends leave Palo Alto and, in some cases, the Bay Area. She also said that she has seen friends from other states get job offers in Palo Alto and then turn them down whey they started to look at the price of housing.
"I struggle to think what Palo Alto will become and what it will represent when young families have no hope of ever putting down roots here, and meanwhile the community is engulfed with middle-aged jet-setting executives and investors who are hardly the sort to be personally volunteering for neighborhood block parties, earthquake preparedness responsibilities, or neighborhood watch," Downing wrote. "If things keep going as they are, yes, Palo Alto's streets will look just as they did decades ago, but its inhabitants, spirit, and sense of community will be unrecognizable.
"A once thriving city will turn into a hollowed out museum. We should take care to remember that Palo Alto is famous the world over for its residents’ accomplishments, but none of those people would be able to live in Palo Alto were they starting out today," she wrote.
Downing is hardly alone in urging the council to act with more urgency on promoting affordable housing. In March, more than 1,000 residents, including numerous former mayors and planning commissioners, signed a petition spearheaded by Palo Alto Forward that urged the council to do more to address this topic.
"The cost of living in Palo Alto has skyrocketed. As a result, we are seeing long-time neighbors move because they can no longer afford the rent," the petition stated. "It is not unusual for Palo Alto workers to commute in from areas as far as Stockton, Gilroy and Tracy, putting severe strain on our roads and our climate. We are on the path to being a city composed only of long-time landowners and wealthy newcomers. This situation is the result of city policies that have discouraged new housing while encouraging more office space."
Recent surveys also suggest that residents are growing increasingly anxious about getting priced out of Palo Alto. In the city's annual survey, the number of people who gave Palo Alto good grades for "variety of housing options” dropped from 27 percent in 2014 to 20 percent in 2015, while the percentage of people who ranked the city as a good or excellent place to retire dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent between 2014 and 2015 (in 2006, it was 68 percent).
Local concerns about housing were also highlighted in a poll that the city commissioned last spring, when it was considering whether to proceed with a business tax to address traffic congestion. The poll showed 76 percent of the respondents listing "cost of housing" as an "extremely serious" or "very serious" problem, a higher percentage than any other issue (the drought and traffic congestion scored second and third, with 65 percent and 53 percent, respectively).
Downing's letter comes at a particularly sensitive time for local politics. The city is about to hold its first City Council election since the slow-growth "residentialist" camp won the council majority in 2014 and four of the council's nine seats will be up for grabs.
Several candidates jumping into the race, including current planning commission Chair Adrian Fine, Human Relations Commission Chair Greer Stone and technology executive Michelle Kraus (all of whom are renters) have vowed to make creation of more housing options a priority if elected.
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Follow the Palo Alto Weekly/Palo Alto Online on Twitter @PaloAltoWeekly and Facebook for breaking news, local events, photos, videos and more. ||||| PALO ALTO -- You're a well-paid professional. You work in tech. You've got it made.
Not if you want to buy a house in Silicon Valley.
On Wednesday, a planning commissioner here became the very public voice of the region's frustrations over spiraling housing costs when she published her resignation letter to the city of Palo Alto. It said that she and her husband are moving to Santa Cruz because -- even with their combined incomes as a tech lawyer and software engineer -- they can't afford to live in this upscale city.
After five years of "trying to make it work in Palo Alto, my husband and I cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family here," Planning and Transportation Commissioner Kate Downing wrote in her public resignation letter.
The letter makes personal what the numbers show: That rising rents and home prices of recent years have put the region beyond the reach of many, even some at the top of the heap -- including in the lucrative tech industry that fuels the rush for housing.
The average rent in Palo Alto was $3,463 in the second quarter of 2016, according to a report last month from Novato-based RealFacts. In June, the median price of a single-family home was $1.2 million in San Mateo County and $982,500 in Santa Clara County, according to the CoreLogic real estate information service.
Downing, 31, has a full-time job as senior corporate counsel to a tech company in Santa Clara. In an interview, she explained that her letter "is not supposed to be a sad story about me. I'm going to land on my feet. I'm extraordinarily lucky and privileged. I'm going to be fine."
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Rather, she characterized the letter as a warning call about economic trends and failed policies that are hurting Palo Alto and the region. "It's clear," she wrote, "that if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders and service workers are in dire straits."
Downing and her engineer husband, Steve Downing, 33, share a 2,300-square-foot, four-bedroom house in Palo Alto's Ventura neighborhood with another couple. The monthly rent is $6,200.
"That's actually pretty cheap for here," she said in the interview. "We probably pay on the low end of what they could get for our home."
Her letter calculated that if the couple "wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7 million, and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes and insurance. That's $146,127 per year -- an entire professional's income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer."
The Downings based those numbers on putting 20 percent down: "If you put down less than that, you're not going to get picked," she said. "Everyone knows how competitive it is in Palo Alto, with multiple offers on every house. Some of them are putting down all cash. They're coming in with just gigantic deposits."
Downing's letter, a colleague said, is a timely commentary on Palo Alto's changing demographics: "All of us who are in our 20s and 30 and 40s -- we're used to seeing people leave," said Elaine Uang, a co-founder with Downing of the community group Palo Alto Forward.
"You never know when your friends are going to go because there aren't the right housing options here for them to pursue the next stage of life."
A commissioner since November 2014, Downing said in the letter that the city has failed to move the dial on housing. Stating that her own recommendations to the City Council have gone nowhere, she outlined some of the ways in which the housing supply might be expanded in order to "make a dent in the jobs-housing imbalance that causes housing prices throughout the Bay Area to spiral out of control."
She mentioned "small steps like allowing two floors of housing instead of one in mixed-used developments," as well as legalizing duplexes, streamlining restrictions on granny units and "enforcing minimum-density requirements" so that developers will "build apartments instead of penthouses." Housing should be allowed, she wrote, above shops and offices in single-use areas like the Stanford Shopping Center.
"Kate does a good job summarizing the challenges we're facing as a community," said Councilman Cory Wolbach. "To say that Palo Alto has been slow to add housing is a very accurate statement.
"There's nothing shocking here," he added, in regard to Downing's letter. "Palo Alto certainly does not encourage high-density, smaller, more reasonably priced units. It's unfortunate but true."
Palo Alto "is not the family-oriented community it used to be," Downing said. In her estimation, it's becoming a place for "jet-setting executives and investors" who have neither the time or inclination to help out with block parties or join Neighborhood Watch.
"Young people are not moving here anymore. It used to be a place of innovation, where people created art and sculpture in their backyards or started companies in their garages. Now, it's more for people who are CEOs and executive vice presidents."
Contact Richard Scheinin at 408-920-5069, read his stories at www.mercurynews.com/richard-scheinin and follow him at Twitter.com/RealEstateRag. ||||| In what’s becoming a regular story in the Bay Area, many Peninsula towns’ refusal to increase housing has led to a mass exit of long-time, working-class residents. First responders, police, teachers, grocery store clerks—the list goes on.
These small cities, rich with tech money and close-proximity desirability, have left it to San Francisco, Oakland, and only a few other areas to house the influx of new-moneyed arrivals.
And with that, another noteworthy exodus has taken place: Palo Alto Planning and Transportation commissioner Kate Vershov Downing and her family have decided to leave the pricey town for Santa Cruz because they, like many other residents, can no longer afford the area.
In a letter of resignation, she starts off saying:
Dear City Council Members and Palo Alto Residents, This letter serves as my official resignation from the Planning and Transportation Commission. My family has decided to move to Santa Cruz. After many years of trying to make it work in Palo Alto, my husband and I cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family here. We rent our current home with another couple for $6200 a month; if we wanted to buy the same home and share it with children and not roommates, it would cost $2.7M and our monthly payment would be $12,177 a month in mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That’s $146,127 per year — an entire professional’s income before taxes. This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer.
Downing goes on to note that the city council is, in part, to blame for this mess, noting that pleas from citizenry for more housing go ignored.
I have repeatedly made recommendations to the Council to expand the housing supply in Palo Alto so that together with our neighboring cities who are already adding housing, we can start to make a dent in the jobs-housing imbalance that causes housing prices throughout the Bay Area to spiral out of control. Small steps like allowing 2 floors of housing instead of 1 in mixed use developments, enforcing minimum density requirements so that developers build apartments instead of penthouses, legalizing duplexes, easing restrictions on granny units, leveraging the residential parking permit program to experiment with housing for people who don’t want or need two cars, and allowing single-use areas like the Stanford shopping center to add housing on top of shops (or offices), would go a long way in adding desperately needed housing units while maintaining the character of our neighborhoods and preserving historic structures throughout. Time and again, I’ve seen dozens of people come to both Commission meetings and Council meetings asking Council to make housing its top priority. The City Council received over 1000 signatures from Palo Alto residents asking for the same. In the annual Our Palo Alto survey, it is the top issue cited by residents. This Council has ignored the majority of residents and has chartered a course for the next 15 years of this city’s development which substantially continues the same job-housing imbalance this community has been suffering from for some time now: more offices, a nominal amount of housing which the Council is already laying the groundwork to tax out of existence, lip service to preserving retail that simply has no reason to keep serving the average Joe when the city is only affordable to Joe Millionaires.
Like Menlo Park, Palo Alto’s housing stock is extremely pricey. You can hardly find a home on the market right now for less than $1 million. And there’s no sign of things slowing down.
Read the entire piece here. | – Palo Alto's planning and transportation commissioner sat down and did the math: For Kate Vershov Downing and husband Steve to purchase a home similar to the 4-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot dwelling they currently rent (with another couple, at $6,200 a month), their monthly payment would be $12,177. That's $146,127 a year on mortgage, insurance, and taxes, and that's assuming they had half-a-million dollars for a down payment. "This is unaffordable even for an attorney and a software engineer," she writes; she's senior corporate counsel to a tech company and her husband works for Palantir. And so after five years of trying to make it work in Silicon Valley, the Downings, "cannot see a way to stay in Palo Alto and raise a family," Kate writes in a public resignation letter posted Tuesday announcing her move to Santa Cruz. She tells the Mercury News that her letter "is not supposed to be a sad story about me. ... I'm extraordinarily lucky and privileged." But she writes that "it's clear that if professionals like me cannot raise a family here, then all of our teachers, first responders, and service workers are in dire straits." Indeed, Curbed SF backs up its assertion that there's little on the market there for less than $1 million with a link to Redfin, which, for example, has a listing for a $729,000 house ... that's 529 square feet. In her letter, Downing—called "one of Palo Alto's most passionate advocates for building more affordable housing" by Palo Alto Online — takes the City Council to task for ignoring residents' clamor for significant change on the housing front; her letter repeats some of the recommendations she herself has made. (Palantir is having a profound effect on the city's commercial space.) |
Incidents listed are selected by the Officer In Charge of each shift that may have significant public interest. Incidents listed are not inclusive of all incidents. To view Calls for Services information, please visit communitycrimemap.com. Requests for information can be directed to the MPD Records Unit: (608) 266-4075.
Incident Report for Case #2017-460207
Incident Type Arrested Person
Incident Date 12/22/2017 - 2:16 PM
Address 627 State St. (Ruby's Salon)
Arrested Khaled A. Shabani, age 46, Madison
Suspect was arrested for mayhem and disorderly conduct while armed.
Victim(s) Male, age 22, Madison ||||| Close Get email notifications on Logan Wroge | Wisconsin State Journal daily!
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Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. ||||| An angry barber allegedly retaliated against a 22-year-old customer by shaving his head down the middle and snipping his ear with scissors, leaving him bloodied.
He requested a No. 2 on the sides, and an inch taken off the top with scissors, police spokesman Joel Despain said.
The 22-year-old customer, who wasn't named in the Madison Police Department press release , had gone to the salon to get his hair cut.
Police arrested 46-year-old Khaled A. Shabani at Ruby's Salon in Madison, Wisconsin, after the alleged incident, which they said occurred on Dec. 22.
However, his cut soon went south. He claimed Shabani began complaining he was fidgeting and moving his head, and twisted his ear. Then, Shabani allegedly grabbed a "zero" clipper, "snipped" his ear, and shaved a line in his head.
"[The victim] was starting to bleed when the 'zero' was used to cut a close path down the middle of his head, leaving him looking a bit like Larry from the Three Stooges," Despain said.
The victim then got up and left, with Shabani allegedly shouting after him, "You want a zero right?"
The man called police when he got home, and Shabani was arrested on suspicion of mayhem and disorderly conduct while armed.
"While it is not a crime to give someone a bad haircut, you will get arrested for intentionally snipping their ear with a scissors," Despain said.
On Wednesday, Shabani pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. The charge is a violation of a county ordinance, not criminal.
When reached by BuzzFeed News, the Madison Police Department had no further information. | – A young man who went for a pre-Christmas haircut got a disorderly one, while his barber got slammed for disorderly conduct, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Per Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain, the 22-year-old patron headed over to Ruby's Salon on Friday and asked for an inch off the top and the sides shaved, and his stylist, 46-year-old Khaled A. Shabani, set to work. The police report notes the customer asked for a No. 2 buzzer for the sides and that scissors be used to trim the top. The customer soon realized things were "not going well," however, when Shabani started chastising him for not keeping his head still, which earned him an ear-twisting, per the report. The situation got worse when Shabani allegedly "snipped" his ear with the scissors, drawing blood, and used a "zero" buzzer (which provides the closest cut) to swoop right down the middle of his head. The result? The customer got a buzz that left him "looking a bit like Larry from the Three Stooges," DeSpain says. Which is when the customer says he got up to leave, with Shabani allegedly yelling after him, "You want a zero, right?" Shabani was cited for mayhem and disorderly conduct while armed, which the Journal notes is not a criminal charge but a county ordinance violation. "While it is not a crime to give someone a bad haircut, you will get arrested for intentionally snipping their ear with a scissors," DeSpain says. The customer had another stylist elsewhere shave his head all the way to rid himself of the Stooges look. Per a police report, Shabani told cops the ear-snipping was an accident, but BuzzFeed reports on Yelp reviews that note other bad experiences at the salon, including one ex-patron that says his visit felt like it "[bordered] on assault." |
Style Meet the first model with Down syndrome to walk the runway at Fashion Week Feb. 11, 2015 at 4:48 PM ET
When Jamie Brewer strides down the catwalk during New York Fashion Week, she'll not only be showing off an original design by Carrie Hammer, but she will also become the first woman with Down syndrome to grace the runway.
“Young girls and even young women … [see me] and say ‘hey, if she can do it so can I,’” says Brewer, an actress known for her work on “American Horror Story” and an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities. “It’s a true inspiration being a role model for any young women to [encourage them] in being who they are and showing who they are.”
Courtesy of Michael Hansel
Brewer is modeling as part of Hammer’s “Role Models Not Runway Models,” a campaign the designer started when she was first asked to show her line at Fashion Week a year ago. Hammer wanted to represent the women who bought her designs and realized that featuring her clients—leaders of multibillion dollar businesses, heads of global nonprofits, pioneers of cutting-edge research, and women who just rock—would do exactly that. For her first show, she invited her friend, Danielle Sheypuk, who uses a wheelchair, to be a model.
“I called up my existing clients who were all incredible women and one of them happened to be a doctor and a sex therapist who happened to be in wheelchair,” Hammer told TODAY.com. “It was never intended to be this incredible statement.”
But it was. Hundreds of women and girls contacted Hammer to thank her. One email stuck out: Every time Hammer read it, she cried. It was from Katie Driscoll, co-founder of Changing the Face of Beauty, a nonprofit that encourages media to include people with disabilities. She wrote:
“Thank you for being the change that is long overdue. I could literally cry every time I read an article talking about your decision to include a model who just happens to have a disability! YOU are what this world needed!”
Driscoll’s daughter Grace was born with Down syndrome. After sharing her story with Hammer, Driscoll asked a favor.
Courtesy of Cindy Brewer
“She asked if I would have a role model for Grace,” Hammer says.
“Role Models Not Runway Models” took off, and Hammer received hundreds of nominations for women to model in her shows—including one from Karen Crespo, who lost her limbs to bacterial meningitis and longed to walk the runway to boost her self esteem. She appeared in Hammer’s fall Fashion Week show. But the designer didn’t forget about Grace. She asked Driscoll to suggest a good role model, and the mom immediately named Brewer.
“I explained to her how important it is for my daughter to have role models like [Brewer] to see that [anything] is possible,” says Driscoll.
While most recognize Brewer for playing Addie in “American Horror Story: Murder House,” Nan in “American Horror Story: Coven,” and Marjorie in “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” she has long worked as an advocate for people with intellectual disabilities. At 19, she was elected to the State of Texas ARC Board; she also worked on the Executive Board for the State of Texas ARC and the Governmental Affairs Committee for the State of Texas, where she was the only member with a disability.
“Jamie is an activist for intellectual disabilities, she is a writer and artist and amazing actress,” says Hammer.
Hammer designed a dress that she hopes plays up Brewer’s fabulous qualities.
“‘American Horror Story’ is dark, scary, bewitching so we had to go with black and Jamie has a beautiful body with a teeny waist and curves and we went with an A-line,” she says. The dress is also special for another reason—Hammer hopes that First Lady Michelle Obama will wear it.
For her part, Brewer feels excited for her spin down the runway.
“It’s amazing, it’s really neat. Many women have many sides to their personality, this dress fits...mine,” she says. “I am honored to be in it.” ||||| Actress Jamie Brewer walks the runway during the 'Role Models Not Runway Models' Carrie Hammer show. (Photo: Brian Ach, Getty Images)
Actress Jamie Brewer, best known for her roles on American Horror Story, appeared Thursday on a catwalk during New York Fashion Week.
Brewer was the first model in the show with Down syndrome.
Brewer wore clothing by designer Carrie Hammer as part of Hammer's "Role Models Not Runway Models" show, a project that invites inspiring women to showcase Hammer's work.
"We feature incredible influential women on the runaway. CEOs, executives, activist, actresses, anyone who is the top of the field, top of their game," Hammer told USA TODAY Network.
"Jamie is an absolute star," Hammer said, adding that the actress is also an activist for people with intellectual disabilities.
All of the women in the show wore clothing designed especially for them.
Brewer played a witch on American Horror Story so Hammer put her in black with an A-line cut. "Jamie has this beautiful figure with a small waist. A-lines really compliment that," Hammer said about the design.
The show took place at Lightbox, a digital arts and events space in New York City.
Brewer tweeted images of herself getting ready Thursday morning:
Follow @lagrisham on Twitter
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Dlb26X | – Visitors to New York Fashion Week will see a first today: a model with Down syndrome walking the runway, reports USA Today. Actress Jamie Brewer, best known for her work on American Horror Story, will do the honors, wearing an original by designer Carrie Hammer as part of Hammer's Role Models Not Runway Models show. “Young girls and even young women … [see me] and say, ‘Hey, if she can do it so can I,’” Brewer tells Today. Hammer explains that the idea came from Katie Driscoll, a woman whose daughter Grace has Down syndrome. “She asked if I would have a role model for Grace,” Hammer says. Brewer was an easy pick, given that she's not only an actress but an activist for others with disabilities. The actress tells Bustle she understands why it's taken this long for the milestone: “A lot of people have a certain image of what perfect is until they actually see or hear something that’s extremely different in the media." |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — If "The story of Jack and Oskar" was pitched as the script for a Hollywood movie, it's a good bet no one would believe it.
In this Nov. 25, 1979 photo, Jack Yufe, left, and his twin brother, Oskar, look on. Separated soon after birth, Jack Yufe was raised as a Jew in Trinidad while his sibling Oskar grew up in Nazi Germany... (Associated Press)
Separated sixth months after birth in 1933, Jack Yufe was raised as a Jew in his native Trinidad while his identical twin, Oskar Stohr, grew up in Nazi Germany, where he joined the Hitler Youth movement.
When the two met again at a German train station at age 21 they discovered they didn't particularly like each other. Not so much because they were different, but because they were so much alike.
Yufe, who died Monday of cancer in a San Diego hospital, had arrived for that first meeting wearing a white sports jacket, shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. So had his brother.
"I said, 'Oskar, you are wearing the same shirt and same glasses. Why?'" Yufe, who was 82, recalled in a 1999 BBC documentary. "He said to me, 'Why are you wearing the same thing that I am?'"
As they got to know each other better they would learn they also walked with the same gait, had the same nervous habits, even liked to play the same practical jokes on people.
"They both used to wash their hands before and after going to the toilet," recalled Nancy L. Segal, a professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, who studied the brothers as part of a landmark study of twins conducted at the University of Minnesota.
"They both used to like to sneeze loudly in elevators, thinking that was funny," she continued. "If you sat across from them at a table and there was a vase with a rose or something, they would both shove it aside because they couldn't stand that."
They also shared the same hot temper and competitive drive, which led them to learn not to ever talk politics or religion, Yufe's son, Kenneth, said Wednesday.
"It was an interesting pair to watch, for sure," he added.
The two were separated when their parents split and their mother took Oskar to her native Germany while Jack stayed in Trinidad with their father. In his teens, Yufe moved to Israel where he served in the navy before moving to the United States and going into the retail business in San Diego.
"When he first started he was selling out of a van, and he'd see people who had no shoes or horrible shoes and he'd say, "Here's a pair of boots, give me a dollar a week, that sort of thing," the son recalled. "He'd give credit to people who never had credit before."
But if the buyer didn't pay that dollar a week, his son recalled with a laugh, he'd demand those boots back.
"He was very old school, but he really was a wonderful guy."
It was in San Diego that Yufe's first wife learned of the landmark Minnesota Twins Study and persuaded her husband and brother-in-law to take part. They and others showed remarkable similarities despite growing up apart from one another for decades.
"As psychologists, it made us really rethink our explanations for behavior," said Segal.
Yufe and Stohr, meanwhile, came to care deeply for one another, said the psychologist, who got to know both over the 20-year study and wrote about them in her books "Born Together — Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study" and "Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins."
When Stohr died of cancer in 1997, she said, Yufe was devastated but couldn't bring himself to attend the funeral because he looked so much like his brother that he feared it would disturb the family.
"They had an amazing, what I would call a love-hate relationship," she said. "They were fascinated by one another, fascinated by their similarities, intrigued that the worst traits that they saw in themselves were mirrored in the other one. They were hot tempered and short tempered and impatient, demanding. But their families loved them."
In addition to his wife, Ruth, and son, Kenneth, Yufe is survived by daughters Anita Yufe, Hovi Reader and Debvra Gregory and stepsons Renee and Enrique Vega. ||||| Although the brothers got to know one another much better through the study and subsequent visits, their relationship never lost its prickly edge. Oskar had the same competitive nature, and the rivalry between them "was just nonstop," Kenneth Yufe said Tuesday, recalling the time the two men even battled to see who had the best technique for cleaning a dirty car window. |||||
Separated soon after birth, Jack Yufe, left, was raised as a Jew in Trinidad while his sibling Oskar Stohr, right, grew up in Nazi Germany where he joined the Hitler Youth. (Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times via AP)
Jack Yufe grew up missing his other half, an identical twin brother from whom he had been separated at six months.
For years, they exchanged letters and photographs. Then, at age 21, they met at a German train station. The encounter was detailed in psychologist Nancy Segal’s book “Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins.”
Yufe and his brother, Oskar Stohr, examined one another as if they were looking at alien specimens, though no likeness could have been more familiar to either of them. Their cultural differences were as immediately apparent as their physical similarities. Casting a wary eye at Yufe’s Israeli luggage tags, Stohr removed them and told his long-lost brother to tell others he was coming from America.
From this first uneasy exchange in 1954 grew a complex but enduring bond that would bring Yufe and Stohr to the center of discussions about nature and nurture. After all, the differences between the brothers’ upbringings were more extreme than those experienced by most twins separated by circumstance.
Yufe grew up Jewish in Trinidad and became an officer in the Israeli Navy. Stohr grew up Catholic in Nazi Germany and became an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth.
Yufe died Monday of cancer in a San Diego hospital, the Associated Press reports. He was 82.
Stohr passed away in 1997, also of cancer.
The brothers’ unique relationship was a source of fascination for the researchers behind the landmark Minnesota twin study conducted from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Seeking to identify how environmental and genetic factors contributed to psychological traits, the study closely examined the behaviors of sets of twins who were separated early in their lives and raised by different families.
What made Yufe and Stohr an extraordinary case was not only the stark contrasts between the cultures in which they grew up — Nazism versus Judaism — but also the striking similarities in their habits and emotional temperaments.
In 1933, Yufe and Stohr were born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to a Romanian Jewish father and a German Catholic mother. According to Segal, it’s not known whether the couple was ever married, and their relationship quickly soured “as a result of [the father’s] ‘roving eyes’ and excessive drinking.”
The twins’ mother returned to her native Germany with Stohr and an older daughter in tow, while Yufe remained in Trinidad as a British subject. Meanwhile, Stohr became a subject of the German Reich and a member of the Hitler Youth, a cause he took on with enthusiasm.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Stohr confessed years later to having dreamt of shooting his twin in an aerial dogfight. On the other hand, Yufe had a nightmare about killing his brother with a bayonet.
Their stark cultural, political and religious differences were what initially made them the stars of headlines such as “Twins: Nazi and Jew” and snapshots that featured the Jewish star printed above one brother and a swastika above the other.
“But that’s too simple,” Segal wrote of the pair. “That’s not how it was.”
Once Yufe and Stohr started discovering their shared idiosyncrasies, those seemed even more peculiar than what set them apart.
The first meeting — when Yufe visited Stohr, his mother and her side of the family in Germany — was awkward. Yufe recalled to Segal, “We saw each other as enemies, neither one of us would change. We looked at each other with suspicion.” Then, on a boat trip they took together on the Rhine River, Jack had hoped to have some private time with Stohr, “but he was so unfriendly, and he was not trying to hide it. He kept covering his eyes with his hand.”
After six days, they parted ways with just a cold handshake. They wouldn’t see each other for another 25 years.
It was the Minnesota twin study that ultimately brought them back together. Yufe told the Los Angeles Times in 1979, “I thought it perhaps would be a good idea…to meet in a neutral territory to hash out all this, all the hidden feelings.”
The revelations began when they met at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. As it so happens, both were wearing the same outfit: a white sports jacket, shirt and wire-rimmed glasses.
“I said, ‘Oskar, you are wearing the same shirt and same glasses. Why?'” Yufe recalled in a 1999 BBC documentary. “He said to me, ‘Why are you wearing the same thing that I am?'”
The similarities soon piled on, with startling specificity: both read books from back to front, sneezed loudly in elevators, wrapped rubber bands around their wrists, flushed toilets before and after using them and wore tight bathing suits.
Segal explains in “Indivisible by Two” that some of these peculiar commonalities could be explained by genetics. The toilet-flushing, for instance, likely had to do with the brothers’ sensitivity to germs.
In later years, their wives noticed that they walked, and even tripped, in a similar fashion.
Still, some differences persisted. They could never agree on Israel and Palestine, for instance, or who was responsible for World War II. Segal writes, “Oskar’s repeated reference to German soldiers as ‘we’ infuriated Jack.”
After a stint in the Israeli army, Yufe eventually settled in San Diego and became the owner of a retail store called “El Progresso.” Stohr stayed in Germany, working as a miner and electrical welder.
“They had an amazing, what I would call a love-hate relationship,” Yufe’s wife, Ruth, told the AP. “They were fascinated by one another, fascinated by their similarities, intrigued that the worst traits that they saw in themselves were mirrored in the other one. They were hot-tempered and short-tempered and impatient, demanding. But their families loved them.”
Yufe’s son, Kenneth, described his father to the AP as “very old school,” but a “wonderful guy.”
Yufe is also survived by daughters Anita Yufe, Hovi Reader and Debvra Gregory, as well as stepsons Renee and Enrique Vega.
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Dunkin’ Donuts just ‘destroyed’ Starbucks with this much more Christmas-y holiday cup | – A California man named Jack Yufe died this week at age 82, and his life story is so fascinating that the AP likens it to a Hollywood script nobody would believe; the Los Angeles Times draws a comparison to a "tabloid headline." The reason? Yufe was born in Trinidad along with an identical twin brother, but their parents split after 6 months. Yufe grew up as a Jew, even serving a stint in the Israeli navy. Brother Oskar Stohr, meanwhile, went to Germany with his Catholic mom and grew up as a Nazi, becoming a member of the Hitler Youth. They managed to stay in touch and met again at age 21. The weird part? Despite their incredibly different backgrounds, they were alike in nearly every way. They dressed the same (both showed up to their first meeting in a white sports jacket and wire-rimmed glasses), walked the same, wore the same mustache, and had the same temperament and quirks. They both liked to sneeze loudly to scare people as a joke, and "both used to wash their hands before and after going to the toilet," says Nancy Segal, a professor of psychology who studied the pair as part of a well-known study of separated twins at the University of Minnesota. The brothers' story eventually rose to "the center of discussions about nature and nurture," notes the Washington Post. Though the brothers didn't much like each other at first, that changed over the years. When Stohr died of cancer in 1997, a devastated Yufe didn't attend the funeral, however, notes AP. They looked so much alike he was afraid it would upset loved ones. (A survivor of the Nazi death camps' only mass escape also recently died.) |
The $43,000 phone booth that then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt installed in his office may not have been worth all the headaches it caused him.
He placed only one phone call to the White House, newly released records from the agency show. It lasted five minutes.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency resigned last month after coming under fire for how he spent tax dollars and treated his staff. He made the five-minute call on Jan. 29, according to Verizon phone logs released in response to litigation filed by the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group.
[Scott Pruitt’s $25,000 soundproof phone booth? It actually cost more like $43,000.]
The new documents do not show how many incoming calls Pruitt received in the soundproof booth, which he installed last year. In April, Pruitt testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that he used the booth sparingly.
“It’s for confidential communications, and it’s rare,” he told Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.).
Then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt at the White House in June. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Previously Pruitt had likened the booth to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), which government officials use to conduct secure conversations, arguing that he needed it to discuss matters with the White House. The EPA has a SCIF at its headquarters on a different floor from the administrator’s office.
“Cabinet-level officials need to have access to secure communications,” the then-administrator testified in December. “It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job.”
EPA officials said Monday that they could not specify how many incoming calls Pruitt received from the White House in the soundproof booth.
“EPA has learned from Verizon that in order to request complete phone logs of all incoming and outgoing calls to or from these lines, EPA would need to supply Verizon with a subpoena for the records,” said EPA spokesman James Hewitt, who declined to say what the call was about.
The agency identified two phone lines associated with the booth, according to correspondence between EPA attorneys and Sierra Club lawyers. The phone numbers released through billing records for November involve calls technicians made to test the lines, EPA lawyers said.
The EPA voluntarily provided billing records for the booth through June 20, just two weeks before Pruitt resigned his post, that show no other outgoing calls from the booth. The Sierra Club’s original public-records request covered the period ending Dec. 6.
The Government Accountability Office concluded that Pruitt violated federal spending laws when he built the phone booth, because he spent more than $5,000 without providing advance notice to Congress.
While the original contract for the phone booth was slated to cost roughly $25,000, the agency ended up paying contractors an additional $18,000 to convert a closet space that could house it. That work included removing closed-circuit television equipment, pouring 55 square feet of concrete, installing a drop ceiling and patching and painting the room.
Pruitt told members of the Energy Committee in April that he did not know the project’s price tag had escalated to $43,000. “I was not aware of the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it . . . I would not have approved it,” he said.
A few hours later, Pruitt remarked to members of a House Appropriations subcommittee that in retrospect, the decision to install the booth “should not have been made.”
Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, said in a statement that the incident underscored the kind of managers President Trump has picked to run the federal government.
“With each new revelation it becomes clearer and clearer that Donald Trump enabled the most corrupt cabinet member ever to hang on far past his expiration date,” Pierce said, adding that Pruitt’s successor continues to advance policies that benefit corporate interests. “We need leadership at the EPA that can be trusted to protect our health, not polluter profits.”
Shortly after taking the helm of the EPA, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler indicated in an interview with E&E News that he does not intend to dismantle the phone booth. He added that he would maintain a policy Pruitt instituted in the spring that requires that at least two senior EPA officials beyond the administrator sign off on any expense over $5,000.
“It’s there,” Wheeler said of the booth. “It would be expensive to tear it apart. I don’t see any sense in tearing it apart. And in this day and age, I don’t know what the assessment was for the need of it.”
Read more
Pruitt’s $25,000 phone booth cost more like $43,000, records show
Pruitt blames aides and staff for spending missteps at EPA
Scott Pruitt resigns amid ethics, management scandals ||||| THE LIGHTBULB
Acting Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler listens as President Trump leads a cabinet meeting in the White House this month. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Investigators in Congress and reporters played a role in unearthing information about Scott Pruitt’s suspect spending decisions. But much of the credit for exposing the activities of the former Environmental Protection Agency chief goes to the Sierra Club.
Now the group is making its move against his successor, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler.
The nation’s oldest environmental advocacy group overwhelmed the agency with requests for emails and other documents sent by Pruitt and his closest aides. When the EPA failed to cough up the correspondence requested under the Freedom of Information Act, the Sierra Club sued. By April, the lawsuit yielded a trove of documents used by reporters, including those at The Washington Post, to share with the public details of his behavior in office that sparked a firestorm of criticism.
This week the Sierra Club filed an amendment to a lawsuit against the EPA in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, asking the agency to release yet more communications from EPA staff — including those, for the first time, from Wheeler.
“With these FOIAs, we're keeping an eye on their external communication, which will allow us to see how they're getting information, how they're making decisions,” Sierra Club senior attorney Elena Saxonhouse said. “That was the same approach that we took with the Pruitt FOIA, and it's really the same strategy here.”
The organization is not letting up after its past FOIA requests yielded documents that helped whittle down President Trump’s support for Pruitt -- even though the former EPA chief was lauded by conservatives for reducing regulatory burdens for businesses.
For example, one of the more unusual emails unearthed by the Sierra Club was a request from Pruitt's scheduler to Dan Cathy, the chief executive of Chick-fil-A. The aide asked Cathy whether he would meet with Pruitt to discuss “a potential business opportunity.” The fast-food company eventually confirmed to The Post that Pruitt told a Chick-fil-A representative over the phone that he wanted his wife to become a franchisee.
Another exchange revealed the agency spent $1,560 on a dozen customized fountain pens emblazoned the Pruitt's signature.
Of course, the Sierra Club did not originally file its public-records requests on Pruitt with fancy pens or fried chicken in mind. “He had many ties to polluting industries,” said Saxonhouse, who was recently profiled in Slate for overseeing the Sierra Club's FOIA efforts.
“There is still a lot of people at EPA there to carry out the agenda of granting industry wish lists,” she added.
In total, the Sierra Club is seeking the records of 25 more staffers with its suit in San Francisco. The agency did not reply to a request for comment from The Post.
Environmentalists see a similar pro-industry streak in Wheeler. After working for years for Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the most ardent opponents of climate science in the Senate, Wheeler went on to lobby for several industries, including coal and nuclear companies, before joining the Trump campaign as an energy adviser.
Programming note: I am off next week, but the Energy 202 is not. Several of my colleagues will be filling in for me during my vacation.
POWER PLAYS
Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
— More on Wheeler: The acting administrator pledged upon taking office that he would avoid potential conflicts of interest. But E&E News reports that since taking over as acting chief of the agency, Wheeler has taken three meetings with former clients that “may have violated the Trump administration’s ethics pledge,” and attended events that included the head of a company that Wheeler agreed not to meet with through 2020. The meetings, which E&E News reports are mentioned on Wheeler’s public schedule, “stand in stark contrast to the acting EPA chief's claims that he is taking pains to avoid helping his former clients advance their interests,” per the report. “It's possible that the meetings with former clients weren't about a 'particular matter' that Wheeler previously worked on for them. But that's difficult to determine from the public calendars, and EPA didn't provide additional information about the focus of the events.”
Vehicles sit in rush hour traffic at the interchange between the Interstate 405 and 10 freeways in Los Angeles, California. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)
— EPA rolls forward with some Pruitt deregulation... The Trump administration is set to halt Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, Wheeler told USA Today, adding that the previous administration “jumped the gun” on increasing fuel-economy standards. The Obama-era agreement was to boost fuel-economy levels to an average of 34.5 mpg by 2016 and increase it yearly up to 54.5 mpg by the end of 2025, per the report.
...and reverses it elsewhere: In a 180, the EPA said Thursday it would enforce stricter pollution limits on “glider trucks,” which The Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis report emit dozens of times more soot and contaminants than diesel engine trucks. The move reverses ex-administrator Pruitt’s final act as the head of the agency. In a three-page memo, Wheeler said he would withdraw Pruitt’s “no action assurance” to manufacturers of glider trucks that said they would not have to limit their production to 300 trucks through the end of 2019. “In his memo Wheeler noted that the agency suspends enforcement only in rare circumstances and that after consulting with EPA lawyers and policy experts, 'I have concluded that the application of the current regulations to the glider industry does not represent the kind of extremely unusual circumstances that support the EPA’s use of enforcement discretion,’” per Eilperin and Dennis.
Former Republican Senate candidate and former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. (Craig Hudson/Charleston Gazette-Mail via AP)
— Bye-bye (again), Blankenship: West Virginia blocked convicted former coal baron Don Blankenship from running for Senate as a third-party candidate. Blankenship, who finished third in the May Republican primary, had hoped to get on the ballot as the Constitution Party's nominee. But Secretary of State Mac Warner said Blankenship’s bid would violate the state's “sore loser law,” Politico reports.
But don’t count Blankenship out yet. He previously vowed to take legal action were the secretary of state to deny his bid and said in a statement Thursday he was "confident" the decision would be overturned.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry stands with the main cyrogenic heat exchange as he speaks with reporters at Dominion Energy's Cove Point LNG liquefaction Project facility in Lusby, Md. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
— Perry tweet violated federal law: The Government Accountability Office has determined that a July 2017 tweet from the Energy Department sharing a column by Secretary Rick Perry that criticized Obamacare violated federal appropriations law. The tweet was in violation “because Energy did not show that its appropriation was available for the purpose of informing the public about health care,” the GAO concludes in its report.
The offending tweet: The @EnergyPressSec account said “Time to discard the burdens and costs of Obamacare: @SecretaryPerry” along with a link to a column written by Perry.
View from my office window as the White House makes a bad weather call - meaning the president will take a car to Andrews, rather than depart via his helicopter from the South Lawn where reporters can gather to shout questions at him. pic.twitter.com/csRYnCmbGI — Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) July 26, 2018
— Clear with a chance of hot air: The White House on Thursday decided to have the president take the motorcade on his way to Air Force Once rather than take Marine One, citing “bad weather” per a pool report filed shortly before 9 a.m. on Wednesday. But some pointed out that it may have been a tactic to avoid reporters who gather on the South Lawn, where Trump would have had to board the helicopter. The National Weather Service said the bit of ground fog at Joint Base Andrews at 6:30 a.m. had cleared up by 7 a.m., according to BuzzFeed News.
THERMOMETER
— Man it’s a hot one: More specifically, The Post’s Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz write, it’s been a “hot, strange and dangerous summer across the planet.” Scorching temperatures and wildfires have impacted regions all over the world, with record temperatures in Japan, Algeria, Oman and Canada, and deadly wildfires in Greece. In the United States, 35 different weather stations have reported new warm overnight temperature records.
“The brutal weather has been supercharged by human-induced climate change, scientists say,” Achenbach and Fritz write. “Climate models for three decades have predicted exactly what the world is seeing this summer. And they predict that it will get hotter — and that what is a record today could someday be the norm.”
Temperature difference from normal (20th-century average) in June 1976 and June 2018. (NOAA)
...and if there were any doubt that summers are getting hotter: Two separate maps showing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration comparing June 1976 and June 2018 tell you what you need to know about the warming earth, The Post’s Jason Samenow reports. “Look at how much more red there is in 2018 vs. 1976,” he writes. “The headlines you see touting a global heat wave are not hyperbole. While there are cool pockets, most of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is currently summer, is hotter to much hotter than normal" compared with the 20th century baseline.
— Trump vs. vaquita: The United States Court of International Trade ruled Thursday that the federal government must ban seafood imports from Mexico that are caught in gillnets, fishing nets dropped in the water to entangle fish and shrimp, a method that the court ruling notes is putting the critically endangered vaquita porpoise at risk. The court denied a motion from the Trump administration to dismiss the case brought by environmental groups. The ruling notes that scientists estimate there are only about 15 vaquita left is existence, and the population could be extinct by 2021 “if current levels of gillnet fishing in vaquita’s habitat continue.”
Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (Jacqueline Nell/Disneyland Resort via Getty Images)
— The last straw: Walt Disney is joining the growing number of companies that are pledging to eliminate single-use plastic straws and stirrers. The theme-park giant said Thursday it will remove those products from all parks by mid-2019, a move it said will eliminate the more than 175 million straws and 13 million stirrers it uses annually, according to USA Today.
A photo from 2017 of one of 15 critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles. (Larry Benvenuti/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP)
— Some less happy news from Florida: Already this year, hundreds of sea turtles have washed up on beaches in South Florida and scientists are pointing fingers at a red tide algae bloom. Since the bloom started in October, there have been 287 sea turtle deaths in waters along the southwest Florida coast as documented by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Associated Press reports. Heather Barron, who leads the Center for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife veterinarian hospital warned about how the high number of deaths may affect the protected species long term in an interview with the News-Press in Fort Myers. "This is so devastating to the population of sea turtles that was really starting to come back, and I fear this event will have an impact for years to come," she said.
DAYBOOK
Coming Up
EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler is scheduled to testify before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on August 1.
The Women’s Council on Energy and the Environment holds a discussion on the role of science in public policy on August 2.
EXTRA MILEAGE
Salt Lake Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley calls B.S. on Zinke's national monument review, which has already shrunk the size of two monuments in the state: | – Scott Pruitt is no longer head of the Environmental Protection Agency, but the saga of his $43,000 phone booth isn't quite over. The Washington Post is out with one last financial tidbit courtesy of the Sierra Club, which sued the EPA to access records related to Pruitt. It learned, per Verizon phone logs, that Pruitt made a single outgoing call from the soundproof phone booth. The five-minute call was placed to the White House on Jan. 29. The EPA on Monday said it learned it couldn't provide the incoming call logs without subpoenaing Verizon, so any details on calls Pruitt may have received from the White House in the booth aren't available. |
The federal government says its offices in the Washington, D.C., area will be closed Wednesday as the nation's capital braces for its first big snowfall of the winter.
The Office of Personnel Management says non-emergency employees of the federal government will be granted excused absences for Wednesday.
Forecasters were predicting as much as 10 inches of snow for Washington, with more predicted for the suburbs north and west of the district.
Airlines along the storm's projected path have cut hundreds of flights, most of them at Dulles and Reagan National airports in the Washington area. ||||| Story highlights Shelters are open for 215,000 without power in Virginia
A coastal flood warning is in effect for Massachusetts
Virginia's governor declares a state of emergency
They'd hoped to trade political potshots for wet snowballs.
Instead, the storm billed as "Snowquester" is turning out to be nothing more than a big wet blanket for members of the Washington D.C. Snowball Fight Association. The group had planned a big showdown in DuPont Circle, where a few years ago 3,000 people turned out for a humdinger of a fight.
But where 5 to 10 inches of wet snow was supposed to fall on DuPont Circle, not even slush was accumulating Wednesday afternoon, said organizer Michael Lipin.
"Quite a letdown," he said.
While the storm was dumping plenty of snow in other places, Washington was getting just fractions of an inch, said CNN meteorologist Sean Morris.
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In fact, the National Weather Service dropped its winter storm warning for the Washington area Wednesday afternoon.
"It's just not panning out to be the storm we'd thought it would be," Morris said.
In nearby Virginia, however, things were quite different.
Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency, state police extended shifts and the National Guard called up 100 troops for snow duty as inches of wet, heavy snow fell across parts of the state.
Authorities opened shelters for the 215,000 Virginians without power, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.
Transportation officials reported particularly nasty conditions on many secondary and some primary routes in 15 central and northern counties, with deep snow or ice covering the pavement. State and many county offices closed early.
About 4,200 utility workers were in the field trying to deal with outages, Rodney Blevins of Dominion Power said during a news conference.
How do you really feel about the snow?
Airlines canceled more than 1,600 flights, leaving passengers such as Alex Thompson, who had hoped to take a flight to San Francisco, with plenty of time on their hands.
Thompson traveled all the way from Kenya only to find that his next flight was one of hundreds called off until Thursday because of the storm.
With no hotel reservations and nowhere else to go, he said he'd find a place to sack out at Dulles International Airport and "waste my time until I can get on my flight."
Capital closings
The dire forecast issued Tuesday prompted the federal government to close offices in the nation's capital, but emergency workers and telecommuters were expected to be on duty, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
The White House canceled a planned celebration for the Alabama Crimson Tide, college football champions, and Congress called off several hearings.
More than 954,000 students who attend major school districts in Washington, Virginia, Maryland and Ohio got the day off.
Amtrak shut down some trains in Washington, Virginia, West Virginia and New York.
Track the late-winter storm
But tourism goes on
Not all of Washington was shut down. Although the National Zoo was closed, the Smithsonian said its museums would be open for visitors.
Washington's Metrorail system was running, although some bus service was disrupted, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Flooding threat
Along the coast, the problem wasn't snow, but high winds and the threat of flooding.
The National Weather Service issued coastal flood warnings for parts of Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Officials in parts of New Jersey suggested residents evacuate from flood-prone areas along the coast, including areas still recovering from damage done by Hurricane Sandy in October, according to CNN affiliate WABC.
A flood warning was in effect through Friday morning for the eastern coast of Massachusetts based on a "high confidence" for high winds, storm surge, and moderate to major coastal flooding, the state's emergency management agency said.
About 300 National Guard troops will be used along the Massachusetts coast to help with flooding and possible evacuations, agency spokesman Peter Judge said.
Fifty Delaware National Guard troops were called up as emergency management officials urged some coastal residents in that state to evacuate, saying flooding would cut off exit routes. The agency warned of almost certain flooding in areas and said "conditions during the height of the storm could make the process of leaving flooded areas dangerous or impossible."
High winds forced the brief closure of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in both directions, Maryland authorities said, but not before a tractor trailer overturned on one end, CNN affiliate WJZ reported.
Wind was believed to have been a major factor in the accident.
Power was out across the Delmarva Peninsula, which includes parts of Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, Delmarva Power reported.
In coastal Sussex County, the 911 center reported numerous calls for wires down, vehicle accidents and trees down.
Water breached a sand dune in Sussex County, forcing the closure of State Route 1 in the county, according to DEMA.
Is the snow helping ease drought?
Midwest recovering
The storm is the same one that earlier dumped about a foot of snow in parts of Illinois, Minnesota and North Dakota, paving a white swath across the Upper Midwest.
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport had 6 inches of snow Tuesday, beating a 1999 record for the date by 2.2 inches. It was the first snowfall of 6 inches or more in the Windy City since February 2011, the weather service said.
Plows removed snow from roads and trucks spread salt and sand, but drivers still slipped off of roadways, leaving snow-covered cars to be retrieved by tow trucks.
Tuesday's snow put a drag on air traffic in the Midwest, leading to delays and cancellations, but planes continued to fly in Columbus, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, after plows removed the snow from runways.
Analyze the snowfall | – The federal government closed up shop today, shutting offices in anticipation of a looming snowstorm that blanketed Chicago with snow yesterday, the AP reports. (The six inches logged at O'Hare best a 1999 record for the date—by more than two inches.) The National Weather Service is predicting six to 12 inches of heavy, slushy snow in DC, though there's a chance the snow could turn to rain as it nears the Atlantic, CNN reports. "We're in our mobilization level 5, which is our highest mobilization level," says one Virginia Department of Transportation employee. Airlines have already cancelled hundreds of flights in the storm's projected path, and at least 4,723 Virginia residents have lost power. Ohio is getting its taste of the storm as well, and schools in Columbus have closed; DC kids are off, too. |
In this Thursday, March 3, 2016, photo, Nino Alexander, of Lithonia, Ga., right, and Sabrina Britt, of Clarkston, Ga., left, interview for a job with Sweet Tomatoes restaurant general manager Valerie... (Associated Press)
In this Thursday, March 3, 2016, photo, Nino Alexander, of Lithonia, Ga., right, and Sabrina Britt, of Clarkston, Ga., left, interview for a job with Sweet Tomatoes restaurant general manager Valerie... (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. workers have been largely insulated from a global slowdown.
Job growth remains steady and wages are finally picking up — trends that will be put to the test in Friday's employment report for February.
Economists have forecast that employers added a solid 195,000 jobs last month, up from the 151,000 added in January, according to data firm FactSet. And the unemployment rate is expected to remain at a low 4.9 percent.
Hiring by construction companies, retailers and health care providers have offset layoffs at manufacturers and fossil fuel companies — two sectors squeezed by the pressures of uncertainty in China, sluggishness in Europe, declining oil prices and a stronger dollar.
Consumers have provided the foundation for much of the job market's improvement in what's become something of a self-sustaining cycle. The 2.7 million workers hired in the past 12 months have bolstered spending on autos, housing and meals out. As unemployment has dropped, more companies have begun to raise pay to attract workers, thereby fueling more hiring as people's ability to spend, invest and save has increased.
Friday's jobs report will be closely monitored by the Federal Reserve and presidential candidates as a key gauge of whether the economy is extending its 6½-year rebound from the Great Recession.
Recent reports point to continued improvement.
Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen 2.5 percent. Annual pay growth has perked up after having increased at a roughly 2 percent pace in the previous few years. The wage acceleration has prompted optimism among many economists despite the difficulties worldwide.
"The trend is wage growth is clearly a straight line upward — I believe we will hit the 3 percent threshold," said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, a jobs marketplace.
The hiring and rising incomes have translated into more consumer spending in several key sectors.
Auto sales rose 7 percent over last February to 1.3 million vehicles, according to Autodata Corp.
Purchases of existing homes rose 0.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.47 million, according to the National Association of Realtors. That improvement followed a solid 2015, when sales achieved their highest level in nine years.
And spending at restaurants has risen 6.1 percent over the past 12 months.
Still, troubles abroad have tempered U.S. economic growth.
China, the world's second-largest economy, is struggling with high corporate debts and slower growth. Oil prices have tumbled amid relatively low demand. The strong dollar has crushed exports, while the stock market has dropped in an extended bout of volatility this year.
Mining companies, including oil and gas drillers, have shed 130,600 jobs in the past 12 months. Factories have hired just 45,000 workers from a year ago as job gains in the manufacturing sector have slowed after a strong 2014.
The Fed is looking for further wage growth. The central bank is considering whether to raise interest rates again in the face of global risks that could imperil broader economic growth. In December, the Fed raised rates from record lows — its first increase in nearly a decade.
Investors have largely dismissed the likelihood of another rate hike at the upcoming Fed meeting March 16-17. ||||| U.S. employers are shrugging off fears of an economic downturn.
The nation’s job growth rebounded in February as nonfarm payrolls rose by 242,000 and the prior two months were revised up by 30,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9% as more Americans jumped into the job market, pushing labor-force participation to its highest rate in a year.
The... ||||| WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. generated 242,000 new jobs in February, snapping back after a modest slowdown in hiring in the first month of 2016. Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast the addition of 198,000 nonfarm jobs. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9%. Employment gains for January and December, meanwhile, were revised upward by a combined 30,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The government said 172,000 new jobs were created in January instead of the previously reported 151,000. December's gain was raised to 271,000 from 262,000. Yet despite the big gain in new jobs, the average hourly wage fell 3 cents, or 0.1%, to $25.35. Hourly pay rose a mild 2.2% from February 2015 to February 2016. And the amount of time people worked each week dropped two-tenths of an hour to 34.4 hours, the lowest level in two years. The labor-force participation rate moved up to 62.9%, the highest level since May, as more than half a million people joined the labor force. (A news alert linking to this item initially reported the nonfarm-payrolls data as being for January rather than February.)
Read the full story: Hiring surges in February as U.S. gains 242,000 jobs | – The February jobs report came in stronger than expected on Friday: Employers added 242,000 jobs last month, above the 200,000 or so that analysts were expecting and way up from the revised figure of 172,000 in January. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, remained at 4.9%. One not-so-bright spot: Though a slight rise was expected, average hourly wages dropped 3 cents, or 0.1%, to $25.35, notes MarketWatch. The Fed in particular has been keeping an eye on wages—it wants to see steady growth before raising interest rates again, reports AP. Still, the jobs number is "a sign of steady economic growth despite financial-market turmoil and weakness abroad," notes the Wall Street Journal. |
A good night’s sleep can be transformative. Among its benefits are improved energy and mood, better immune system functioning and blood sugar regulation, and greater alertness and ability to concentrate. Given all of these benefits, the fact that a third of the human lifespan is spent sleeping makes evolutionary sense. However, sleep appears to have another important function: helping us learn. Across a plethora of memory tasks—involving word lists, maze locations, auditory tones, and more—going to sleep after training yields better performance than remaining awake. This has prompted many sleep researchers to reach a provocative conclusion: beyond merely supporting learning, sleep is vital, and perhaps even directly responsible, for learning itself.
Recent discoveries from neuroscience provide insights into that possibility. Sleep appears to be important for long-term potentiation, a strengthening of signals between neurons that is widely regarded as a mechanism of learning and memory. Certain memories acquired during the day appear to be reactivated and “replayed” in the brain during sleep, which may help make them longer lasting. In some instances the amount of improvement that occurs on memory tasks positively correlates with the length of time spent in certain stages of sleep. These and other findings are generating great excitement among sleep researchers, as well as prompting heated debates about the degree to which sleep may or may not be involved in learning.
To date, most sleep and learning research has focused on recall, which is the capacity to remember information. However, new research by Stéphanie Mazza and colleagues at the University of Lyon, recently published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests another potential benefit of sleep: improved relearning. Relearning refers to the process of re-acquiring forgotten information. Because we cannot possibly remember all of the information that we encounter, it is often necessary to go back and learn that information again. That’s when relearning occurs—such as when preparing for an exam, taking a refresher course, or simply revisiting a topic after an extended period of time. According to this new research, sleep supercharges relearning: it can enable us to relearn twice as quickly and up to three times more effectively.
In the study, 40 French-speaking adult participants learned a list of 16 Swahili-French word pairs (for example, nyanya-tomate), relearned those word pairs after a period of 12 hours that did or did not include sleep, and were tested on their memory for the word pairs after one week and after six months. Each participant completed the study as part of a randomly-assigned “wake” or “sleep” group. In the wake group, the initial learning session occurred at 9 AM and the relearning session occurred at 9 PM on the same day; in the sleep group, the initial learning session occurred at 9 PM and the relearning session occurred at 9 AM on the next day, after a night of sleep. During the learning session, participants first studied all of the word pairs. Next, the Swahili word from each pair was shown by itself while participants attempted to recall its French equivalent. After each attempt, the correct answer was displayed, allowing participants to study further. The learning session concluded after each pair was successfully recalled once. At the relearning session, participants again attempted to recall the French word of each pair, and then continued cycling through the entire list until they could recall all pairs perfectly. Thus, by the time the relearning session was complete, any word pair that had been forgotten in the intervening 12 hours had been practiced until it could be correctly recalled once more.
During the initial learning session there were no observed performance differences between the sleep and wake groups, which suggests that a similar degree of learning occurred in both groups. However, substantial differences emerged at the relearning session: participants in the sleep group recalled an average of 10 word pairs on their first attempt, whereas those in the wake group could only muster up about 7; in addition, those that had slept took only about three cycles through the list to finish relearning, whereas those that had not slept needed twice that amount. Even the lowest-performing members of the sleep group—those that had forgotten more word pairs than other members and had the most to relearn—still took fewer cycles to relearn than the best performing (and least forgetful) members of the wake group.
Along with that impressive result, a benefit of having slept between the learning and relearning sessions was also evident over the long term. After one week, participants in the sleep group correctly recalled more word pairs than those in the wake group (an average of 15 vs. 11), and after six months, their recall performance, while attenuated due to some forgetting, was three times better than that of the wake group (an average of 9 vs. 3). Thus, despite the fact that both groups had practiced to a level of perfect recall during the relearning session, only those that had slept prior to relearning accrued any long-term memory benefits.
The fact that participants in the sleep group engaged in relearning was also critical for their improved long-term performance. In a follow-up to the main experiment, a control group of 20 additional participants followed nearly all of the same procedures as the sleep group, including training at the same times of day and sleeping after initial learning. However, in place of the relearning session, these participants only briefly practiced the list of word pairs one time. Without relearning, their subsequent recall performance was no better than the wake group. Thus, it was the combination of sleeping after initial learning, plus engaging in relearning itself, that generated long-term memory benefits.
Mazza and her colleagues interpreted their results as evidence that sleep “transforms” memories, making the effects of initial learning stronger and empowering subsequent relearning. By this interpretation, sleep not only prevents memories from being forgotten, it also makes it easier to restore memories during relearning. In support of this conclusion, the authors noted that total sleep time was positively correlated with recall and relearning performance (the longer participants slept, the better they tended to do on both). This pattern, similar to that observed in prior research, is consistent with two possibilities: either a sleep-specific mechanism boosts learning, which sets the stage for improved relearning, or sleep allows regularly occurring learning processes to occur without interference, which also boosts memory and expedites relearning. Both possibilities remain viable in this and related research, thus inviting future studies to tease the two apart.
Moreover, while this latest study reveals an important and largely unknown potential benefit of sleep, it remains to be determined whether the same benefits will manifest in other circumstances (such as when relearning non-verbal materials). It is also important to note that Mazza and her colleagues had their sleep and wake groups train at different times of day. In a recent meta-analysis of sleep and motor learning research, Tim Rickard and I found that such “varied time” experimental designs often yield better performance in sleep vs. wake groups regardless of whether there is a sleep-specific learning benefit. This may be due to the fact that humans vary in fatigue levels, alertness, and other characteristics according to the time of day and their natural urge to sleep—differences that may not necessarily manifest in the sleepiness surveys that participants of sleep studies are often asked to take (as occurred in the present study). Further research in which the sleep and wake groups are not subjected to such widely divergent schedules is needed to address this issue.
At present, these new results suggest that sleeping between study sessions can be a particularly potent learning strategy, and especially when learners take the time to repeatedly revisit and relearn in order to achieve a high level of performance. For instance, if a set of materials needs to be completely mastered, such as an official manual in preparation for a licensure exam, then those materials should be repeatedly studied across multiple study sessions and in between periods of sleep. Scheduling those study sessions to occur shortly before going to bed is also likely to improve future remembering and relearning. In a world where an uninterrupted night of sleep seems to be increasingly rare—and many of us try expensive and unproven ways to improve learning and memory—these may be some of the most compelling reasons yet to embrace the Land of Nod. ||||| Abstract
Both repeated practice and sleep improve long-term retention of information. The assumed common mechanism underlying these effects is memory reactivation, either on-line and effortful or off-line and effortless. In the study reported here, we investigated whether sleep-dependent memory consolidation could help to save practice time during relearning. During two sessions occurring 12 hr apart, 40 participants practiced foreign vocabulary until they reached a perfect level of performance. Half of them learned in the morning and relearned in the evening of a single day. The other half learned in the evening of one day, slept, and then relearned in the morning of the next day. Their retention was assessed 1 week later and 6 months later. We found that interleaving sleep between learning sessions not only reduced the amount of practice needed by half but also ensured much better long-term retention. Sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy. | – It's well established through previous research that sleep after learning is best for many memory-related tasks, including word lists, mazes, auditory tones, and so on. Sleep seems so vital to recall that some speculate it is directly responsible for, not just supportive of, learning, reports Scientific American. So researchers out of the University of Lyon chose to investigate another aspect of learning—not recall but relearning, where something previously learned has been forgotten and must be re-acquired. Reporting in the journal Psychological Science in August, they wroite that, coupled with practice, "Sleep makes perfect," and that "sleeping after learning is definitely a good strategy, but sleeping between two learning sessions is a better strategy." The team tested 40 French-speaking adults tasked with learning 16 Swahili words. Some learned them at night, slept, and relearned them in the morning, while others learned the words in the morning, didn't sleep, and relearned them at night. The group that slept between sessions performed so much better that even those who forgot the most words relearned them faster during their morning session than the least forgetful members of the group relearning the words at night. The results don't clarify which is at play—sleep boosting learning, which helps improve later relearning, or sleep simply allowing for uninterrupted learning processes to speed up relearning—but either way, sleeping between studying seems worth a shot. (This woman only sleeps three hours a night.) |
It is of no surprise that the Great Recession had an impact on the retirement plans of many Americans. What is a shock though is just by how much. A component in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households quantifies the number: roughly 40% of people 45 and over who were not yet retired have pushed back their retirement plans.
This is no simple report to ignore, and this can affect the future of many things in America. It can affect Social Security, it can affect the financial markets via contributions and withdrawals of retirement funds, and it can affect the future workforce demographics in that older workers may simply not be removing themselves from the workforce, making it impossible for younger workers to graduate or move up.
In how much (or any) contribution is being made, some 54% of those with incomes under $25,000 reported having no retirement savings or pension. This compares with only 10% of those earning $100,000 or more.
Roughly one-third reported that they plan to retire at the same age as they had planned prior to 2008, and 36% now plan to retire at a later age than before the recession. The age breakdown is where the data gets skewed: some 41% of adults aged 45 and over now plan to retire at a later date than they had before 2008, and only 5% who gave at least some thought to retirement now plan to retire sooner than they had prior to 2008.
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Among those aged 55 to 64 who had not yet retired, only 18% plan to follow the traditional retirement model of working full time until a set date and then stop working altogether. Some 24% expected to keep working as long as possible, and another 18% expected to retire and then work a part-time job. Another 9% said that they expect to retire and then become self-employed.
Another retirement scare is a tale you have heard, but this quantifies it. The Fed showed that although the long-term shift from defined-benefit to defined-contribution (from pension to 401(K) and IRA) plans places significant responsibilities on individuals to plan for their own retirement, only about one-fourth appear to be actively doing so.
Here is the true issue affecting many: they are clueless about their retirement! When asked how they and their spouse will pay for expenses in retirement, a whopping one-fourth of all respondents (and even 14% of those aged 45 or more) chose the answer “I don’t know.”
I don’t know. This is a scarier notion than improper planning — it is not having a plan at all.
We have outlined the full Fed household survey as well. ||||| One in five people who are near retirement age have zero money saved.
Yes, you read that correctly.
The sobering statistic was one of many released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday as part of its report on the economic well-being of U.S. households, which surveyed more than 4,100 people online last year between mid-September and early October.
The study offered a stark reminder that as more Americans are made responsible for their own retirement, most are not saving nearly enough. Overall, 31 percent of people said they have zero money saved for retirement and do not have a pension. That included 19 percent of people between the ages of 55 and 64, or those closest to retirement age.
What's going on here? A lot of people said they rarely thought about retirement, at least not until it was too late. About 41 percent of people ages 18 to 29 said they never thought about retirement planning, a number that understandably declined to 20 percent for people above the age of 60.
But researchers said the dismal saving rates weren't fully explained by lack of caring. They also cited a combination of low resources and poor awareness:
The lack of preparedness is not signaled by a lack of planning alone. Many respondents, particularly those with limited incomes, indicated that they simply have few or no financial resources available for retirement.
For many people, particularly those working part time or earning low wages, the biggest obstacle to a steady retirement savings plan is access. About three-fourths of private sector workers with full-time jobs have access to a retirement plan, but that number drops to 37 percent for part-time workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So, what did workers say about how they expected to cover expenses in retirement? The biggest resource people planned to rely on, whether they had savings or not, was Social Security, which was cited by roughly 45 percent of respondents.
A lot of people said they would just keep working: About one-third of the people surveyed said they delayed their retirement date after the financial crisis. Among the people closest to retirement, those ages 45 and over, that number increases to 41 percent.
Only 18 percent of people said they envisioned having a traditional retirement where they would work full time until a particular date and then stop working completely. About a quarter of respondents said they plan to work as long as possible. And another 18 percent said they expect to take on a part-time job.
Not surprisingly, the most common savings vehicle was a defined contribution plan such as a 401(k) or 403(b), used by 44 percent of the people surveyed. That compares to 18 percent of people who said they were eligible to receive a pension from their employers.
(Correction: This story has been updated to correct that three-fourths of private sector workers with full-time jobs have access to a retirement plan.)
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Americans’ checking accounts are filling with cash, but they’re afraid to spend it
About 100 million Americans are now using credit unions. Should you join them? ||||| New data from the Federal Reserve highlight how many Americans continue to struggle financially more than five years after the end of the Great Recession.
As of September 2013, when the central bank conducted the poll, a quarter of families said they were "just getting by," while an additional 13 percent were struggling to make ends meet.
Asked to compare their current financial situation with how they were faring five years ago, as the housing crash was wreaking havoc on the economy, 34 percent of respondents said they were doing "somewhat or much worse" than in 2008. The same percentage reported essentially treading water, while 30 percent said they were doing better.
"Given that respondents were being asked to compare their incomes to 2008, when the United States was in the depths of the financial crisis, the fact that over two-thirds of respondents reported being the same or worse off financially highlights the uneven nature of the recovery," the Federal Reserve said in the report.
The Fed found that more than 60 percent of U.S. families were either "doing OK" or "living comfortably."
The survey of 4,100 households was conducted between September and October of last year. Since then, economic growth has been inconsistent. The nation's GDP shrank 2.1 percent over the first three months of the year, when harsh winter weather slowed consumer spending and dented the housing sector. But GDP surged to an annualized 4 percent between April and June, while the job market has strengthened in recent months.
Americans' biggest financial concerns centered on three issues, the Fed found: retirement, education and jobs. And even with the economy seemingly on the mend, other findings from the Fed survey highlight the financial challenges many Americans still face.
For instance, a third of households who had applied for credit in the previous 12 months reported being turned down or getting less than they asked for. Meanwhile, 10 percent of households said their income fluctuates significantly from month to month, largely because of an irregular work schedule or because respondents are unemployed.
Wage growth has been soft throughout the recovery, which officially began in June 2009. That has strained household budgets and damped consumer spending, slowing the pace of recovery. Average hourly earnings for all private nonfarm employees was essentially flat last month. Wages are now growing at an annualized rate of only 2 percent, barely keeping earners ahead of inflation this year.
Other key findings from the Fed survey: | – Here's a scary stat for you, spotted by the Washington Post: About 1 in 5 people nearing retirement have no money for retirement. It comes from a newly released survey by the Federal Reserve of about 4,100 Americans. In total, 31% had saved no money for retirement, though the figure improved to 19% for those ages 55 to 64. What's more, 20% of people over 60 said retirement planning hadn't even crossed their minds, which probably explains why 24/7 Wall St. calls this "the next crisis." Another depressing find: Some 40% of non-retirees 45 and over have had to delay their pre-recession retirement plans. The problem doesn't just boil down to poor planning. "Many respondents, particularly those with limited incomes, indicated that they simply have few or no financial resources available for retirement," researchers say. In particular, a quarter of respondents said they were "just getting by," while 13% said they were struggling, CBS News reports. About 45% of people said they planned to rely on Social Security to pay the bills in retirement, while 25% gave the following answer: "I don't know." Just as many said they expected to work as long as they could, and another 18% planned to get a part-time job after retiring. |
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First, there was old-fashioned gambling on football. Then came the fantasy leagues. And now, thanks to Wall Street, fans can buy a stake in their favorite player.
On Thursday, a start-up company announced a new trading exchange for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes. Backed by executives from Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the sports world, the company plans to create stocks tied to an athlete’s financial performance.
After considering a number of possibilities for its inaugural initial public offering, the company found a charismatic candidate in Arian Foster, the Pro Bowl running back of the Houston Texans. Investors in the deal will receive stock linked to Mr. Foster’s future earnings, which includes the value of his playing contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees.
The company, Fantex Holdings, has grand ambitions beyond a Foster I.P.O. ‚ÄĒ it hopes to sign up more football players and other athletes, as well as celebrities like pop singers and Hollywood actors.
But if such an investment sounds speculative, that is because it is. In a filing for the Foster deal with securities regulators, Fantex laid out 37 pages of risk factors, including a possible career-ending injury or a performance slump.
‚ÄúYou are potentially one hit away from losing your money,‚ÄĚ said Bradley Shear, a sports management professor at George Washington University. ‚ÄúOn any given Sunday, anything can happen to any player.‚ÄĚ
Risks aside, the offering is intended to capitalize on the mammoth popularity of the National Football League and fantasy football, where fans draft players and score points for touchdowns, yardage and other notable plays during the season.
If thousands of fans are willing to pay as much as $250 for an Arian Foster jersey, the thinking goes, why wouldn’t they pay up for a few shares of Arian Foster stock?
Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the N.F.L., declined to comment on the deal.
A market of star athletes calls to mind other unusual investments tied to entertainers. In the late 1990s, a financier created Bowie Bonds, a small bond issue that paid interest from the current and future revenue of 25 albums by the rock musician David Bowie. The brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald runs the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a marketplace for bets on the fortunes of movies and their stars, but participants use only play money.
Fantex wants its venture to be anything but make-believe. Investors can now register with the company and soon place orders for the I.P.O. The company will market the I.P.O. in the coming weeks, offering 1.06 million shares at $10 a share, or $10.6 million worth of stock. If demand is insufficient, the company may cancel the deal.
As for Mr. Foster, he will receive a $10 million payment from Fantex upon consummation of the offering. (The balance of the I.P.O. covers the deal’s costs.) In exchange for the payment, Mr. Foster has promised to pay Fantex 20 percent of his future earnings.
The company is effectively financing the $10 million payment to Mr. Foster by raising money from retail investors in an I.P.O. In its filings, Fantex says it believes that the stock is intended to track the economic performance of Mr. Foster’s future brand income.
Still, shareholders will not have a direct investment in Mr. Foster or any control over his brand. The company did say it expected to pay a dividend to holders of the Foster stock.
Shares will trade exclusively on an exchange operated by Fantex. The tracking stock will increase in value if Mr. Foster raises his earnings potential with standout play or increased sponsorships.
Then, the investor can try to sell his shares at a higher price. Fantex will make a 1 percent commission from both the buyer and seller on the trades.
Buck French, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, demurred when asked to predict how the stock might behave in a secondary market.
‚ÄúWe don‚Äôt know how it will trade,‚ÄĚ he said.
A graduate of West Point and Harvard Business School, Mr. French made a fortune during the dot-com boom when, in 2000, he sold OnLink, a software company he founded, to Siebel Systems for about $600 million. One of his Fantex co-founders, David M. Beirne, was a general partner at Benchmark Capital, the venture capital firm that was one of eBay’s earliest investors.
Mr. French said Mr. Beirne conceived of the Fantex concept more than a decade ago when working on a sports-related venture with John Elway, the former Denver Broncos quarterback.
‚ÄúFantex represents a powerful new opportunity for professional athletes, and I wish it were available during my playing days,‚ÄĚ Mr. Elway, a member of Fantex‚Äôs board, said in a statement.
Wall Street executives have also joined the company. Fantex’s president is John Rodin, co-president of the hedge fund Glenview Capital Management and a Goldman Sachs alumnus. Its chief technology officer is Joshua S. Levine, a former senior executive at E*Trade and Deutsche Bank.
A big question is whether other athletes are on the sidelines awaiting a Fantex I.P.O. Mr. French declined to discuss future deals.
On one hand, athletes and their agents could view Fantex as a compelling proposition, providing athletes with a large upfront payment for giving up a certain percentage of their future earnings. Such a payment could act as a hedge against an unexpected downturn in a player’s career.
But advisers could counsel against trading a piece of their future earnings for a big lump sum, as some athletes are notorious for squandering money.
Other considerations are the specter of insider trading violations, and complying with the federal securities laws. Mr. Foster, his friends and his financial team will have to be especially circumspect when discussing issues that might affect his earnings.
A fifth-year veteran from the University of Tennessee, Mr. Foster, 27, has led all running backs in rushing touchdowns two of the last three seasons, while racking up well over 1,000 yards each year. In March 2012, Houston signed Mr. Foster to a contract worth up to $43.5 million over five years. He has a handful of endorsement contracts, including with Under Armour and Kroger Texas.
Half Mexican-American, half black, Mr. Foster is a crowd favorite and media darling who trumpets his passions for poetry and yoga. When he scores, he clasps his hands together and strikes a namaste pose.
‚ÄúWe see Arian as a unique, multidimensional individual, a trailblazer,‚ÄĚ said Mr. French, who added that Fantex cold-called Mr. Foster‚Äôs agent to pitch the idea.
Yet during the first six weeks of this season, Mr. Foster’s production has flagged. He has just one rushing touchdown. Heading into the year, there was concern over various injuries. Off the field, Foster admitted in a documentary released in September that he potentially violated N.C.A.A. rules by accepting money when he was a college player.
Those issues underscore the risk of betting on Mr. Foster’s brand, or that of any professional athletes, especially N.F.L. players. Unlike some other sports, N.F.L. contracts often are not fully guaranteed, meaning players are often cut and forced to find a new team, sometimes for a lesser contract.
For investors, the long-term outlook for a player will be difficult to handicap. If a player‚Äôs fortunes suffer and the tracking stock declines, there will be no rescue financing from a private equity firm ‚ÄĒ or an investor like Warren E. Buffett ‚ÄĒ to stabilize the share price.
And unlike a stockholder of a public company, investors have no corporate governance rights.
There are no plans to hold annual meetings with the athlete, or quarterly conference calls.
Despite all the risks, some football fans appear poised to buy in. As one tweeted on Thursday after reading the news: ‚ÄúWow. This is awesome.‚ÄĚ ||||| Photo: Jeff Gross/Getty Images
There was a time, not too long ago, when a fool who wandered into the world of investments could very well be separated from his money with the help of any number of dumb, overpriced, or downright fraudulent schemes. Then, in 2008, the economy went into freefall, and everyone who had money left held onto their checkbooks a little more tightly. Fear bred caution, and some of the worst offenders in the dumb-money chase were forced to close up shop, or at least become a little more discreet about their advantage-taking.
Now, with five years of air between Lehman Brothers and the present, the seal has been lifted. Athletes and virtual currencies are being traded alongside Ford and General Electric. Venture capitalists are pitching start-up stocks to the unwashed masses. And later today, the SEC is expected to propose new rules that will make it even easier for companies to fleece the unsuspecting public.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the age of bullshit investments is back.
Look around today’s markets and you’ll see a surfeit of senseless investment opportunities wearing the cloak of legitimacy.
You’ll see, on page one of the New York Times, a start-up called Fantex touting a new investment vehicle that allows fans of NFL running back Arian Foster to support his career by purchasing stock that gives them a share of his future earnings. (What didn’t make page one: Foster’s career-worst game the very next Sunday.) This investment opportunity, which will appeal mainly to those too young to remember Bowie Bonds, is a terrible idea on multiple fronts: It bases returns on the unpredictable performance of professional athletes, it gives stock that can only be traded on a private, relatively illiquid exchange, and its single-athlete stock can be converted into common Fantex stock whenever the company feels like it.
Look harder, and you’ll see companies like Goldman Sachs throwing millions of dollars at hare-brained schemes like Motif Investing, a “theme-based stock investment platform” that allows rank amateurs to make up “motifs” of stocks they think are going to behave in a certain, coordinated way. (Professional stock traders do this all the time, without calling it a “motif” strategy — but they don’t charge ordinary people what can amount to double-digit fees, nor do they base their investment decisions on “Companies with lots of Facebook likes,” as Motif suggests.)
You’ll see Bitcoins, the everlasting fascination of Silicon Valley crypto-geeks, being not only spoken about as an investment-grade commodity despite having higher volatility than your average Baldwin brother, but inspiring entire investment vehicles (one of which is structured by celebrity twins) that give ordinary investors as well as the tech-savvy crowd the chance to lose money when the fad runs its course. You’ll also see art dealers trying to convince you that betting on the paintings of unknown artists is a sound portfolio move.
Some of these bad ideas spring from the normal irrational exuberance that comes with an economic bounce-back, and the fact that many investors are more willing to jump into murky waters than they were in 2008. But there are other factors in play, too. The JOBS Act, for one, was a post-crisis law that was meant to make it easier for companies to raise money. Instead, by paving the way for equity crowdfunding and making it possible for private investors to hawk their services like Cracker Jack vendors at Yankee Stadium, the law opened a Pandora’s box of truly unwise investments.
Thanks to the JOBS Act, there are now crowd-funding bazaars that make gambling in the markets as easy as picking a Spotify playlist. There’s also the newest West Coast fund-raising trend, the venture capital syndicate, which makes it possible for average shmoes with little to no market expertise to enter into highly risky investments with early stage start-ups, and which has put the sentence “Miley Cyrus could be the next big tech investor” within the realm of the possible.
There’s a lot to take in, between the NFL-stock-trading and the Miley Cyrus venture capital buffoonery. But the upshot is that between the rise of the social web, the recovering economy, and the deregulatory impact of the JOBS Act, it’s now easier than ever for you to lose money in fun-sounding ways. This is fine if you have disposable income to spare, which many of the people who meet the SEC’s threshold for being an “accredited investor” (someone with a $1 million net worth or an individual annual income of $200,000) do. But other accredited investors are doctors, lawyers, and workaday tech nerds who know next to nothing about the stock markets, but are gullible enough when flashy investments are shined in their faces. For these people, no number of “treat it as casino money” caveats will suffice; they will inevitably succumb to the pitch, and they will lose money.
I’m not the only one noticing that things are getting dangerous. Felix Salmon says that years of near-zero interest rates and the JOBS Act gold rush mean that “even the smart money has started funding companies at utterly bonkers valuations.” Josh Brown, a financial advisor and CNBC regular, told me in an e-mail that the “ludicrous” investing climate “is a byproduct of the giddiness we’re seeing amongst the owners of financial assets. We’ve eclipsed the 2007 peak of household net worth but the makeup is very different. More has accrued to the upper echelon and the lesson that group has learned about the nature of investing is that even if we blow up, the Fed and Congress will ensure that come out of it in even better shape.” And the SEC has been busting record numbers of petty thefts and boiler-room schemes — many of which reflect the intersection of well-intentioned but underinformed investors with slick profiteers claiming to have access to the next big thing.
The truly scary part of what’s happening now is that it’s not a particular asset bubble, nor the sketchy practices of a coterie of bankers, that’s endangering the investment portfolios of normal people. It’s the deregulated system itself that poses the threat. Unlike in 2008, this exuberance won’t end in a sudden crash, brought on by shady practices at large investment firms. It will be a slow flow of assets from the information-deprived to the information-rich, in the form of fees and other completely legal wealth transfers.
Whatever the cause — be it interest rates or income inequality, the JOBS Act or simply the state of the S&P and the folly of man — make no mistake: The investment environment is as hostile to ordinary investors as it’s been in many years. The best course of action is simply to do very little — to invest in low-cost index funds, or just follow Harold Pollack’s now-famous Financial Advice Index Card. But if you must invest in things beyond the ordinary and boring, watch your wallet: Your next big mistake may be just around the corner. ||||| Bitcoins may be getting a lot of buzz, but the market for products that deal with old fashioned dollars and cents is apparently still strong.
To wit: Motif Investing, the Silicon Valley startup headed up by Microsoft alum Hardeep Walia that lets people invest their money in themed groups of stocks called “motifs”, has raised $25 million in a new round of funding led by Goldman Sachs.
This counts as a Series C round for Motif, bringing the total amount of money invested in the company to $51 million since it was founded in mid-2010. All of Motif’s previous investors, including Ignition Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Foundation Capital, also pitched into this new round. As part of the investment Darren Cohen, Goldman’s managing director of principal strategic investments, is joining Motif’s board as an observer.
In an interview this week, Walia told me that Motif’s growth has been strong since it officially launched its platform to the public last summer. To date more than 7500 “motifs” have been created, which are investment indexes that let people invest in genres such as “Biotech Breakthrough” or “Housing Recovery” as opposed to buying individual stocks or putting complete trust in a mutual fund or ETF.
Motif, which Walia bills as a “Facebook meets eTrade meets Mint.com,” does not collect management fees, which is another thing that sets it apart from traditional money management vehicles. It makes money by charging a flat $9.95 fee to make a motif (which can include up to 30 stocks) and in several other ways, such as collecting margins on investments and selling value-added services and products. In the months since launch, the platform has attracted a diverse user base ranging from “ultra high-net-worth individuals” who primarily appreciate that Motif does not charge management fees, to “newbie investors” who appreciate the site’s natural language approach, Walia says.
With the fresh Series C funds, Walia says that Motif will work on further developing its product for financial advisors, which will let professional consultants use Motif’s investment platform with their own clients. There are other new products in the works, as well, he says. Motif’s own staff, meanwhile, has grown to 40 full-time employees, and the funding will also be used to continue to add talent (with a special focus, not surprisingly, on engineering.)
When asked about strategic options — after all, Goldman Sachs doesn’t exactly invest in companies without an eye on getting a return — Walia said that he’s focused on building Motif as “a company that lasts and is independent, so that we can continue to disrupt this space.”
That said, Walia, whose resume includes time on the M&A team at Microsoft, did acknowledge that Motif could make sense as an acquisition target, especially for established entities that deal in ETFs, stock brokering, and financial services. “A lot of people have found what we do quite fascinating… we are very attractive to certain players.” For now, though, Motif certainly has the vision — and funding — necessary to continue to grow as a standalone entity, and it should continue to be one to watch at the intersection of finance and technology. | – Hang on to your wallets, folks, because "the age of bull---- investments is back," declares Kevin Roose at New York. The collapse of 2008 put a damper on things, but today the financial world is filled with crazy schemes and iffy start-ups designed to separate suckers from their money. Want to buy stock in a football player? Have at it. Heard of "Motif Investing"? Good luck with that. Care to join the Winklevoss twins by investing in Bitcoins? Fine. "Some of these bad ideas spring from the normal irrational exuberance that comes with an economic bounce-back, and the fact that many investors are more willing to jump into murky waters than they were in 2008," writes Roose. But he also blames the JOBS Act, put in place after the financial crisis to help companies raise money, for unleashing a wave of these dumb investments. "The upshot is that between the rise of the social web, the recovering economy, and the deregulatory impact of the JOBS Act, it's now easier than ever for you to lose money in fun-sounding ways." That's fine if you've got money to burn, but ordinary investors should pay heed. Click for the full column. |
The jury’s out on just how seriously Democratic candidate Dan Adler should be taken in the crowded primary to replace departed Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) in California’s 36th district, but the career entertainment executive is drawing plenty of attention for his bizarre — and possibly offensive — ad campaign.
In his latest ad, Adler hangs out with a multi-ethnic crowd touting his appeal to Asian voters by pointing out that he’s married to a Korean and that — as a Jew — he can understand what it’s like to be a minority. In a weird and seemingly quite patronizing twist, a heavily-accented Korean immigrant woman in a laundromat awkwardly interrupts him throughout the ad, finally asking the camera “What’s a mensch?” The clip is drawing attention from viral video sites.
It seems clear that Adler, who is backed by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, is going the “Demon Sheep” route, using ads specifically designed to spread online out of shock value or just sheer weirdness. In another out-there spot, former child star Patty Duke declares “Dan Adler: He Gets Shit Done.”
In a similarly foul-mouthed video, Adler ups the shock factor to 11 by having his own young son deliver the catchphrase. He then proceeds to make a special effects-assisted dunk on a garage basketball hoop that would put Blake Griffin to shame.
Benjy Sarlin Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun. | – Dan Adler is campaigning for Jane Harman's vacated House seat, and the California Democrat has an odd, possibly offensive reason certain people should vote for him: His wife is Korean! Oh, and he himself is Jewish, and as his odd campaign ad states, "We minorities should stick together." On Talking Points Memo, Benjy Sarlin notes that the most "patronizing" part of the commercial is the "heavily-accented Korean immigrant woman in a laundromat awkwardly [interrupting] him throughout the ad." And in New York, Dan Amira concludes that if Adler "didn't have a Korean wife, this might one of the most racist campaign ads we've ever seen." |
President-elect Donald Trump answers questions from the media during transition team meetings at the Mar-a-Lago Club on Dec. 28. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
After having repeatedly praised President Obama’s efforts to ensure a smooth transition, President-elect Donald Trump reversed course on Wednesday, accusing the current occupant of the Oval Office of putting “roadblocks” in his way.
Trump took to Twitter shortly after 9 a.m., saying he was “doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.”
Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
“Thought it was going to be a smooth transition — NOT!” the Republican president-elect wrote.
The White House declined to comment on Trump's tweet and others that followed.
President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump had kind words for each other in the aftermath of the election. Then things seemed to change after Christmas. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Trump’s assessment comes amid days of verbal sparring between the outgoing and incoming president. During a ceremony Tuesday marking the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, Obama cautioned against “the urge to turn inward” and stressed a need to “resist the urge to demonize those who are different” — remarks some thought were aimed partly at Trump.
Trump also made it clear Wednesday that he is perturbed by a number of steps the Obama administration is taking in its final weeks related to Israel, including a speech that was planned Wednesday by Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Middle East policy.
We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but....... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
“We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect,” Trump wrote in another series of tweets. “They used to have a good friend in the U.S., but … not anymore.”
Trump said the “beginning of the end” was the “horrible” Iran nuclear deal reached last year that was supported by a coalition of world powers but vigorously opposed by Israel.
Trump was also highly critical this week of the Obama administration’s refusal to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to his inauguration date.
During a conference call with reporters later Wednesday morning, transition spokesman Sean Spicer at first declined to elaborate on Trump's tweets, saying they “speak for themselves.” He later said that Obama and his administration officials have been generous with their time during the transition process and helpful with “mechanical” issues.
On Wednesday afternoon, during a brief appearance before reporters at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump was asked about whether he thinks the transition is going smoothly.
“Oh, I think very, very smoothly,” he replied. “Very good. You don't think so?”
Trump also sounded more conciliatory later in the afternoon, when he told reporters that Obama had called him earlier in the day.
“He called me, we had a very nice conversation,” Trump said, without offering much elaboration.
Trump’s view of his Democratic predecessor soured earlier this week when Obama said on a podcast hosted by his former adviser, David Axelrod, that he thought he could have prevailed in an election over Trump.
[President Obama says he could have beaten Trump — Trump says ‘NO WAY!’]
Those comments prompted two tweets in as many days from Trump contesting Obama’s assessment. On Tuesday, Trump chided Obama for the failure of his campaign efforts on behalf of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to bear fruit.
“President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states and lost,” Trump said in a tweet. “The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. ||||| (European Pressphoto Agency)
John F. Kerry is nothing if not indefatigable, traveling to all corners of the world as America’s top diplomat over the last four years. But as he prepares to leave office, he confronts a mixed legacy: a handful of successes coupled with searing defeats, especially in the Middle East.
His inability to halt the carnage in Syria, or to block Russia’s growing influence, ranks as the most serious blot on his record. But he also got nowhere trying to end the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, or to stop Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, from bombing civilians in Yemen.
Kerry’s greatest success was the historic accord to curtail Iran’s nuclear development program and a landmark climate change treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions and slow global warming. ||||| Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT! ||||| President-elect Donald Trump said he had a "nice conversation" with President Barack Obama Wednesday following a string of tweets in which he went so far as to suggest that the sitting president was disrupting the smooth transition of power.
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"He phoned me, we had a very nice conversation," Trump told reporters today outside his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. "We had a general conversation."
Later this evening, Trump stepped out again, this time with Don King by his side, and emphasized that he had a "good talk" with Obama. "I actually thought we covered a lot of good territory," he said.
Trump also said he will hold a press conference in early January. The president-elect has not held a full press conference since the election.
Tweeting earlier in the day from the Mar-a-Lago, where he's spending the holidays with his family, Trump wrote, "Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!"
Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016
Trump's tweet followed an interview in which Obama claimed that he would have won with his message of hope if he had faced off against Trump in the 2016 election.
"I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it," Obama said.
Tonight, Trump addressed Obama's remark, saying, "Nobody's ever going to know because we're never going to be going against each other in that way."
Asked on a morning conference call to clarify the roadblocks to which Trump referred, his pick for White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said he would let Trump's tweets "speak for themselves."
Trump briefly emerged from Mar-a-Lago this afternoon and fielded a question from ABC News about whether the transition of power was going smoothly.
"I think very, very smoothly, very good," Trump said. "You don't think so?"
The White House earlier this month notably defended a decision by the Energy Department not to comply with a request from the Trump transition team to provide names of employees who worked on the Obama administration's climate policy efforts.
Obama has repeatedly committed to a peaceful and smooth transition of power, keeping with centuries of American tradition, and said that he will, despite his disagreements with Trump during the campaign, escort him to the Capitol and attend his inauguration on Jan. 20. | – It looks like the honeymoon is over between Trump and Obama. "Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition—NOT!" Trump tweeted Wednesday. The Los Angeles Times notes Trump's use of "1990s-style sarcasm." Trump had previously commended Obama on his commitment to a smooth transition of power, but a number of things have changed since then, the Washington Post reports. Many saw comments made by Obama during Tuesday's Pearl Harbor anniversary as directed at Trump. The president urged the US not to "turn inward" and to "resist the urge to demonize those who are different." Trump is also upset with the Obama administration for allowing the UN to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, as well as with Obama personally for saying in an interview he could have beaten Trump and won a third term. In addition, the White House is defending the Department of Energy for not complying with a request from Trump's transition team for the names of employees involved in climate policy, ABC News reports. Transition team spokesperson Sean Spicer at first said Trump's tweets "speak for themselves, very clearly," but later complimented members of the Obama administration for being "helpful and generous with their time." |
(CNN) Nathan "Bodie" Barksdale, the inspiration behind the show "The Wire," has died in a federal prison. He was 54.
Barksdale passed away from natural causes after being sick for a period of time, a spokesperson for the Baltimore City Health Department, Sean Naron, told CNN.
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Oxley -- co-author of a landmark anti-corporate-fraud law that bears his name -- died on January 1. He was 71.
Producer Robert Stigwood , the creative force behind "Saturday Night Fever," "Grease" and other cultural blockbusters of the 1970s, died on January 4. He was 81.
French fashion designer Andre Courreges, famous for his "space age" designs of the 1960s and 1970s, died on January 7, his family told CNN affiliate France 3. He was 92.
French fashion designer Andre Courreges, famous for his "space age" designs of the 1960s and 1970s, died on January 7, his family told CNN affiliate France 3. He was 92.
Baseball Hall of Fame outfielder Monte Irvin died January 11 at the age of 96. Irvin was regarded as one of the best hitters and all-around players in the Negro League, making five All-Star teams. He became one of the first African-Americans to play in the majors, and he played a vital role in the New York Giants' World Series runs in 1951 and 1954.
At left is Bob Elliott , half of the TV and radio comedy duo Bob and Ray. He died February 2 at the age of 92. For several decades, Elliott and Ray Goulding's program parodies and deadpan routines were staples of radio and television. Elliott was the father of comedian and actor Chris Elliott and the grandfather of "Saturday Night Live" cast member Abby Elliott.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia , the leading conservative voice on the high court, died at the age of 79, a government source and a family friend told CNN on February 13.
Singer Sonny James , who ruled the country music charts for nearly 20 years, died February 22 at the age of 87.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan , who joined her husband on a storybook journey from Hollywood to the White House, died of heart failure on March 6. She was known as a fierce protector of her husband, President Ronald Reagan, as well as a spokeswoman of the "just say no" anti-drug campaign. She was 94.
Actor Larry Drake , best known for his role as Benny on "L.A. Law," died at his home in Los Angeles on March 17, according to his manager Steven Siebert. Drake was 66.
Malik Taylor, better known to fans as Phife Dawg of the rap group A Tribe Called Quest, died March 23 at the age of 45. He's seen here at center during a performance in 1996. Taylor had long suffered from health issues associated with having Type 1 diabetes. In 2008, he underwent a kidney transplant.
Author and poet Jim Harrison died March 26 at his winter home in Arizona. He was 78. His many books include "Legends of the Fall," which was made into a 1994 movie starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.
Actor James Noble , who played Gov. Eugene X. Gatling in the television series "Benson," died from a stroke on March 28. He was 94.
Actress Patty Duke , star of "The Patty Duke Show," died March 29, at the age of 69. Duke won an Academy Award at age 16 for playing Helen Keller in 1962's "The Miracle Worker."
Architect Zaha Hadid , whose designs include the London Olympic Aquatic Centre, died March 31, a spokesperson from Zaha Hadid Design told CNN. She was 65. Hadid died of a heart attack in a Miami hospital where she was being treated for bronchitis, according to her firm's press office.
Country music legend Merle Haggard died on April 6 -- his 79th birthday -- of complications from pneumonia, his agent Lance Roberts told CNN.
Actress Doris Roberts , best known for her role as Marie Barone on the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," died April 17. She was 90.
The musician Prince died at his home in Minnesota on April 21 at age 57. The medical examiner later determined he died of an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl.
Grammy-winning songwriter Guy Clark died May 17 at the age of 74. The Texas native died after a long illness, according to a statement from his publicist.
CBS News legend Morley Safer , whose work on "60 Minutes" embodied the show's 50 years on air, died at the age of 84, according to CBS on May 19.
Actor Alan Young , known for his role as Wilbur Post in the television show "Mr. Ed," died on May 19. He was 96.
Drummer Nick Menza , who played on many of Megadeth's most successful albums, died after collapsing on stage during a show with his current band, Ohm, on May 21. He was 51.
Mixed martial arts fighter Kimbo Slice died June 6 at the age of 42. Slice, whose real name was Kevin Ferguson, initially gained fame from online videos that showed him engaging in backyard bare-knuckle fights. He then became a professional fighter with a natural charisma that endeared him to fans.
Hockey legend Gordie Howe , left, scored 801 goals in his NHL career and won four Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings. Howe, also known as "Mr. Hockey," died June 10 at the age of 88, his son Marty said.
Singer Christina Grimmie died June 11 from gunshot wounds. The 22-year-old singer, who finished third on season 6 of "The Voice" on NBC, was shot while signing autographs after a concert in Orlando.
Singer Attrell Cordes , known as Prince Be of the music duo P.M. Dawn, died June 17 after suffering from diabetes and renal kidney disease, according to a statement from the group. He was 46.
Actor Ron Lester , who portrayed Billy Bob in the 1999 football movie "Varsity Blues," died June 17 at the age of 45, according to his representative Dave Bradley. Bradley said Lester died of organ failure -- specifically his liver and his kidneys. Lester had openly talked about his struggle with his illness on Twitter.
Bluegrass music pioneer Ralph Stanley died June 23 at the age of 89, publicist Kirt Webster announced on Stanley's official website. Stanley was already famous in bluegrass and roots music circles when the 2000 hit movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" thrust him into the mainstream. He provided a haunting a cappella version of the dirge "O Death" and ended up winning a Grammy.
Scotty Moore, a legendary guitarist credited with helping to launch Elvis Presley's career, died at the age of 84 on June 28. Moore is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he was ranked No. 29 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
Scotty Moore, a legendary guitarist credited with helping to launch Elvis Presley's career, died at the age of 84 on June 28. Moore is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he was ranked No. 29 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel died at the age of 87 on July 2. Wiesel's book "La Nuit" is the story of the Wiesel family being sent to Nazi concentration camps.
Director Michael Cimino , whose searing 1978 Vietnam War drama "The Deer Hunter" won five Oscars, including best picture, died July 2. He was 77.
Actress Noel Neill , who played Lois Lane in the 1950s TV version of "Superman," died July 3 at the age of 95.
Actor David Huddleston , perhaps best known for his role in the 1998 film "The Big Lebowski," died August 2 at the age of 85.
Famous New Orleans jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain died August 6 of heart failure. He was 86.
British actor Kenny Bake r, best known for playing R2-D2 in the "Star Wars" films, died on August 13, Baker's niece, Abigail Shield, told CNN. He was 81.
Actor Steven Hill , best known for playing District Attorney Adam Schiff on NBC's "Law & Order," died August 23, his son confirmed to CNN. He was 94.
Mexican music icon Juan Gabriel, who wooed audiences with soulful pop ballads that made him a Latin American music legend, died August 28 at the age of 66.
Actor Gene Wilder , who brought a wild-eyed desperation to a series of memorable and iconic comedy roles in the 1970s and 1980s, died August 29 at the age of 83. Some of his most famous films include "Young Frankenstein," "Blazing Saddles" and "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."
Character actor Jon Polito, who appeared in films such as "American Gangster" and "The Big Lebowski," died September 2, his manager confirmed. He was 65.
Character actor Jon Polito, who appeared in films such as "American Gangster" and "The Big Lebowski," died September 2, his manager confirmed. He was 65.
Actor Hugh O'Brian , best known for his portrayal of the title role in the 1950's TV Western "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp," died on September 5. He was 91.
Legendary playwright Edward Albee -- whose works included "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" -- died at the age of 88 after a short illness, according to his personal assistant Jakob Holder. Albee died September 16 at his home in Montauk, New York.
"L.A. Confidential" director and writer Curtis Hanson , 71, died of natural causes on September 20, Los Angeles police said. He won an Oscar with Brian Helgeland for the screenplay on "L.A. Confidential," and he also directed "8 Mile" and "Wonder Boys."
Grammy and Emmy Award winner Stanley Dural Jr., also known as Buckwheat Zydeco, died September 24 in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was 68.
Veteran actor Bill Nunn, best known for playing Radio Raheem in "Do the Right Thing" and Robbie Robertson in the "Spider-Man" trilogy, died September 24 at age 63.
Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez , one of baseball's brightest stars, was killed in a boating accident September 25, Florida authorities said. He was 24.
Golfing legend Arnold Palmer , who helped turn the sport from a country club pursuit to one that became accessible to the masses, died September 25 at the age of 87, according to the U.S. Golf Association.
Award-winning author Gloria Naylor , whose explorations of the lives of black women in the 1980s and 1990s earned her wide acclaim, died on September 28. She was 66.
Actor Tommy Ford , best known for his role as Tommy in the 1990s hit sitcom "Martin," died in Atlanta, a spokeswoman for his family announced on October 12. Ford was 52.
Actor and comedian Kevin Meaney , who had been a regular on late-night TV and was famous for delivering the line, "That's not right," died, his agent said October 21. Meaney's age and the cause of death weren't immediately known.
Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen died at the age of 82, according to a post on his official Facebook page on November 10. A highly respected artist known for his poetic and lyrical music, Cohen wrote a number of popular songs, including the often-covered "Hallelujah."
Actor Ron Glass , known for his role on the police sitcom "Barney Miller," died November 25, his agent said. Glass also starred in "Firefly" and its film sequel "Serenity."
Actor Alan Thicke , known for his role as the father in the sitcom "Growing Pains," died on December 13, according to his agent, Tracy Mapes. He was 69. Thicke's career spanned five decades -- one in which he played various roles on and off screen, from actor to writer to composer to author.
English novelist Richard Adams , author of the famous children's book "Watership Down," died at the age of 96 on December 24.
Singer George Michael , who shot to fame with the '80s band Wham!, died on Christmas Day, according to Britain's Press Association. He was 53 years old.
Actor and comedian Ricky Harris , who was a regular on the TV sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris" and first gained attention on HBO's "Def Comedy Jam," died December 26, according to his publicist. He was 54.
Actress Carrie Fisher , best known for her role as Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" franchises, died December 27, according to her daughter's publicist. Fisher had suffered a cardiac event on December 23. She was 60 years old.
Barksdale was a notorious criminal in Baltimore in the 1980s. According to the Baltimore Sun , he ran a violent heroin-dealing operation in the Murphy Homes public housing complex.
Barksdale is also said to be the inspiration for a number of key characters in "The Wire," the critically acclaimed HBO series that chronicled life in the Baltimore projects. He's specifically thought to be the true story behind the ruthless drug king pin character "Avon Barksdale."
'This is real'
In 2010, Barksdale released a DVD that dramatized his own life, entitled " The Avon Barksdale Story: Legends of the Unwired ."
Actor Wood Harris, who portrayed "Avon Barksdale" in "The Wire".
In the low budget documentary he is interviewed by Wood Harris, who played Avon in the hit series.
"In real life," the narrator claims, "he was one of the most notorious gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen. He was a magnet for violence."
In a series of on-camera interviews, Barksdale talks about his early days as a pickpocket in the projects and his progression into more violent crime. He was reportedly shot over 20 times and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee.
"I've been paralyzed, I was temporarily blind," he tells Harris. "It's horrible being shot."
But series creator David Simon told The Baltimore Sun that the two men were not one and the same.
Characters from the HBO series, "The Wire".
"There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," Simon said to the paper in 2013
"We mangled street and given names throughout 'The Wire' so that it was a general shout-out to the west-side players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character." The series did also feature a low-level dealer in the fictional Barksdale organization called "Bodie."
While never matching the audiences of other big HBO series, the authenticity of "The Wire" inspired a passionate following. It's portrayal of a morally gray universe, set against an equally gray Baltimore backdrop, regularly has it being cited by critics as one of the most accomplished television series ever made.
"I said to the man, just don't make me a snitch," Barksdale said of being fictionalized by Simon in the show. "Ain't nothing I can do to stop it, just don't do that, and I won't kill your ass." ||||| Nathan Barksdale, the former Baltimore gangster who inspired characters in "The Wire," died in a federal medical prison in North Carolina on Saturday. He was 54.
Barksdale, who went by the nickname "Bodie," was a notorious Baltimore criminal in the 1980s, running a violent heroin-dealing operation in the Murphy Homes public housing complex. He was shot more than 20 times and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee.
He later worked with the anti-violence Safe Streets program. But he was arrested in 2014 and pleaded guilty to taking part in a heroin conspiracy with members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang.
Key characters on "The Wire," the gritty HBO drama set in Baltimore, included the drug kingpin Avon Barksdale and a dealer named "Bodie" Broadus.
Nathan Barksdale embraced the connection. He released a DVD that chronicled his life, in which he was interviewed by the actor Wood Harris, who played the Avon Barksdale character.
"In real life he was one of the most notorious and resilient gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen," the narrator says. "He was a magnet for violence."
Have you ever found yourself wondering, "Where's Wallace?" Turns out, he was starring in a little movie called "Black Panther." In honor of the 10th anniversary of the finale of "The Wire," see what the series' stars have been up to for the past decade.
A spokesman for the city Health Department, for which Barksdale worked in the Safe Streets program, and an official at the Butner, N.C., medical prison where he died confirmed his death from an undisclosed illness. Attempts to reach his family were unsuccessful.
Barksdale said he left a life of crime. But he was ensnared in a Drug Enforcement Administration wiretap investigation in 2014, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison.
"I got busted," Barksdale said at his plea hearing.
Still, he said, he thought he had more work to do in the community.
Akio Evans, a local video director, this week recalled watching Barksdale counsel young people on how to avoid his mistakes.
"I did some good," Barksdale said at sentencing. "I'd like to think I saved some lives."
U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III responded: "You paid back, but you took a lot. So you still owe."
Barksdale said he had lapsed back into heroin addiction and had been running a scam to feed his habit. He said he would try to get samples of heroin, promising to pass them on to big-time dealers, but would use the drugs himself.
Barksdale presided over a lucrative heroin ring in the mid-1980s that authorities said controlled much of the drug traffic in now-demolished public housing such as the Lexington Terrace apartments and the George B. Murphy Homes.
Barksdale was acquitted in August 1982 in the killing of Frank Harper, a drug trafficker who had been Barksdale's mentor in the trade.
He was convicted in early 1985 of torturing three people in an 11th-floor apartment in Murphy Homes. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
David Simon, who created "The Wire," said in 2014 that Barksdale did inspire aspects of certain characters, but was not specifically the basis for the Avon Barksdale character.
"There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," Simon said. "We mangled street and given names throughout 'The Wire' so that it was a general shout-out to the Westside players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character."
justin.fenton@baltsun.com | – Nathan "Bodie" Barksdale, the former Baltimore gangster who inspired characters in the HBO series The Wire, has died in a federal medical prison in North Carolina. He was 54. He was shot more than 20 times in his life and had to have his right leg amputated below the knee while running a heroin-dealing operation in Baltimore in the 1980s, but he died of natural causes on Saturday after a period of illness, a rep for the Baltimore City Health Department tells CNN. In a 2010 documentary on Barksdale's life, a narrator calls the ex-gangster "a magnet for violence" and "one of the most notorious and resilient gangster drug kingpins Baltimore has ever seen," per the Baltimore Sun. In 1985, he was convicted of torturing three people and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He later assisted an anti-violence program in Baltimore but was arrested again in 2014. He told a judge he was addicted to heroin and running a scam to get access to the drug. He was sentenced to four more years behind bars. "There are some anecdotal connections between his story and a multitude of characters," The Wire creator David Simon said in 2014. "We mangled street and given names throughout The Wire so that it was a general shoutout to the Westside players. But there is nothing that corresponds to a specific character." Characters on the show included drug kingpin Avon Barksdale and dealer "Bodie" Broadus. |
Retired Army Gen. Alexander Haig, who held influential positions in the U.S. military and government and who as White House chief of staff shepherded Richard M. Nixon toward peacefully resigning the presidency, died Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore of complications from an infection. He was 85.
Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter sent the four-star general to Europe as supreme commander of NATO. Ronald Reagan made him secretary of state, a brief and stormy appointment in which he famously tried to assert command after the attempted assassination of the president. And Gen. Haig himself, a tall man with blue eyes who kept his chin-up military bearing long after he left the service, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988.
In a statement, President Obama said Gen. Haig "exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service."
Gen. Haig's influence peaked in his late 40s, during Nixon's last 16 months in office, when brewing developments in the Watergate scandal damaged and increasingly distracted the president. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously told Gen. Haig to keep the country together while he held the world together during one of the greatest constitutional crises in the nation's history. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski, and many others, called Gen. Haig the "37 1/2 president."
Gen. Haig, untainted by the botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, took over as chief of staff in May 1973 from H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, who would spend 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. When the public learned about the secret Oval Office taping system, which would eventually implicate Nixon in the coverup, Gen. Haig, as he acknowledged later, urged the president to destroy the tapes.
When Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Jaworski's predecessor, pursued his investigation too aggressively for Nixon's comfort, the president dispatched Gen. Haig in October 1973 to instruct the acting attorney general, William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. "Your commander in chief has given you an order," Gen. Haig told him.
Ruckelshaus refused, quitting instead in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
Although Gen. Haig vigorously defended the president, he realized the direness of the mounting evidence and arranged a series of meetings between Nixon, his attorneys and leading members of Congress to make Nixon understand that his position had become untenable in the summer of 1974.
Gen. Haig said he thought Nixon needed to make the final decision, but he "smoothed the way" by presenting resignation as the only serious option, according to the account of this period in journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's 1976 book "The Final Days." After the president broached the possibility of suicide, the authors noted, Gen. Haig ordered doctors to take away Nixon's tranquilizers and deny his requests for pills.
Then, on Aug. 1, 1974, Gen. Haig told Vice President Ford that he should prepare to assume the presidency. Critics said later that he brokered a deal that got Nixon a pardon in exchange for stepping down. Gen. Haig maintained that he never implicitly or explicitly made such an offer.
Gen. Haig stood on the White House lawn eight days later, on Aug. 9, when Nixon left town. The chief of staff had his arms folded, but he discreetly gave a thumbs-up to his disgraced boss.
Powerful mentors
Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. was born on Dec. 2, 1924, in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, Pa. He was 10 when his father, a lawyer, died of cancer and left the family $5,000 in life insurance money. Gen. Haig was the second of three children, but he assumed an important role in family matters as the oldest male. ||||| Seven years before, Mr. Haig really had been in control. He was widely perceived as the acting president during the final months of the Nixon administration.
He kept the White House running as the distraught and despondent commander in chief was driven from power by the threat of impeachment in 1974. “He was the president toward the end,” William B. Saxbe, the United States attorney general in 1974, was quoted as saying in “Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency” (HarperCollins, 1994). “He held that office together.”
Henry A. Kissinger , his mentor and master in the Nixon White House, also said the nation owed Mr. Haig its gratitude for steering the ship of state through dangerous waters in the final days of the Nixon era. “By sheer willpower, dedication and self-discipline, he held the government together,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in the memoir “Years of Upheaval.”
Mr. Haig took pride in his cool handling of a constitutional crisis without precedent.
“There were no tanks,” he said during a hearing on his nomination as secretary of state in 1981. “There were not any sandbags outside the White House.”
Serving the Nixon White House from 1969 to 1974, Mr. Haig went from colonel to four-star general without holding a major battlefield command, an extraordinary rise with few if any precedents in American military history.
But the White House was its own battlefield in those years. He won his stars through his tireless service to President Richard M. Nixon and Mr. Nixon’s national security adviser, Mr. Kissinger.
Mr. Haig never lost his will. But he frequently lost his composure as Mr. Reagan’s secretary of state. As a consequence, he lost both his job and his standing in the American government.
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Mr. Nixon had privately suggested to the Reagan transition team that Mr. Haig would make a great secretary of state. Upon his appointment, Mr. Haig declared himself “the vicar of foreign policy” — in the Roman Catholic Church , to which he belonged, the pope is the “vicar of Christ” — but he soon became an apostate in the new administration.
He alienated his affable commander in chief and the vice president, George H. W. Bush , whose national security aide, Donald P. Gregg, described Mr. Haig as “a cobra among garter snakes.”
Mr. Haig served for 17 months before Mr. Reagan dismissed him with a one-page letter on June 24, 1982.
Those months were marked by a largely covert paramilitary campaign against Central American leftists, a heightening of nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union, and dismay among American allies about the lurching course of American foreign policy.
Sixteen months after his departure came the deaths of 241 American Marines , sailors and soldiers in a terrorist bombing in Beirut and, two days later, the American invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada .
“His tenure as secretary of state was very traumatic,” John M. Poindexter , later Mr. Reagan’s national security adviser, recalled in the oral history “Reagan: The Man and His Presidency” (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). “As a result of this constant tension that existed between the White House and the State Department about who was going to be responsible for national security and foreign policy, we got very little done.”
Mr. Haig said the president had assured him that he “would be the spokesman for the U.S. government.” But he came to believe — with reason — that the White House staff had banded together against him.
He blamed in particular the so-called troika of James A. Baker III , Edwin Meese III and Michael K. Deaver.
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“Reagan was a cipher,” Mr. Haig said with evident bitterness. “These men were running the government.”
He reflected: “Having been a White House chief of staff, and having lived in the White House under great tension, you know that the White House attracts extremely ambitious people. Those who get to the top are usually prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get there.”
Mr. Haig briefly considered running for president in 1980 and became a candidate in 1988, but his campaign attracted virtually no popular support.
A spokesman for Johns Hopkins, Gary Stephenson, said Mr. Haig’s death was caused by staphylococcal infection that he had before his admission to the hospital. Mr. Haig is survived by his wife, the former Patricia Fox, 81; their three children, Alexander Patrick Haig Sr. and Barbara Haig, both of Washington, and Brian Haig of Hopewell, N.J.; and eight grandchildren, according to the Rev. Frank Haig, 81, his brother and a professor emeritus of physics at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore.
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Father Haig said the Army was coordinating a Mass at Fort Myer in Washington and an interment at Arlington National Cemetery, but both would be delayed by about two weeks due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq .
In a statement issued Saturday, President Obama said: “Today we mourn the loss of Alexander Haig, a great American who served our country with distinction. General Haig exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service.”
Alexander Meigs Haig Jr. was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 2, 1924, the son of a lawyer and a homemaker. At 22, he graduated from West Point , ranking 214th of 310 members of the class of 1947.
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As a young lieutenant, he went to Japan to serve as an aide to Gen. Alonzo P. Fox, deputy chief of staff to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the supreme allied commander and American viceroy of the Far East.
In 1950, Mr. Haig married the general’s daughter.
Introduction to War
Mr. Haig’s first taste of war was brutal. In the first months of the Korean War, he served on the staff of Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond, chief of staff of the Far Eastern Command. Official Army histories depict General Almond as a terror to his underlings and as one of General MacArthur’s most uncompromising disciples.
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Following orders, General Almond sent thousands of American soldiers north toward the Chinese border in November 1950. They met a ferocious surprise counterattack from a far larger Chinese force.
General Almond and Lieutenant Haig flew to the forward outpost of an American task force on Nov. 28, where the general pinned a medal on a lieutenant colonel’s parka, told him the Chinese were only stragglers, and then flew off. Of that task force, once 2,500 strong, some 1,000 were killed, wounded, captured or left to die. In all, within two weeks, American forces in Korea took 12,975 casualties, in one of the worst routs in American military history.
After the Korean War, the young officer served at the Pentagon and eventually become a deputy special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara . He served in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967 as a battalion and brigade commander of the First Infantry Division, and received the Distinguished Service Cross.
In 1969, Colonel Haig became a military assistant on the staff of Mr. Kissinger’s National Security Council . He distinguished himself as the hardest worker in an ambitious and talented cohort. Soon he was a brigadier general and Mr. Kissinger’s deputy.
Vietnam consumed General Haig. He made 14 trips to Southeast Asia from 1970 to 1973. He later said that Mr. Kissinger “got snookered” in negotiations with the enemy, and that he would have chosen to be more forceful. “That is how Eisenhower settled Korea,” Mr. Haig said. “He told them he was going to nuke them. In Vietnam, we didn’t have to use nuclear weapons; all we had to do was to act like a nation.”
Then Watergate consumed the White House. In 1973, after a brief stint as the Army’s vice chief of staff, General Haig was summoned back as chief of staff, replacing H. R. Haldeman, who later went to prison.
All this, in the course of a few weeks in the fall of 1973, fell on Mr. Haig’s head:
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to taking bribes. The next man in line under the Constitution, House Speaker Carl Albert, was being treated for alcoholism . The president himself, by some accounts, was drinking heavily. War broke out in the Middle East . When the president tried to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox , rather than surrender his secret White House tapes, the attorney general, Elliot L. Richardson, and his deputy, William D. Ruckelshaus, resigned. Impeachment loomed.
What began with the arrest of several men breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington in June 1972 had poisoned the presidency. Days after the break-in, the president and his closest aides had discussed how to cover up their role and how to obtain hush money for the burglars. The discussions, secretly taped by the president, were evidence of obstruction of justice.
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General Haig was one of the first people, if not the very first person, to read transcripts of the tapes the president had withheld from the special prosecutor. “When I finished reading it,” he says in “Nixon: An Oral History,” “I knew that Nixon would never survive — no way.”
On Aug. 1, 1974, the general went to Vice President Gerald R. Ford and discussed the possibility of a pardon for the president. Mr. Nixon left office a week later; the pardon came the next month. Public outrage was deep. Mr. Haig soon departed.
After leaving the White House in October 1974, he became supreme allied commander in Europe , the overseer of NATO . In 1979, he resigned and retired from the Army. He served for a year as president of United Technologies .
A “Haig for President” committee was formed but dissolved in 1980. Mr. Haig made a full-fledged run for the Republican nomination in 1988. But he placed last among the six Republican candidates in Iowa , where he barely campaigned, and he withdrew before the New Hampshire primary. He had been, he said, “the darkest of the dark horses.”
In his 80s, Mr. Haig ran Worldwide Associates, a firm offering “strategic advice” on global commerce. He also appeared on Fox News as a military and political analyst.
His Way With Words
He had a unique way with words. In a 1981 “On Language” column, William Safire of The New York Times , a veteran of the Nixon White House, called it “haigravation.”
Nouns became verbs or adverbs: “I’ll have to caveat my response, Senator.” (Caveat is Latin for “let him beware.” In English, it means “warning.” In Mr. Haig’s lexicon, it meant to say something with a warning that it might or might not be so.)
Haigspeak could be subtle: “There are nuance-al differences between Henry Kissinger and me on that.” It could be dramatic: “Some sinister force” had erased one of Mr. Nixon’s subpoenaed Watergate tapes, creating an 18 1/2- minute gap. Sometimes it was an emblem of the never-ending battle between politics and the English language: “careful caution,” “epistemologically-wise,” “saddle myself with a statistical fence.”
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But he could also speak with clarity and conviction about the presidents he served, and about his own role in government. Mr. Nixon would always be remembered for Watergate, he said, “because the event had such major historic consequences for the country: a fundamental discrediting of respect for the office; a new skepticism about politics in general, which every American feels.”
Mr. Reagan, he said, would be remembered for having had “the good fortune of having been president when the Evil Empire began to unravel.” But, he went on, “to consider that standing tall in Grenada, or building Star Wars, brought the Russians to their knees is a distortion of historic reality. The internal contradictions of Marxism brought it to its knees.”
He was brutally candid about his own run for office and his subsequent distaste for political life. “Not being a politician, I think I can say this: The life of a politician in America is sleaze,” he told the authors of “Nixon: An Oral History.”
“I didn’t realize it until I started to run for office,” he said. “But there is hardly a straight guy in the business. As Nixon always said to me — and he took great pride in it — ‘Al, I never took a dollar. I had somebody else do it.’ ” | – Alexander Haig died this morning at age 85. The former four-star general served as White House chief of staff during the tumultuous final months of the Nixon administration—he kept the place running and guided Nixon toward a peaceful resignation, reports the Washington Post—and he ran for the top office himself in 1988. But he's perhaps best known to Americans as Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, who incorrectly told the nation "I am in control here" after Reagan got shot. Another former Reagan aide, Lyn Nofgizer, said Haig knew that despite all his accomplishments, the third paragraph of his obituary would harp on that, notes the New York Times—in the third paragraph of its obituary. Prior to the news conference in which he made the declaration, Haig told fellow Cabinet members that the "helm is right here, and that means in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here." The Constitution, of course, disagrees, and Haig's words forever earned him the reputation as being hungry for power. |
On Independence Day, celebrations across the United States depend on China.
The sparklers, bottle rockets and Roman candles you’ll be using this Fourth of July almost certainly came from there. So did the professional-grade pyrotechnics that’ll be launched above the Washington Monument on Friday night.
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It’s a quirky exception to “Buy American” sentiments that are otherwise going strong and picking up steam in Washington and corporate America, especially around patriotic events.
(PHOTOS: 15 historic Independence Day events)
After all, Congress passed a law this year requiring flags flown by the U.S. military to be made in America. Ralph Lauren, meanwhile, scrambled ahead of this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi to make sure that Team USA’s uniforms were all manufactured in the United States. And first lady Michelle Obama used U.S.-grown iris and quince blossoms at a state dinner for France in May, departing from the White House’s typical practice of using imported flowers.
But fireworks? No change there. Over the past 35 years, China has grabbed nearly the entire U.S. market — with 98 to 99 percent of what consumers will buy this year being made there, as well as 75 percent of the “display” fireworks, which are used in big, public shows.
Fireworks are a big business, with $675 million in sales just to consumers who will shoot off their own products expected this year, said Julie Heckman, the American Pyrotechnics Association’s executive director. Chinese imports are necessary, she said, because it’s “very, very labor-intensive to make fireworks. Basically everything is still made by hand.”
(Also on POLITICO: Why the Civil Rights Act couldn't pass today)
Environmental and safety regulations in the United States, she said, would force domestically made versions of the same fireworks to retail for 10 times as much as the Chinese imports, she estimated.
The industry’s shift to Chinese production came about shortly after the United States and China reestablished trade ties in 1979. By the early 1990s, the country was generating more than $60 million in annual sales from pyrotechnic exports to the United States. By 2013, the United States was importing $213 million worth of fireworks — virtually all from China.
The trend won’t be changing anytime soon, fireworks industry experts said.
Thailand accounts for some of the small fraction of fireworks used in the United States that weren’t made in China, as do U.S. companies and European manufacturers of larger pyrotechnics used in professional shows, according to John Rogers, executive director of the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, which conducts safety inspections before fireworks are shipped from China to U.S. buyers.
(Also on POLITICO: Reforming the VA one step at a time)
In the 1980s and early 1990s, Rogers said, the Chinese imports fell short of U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Department of Transportation safety standards, largely because manufacturers there lacked quality control procedures and “because there was nobody really checking — nobody was monitoring to make sure they were meeting U.S. manufacturing and safety standards.”
The good news, Rogers said, is that the quality of China’s fireworks is improving. Starting in 1994, the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, which counts nearly all major U.S. fireworks importers among its clients, started inspecting tens of thousands of shipments each year before they left China.
The group also imposed its own standards, such as a rule intended to prevent sparklers’ particles from falling onto children’s clothing and starting fires, Rogers said.
U.S. fireworks importers typically make several trips to China each year, and manufacturers there have retooled their production to meet U.S. standards, Heckman said.
She acknowledged that China has earned a “bad rep” over imported tires, agricultural products and more, but said: “In the fireworks industry, it’s very different. The industry has worked hand in hand with China, and many of these relationships go back four, five, six generations, much like the generational family businesses in the United States.” ||||| When you look up at those Fourth of July fireworks, say hooray for the red and white — but give a special cheer for the blue.
"People have been trying to make a good blue for 500 years, and they haven't quite perfected it," John Conkling, a chemistry professor emeritus from Washington College in Maryland, told NBC News. "Purples we're getting good at. Pinks are decent. But blues are a big challenge."
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Conkling should know: He literally wrote the book on the chemistry of pyrotechnics, and is featured in a new video on the subject from the American Chemical Society. The way Conkling sees it, scientists still have a lot to learn about the science of fireworks, thousands of years after the Chinese invented them.
Even today, the Chinese are setting the pace in the global fireworks industry. "More and more of the product these days is made in China, so if there was a lot of research and development, it'd be going on in China," Conkling said.
But there's still something to be said for American know-how: Every year, specialty fireworks manufacturers in the United States come up with fresh twists — with a big assist from the U.S. Army.
"Pyrotechnics is one leg of a four-legged stool in the energetics field," said James Wejsa, chief of the pyrotechnics technology and prototyping division at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. "We also have the propellants, the explosives and the warheads. The military is the one who really drives the technology in this area, and usually what you have are spin-offs in the commercial sector."
'Greener' fireworks from the Army
For example, Picatinny has been working on more environmentally friendly ingredients for the pyrotechnics that produce colored signals as a means of non-verbal communication on the battlefield.
"Getting new dyes and new ways to burn the formulations with different fuels is a challenge," Wejsa said. "The last thing you want is to have a soldier saying, 'Is that red smoke or violet smoke?' It could be the difference between 'shoot me' and 'don't shoot me,' you know what I'm saying?"
It turns out that the new formulations just might improve your neighborhood Fourth of July fireworks show as well. The Army has been working on a spin-off with Fireworks by Grucci, one of the biggest companies in the business.
"These formulations burn brighter and they burn clearer because there's less smoke," Wejsa said. "It's almost like going to high definition, because you don't have the smoke obscuring the color."
Wejsa and his team are making fireworks "greener" in more ways than one: They've developed a technique to produce a bright green flare using boron carbide rather than toxic barium compounds, a smoke grenade that emits less hazardous smoke, timing fuses and other pyrotechnics that don't leave potentially toxic perchlorate residues, and explosive primers that don't use lead.
"Our goal is to spin this off to commercial applications," Wejsa said.
The future of fireworks
So what's next? "The newest thing has been to try to perfect colors that normally people don't see in fireworks," Conkling said. Like a bright true blue, or really good orange.
"All the blues we see now have a copper compound that's at the heart of the reaction," Conkling explained. "The battle you're fighting here is that colored fireworks are brightest at high temperatures, but the copper emitter is not stable at high temperatures. So you have to play a game of 'The Price Is Right.'"
To produce an especially orange blast, chemists try blending run-of-the-mill sodium yellow-orange with red, but the job requires a lot of experimentation. The resulting recipes are closely held. "The old U.S. fireworks makers used to say there were some formulas they wouldn't even tell their grandmothers," Conkling said.
NBC News file
Another frontier for fireworks has to do with creating shapes in the sky. "It's common to see the heart pattern, the five-pointed star, multiple rings," Conkling said. "The logical extension of that would be letters, and being able to orient the letter up in the sky so you could spell out 'NBC' or something like that."
Fireworks by Grucci is already experimenting with a couple of technologies called PixelBurst and SkyEtching to create complicated patterns, letters and numbers. The technique was used for the countdown in Grucci's Dubai New Year's Eve display — and although the numbers are a bit hard to read, Conking is confident pyrotechnicians will work out the bugs. "It isn't like putting a man on the moon to do that," he said.
Will your fireworks be rained out? A guide for East Coasters
Besides the military, theme parks are the main drivers for innovation in fireworks displays — and sometimes it's not strictly about the fireworks. For example, the "Frozen" spectacular that's due to make its debut at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida this week will supplement the evening sky show with a video projection of social-media "selfies" submitted by parkgoers during the day.
When Conkling attends the Fourth of July festivities with his four grandchildren in Chestertown, Maryland, he'll be watching for the blues in the red-white-and-blue. But like most fans of the Fourth, he recognizes that a fireworks display isn't just a chemistry experiment. The winning formula also requires a healthy dose of flag-waving — and a flair for drama.
"One thing I like is a well-paced show," he told NBC News. "There should be no dead spots in it, and there should be some variety in it. It's not just the same thing over and over again."
IN-DEPTH
First published July 4 2014, 8:45 AM | – Ah, Independence Day fireworks: What could be more ... Chinese? Yep, despite strong "Buy American" sentiments in other fields (the US military must fly made-in-America flags, for example), China still manufactures at least 98% of consumer fireworks and 75% of "display" fireworks (for big shows) sold in America, Politico reports. The US needs them because fireworks production is "very, very labor-intensive," says a pyrotechnics expert. "Basically everything is still made by hand." What's more, she says, US safety and environmental regulations would make home-made fireworks about 10 times costlier for consumers. China began grabbing the US fireworks market after Washington reestablished trade ties in 1979; by last year, the US was importing $213 million in fireworks, nearly all from China. Federal authorities grew alarmed in the 1980s and early 1990s over the lack of safety standards in Chinese fireworks, but now the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory has imposed stricter rules and says it inspects fireworks shipments before they leave China. Despite all this Chinese know-how, the US Army is making "greener" pyrotechnics that produce less hazardous smoke and leave behind fewer possibly toxic residues, NBC News reports. "Our goal is to spin this off to commercial applications," says an Army pyrotechnics chief. (Read about the connection between fireworks and war.) |
"Something funny is definitely going on. We're getting to the bottom of it," read a message on Fandango.
Fandango and Movie Tickets were among the sites crashing Monday as users tried to secure presale tickets for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Tickets to director J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated film were made available for purchase Monday, hours earlier than anticipated. But some Fandango users got a "site maintenance" message after trying to click on a desired screening time.
"Something funny is definitely going on," read a message on Fandango's site. "We're getting to the bottom of it."
Similarly, some Movie Tickets' users saw a screen reading "Web server is returning an unknown error," while an Imax error screen blamed heavy traffic volume and directed users to Fandango and Movie Tickets. Imax had not yet begun to sell tickets, waiting until a new trailer for the film aired during halftime of ESPN's Monday Night Football.
A Fandango rep did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The film, which stars Oscar Isaac, Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, opens in theaters Dec. 18. ||||| Published on Oct 19, 2015
Watch the official trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, coming to
theaters December 18, 2015.
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Follow Star Wars on Tumblr at http://starwars.tumblr.com/ ||||| The first full trailer for "Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens" premiered on ESPN during halftime of "Monday Night Football."
It has a whole lot to offer running at over two minutes, as it highlights many of the main characters we will follow in this chapter of the saga. From new ones like Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) to favorites like Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).
Watch it here:
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Tickets are now available at online movie-ticket sites and theaters.
"The Force Awakens" opens in theaters December 18. ||||| Han Solo believes in the Force and the Jedi. Kylo Ren worships at the altar of Darth Vader, which might confirm some spoilers flying about on the Internet. John Boyega may be well on his way to becoming a Jedi, and the junk scrounge Rey (Daily Ridley) is definitely more important than we've been led to believe.
And Han and Leia -- contrary to Internet rumors -- reunite. At least for a serious hug.
Disney and Lucasfilm released the third and likely last trailer for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on Monday night, the same night they started selling tickets for the highly-anticipated film.
While the trailer didn't give away too much, it did possibly confirm some plot rumors while disgarding others.
The new poster for upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." (Disney via AP)
What we can see if that that special effects will be incredible while the computer-generated action will give way to real sets and real humans with real human emotions.
We also see what looks like Kylo Ren dueling Finn (Boyega) with lightsabers. Which could mean Finn isn't the amateur everyone thinks he is.
And, like the first official movie poster released Sunday, there wasn't much Luke Skywalker in the trailer. We got some Luke in the second one, but his role is still pretty mysterious at this point. The poster and new trailer may seem to suggest the rumors of him spending years in exile are true. Which would probably be a good set-up for the whole "the Force awakens" stuff.
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" hits theaters Dec. 18. And not a moment too soon.
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Tony Hicks writes celebrity commentary for the Bay Area News Group. Contact him at Facebook.com/BayAreaNewsGroup.TonyHicks or Twitter.com/tonyhicks67 | – The new Star Wars trailer debuted at halftime during ESPN's Monday Night Football, and immediately became a force to be reckoned with both on social media and ticket sites that crashed during presales for its Dec. 18 opening. Fandango and Movie Tickets both had issues after offering tickets even before the trailer aired for the JJ Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, the Hollywood Reporter notes. Fandango users got hit with a "site maintenance" message, while Movie Tickets customers received an error warning. Imax, meanwhile, waited patiently until after the halftime show to start its selling spree, but also had problems and had to funnel people to the other two sites. Meanwhile, buzz about the movie was one for the cosmos, making it hard to find a non-Star Wars-related tweet for a couple of hours after the trailer aired. The clip—which Business Insider called "glorious" and the San Jose Mercury News deemed "spectacular with surprises"—blasted plenty of computer-generated special effects off the screen, as well as close-ups of newbies John Boyega as Finn, the franchise's new hero, and Daisy Ridley as female scavenger Rey (Ridley got emotional herself watching the trailer). And, to everyone's great pleasure, there was a Han Solo-Chewie appearance, as well as a rumor-busting interaction between Solo and Princess Leia, the Mercury News notes. See the full trailer below. (This couple should have made Dec. 18 their wedding date.) |
Why Gibson Guitar Was Raided By The Justice Department
i itoggle caption Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal/ZUMAPRESS.com Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal/ZUMAPRESS.com
UPDATE: September 6, 2011 1:45 p.m.: Andrea Johnson, director of forest programs for the Environmental Investigation Agency, wrote to NPR to express concern over two points in this story. First, the word "verify" more accurately reflects the requirements placed on end users of endangered wood. The Lacey Act, Johnson wrote, "does not require any 'certification' at all per se. In the forestry world, 'certify' implies independent third-party certification, or government stamps, neither of which the US government recognizes as 'proof' of legality."
Johnson also says she mis-spoke when she said that Gibson "was on the ground in Madagascar getting a tour to understand whether they could possibly source illegally from that country."
"I used 'illegally' when I meant 'legally' in talking about the trip to Madagascar," she writes. "I didn't realize I'd done this until I was listening to the piece. I really wanted to be clear: the objective of that trip's organizers was to look into whether there were opportunities for 'good wood' sourcing, and in the end after seeing the risks, only Gibson continued to purchase."
Last week federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee. It wasn't the first time. The government appears to be preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. It's a rare collision of music and environmental regulation.
In the hottest part of an August Tennessee day last Thursday, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz stood out in the full sun for 30 minutes and vented to the press about the events of the day before.
"We had a raid," he said, "with federal marshals that were armed, that came in, evacuated our factory, shut down production, sent our employees home and confiscated wood."
The raids at two Nashville facilities and one in Memphis recalled a similar raid in Nashville in November 2009, when agents seized a shipment of ebony from Madagascar. They were enforcing the Lacey Act, a century-old endangered species law that was amended in 2008 to include plants as well as animals. But Juszkiewicz says the government won't tell him exactly how — or if — his company has violated that law.
"We're in this really incredible situation. We have been implicated in wrongdoing and we haven't been charged with anything," he says. "Our business has been injured to millions of dollars. And we don't even have a court we can go to and say, 'Look, here's our position.'"
The U.S. Justice Department won't comment about the case it's preparing, but a court motion filed in June asserts Gibson's Madagascar ebony was contraband. It quotes emails that seem to show Gibson taking steps to maintain a supply chain that's been connected to illegal timber harvests.
Andrea Johnson, director of forest programs for the Environmental Investigation Agency in Washington, says the Lacey Act requires end users of endangered wood to certify the legality of their supply chain all the way to the trees. EIA's independent investigations have concluded that Gibson knowingly imported tainted wood.
"Gibson clearly understood the risks involved," says Johnson. "Was on the ground in Madagascar getting a tour to understand whether they could possibly source illegally from that country. And made a decision in the end that they were going to source despite knowing that there was a ban on exports of ebony and rosewood."
Gibson vigorously denies these allegations, maintaining that all of its purchases from Madagascar have complied with U.S. and Malagasy law. A company attorney says Gibson has presented documents to support that claim and that the recent raid seized legally obtained wood from India. He adds that the company stopped importing wood from Madagascar in 2009.
Chris Martin, Chairman and CEO of the C.F. Martin Guitar Co. in Nazareth, Pa., says that when he first heard guitars built from Madagascar rosewood, he dreamed it might be the long-sought substitute for Brazilian rosewood, whose trade was banned in the 1990s due to over-harvest. Then the situation in Madagascar changed.
"There was a coup," Martin says. "What we heard was the international community has come to the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That's when we said, 'Okay, we can not buy any more of this wood.'"
And while some say the Lacey Act is burdensome, Martin supports it: "I think it's a wonderful thing. I think illegal logging is appalling. It should stop. And if this is what it takes unfortunately to stop unscrupulous operators, I'm all for it. It's tedious, but we're getting through it."
Others in the guitar world aren't so upbeat. Attorney Ronald Bienstock says the Gibson raids have aroused the guitar builders he represents because the Lacey Act is retroactive. He says they're worried they might be forced to prove the provenance of wood they acquired decades ago.
"There hasn't been that moment where people have quote tested the case. 'What is compliance? What is actual compliance? How have I complied?' We're lacking that."
He's even warned clients to be wary of traveling abroad with old guitars, because the law says owners can be asked to account for every wooden part of their guitars when re-entering the U.S. The law also covers the trade in vintage instruments.
Nashville's George Gruhn is one of the world's top dealers of old guitars, banjos and other rare stringed instruments. "It's a nightmare," he says. "I can't help it if they used Brazilian rosewood on almost every guitar made prior to 1970. I'm not contributing to cutting down Brazilian rosewood today."
Gruhn acknowledges that the government has tried to create exemptions to cover vintage instruments. But he says they are rife with delays and to play it safe he's nearly eliminated the 40% of his business that used to deal with overseas buyers. "This is a new normal," says the EIA's Andrea Johnson. "And it takes getting used to."
Johnson defends the Lacey Act and the government's efforts to enforce it. "Nobody here wants this law to founder on unintended consequences," she says. "Because ultimately everybody understands that the intent here is to reduce illegal logging and send a signal to the markets that you've got to be asking questions and sourcing wood in a responsible way."
What constitutes that responsible way may only become clear when the government finally charges Gibson and the company gets the day in court it says it wants so badly. ||||| 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. | – Allegations of illegal wood imports prompted the Justice Department to raid Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee last week. NPR aired the complicated story involving the 100-year old Lacey Act, which prohibits imports of endangered species, including plants, into the US. No formal charges have been pressed, but it appears the issue lies with Gibson possibly importing banned Madagascar ebony. Gibson insists the wood confiscated by marshals was legally acquired rosewood from India. Adding some gusto to the story, right-leaning sites assert that Gibson rival CF Martin uses the same wood in some of its guitars, but the company was never investigated. The Landmark Report thinks that's fishy, given that Martin's CEO is a Democratic donor and Gibson's CEO is a GOP backer. Raising the octave even higher, it is possible Michelle Obama ran afoul of the Lacey Act when she presented France's Carla Bruni with a Gibson guitar that may have contained banned wood. However the story plays out, many are frustrated with the retroactive aspect of the law. "It's a nightmare," says a dealer. "I can't help it if they used Brazilian rosewood on almost every guitar made prior to 1970." |
The owner of a Frisco medical company regularly directed nurses to overdose hospice patients with drugs such as morphine to speed up their deaths and maximize profits, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by NBC 5. (Published Tuesday, March 29, 2016)
The owner of a North Texas medical company regularly directed nurses to give hospice patients overdoses of drugs such as morphine to speed up their deaths and maximize profits, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by NBC 5.
Executive Brad Harris, 34, founded Novus Health Care Services, Inc., in July 2012, according to state records. The Novus office is located on Dallas Parkway in Frisco.
Harris, an accountant, instructed a nurse to administer overdoses to three patients and directed another employee to increase a patient's medication to four-times the maximum allowed, the FBI said. He allegedly sent text messages like, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye."
In the first case, the employee refused to follow Harris' alleged instructions, according to the FBI affidavit. The document does not say whether the other three patients were actually harmed.
Frisco Hospice Sued Employees Who Left After FBI Raid
The owner of a Frisco hospice agency accused of telling nurses to overdose patients on morphine to speed their deaths filed lawsuits against several employees and two executives who quit in the days after an FBI raid. (Published Wednesday, March 30, 2016)
Harris also told other health-care executives over a lunch meeting that he wanted to "find patients who would die within 24 hours," and made comments like, "if this f----- would just die," an FBI agent wrote in the warrant.
No charges have been filed against Novus or Harris, who did not return messages left with a receptionist and at his Frisco home.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the investigation.
Novus' website says the company offers hospice and home health-care services.
"We have a saying at Novus, be fast and treat people the way we would want to be treated," the website says. "This encourages us to go the extra mile to make patients feel comfortable and secure about their special needs and requests."
"AGGREGATOR CAP"
Video Partial Human Skeleton Uncovered in Anna
Health-care providers do not necessarily make more money for longer hospice stays.
That's because hospices are subject to an "aggregator cap," which limits Medicare and Medicaid payments based on the yearly average hospice stay, the FBI said.
If patients live too long, the provider can be forced to pay back part of their payments to the government.
"Hence, hospice providers have an incentive to enroll patients whose hospice stays will be short relative to the cap," an agent wrote in the affidavit.
THE INVESTIGATION
The FBI said its investigation into Novus started in October 2014 and initially focused on allegations that, over the previous two years, the company recruited patients "who did not qualify for services" and charged the government for services that were not medically necessary.
The investigation revealed that "as part of this scheme, Harris, who has no medical training or licenses, would direct his employed nurses to overdose hospice patients with palliative medications such as morphine to hasten death, and thereby minimize Novus' (paybacks) under the cap."
The search – for emails and other electronic documents – was executed in early February, but the paperwork was obtained Tuesday by NBC 5.
The warrant refers to an FBI raid of Novus' offices in September 2015 but court records related to that search could not be found and appear to be under seal.
The FBI said investigators had interviewed several Novus employees.
One worker said Harris himself decided which home health care patients would be moved to hospice.
"He did this by having employees who were not doctors sign the certifications with the names of doctors also employed by Novus," the agent said. "If a patient was on hospice care for too long, Harris would direct the patient be moved back to home health, irrespective of whether the patient needed continued hospice care."
In a lunch meeting, the FBI said Harris asked two health care executives to "find patients who would die within 24 hours" because that would "save my ass toward the cap."
Speaking of one of his patients, Harris said "words to the effect of, 'If this fu**** would just die.'"
Another Novus employee told agents that in late 2013, Harris sent a text message asking the worker to "administer an overdose of medication to a hospice patient … by increasing the patient's medication dosage to approximately four times the maximum allowed."
The employee did not comply with the request because it would have killed the patient, the FBI said.
One worker said Harris regularly directed nurses to "overdose hospice patients when they have been on hospice service for too long" by sending text messages like, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye," the FBI said.
SEARCH WARRANT
The search warrant required that a data storage company that Novus had hired, Smarsh, of Portland, Ore., turn over all of Novus' emails and medical records.
The company turned over the information the same day, according to court records.
In the warrant, signed Feb. 3, the FBI said it was investigating health care fraud, false statements relating to health care matters, and obstruction of a criminal investigation into health care offenses.
The FBI said it searched Novus' offices on Sept. 17, 2015, and seized 18 DVDs of the company's emails. Another 44 were subpoenaed from the attorney of a former unnamed executive.
Agents needed a password to read the emails, according to the records. Smarsh turned over the password along with a hard drive and account and search histories, records showed.
Smarsh, which is not accused of any wrongdoing, did not respond to a request for comment.
An FBI agent investigating the case said he was working with investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services' Inspector General's office.
HHS administers the Medicare program, which provides health benefits for people 65 and older.
Medicaid, which is funded mostly by federal tax dollars and administered by the state of Texas, provides health care for poor people. ||||| The owner of a Frisco hospice agency accused of telling nurses to overdose patients on morphine to speed their deaths filed lawsuits against several employees and two executives who quit in the days after an FBI raid. (Published Wednesday, March 30, 2016)
The owner of a Frisco hospice agency accused of telling nurses to overdose patients on morphine to speed their deaths filed lawsuits against several employees and two executives who quit in the days after an FBI raid.
On Sept. 17, 2015, agents searched Novus Health Services, claiming in a warrant that the company’s founder, Brad Harris, was suspected of committing health care fraud and had made comments to employees like, “You need to make this patient go bye-bye.”
In late October, the company filed a lawsuit against nursing director Patricia Armstrong, accusing her of violating a no-compete contract when she left on Oct. 6, 2015, and went to work for another company.
The suit asked for between $200,000 and $1 million.
FBI: Hospice Owner Directed Overdoses of Patients
The owner of a Frisco medical company regularly directed nurses to overdose hospice patients with drugs such as morphine to speed up their deaths and maximize profits, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant obtained by NBC 5. (Published Tuesday, March 29, 2016)
The following month, Novus also sued four former marketing executives, also accusing them of violating their contracts.
In court papers, an attorney for the executives, Jacob Kring, blasted the company for not disclosing the FBI investigation in its lawsuit.
"Novus and its CEO Brad Harris had their offices raided by the FBI ... for euthanizing patients for profits and committing Medicaid/Medicare fraud,” Kring wrote. “(Novus) never disclosed this fact to the court."
He also said the raid had effectively put Novus out of business.
“To compound the injury, (Novus) in a Grinch-like act of spite, refused to pay each Defendant their final check,” he wrote.
Both cases were later dropped.
A separate lawsuit named two of Harris' own business partners who left soon after the FBI search.
The suit, filed by Novus' parent company, HNA Holdings, named Preston Huffington and Samuel Anderson and two law firms.
The suit claimed: "In short, Huffington and Anderson grabbed $200,000 of HNA's money for their personal benefit on their way out the door."
The executives said the money went to the lawyers because Harris had promised to pay their legal fees.
Court records show this case was closed in January.
Harris has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Nobody has been charged in the case.
An FBI spokeswoman has declined comment.
Staff Writer Valerie Wigglesworth of The Dallas Morning News contributed to this report. ||||| DALLAS (AP) — The owner of a Dallas-area hospice ordered nurses to increase drug dosages for patients to speed their deaths and maximize profits, according to an FBI affidavit.
A copy of the affidavit for a search warrant obtained by KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth (http://bit.ly/1VTzfeh ) alleges Brad Harris ordered higher dosages for at least four patients at Novus Health Services in Frisco. It's unclear whether any deaths resulted from overdoses of drugs like morphine.
Harris has not been charged. The FBI on Wednesday declined to say whether an investigation is ongoing.
The warrant refers to an FBI raid on the hospice in September. It alleges Harris sent text messages to workers such as, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye." On another occasion, Harris told administrators during a lunch meeting that he wanted to "find patients who would die within 24 hours."
In at least one instance, an employee refused to follow orders to increase a dosage, the warrant said.
The document explains that federal reimbursements can diminish the longer a patient receives care. A provider eventually can be forced to return federal payments.
A woman who answered the phone Wednesday at Novus declined to comment. Attempts to reach Harris for comment on Wednesday were unsuccessful. A working number for him could not be found; listings for a Brad Harris in the Dallas and Houston areas had either been disconnected or turned out not to be his. The Associated Press also sent a request for comment to two email addresses believed to be his.
Harris, 34, is an accountant who founded Novus in 2012, according to KXAS, citing state records.
Novus' website says the company offers hospice and home health care services.
The FBI investigation of Novus, which included interviewing several employees, began in 2014 and initially focused on allegations that the company sought federal reimbursements for patients recruited by Novus who didn't qualify for services, according to KXAS. | – It's tough to comprehend: The FBI says the owner of a Dallas-area hospice ordered nurses to increase drug dosages for patients to speed their deaths and maximize profits, reports the AP. The revelations come via KXAS-TV, which obtained an affidavit filed to justify a search warrant of Novus Health Services in Frisco. The affidavit alleges that owner Brad Harris, 34, texted nurses orders such as, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye." More specifically, it accuses Harris of ordering too-high dosages for at least four patients with drugs such as morphine, though it's unclear whether any patients died as a result. No charges have been filed as the investigation continues. The FBI also accuses of Harris, during a meeting with two other execs, of expressing the wish to "find patients who would die within 24 hours." In regard to one patient in particular, he said "words to the effect of, 'If this fu**** would just die,'" according to the affidavit. The FBI says Harris was worried that if patients lingered too long in hospice care, it would cut into his company's profits. Several employees left the company after the FBI raid, and now Harris is suing them for breach of contract, reports a separate KXAS story. |
Dear Celestia,
Today we learned that Hasbro, are no real bros. They are indeed proper wankers.
We were only trying to spread the word that friendship is magic, and then these twats came along with their fancy threat-letters.
Please, banish HasNObro to the hell-holes forever.
Yours truly
Pony Mc Archiveington ||||| Forget SOPA. The biggest online intellectual property story last week was the shutdown of a website offering downloads of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which shook the burgeoning "brony" community to its core.
Bronies (bro+pony) are adult male fans of the new series launched in 2010 based on the classic ‘80s My Little Pony toy that [spoiler] your mom secretly threw out your collection of when you went to college.
If you think bronyism sounds like something only a serious pervert living in his mother's basement would be into, you're only about 30% correct. To address your immediate question: it's not ironic. It's nerdy guys who genuinely enjoy an animated series about ponies. The show has a legitimate appeal to older audiences—high production values, snappy dialog, and a heartwarming message. But the online fan culture of bronies grew out of 4chan, so they have a computer nerd vestigial tail of Mountain Dew, anime appreciation, chronic virginity, and cyberbullying.
Bronies have their own news sites, fan forums, and even a healthy amount of fan art of ponies doing unspeakable sexual acts on Tumblr. They've had real life meet-ups, and an upcoming BronyCon in New York will feature appearances by voice actors from the show.
In the pecking order of internet weirdo subcultures, bronies fall somewhere between Ron Paul supporters and furries. For this reason, I like to do a search for "bronies" on Twitter every now and then to see if there's anything worth ironically retweeting. It was while doing this search that I stumbled onto the piracy scandal unfolding between trademark holder Hasbro and a popular brony site.
Until last week, PonyArchive.org was a keystone of the Brony community. The fan site offered free full episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and had around 30,000 visitors a week. PonyArchive's videos were much higher quality than YouTube, making it the best destination for fans who didn't want to buy episodes on iTunes or wait for the DVD release in February. It also serviced international fans who couldn't access the show on TV or iTunes in their country.
It turns out giant international corporations don't love it when you pirate their content, even if the words "friendship" and "magic" occur in its title. On December 14, Hasbro sent a take-down notice to PonyArchive.org. PonyArchive, which was based in Sweden, did not comply, and sent this email reply, reposted on BronyNews:
Thanks for your consern [sic]. Since we are merely spreading friendship and magic we feel that we're protected by princess Celestia herself. Also, we are not based in the US - so US law does not apply to us. Please feel free to download the episodes from our website in order to
learn about accepting, friendship and happyness too. Have a nice one :)
But Hasbro did not want to learn about accepting or happyness. They sent a second notice, and by December 20th, PonyArchive relented and removed all content from the site except this message under the heading "Fuck you, Hasbro":
Dear Celestia,
Today we learned that Hasbro, are no real bros. They are indeed proper wankers.
We were only trying to spread the word that friendship is magic, and then these twats came along with their fancy threat-letters.
Please, banish HasNObro to the hell-holes forever.
Yours truly
Pony Mc Archiveington
(According to the Friendship Is Magic wiki, Princess Celestia is a "winged unicorn, the supreme ruler of Equestria"—the world of My Little Pony.)
These harsh words sparked a rift in the brony community. Had PonyArchive reacted immaturely, or was it a justified response to a snub by Hasbro? EquestriaDaily, the most popular brony blog, had 844 comments on its post about the crack-down.
Most commenters were anti-PonyArchive:
"Being a brony, I am ashamed to be associated with people that choose to answer in such an arrogant and self-entitled manner. It's childish, that's what it is. The last thing this fandom need are people like this."
"Not cool, PonyArchive. You're failing to love and tolerate the very people who introduced the love and tolerate rule. Shame..."
Other bronies were just disappointed the site was gone, especially bronies in other countries:
Ponyarchive is down. Guess I'll just use The Pirate Bay. It's not like I can buy the DVDs or any episodes from iTunes. — Anonybrony (@Anonybrony) December 21, 2011
PonyArchive's official response in the comments? "Well, we did this for teh lulz."
Illegal torrents of episodes are still out there for motivated bronies and international fans, and there's little chance bronies are going away anytime soon. Right or wrong, one thing is clear: Don't get between a man and his Ponies.
Katie Notopoulos is the creator of the blogs Sorry I Missed Your Party, Dumb Tweets at Brands, and Marina Abramovic Made Me Cry. She's on Twitter, duh. ||||| Today's My Little Pony is totally different from what you grew up with in the '80s, and it isn't just that you're no longer interested in brushing a plastic pony's mane for hours. When the franchise was rebooted last year with the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it developed an unlikely fanbase: "Bronies," or adult male fans. Like an animated, girls' version of Bridesmaids (with less diarrhea jokes, presumably), the series proves that men will watch a high-quality program targeted to women, even if it's overloaded with pink and sparkles.
The New York Observer tells the unlikely tale of how the charming 4chan cesspool inspired a legion of men to begin following the adventures of characters like Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash. Shortly after the show (which, true to its origins, still exists in part to sell Hasbro toys) premiered on The Hub in October, an article about the show was posted on the 4chan comics and cartoons message board /co/. According to fan Nanashi Tanaka, "We were going to make fun of it, but instead everybody got hooked. And then the first pony threads exploded."
Soon the mostly-male commenters, who developed the term Brony from "bro pony," were posting about the show thousands of times a day, and even taking their discussion of Applejack and Pinkie Pie's latest exploits to the infamous /b/ board. Big-eyed, pastel-colored cartoon ponies who talk about friendship are the antithesis of everything /b/ stands for, and thus a civil war broke out on the boards. The denizens of /b/ fought back against the influx of ponydom with bannings and the usual photos of hardcore sex acts and dead things, which would traumatize the average internet user for life. According to Know Your Meme, the Bronies adopted a surprising mantra: "I'm gonna' love and tolerate the shit outta you." Fans responded to hate by calmly working around bannings and posting even more pony pictures, enraging their /b/ opponents even further. Eventually things died down when the creator of 4chan acknowledged the popularity of ponies on the boards. Says fan Sam Levine:
"My Little Pony is the only group to take on 4chan and win. 4chan once took on the F.B.I. and won. So you might say that My Little Pony is more powerful than the F.B.I."
The show's first season ended last month and by now Bronies have moved on to other Pony-centric fansites. Many say they're not ready to share their love of My Little Pony with the world yet, and not just because it's girly. In fact, though male Bronies have drawn the most attention, the Observer estimates that about a quarter of adult fans are women.
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Understandably, fans of both genders don't want to advertise to everyone at work that they create fan art, post YouTube parodies, and collect merchandise related to a children's show. Bronies say they're drawn to My Little Pony because the plots, characters, and animation rise above the level of your average kids' show — and that's exactly what creator Lauren Faust intended. Faust was a writer and storyboard artist on The Powerpuff Girls and wanted to make another show children and adults could enjoy. Though, she recently told Wired she never expected this response:
"This might be a little short-sighted on my part, but I just assumed that any adult man who didn't have a little girl wouldn't even give it a try ... The fact that they did and that they were open-minded and cool enough and secure in their masculinity enough to embrace it and love it and go online and talk about how much they love it - I'm kind of proud."
The Hub has embraced Bronies in it's marketing, and hopefully other executives are taking note. They key to a successful children's program isn't churning out increasingly stereotyped shows in which girls pretend to be princesses and frolic with woodland creatures while boys fight and play with cars (or fight with robots that turn into cars). Men aren't allergic to everything aimed at women, and with interesting characters and plots (and a dose of '80s nostalgia) people of all ages, and genders, are likely to become fans.
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With such high praise for the show, you might want to check out the first episode for yourself on YouTube. After all, even Ryan Gosling is a closet Brony.
Pony Up Haters: How 4chan [N.Y. Observer]
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic [Know Your Meme]
My Little Pony Corrals Unlikely Fanboys Known As ‘Bronies' [Wired]
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Earlier: Ryan Gosling Obviously Sings My Little Pony Theme Song | – It's going to be harder to salivate over the precious hijinks of My Little Pony for a weird conglomeration of "Bronies"—men addicted to the exploits of the syrupy animals. Hasbro has shut down the website that offered downloads of My Little Pony cartoons, featuring the exploits of the tricked-out ponies based on the company's classic toy. "If you think bronyism sounds like something only a serious pervert living in his mother's basement would be into, you're only about 30% correct," nickers Gawker. Some bronies do enjoy seeing their favorite characters in a pastel sex haze. But others are actually drawn to the heartwarming messages of the stories, and bridle at any suggestion they might be pony-kinky. Sweden-based PonyArchive.org was kind of the bible of bronies everywhere, offering high-quality online episodes, but Hasbro has now succeeded in shutting it down. Operators were stunned. "Since we are merely spreading friendship and magic, we feel that we're protected by princess Celestia herself," noted one operator on Brony News. Neigh. |
Elon Musk: billionaire, entrepreneur, and man with a Twitter account. It’s a lethal combination that means when Musk tweets, we must ask questions. Namely: is he serious?
Last month, the SpaceX CEO sent out a string of tweets complaining about traffic. He suggested that a possible solution might be to start a tunnel-digging firm called — wait for it — The Boring Company, following it up by saying “I am actually going to do this,” and updating his bio to read: “Tesla, SpaceX, Tunnels & OpenAI.” This morning, he repeated the claim, and even assured a questioner that he was, in fact, serious.
Exciting progress on the tunnel front. Plan to start digging in a month or so. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2017
But is he?
The thing is, the idea of building tunnels to “solve” traffic sounds, on the face of it, no wilder than Hyperloop or a mission to Mars. By which I mean: it might be technically possible, but the logistical headaches involved mean there has to be serious will (and money) behind any efforts. Do we think Musk is really going to build a tunnel from his desk at SpaceX, as one tweet suggested? No.
@_wsimson Starting across from my desk at SpaceX. Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway, which is 5 mins from LAX — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2017
More plausible explanations for Musk’s interest in tunnels include the fact that, with President Trump’s pledge to fund infrastructure, starting a boring company now might be a lucrative idea. Or it’s just a joke — related, perhaps, to Trump’s plans to build a border wall with Mexico. After all, in the same Twitter sesh Musk also said his “neural lace” required for our conversion to cyborgs would be announced next month. It’s clear the man has a sense of humor.
We’ve messaged Musk to ask what’s going. Fingers crossed he’ll be a little more serious in his DMs than his tweets. ||||| Billionaire Elon Musk says he really does plan to dig a tunnel to avoid LA traffic, and that he plans to start "digging next month."
Musk first announced his intentions in December, complaining that traffic in Los Angeles is out of control.
But that was then followed by some tweets that suggested he was joking.
Some have found it hard to believe that Musk, who already is pretty busy running Tesla (with its recent SolarCity acquisition), SpaceX, and the OpenAI project, is serious about boring through the earth beneath southern California to avoid traffic, but the entrepreneur has repeatedly stressed he is not merely trolling.
Musk said he plans to start digging "across from my desk at SpaceX. Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway, which is 5 mins from LAX." Crenshaw Boulevard is a major street in Los Angeles that runs past SpaceX headquarters and the adjacent Tesla Design Center.
As with any Musk project — self-driving cars, human colonies on Mars — questions remain over whether laws, or simple scientific realities, could stymie such a project.
A Musk spokesperson was not immediately available to comment.
It might not seem terribly wise digging underground in a city known for its earthquakes, but Los Angeles does have a underground rail system already — though it is far more limited in range than those in other major U.S. cities.
When Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer introduced a bill into the Senate in 2007 to allow for the expansion of Los Angeles' subway system, Feinstein said, "Experts have now assured us that tunneling technologies have improved sufficiently to allay" concerns over earthquake damage.
So Musk's tunnel may be possible. | – Say what you will about Elon Musk, he's not boring. But apparently that could change next month. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted last month about traffic in Los Angeles "driving me nuts" and said he was going to make a tunnel boring machine and "just start digging." He insisted at the time that he was serious. Musk was back to talking tunnels Wednesday, when he tweeted that he's planning "to start digging in a month or so." CNBC reports the plan is apparently to start drilling at SpaceX in order to tunnel under Los Angeles and get around its notoriously awful traffic. While it appears possible—probable?—that Musk is joking (he's dubbed his tunneling business The Boring Company), USA Today points out the man did send rockets to space and popularize electric cars. If anyone is going to successfully tunnel under Los Angeles, Musk would be the one to do it. But he would have to get around laws, permitting, and what CNBC calls "simple scientific realities." The Verge reports it's more likely that—if not joking—Musk is simply trying to set himself up to take advantage of President Trump's promise to throw money at infrastructure projects. In fact, Musk met with Trump this week. |
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press Guards try to wake a man sleeping in Zuccotti Park on Wednesday.
The newly homeless Occupy Wall Street activists on Thursday plan a citywide day of demonstrations, an event that will test both the movement's resilience following its eviction from Zuccotti Park and the city's ability to deal with the decentralized protests.
Protesters plan to start early. At 7 a.m., some say they'll try to march on Wall Street and disrupt the beginning of the work day. So far, a heavy police presence and a warren of barricades have kept protesters from holding serious protests on Wall Street. Others will gather in Zuccotti Park.
WSJ's Jess Firger updates from the Occupy Wall Street protests, where protesters are being arrested after clashes with police. The end of the day suggests a heightening of protesting activities, with plans to march over the Brooklyn Bridge, she reports on Markets Hub. Photo: AP.
In the afternoon, they're urging people to gather at transit hubs in each of the five boroughs. They've also called for student walkouts.
Then, protesters plan to take trains to Foley Square, in Lower Manhattan. While on the subway, groups will talk about economic inequality, one organizer said.
At Foley Square, plans call for a large rally that is being backed by some of the city's largest unions, one of which has obtained a permit for the rally. Protesters then plan to march across the Brooklyn Bridge's pedestrian path. The events are tied to the Occupy Wall Street movement's two-month anniversary.
It's not clear how disruptive demonstrators plan to be, or what kind of police response they'll face. City officials on Wednesday said they're expecting problems and police are prepared to handle them.
Following the Occupy Wall Street Protests See key dates since the Occupy Wall Street protests began. View Interactive More photos and interactive graphics
"Everything that we have seen and heard suggests that we may have tens of thousands of people tomorrow protesting," Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson told reporters on Wednesday. "The protesters are calling for a massive event aimed at disrupting major parts of the city."
Paul Browne, an NYPD spokesman, declined to comment on any police department plans for policing the various protests on Thursday. "We don't talk about police tactics in advance," he said.
After protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park early Tuesday morning it's not clear if the demonstrations will end or if they'll enter a new phase. WSJ's Hilke Schellmann reports from downtown Manhattan.
A police officer who works in a nonpatrol position in a Manhattan precinct said he has been ordered to report to duty policing the Occupy Wall Street protest at 4 a.m. Thursday. The officer, who asked not to be identified, said he has been told to muster at Broadway and Exchange Place and to bring "hats and bats," terms for riot helmets and batons. He said he didn't know exactly how many officers like him have been ordered to the detail but supposed if they're pressing him into action, "it will be a lot."
Mr. Browne said that in general the protest has been peaceful but that there's been "a small group" of troublemakers.
"Our kind of overall posture has not changed," Mr. Browne said. "We'll continue to accommodate peaceful protest."
One widely circulated video showed a man outside Zuccotti Park on Tuesday yelling that protesters were going to burn New York City to the ground and "you're going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy's." At about 5 p.m. on Wednesday at Zuccotti Park, police arrested Nkrumah Tinsely, 29, of the Bronx and charged him with making terroristic threats. He was awaiting arraignment last night.
With a few exceptions, most of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations haven't had much impact on commuters or the basic functioning of New York City beyond a few relatively small areas, like Wall Street and Zuccotti Park.
The park was barricaded Wednesday, with police and private security guards manning checkpoints to keep protesters from re-establishing the camp that was dismantled early Tuesday in a surprise police raid.
A few demonstrators gathered inside, but most of the construction workers and office workers who used to frequent the park stayed away. Many protesters were elsewhere, too, recovering after the drama and confusion that followed their eviction from the park.
Enlarge Image Close Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency A woman makes a sign near the park where protests had been based.
Some volunteers were working to help the movement regroup. Bill Mills, a 20-year-old from New Jersey, was at the United Federation of Teachers space where Occupy Wall Street has been storing its cache of donated supplies. He fielded requests from protesters who came looking for gear such as pants, umbrellas and food.
He said he thinks the sweep of Zuccotti Park will make the protests stronger by stripping away the people who came only for fun and free food, not activism.
" Michael Bloomberg is my hero," Mr. Mills said. "He catapulted us out of all this lethargy. He threw out all the drunks, all the hypocrites, all the liars, all the people who were here for a little bit of fun, and brought us down to the people who are smart enough to get things done and really have something invested in this."
—Alison Fox, Sean Gardiner
and Sophia Hollander contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Grossman at andrew.grossman@wsj.com ||||| occupy wall street Thousands Assemble for Occupy Wall Street Day of Action [Updated]
Update, 10:19 p.m.: The Daily News estimates that several thousand people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge protest was largely peaceful and the marchers have now returned to Zuccotti Park. Some technologically adept Occupiers have been projecting a series of messages onto the giant Verizon building on the east side of Manhattan: "You are a part ... of a global uprising ... from the heart ... another world is possible ... we are winning. Check out the video here. Update, 6:30 p.m.: The Times reports that 60 protesters have already been arrested at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, where they sat in the road and chanted, "All day, all week, Occupy Wall Street." Among the arrested demonstrators was City Councilman Jumaane Williams. The police are going to need some more arrest buses.
Update, 6:20 p.m.: Thousands of protesters have gathered in and around Foley Square, and next on the agenda is a giant march to the Brooklyn Bridge, which will cap off today's action-packed two-month anniversary of the protest's beginning. Way back at the start of October, remember, protesters marched on the Brooklyn Bridge, resulting in hundreds of arrests. Today they've made damn sure the NYPD knows they're coming. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFA18IvFyE
Update, 4:33 p.m.: In an afternoon press conference, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said 177 people connected with the protests have been arrested so far today. The NYPD reports that the overtime tab for the city's cops is currently at $8 million.
"Unfortunately, some protesters today have deliberately pursued violence," said Mayor Bloomberg. "Even in the face of this antagonism, the police maintained incredible restraint." In a dig at the day's action, he added, "The real story for tomorrow morning's paper was there were just not that many people out here."
Protesters are currently demonstrating at subway stations around the city and marching around Union Square, where the crowds look pretty strong, at least from the Internet. Plans call for the protest to move next to Foley Square, a few blocks from City Hall.
Update, 2:13 p.m.: The clash appears to have subsided again, as people are being allowed to exit and enter the park. The Daily News reports that an injured cop may have been the reason for the rush, and quotes an officer as saying, "There is an injured officer with a laceration to his hand. He is in stable condition. The protester had a glass object in his left hand. It's going to require stitches. The man who assaulted the officer is not in custody." The Times is now reporting that the protester with the glass has been apprehended.
Eyewitnesses, meanwhile, are describing a protester who was kicking a barricade and caused a scuffle as police tried to detain him.
Update, 1:53 p.m.: The NYPD is reportedly raiding Zuccotti Park again, entering with batons drawn and not allowing anyone to enter or exit the park. The scene is somewhat chaotic as journalists on the outside attempt to figure out what's going on inside. Mass arrests appear imminent as paddy wagons have pulled up and cops in riot gear surround the perimeter. The live-streaming of video persists. The videographer reports that a protester requesting to exit the barricades asked if he was stuck inside and an officer responded, "Yup." Protesters can be heard chanting, "We are the 99 percent," and "Leave our park."
The Daily News reports that a police officer was hit in the head with a bottle, and a protester bleeding from the head was also seen being escorted out of the park by police. Sound cannons have also been deployed against protesters.
Update, 12:58 p.m.: After a frenzied attempt by marchers to break down heightened security at Zuccotti Park, barricades were placed back around the area by 12:30 p.m. as the struggle between police and protesters subsided. Police say there were at least 75 arrests in the morning. During the return to the park from the morning's Stock Exchange march, the Times reports, "Officers could be seen shoving and hitting protesters and journalists."
Update, 12:00 p.m.: Groups of demonstrators are now headed out of Zuccotti and towards the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall, where there are plenty of police set up and waiting. Another group headed up Cedar Street, where police in riot gear mobilized.
Update, 11:11 a.m.: The New York Times reports that protestors, amid chants of "our park", are trying to remove and jump the police barricades at Zuccotti. Police have moved in, and there have been several arrests.
Update, 10:30 a.m: A group of protestors is headed back to Zuccotti; another is ensconced on Wall Street. Police say about 60 protestors have been arrested this a.m. There was a scuffle on William Street, as demonstrators took over the street, but it's now been cleared. Meanwhile, there were several arrests outside Trinity Church; one woman there spilled her tea while she was being arrested, then grabbed the container and threw the liquid on two cops. The church is also playing host to several topless women, who say they're protesting the treatment of women at Zuccotti Park.
Update, 9:40 a.m: The Stock Exchange's opening bell rang on time at 9:30 a.m. Protestors responded by ringing a "people's bell" outside, where Wall Street workers struggled to press through the crowds to the office.
Update, 9:21 a.m.: Nassau and Pine has been reopened to traffic, after arrested protestors were bussed away. There have also been arrests on Beaver Street, near New. And one arrestee this morning was a retired police captain named Ray Lewis, whom the crowd cheered as he was taken away. There's also a mini counter-protest, begun by people saying they want to get through to their offices — a group of men holding signs reading Get a Job and Occupy an Office. Elsewhere, an observer caught what looks like a Wall Streeter throwing a punch at a demonstrator.
Update, 9:05 a.m: Here's the scene from Pine and Nassau, where the morning's first arrests took place. A group of perhaps 30 protestors sat down, to stake out their territory. Police told them they could be arrested for marching without a permit, and soon began to drag away the seated occupiers, batons unsheathed.
Update, 8:24 a.m.: The march, which has swelled dramatically in size already, remains fairly peaceful: Lots of chanting, an ever-growing police presence, but no drama quite yet. Protesters have approached barricades at at least a couple sites, including Pine and Nassau and Wall and Hanover, but they've largely, it seems, either stopped to wait, or turned to continue marching. There's also been a sighting of Hipster Cop, who was apparently greeted with cheers — perhaps a sign that no one's in a truly combative mood yet today. ||||| Police officers clash with protesters affiliated with Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park on November 17, 2011 in New York City. The day has been marked by sporadic violence, arrests, and injuries sustained by both protestors and police. Protesters attempted to shut down the New York Stock Exchange today, blocking roads and tying up traffic in Lower Manhattan. ( Andrew Burton/Getty Images )
By Mathew Katz, Serena Solomon, Julie Shapiro, Jill Colvin, Nicole Bode, Ben Fractenberg, Carla Zanoni, Tom Liddy and Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Staff
MANHATTAN — Tensions between cops and Occupy Wall Street protesters boiled over in Zuccotti Park Thursday afternoon following a failed morning attempt to shut down the New York Stock Exchange — part of a "Day of Action" to mark the movement's two-month anniversary that included thousands marching on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The clashes came after more than 100 protesters were arrested as throngs from the anti-greed group surrounded the stock exchange chanting "Wall Street's closed."
A total of 242 protesters had been arrested by Thursday afternoon, including five for assault, police said. Ten were injured in the process, including one with a head wound.
"Some people were intent on being arrested. There's no question about that. It's part of the tactic and strategy," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who added that he was "pleased" with the performance of his officers.
Seven police officers were injured during the mass protests, including five cops who had a liquid, possibly vinegar, tossed in their faces, Mayor Bloomberg said during a press conference at Bellevue Hospital, where one of the injured cops were being treated.
Two officers were struck by objects thrown by protesters, including one, Matthew Walters, 24, who received 20 stitches in his left hand when he tried to deflect a star-shaped glass object that had been thrown at him.
Another cop was treated and released for a hand injury. All of the officers were hospitalized but none was seriously hurt.
"We will ensure that everyone has a right to execute their First Amendment Rights," said the mayor, adding that most protesters "have acted responsibly." "But make no mistake about it, if anyone's actions cross the line, and jeopardize the health and safety of the first responders, we will act accordingly."
Cops also confiscated a dozen metal devices that could have been used by protesters to lock themselves to objects, but none were used.
Just before 2 p.m., police closed the exits to Zuccotti Park, which was jammed with protesters, sparking a fight for control of the barricades surrounding the plaza — the movement's lower Manhattan base until the space was cleared Tuesday morning in a pre-dawn raid.
Shortly before that, 30 or 40 cops surged into the park, but protesters surrounded the officers and started yelling. Police then pushed some protesters to the ground and hit others with batons.
About 50 cops then stormed into the park, moving demonstrators from one side to the other while protesters pushed back. Cops stood in a circle in the center of the park while the group chanted, "This is a non-violent protest."
In the melee, a man was seen laying on the ground bleeding from the head. Police said that the man, Brandon Watts, 20, tossed batteries and pieces of a plastic pen at police officers. He also allegedly stole a deputy inspector's hat.
Watts then tried to shove metal barricades at the officers, who tackled him to the ground as he kicked at them, police said. The suspect, who hit his head on the ground, was treated and Bellevue Hospital and released. He was charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest and grand larceny, police said.
The scuffle came just hours before a series of other actions including small protests on the subway in the afternoon and students rallying in Union Square and at Hunter College and a planned march on the Brooklyn Bridge, where more than 700 protesters were arrested in October.
In Foley Square, ahead of the march to the bridge, thousands of protesters were joined by members of the Service Employees International Union and some 200 Verizon workers chanting "we are the 99 percent" and "this is what a police state looks like." Also among the throng were rappers Fab 5 Freddy and KRS ONE.
As the group streamed through Lower Manhattan, funneled by police barricade, several protesters who had already gathered at the foot of the bridge were arrested, including City Councilman Jumaane Williams, according to his Twitter account. According to a witness, about 100 demonstrators wearing white shirts sat down and linked arms before being taken into custody.
As protesters marched across the bridge chanting "Whose bridge? Our bridge?" cars honked their horns in support. Cheers erupted as a giant "99%" symbol was projected onto the Verizon building, near the base of the bridge.
Earlier in the day, protesters said they thought their actions had delayed the stock exchange's opening bell, but an NYSE spokesman said trading started on time at 9:30 a.m. "For us, it's business as usual," said NYSE spokesman Ray Pellechia.
But at Zuccotti Park demonstrators rang cow bells and climbed trees to celebrate their attempt to shut down the global trading hub.
"I think it was a success," said 26-year-old Karen Jenson, a Wyoming resident who's been participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests for the past five weeks. "I was not overwhelmed with our success, but I felt like we were humble about it."
Outside the stock exchange, some of the thousands of protesters that amassed formed a human chain to block workers from heading toward the financial center, sparking a clash with police. During the scuffle cops were seen repeatedly hitting a protester with a nightstick near Broad and Beaver streets.
A protester in a wheelchair joyfully recounted how cops arrested her near William Street as demonstrators linked arms and refused police orders to disperse.
"They asked me if I really wanted to be arrested," said 63-year-old Nadina LaStina, who uses a wheelchair because of a childhood bout with polio. "I said, that's why I'm here, so they arrested me."
But police weren't able to load LaStina and her wheelchair into a paddy wagon to central booking with other arrested protesters. Instead took her mugshot in the street and handed her a summons for disorderly conduct on the spot.
"It was extremely important to me as a disabled person," said LaStina of her arrest. "I am very angry. I want our democracy back."
Many angry commuters were caught up in the fracas as they tried to make their way to work.
"These a--holes need to get a job and stop keeping us from ours," said Jenn Bobics, 42, who works at an investment firm. "I can't get to work now, or at least I don't know how to."
A 23-year-old security guard on her way to work from Queens called the protest "ridiculous."
"I have to get to work," said Shareema Williams.
Police had barricaded Wall Street at Broadway only allowing those with employee IDs to pass. They also closed Hanover and Pine streets, as well as Thames Street from Nassau Street to Broadway, and Nassau Street from just south of Cedar to Wall Street.
Cops in riot gear tried to keep protesters on the sidewalk, but their swelling numbers caused many of them to spill into the street. At least eight police officers were stationed in front of Wall Street's famous bronze bull sculpture.
Marchers heckled Wall Street workers as they showed up for work, shouting, "Get your corporate ID out, this is a police state" and "God Bless America."
Tylee Robinson, a 23-year-old actor, tried to sneak past a police barricade wearing a suit and tie and carrying a fake corporate ID. "I'm prepared to get arrested, I'm prepared to get beaten," he said.
But he drew the line at being the first to jump barricades. "I would follow someone else jumping over the barricade, but I wouldn't lead it," he said.
Some protesters said it was Tuesday's police raid at Zuccotti Park that inspired them to join the day's events.
Among them was Alison Bell, a 54-year-old lawyer from Stowe, Vt., who was with her 20-year-old son, Cameron, in Zuccotti Park.
"I participated in these sorts of things at [my son's] age. It makes me hopeful for the first time in a long time," Bell said.
"We want a big show of support from people who haven't been here before like me, and people who've been here from the beginning." | – Days after being removed from Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street is launching its biggest day of protests yet, and the arrests are already piling up: Daily Intel reports that about 60 people have been arrested after clashing with police in their attempt to reach the New York Stock Exchange. Thousands marched toward the NYSE shortly after 7:30am in an attempt to block it on the movement’s two-month anniversary. Protesters chanted "Get your corporate ID out. This is a police state" and "God Bless America" at Wall Street workers as they passed through police checkpoints, notes DNAInfo. Though some workers had difficulty getting in, the stock exchange opened at 9:30am per usual; protesters rang a "people's bell" outside. Later in the day, protesters plan to head to subway stations to “listen to a singular story from one of our hardest-hit and most inspirational neighbors,” fliers for the event say. Next, it’s a march to Manhattan’s Foley Square, where a protest is backed by major unions; then on to local bridges to “demand that we get back to work rebuilding our country's infrastructure.” Officials say they expect “tens of thousands” of protesters. Police plan to bring “hats and bats”—riot gear—to the events, one tells the Wall Street Journal. Still, “we'll continue to accommodate peaceful protest,” says a rep for the NYPD. |
The best friend of Sergei Skripal believes the poisoned double agent and his daughter Yulia are so critically ill they should be allowed to die.
Ross Cassidy, a haulage contractor, met Mr Skripal when he moved in next door in Salisbury in 2010, shortly after the Russian arrived in a spy swap with Moscow.
Image: Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal are in hospital after being poisoned. File pic
He told Sky News: "Quite frankly, what future have they got? I don't know the properties of this weapon that was used on them and my guess is they are probably being kept alive by artificial means and what life will they have if they survive?
"We've already been told they will be severely mentally impaired and I don't think they would want that. I think death would probably be merciful."
:: Poisoned ex-Ukrainian president: 'I know what Putin fears'
8:26 Video: 'Putin sanctioning poisoning unlikely'
Mr Cassidy got to know Sergei, his wife Lyudmila, his son Alexandr (who was known as Sasha) and Yulia.
Mr Skripal, 66, a military intelligence officer, had been convicted and jailed in Russia for spying for MI6.
Mr Cassidy said: "It was a bit unusual having a Russian family there, but they were very friendly and when they bought their own home nearby and moved out we continued our friendship. Sergei's English was okay, though his wife's wasn't and she didn't mix so much, but Yulia was almost fluent.
"We became great pals and I introduced Sergei to a lot of things, including English beer and he introduced me to vodka."
:: Salisbury public areas to be decontaminated
0:52 Video: World has 'united' behind UK stance on Russia
Mr Cassidy, 61, has spent many hours with counter-terror detectives investigating the poisoning, but would not discuss the police operation.
"I was aware of his background and I can't say I approve of treachery, but that was none of my business," he said.
"Sergei spent a lot of time out of the country and there were times when I didn't see him, but he used to call me his English friend. He was very generous and never forgot my birthday, usually buying me an expensive bottle of whisky."
:: Britain's ability to respond to Salisbury attack was underestimated
0:37 Video: Salisbury nerve agent bench removed
On Saturday 3 March, Mr Cassidy drove Mr Skripal to Heathrow to collect Yulia, who had moved back to Moscow and was visiting her father. It had been snowing and Sergei asked his pal if they could use his four-wheel-drive pick-up truck.
The next day father and daughter were found collapsed in Salisbury city centre after being attacked with the nerve agent novichok.
Mr Cassidy said: "I remember when my wife Mo came upstairs to tell me. We had heard about the incident in the town and we didn't know who it was, but Mo said the couple who had been poisoned were Sergei and Yulia.
"To say we were shocked is the understatement of the century. I realised from that moment on it was going to be massive and it has occupied every part of our lives."
:: Recap: Belgium joins nations expelling diplomats
Image: Police officers in protective suits and masks at the scene of the nerve agent attack
Mr Cassidy said he had spent so much time with the police and dealing with media inquiries that he had barely considered the serious plight of his friends.
"It wasn't until about 10 days later I started thinking, 'Hang on a minute, Sergei and Yulia are in hospital and are probably going to die', and I actually felt guilty that I hadn't thought more about that," he said.
Last week, in a court ruling about the Skripals' medical needs, a judge quoted the consultant treating them in Salisbury district hospital: "The hospital has not been approached by anyone known to the patients to enquire of their welfare."
Mr Cassidy was upset by the suggestion there wasn't anyone who cared enough to want to go and see the Skripals.
He said: "That is misinformation, because we care. I asked the police several times if we could go and see them, quietly and away from the media, but I was told quite categorically that we were not allowed. We asked the question and the answer was 'no'.
"We were also upset that if his family and friends in Russia got to hear about this lack of concern it would cause them extra anguish."
Two weeks after the nerve agent attack, police recovered Mr Cassidy's truck he used to collect Yulia. He has just been told they found no trace of contamination.
He said: "I just want to go back to being the old Ross Cassidy, putting on my boots each morning and going to work, then having a pint at the weekend. But I don't think I will ever see Sergei and Yulia again, even if they recover."
Meanwhile, Viktoria Skripal, Mr Skripal's niece, told the BBC she was hoping for a miracle.
She said: "We are all grown up and we don't believe in miracles but I can't stop thinking that maybe it's not them.
"Maybe a miracle will happen and it will turn out not to be them.
"But everyone is saying that, even if they recover, the long-term prognosis is not good." ||||| Video
Viktoria Skripal, the niece of the poisoned Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, told the BBC she hopes a miracle will happen.
Three weeks after the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition.
Viktoria Skripal is one of their closest living relatives and she spoke exclusively to BBC Russian's Olga Ivshina in Russia about how the family are coping. ||||| Viktoria Skripal not hopeful about former Russian spy and daughter in nerve agent attack
The niece of the poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal has said he and his daughter Yulia have only a slim chance of surviving.
Viktoria Skripal said the prognosis for both “really isn’t good” following the novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 4 March.
She told the BBC: “Out of 99% I have maybe 1% of hope. Whatever it was has given them a very small chance of survival. But they’re going to be invalids for the rest of their lives.”
Salisbury health risks assessed as £1m aid package approved Read more
She also revealed that Skripal’s mother had not been told of the incident, adding: “The first priority was to protect our granny so that she wouldn’t hear or find out anything.”
Countries across the world have joined the UK in taking diplomatic action against Russia, which has been blamed for the attack.
Theresa May said the “unprecedented series of expulsions” of Russian diplomats sent a strong message to Moscow that it could not ignore international law.
Briefing the cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister reported that 23 countries had expelled more than 115 Russian intelligence diplomats. She told her colleagues this demonstrated to the Kremlin “that we will not tolerate their attempts to flout international law, undermine our values or threaten our security”.
The Russian embassy in the UK said the prime minister had still not presented evidence that the country was responsible for the poisonings, adding that “no one in the wider world would take British words for granted”.
May wants west to develop long-term response to Russia Read more
On Wednesday, Ireland became the 24th country to join the the UK in taking diplomatic action against the Kremlin.
Nato announced it was cutting the size of its Russian mission by a third, removing accreditation from seven Russian staff and rejecting three other pending applications. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said the permanent size of the Russian mission would be cut from 30 to 20 people, adding that the gesture was “a clear and very strong message that there was a cost to Russia’s reckless actions”. | – Theresa May predicted that ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia may never fully recover after being poisoned with a nerve agent March 4 in Salisbury, England. Now a family member tells the BBC, via the Guardian, that the outlook for the pair "really isn't good" and that her family has kept news of what happened from Skripal's own mother. "I have maybe 1% of hope," Viktoria Skripal, the ex-spy's niece, says. "Whatever it was has given them a very small chance of survival." And if they do make it, she adds, "they're going to be invalids for the rest of their lives." Still, she says that even though "we are all grown up and … don't believe in miracles," her family is still hoping for one, per Sky News. (The UK believes the poison path leads right back to the Kremlin.) |
(CNN) A 3-year-old boy and his 1-year-old brother were on their own -- possibly for as many as four days -- after surviving a single-vehicle crash that killed their mother in south Arkansas.
The older of the two boys was found Monday morning after authorities received a 911 call about a boy who was seen walking by himself in a rural area on a state highway near Camden, Arkansas, Ouachita County Detective Nathan Greeley told CNN.
The boy was covered in cuts and scrapes and appeared to have been outside for an extended period, Greeley said.
"You could tell he was extremely traumatized," Greeley said.
The 3-year-old boy who, along with his 1-year-old brother, survived a car crash that killed their mother in south Arkansas.
Officials gave the boy a bath, food and a change of clothes and distributed a description of him. A family member contacted the sheriff's office and told authorities that the boy's 1-year-old brother was likely nearby, Greeley said. The relative also said the children's mother had not been seen since going grocery shopping on Thursday.
Read More ||||| EXCLUSIVE: Grandfather Calls Toddler 'Hero' for Saving Infant Brother after Mother Killed in Wreck Copyright 2018 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Video
OUACHITA COUNTY, Ark. - Along busy Highway 24 in Ouachita County, deputies say a wrecked car with a mother and her two small children inside went unnoticed for two days.
"She takes them everywhere she goes," says James Holliman.
James is in disbelief his daughter Lisa Holliman, 25, is dead.
"I'll never get up and see her, I'll never get to talk to her, laugh with her. My baby's gone," says Holliman.
It's what unfolded after the wreck deputies say is nothing short of a miracle.
"They went through a pure hell, no doubt," says Ouachita County Sheriff's Detective Lt. Nathan Greeley.
Holliman's three-year-old grandson Kylen managed to get out of his car seat, through the sunroof then up a small hill filled with bushes.
"When he climbed out of that car, seeing his mother dead like that like she was, he tried to wake his mom up," says Holliman.
Greeley says when they found the car, they found the boys' mother nearby and Kylen's one-year-old brother still fastened to his car seat.
"He was somewhat turned sideways, in a position upside down," says Greeley.
Investigators say it's by the grace of God the children survived not only the wreck, but made it two days without food or water.
"It was hard to see my grandson, you know, laying there like that... all cut up," says Holliman.
Holliman says losing his daughter may be the hardest thing he'll go through. He says it's even more difficult knowing his daughter was four weeks pregnant.
"We just found that out at the hospital that she was pregnant. We didn't know. We lost two," says Holliman.
Both boys suffered dehydration.
The one-year-old is recovering at Arkansas Children's Hospital and is expected to survive.
The cause of the wreck remains under investigation. | – "They went through a pure hell, no doubt," says an Arkansas sheriff's detective about the ordeal two small children somehow managed to survive—all thanks to the eldest of them, a 3-year-old named Kylen. The boy was found wandering alone on a state highway near Camden, Arkansas, on Monday, CNN reports. He was scraped up and "extremely traumatized," says Ouachita County Sheriff's Detective Lt. Nathan Greeley, per CNN. It was upon trying to reconnect the child with family that they learned his mother, Lisa Holliman, had last been seen going to the grocery store on Thursday; she also had a 1-year-old son. A search led to Holliman's overturned car in a ravine, apparently the result of a single-car crash and not visible from the road. The infant was found strapped in his car seat alive; Holliman, 25, had been ejected and was dead. "We're still trying to determine the timeline, but the mother was last seen Thursday," Greeley said. "This is one of the most remarkable things I've ever experienced in my 11 years at this department." Holliman's father, James, tells KARK that Kylen was able to unstrap himself and exit the car through the sunroof. "When he climbed out of that car, seeing his mother dead like that like she was, he tried to wake his mom up," he says. The boys survived without food and water; the temperatures were high and thunderstorms came through the area. "It's nothing short of a miracle," says Greeley. But still, a tragedy: Holliman's family learned she was four weeks pregnant at the time of her death. The crash remains under investigation. |
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Archaeologists have uncovered a stone tool at an ancient rock shelter in the high desert of eastern Oregon that could turn out to be older than any known site of human occupation in western North America.
The find was announced Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls the land on which the site was found.
University of Oregon archaeologist Patrick O'Grady, who supervises the dig, says the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter outside Riley has not been fully excavated. But the tool, a hand-held scraper chipped from a piece of orange agate not normally found in eastern Oregon, was found about 8 inches below a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption of Mount St. Helens that has been dated to 15,800 years ago. The depth was about 12 feet below the surface.
Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Scott Thomas said that if the age of the site holds up to scrutiny, it would be the oldest west of the Rockies, and another predating the so-called Clovis culture, once generally believed to be the first people to migrate from Asia into North America. The earliest Clovis artifacts, known for distinctive and elegant stone points, are dated to about 13,000 years ago.
O'Grady called the find "tantalizing," but he added that they want to continue digging this summer to see whether the volcanic ash covers the entire area.
Donald K. Grayson, professor of archaeology at the University of Washington, said the scientific community would be skeptical.
"No one is going to believe this until it is shown there was no break in that ash layer, that the artifact could not have worked its way down from higher up, and until it is published in a convincing way," he said. "Until then, extreme skepticism is all they are going to get."
Two pre-Clovis sites are well documented and generally accepted by scientists, Grayson said. One is Paisley Cave, located about 60 miles southwest of the Rimrock site. The other is Monte Verde in Chile. Both are dated about 1,000 years before the oldest Clovis sites.
If the date of Rimrock holds up, it would put people at the site about 1,500 years earlier, at the end of the Pleistocene era, when mastodons, mammoths, camels, horses and bison roamed the area.
The find has yet to be submitted to a scientific journal for publication, but it has been reported in newsletters and at conferences, Thomas said.
Thomas found the site several years ago, while taking a break from carrying supplies to a session of the University of Oregon Archaeological Field School nearby that O'Grady was overseeing.
Thomas said he noticed an outcropping of an ancient lava flow, with some very tall sage brush growing in front of it, indicating very deep sediment deposits. The soil was black in front of the rock, indicating someone regularly built cooking fires there for a long time. An ancient streambed ran by, which would have given people more reason to stay there. And on the surface, he found a stone point of the stemmed type, found at sites both older and younger than Clovis. Similar points have been found at Paisley Cave
Volunteers looking around the surface found some 30 stemmed points, and the field school started excavations in 2011, O'Grady said. Uncovered above and below the volcanic ash layer were fragments of teeth believed to be from ancient camels.
Tests by Archaeological Investigations Northwest Inc. of Portland on blood residue on the agate scraper were consistent with the bovid family of animals, Thomas said. The most likely bovine animal living in Oregon at that time would have been an ancestor of the buffalo. ||||| PORTLAND, Ore. -
Near the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter outside of Riley in southeast Oregon, archaeologists recently discovered evidence suggesting one of the oldest known human occupations in the western United States, officials said Thursday.
Archaeologists with the Bureau of Land Management and the University of Oregon Archaeological Field School have been excavating at the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter since 2011.
Their discoveries have included a number of stone projectile points and tooth enamel fragments likely belonging to a prehistoric camel (Camelops sp.) that became extinct approximately 13,000 years ago.
But what has the archaeological community most excited is a small stone tool found below a layer of volcanic ash.
Near the bottom of a 12-foot deposit, archaeologists discovered a layer of ash that was identified as volcanic ash from a Mt. St. Helens eruption about 15,800 years ago.
Beneath the layer of volcanic ash, archaeologists discovered a small orange agate tool believed to have been used for scraping animal hides, butchering, and possibly carving wood.
A blood residue analysis of the tool revealed animal proteins consistent with bison, the most likely species being Bison antiquus, an extinct ancestor of the modern buffalo.
“The discovery of this tool below a layer of undisturbed ash that dates to 15,800 years old means that this tool is likely more than 15,800 years old, which would suggest the oldest human occupation west of the Rockies,” said Scott Thomas, BLM Burns District archaeologist.
Presently, Oregon’s Paisley Cave, also managed by the BLM, is considered home to the earliest known residents of North America based on human physical evidence.
In 2008, a team of archaeologists, led by Dr. Dennis Jenkins with the University of Oregon's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, discovered coprolites - dried feces - containing human DNA dated over 14,000 years old.
Dr. Patrick O’Grady, with the University of Oregon Archaeological Field School, has been directing the Rimrock Draw Rockshelter excavations since they began.
“When we had the volcanic ash identified, we were stunned, because that would make this stone tool one of the oldest artifacts in North America. Given those circumstances and the laws of stratigraphy, this object should be older than the ash,” said O’Grady.
"While we need more evidence before we can make an irrefutable claim, we plan to expand our excavation this summer and hopefully provide further evidence of artifacts found consistently underneath that layer of volcanic ash. That’s the next step,” he added,
The University of Oregon Archaeological Field School, in partnership with the BLM and volunteers from the Oregon Archaeological Society, will begin its fifth season this summer, offering students, researchers and volunteers invaluable field experience.
Stan McDonald, BLM Oregon/Washington lead archaeologist, explained the potential this discovery has for the archaeological community.
“For years, many in the archaeological field assumed that the first humans in the western hemisphere were the Clovis people – dating to around 13,000 years ago," McDonald said. "While a handful of archaeological sites older than Clovis cultures have been discovered in the past few decades, there is still considerable scrutiny of any finding that appears older.”
“With the recent findings at Rimrock Draw Shelter, we want to assemble indisputable evidence, because these claims will be scrutinized by researchers," he said. "That said, the early discoveries are tantalizing.”
Flickr photo album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/sets/72157651118216896/ | – A small stone tool unearthed in eastern Oregon appears to be so ancient that the history of humans in the area may have to be rewritten, archaeologists say. The agate scraper found at a rock shelter was below a 15,800-year-old layer of ash from Mount St. Helens, making it potentially older than any other evidence of human occupation west of the Rocky Mountains, reports the AP. Analysis of the tool—which is made from orange agate not usually found in the area—revealed it had been used to butcher an animal believed to be the extinct buffalo species Bison antiquus, KTVZ reports. University of Oregon archaeologist Patrick O'Grady says the team plans to keep excavating the site after the "tantalizing" find, which may be older than any other find predating the Clovis people once thought to be the first in North America, NBC News reports. University of Washington professor of archaeology Donald K. Grayson, however, predicts there will be a lot of skepticism about the find. "No one is going to believe this until it is shown there was no break in that ash layer, that the artifact could not have worked its way down from higher up, and until it is published in a convincing way," he tells the AP. "Until then, extreme skepticism is all they are going to get." (Experts believe they have found evidence of a long-lost civilization in the Honduran rainforest.) |
Central Texas teen has sense of humor as she recovers from being struck by lightning
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gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-8090761|article-gallery-6304355|11 Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close gallery_thumbnails_show|article-gallery-6304355|article-gallery-6304355|0 gallery_overlay_open|article-gallery-6304355|article-gallery-6304355|0 gallery_overlay_open_thumbs|article-gallery-6304355|article-gallery-6304355|0 Image 1 of 12 Macie Martinez's mother, Misty Villareal, said her daughter, who is currently a trainer for the Lake Travis High School softball team, hopes to be a nurse some day. Her mother worries the nerve damage from the incident may affect her long-term. Macie Martinez's mother, Misty Villareal, said her daughter, who is... Image 2 of 12 Austin teen recovers after being struck by lightning on Memorial Day. Austin teen recovers after being struck by lightning on Memorial Day. Image 3 of 12 Macie's mother, Misty Martinez, said it appears the lightning entered through the roof of her home. Macie's mother, Misty Martinez, said it appears the lightning... Image 4 of 12 In addition to the family's gaming systems, wood flooring, fridge and other appliances, the garage door sensor was destroyed by the lightning. In addition to the family's gaming systems, wood flooring, fridge... Image 5 of 12 Lake Travis high school student Macie Martinez jokes on social media after being struck by lightning. Lake Travis high school student Macie Martinez jokes on social... Image 6 of 12 Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis High School junior stays positive after getting struck by lightning. Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis High School junior stays positive... Image 7 of 12 Macie Martinez's step dad Anthony Villarreal realized his "fern rash" upon returning home from the hospital. Macie Martinez's step dad Anthony Villarreal realized his "fern... Image 8 of 12 Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, serves as a trainer for her high school softball team. Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, serves as a trainer for her... Image 9 of 12 Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being struck by lightning. Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being... Image 10 of 12 Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being struck by lightning. Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being... Image 11 of 12 Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being struck by lightning. Macie Martinez, a Lake Travis junior, stays positive after being... Image 12 of 12 Central Texas teen has sense of humor as she recovers from being struck by lightning 1 / 12 Back to Gallery gallery_thumbs_close|article-gallery-6304355|article-gallery-6304355|0 gallery_overlay_close|article-gallery-6304355|article-gallery-6304355|0
Just over one week after being struck by lightning in her Dripping Springs home, Lake Travis High School student Macie Martinez is taking a light-hearted approach on social media as she recalls the events that left her with a "cool scar."
In her most recent post on Instagram, Martinez joked "call me Sparky" with bolts of lighting bracketing the caption, but on Memorial Day the mood was entirely different as Martinez's mother, Misty Villarreal, said her daughter let out the worst scream she has ever heard as Macie opened the refrigerator door.
"Macie went in the kitchen to get some applesauce. It was so surreal, there was a loud explosion, everything went dark and at the same time, Macie started screaming, but it wasn't from her throat. It was a deep scream. It was just so scary," Villarreal said in a phone interview.
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After Macie's father Anthony Villarreal removed his daughter from the kitchen, Macie was rushed to the hospital where doctors surveyed the Fern rash on her back, which doctors told Misty is a typical symptom of those who have been struck by lightning.
Upon their return home, Anthony noticed similar marks on his arms.
Macie told myFOXAustin the ordeal was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. After the incident, Macie's legs were paralyzed for 45 minutes, but the long-term damages are still unknown.
What Macie and her family do know is that Macie suffered nerve damage in her arm and hands, and while Macie maintains a cheerful spirit in light of her painful experience, doctors are monitoring her liver and kidneys as she follows doctors' orders to finish her final exams and rest.
She said she still experiences bouts of fatigue and numbness in her arm, and her mother said Macie exhibits random incidents of confusion and forgetfulness.
"We're so overwhelmed, that we can't help but laugh or we would cry all the time," Misty said.
"So, we're calling her things like Sparky and Bolt to boost our spirits."
Her parents are glad their only losses that day were inanimate household objects, losing just about everything but the coffee maker.
"I get my daughter and coffee maker, so I'm set," Misty joked. "We want to be positive, because we are so thankful. There's so much to be thankful for because for me, it was such a traumatic experience."
mmedina@mysa.com
Twitter: @mariahmedinaaa ||||| Have a news tip? Here's how you can reach us:
Call the News Tip Line: (512) 472-0988
Or send us an email: KTBCnews@foxtv.com | – Lightning strikes people often enough, but usually not when they're opening the fridge for a snack. Such is the plight of Texas high school student Macie Martinez, who was home with her parents on Memorial Day when a storm blew in. She was opening the fridge to grab some applesauce when the bolt struck. "It was so surreal," her mom tells the Houston Chronicle. "There was a loud explosion, everything went dark and at the same time, Macie started screaming, but it wasn't from her throat. It was a deep scream." The teen tells MyFox Austin that she remembers not being able to feel her legs, and her parents hustled her to the hospital. She suffered nerve damage in her arms and hands, and doctors are keeping an eye on her kidney and liver, but she seems to have escaped major harm. "I feel very lucky," she tells the TV station. "Lucky to be sitting here doing this interview today." She's even making light of herself on Instagram, telling people to call her Sparky. It turns out that Martinez's father also got zapped, though his telltale rash didn't show up until after the family had returned from the hospital. "My right arm gets tingly," he says. The family home sustained significant damage from the strike, which a neighbor says appeared to have come from beneath the house and exited through the roof. Appliances were fried, with the coffee maker one of the few survivors. That's fine with mom: "I get my daughter and coffee maker, so I'm set." (This guy survived a lightning strike to the head.) |
That naked Donald Trump statue that created a stir on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz could be yours for $10,000 to $20,000.
That's the estimated sale price for the piece created by guerrilla art collective Indecline. Los Angeles–based Julien's Auctions says the statue will be up for grabs at its street art and contemporary art auction on Oct. 22.
"A portion of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the National Immigration Forum, one of the leading immigrant advocacy organizations in the country, with a mission to advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation," the auction house said in a statement.
Naked Trump will join "coveted works" being offered at the event, Julien's says. Those include pieces by Banksy, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Shepard Fairey.
While versions of the statue also appeared simultaneously in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Cleveland, the auction house says this one, rescued by Matt Kennedy of La Luz de Jesus gallery, is the only one that has not been destroyed or confiscated.
Kennedy took heat because the depiction of Trump is nude. Police reportedly asked that it be obfuscated or moved, but he refused.
Now you can see it for yourself before some lucky (or unlucky) collector puts it in their atrium. Julien's says naked Trump will be on display at its Westside gallery Oct. 17-22.
||||| Just when you thought this year's presidential election cycle shenanigans couldn't get an weirder, think again.
A life-size foam sculpture of Donald Trump naked will be sold at a live auction in Los Angeles, according to statement from Julien's Auctions Wednesday.
In October, the auction will feature the statute entitled "The Emperor Has No Balls" estimated to be worth between $10,000 and $20,000. A portion of the cash from the sale will go towards the National Immigration Forum, a immigrant advocacy organization, the group said.
The "Naked Trump" statue, created by members of the anarchist art collective INDECLINE, made its first public appearances in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Cleveland and Los Angeles earlier this month. Onlookers stopped to take photos with the statue. The figure was removed immediately by officials in some locations.
||||| (Reuters) - A life-sized nude statue of U.S. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump is going up for auction, with profits from the sale going to an immigrant support group.
Julien’s Auctions said on Wednesday that the statue, called “The Emperor Has No Balls,” is expected to fetch $10,000 to $20,000 at the Oct. 22 auction in Los Angeles.
The statue is one of a series that appeared unannounced in public spaces in New York and four other U.S. cities earlier in August. The orange-tinted likeness showed Trump with a massive belly, small fingers and some missing genitals.
Most were confiscated or destroyed by local authorities and the Los Angeles statue is the only one remaining, Julien’s said.
The statues were created by an anonymous artists collective called INDECLINE. A portion of the auction profits will go to the National Immigration Forum, which campaigns for the rights of immigrants.
Trump has pledged to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep immigrants out and to deport the millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, should he be elected. He is due to give a speech on Wednesday as he seeks to find a balance in his immigration stance.
Trump is not the only politician to be represented in the October auction of street and contemporary art. American pop artist Knowledge Bennett’s “Hillary Clinton Cojones,” featuring the Democratic White House hopeful wearing a tuxedo, is expected to fetch up to $15,000, Julien’s said. ||||| In this Aug. 18, 2016 photo, a statue of presidential hopeful Donald Trump is placed outside a shop in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Celebrity auction house Julien's Auctions said Wednesday, Aug. 31, ... more
In this Aug. 18, 2016 photo, a statue of presidential hopeful Donald Trump is placed outside a shop in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Celebrity auction house Julien's Auctions said Wednesday, Aug. 31, that it will sell the life-sized, naked Trump statue, part of artist collective INDECLINE installed around the country earlier this month at an upcoming auction. The statue is expected to fetch at least $10,000 at the October 22 sale. A portion of the auction proceeds will benefit the National Immigration Forum. less
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - AUGUST 18: Photographers take pictures of a passerby as she hugs a statue depicting republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the nude on August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, United ... more
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - AUGUST 18: Photographers take pictures of a passerby as she hugs a statue depicting republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the nude on August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, United States. Anarchist collective INDECLINE has created five statues depicting Donald Trump in the nude and placed them in five U.S. cities on Thursday morning. The statues are in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) less
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the ... more
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the statue says "the emperor has no balls" -Indecline less
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the ... more
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the statue says "the emperor has no balls" -Indecline less
Passers-by interact with a life-size statue of a naked Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, that appeared on the corner of 11th and E Pike Street in Capitol Hill, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. Identical ... more
Passers-by interact with a life-size statue of a naked Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, that appeared on the corner of 11th and E Pike Street in Capitol Hill, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. Identical statues appeared in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Cleveland and are the brainchild of INDECLINE, an activist collective. (Genna Martin, seattlepi.com) less
Passers-by interact with a life-size statue of a naked Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, that appeared on the corner of 11th and E Pike Street in Capitol Hill, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. Identical ... more
Passers-by interact with a life-size statue of a naked Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, that appeared on the corner of 11th and E Pike Street in Capitol Hill, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. Identical statues appeared in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Cleveland and are the brainchild of INDECLINE, an activist collective. (Genna Martin, seattlepi.com) less
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the ... more
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the statue says "the emperor has no balls" -Indecline less
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the ... more
People crowd around a nude statue of Republican Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump to take photographs of it on Market and Castro streets August 18, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. Written at the feet of the statue says "the emperor has no balls" -Indecline less
Mrs. Vera poses with the naked Donald Trump statue in San Francisco's Castro District.
Mrs. Vera poses with the naked Donald Trump statue in San Francisco's Castro District.
Image 10 of 18
Naked Donald Trump statue in San Francisco’s Castro District drew crowds late into Thursday night before it was removed by the city’s Department of Public Works early Friday morning.
Naked Donald Trump statue in San Francisco’s Castro District drew crowds late into Thursday night before it was removed by the city’s Department of Public Works early Friday morning.
Photo: Bill Hutchinson / The Chronicle / / | – Pretty soon, one lucky American will get to come home to naked Donald Trump every night. The San Francisco Chronicle reports one of the explicit Trump statues that made headlines when they popped up around the country last month will be auctioned off on Oct. 22. The statues created by an anarchist artist collective and dubbed "The Emperor Has No Balls" were erected in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco, according to Reuters. But the Los Angeles statue was the only one not seized or destroyed by authorities. "The explicit statue quickly became a symbol of political protest art," CNBC quotes Julian's Auctions as stating. Julian's Auctions expects the surviving Los Angeles statue to go for between $10,000 and $20,000 at auction. A portion of those proceeds will go to the National Immigration Forum. The immigrants rights organization will use the money to "advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration to the nation," LA Weekly reports. Hundreds of other pieces of art will be auctioned off alongside naked Donald Trump, including the famous "Hope" portrait of President Obama and a portrait of Hillary Clinton in a tuxedo called "Hillary Clinton Cojones." |
Murdoch and Hall’s engagement notice appeared in the births, marriages and deaths section of the Times newspaper in London
Rupert Murdoch has announced his engagement to Jerry Hall in the births, marriages and deaths section of the Times newspaper in London.
The Rupert and Jerry show: more gripping than Dynasty or Empire Read more
The 84-year-old media mogul and the 59-year-old former supermodel have been dating for four months after being introduced by Murdoch’s sister and niece in Australia.
Their relationship became public knowledge after they appeared together at the rugby World Cup final at Twickenham in London in October.
They were engaged over the weekend in Los Angeles, where they attended the Golden Globes.
The notice appeared in the Tuesday 12 January edition of the Times. The newspaper also ran a news story online, behind its paywall.
“Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement.”
An announcement in the Times newspaper on 12 January. With black border Photograph: The Times
Guardian Australia investigations suggest Murdoch could have paid close to £300 ($US436) for the classified, though as the executive chairman of News Corporation, which owns the Times, it seems reasonable to assume that he would not have paid full price.
He, or his representative, did shell out extra for a black border.
News Corp Australia journalists have been among those to congratulate the couple on social media.
Luke Dennehy (@LukeDennehy) Congratulations to @rupertmurdoch and Jerry Hall on their engagement.
This will be Murdoch’s fourth marriage, and Hall’s second – or first, depending on how much credence you give Mick Jagger’s claim, made during divorce proceedings in 1999, that their Hindu ceremony in Bali in 1990 was invalid.
Murdoch has been married to former flight attendant Patricia Booker, journalist Anna Torv and most recently Wendi Deng, whom he divorced in 2013 after 14 years of marriage.
The Times quoted a spokesman for the Murdoch family as saying, “They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future.”
A source told the Daily Mail that “he is very happy, and she makes him laugh”.
Elsewhere the relationship has been credited as responsible for Murdoch’s “renewed vigour”. ||||| Former model Jerry Hall didn’t get what she wanted then, but is she now getting what she needs?
The Texas-born stunner is trading in life as the woman Rolling Stone Mick Jagger never married to become the fourth Mrs. Rupert Murdoch.
The November-December couple — she’s 59 to his 84 — made the announcement Monday in The Times of London, which Murdoch owns.
RUPERT MURDOCH APOLOGIZES FOR 'REAL BLACK PRESIDENT' REMARK
“It’s ridiculous to watch them together. Beauty and the Beast,” said a source familiar with the courtship.
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall seen at Twentieth Century Fox Golden Globes Party on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2015, in Beverly Hills, CA. (Eric Charbonneau/Eric Charbonneau/Invision/AP)
Murdoch is executive chairman at News Corp., which also owns the downmarket New York Post. He has written checks for years to the tune of hundreds of millions to keep the flailing tabloid afloat. Despite his best efforts, the money-losing rag continues to be irrelevant, most say.
“Mr. Rupert Murdoch ... and Miss Jerry Hall ... are delighted to announce their engagement,” the London Times announcement read.
The unlikely duo apparently met four months ago and have been dating ever since.
FBI SEIZES EMAIL FROM NEWS CORP. IN PHONE HACKING SCANDAL
“They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future,” a Murdoch family rep told the London newspaper.
Others do not so warmly share their bliss.
“They say love is blind,” sniped a Murdoch insider.
According to the London Times, the bald and saggy octogenarian was introduced to the still-statuesque blonde in his native Australia by one of his sisters and a niece. The mismatched duo got engaged in Los Angeles over the weekend while in town for the Golden Globes, the report said.
Hall had four children with Jagger.
Their 22-year relationship ended in 1999.
Jerry Hall, right, shown in this 1988 file photo with Mick Jagger, (SUSAN RAGAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956, but ditched the former flight attendant in 1967. That was the same year he married Anna Maria Mann, a Scottish journalist 15 years his junior who was toiling at one of his newspapers.
He divorced her in June 1999 and 17 days later married the woman his intimates nicknamed “The Gold Digger.”
MURDOCH EX DENG POSSIBLY CHEATED WITH TONY BLAIR
Wendi Deng, a Chinese-born businesswoman, had worked her way into the upper echelon at Murdoch’s media empire. She solidified her standing as a fierce protector of the family interests in 2011, when she slapped away a pie a comedian threw at her decrepit husband’s head as he testified about a phone hacking scandal at one of his tawdry London tabs. That earned her another moniker: “Crouching Wendi: Hidden Tiger.”
Murdoch dumped Deng in 2013 amid rampant rumors she had fallen in love with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The media mogul suspected the two had an affair and reportedly cut all ties with Blair, a longtime friend who was godfather to the youngest of two girls Murdoch had with Deng. | – Looks like there's still some life in the 84-year-old media tycoon the Brits know as the "Dirty Digger." Rupert Murdoch announced his engagement to 59-year-old former supermodel Jerry Hall in a discreet advertisement in the Times, reports the Guardian, which notes that the ad would have cost him $436 if his News Corp. company didn't own the newspaper. "Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace, and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia, and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement," the notice reads. Murdoch and Hall—who was in a long relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger that ended in 1999—started dating around four months ago and he proposed after the Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday, according to the Times. This will be the fourth marriage for Murdoch, who split up with third wife Wendi Deng in 2013 amid rumors that she had been having an affair with Tony Blair, reports the New York Daily News. (After her split from Jagger, Hall said her daughters wouldn't end up dating womanizers like their rock star father.) |
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. ||||| Your cat probably thinks that you are a cat yourself -- albeit a much larger one.
That's according to British biologist John Bradshaw, who says the way furry felines greet us (with their tails up) and rub on our legs is similar to how the animals communicate affection to other cats.
"In cat society, this sequence is usually performed by a smaller cat towards a larger one -- a kitten or young cat towards its mother or an older relative, a female towards a male," Bradshaw, who is foundation director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol, told The Huffington Post via email this week.
"[I]t seems to be a way that smaller cats have of indicating to larger ones that they want to remain friends. When cats started becoming friendly towards us, maybe 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, they just adapted this piece of behavior to show that they like us, too," he continued.
Author of the 2013 book Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet (which has been attracting a resurgence of interest on social media this week), Bradshaw has been studying the history and behavior of cats for decades. He argues that to live happily with our cats, we must first come to understand their behavior and their eccentricities.
For instance, knowing that cats carry out this tail-up/rub ritual as a form of friendly greeting should influence the way cat owners interact with their pets, Bradshaw says.
"Research has shown that when people interact with their cats, the interactions tend to go on for longer if they're started by the cat -- many cats seem to need to go through the tail-up/rub ritual in order to feel comfortable, and may not have time to do it if it's the person who makes the first move. So the advice would be, take your time when approaching your cat, and wait for it to at least put its tail up before making actual contact," he told HuffPost.
Bradshaw has also advised cat lovers to keep their ears peeled for purring. Purring, he says, isn't just a way that cats express contentment, but -- as he explained to NPR's Terry Gross last year -- it can also be a sort of signal for help.
"What we think cats are doing here is just trying to reassure their person — or [another] cat — who is hearing the purr that they are no threat, and ideally they'd like them to stand still and help them do something," Bradshaw told Gross. "So it starts off with kittens purring to get their mother to lie still while they're suckling, and it goes on into adulthood... It's a signal to the animals, [and] the people around them to pay attention and try to help them."
As for whether or not your cat likes you, Bradshaw says there are a handful of tell-tale signs of a cat's affection.
"Cats show they're fond of other cats in three ways," he told HuffPost. "The tail-up/rub ritual; by resting in contact; and by grooming one another. So if your cat is doing any one of these, then it likes you! It doesn't have to be all three -- for example, some cats (in my experience, especially the long-haired) don't much like sitting on people's laps, but if they're reliably doing the tail-up/rub, then everything's okay."
To find out more about John Bradshaw's book, visit the publication's website. | – Cats aren't dogs, and they'd like us to remember that, an animal behavior expert tells the Telegraph. We stress them out by expecting them to be as sociable as our canine friends, happy to be petted and hang out in the same space as other cats. But that just doesn't fit with how cats think, says Dr. John Bradshaw. "Dogs were sociable before they were domesticated," he says. "Unlike dogs, the cat is still halfway between a domestic and a wild animal, and it’s not enjoying 21st-century living." And when a cat is stressed, it can develop dermatitis and cystitis, he notes. In the past, "with cats, all we wanted was for them to keep our houses and farms and food stores free of rats and mice, and they got on with that," Bradshaw says. “It’s only in the last few decades that we have wanted them to be something else." That's not to say your cat doesn't love you, he adds. It's just that they "have their own lives" and interests. (And, as he told the Huffington Post earlier this year, your cat probably also thinks you are a very large cat; that's why, he theorizes, they communicate affection with humans the same way they do with other cats.) Some tips: Cats are likely to spend more time with you if they approach you, rather than if you approach them first, according to research, he notes. And if you're planning to get a second cat, you might want to bring its smell home first on a handkerchief: "It’s the cat equivalent of exchanging photos before a blind date." (Read about a cat who lived secret lives with two families.) |
Scott Wiener, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, made an unusual public announcement on Wednesday: He takes Truvada, a daily antiviral pill, to greatly reduce his risk of contracting H.I.V.
Taking the pills is a practice known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and some researchers believe it may reduce the risk of infection by 99 percent if patients take their medication daily as prescribed. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012, PrEP has increasingly been embraced by public health authorities and is one of three planks of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan in New York to sharply cut new H.I.V. infections.
But it carries a stigma in some parts of the gay population, and Mr. Wiener appears to be the first public official to disclose that he’s personally on it. ||||| Each morning, I take a pill called Truvada to protect me from becoming infected with HIV. This strategy, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, reduces the risk of HIV infection by up to 99 percent if the pill is taken once a day. This makes PrEP one of the most effective HIV-prevention measures in existence. After consulting with my physician, I went on PrEP to further protect and take personal responsibility for my health. I'm HIV-negative, and I want to remain that way.
I recently decided to be public about my use of PrEP in order to raise awareness about this relatively new tool for preventing HIV. It's important to encourage people at risk for HIV to talk to their medical providers about all the tools and methods available for preventing infection, including PrEP, and to choose the methods that are best for them.
As an elected official, disclosing this personal health decision was a hard but necessary choice. After all these years, we still see enormous stigma, shame, and judgment around HIV, and around sexuality in general. That is precisely why I decided to be public about my choice: to contribute to a larger dialogue about our community's health. I have the honor of representing a district that includes the Castro -- ground zero for the HIV epidemic. I represent a community that has been profoundly impacted by HIV, with a large number of HIV-positive people -- nearly one in four gay men in San Francisco is HIV-positive -- and an even larger number of people at risk of becoming positive. As an elected official in this role, I have an obligation to do everything in my power to support those living with HIV, increase public awareness about effective HIV prevention, and reduce stigma and shame.
My journey to PrEP was a long one. I came to terms with myself as a gay man when I was 17 years old in 1987, at the height of the HIV epidemic. Many gay men were getting sick and dying. Like many in my generation, I came of age associating sex with illness and death. That association -- with all the fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame that go along with it -- is still very real for many of us.
As time has gone by, I've seen people become healthier, and I'm continually in awe of those who have survived the epidemic and thrived. Yet new HIV infections continue -- 50,000 annually in the U.S., and over 2 million annually worldwide. Despite all our prevention efforts, I continue to know people who've remained HIV-negative for 20 or 30 years, only to become HIV-positive. I regularly meet young men, some barely out of high school, who have the virus.
None of this is preordained. People don't need to continue to get infected, and we know that PrEP has the potential to help stop the epidemic in its tracks by ending new HIV infections. It's one pill a day, with few side effects for most people.
Condoms remain critically important for HIV-prevention efforts, but they have their limits, as demonstrated by the continuing new infections after 30 years of robust prevention efforts. Only one in six gay men uses condoms consistently and effectively enough to be fully protected from HIV. For those who do use them consistently, condoms offer significant protection but have a failure rate, and condom usage among gay men reduces HIV risk by 76 percent, not 100 percent.
Given the challenges many gay men have with consistent condom use as well as the continued risk of HIV transmission even for those who use condoms, PrEP provides a powerful additional level of protection. It's not a question of either condoms or PrEP. It's about both important tools.
PrEP has broad support in the public-health community. The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended its use by those at risk for HIV, including gay men. The state of New York and the San Francisco Department of Public Health have adopted PrEP as a core prevention strategy. The HIV advocacy community overwhelmingly supports PrEP. Most insurance companies cover it fully despite its considerable cost, precisely because it is so effective at preventing a serious illness for which there is no cure.
Some aren't sold on PrEP. Skeptics question whether people will adhere to a daily pill, which is a legitimate concern. Protection decreases if usage is inconsistent. This challenge can be overcome with effective education, and drug adherence is a challenge that isn't unique to PrEP.
Some critics also view PrEP as a license for people to engage in risky behavior and assert that it will cause non-HIV sexually transmitted infections to increase. No study to date has shown that those using PrEP increase risky behavior -- such as reducing condom usage compared with before using PrEP -- and there is evidence to the contrary. Indeed, this line of thinking -- that promoting an effective prevention method will lead to irresponsible behavior -- resembles some of the phony arguments used to attack the HPV vaccine by suggesting that getting vaccinated will lead young girls down a path to promiscuity. And, since PrEP users are regularly screened for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, PrEP use will increase opportunities for prompt detection and treatment of STIs.
PrEP isn't only about gay men. Women can benefit tremendously from it as well. Many women are using PrEP to conceive a child with an HIV-positive partner, a new approach dubbed "PrEP-ception." PrEP can also protect women (and men) in abusive relationships. Too many women -- and gay men as well -- don't fully control how or when they have sex, whether their partners use condoms, and what risks their partners are taking elsewhere. People facing these challenges can take control of their infection risk -- and essentially eliminate that risk -- by using PrEP effectively.
In addition to lack of education and stigma, another significant barrier to fully realizing PrEP's potential benefits is lack of access. PrEP isn't cheap, and for the many people who are uninsured or underinsured, cost can effectively deny access. PrEP needs to be easily available to all communities and all income levels through public healthcare programs, including Medicaid. Otherwise we risk accentuating health disparities among our diverse communities.
Many people and organizations have gotten us where we are with PrEP. The University of California San Francisco is responsible for some of the earliest clinical studies of PrEP, and organizations like San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Inform, and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition have been working on the front lines to ensure that the promise of PrEP is fully realized, including advocating for FDA approval, helping establish expanded access programs from the drug manufacturer, ensuring PrEP is covered by insurance plans, and disseminating information to consumers and clinicians.
We know how to end HIV infection. We simply need the political will to ensure that the community has accurate information about and access to all prevention methods, including PrEP. I hope my disclosure can play a role in moving us toward these goals.
Scott Wiener is an elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. For more information, visit scottwiener.com. ||||| S.F. Supervisor Wiener says he's taking HIV-prevention drug
Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Image 1 of 5 Supervisor Scott Wiener during the Board of Supervisors meeting in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, June 19, 2012. Supervisor Scott Wiener during the Board of Supervisors meeting in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, June 19, 2012. Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle Image 2 of 5 Supervisor Scott Wiener, left, and Supervisor Mark Farrell, right, during the Board of Supervisors meeting in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, June 19, 2012. Supervisor Scott Wiener, left, and Supervisor Mark Farrell, right, during the Board of Supervisors meeting in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, June 19, 2012. Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle Image 3 of 5 Supervisor Scott Weiner listens to members of the public speak during the ethics hearing for Mirkarimi at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, October 9, 2012. Supervisor Scott Weiner listens to members of the public speak during the ethics hearing for Mirkarimi at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, October 9, 2012. Photo: Jason Henry, Special To The Chronicle Image 4 of 5 Scott Wiener considers the issue of free fares for low-income youth on Muni in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, July 25, 2012. Scott Wiener considers the issue of free fares for low-income youth on Muni in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, July 25, 2012. Photo: Sonja Och, The Chronicle Image 5 of 5 Supervisor Scott Wiener at Macy's Passport Presents Glamorama at the Orpheum Theatre on September 19, 2013. Supervisor Scott Wiener at Macy's Passport Presents Glamorama at the Orpheum Theatre on September 19, 2013. Photo: Drew Altizer Photogaphy S.F. Supervisor Wiener says he's taking HIV-prevention drug 1 / 5 Back to Gallery
San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener on Wednesday became what appears to be the first public figure in the country to disclose that he's taking a drug that prevents HIV infection - a pill that public health officials said could save lives but has remained largely unused due to stigma and lack of awareness.
Wiener's announcement is significant because so few people have been willing to talk openly about their use of Truvada, a drug that's been weighed down by controversy. He said he hopes his revelation will lift some of the stigma associated with Truvada and encourage more men to consider taking it.
Critics have suggested that taking the daily pill could make people more likely to engage in unsafe sex, but that claim hasn't been backed up by research. Still, the idea has persisted, and people have been slow to embrace a drug that public health officials believe could be key to stopping, or significantly slowing down, the spread of HIV.
Wiener's disclosure, which he made in an online essay published Wednesday evening, comes as San Francisco pushes an aggressive campaign to persuade more gay men to take the drug, which is referred to as PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis. Truvada, an antiviral drug that has been used to treat HIV infection for more than a decade, is the only pill approved for prevention.
At a meeting Thursday, Supervisor David Campos is expected to discuss a new initiative to make Truvada more accessible in San Francisco and distribute it to any resident who needs it. The initiative includes a plan to help pay for the drug for residents who can't afford it. Truvada can cost up to $14,000 a year, although it's covered by most insurance plans, and the drugmaker will help with the cost for people who need financial help.
San Francisco city and public health officials said they want to make the drug more accessible, and also normalize it. Wiener said that was his motivation in going public.
'Elevate awareness'
"People need to feel comfortable talking about these issues and not think they're going to be stigmatized or denigrated if they talk about using it," Wiener said. "My hope is that talking about it will elevate awareness about PrEP as an available and powerful prevention tool."
Truvada, which is made by Gilead Sciences in Foster City, is a single tablet that combines the drugs emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate. If taken daily, it can cut the risk of HIV infection by more than 90 percent.
The drug primarily has been tested in men who have sex with men, which is why they're the focus of efforts to increase use of PrEP, although it appears to also be effective for women and transgender men and women.
Most people report no side effects from the drug, and about 10 percent of users say they have some gastrointestinal discomfort for the first few weeks after starting. A smaller percentage of users can suffer more serious signs of drug toxicity and will need to stop taking the drug.
The drug has been widely discussed among health care providers and in the gay community for several years - even before it won FDA approval - but even in San Francisco, where much of the initial research was done, the pill has been slow to gain acceptance. Nationwide, only about 2,000 people are taking PrEP.
"Nationally, we all - health departments and community groups - need to speed this up, because we could be preventing a lot of infections," said Dan Van Gorder, executive director of Project Inform, an HIV patient treatment and information advocacy organization.
The slow acceptance of the drug has been due somewhat to the stigma, which is widespread but has dimmed in recent months. But another major barrier comes from doctors, many of whom have been reluctant to prescribe it, especially if they don't regularly treat HIV-positive patients and aren't familiar with Truvada.
Increase accessibility
That's where San Francisco can improve access to the drug, public health and city officials said. Thursday's city meeting, organized by Campos, is focused on the idea of ensuring the that drug is easily available to anyone who is interested in it, regardless of their ability to afford it or find a doctor who will prescribe it.
"The issues we face are in getting what we know is a very effective HIV-prevention tool into the hands of people who need it," said Dr. Susan Philip, director of the STD Prevention and Control Services Section of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. "We've always believed in PrEP as an intervention. Now we're figuring out how to help with delivery."
Wiener said he was slow to come around to PrEP, even after he'd seen the initial reports about how effective it could be. Like many other men, he wasn't convinced at first that he was the right target for the drug.
"A lot of us in the past had stereotypes about who should be using PrEP - that PrEP was for sex workers and porn actors and people who hated using condoms. But really prep is much broader than that," Wiener said.
Now, he said, he likens the drug to the birth control pill - it's just another option for practicing safe sex.
"There are some people who are convinced PrEP is going to make people reckless, but that's a bogus argument. It's the same argument we've heard around birth control, and it's very antipublic health," Wiener said. "There's always a lot of judgment around sex.
"There are downsides to being public about my sexual health," Wiener said, adding that the most awkward drawback so far has been telling his mom he was taking PrEP. "Ultimately, I decided that this could play a positive role in moving the dialogue forward and increasing awareness." | – A San Francisco official looks to be the first public figure in the country to "come out of the PrEP closet," as he puts it in a piece for the Huffington Post. Scott Wiener—who represents a district he calls "ground zero for the HIV epidemic"—says he takes the daily antiviral pill Truvada to lower his risk of contracting HIV. He's urging other gay men to do the same. "A much larger segment of gay men should be taking a close look" at what's known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, Wiener tells the New York Times. Truvada as PrEP has been very slow to catch on across the country, which Wiener writes sees 50,000 new HIV infections each year. Researchers say PrEP could reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 99% if taken as prescribed. The World Health Organization made a similar case to Wiener's this summer, but the San Francisco Chronicle calls Wiener's announcement "significant because so few people have been willing to talk openly about their use of Truvada." Though the drug's list price is just over $1,000 a month, Wiener says PrEP is covered by most health insurers (he personally pays $15 a month). For the uninsured or those with high-deductible plans, however, the price can be a problem. Wiener's colleague, David Campos, says he will ask the city's health department to develop a strategy that "addresses the educational and affordability issues" by December. "We have to start somewhere," says Campos, who adds that every prevented infection saves $355,000 in treatment costs. |
The Trump administration has denied a request from the House Oversight Committee for more information on payments that former national security adviser Michael Flynn received from foreign governments, including from the Kremlin-backed television station RT and other Russian firms.
Legislative affairs director Marc Short said the committee is requesting documents that are not in possession of the White House because they involved Flynn's activity prior to President Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Other documents sought by the committee, from after Jan. 20, involve sensitive information, he said.
"It is unclear how such documents would be relevant to the stated purpose of the committee's review, which according to your letter is to examine Lt. Gen. Flynn's disclosure of payments related to activities that occurred in 2015 and 2016, prior to his service in the White House," Short wrote in a letter dated April 19 that was sent to committee leaders.
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In March, the committee sent a letter to the White House, the Defense Department and several other administration heads asking for a range of records related to the payments received by Flynn, who also worked on Trump’s campaign and the presidential transition.
On Tuesday morning, the committee reviewed a batch of documents responsive to the request from the Pentagon behind closed doors.
Those documents, said both chairman Jason Chaffetz Jason ChaffetzTucker Carlson: Ruling class cares more about foreigners than their own people Fox's Kennedy chides Chaffetz on child migrants: 'I’m sure these mini rapists all have bombs strapped to their chests' After FBI cleared by IG report, GOP must reform itself MORE (R-Utah) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), suggest that Flynn broke the law by declining to disclose the payments from both Russia and Turkey in his application to renew his security clearance.
"Personally, I see no data to supper the notion that Gen. Flynn complied with the law," Chaffetz said.
But both Chaffetz and Cummings stopped short of accusing the White House of obstructing their investigation.
"I wouldn't call it obstruction," Cummings said.
Flynn had also declined to disclose the payments in his original financial disclosure forms submitted in February.
He filed an amended disclosure last month reporting payments for speeches from three Russian-linked companies, including RT, but the move has remained under scrutiny amidst the FBI’s ongoing investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election.
According to Cummings, Flynn applied to renew his security clearance — using a form called a SF-86 — in January of 2016, just month after he traveled to Moscow to give a paid speech. During a dinner at that appearance, he was seated with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There is "no evidence in the documents that he reported funds he received for his trip" and "no evidence he sought permission to obtain these funds from a foreign source," Cummings said Tuesday, noting that knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact in an SF-86 is a felony.
Flynn was forced to resign in February after it came to light that he had misled Vice President Pence and the public about the content of a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyac.
The former intelligence official has offered to testify before the Senate and House Intelligence committees — which are both investigating Russian interference in the election — in exchange for immunity, but neither committee has accepted the offer.
Chaffetz said Tuesday that Flynn could potentially be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in remittance to the U.S. government.
But the authority to levy that penalty would rest with the administration — not with the committee.
Although Cummings said that he would like to see Flynn appear before the committee, such a hearing appears unlikely. Chaffetz argued that the "lead" in any Russia-related investigations is the Intelligence Committee. Oversight, he said, is in "more of a support role."
"I highly doubt" the committee will call Flynn to testify, Chaffetz said.
This story was updated at 11:56 a.m. ||||| The lead Democrat and Republican on the House Oversight Committee meted out a rare bipartisan rebuke of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday after seeing private information that confirmed the former administration official failed to disclose foreign income from Russia and Turkey.
[Flynn did not initially reveal income from Russia-related entities]
The public criticism by the senior Republican on the House’s chief investigative panel is unusual and presents a dilemma for the White House, which was accused of failing to provide everything the committee asked for — an assertion White House press secretary Sean Spicer disputed.
Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), suggested that Flynn broke the law. Flynn was ousted in February after misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
The lawmakers said they believe Flynn neither received permission nor fully disclosed income he earned for a speaking engagement in Russia and lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey. They reached the conclusion after viewing two classified memos and a disclosure form in a private briefing Tuesday morning.
(Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
“Personally I see no evidence or no data to support the notion that General Flynn complied with the law,” Chaffetz told reporters after the briefing.
Added Cummings: “He was supposed to get permission, he was supposed to report it, and he didn’t. This is a major problem.”
The bipartisan criticism of Flynn is a striking departure from the partisan discord that has defined recent Oversight Committee investigations. Democrats have often complained of being shut out of major decisions in high-profile investigations such as the Benghazi probe.
It comes as the House and Senate intelligence committees move into a new phase of their investigations into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, including alleged ties between campaign aides and Russian officials. The FBI is also investigating Russia’s suspected interference in the elections and ties to the Trump campaign.
After a rocky start, the House Intelligence Committee is gaining steam with a new head of the Russia investigation. Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) — who stepped in after the committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), recused himself — has scheduled a classified briefing next Tuesday with the directors of the FBI and National Security Agency. He has invited former CIA director John Brennan, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former acting attorney general Sally Yates to testify in an open hearing.
The Senate is also taking action. Yates and Clapper are scheduled to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said Tuesday that his panel had “finished the initial round” of over 20 interviews and planned to “pick that pace up” with more in the near future.
(Reuters)
Flynn is on the list of officials Burr hopes to bring in for an interview. The senator noted the panel had been interested in speaking to him “from the beginning.”
“In many cases in investigations like this, you get one shot at people,” Burr said, explaining why they had not yet invited him. “So we want to make sure we’re as thorough as we possibly can be.”
Chaffetz and Cummings stressed Tuesday that as a former military officer, Flynn would have needed special permission for his December 2015 appearance at a gala sponsored by RT, the Russian-government-funded television station, for which he was paid $45,000. For his work lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government, he was paid more than $500,000.
“It does not appear that was ever sought, nor did he get that permission,” Chaffetz said.
The Republican later added that while Flynn was clearly not in compliance with the law, “it would be a little strong to say that he flat-out lied.”
Democrats immediately pounced on the news, claiming that it was yet another drip of damaging information implicating the Trump world’s relationship with Russia.
“The disturbing news that General Flynn may have violated the law in connection with his security clearance may be just the tip of the iceberg,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “These revelations highlight the importance of the intelligence committee working in a bipartisan way to request and receive documents with respect to any financial arrangements Flynn and others in similar positions may have had with foreign governments,” he said.
According to the New York Times, Flynn isn’t the only member of Trump’s team who left his contacts with foreign officials off his official security-clearance application — Jared Kushner left his meetings with Russian officials off the same form.
Chaffetz and Cummings stressed that Flynn’s omission could cost him. Violations of this nature can be punished by up to five years of jail time. The FBI could open an investigation into the matter, and if it has not already, Congress could ask them to do so.
Those decisions will probably be up to the Justice Department’s new deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, whom the Senate confirmed Tuesday by a vote of 94 to 6. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from matters involving the Trump campaign.
The bar for prosecution is high. The law requires investigators to show that Flynn “knowingly and willfully” made false statements. Prosecutors would not be able to make a case if Flynn’s forms were inaccurate because of carelessness or an honest mistake.
Chaffetz stressed that the government should “recover the money” paid to Flynn by foreign entities, a figure that would at least be in the tens of thousands of dollars. But Chaffetz announced last week that he would resign from Congress in 2018 and perhaps leave much sooner — setting off a scramble to replace him. On Tuesday, Chaffetz also said the House Intelligence Committee would be the panel to compel any testimony from Flynn.
Spicer would not say in his Tuesday briefing whether Flynn may have broken the law.
“That would be a question for him and the law enforcement agency. I don’t know what he filled out or what he did or didn’t do,” Spicer told reporters. “He filled that form out before coming here, so it would be up to the committee and other authorities to look at that.”
He insisted the Trump administration had provided all the documents Congress requested.
“Every document they asked for it’s my understanding they’ve gotten,” he said.
The Oversight Committee asked the White House in March for documents pertaining to Flynn’s security-clearance applications, the vetting that occurred before he was named national security adviser, and all of his contacts with foreign agents, including any payments received. In particular, the committee heads requested to see a disclosure form known as the SF86, on which Flynn was obligated to declare any foreign income.
On April 19, the White House sent the committee a reply, stating that any documents related to Flynn from before Jan. 20 — the day Trump took office — were not in its possession and that any documents from after that date did not seem relevant to the investigation.
Spicer added Tuesday that records requests for Flynn’s conversations with foreign contacts were “unwieldy,” arguing it was Flynn’s job “to talk with foreign counterparts on a daily basis.”
“To document every call that he may have made is not exactly a request that is able to be filled,” he said.
[Oversight Committee jockeying heats up in wake of Chaffetz announcement]
Flynn counsel Rob Kelner of Covington & Burling said his client has spoken extensively with the government about the matter. “As has previously been reported, General Flynn briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, a component agency of DoD, extensively regarding the RT speaking event trip both before and after the trip, and he answered any questions that were posed by DIA concerning the trip during those briefings,” Kelner said in a statement.
[Here’s what we know about Trump’s ties to Russian interests]
The documents that committee members reviewed Tuesday came from the Defense Intelligence Agency and showed that Flynn had not declared any income from Russian or Turkish sources, committee leaders said.
Kelner also noted that lawmakers might be interested in seeing documents that could shed light on what Flynn told the White House and his foreign contacts before he was named national security adviser, and what led to his exit less than a month later. During the transition period, Flynn told the incoming White House that he might need to register as a foreign agent.
David Nakamura and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the congressional probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election (all times local):
11:20 a.m.
The senior members of Congress on the House Oversight Committee says classified military documents show that the Trump administration's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, did not ask permission or inform the U.S. government about payments he received for appearances before Russian organizations in 2015 and for lobbying that helped Turkey's government.
Flynn's failure to obtain permission from military authorities for the payments raises concern whether Flynn violated a constitutional ban on foreign payments to retired military officers. That's according to Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings.
The two leaders of the oversight committee said there was no evidence Flynn complied with federal law. They said Flynn could be criminally prosecuted, and they said Flynn should surrender the money he was paid.
___
10:55 a.m.
The White House is refusing to provide lawmakers with information and documents related to President Donald Trump's first national security adviser's security clearance and payments from organizations tied to the Russian and Turkish governments.
The White House was responding to requests made last month by the House Oversight committee. The committee made six requests, and the White House cited reasons it could not comply with each of them.
Trump has said he fired Michael Flynn because of misleading comments he made to the vice president about his discussions with the Russian ambassador during the transition. Flynn is among the Trump associates being investigated by Congress and the FBI for possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
_____
8:45 a.m.
Former acting attorney general Sally Yates is scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing next month on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Yates is to appear May 8 along with James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence.
The hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee was announced Tuesday morning.
It will mark her first appearance on Capitol Hill since she was fired in late January after refusing to defend President Donald Trump's travel ban. ||||| WASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, may have violated federal law by not fully disclosing his business dealings with Russia when seeking a security clearance to work in the White House, top House oversight lawmakers from both parties asserted on Tuesday.
The revelation came after Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House oversight committee, and other lawmakers on the panel examined classified documents related to Mr. Flynn, including a form he filled out in January 2016 to receive his security clearance. The form is known as an SF-86 and is required by anyone in the government who handles classified information.
As part of the review, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s senior Democrat, said Mr. Flynn did not disclose in those documents payments totaling more than $45,000 that he received from the Russian government for giving a speech in Moscow in 2015, among others.
The development is the latest trouble for Mr. Flynn, who also did not disclose payments from Russian-linked entities on a financial disclosure form that the Trump administration released in late March. Earlier in March, Mr. Flynn filed papers acknowledging that he worked as a foreign agent last year representing the interests of the Turkish government, causing another uproar and more unfavorable headlines for the Trump administration. | – Michael Flynn's Russia headache just got worse: The two heads of the House Oversight Committee say the erstwhile national security adviser probably broke the law in regard to his foreign business dealings, reports the Washington Post. GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings say they reviewed classified military documents and found that Flynn never received the proper permission to accept payments for a speech in Russia and for lobbying on behalf of Turkey. That means Flynn could face criminal prosecution and may have to surrender any money received, reports the AP. "As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey, or anybody else," said Chaffetz of the former general, per the New York Times. “"And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for a violation of law." Added Cummings: "He was supposed to get permission, he was supposed to report it, and he didn’t." The White House has denied the panel's request for more documents related to Flynn's hiring and subsequent departure, reports the Hill. Flynn resigned in February over phone calls he made to the Russian ambassador before assuming office. (His lawyer has floated the idea of immunity in exchange for testimony.) |
By Acting Lieutenant Tom Fuhrmann, Antioch Police Investigations
On Monday, May 11, 2015 at 7:44 PM, Antioch Police Officers responded to the 4900 block of Ridgeview Drive on the report of a burglary in progress. The homeowner advised she was in the home holding her baby when she saw an intruder enter her home through an unlocked door.
She fled out of the front of the house with her baby. Upon fleeing she had left her four-year-old daughter behind in the house. Officers arrived, conducted an interior check of the residence and located the four-year-old at the top of the stairs. The child was directed to go outside to her mother as officers continued to check inside. The four-year-old daughter told her mother, who then alerted the officers that the intruder was hiding in the little girl’s bedroom closet. Upon checking the little girls bedroom, they located 21-year-old Antioch transient male, Demaria Lopez hiding in the closet.
Lopez would not comply with commands. A brief struggle ensued and Lopez was taken into custody without further incident. Lopez was transported and booked into the Martinez Detention Facility on charges of burglary and resisting arrest. There were no injuries to any involved.
Anyone with information regarding this case is encouraged to call Det. McManus with the Antioch Police Department at (925)779-6940. You may also text a tip to 274637 (CRIMES) using key word ANTIOCH.
Share this: ||||| Burglary suspect found after 4-year-old leads police to him
A burglary suspect was arrested in Antioch after he allegedly broke into an occupied home and tried to hide when police arrived, only to be pointed out by the young girl whose closet he was hiding in, officials said Tuesday.
Officers responded to reports of a burglary in progress on the 4900 block of Ridgeview Drive around 7:45 p.m. Monday. The caller told police she had been at home holding her baby, her second child, when she saw a man enter the house through an unlocked door.
The woman fled the home — baby in tow — but realized she had left her 4-year-old girl, in the house, police said.
Police searched the house and found the young girl at the top of the stairs, police said, but no sign of the intruder. The girl went outside and told her mom that the guy was hiding in her closet, police said.
The woman relayed that information to police who found the man, later identified as Demaria Lopez, a 21-year-old transient, exactly where the girl said he was, police said.
Officers briefly struggled with Lopez when he failed to comply with their commands, police said. But he was eventually taken into custody without injury and transported to the Martinez Detention Facility where he was booked on suspicion of burglary and resisting arrest.
Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale | – What should this 4-year-old be when she grows up? Our suggestion: police officer. The San Francisco Chronicle has the initially frightening story of woman who ran from her Antioch, Calif., home after seeing a man come inside through an unlocked door. She had her baby in her arms—but had left the 4-year-old inside. Police arrived and found the girl unharmed, but they were unable to locate the reported intruder ... until the child told her mother exactly where he was. Police did indeed find the man hiding inside the girl's closet, as the child had said. Following a short struggle, 21-year-old Demaria Lopez was arrested, the Antioch Herald reports. He faces charges of attempted burglary and resisting arrest. |
Updated and corrected.
On a muggy Fourth of July night just outside Austin, Rep. Beto O’Rourke walked on stage wearing a light blue button-down, with a Texas-size American flag in the background. But rather than one of his campaign rallies in his Senate bid against Republican Ted Cruz, the Democrat was in front of the thousands that came out for Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic, an annual celebration of country music started by the legendary singer 45 years ago.
Met with a mix of wild cheers and a fair share of booing on the soggy holiday, O’Rourke explained why this Independence Day mattered even more to the country, expressing hope that “the big, bold, confident, strong people of the state of Texas” would help show the rest of the United States that there’s no need to be afraid of immigrants, Muslims or anyone else who might be considered different.
“It’s my honor to be here tonight, to be able to work with so many of you,” he said just before the fireworks, “to be with legends like Ray [Benson] and Willie, who ensure that in times of disappointment and darkness that we meet that with power and joy and rock-and-roll music.”
Soon after, O’Rourke, whose punk-rock roots would later be rehashed by the Cruz campaign, shed his button-down for a black T-shirt and guitar and joined Nelson and the rest of his band on stage for spirited renditions of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” to close out the show.
For Nelson, the jam session with O’Rourke was the latest in a career filled with activism and liberal-leaning political stances that have largely gone against the norm for country-music culture.
But for some of Nelson’s fans, his partnership with O’Rourke was the breaking point. After Nelson announced Wednesday that he would be headlining a Sept. 29 rally for O’Rourke in Austin, fans have taken to social media to boycott and publicly disown the country legend.
On Nelson’s Facebook page, where he posted an article from news outlet Austin360 with the announcement, some of the most striking remarks accuse the performer of aligning with what they believe to be the “socialist” positions of O’Rourke.
“Goodbye Willie,” David R. Williams posted on Facebook. “I don’t support socialist commies! You’re not going to advertise on my FB page either.” He added: “Like we say in Texas, Now Git.”
“Open your eyes Willie!” Claudia Kirby Heathington wrote. “Beto is a Socialist who probably has lied to you. This is a real shame you support him.”
“Wow what a let down,” Melanie Philip said. “You would pick a socialist agenda and an Anti American fellow like BETO, shame on you.”
One man was so disgusted with Nelson that he offered up his ticket to one of the legend’s upcoming shows.
“I am no longer willing to watch that hippie guitarist who supports that … socialist running for Senate,” Dakota Bell tweeted Wednesday.
Someone buy my Willie Nelson ticket for Friday, November 16. I am no longer willing to watch that hippie guitarist who supports that damn socialist running for Senate. — Dakota Boll (@BollDakota) September 13, 2018
Others were much more supportive of Nelson and questioned those skeptical of the country legend.
“Not sure what went wrong in your life that would make you insult Willie Nelson,” tweeted Wheeler Walker Jr., a country singer and songwriter, on Thursday. “You can argue politics all you want but you cannot argue Willie.”
Not sure what went wrong in your life that would make you insult Willie Nelson. You can argue politics all you want but you cannot argue Willie. — Wheeler Walker, Jr. (@WheelerWalkerJr) September 13, 2018
In a news release announcing the concert, Nelson offered insight as to why he’s backing O’Rourke.
“My wife Annie and I have met and spoken with Beto and we share his concern for the direction things are headed,” Nelson said in the release. “Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine.”
The outrage comes as O’Rourke and Cruz are entangled in a tight Senate race, described by the incumbent as a “dogfight,” that has gained national spotlight in recent months.
Nelson’s political activism goes back decades, with his support of the environment, same-sex marriage and, famously, marijuana legalization. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter invited him to perform at the White House. Nelson later said that during the visit he smoked what he called a “big fat Austin torpedo” on the roof of the White House. He has supported President Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton in recent years.
He even released a song last year inspired by President Trump, called “Delete and Fast-Forward.”
“Delete and fast-forward the news. The truth is the truth, but believe what you choose,” Nelson sings. “When we blow the whole world back to where it began, just delete and fast-forward again.”
Correction. The original version of this story incorrectly said this is the first public concert Nelson has held for a political candidate. The story and the headline have been corrected.
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Also on the bill are Leon Bridges, Joe Ely, Carrie Rodriguez, Tameca Jones, and Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah Nelson. (Update, Sept. 19: An initial report of Leon Bridges being on the bill was unconfirmed when the show was announced on Sept. 12, but Bridges confirmed on Sept. 19 that he will be on the bill.)
Admission is free but requires an RSVP via O’Rourke’s website.
A press release from Nelson’s publicist describes the event as “the first public concert Nelson has held for a political candidate.”
“My wife Annie and I have met and spoken with Beto and we share his concern for the direction things are headed,” Nelson said in the press release. “Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine.”
Nelson’s new album “My Way,” featuring standards associated with the repertoire of Frank Sinatra, comes out Friday on Legacy Recordings.
RELATED: More Willie Nelson news on Austin360
Will Beto jam with Willie again? That’s what happened during the encore of the July Fourth Picnic, when O’Rourke joined in on acoustic guitar for the finale of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
So @BetoORourke not only stuck around to sing with @WillieNelson, he played guitar with him. pic.twitter.com/HZdod0WLqr — Peter Blackstock (@Blackstock360) July 5, 2018 | – A free Willie Nelson concert in the heart of the Lone Star State seems like something that would attract fans of all political stripes, but there's a good chance the Sept. 29 event will feature a largely left-leaning crowd. That's because the country crooner is headlining a "Turn Out for Texas" rally in Austin for Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic challenger to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, and many of Nelson's fans aren't happy about it, KTRK reports. Per Austin360, it's "the first public concert Nelson has held for a political candidate," the singer's publicist says in a release, though Rolling Stone notes he's put on private concerts for politicians in the past. "My wife Annie and I have met and spoken with Beto and we share his concern for the direction things are headed," Nelson says in the release. "Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine." The site notes Nelson even brought O'Rourke out on stage during his Fourth of July concert. None of this pleases Nelson's more conservative fans, who see his ties to O'Rourke as a "breaking point," per the Washington Post. "I am certain you've lost your mind," one commenter wrote on Nelson's Facebook page, while another noted: "Willie's position is proof positive that marijuana use over time kills brain cells." Still others are dumping already purchased tickets to future Nelson shows. Many, however, applauded Nelson's decision. "So glad you are involved in this good cause. I have always been a fan, and am now a bigger fan," noted one well-liked post. The Post notes Nelson has long been politically active, throwing his support behind Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, and advocating for pot legalization, gay marriage, and the environment. |
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bans companies from paying foreign officials to get more business. The law has recently been targeted by lobbyists — including an arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with ties to Wal-Mart — who criticize it as too broad and bad for business.
The Times investigation found that Wal-Mart de Mexico paid more than $24 million in bribes to win construction permits. When a whistleblower alerted top Wal-Mart executives in 2005, they launched an investigation that found evidence of the bribery but then shut down the inquiry. The company failed to report any of the information to law enforcement at the time, the Times story said.
The revelations threaten to blemish the cleaned-up image Wal-Mart has carefully put together in recent years after facing criticism that it paid workers too little and put mom-and-pop stores out of business.
As officials in recent years have stepped up their enforcement of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Chamber has been pushing for the law to be scaled back.
The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, an arm of the Chamber that has been a leader in criticizing the law, listed two Wal-Mart executives as board members in its 2010 tax form: Jeff Gearhart, Wal-Mart’s general counsel, and Thomas Hyde, a former Wal-Mart corporate secretary who stepped down in August 2010.
Hyde was among the company executives who received initial reports of the alleged bribery in 2005, according to the Times story.
“We take compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) very seriously and are committed to having a strong and effective global anti-corruption program in every country in which we operate,” David Tovar, Wal-Mart’s vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement Saturday. “Many of the alleged activities in The New York Times article are more than six years old. If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”
A spokesman for Justice Department declined to comment. The people who confirmed the department’s investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because the probe is ongoing.
Wal-Mart’s shares slid nearly 5 percent Monday, and the company faced more questions about how much it knew about the corruption and why it did not tell authorities. Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Wal-Mart chief executive Michael Duke requesting an in-person meeting about the bribery allegations.
Labor critics again raised alarms about the company’s practices.
“The reported cover-up by Walmart executives at the highest levels exposes a core truth: Walmart cannot be taken at its word,” Joe Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said in statement.
One in five Wal-Mart stores is in Mexico. Wal-Mart de Mexico is the company’s largest foreign subsidiary.
Staff writer Tom Hamburger contributed to this report. ||||| Stock Chart for Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB de CV (WALMEXV)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) is the subject of a U.S. Justice Department criminal investigation into allegations of bribery in its Mexican subsidiary, according to a person familiar with the probe.
The Justice Department is investigating potential criminal charges under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to the person familiar with the probe who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about it. Wal-Mart is conducting its own review of allegations that its representatives paid local officials in Mexico to get stores opened faster in the early 2000s.
The investigations by the government and the company may prompt executive departures and U.S. penalties if it reveals senior managers didn’t take strong enough action, governance specialists said. The probes also may slow Wal-Mart’s expansion in Mexico and other markets.
“The penalties paid by companies in settling these types of FCPA investigations have grown significantly larger in recent years,” said Jeffrey Lehtman, a Washington-based partner with the law firm of Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP. “Depending on the facts uncovered, companies like Wal-Mart can expect the penalties to be incredibly high.”
The bribery allegations were described in an April 21 New York Times story. In a December 2011 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Wal-Mart said it was examining whether it was in compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, without saying what region or time period was in question.
“It is an open question as to whether Wal-Mart’s prior disclosure would have allowed investors to understand the magnitude of potential exposure,” said Lehtman, whose firm handles Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases.
‘Anti-Corruption Program’
Alisa Finelli, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment. John Nester, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment earlier yesterday on whether the agency plans to investigate the Wal-Mart allegations.
The company said in an April 21 statement that it has met voluntarily with the Justice Department and the SEC to discuss the case. The company is also enhancing its audit procedures and internal controls to escalate to management possible violations of the bribery law.
Jeff Gearhart, the company’s general counsel and corporate secretary, told employees in an April 21 memo that the alleged violations “occurred more than six years ago” and are “not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”
In a separate note sent to employees yesterday, Chief Executive Officer Mike Duke said Wal-Mart is conducting an “aggressive investigation” and “will not tolerate violations anywhere or at any level of the company.” David Tovar, a company spokesman, confirmed the authenticity of both documents.
Mexican Expansion
The expansion of Wal-Mart de Mexico, mainly in the last decade, left the world’s largest retailer with about 20 percent of its stores in Mexico, out of more than 10,000 worldwide. Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart’s sales rose about 6 percent last year to $447 billion. Wal-Mart has more than doubled the number of stores in Mexico to 2,088 since 2008.
The investigation may slow Wal-Mart’s growth in the country if authorities there feel pressure to show more scrutiny of its permits, Robert Carroll, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, said yesterday in a report.
Wal-Mart de Mexico, which is 69 percent owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., fell 12 percent yesterday to 37.89 pesos in Mexico City, the biggest decline since May 4, 1998. The parent company’s shares slid 4.7 percent to $59.54 at the close in New York, the biggest drop since Aug. 10.
Conference Call
Walmex’s first-quarter net income rose 4.5 percent to 4.71 billion pesos ($357 million) from 4.5 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Sales climbed 14 percent to 96.9 billion pesos, missing the average estimate of 99.7 billion pesos of five analysts polled by Bloomberg.
Walmex CEO Scot Rank and Chief Financial Officer Rafael Matute didn’t mention the corruption investigation yesterday on a seven-minute conference call to discuss first-quarter results. As usual, the company didn’t take questions from analysts or investors on the quarterly call.
Settlements involving the corrupt practices act are typically 1 percent to 2 percent of sales, and that would be about $4.5 billion per 1 percentage point of sales for Wal-Mart, Carroll said. FCPA investigations take 2 years to 6 years to settle, he said. The largest such settlement ever was $1.6 billion paid by Siemens AG (SIE) in 2008, he said.
Wal-Mart executives, including then-Chief Executive Officer and current board member Lee Scott, were made aware of the bribery allegations in 2005, the New York Times reported. So was Duke, the current CEO, who at the end of that year was just taking over international operations, the article said.
Scott didn’t return a phone call to his home.
Congressional Scrutiny
Two top Democrats on congressional panels yesterday moved to start a probe and request a meeting with Wal-Mart executives.
The Times report “raises serious questions about potential violations of United States law” and “about the actions of top company officials in the United States who reportedly tried to disregard substantial evidence of abuse,” Representatives Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Henry Waxman of California, wrote in a letter to Duke.
Cummings is the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Waxman is the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Wal-Mart will face pressure from shareholders to take action against any executives who didn’t act fully on the bribery allegations sooner, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
‘It’s Problematic’
“If this is all true, it’s problematic,” Elson said in a telephone interview. “If any officer was significantly involved, their position has to be reviewed. You have to do the investigating and determine what did the CEO know and when.”
The Times article said the bribes may have amounted to more than $24 million in payments.
The Times identified executive Eduardo Castro-Wright as a central figure in the expansion of the alleged payments. Castro- Wright ran Wal-Mart de Mexico as CEO from 2003 to 2005 and was president and chief operating officer of the unit from 2001 to 2003. Some of the alleged bribery took place during that time, the newspaper reported.
In a telephone interview, Tovar declined to discuss the future of Castro-Wright, who is now a Wal-Mart vice chairman scheduled to retire July 1.
To contact the reporters on this story: David Welch in Detroit at dwelch12@bloomberg.net; Thom Weidlich in New York at tweidlich@bloomberg.net; Seth Stern in Washington at sstern14@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robin Ajello at rajello@bloomberg.net; Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net | – Walmart is under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice over allegations that it doled out millions in bribes to Mexican officials in order to grow its business there more quickly, sources tell Bloomberg and the Washington Post. The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits companies from paying foreign officials in an effort to increase business, and if Walmart is found to be in violation of FCPA, the company could face executive departures, slowed expansion in Mexico and other markets, and penalties that could be "incredibly high," says one lawyer. In a note to employees yesterday, Walmart CEO Mike Duke said the company is conducting its own "aggressive investigation" into the allegations; in an earlier statement, a VP had noted that "many of the alleged activities ... are more than six years old. If these allegations are true, it is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for." The top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee also moved yesterday to open a probe into the incident. Walmart shares dove after the allegations came to light. |
The following article, which has provoked much criticism, should have included acknowledgment of the serious nature and number of allegations that had been made against the writer, Jian Ghomeshi. In October 2014, Ghomeshi—about whom multiple women had filed harassment complaints—was fired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after executives saw evidence that he had caused physical harm to a woman. Shortly after, more than twenty women accused him of sexual abuse and harassment, which included hitting, biting, choking, and verbal abuse during sex. Many of these allegations were made in respected publications, including The Toronto Star. That November, Ghomeshi was charged with the sexual assault of three women. (Sexual assault, under Canada’s Criminal Code, can include threats and nonconsensual physical contact. There is no specific legal provision for rape as it is defined in US law.) In January 2015, additional counts of sexual assault were brought against him by three more women. He was acquitted of all charges, and settled a further charge of sexual assault, of a coworker at the CBC, out of court with a peace bond and public apology. Substantial space will be devoted to letters responding to this article in the next issue of The New York Review, dated October 25, 2018.
Not so long ago, I spoke to hundreds of thousands of listeners across North America every day on a public radio show. These days, the closest I come to public performance is at a neighborhood karaoke bar in New York. Even that can have its perils. One night last year, I was waiting my turn to sing when a woman spotted my name on the list. “Jian!” she said to me. “Your name is Jian? Ha! Hey, you know who ruined that name for you?” “No. Who?” I said, bracing myself. For the first time, she looked straight at me—and stopped smiling.
For her, it was like one of those excruciating moments when you accidentally include the butt of a joke in a reply-all e-mail. For me, it was just another day in the life of the notorious Jian. She apologized and said all the right things. And I said all the right things back. (“How could you have known?”) Mostly I felt bad because she felt bad. But then we rallied and sang a duet together. And then we became friends and are regularly in touch. Chalk up one more human being who no longer thinks I’m a creep.
Here’s the thing about being an erstwhile “celebrity” who is now an outcast: You’re not just feeling sorry for yourself. You’re also feeling sorry for everyone around you—sometimes even the strangers. You can see the anxiety in their faces as they stammer out banalities, studiously avoiding the subject of career (or lack thereof), making vague gestures of encouragement that trail off into silence. ||||| Ian Buruma, the former editor-in-chief of the New York Review of Books who was forced out of the job on Wednesday amid a row over his editorial judgment relating to #MeToo, has complained of being “publicly pilloried” and “convicted on Twitter”.
A day after the announcement of Buruma’s departure from the literary magazine, the NYRB itself has yet to give an explanation for the rift with its chief editor – only the third person to hold the top post since the review was founded in 1963. The silence means Buruma has got his side of the story out first, portraying himself as a victim of social media bullying.
New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma departs amid outrage over essay Read more
In an interview with the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland, the writer and academic said he had been “convicted on Twitter, without any due process”. He characterized his fate as “rather ironic”.
“As editor of the New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo-offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media. And now I myself am publicly pilloried.”
The storm that toppled Buruma from one of the most prestigious journalistic seats in America erupted this month when he published a long article by the former Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi. The celebrity was acquitted in March, 2016, of sexual assault and choking relating to three women.
At least a further 17 other women have also made serious allegations of improper sexual conduct against Ghomeshi. Yet in the essay, Ghomeshi tried to defend himself against the accusations, saying they were “inaccurate”.
Ghomeshi said he wanted to give a more “nuanced” view of what had happened.
The article prompted furious debate on social media and widespread criticism of Buruma’s decision to publish on the grounds that, though Ghomeshi had been acquitted, he remained subject to multiple claims of violent behavior from many women. The dispute was aggravated when Buruma gave an interview last week to Slate in which he said it was not “really my concern” to take a view on Ghomeshi’s allegedly violent behavior and argued that there were “undesirable, or at least unresolved, aspects” aspects to the way the Canadian star had been treated.
Buruma commissioned the Ghomeshi article several months ago, and faced strong opposition to publication from members of the NYRB staff. The former editor-in-chief told Vrij Nederland: “The staff was initially not unanimously positive about publication, but once the decision to publish was made, we agreed. Also the publisher was initially positive.”
He insisted that he had not been fired from the NYRB job but had been put in a position where he felt he had to step down because of a combination of social media hounding and pressure from academic advertisers to the magazine who were not happy about the Ghomeshi scandal. “University publishers, whose advertisements make publication of the New York Review of Books partly possible, were threatening a boycott,” Buruma said.
“They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic. Because of this, I feel forced to resign – in fact it is a capitulation to social media and university presses.” ||||| Dutch version here.
‘I am embroiled in a big scandal, in the middle of storm on social media,’ said Ian Buruma on the phone from New York. ‘It is rather ironic: as editor of The New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo-offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media. And now I myself am publicly pilloried.’
For the moment, he does not want to comment on his sudden departure from the renowned, bi-weekly The New York Review of Books. But because Vrij Nederland was about to publish a long interview with him, Buruma made an exception for VN – although he is not willing to go deeply into the case and he terminated the conversation after a brief exchange.
He is about to write a resignation letter to publisher/owner Rea. S Hederman, says Buruma. A month earlier, during the interview, he was very enthusiastic about his new job, his young editorial team and his wealthy, but progressive publisher. And he is still. Just as he is... |||||
Liam Casey and Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press
A former editor at the New York Review of Books says he stands by his decision to publish a controversial essay written by disgraced former radio host Jian Ghomeshi.
Ian Buruma told Vrij Nederland, a Dutch magazine, that he lost his job after an intense backlash to the article from social media and magazine advertisers.
"It is rather ironic: as editor of The New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about .MeToo offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media," the Dutch native said to Vrij.
"And now I myself am publicly pilloried."
Last week, the magazine published Ghomeshi's essay, titled "Reflections from a Hashtag," where he wrote he had "deep remorse" for the way he treated people, but said the accusations from the women were inaccurate.
Ghomeshi was acquitted in March 2016 of four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking involving three women and later signed a peace bond after apologizing to a fourth woman that saw another count of sexual assault withdrawn.
The essay sparked an online backlash from those who said the former CBC radio host should not have been given such a prestigious platform to write an unchallenged first-person piece. Critics complained that the piece wasn't properly fact-checked and was self-serving to a man trying to rehabilitate his image.
On Wednesday, the magazine added an editorial note clarifying several details about the allegations against Ghomeshi, how they emerged and the legal proceedings that followed.
Buruma says he was not fired from the prestigious literary magazine, but felt forced to resign after he was told by his publisher that university publishers who advertise in the Review of Books were threatening a boycott.
"They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic," Buruma said to Vrij.
"Because of this, I feel forced to resign -- in fact it is a capitulation to social media and university presses."
He admits he didn't gauge the forces of the .MeToo movement.
"I still stand behind my decision to publish," Buruma says now. "I expected that there would (be) intense reactions, but I hoped that it would open a discussion about what to do with people who behaved badly, but who were acquitted in a court of law."
Romayne Smith Fullerton, an associate professor in Western University's faculty of information and media studies, said it's the intransigence of those with influence like Buruma that has made her less and less optimistic about the potential for gender equality in journalism and beyond over her 22 years of teaching.
"It makes me feel like we haven't come very far," she said. "I feel often like there's more push back. That there are less people who are willing to even stand up for equality, let alone what I would see as advancing the cause of women."
Smith Fullerton said the magazine's lack of transparency about the events that transpired over the roughly weeklong controversy has sown distrust among readers.
"I would like to see the magazine step up, and acknowledge what they see as their own deficiencies," she said. "One of the biggest and most valuable pieces of currency journalism has is credibility. If you're going to throw it under the bus, don't be sad when you don't have an audience."
There is a place for journalism about the cultural forces that have enabled bad male behaviour, said Smith Fullerton, as well as the perspectives of men who have been accused, like Ghomeshi. But those accounts shouldn't come in the form of an unchallenged, first-person essay in a highbrow literary magazine, she said.
"Until we actually reach a spot where we are in fact equal, then we need to advocate on the side of those who are not equal," she said. "And we do not yet have an equal workplace, a equal social sphere, or an equal public sphere."
The New York Review of Books declined to comment. ||||| The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It by Warren Farrell and John Gray
Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism by Michael Kimmel
White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out by Christian Picciolini | – The former editor-in-chief of the New York Review of Books—who abruptly left his post after running an essay by #MeToo villain Jian Ghomeshi—has given an interview with a Dutch publication blaming his downfall on Twitter and university publishers, the Guardian reports. "As editor of the New York Review of Books I published a theme issue about #MeToo offenders who had not been convicted in a court of law but by social media," says Ian Burama of the Oct. 11 issue, which actually focuses on modern male struggles and female empowerment. "And now I myself am publicly pilloried." He also blames academic advertisers who were unhappy about the Ghomeshi piece. "University publishers, whose advertisements make publication of the New York Review of Books partly possible, were threatening a boycott," says Burama. "They are afraid of the reactions on the campuses, where this is an inflammatory topic. Because of this, I feel forced to resign..." But the head of the Association of University Presses says he's unaware of any such boycott threat, the Washington Post reports. And with the Review keeping mum, most commentators and critics are slamming Burama for giving an alleged serial assaulter such a highly regarded platform. "One of the biggest and most valuable pieces of currency journalism has is credibility," an associate professor in Canada tells CTV. "If you're going to throw it under the bus, don't be sad when you don't have an audience." |
Yet Rodman said Monday that he has not spoken with Trump in a while, and criticized the president for his frequent Twitter tirades against Kim. “I would love for Donald Trump to call me and say, ‘What is he like?’” Rodman said. “He’s never met him, he’s never talked with his people.… You can say [Kim] is crazy, but what has he done to you? What has he done in general?” ||||| Dennis Rodman Busted for DUI
Dennis Rodman Arrested for DUI (UPDATE)
EXCLUSIVE
10:10 AM PT -- Rodman's rep tells TMZ, "Alcoholism has been a struggle on and off for Dennis the past 15 years," adding he's been going through some "tough personal issues." The rep says he's going to talk to Dennis about going back to rehab.
Dennis Rodman has been arrested for DUI ... TMZ has learned.
Rodman was driving in Newport Beach Saturday at around 11 PM when cops pulled him over for a traffic violation. Cops administered a field sobriety test, which he flunked. He was handcuffed, put in a patrol car and taken to the police station.
We're told Rodman was cooperative and submitted to a breathalyzer test, and he blew over the .08 legal limit.
Rodman remained in jail for 7 hours, and when police determined he was sober enough to care for himself he was released.
Rodman was busted for DUI back in 1999. | – Dennis Rodman was pulled over late Saturday in Southern California, where police allege he was driving under the influence. USA Today reports the five-time NBA championship winner was first stopped by cops in Newport Beach around 11pm for vehicle code violations before officers began a DUI investigation. According to reports, Rodman was given a breathalyzer test before being arrested and booked into Newport Beach Jail. The legal limit in California is .08, but police did not release Rodman's test results. TMZ reports the 56-year-old was cooperative and that he remained in custody for seven hours before officials determined he'd sobered up enough to go home. Rodman was previously arrested on DUI charges in 1999 and 2003. "Alcoholism has been a struggle on and off for Dennis the past 15 years," a rep for Rodman told TMZ on Sunday. Rodman retired in 2000 after 14 seasons in the NBA. More recently, he's made headlines for his unlikely bond with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Just last month, the LA Times reported that Rodman wanted to arrange a diplomatic basketball game between North Korea and Guam, a US territory. “The people in Guam are all about it. They love it," he said while on what he called a "humanitarian" tour of Asia aimed at bridging the rift in US-DPRK relations. With President Trump and Kim Jong Un trading fiery rhetoric, Rodman used the occasion of his fifth and most recent North Korea visit to present a state official with a copy of Trump's The Art of the Deal in June. |
"This is a very difficult time for us. We ask the media to respect our privacy. There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better. We don't understand why this happened. It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss." ||||| TUCSON, Ariz.—The father of shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner has prepared and may release a public statement, according to a neighbor who met with Mr. Loughner's parents Monday.
A neighbor of Randy and Amy Loughner, who have lived for decades in a ranch house north of Tuscon, Ariz., describes their devastation at learning that their son Jared had shot 20 people, killing six of them. WSJ's Charles Forelle reports.
Devlin Barrett reports on how federal investigators are working to make the case against accused shooter Jared Loughner in this weekend's massacre in Tucson. Plus, former House Majority Leader Tom Delay is sentenced to three years in prison.
Randy and Amy Loughner disappeared from view shortly after the shootings, and a statement would be the family's first public comments since the attack.
Even in normal times, many on his block describe the elder Mr. Loughner as a reclusive man who had little time for neighborhood niceties.
Few people besides law-enforcement officers have been spotted entering the family home. Neighbor Wayne Smith did so on Monday evening, after he said Mr. Loughner asked him to bring in the mail.
Mr. Smith emerged to tell a small group of reporters that Randy Loughner had written a statement but isn't sure when to release it. Mr. Loughner is reluctant to greet the public and will try to coordinate the release through the local sheriff's office, Mr. Smith said.
"They're hurting real bad," Mr. Smith said, outside the house, in a neighborhood north of Tucson amid a flat carpet of strip malls and low subdivisions. "They are devastated."
Officials say Mr. Loughner had psychological problems and plotted his attack, which killed six people, gravely wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and injured 13 others.
Mr. Loughner's parents have been unreachable since. The parents told investigators they didn't realize the severity of their son's problems, say people familiar with the matter.
The Loughners' single-level ranch house stands out on the quiet and open block: its entire front is shrouded by shrubbery—a billowing mesquite, a cactus with droopy paddles and a stunted palm whose fronds shield a street-facing window.
"They liked their privacy," says George Gayan, a retired mechanic who has lived next door for three decades. Sometimes "I didn't see him for three or four days."
Mr. Smith, who is 70 and has lived in a house across the street since 1972, said he didn't know the couple's last name until after Saturday's rampage. And Mr. Loughner didn't know his, he said. Still, he said he was probably one of Randy Loughner's closest acquaintances in the neighborhood.
He said he believes Randy hasn't worked since Jared was born. Amy had a steady job and Randy raised Jared, he said.
Residents interviewed on the block said they barely knew the Loughners. Stephen Woods, who lives next door, had run-ins with Mr. Loughner over uncollected trash that he said were vituperative and hostile.
Once, Mr. Woods said, Mr. Loughner spotted him from a distance in a Wal-Mart parking lot and repeatedly shouted "Trash people!"
It was Mr. Smith who told the Loughners what had happened Saturday. They returned from shopping, grocery bags in their peeling white Chevy truck, to find sheriffs' cars parked in front of the house and deputies stringing up crime-scene tape.
Mr. Smith, who had seen the news on TV, walked up and told them their son was suspected in a mass shooting.
"She almost passed out right there," Mr. Smith said. "He sat in the road with the tape up and cried."
—Evan Perez contributed to this article.
Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle@wsj.com | – The parents of Jared Lee Loughner have released their first statement, and they sound as perplexed as the rest of us. "We don't understand why this happened," says the statement, via AP. "It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss." Earlier, a neighbor described Amy and Randy Loughner as "hurting real bad," reports the Wall Street Journal. "They are devastated." The same neighbor—like others, he described the Loughner family as extremely private—was the first to break the news of their only child's arrest. He approached when they arrived home from shopping to see police cars and crime scene tape surrounding the house. "She almost passed out right there," said the neighbor. "He sat in the road with the tape up and cried." |
Columnist with The Sunday Times and Irish Catholic. Director of Iona Institute. Author of 'How we killed God (and other tales of modern Ireland)'.
Dublin ||||| DUBLIN The people of Ireland backed same-sex marriage by a landslide in a referendum that marked a dramatic social shift in a traditionally Catholic country that only decriminalized homosexuality two decades ago.
After one of the largest turnouts in a referendum there, 62 percent of voters said 'Yes', making Ireland the first country to adopt same-sex marriage via a popular vote.
'Yes' supporters crowded into the courtyard of Dublin Castle to watch in blistering sunshine as results trickled in from around the country were shown on a large screen. They cheered with joy as the final tally was announced and then burst into a rendition of the national anthem.
"We woke up today to a new Ireland. The real Irish Republic that I have dreamed of my whole life," said Jean Webster, a 54-year-old administrator who came out as a lesbian eight years ago after separating from her husband.
Government ministers waved a rainbow flag from the stage in front of the crowd and one lesbian senator proposed to her partner live on national television.
"The answer is yes to their future, yes to their love, yes to equal marriage. That 'Yes' is heard loudly across the world as a sound of pioneering leadership from our people," Prime Minister Enda Kenny told a news conference. "Ireland, thank you."
The Catholic Church, which teaches that homosexual activity is a sin, saw its dominance of Irish politics collapse after a series of child sex abuse scandals in the early 1990s and limited its 'No' campaigning to sermons to its remaining flock.
The archbishop of Dublin said the result presented a challenge.
"It is a social revolution. It's very clear that if this referendum is an affirmation of the views of young people, then the Church has a huge task ahead of it," Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told national broadcaster RTE.
"The Church needs to do a reality check."
TABOO
Ireland follows several Western European countries including Britain, France and Spain in allowing gay marriage, which is also legal in South Africa, Brazil, Canada and some U.S. states, while homosexuality remains taboo and often illegal in many parts of Africa and Asia.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden tweeted: "We welcome Ireland's support for equality. #LoveWins"
After Irish expatriates flocked home to vote, 60 percent of registered voters cast their ballot, the highest in two decades.
"This is a big placard from the people of Ireland to the rest of the world saying this is the way forward," said David Norris, who began a campaign for gay rights in the late 1970s.
The proposal was backed by all political parties, championed by big employers and endorsed by celebrities, all hoping it would mark a transformation in a country that was long regarded as one of the most socially conservative in Western Europe.
Only a third of the country backed the decriminalization of gay sex for men over 17 in 1993, according to a poll at the time. When voters narrowly legalized divorce in 1995, only five of the 30 constituencies outside Dublin backed the proposal.
This time, all bar one of the 43 voting areas approved the marriage measure.
"It changes everything, the worries and fears I had as a young gay kid in Ireland, they're all gone," said Ger O'Keefe, 27, a 'Yes' campaigner from Waterford.
"This will tell kids now that you don't need to be afraid."
(Editing by Robin Pomeroy) ||||| Full list of results
Ireland has officially passed the same-sex marraige referendum with 1.2 million people voting in its favour. The result was confirmed just before 7pm on Saturday although the result was clear from very early in the count. The Yes vote prevailed by 62 to 38 per cent with a large 60.5 per cent turnout.
In total, 1,201,607 people voted in favour with 734,300 against, giving a majority of 467,307. The total valid poll was 1,935,907.
Roscommon-South Leitrim was the only county to reject same-sex marriage. The No vote there finished with 51.4 per cent.
Donegal, against some expectations, approved the amendment to the Constitution by a small margin. Donegal South West was on a razor edge with 50.1 per cent voting Yes, representing a margin of just 33 votes.
A referendum presented simultaneously on reducing the permissible age for presidential candidates was roundly defeated.
The Yes vote in Dublin in the same-sex marriage referendum was particularly pronounced.
Dublin Midwest recorded a Yes vote of 70.9 per cent, Dublin South West returned 71.3 per cent, Dún Laoghaire 71.6 per cent, Dublin North West 70.6 per cent and Dublin South Central 72.3 per cent, all in keeping with the 70 per cent-plus positive vote that had been anticipated in the capital.
As the result emerged on Saturday afternoon thousands of people gathered in the courtyard of Dublin Castle amid scenes of widespread jubilation.
Senior politicians welcomed the result, with Minister for Health Leo Varadkar saying the overwhelming Yes vote makes Ireland a “beacon of light” for the rest of the world in terms of liberty and equality.
“It’s a historical day for Ireland,” he told RTÉ, a “social revolution”, adding that had any constituencies voted No, it would only have been a handful. In the end there was just one. Mr Varadkar revealed publically during the referendum campaign that he was gay.
Well done, Ireland. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 23, 2015 Ireland did it! The 1st country to legalize marriage equality by popular vote, but they won't be the last! What an incredible accomplishment — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) May 23, 2015
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said it was now time to focus on other myriad inequalities in Irish society.
“I have the strong belief - there is a strong belief in the church - about the nature of marriage and the family,” he said, after the result was beyond dispute.
“I would like to have seen that the rights of gay and lesbian men and women could have been respected without changing the definition of marriage. That hasn’t happened, but that is the world we live in today.”
The eyes of the world have been trained on Ireland with the story featuring prominently in international media throughout the weekend.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the referendum turnout showed the “palpable movement” of people wanting to be involved.
He particularly noted how young people had travelled around the country to “to put a single mark” on a ballot paper, demonstrating the value of the issue at hand.
Paul Moran of Millward Brown told RTÉ voter turnout had proved vital and that youth had driven the result, if not entirely deciding it. Social media has played a central role, he said.
No campaigners congratulated the Yes side. Prominent No campaigner and director of the Iona Institute David Quinn seemed to concede the vote shortly after counting began when he tweeted: “Congratulations to the Yes site. Well done.”
The Iona Institute issued a statement congratulating the Yes side “on their win” which they described as “a handsome victory”.
“We hope the Government will address the concerns voters on the No side have about the implications for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience,” it concluded.
No campaigner Senator Ronan Mullen said he was not surprised by the seemingly “very substantial majority” in the Yes vote but remains concerned about changes to the Constitution and its negative impacts.
Nobody in the No campaign thought it was going to be easy, he said.
“We are operating in a political time and place in Irish culture”, up against a very skilled Yes campaign which had the support of all political parties.
Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, who also campaigned for a No vote, said the referendum “for me was never anti-gay”. She said she had switched her vote from Yes to No simply because of her concerns around constitutional change and its effect on a child’s birthright.
The No advocacy group Mothers and Fathers Matter expressed “warm congratulations” to the Yes side but said that one in three Irish people - the vote ratio - were not represented by the political establishment.
Yes campaigner and Fianna Fáil Senator Averil Power said gay campaigners who told their stories on the doorsteps of voters had “helped to change Ireland for all of us”, not just the gay community.
She said she had seen many of them reduced to tears by the experience they had during the campaign. For them, it was often “an incredibly difficult thing to do”.
Senator David Norris, who fought from the 1970s to 1993 to have homosexuality decriminalised, welcomed the result. “I believe that by the end of today gay people will be equal in this country. I think it’s wonderful,” he said.
Minister for Children James Reilly said while the same-sex marriage referendum yes vote is strong in Dublin, it is also strong around the country. He says a lot of voters have been thinking about their grandchildren and giving them the same opportunities in life, should they be gay.
US vice president Joe Biden tweeted: “We welcome Ireland’s support for equality #LoveWins.”
As with the last referendum, media facilities were made available at Dublin Castle, and a large international contingent was in attendance.
Following calls from politicians and members of the public on Friday Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW Simon Harris announced that Dublin Castle would also be open to 2,000 members of the public. | – The world is about to have its first country to accept gay marriage through a popular vote. Though final results aren't expected for hours, both sides say the "yes" side has won an easy victory in yesterday's referendum, reports the Irish Times. One of the main opponents conceded as much in a tweet: "Congratulations to the Yes side," wrote David Quinn of the Iona Institute, a Catholic think tank. "Well done." It's not a huge surprise given that all major political parties backed the idea, and massive turnout boded well for proponents. "The numbers of people who turned out to vote is unprecedented," says the nation's equality minister. "This has really touched a nerve in Ireland today." Reuters is typical in its coverage in describing the result as a "dramatic social shift" in the predominantly Catholic country, one in which homosexuality was still illegal just two decades ago. |
Facebook says likely Russia-based group paid for political ads during US election
Facebook said on Wednesday it had found that an influence operation probably based in Russia spent $100,000 on ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May.
The social media network said that many of the ads promoted 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages Facebook has now suspended. The ads spread polarizing views on topics such as immigration, race and gay rights, instead of backing a particular political candidate, it said.
Trump makes policy pledge to senator investigating son's Russia meeting Read more
Facebook announced the findings in a blogpost by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 presidential election.
The company said it found no link to any presidential campaign. Three-quarters of the ads were national in scope, and the rest did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing states as voting neared.
Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot”.
The findings buttress US intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election.
Facebook previously published a white paper detailing well-funded and subtle techniques used by countries and organizations to spread misleading information for geopolitical goals. These efforts go well beyond “fake news”, the company said, and include content seeding, targeted data collection and fake accounts used to amplify one particular view, sow distrust in political institutions and spread confusion.
The company said in April: “We have had to expand our security focus from traditional abusive behavior, such as account hacking, malware, spam and financial scams, to include more subtle and insidious forms of misuse, including attempts to manipulate civic discourse and deceive people.”
Facebook did not attribute the manipulation to any nation state, although it said that the company’s investigation “does not contradict” the findings of a January report by the US director of national intelligence that outlined Russian involvement in the election.
Even so, as recently as June, it told journalists that it had not found any evidence to date of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform.
A Facebook employee said on Wednesday there were unspecified connections between the divisive ads and a well-known Russian “troll factory” in St Petersburg that publishes comments on social media.
Beyond the issue ads, Facebook said it uncovered $50,000 more in overtly political advertising that might have links to Russia. Some of those ads were bought using the Russian language, even though they were displayed to users in English.
West failing to tackle Russian hacking and fake news, says Latvia Read more
Even if no laws were violated, the pages ran afoul of Facebook requirements for authenticity, setting up the suspensions.
“In the past Facebook has taken the stance that it’s a tech company and not a media company, but they have clearly moved into the media company category,” said advertising veteran Mike Kelly, CEO of Kelly Newman Ventures and former president of AOL Media. “They have to up their game a bit.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Zuckerberg has said the idea that fake news on Facebook could influence an election is ‘pretty crazy’, but not everyone agrees. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Kelly suggests that the company should use its technology prowess to come up with “new ways to filter and assess accounts and advertisers”.
Facebook, which now has 2 billion monthly users, suspends more than 1 million accounts per day in its quest to keep spam, fraud and hate speech of its platform.
More than $1bn was spent on digital political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, 10,000 times the amount identified by Facebook’s security team.
Facebook has rejected the notion that fake news on Facebook influenced the outcome of the US election, with Mark Zuckerberg describing it as a “pretty crazy idea”.
“Voters make decisions based on their lived experience,” he said in November.
But Facebook’s ad sales team tells a different story. It highlights how an “audience-specific” political campaign on Facebook was able to “significantly shift voter intent and increase favorability” for US senate candidate Pat Toomey, contributing to his re-election.
In other words: it is entirely possible to swing an election using Facebook advertising, but it doesn’t seem like this Russian “influence operation” was effective.
“Maybe nothing happened this time, but it’s a good warning to them that their [Facebook’s] role in the media landscape has changed, especially given their scale, and with that comes a lot of new responsibility,” said Kelly.
||||| Representatives of Facebook told congressional investigators Wednesday that the social network has discovered that it sold ads during the U.S. presidential campaign to a shadowy Russian company seeking to target voters, according to several people familiar with the company's findings.
Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian "troll farm" with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda, these people said.
A small portion of the ads, which began in the summer of 2015, directly named Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the people said, although they declined to say which candidate the ads favored.
Most of the ads, according to a blog post published late Wednesday by Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, "appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."
The acknowledgment by Facebook comes as congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are probing Russian interference in the U.S. election, including allegations that the Kremlin may have coordinated with the Trump campaign.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election to help elect Trump, including by using paid social media trolls to spread fake news intended to influence public opinion.
Even though the ad spending from Russia is tiny relative to overall campaign costs, the report from Facebook that a Russian firm was able to target political messages is likely to fuel pointed questions from investigators about whether the Russians received guidance from people in the United States — a question some Democrats have been asking for months.
Facebook reported in its blog post Wednesday that about one-quarter of the ads in question were "geographically targeted," although company officials declined to provide specifics about what areas or demographic groups were the recipients. Of those targeted ads, the company said, more ran in 2015 than 2016.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday that the disclosure by Facebook confirmed one of the ways Russia sought to interfere in U.S. politics and serves as a "profound warning to us and others about future elections."
"This is a very significant set of data points produced by Facebook," Schiff said, adding: "Left unanswered in what we received from Facebook — because it is beyond the scope of what they are able to determine — is whether there was any coordination between these social media trolls and the campaign. We have to get to the bottom of that."
The House panel, whose staff investigators heard briefly from Facebook representatives behind closed doors Wednesday, will follow up with Facebook and other social media companies and platforms to see "to what degree they are able to confirm similar metrics," Sciff said.
An official familiar with Facebook's internal investigation said the company does not have the ability to determine whether the ads it sold represented any sort of coordination.
The acknowledgment by Facebook follows months of criticism that the social media company served as a platform for the spread of false information before the November election. In a statement posted days after the election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg promised to explore the issue but said that 99 percent of information found on Facebook is authentic and only "a very small amount" is fake or hoaxes. In December, however, the company announced that it would begin flagging articles that had been deemed false or fake, with the assistance of fact-checking organizations.
Facebook discovered the Russian connection as part of an investigation that began this spring looking at purchasers of politically motivated ads, according to people familiar with the inquiry. It found that 3,300 ads had digital footprints that led to the Russian company.
Facebook teams then discovered 470 suspicious and likely fraudulent Facebook accounts and pages that it believes operated out of Russia, had links to the company and were involved in promoting the ads.
A Facebook official said "there is evidence that some of the accounts are linked to a troll farm in St. Petersburg, referred to as the Internet Research Agency, though we have no way to independently confirm." The official declined to release any of the ads it traced to Russian companies or entities.
"Our data policy and federal law limit our ability to share user data and content, so we won't be releasing any ads," the official said. The official added that the ads "were directed at people on Facebook who had expressed interest in subjects explored on those pages, such as LGBT community, black social issues, the Second Amendment and immigration."
Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has studied Russian online influence campaigns, said Wednesday that Facebook's report served as "validation" for findings by him and his researchers, who he said had spotted what they believed to be Russians posing as Americans to press political messages on Facebook as early as 2015.
He said his analysis showed that Facebook ads in 2015 were largely concerned with divisive social messages and were used to identify other Facebook users most susceptible to messaging. Those users were then targeted with election-oriented ads in 2016, he said.
"We had these suspicions, but we could never see who was purchasing the accounts," said Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "Facebook's being brave. They probably could have buried this, and they did the right thing by coming forward."
Stamos, the Facebook security chief, said the company is committed to continuing to protect the integrity of its site and improve its ability to track fraudulent accounts. He said Facebook has shut down the accounts that remained active.
"We know we have to stay vigilant to keep ahead of people who try to misuse our platform," he said.
This year, Facebook announced technology improvements to detect fake accounts and more recently announced that it would no longer allow Facebook pages to advertise if they have a pattern of sharing false news stories. Over the past few months, Stamos said, the company has also taken action to block fake accounts tied to election meddling in France and Germany.
The Internet Research Agency has received attention in the past for its activity.
In 2013, hackers released internal company documents showing it employed 600 people across Russia. Ex-employees who have gone public with their experiences at the company in Internet postings and in media interviews have said their work entailed creating fake Twitter and Facebook accounts and using them to circulate pro-Kremlin propaganda. They said Internet Research Agency employees, for instance, spread derogatory information about Putin critic Boris Nemtsov in the days after his 2015 murder.
In 2015, the New York Times Magazine reported that social media accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency had launched social media campaigns in the United States, including a sophisticated hoax that spread false news of a chemical leak in Louisiana in 2014, apparently to sow chaos and fear.
In its unclassified report in January, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Internet Research Agency's "likely financier" is a "close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence."
In May, Time magazine reported that U.S. intelligence officials had discovered evidence that Russian agents had purchased ads on Facebook to target specific populations with propaganda. A Facebook spokesman told the magazine that the company had no evidence of such buys.
Under federal law and Federal Election Commission regulations, both foreign nationals and foreign governments are prohibited from making contributions or spending money to influence a federal, state or local election in the United States. The ban includes independent expenditures made in connection with an election.
Those banned from such spending include foreign citizens, foreign governments, foreign political parties, foreign corporations, foreign associations and foreign partnerships, according to the FEC. (Permanent residents who hold green cards, however, are not considered foreign nationals.) Violators face civil penalties, as well as criminal prosecution, if they are found to have knowingly broken the law.
Andrew Roth, Alice Crites, Matea Gold and Ashley Parker contributed to this report. ||||| SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it had found that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of U.S. ads promoting divisive social and political messages in a two-year-period through May.
Facebook, the dominant social media network, said 3,000 ads and 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages spread polarizing views on topics including immigration, race and gay rights.
Another $50,000 was spent on 2,200 “potentially politically related” ads, likely by Russians, Facebook said.
U.S. election law bars foreign nationals and foreign entities from spending money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate. Non-U.S. citizens may generally advertise on issues. Other ads, such as those that mention a candidate but do not call for the candidate’s election or defeat, fall into what lawyers have called a legal gray area.
Facebook announced the findings in a blog post by its chief security officer, Alex Stamos, and said that it was cooperating with federal inquiries into influence operations during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Facebook briefed members of both the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on Wednesday about the suspected Russia advertising, according to a congressional source familiar with the matter. Both committees are conducting probes into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, including potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow.
Facebook also gave its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, a source familiar with the matter said. The company produced copies of advertisements as well as data about the buyers, the source said.
Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Facebook said it found no link between the Russian-purchased advertising and any specific presidential campaign. The ads were mostly national in their focus and did not appear to reflect targeting of political swing-states, the company said.
Even if no laws were violated, Facebook said the 470 accounts and pages associated with the ads ran afoul of the social network’s requirements for authenticity and have since been suspended.
Facebook did not print the names of any of the suspended pages, but some of them included such words as “refugee” and “patriot.”
More than $1 billion was spent on political ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, thousands of times more than the presumed Russian spending identified by Facebook’s security team.
FILE PHOTO - A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration photo May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
But the findings buttress U.S. intelligence agency conclusions that Russia was actively involved in shaping the election.
Facebook previously published a white paper on influence operations, including what it said were fake “amplifier” accounts for propaganda, and said it was cracking down.
As recently as June, Facebook told journalists that it had not found any evidence of Russian operatives buying election-related ads on its platform.
“TROLL FACTORY” CONNECTION
Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the Facebook report “deeply disturbing and yet fully consistent with the unclassified assessment of the intelligence community.”
“We are keenly interested in Russia’s use of social media platforms, both the use of bots and trolls to spread disinformation and propaganda, including through the use of paid online advertising,” he said in a statement.
A Facebook employee said Wednesday that there were unspecified connections between the divisive issue ads and a well-known Russian “troll factory” in St. Petersburg that publishes comments on social media.
Ellen Weintraub, a member of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, said U.S. voters deserve to know where the ads are coming from and that the money behind them is legal.
“It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state or local election, directly or indirectly,” Weintraub said in a phone interview.
She declined to comment on the Facebook ads, saying she could not discuss subjects that could come before the agency.
Facebook declined to release the ads themselves, prompting a sharp rebuke on Twitter from Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of First Look Media, a producer of feature and documentary films, television and podcasts.
“Facebook keeps the targeted political ads it publishes secret, emboldening criminals,” wrote Omidyar, the eBay founder who also provided funding to launch media organization The Intercept. “I don’t see how that can possibly be legal.”
The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo taken in Bordeaux, France, February 1, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
Facebook’s disclosure may be the first time a private entity has pointed to receiving Russian money related to U.S. elections, said Brendan Fischer, a program director at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington nonprofit that advocates for more transparency.
“Whoever may have provided assistance to Russia in buying these Facebook ads is very likely in violation of the law,” he said, adding that Facebook has a legal duty to act if it is aware of similar activity in the future. | – Facebook says a Russian "troll farm" appears to have spent $100,000 on 3,300 digital ads targeting American voters in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post reports. While some of the ads expressly mentioned Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, the majority simply promoted "divisive" views on things like gun and gay rights, discrimination, and immigration. According to Reuters, the ads were linked to 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that have since been suspended. While Facebook isn't releasing the ads, the names of the suspended pages featured words like "patriot" and "refugee," the Guardian reports. The Russian company linked to the ads has a history of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda. Facebook said it also found $50,000 spent on 2,200 "potentially politically related" ads that may be tied to Russia. The company's findings are more evidence to back the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia influenced the election. The findings are also likely to make investigators question whether the Russians were getting input on ad buys from people in the US. The ad buys may have been a violation of US election law by Facebook and others involved. “It is unlawful for foreign nationals to be spending money in connection with any federal, state, or local election, directly or indirectly,” a member of the US Federal Election Commission tells Reuters. Facebook found no evidence tying the ads to any presidential campaign. |
Feds may set Gulf oil slick ablaze
A satellite shot, taken Monday, of the oil slick off the coast of Louisiana.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Coast Guard officials are considering setting the Gulf of Mexico oil slick on fire as it moved Tuesday to within 20 miles of sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.
Officials say it could become one of worst spills in U.S. history.
Oil is still leaking at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day from the well, located some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana beneath a drill rig that exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are still missing following the incident, and are presumed dead.
BP, the well's owner, is racing to shut off the well using eight remote controlled submarines, but has had no luck as of yet.
"If we don't secure the well, this could be one of the most serious oil spills in U.S. history," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, head of a joint response task force, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Twenty miles is the closest the slick has come to land so far.
Officials said oil slicks are sometimes set on fire, especially when they are near sensitive marsh areas where heavy equipment used to clean the oil may cause more harm than good.
If the slick is set on fire, it would be a controlled burn using fire-proof booms, and only done during the day, said Landry. It could begin as early as Wednesday.
The spill, measured from end to end, stretched as wide as 42 miles by 80 miles, although oil isn't necessarily covering that entire area.
Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface, ranging in thickness from a couple of molecules to the equivalent of a layer of paint. About 3% of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil.
At its current flow rate would take over 260 days to rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, which discharged some 11 million gallons into Alaska's Price William Sound. Still, even if it never compares to the Exxon Valdes spill's size, if it makes landfall it'll have serious ecological repercussions.
The Coast Guard, BP, and the rig's owner Transocean (RIG), have deployed nearly 50 vessels to help contain and clean the slick.
Marine life has been spotted in the area. Over the weekend a plane from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sighted five small whales nearby. Crews working to contain the spill were alerted to their presence.
Efforts are also underway near the shoreline to deal with the spill should it reach land, including positioning boom material around sensitive ecological areas.
Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, La. to Pensacola, Fla.
Landry said it appears the slick should remain at sea for at least the next three days, although weather reports for the latter part of that period suggest the wind could shift and blow the slick toward land.
The oil, if it stays at sea, will eventually evaporate, breakdown and sink, or get cleaned up.
But analysts have said the spill could have political fallout, especially if it reaches shore.
Several lawmakers and interest groups have led a charge over the last several years to open up more parts of the U.S. coast for oil drilling, efforts that are generally supported by the public.
That support could erode if crude oil starts washing up on the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts.
The well is expected to continue leaking until it is sealed. The leak appears to be coming from a pipe that ran from the well head to the drilling rig, which is now laying upside down in 5,000 feet of water not far from the well head.
It has not been decided if the rig will be salvaged or remain where it is, a Transocean official said Monday.
To seal the leak, three approaches are being tried.
BP is now using a set of remote controlled submarines in an attempt to activate the well's "blow out preventer" -- a steel device the size of a small house that sits atop the well and is intended to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a disaster.
It's not clear why that device didn't not originally act to cap the well, or if it will be of any use going forward.
BP (BP) is also bringing in another drilling rig which could seal the well, but that effort will take months, according to a BP spokesman.
In the meantime, the company is also trying a novel approach to capture the oil -- using a dome right above the well head. The dome resembles an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface to capture the oil. That tactic has never been tried in water this deep.
A BP spokesman said the dome should be ready in two to four weeks.
The blast last week, which is still under investigation, resulted in 11 workers going missing. The search for them was suspended last Friday.
115 other people made it off the rig after it exploded, most of them safely. One person remains in the hospital. ||||| With a vast oil slick now within only 20 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline, Coast Guard officials said they were considering a “controlled burn” of the petroleum on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the federal on-scene coordinator for the spill, said such a burn might be conducted as soon as Wednesday.
A joint government and industry task force has been unable to stop crude oil from streaming out of a broken pipe attached to a well 5,000 feet below sea level. The leaks were found Saturday, days after an oil rig to which the pipe was attached exploded and sank in the gulf about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. An estimated 42,000 gallons a day are now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
Officials said Tuesday that wind projections indicated that the oil would not reach land in the next three days, and it was unclear exactly where along the Gulf Coast it might arrive first.
“If some of the weather conditions continue, the Delta area is at risk,” said Charlie Henry, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Admiral Landry said a final decision had not been made yet about whether to burn the oil.
“We fully understand there are benefits and trade-offs,” she said.
But she also noted that with the spill moving toward land the impact on the shoreline had to be considered. That part of Louisiana contains some 40 percent of the lower 48 states’ wetlands and is spawning grounds for countless fish and birds.
Controlled burns have been done and tested before, Admiral Landry said, and had been shown to be “effective in burning 50 to 95 percent of oil collected in a fire boom.” The downside, she said, was a “black plume” of smoke that would put soot and other particulates into the air.
The consideration of burning was raised as the spill seemed to enter a direr phase. Short-term fixes have been unsuccessful, and political reaction has intensified.
On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said they were expanding the government’s investigation of the explosion that caused the oil rig disaster. The inquiry will have subpoena power and will look into possible criminal or civil violations by the operators of the drilling rig, Transocean, a Swiss company, and related companies.
Administration officials also met Tuesday with top executives of BP, which was leasing the rig and is required by law to pay for the cleanup. Last fall, as the federal government was weighing tougher safety and environmental rules for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, BP objected, saying its voluntary programs were successful.
BP engineers have not been able to activate a device known as a blowout preventer, a valve at the wellhead that was supposed to stop oil flow in an emergency and is the only short-term solution for capping the well.
Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production at BP, defended the company’s efforts, and said the cleanup was costing $6 million a day. He said engineers had not given up on engaging the valve and were exploring other possible fixes.
Mr. Suttles said that a plan to use a type of tent or dome to collect the oil was progressing and was two to four weeks from being operational. On Tuesday, the company received permits to drill a relief well, which would be started half a mile from the current well site. Crews plan to drill toward the current well and then inject it with heavy fluids and concrete to seal it. That solution is experimental at this depth, however, and is months away.
Coast Guard officials said they were not expecting landfall for the spill in the next three days. But Doug Helton, the incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s emergency response division, said winds would change Wednesday and start pushing the spill north and west toward the Mississippi Delta. “It is going to land eventually,” Mr. Helton said.
The prospect alarmed fisherman and ecologists along the Louisiana coast. Gov. Bobby Jindal requested that the Coast Guard set up protective booms around several wildlife refuges in the Delta.
Those delicate coastal rookeries and estuaries factor into the consideration for the surface burn. Such a burn would most likely ease the impact on wildlife.
The oceanic agency issued a guide to the burn that advised as follows:
“Based on our limited experience, birds and mammals are more capable of handling the risk of a local fire and temporary smoke plume than of handling the risk posed by a spreading oil slick. Birds flying in the plume can become disoriented, and could suffer toxic effects. This risk, however, is minimal when compared to oil coating and ingestion.”
Admiral Landry said that a burn would take place offshore where no one on land could see it.
A burn does not get rid of the oil entirely. It leaves waxy residue that can either be skimmed from the surface or sink to the bottom of the ocean.
John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington. | – The Coast Guard is considering setting the gigantic oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico ablaze as it approaches land. A controlled burn to burn off the oil could happen as soon as today if winds keep pushing the Rhode Island-sized slick toward ecologically sensitive areas of the Mississippi Delta, CNN reports. "We fully understand that there are benefits and trade-offs" in torching the slick, the admiral co-ordinating federal operations told the New York Times. Birds and mammals will be "more than capable" of handling the effects of a burn, which will remove most of the oil and leave a waxy residue, said a Coast Guard spokesman. |
Ladies rock outer space!
Women have played critical roles throughout the history of the U.S. space program, a.k.a. NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Yet in many cases, their contributions are unknown or under-appreciated — especially as women have historically struggled to gain acceptance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
This proposed set celebrates five notable NASA pioneers and provides an educational building experience to help young ones and adults alike learn about the history of women in STEM. The five Women of NASA are: ||||| For years, Maia Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, has been creating miniature LEGO figurines to honor and promote such scientists and engineers as MIT Institute Professor Emerita Mildred Dresselhaus, Vice President for Research Maria T. Zuber, and Department of Chemical Engineering head Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Chair Professor in Engineering. The figures are Weinstock’s playful way of boosting the visibility of scientists, in particular the work of female scientists.
Now, a set of LEGOs Weinstock created celebrating the history of women at NASA is about to blast off. On Tuesday, LEGO announced that Weinstock’s project, which spotlights five women who made historic contributions to the U.S. space program, has been selected to become an official LEGO set.
“What a wonderful way to celebrate the scientific achievements of these five pioneering women,�? says Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and the first woman to lead a NASA planetary mission. “And I’m thrilled with the message that these LEGOs will send to girls — that they, too, can pursue their passions in science, technology, engineering, and math, and help make a better world.�?
Last summer Weinstock submitted her concept, dubbed the Women of NASA, to LEGO Ideas, a platform that allows people around the world to propose new ideas for LEGO concepts. After a public voting period, during which Weinstock’s set received 10,000 votes in 15 days, her project underwent an official LEGO review.
Weinstock was inspired to create the set by her love of space and NASA, and her desire to showcase the contributions that women have made over the years to the field of space exploration. Above all, she hopes the set will help encourage more young girls to pursue STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math).
“I hope that ‘Women of NASA’ will be one little extra brick in the wall of trying to improve how women are perceived and shown in books, toys, and family programming,�? Weinstock explains. “Anything I can do to help make sure girls understand that they can and should be interested in the sciences, engineering, and math, that is my goal. At the end of the day, that’s why I am doing this.�?
The set depicts five trailblazers in NASA’s history: Margaret Hamilton, a computer scientist who led the development of software for the Apollo missions while at MIT; Mae Jemison, who became the first African-American woman in space in 1992; Katherine Johnson, known for calculating and verifying trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo programs; Sally Ride, who became the first American woman in space in 1983; and astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, one of the first female executives at NASA, who was instrumental in the planning of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Weinstock explains that she wanted the set to feature “a very diverse group of women in terms of what they did, in terms of their fields at NASA, in terms of their cultural backgrounds, and also in terms of their age. Some are shown as younger, but I made sure I had one shown as older. Also, most of the women in the set are known for their work in the space flight program at NASA, but I wanted to give a shout out to the astronomy program as well.�?
Weinstock began creating LEGO figures back in 2009, when she constructed a LEGO likeness for her friend Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist known for her imaging work on the Voyager and Cassini missions. After sharing an image of Porco’s LEGO figurine on Twitter, Weinstock received an outpouring of positive feedback and was inspired to create more figures in an effort to help promote the work of living scientists.
Since she built her first figurine, Weinstock has created LEGOs for a number of celebrated scientists and engineers, including primatologist Jane Goodall, oceanographer Sylvia Earle, physicist Stephen Hawking, and a number of MIT faculty members such as Ernest Moniz, professor of physics and special advisor to the president, and Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
“Being immortalized in LEGO is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me,�? Bhatia says. “I hope it makes lots of little tinkerers dream about being engineers at MIT someday.�?
Weinstock explains that she chose LEGOs as her medium as she feels “there is a childlike wonder to playing with a toy that you can make in people’s likeness.�?
“One major goal for me is to get the public to recognize the history of women in the STEM fields. I’m hopeful that with this set more people will come to know these women,�? Weinstock says. “Part of it is knowing these specific five women, but also part of it is setting an example. It’s really important to set an example for girls, as well as for boys, to normalize and make plain that women are expected to be in these fields and that it’s not strange or unusual.�? | – Mathematician Katherine Johnson was one of the women of NASA depicted in the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures, and now she's about to get her own Lego figure. Per MIT News, Johnson and four other women involved with the space agency over the years—Margaret Hamilton (computer scientist), Mae Jemison (first African-American woman in space in 1992), Nancy Grace Roman (pioneering NASA female exec and astronomer), and Sally Ride (the first US woman in space in 1983)—are set to be part of Maia Weinstock's "Women of NASA" Lego prototype, which was chosen from the Lego ideas submission website to be made into an actual set. Concepts for potential sets can be posted on the site, and after the public votes (Weinstock, the deputy editor of MIT News, got 10,000 votes for her idea), Lego then reviews eligible projects. Weinstock says she not only wanted to give a nod to the history of women in STEM, but also to "set an example" for both girls and boys that it isn't "strange or unusual" for there to be females working as astronauts, computer programmers, or any other science or technology expert. Lego says more details on Weinstock's set, including how much it will cost and its release date, should be out later this year or in early 2018. (Cambridge is offering a Lego professorship.) |
Actor George Takei took to his Facebook page Thursday night to explain what he meant by calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a “clown in blackface,” saying the term was “theater lingo” that “is not racist.”
A few fans have written wondering whether I intended to utter a racist remark by referring to Justice Thomas as a “clown in blackface.” “Blackface” is a lesser known theatrical term for a white actor who blackens his face to play a black buffoon. In traditional theater lingo, and in my view and intent, that is not racist. It is instead part of a racist history in this country. I feel Justice Thomas has abdicated and abandoned his African American heritage by claiming slavery did not strip dignity from human beings. He made a similar remark about the Japanese American internment, of which I am a survivor. A sitting Justice of the Supreme Court ought to know better. I have expressed my full thoughts on the matter here.
A few thoughts from one of Takei’s (former) fans.
1. No, no one cared if you “intended to utter a racist remark.” They cared that you uttered a racist remark. The outrage stemmed not from the fact that you intended to be racist, but that you seem so utterly clueless that what you were saying was unacceptable.
2. Blackface is a “lesser known theatrical term”? Don’t be condescending. The people who took offense to your comments knew exactly what blackface is, and the entire ugly racist history behind it. On the contrary, you sound like the ignorant one for seriously trying to downplay that ugly history as just some cute theater factoid.
3. So blackface “is not racist,” but “is instead part of a racist history in this country.” I… I won’t even respond to this because it’s literally nonsense. I honestly don’t even know what he’s getting at.
4. “I feel Justice Thomas has abdicated and abandoned his African American heritage…” Let’s pause you right there. Who in God’s name are you that you have the right to tell someone that they have abandoned their entire race? It’s bad enough when conservatives of color get this from people of their own race, but now it’s apparently a racial elimination free-for-all.
And what kind of screwed up person believes that someone abandons their entire race because of their politics anyways? What sort of discourse will this country have when people are told that unless they toe the line on certain beliefs, they will be considered traitors to their race and Hollywood actors can shame them without facing any sort of retribution at all?
Of course, I suspect that if someone tried to erase George Takei’s entire racial (or sexual) identity in retaliation for an unpopular view he held, he’d have a slightly different take on the matter.
5. “…by claiming slavery did not strip dignity from human beings. He made a similar remark about the Japanese American internment, of which I am a survivor.” Takei had several hours to look up and read Thomas’ dissent to know that he was intentionally taken out of context. Many, many people pointed out that he was wrong. At this point, his stubbornness can only be chalked up to intentional blindness.
For God’s sake, Clarence Thomas was born in the rural Jim Crow South. He understands what it’s like to live under the thumb of a racist, oppressive government. Did anyone outside of the most hateful partisans really believe that he’s some sort of slavery apologist, and that he was open about that fact in the most widely read legal opinion for decades?
But apparently Thomas’ experiences with racism don’t mean squat, because some actor who scored one significant role and coasted for fifty years ago thinks he isn’t black anymore. And worse yet, judging by the complete silence from nearly everyone on the in Hollywood and on the left side of the aisle, a lot people have no problem with that*.
*Shout-out to Marc Lamont Hill, whose been one of the few liberals to date to loudly and publicly condemn Takei.
[Image via screenshot]
——
>>Follow Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com | – George Takei is usually the one doling out criticism for those who step out of line on matters of race or equality. This time, he's the one catching flak from critics. It's over an interview the actor gave to Fox 10 Phoenix in which he called Justice Clarence Thomas a "clown in blackface." Takei, a gay-rights advocate, lit into Thomas because of his dissent in the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. Yesterday, Takei posted a message on Facebook addressing those who think he went too far, thought he didn't actually back down. He explains the theatrical origins of blackface as a white actor portraying a "black buffoon" and adds: "In traditional theater lingo, and in my view and intent, that is not racist. It is instead part of a racist history in this country." Then he goes after Thomas anew, saying he "has abdicated and abandoned his African American heritage by claiming slavery did not strip dignity from human beings." Thomas "made a similar remark about the Japanese American internment, of which I am a survivor," writes Takei, who thinks that "a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court ought to know better." He's still catching flak, though. "Where in the world does George Freaking Takei get off deciding that he’s the new arbiter of American blackness?" asks Sean Davis at the Federalist. And at Mediaite, Alex Griswold has a scathing critique that, among other things, describes Takei's it's-not-racist explanation as "literally nonsense. I honestly don't even know what he's getting at." |
Colbert joke prompts thousands of FCC complaints from all political stripes
Disgruntled viewers of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on CBS complained to the FCC that a sexually explicit joke about President Donald Trump and his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is “beneath the dignity of American broadcasting,” and urged the agency to sanction the network.
A sample of the more than 5,700 complaints that flooded the agency since Colbert’s joke on the May 1 episode of “The Late Show” included concerns about indecency, hate speech and homophobia from across the political spectrum. Colbert used a crude term to refer to a metaphorical sexual relationship between the U.S. and Russian presidents in a monologue on Trump’s first 100 days in office.
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The FCC, in response to a POLITICO Freedom of Information Act request, released samples of the complaints, with the names of the people who submitted them redacted but their geographic locations intact. The agency provided the first 100 complaints received between May 2 and May 17.
Parents complained about answering questions from their kids, while one viewer thanked God “my children, elderly parents, and other loved ones did not see the dispicable (sic) display of vitriol that spewed from his hateful mouth!”
Some viewers argued that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama wouldn’t be the butt of a similar joke, and complained that Trump was unfairly targeted by the media.
“I know all you Commie shills hate this president but it is your job to keep these Leftists from dragging this nation further into the gutter,” one complaint from St. Petersburg, Fla. said.
Several raised qualms about what they viewed as the homophobic nature of the joke: “By using accusations of being gay as an insult, it implied that there is something wrong with being gay,” an Urbana, Ill. viewer wrote.
“There is nothing wrong with two men who love each other,” one complaint, from a trans man who identifies as homosexual, said. “I don't like Trump but I also don't like anti-homosexual comments being aired for millions of people to see. I have to say, shame on you for allowing this.”
“I really thought we left this kind of bigotry in the wastebin of history,” a New York City viewer said. “Instead I have to endure it during dinner with me and my husband's son.”
Many of the complaints called for fines against Colbert and CBS, but lawyers familiar with the FCC’s indecency and obscenity rules say that’s not going to happen.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said the agency is reviewing the complaints. Such a review is standard protocol for the FCC, and doesn’t imply the complaints have merit. Pai declined to give an update on the review when asked Thursday at a press conference following a commission meeting.
The number of complaints about Colbert's joke is dwarfed by the more than half a million the agency received over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl on CBS.
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The FCC’s indecency rules apply to broadcasts between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and even then, they prohibit material that “depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in terms patently offensive,” as measured by the community standards.
Andrew Schwartzman, an attorney with Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation, pointed out that what Colbert said was bleeped out, and even if it wasn’t, it would probably pass the FCC’s indecency test.
But that doesn’t matter because "The Late Show" airs at 11:30 p.m., in what’s known as the safe harbor, where the rules are looser because children are presumed to be asleep. The FCC would have to prove the joke was obscene, and as broadcast attorney David Oxenford wrote in a blog post on the subject, “for a program to be obscene, it needs to be really bad.”
“A television program like that in question here is never going to be found obscene — the words describing the specific sexual act itself was bleeped out of the broadcast, the description was not designed to appeal to prurient interests (sexual interests — it was not delivered in such an explicit way as to appeal solely to sexual interest), and it did have social significance — it was delivered in a politically motivated statement,” Oxenford wrote. “Under these circumstances, the extremely rigorous obscenity test simply would not be met.”
Schwartzman was even more blunt, “There is zero chance the FCC would even dream of bringing a obscenity case against this. ... There is less than zero chance it could succeed.” ||||| 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. | – Stephen Colbert's well-covered joke about President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and oral sex has netted more than 5,700 complaints to the FCC since the May 1 episode of The Late Show. Upon request from Politico, the FCC released the first 100 of those complaints, which center on hate speech, indecency, and homophobia and come from both liberals and conservatives. One viewer was thankful their "children, elderly parents, and other loved ones" didn't hear the joke. Another told the FCC: "It is your job to keep these Leftists from dragging this nation further into the gutter." Most of the complaints advocated for a fine against Colbert. FCC chairman Ajit Pai says they are reviewing the complaints, but that doesn't mean the complaints have merit. A lawyer tells Politico there's "zero chance" the FCC brings an obscenity case against Colbert and a "less than zero chance" such a case would be a success. Colbert is also unlikely to face punishment from CBS. Both the late-night host and network chairman Les Moonves joked about the situation during a CBS upfront presentation Wednesday in New York, the Los Angeles Times reports. "There's only one word to describe this president, and the FCC has asked me not to use it anymore," Colbert said following a song-and-dance number. Moonves added The Late Show is very popular with "FCC investigators 18 to 49." |
One day earlier this month, Jim Vidmar bought 1,000 fake Twitter accounts for $58 from an online vendor in Pakistan.
Mr. Vidmar programs accounts like these to "follow" other Twitter accounts, and to rebroadcast tweets.
Rapper Dave Murrell, who calls himself Fyrare and has paid Mr. Vidmar to log into Mr. Murrell's Twitter account and "follow" other people to boost his popularity on the social network, says... ||||| 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. | – Jim Vidmar has rather unusual job: He oversees 10,000 fake Twitter accounts. And the Las Vegas man has been at it for six years, using a dozen computers and a slew of accounts to help beef up the followings of his 50-or-so clients, who pay him to help them seem more popular and important, reports the Wall Street Journal. And the accounts have gotten more sophisticated: In April, a tough new filter was applied, and the majority of Vidmar's accounts were wiped from the site. And so the vendors that sell the fakes to Vidmar put a little more work into them: The fakes now feature photos, profile details, and tweet a number of times before he buys them; he got 1,000 for $58 from a Pakistan supplier this month. From there, he has the accounts tweet, retweet, follow, and message—all in the name of clients like "Rapper/Singer/Producer/Guitarist/Fitness Model" Dave Murrell aka @Fyrare (number of Twitter followers: 238,360). Murrell has tried Twitter ads, but says he gets more bang for his buck with Vidmar. Murrell doesn't exactly express any qualms: "If you're not padding your numbers, you're not doing it right. It's part of the game." And it's not just follower count that can be affected: Client Tony Benson (aka rapper Philly Chase) says Vidmar's fake accounts pushed him onto the "trending topics" list and eventually sparked the noticed of Philadelphia media. Buying and selling both accounts and followers is, of course, barred by Twitter's terms of service, but Vidmar notes he has never been contacted or threatened with legal action by Twitter. |
DETROIT (AP) — A man who was punched in the head over the weekend while refereeing an adult-league soccer match in suburban Detroit died Tuesday, authorities and a longtime friend of the referee said.
An undated photo provided by the Livonia Police Department is of Baseel Abdul-Amir Saad. Saad, a Detroit-area soccer player who police say critically injured a referee by punching him during a match... (Associated Press)
John Bieniewicz, who was attacked Sunday at a park in Livonia, died at Detroit Receiving Hospital, said hospital spokesman Alton Gunn, Livonia police and the man's longtime friend, Jim Acho.
Police Lt. Tom Goralski said a 36-year-old man punched Bieniewicz in the head after the referee indicated he planned to eject the man from the game. Baseel Abdul-Amir Saad of Dearborn was arraigned Monday on a charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm. The Wayne County prosecutor's office said the charges would be reviewed and possibly amended when it had the necessary documentation.
Bieniewicz, 44, was a dialysis technician at Mott Children's Hospital who lived in the Detroit suburb of Westland with his wife and two sons, said Acho, who was a classmate of Bieniewicz's at Catholic Central High School.
"I speak for all his friends when I say we are devastated. Crushed. Just a senseless way for a great guy to go out," Acho said. "He deserved better."
Bieniewicz, Acho said, was the only student-athlete in the class of 1988 to letter in both football and basketball at the ultra-competitive Detroit-area parochial school. Acho, who ran a basketball camp with Bieniewicz for four years after high school, said his 6-foot-5 friend would "wow the kids with dunks."
But much to the surprise of his friends, Bieniewicz gravitated to soccer. He had been a well-respected referee for two decades.
Another friend, Anthony Arrington, said he would often seek Bieniewicz's advice when coaching his sons' youth soccer teams.
"We have a special bond," said Arrington, who added that Bieniewicz's passion for soccer spurred members of their group of friends to watch the World Cup in Brazil.
"Just heartbroken. Just a good person, good family man," Arrington said.
Bieniewicz was doing what he loved on Sunday when he was attacked, Acho said.
Saad was not at Mies Park when police arrived, but surrendered Monday, Goralski said. At Saad's arraignment in Livonia District Court, bond was set at $500,000 and a probable-cause hearing was set for July 10.
Saad's lawyer, Brian Berry, said his client was cooperating with police and was not guilty of the charge.
"As the case progresses we expect to learn the cause of the referee's injuries," Berry said.
Acho said a fund was being set up to help pay for his friend's funeral and burial expenses as well as his children's futures. Bieniewicz's organs were being donated, Acho said.
Violence is not unheard of in soccer and other sports. The recorded telephone message at the National Association of Sports Officials in Racine, Wisconsin, says, "For NASO insurance or assault information, press 3."
Barry Mano — the president and founder of NASO, which has 21,000 dues-paying members in sports ranging from football and soccer to rodeo and water polo — said his group spends 20 percent of its time on assault and liability-related issues, up from around 3 percent 20 years ago.
"When we're unhappy with sports officials, irrespective if the calls are right or wrong, the idea that we believe that we can go smack somebody because we're unhappy is disturbing," he said.
In April 2013, a 17-year-old player punched referee Ricardo Portillo after being called for a foul during a soccer game in Taylorsville, Utah, near Salt Lake City. Portillo, a father of three, died after a week in a coma. The teen pleaded guilty to a homicide charge.
In Brazil last year, a 20-year-old referee was killed, dismembered and decapitated by spectators after he stabbed a player to death during an amateur soccer match. And a volunteer linesman was beaten to death following a 2012 youth amateur match outside Amsterdam. Six teenage players and the father of one of the boys were convicted of manslaughter.
It's part of a worrying trend, Mano said.
"We have trouble getting men and women and young people to come into refereeing. No duh. This is the reason why," he said. ||||| John Bieniewicz was a man who lived life to the fullest. He had a
passion for his family, a passion for the kids at Mott Children's
Hospital, and a passion for soccer. John died doing what he loved:
officiating a soccer game. John was a licensed soccer referee at all
levels, professional, collegiate, high school and children's leagues,
was the president of the Metro Detroit Soccer Officials Organization,
and would often referee 3 games on a Saturday. He also took a particular
interest in all the children he worked with Monday thru Friday at the
pediatric dialysis center at Mott, and reveled in their improvement and
happiness. But most importantly, he was a devoted family man, a proud
husband and father of two boys. The boys will miss his fatherly
guidance and support but they will also miss his financial support, and
we are here to help that in a small way. If you were touched by John, or
merely share his love of soccer, we ask that in his name you donate to
his children's futures. We thank you in advance, and wish you God's
blessings. --The Friends of John Bieniewicz
Share now to help this campaign Share Tweet 10k total shares total shares ||||| Soccer was a passion for 44-year-old John Bieniewicz, who lived and loved the game.
The married father of two sons was refereeing a match on Sunday when authorities said a 36-year-old player punched him in the head, knocking him unconscious.
Doctors declared Bieniewicz of Westland brain dead Tuesday, but he is being kept on a ventilator until his organs can be harvested and donated through Gift of Life, said James Acho, Bieniewicz’s friend of 30 years.
Those who knew Bieniewicz, who worked as the lead medical assistant in the Pediatric Chronic Dialysis unit at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, described him as family man and a huge fan of the University of Michigan who was always in a good mood.
“He’s a fantastic human being,” Acho said. “A guy who lives life to the fullest.”
■ Audio: Listen to the 911 call
Witnesses told the Free Press that Bieniewicz was punched when he was about to eject a player, who had been complaining about a call made during the match in Livonia, resulting in a second violation to be issued against him. Several people playing on the opposing team of Bassel Abdul-Amir Saad, the man accused of throwing the punch, said Bieniewicz was looking down, trying to get a violation card when it happened.
“John had no idea it was coming,” said Matt Tunstall, 41, of Ann Arbor, who said he was about 10-15 yards away, waiting to come into the game.
He hit the ground at Mies Park, and stunned players ran onto field and noticed he wasn’t breathing.
“He turned blue immediately,” said Daniel Winkler, 33, of Lathrup Village. “My wife called 911.”
Witnesses said Bieniewicz did nothing to provoke the attack and officiated neutrally. They called what happened “outrageous” and “unfathomable.” The match was being played by men ages 30 and older.
Saad fled, and some players got the license plate number and a description of the vehicle to give to police, players said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Jamal Saleh, a player in the game, performed CPR on the victim until EMS arrived, he said in a comment on freep.com.
“We are all shocked and deeply saddened by these events,” he wrote.
'We must keep open minds'
Saad of Dearborn was arraigned Monday on a felony charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder and received a $500,000 cash/surety bond.
“The charges will be reviewed and amended when appropriate confirmations are made and other necessary documentation is received,” said Maria Miller, a spokeswoman with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.
Saad’s attorney, Brian Berry, said his client cooperated with the police investigation and voluntarily turned himself in.
“Our hearts are saddened to learn of the passing of John Bieniewicz. May God bless him and his family members as they deal with this loss,” Berry said in an e-mail to the Free Press.
“Based on certain witness statements that have not yet been published, it is believed that the facts of this case have been mischaracterized,” the e-mail said. “Mr. Saad is presumed innocent unless and until a fact finder determines differently. As tragic as this event is, we must keep open minds and listen and wait for all the facts of this case to unfold.”
A preliminary examination is set for July 10 in 16th District Court in Livonia, authorities said.
Friends, others help
Bieniewicz, who never regained consciousness after being hit, was licensed to referee professional, collegiate, high school and recreation league soccer and often worked up to three matches on a Saturday, friends said.
A memorial site has been created at JohnBieniewiczMemorial.com, which links to a GoFundMe site established to help with funeral and burial expenses and to also help his children, ages 9 and 13, moving forward. As of this evening, more than $17,000 had been raised.
“One senseless act in the blink of an eye has affected so many,” Acho said.
Assault death wouldn't be first
Bieniewicz was refereeing a match in the Michigan United Soccer League on Sunday between the Metro Rangers and the Bintjbeil Stars, players said. An official with the league did not return messages left Tuesday.
While rare, it’s not the first time a referee has died after being assaulted. In 2013 in Utah, a 17-year-old was accused of punching Ricardo Portillo in the head because he didn’t like the referee’s call during a game. Portillo died, leaving behind three daughters, and the teen pleaded guilty to a charge of homicide by assault in juvenile court.
Metro Detroit players, many who have been playing soccer for decades, say they’ve never seen anything close to what happened in Livonia on Sunday.
“I’ve never ever, ever seen any act like this in any capacity,” said Tunstall, who has played the game for 36 years.
He has seen some players get heated and come chest to chest with a referee or even poke one, or players grab each other when they are upset, but never punch a person.
“At the end of the day, we have families, we have jobs, we really do it for the love of the game,” he said. “Every minute it just replays over in my head. It’s just a shock and just so disappointing and sad.” ||||| CHARGED. REPORTING FROM ROSEVILLE, I'M PRIYA MANN, LOCAL 4. Carmen: HE WAS A HUSBAND AND A FATHER, DOING WHAT HE LOVED, UNTIL AN ATTACK ON THE FIELD COST HIM HIS LIFE. Devin: JOHN BIENIEWICZ DIED AFTER BEING SUCKER PUNCHED BY A PLAYER DURING A GAME. WE'LL TALK TO DR. McGEORGE HOW ONE PUNCH CAN BE SO DEADLY. Carmen: BUT FIRST, LET'S GO TO ROGER WEBER WITH HOW HIS FELLOW REFEREES AND COMMUNITY ARE REMEMBERING HIM TONIGHT. Roger: JOHN BIENIEWICZ WAS GREATLY RESPECTED IN THE SOCCER COMMUNITY. FELLOW REFEREES ARE TAKING THIS SENSELESS TRAGEDY VERY HARD. JOHN BIENIEWICZ MADE A STRONG POSITIVE IMPRESSION IN THE SOCCER COMMUNITY, ESPECIALLY AT HIGH VELOCITY SPORTS IN CANTON AND REFEREED HERE DURING THE WINTER MONTHS DURING THE LAST 8 YEARS. HE WOULD COME TOERL TALK SOCCER. Roger: HE WOULD REFEREE UP TO FIVE GAMES A DAY, WHICH IS LIKE RUNNING A MARATHON. HE WAS ASSIGNED TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL GAMES AND HE SOMETIMES REFEREED WITH HIM. JOHN HAD GREAT CHARACTER AND HE WAS A PHENOMENAL REFEREE, AN EXCELLENT REFEREE. Roger: ON SUNDAY, HE WAS ABOUT TO PULL A RED CARD FROM HIS POCKET, EJECTING A PLAYER, WHO THEN SUCKER PUNCHED HIM. THE HUSBAND AND FATHER OF TWO DIED TODAY. POLICE HAVE CHARGED 36-YEAR-OLD BASEEL SAAD. AND IT'S REALLY, REALLY HARD BECAUSE NOT ONLY DID I LOSE A GREAT REFEREE, BUT I LOST A GREAT FRIEND. Roger: 10,000 TO 15,000 PEOPLE REFEREE SOCCER GAMES IN MICHIGAN AND HE HOPES THAT PEOPLE WILL REMEMBER THEY'RE DOING A DIFFICULT JOB AS BEST THEY CAN. THEY HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, IT'S JUST A GAME! IT'S JUST A GAME! IT'S REALLY NOT NECESSARY TO DISAGREE WITH THE REFEREE. TAKE THE CALL ON MOVE ON. Roger: ASSAULT CHARGES AGAINST THE DEFENDANT ARE GOING TO BE UPGRADED NOW THAT JOHN HAS DIED. A MEMORIAL FUND HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED TO HELP HIS FAMILY. YOU CAN GET MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THAT ON CLICKONDETROIT.COM. REPORTING LIVE FROM LIVONIA, ROGER WEBER, LOCAL 4. Devin: I KNOW A LOT OF REFEREES WORRY ABOUT THIS THING HAPPENING. HOW DO YOU PREVENT IT? Roger: SOME SUGGEST TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR PLAYERS WHO WOULD PHYSICALLY OR VERBALLY ABUSE REFEREES, BUT IN THIS CASE, NO ONE SAW THIS KIND OF PUNCH COMING. BUT THEY DON'T WANT FANS AND PLAYERS TO FORGET ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHN. THEY HOPE THEY WILL RECALL THIS AND JUST HOLD THEIR TEMPER. REMEMBER, IT'S A GAME AND SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT FUN AND FITNESS. Carmen: AND OFTENTIMES, IT HAPPENS SO QUICKLY, NOT A WHOLE LOT OF TIME THERE. THIS TRAGEDY HAS LEFT MANY WONDERING HOW IT'S POSSIBLE TO DIE FROM A SINGLE BLOW TO THE HEAD. DR. FRANK McGEORGE JOINS US TO EXPLAIN. IT CAN HAPPEN AS WE SAW. Dr. McGeorge: IT CAN HAPPEN. IT'S NOT COMMON FOR PEOPLE TO DIE FROM A SINGLE BLOW TO THE HEAD, BUT IT DOES HAPPEN. IT'S MORE LIKELY IN CIRCUMSTANCES LIKE THIS WHERE SOMEONE IS CAUGHT OFF GUARD BECAUSE THERE'S NO OPPORTUNITY TO REDUCE THE FORCE OF THE BLOW BY SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AND TURNING YOUR HEAD OR TENSING YOUR NECK MUSCLES, LIKE IN A CAR ACCIDENT. IF YOUR HEAD IS STRUCK AND THERE'S NO MUSCLE CONTROL, IT MOVES MUCH FASTER. THE BRAIN ACTUALLY HAS THE CONSISTENCY OF LIKE FIRM JELL-O. SO WHEN YOU'RE HIT, IT'S LIKE SHAKING JELL-O IN A JAR AND CAUSES SMALL TEARS IN THE BRAIN FROM THE RAPID DECELEBRATION AND ACCELERATION. IF THE PLEADING IS SEVERE, IT CAUSES DEATH QUICKLY. EVEN WHEN THERE'S NO BLEEDING, THE SWELLING OF THE BRAIN FROM THE GENERAL DAMAGE INCREASES THE PRESSURE IN THE SKULL WHICH CUTS OFF THE BLOOD FLOW. EVEN WITHOUT BREAKING THE SKULL, THE FORCE CAN KILL SOMEONE. AND THAT'S WHY THINGS LIKE THE KNOCKOUT GAME AND THINGS LIKE THAT ARE SO DANGEROUS. AND IT'S BEING CAUGHT OFF GUARD. Devin: THIS HAS HAPPENED -- IT HAPPENED LAST YEAR IN UTAH, A REFEREE DIED FROM BEING HIT. Dr. McGeorge: I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS ABOUT SOCCER. IT HAPPENED LAST YEAR IN A SOCCER GAME AND HAPPENED IN A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT SPORTS. IT'S NOT COMMON. PEOPLE GET HIT ALL THE TIME IN FIGHTS, BUT THERE SEEMS TO BE SOMETHING ABOUT GETTING CAUGHT OFF GUARD BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO OPPORTUNITY TO PROTECT YOURSELF. Carmen: AND NOBODY WANTS TO GET A CARD. | – Amid World Cup fever, a soccer-related tragedy out of Michigan, where a referee died this morning after being punched by a player on Sunday. The Detroit Free Press reports that responding authorities found John Bieniewicz, 44, on the ground and unconscious. Witnesses say Bieniewicz stopped the adult soccer game in Livonia in order to eject Bassel Abdul-Amir Saad, who had gotten his second violation. "The ref did nothing to provoke this attack," says one player. Another tells WDIV that Bieniewicz never saw the punch coming: "He went into his pockets to pull out his red card, he had his head down, and as he came up the guy punched him, hit him kind of in the neck and chin area and then the jaw." Saad allegedly fled the scene, but was yesterday arraigned on a felony charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder; in light of Bieniewicz's death, a rep for the county prosecutor says "the charges will be reviewed and amended when appropriate confirmations are made." A longtime friend describes the married father of two as a true lover of the sport; his qualifications allowed him to referee professional, collegiate, high school, and rec league soccer. He often worked up to three games on a weekend day, and was what the AP describes as a "well-respected" ref for two decades. A GoFundMe account has been set up to support his boys. |
Image caption Mohammed Ghannouchi was seen as too closely linked to the old regime
Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi has announced on state TV that he is resigning - a key demand of demonstrators.
He was speaking at a news conference in Tunis, after making a lengthy speech defending his record in government.
Mr Ghannouchi is seen as being too close to former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in an uprising last month.
Mr Ghannouchi, 69, had served under Mr Ben Ali since 1989.
"After having taken more than one week of thinking, I became convinced, and my family shared my conviction, and decided to resign. It is not fleeing my responsibilities; I have been shouldering my responsibilities since 14 January [when Mr Ben Ali fled]," he said.
"I am not ready to be the person who takes decisions that would end up causing casualties," he added.
"This resignation will serve Tunisia, and the revolution and the future of Tunisia," he added.
At the scene It is exactly what the protesters had been demanding. Mohammed Ghannouchi, had served under the country's old dictatorship, and as far as they were concerned, until he went, their revolution was unfinished. The question now is whether this resignation will be enough to quell the violence. As the news has spread, people have been taking to the streets, chanting and singing of victory.
Within hours a replacement was named for Mr Ghannouchi - Beji Caid-Essebsi, 84, who served as foreign minister in the government of the late President Habib Bourguiba.
Earlier in the day, police in Tunis fired tear gas and warning shots to disperse the latest demonstration calling for a new government and a new constitution on a third day of violence.
Huge protests
On Friday and Saturday, anti-government protesters held huge rallies calling for Mr Ghannouchi's resignation.
At least three people were killed in clashes between hundreds of demonstrators and security forces in Tunis on Saturday.
Tunisia's government had insisted it was introducing reforms as fast as it could, and that it was planning to hold elections by July.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Paul Moss in Tunis: "Police are giving protesters merciless beatings"
But those promises did not seem to satisfy the protesters, correspondents say.
The fall of Mr Ben Ali after 23 years in power sparked similar uprisings in the Arab world, including one that led to the downfall of long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February and another under way in Libya.
The trigger for the protests in Tunisia was a desperate act by a young unemployed man on 17 December 2010.
Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself when officials in his town prevented him from selling vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid without permission. ||||| Tunisia's interim president chose a former government minister as a new prime minister on Sunday, appealing for a return to calm following new violent protests that have been hobbling this North African country since the ouster of its long-time autocratic leader.
In this undated photo is the newly named Tunisian Prime Minister Beji Caid-Essebsi. Tunisia's interim president has named former government minister Beji Caid-Essebsi as the country's new prime minister... (Associated Press)
A Tunisian riot police officer kicks a anti-government protester during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a... (Associated Press)
Anti-government protesters lay on the ground after being apprehended by Tunisian soldier during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he... (Associated Press)
Anti-government protesters are seen behind a barricade during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand... (Associated Press)
A Tunisian riot police officer escorts away an anti-government protester during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing... (Associated Press)
Tear gas smoke is seen during a anti government protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters after... (Associated Press)
Tunisia'S former Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, center, is seen with Tunisia'S Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, left, and Gen. Rachid Ammar, right, after his resignation's annouNcement in Tunis, Sunday... (Associated Press)
Tunisian President Fouad Mebazaa announces the new Tunisian Prime Minister during a press conference, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Mebazaa named former government minister Beji Caid-Essebsi as prime... (Associated Press)
Tunisian riot police officers arrest antigovernment protesters during a demonstration, in Tunis, Sunday Freb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a... (Associated Press)
Tunisian riot police officers are seen during a antigovernment protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters... (Associated Press)
Tunisian Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi gestures as he announces his resignation during a press conference in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will... (Associated Press)
Tear gas smoke is seen during an anti-government protest, in Tunis, Sunday Feb. 27, 2011. Tunisia's embattled prime minister said Sunday that he will resign, bowing to a key demand of protesters after... (Associated Press)
Tunisian former Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, right, hugs the Tunisian Interior Minister Farhat Rajhi, left, after his resignation's annoucement in Tunis, Sunday Freb. 27, 2011. Ghannouchi's announcement... (Associated Press)
Beji Caid-Essebsi will replace Mohammed Ghannouchi, who resigned earlier Sunday after becoming a major irritant to Tunisians behind the so-called "Jasmine Revolution" that toppled autocratic President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last month and sparked a wave of upheaval in the Arab world.
The caretaker president, Fouad Mebazaa, made the appointment later Sunday.
As Ben Ali's prime minister for 11 years, Ghannouchi became the emblem of an entrenched old guard that many Tunisians feared were hijacking their revolution.
It was not immediately clear how much the shake-up would mollify the protesters in Tunisia, at a time when its leaders are attempting to rebuild its tourism industry and cope with an influx of Tunisians and others fleeing from violence in neighboring Libya.
The change in the government's leadership follows renewed street protests. Officials said that at least five people have died in violent street protests since Friday.
Ghannouchi had previously vowed to stay on to guide Tunisia until elections could be organized this summer.
As he stepped down, Ghannouchi sought to take the high ground.
"This (resignation) is not a flight from my responsibilities, but to open the way for another prime minister who _ I hope _ will have more margin for action than I have had, to give hope to the Tunisian people," he said.
"I am not ready to be the man of repression, and I will never be," Ghannouchi said, warning that unspecified forces appeared to be swelling to try to quash the move toward democracy.
Caid-Essebsi is an elderly statesman and lawyer who served in government posts under the Tunisia's two longtime leaders since it gained independence from France in 1956: Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali.
Ben Ali was driven from power on Jan. 14 and fled to Saudi Arabia following weeks of a deadly popular uprising that has fanned similar upheaval across the Arab world.
Some Tunisians believe that Ben Ali loyalists in the country have sought to sow discord and discredit the movement that brought the former authoritarian leader down.
"There needs to be reconciliation among all Tunisians to show the world that Tunisia is a civilized country," Ghannouchi said. "My resignation will help create this new atmosphere."
The Interior Ministry, in a statement Saturday, blamed "provocateurs" for fomenting violence in otherwise peaceful rallies and for allegedly using young people as human shields in renewed demonstrations.
On Saturday, police and troops backed by tanks used tear gas to disperse hundreds of youths protesting against the caretaker government. Officers were seen chasing some youths through town after the rally ended.
Authorities then ordered a temporarily ban on vehicle and pedestrian traffic on the capital's central Bourguiba Avenue until midnight Sunday _ the first of its kind since Ben Ali's downfall.
On Friday, police fired tear gas and warning shots as violence erupted alongside a sit-in that drew tens of thousands of protesters near the seat of the interim government.
Officials said nearly 200 people were arrested over the last two days. | – Interim Tunisian President Foued Mebazaa has appointed a new prime minister following the resignation of Mohammed Ghannouchi, who bowed to protesters' demands and stepped down yesterday, the BBC reports. Former foreign minister Beji Caid-Essebsi will take Ghannouchi's place, although it's not clear whether the appointment will be enough to mollify the protesters who have returned to the streets of Tunis in large numbers, AP notes. Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri has recorded a message urging Tunisians and Egyptians to rise up against their interim governments. |
Officials confirm death of missing woman
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Rubén Cantú-Rodríguez/Conexión Del Río
DEL RIO – Maverick County officials confirmed this Wednesday morning, August 24, 2016, the passing of Lucila Robles, 69-years-of-age. The woman, who worked at Laughlin Air Force Base, in Del Rio, Texas, was killed during the explosion of a truck and trailer loaded with airbag cartridges near Quemado, Texas.
Forensic tests confirmed the identity of the woman who passed away Monday morning. Dental pieces found at the scene were analyzed by the Medical Examiner in Laredo, Texas. Robles was pronounced dead this Wednesday morning, at 11:35 a.m. by Justice of Peace June Smith.
The Maverick County Sheriff’s Department announced that the two-day search comes to an end.
According to authorities the woman, who lived alone at her home located on U.S. Highway 277, near the intersection with FM 1666, was alone Monday morning, when the truck came off the road, caught on fire and exploded just in front of the structure.
The truck, hauling a flatbed trailer loaded with airbag cartridges, was traveling from Del Rio to the Takata plant in Eagle Pass, Texas. The driver of the truck, identified as Mario Alberto Rodriguez, 20-years-of-age, was injured along with a passenger. They were able to flee the truck before the blast.
An older couple, traveling in a Toyota SUV, was also injured during the explosion. All four injured victims were transported to a hospital in Eagle Pass, and later airlifted to San Antonio.
The blast damaged some 10 nearby homes, breaking windows and dislodging doors from their hinges. Pieces of rubble and truck parts were found almost 1 mile away from the place of the explosion.
The blast cratered the ground and damaged the road, causing the closure of U.S. Hwy 277 for some 30 hours on and off. ||||| In last week’s accident, which occurred in the early hours of Aug. 22, the woman who died, Lucila Robles, 69, was apparently in her home in the town of Quemado, on the Mexico border, when the crash occurred on the road in front of her property before dawn.
Photo
The blast destroyed the home. The sheriff’s office sent out search parties for Ms. Robles, thinking she may have been carried by the force of the explosion into nearby brush.
Investigators called off the search after two days when they discovered Ms. Robles’s bones, teeth and other remains in the smoldering debris of her house, said Tom Schmerber, the local sheriff for the county of Maverick. Also injured were the two drivers of the truck, who fled their vehicle after it swerved off the road and crashed, and two passers-by in a car.
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An internal document provided by a former Takata employee shows that Takata transports its explosive compound more than 2,000 miles across the United States, from its propellant-manufacturing plant in Moses Lake, Wash., to a distribution center just north of the Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Tex.
The 36-hour journey, manned by two drivers, takes the truck through Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, as well as Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., according to the document, dated October 2007. From Eagle Pass, the propellant is transferred to separate trucks that then travel to Takata’s airbag factory in Monclova, Mexico, according to the document.
Drivers of the trucks are required to be equipped with fire-resistant clothing, steel-toed boots with rubber soles, safety goggles and helmets, the document says, pointing to the hazardous nature of the cargo.
Takata said the trucks were carrying the propellant alongside airbag components called inflaters, which are small devices within an airbag that contain the explosive material and which are designed to cause an airbag to inflate in microseconds. The inflaters aboard the truck were newly manufactured, the company said.
50 miles 10 TEXAS San Antonio Quemado 37 Eagle Pass 35 MEXICO Rio Grande Monclova 281
In a statement, a spokesman for Takata, Jared Levy, said the company followed all regulatory requirements.
Glenn P. Wicks, managing director at the Wicks Group, a law firm based in the District of Columbia that specializes in hazmat transportation, said it was not immediately clear whether any federal safety regulations were violated in Takata’s shipping of the propellant and inflaters. Given the severity of the crash, he said, the ammonium nitrate propellant could have triggered an explosion by itself, with or without the inflaters present.
Still, investigators are likely to scrutinize how the propellant was packaged and shipped, whether the drivers were certified to handle hazardous materials and whether their working hours were within legal limits, Mr. Wicks said.
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The Department of Transportation said its investigators were working closely with local officials in Texas to look into the crash and explosion. “Every possible factor or factors — including the safety compliance of the motor carrier, the handling of the cargo by the shipper, its packaging, how the truck was placarded, as well as the truck’s routing — and all other aspects will be thoroughly investigated to determine whether there were violations of any U.S. Department of Transportation safety regulations, which exist to protect everyone’s safety,” the agency said.
The explosion is not Takata’s first accident involving ammonium nitrate. In March 2006, its Monclova plant was severely damaged by a series of blasts blamed on the ammonium nitrate propellant. There were no injuries, although the explosions blew out the windows of nearby homes and forced hundreds of workers and local residents to evacuate.
Takata said the truck was operated by a subcontractor, which it did not name. The supplier immediately sent personnel to the site and has been cooperating with local investigators, Mr. Levy said in a statement.
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“Takata has strict safety procedures relating to the transportation of its products that meet or exceed all regulatory requirements,” he said. “Our thoughts are with the family of the woman who died as a result of this accident, and with the four people injured.” | – More trouble for Takata: A truck carrying Takata airbag parts and explosives crashed in Texas last week, exploding and killing a woman and injuring four others. Authorities say the truck left a highway in Quemado before dawn on Aug. 22, caught fire outside Lucila Robles' home, then violently exploded after the two drivers were able to escape. Both drivers were injured, along with a couple in a nearby car. The force of the explosion was such that officers searched for the 69-year-old Robles for two days before finding her bones and teeth in the rubble of her destroyed house, a Maverick County sheriff tells the New York Times. Ten other homes were damaged, while debris was found a mile away, per Conexion Del Rio. Takata says the truck contained ammonium nitrate and inflaters—which, combined, allow an airbag to expand. The products were believed to be headed to Takata's distribution center in Eagle Pass, Texas. A Takata rep tells Jalopnik that "the accident caused a fire, which led to an explosion," noting the company "has strict safety procedures relating to the transportation of its products that meet or exceed all regulatory requirements." The Department of Transportation says it is investigating "the safety compliance of the motor carrier, the handling of the cargo by the shipper, its packaging, how the truck was placarded, as well as the truck's routing." (Takata is accused of manipulating testing data.) |
A fugitive murder suspect has been arrested after more than 45 years hiding from authorities, police in Japan said.
Masaaki Osaka was arrested Wednesday for five offences including murder, Tokyo police confirmed.
The 67-year-old is accused of killing a police officer during a Tokyo street protest in November 1971, according to public broadcaster NHK.
Masaaki Osaka, in an undated picture used for the police's wanted list. Jiji Press via AFP - Getty Images
He reportedly threw petrol over the 21-year-old police officer before setting him on fire, NHK reported.
The long-time fugitive was first arrested in May after police raided a communist hideout in Hiroshima City, according to regional newspaper Chunichi Shimbun.
Osaka was arrested for an unrelated minor offense — obstructing a police officer — but was identified through a DNA match, the newspaper reported.
As one of the most wanted men in Japan, Osaka’s face has appeared on posters in Tokyo for more than four decades.
Japan has no statute of limitation for murder after the law was revised in 2010. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Police say they have confirmed the identity of Mr Osaka through DNA tests
For one suspected murderer in Japan, it has been a case of being able to run but not being able to hide.
Left-wing revolutionary Masaaki Osaka has been arrested and charged for murdering a police officer during Tokyo street protests more than 45 years ago.
He allegedly set the officer on fire using a Molotov Cocktail petrol bomb.
No other suspected criminal has spent longer evading arrest, Japanese media report. The country has no statute of limitations for murder.
The 15-year time limit was abolished in 2010.
Where do prison escapees and absconders actually go?
Mr Osaka was arrested last month in a Hiroshima apartment belonging to the Chukaku-ha, or the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL). He is reported by police to have remained silent since being caught.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Masaaki Osaka has been wanted by police since the early 1970s
The fugitive was initially accused of a separate offence - obstructing the police - before officers claim to have realised who he was.
On Wednesday, he was transported from Hiroshima to Tokyo for further questioning, local media reported.
Police say they have confirmed his identity through DNA tests because fingerprints were unavailable at the time of the crime.
They say Mr Osaka was able to remain on the run for so long because he is a former high-ranking member of the radical left-wing JRCL and was assisted by sympathetic party associates.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The fugitive has appeared on wanted posters throughout the last four decades
The JRCL was established in the late 1950s and during the 1960s and 1970s earned a reputation for staging violent street protests.
Mr Osaka is accused of killing the 21-year-old police officer during a left wing riot in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward in 1971. He is alleged to have assaulted him with a steel pipe before setting him alight.
The JRCL was protesting - among other things - against the recognition by Japan of the US military presence in the country.
The man alleged to be Mr Osaka's accomplice in the 1971 attack was charged in 1972, but his case was suspended because of mental illness.
Major events in Japan while Masaaki Osaka has been on the run: | – After more than 45 years, time is up for one of Japan's most-wanted criminals. NBC News reports Masaaki Osaka was arrested Wednesday in connection with the 1971 murder of a police officer; he's accused of killing officer Tsuneo Nakamura during a street protest in Tokyo in November of that year. A member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL), Osaka was protesting the continued American military presence in Okinawa, an island 400 miles south of the mainland. Authorities say Osaka, now 67, assaulted Nakamura with a steel pipe before lighting him on fire with a Molotov cocktail. The BBC reports Osaka was first arrested last month for allegedly obstructing police during a raid on an apartment in Hiroshima. The JRCL was reportedly using it as a hideout, and police were in search of someone other than Osaka. Although Osaka refused to give police his name, he was recognized, and his identity was eventually confirmed through DNA testing; the Japan Times explains a new warrant on the murder charge was served Wednesday. Osaka has since been moved from Hiroshima to Tokyo for further questioning, though the BBC says he has yet to say anything. Osaka's time as a fugitive—aided, authorities say, by the JRCL—was the longest among major-crime suspects being sought by Japan's National Police Agency. |
Image copyright Crossrail Image caption The plague victims' bones reveal clues to their harsh lives in medieval London
Skeletons unearthed in London Crossrail excavations are Black Death victims from the great pandemic of the 14th Century, forensic tests indicate.
Their teeth contain DNA from the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis and their graves have been dated to 1348-50.
Records say thousands of Londoners perished and their corpses were dumped in a mass grave outside the City, but its exact location was a mystery.
This discovery solves a 660-year-old mystery. It's a hugely important step forward Jay Carver , Lead archaeologist, Crossrail
Archaeologists now believe it is under Charterhouse Square near the Barbican.
They plan to expand their search for victims across the square - guided by underground radar scans, which have picked up signs of many more graves.
Crossrail's lead archaeologist Jay Carver says the find "solves a 660-year-old mystery".
"This discovery is a hugely important step forward in documenting and understanding Europe's most devastating pandemic," he said.
"Further excavations will follow to see if - as we expect - we are coming across a much bigger mass burial trench."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The teeth of the skeletons contain plague bacterial DNA
Between 1347 and 1351 the "Great Pestilence" swept westward across Europe killing millions of people. It later became known as the Black Death.
The plague The plague is one of the oldest identifiable diseases known to man
Plague is spread from one rodent to another by fleas, and to humans either by the bite of infected fleas or when handling infected hosts
Recent outbreaks have shown that plague may reappear in areas that have long been free of the disease
Plague can be treated with antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline
Source: World Health Organization
It arrived on Britain's shores in 1348 and is believed to have wiped out up to 60% of the population at the time.
In London, two emergency burial grounds were dug outside the walls of the City. One has been found at East Smithfield, while the other is known to lie somewhere in Farringdon.
In March 2013, Crossrail engineers uncovered 25 skeletons in a 5.5m-wide shaft - alongside pottery dated to the mid-14th Century.
Samples from 12 of the corpses were taken for forensic analysis. In at least four cases, scientists found traces of the DNA of the Yersinia pestis, confirming they had contact with the plague prior to their death.
To pinpoint which historical plague outbreak the "Charterhouse 25" could have fallen victim to, the researchers used radio carbon dating.
They determined the burial ground was used in at least two distinct periods - the earliest within the Black Death in 1348-50, followed by a later outbreak in the 1430s.
Image copyright Crossrail Image caption The bodies were found in a Crossrail shaft
In a bid to understand just how far the grave extends across the square, Crossrail approached the University of Keele to undertake a forensic geophysics survey - using ground-penetrating radar.
The initial scan detected signs of further burials across Charterhouse Square and also the foundations of a building - possibly a chapel.
Image copyright crossrail Image caption Traces of plague bacteria were found in the teeth of the skeletons
"We will undertake further excavations in Charterhouse Square later this year to confirm some of the results," said Mr Carver.
The skeletons provide a rare opportunity to study the medieval population of London, according to osteologist Don Walker, of the Museum of London Archaeology.
He said: "We can start to answer questions like: where did they come from and what were their lives like?
"I'm amazed how much you can learn about a person who died more than 600 years ago."
Analysis of the skeletons' bones and teeth indicates that:
Many of the skeletons appear to suffer signs of malnutrition and 16% had rickets.
There is a high rate of back damage and strain indicating heavy manual labour.
The later skeletons from the 1400s had a high rate of upper body injury consistent with being involved in violent altercations.
13 of the skeletons were male, three female, two children, the gender was undetermined in the other seven skeletons.
40% grew up outside London, possibly as far north as Scotland - showing that 14th Century London attracted people from across Britain just as it does today.
Mr Carver said: "We can see from the people here that Londoners weren't living an easy life.
"The combination of a poor diet and generally a struggle means they were very susceptible to the plague at that time and that's possibly one of the explanations for why the Black Death was so devastating."
Image copyright Crossrail Image caption Archaeologist Jay Carver hopes to explore more of the burial site
By sequencing the ancient bacterial DNA, researchers hope to understand how the plague has evolved and spread over the centuries.
Globally the infection still kills 2,000 people a year, including countries like Madagascar. Antibiotics are available, but if untreated the disease kills within four days.
Scientists hope to confirm whether the 14th Century strain was the grandmother of all plague that exists today.
The £14.8bn Crossrail project aims to establish a 118km-long (73-mile) rail link with 37 stations across London, and is due to open in 2018.
The excavations have already unearthed Roman skulls washed down a lost river, a Bronze-Age transport route, and the largest piece of amber ever found in the UK.
The latest announcement comes ahead of a Channel 4 documentary, Return of the Black Death: Secret History, on 6 April, which follows the Charterhouse Square discovery. ||||| In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, some of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square are pictured. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) You can learn a lot from a tooth. Molars taken from skeletons unearthed by work on a new London railway line are revealing secrets of the medieval Black Death—and of its victims.
This week, Don Walker, an osteologist with the Museum of London, outlined the biography of one man whose ancient bones were found by construction workers under London's Charterhouse Square: He was breast-fed as a baby, moved to London from another part of England, had bad tooth decay in childhood, grew up to work as a laborer, and died in early adulthood from the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century.
The poor man's life was nasty, brutish and short, but his afterlife is long and illuminating.
"It's fantastic we can look in such detail at an individual who died 600 years ago," Walker said. "It's incredible, really."
The 25 skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for plague victims. The location, outside the walls of the medieval city, chimes with historical accounts. The square, once home to a monastery, is one of the few spots in the city to stay undisturbed for centuries.
To test their theory, scientists took one tooth from each of 12 skeletons, then extracted DNA from the teeth. They announced Sunday that tests had found the presence of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in several of the teeth, meaning the individuals had been exposed to—and likely died from—the Black Death.
The findings didn't stop there. Archaeologists, historians, microbiologists and physicists worked together to apply techniques from several scientific disciplines to the discovery.
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, Don Walker, a human osteologist with the Museum of London, poses for photographers, with one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
Radiocarbon dating and analysis of pottery shards helped determine when the burials took place. Forensic geophysics—more commonly used in murder and war-crimes investigations—helped locate more graves under the square. Studying oxygen and strontium isotopes in the bones revealed details of diet and health.
These were, by and large, poor people. Many of the skeletons showed signs of malnutrition consistent with the "Great Famine" that struck Europe 30 years before the Black Death. Many had back injuries suggesting lives of hard labor. One man became a vegetarian late in life, indicating he may have entered an order of monks.
Archaeologists were surprised to discover that the skeletons lay in layers and appeared to come from three different periods: the original Black Death epidemic in 1348-1350, and later outbreaks in 1361 and the early 15th century.
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, some of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square are pictured. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
"It suggests that the burial ground was used again and again for the burial of plague victims," said Jay Carver, Crossrail's lead archaeologist.
The Black Death is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population, yet the burials suggest a surprisingly high degree of social order—at first. As the plague ravaged continental Europe—borne westward by fleas on rats—city fathers leased land for an emergency burial ground. The burials were simple but orderly, the bodies wrapped in shrouds and laid out in neat rows, sealed with a layer of clay.
The later skeletons, however, show more signs of upper-body injuries, consistent with a period of lawlessness and social breakdown.
Archaeologists are planning a new dig this summer to learn how many bodies lie under the square. Carver says the number appears to be in the "low thousands."
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, Don Walker, a human osteologist with the Museum of London, poses for photographers, with one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
And the teeth may not have yielded all their secrets. Experts in ancient DNA at McMaster University in Canada are working to sequence the plague genome found in the teeth, in order to learn more about a disease that still infects several thousand people a year around the world. Most patients recover if treated early with antibiotics.
Scientists want to know if the 14th-century disease is the same as the modern version, or whether the disease has evolved. Study of DNA from the teeth of skeletons discovered in the 1980s at another London plague cemetery suggested the bug was largely unchanged, but the scientific jury is still out.
Brendan Wren, a professor of molecular biology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the new information could help scientists "understand how the plague bacillus—and other nasty bugs—become so virulent to humans."
"It is useful information that could warn and avert potential epidemics and pandemics," he said.
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, Don Walker, a human osteologist with the Museum of London, poses for photographers, with one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square is pictured. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square is pictured. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, members of the media film one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, Don Walker, a human osteologist with the Museum of London, holds the scull of one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square, as he poses for photographers. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, some of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square are pictured. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plague was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
In this Wednesday, March 26, 2014 photo, Don Walker, a human osteologist with the Museum of London, holds the scull of one of the skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square, while posing for photographers. Twenty-five skeletons were uncovered last year during work on Crossrail, a new rail line that's boring 13 miles (21 kilometers) of tunnels under the heart of the city. Archaeologists immediately suspected the bones came from a cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. The Black Death, as the plauge was called, is thought to have killed at least 75 million people, including more than half of Britain's population. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
Explore further: Ancient skeletons dug up at Florence's Uffizi | – Skeletons dug up in London last year are indeed the remains of people who died from the Black Plague—and who suffered a tough life before falling ill, the BBC reports. Forensic analysis shows that teeth taken from at least four of the 12 corpses discovered during excavation for a rail line contained trace amounts of plague DNA, indicating exposure. Early burials found at the site, from the late 1340s, are nice and orderly, with bodies wrapped in white shrouds, but skeletons from a second outbreak in the 1430s are tossed in with what appear to be upper-body injuries—evidence of "a period of lawlessness and social breakdown," Phys.org reports. Among other significant details: Several skeletons suffered from malnutrition and 16% had rickets. Many had back damage, signalling stressful manual labor. Analysis of one victim is amazingly detailed: He was born outside of London, breastfed, had bad tooth decay as a boy, and worked in manual labor before dying as a young man of the Black Death. Archaeologists suspect that thousands more Black Death victims lie nearby, and a dig is planned for this summer. DNA experts are analyzing the plague genome in victims' teeth in case there's more to learn about the disease, which still kills 2,000 people per year (when antibiotics aren't applied within four days). "It is useful information that could warn and avert potential epidemics and pandemics," says a London scientist. In a similar vein, see why it's bad news that the Plague and Black Death were quite different. |
I remember conversations with him when he was engaged in what may have been his greatest coup: helping free Hillary Clinton from the confines of the East Wing and converting her into a successful Senate candidate in New York.
The number of people who were determined to keep that from happening were legion, both in Washington and New York. But Rangel knew them all, and he knew how to get around them - by co-opting or by mowing them down, whatever was required. And he loved every minute of this game - which he played for unselfish purposes, not to expand his own influence.
He and Rosty had the same view of the hometown patronage games that brought them down. They wanted the perks that went with their positions of power. But they used them more often to help others along than for themselves, and they weren't greedy. Often, they were just sloppy about the demands of the new era of politics.
It makes you weep to see someone like this fall.
l
Correction: In my Nov. 18 column, I wrote that Rep. Steny Hoyer had challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi for the top leadership post in the House of Representatives. In fact, the two once ran against each other for minority whip, the No. 2 post. ||||| Charlie Rangel stood, stony-faced, in the well of the House. His feet planted wide, his hands crossed over his fly, the 80-year-old lawmaker awaited the rebuke of his peers.
On Thursday evening, for the first time in 27 years, the speaker read aloud the resolution of reproach. "By its adoption of House Resolution 1737, the House is resolved that representative Charles Rangel of New York be censured," Nancy Pelosi read, calling on the fallen chairman of the Ways and Means committee to pay the taxes he owes. Rangel, staring back at the speaker, swallowed hard.
After the ritual of public humiliation, the Harlem Democrat's friends came with outstretched arms to console him, but Rangel brushed them off, instead requesting permission to address the House.
The disgraced lawmaker, defiant even in his moment of shame, scolded his accusers for treating him worse than "those that in the past have done far more harm to the reputation of this body than I."
Rangel then went downstairs to offer more defiance at a news conference. "I leave here knowing that everyone knows I'm an honest guy," he proclaimed, accusing his colleagues of a "very, very, very political vote." The freshly censured legislator even offered a suggestion for newspaper headlines: "Rangel found not guilty of corruption and self dealing."
Sorry, Charlie: That's not going to happen. But if it's any consolation, Rangel should know that however harmed he was by the censure, the entity that was really disgraced was Congress itself. This is because Rangel's two-year battle with the House ethics committee exposed the woeful state of lawmakers' abilities to police their own.
The rules governing members' behavior were proven to be so lax as to be irrelevant. The vast majority of transgressors are never punished - Rangel was only because he himself asked the ethics committee to investigate some of the allegations against him.
To be sure, Rangel deserved punishment for his wrongs, which included failing to pay taxes on his Dominican beach home and improperly using his office for charitable fundraising. But in the 30 minutes allotted to him for his defense on the House floor Thursday evening, Rangel and his friends made a compelling case that he was being punished for doing things that lawmakers do routinely.
"The only examples of anybody sanctioned for tax matters in this House in the history of the United States have been those who didn't pay taxes on bribes they received," argued Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), in Rangel's defense. Several members had a chuckle over their laxity.
"Far more serious ethical lapses than Mr. Rangel's have not met with censure," seconded Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
And Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), one of the only Republicans to oppose censure for Rangel, implored his colleagues to "step back" and reconsider. "Let us apply the same standard of justice to Charlie Rangel that has been applied to everyone else, and that all of us would want applied to ourselves."
Which is to say: a very lenient standard. | – If his House censure is still stinging, Charlie Rangel would do well to pick up today's Washington Post. Columnists Dana Milbank and David Broder don't exactly make the case he's innocent (not even Rangel does that), but they lend sympathetic voices: Milbank: He belittles the House ethics panel, calling it rank hypocrisy that Rangel got singled out for common behavior. "If it's any consolation, Rangel should know that however harmed he was by the censure, the entity that was really disgraced was Congress itself. This is because Rangel's two-year battle with the House ethics committee exposed the woeful state of lawmakers' abilities to police their own." Broder: He likens Rangel's case to that of Dan Rostenkowski's in the late '80s. "He and Rosty had the same view of the hometown patronage games that brought them down. They wanted the perks that went with their positions of power. But they used them more often to help others along than for themselves, and they weren't greedy. Often, they were just sloppy about the demands of the new era of politics." |
"The outpouring of love and generosity that has been displayed to our family throughout these last few weeks has far exceeded anything we could have ever imagined. As we have always known, Christina's life was so very special, not only to us, but to everyone she touched with her joyful heart, beautiful voice and love for life and the Lord. Words cannot express what the many memorials, donations and tributes shared by Christina's fans and those in the media and entertainment industry mean to us. She will live on in our hearts forever. We will take our time in determining the best ways to honor Christina moving forward. Thank you." - Bud, Tina and Marcus Grimmie
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Words cannot begin to describe the pain I am feeling. I learned this business through the eyes of a father and Christina was like a second daughter to me. All I wanted to do was assist her in achieving her musical dreams while protecting her from the pitfalls associated with the business. I never could have imagined this horrific event being one of the pitfalls needing to be avoided. In Christina’s honor I have created a Go Fund Me page to assist her family in their time of need. As family Mother, Father, and Brother made the ultimate family sacrifice to support Christina on her musical journey. They did nothing but love her and support her as family the best they knew how, the only worry I want them to have at this point is that of recovery.
Grimms I love you, and miss you beyond comprehension.
- Brian Teefey, LH7 Management
(Account created by Laura Worley w/LH7 Management) ||||| 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 ||||| Adam Levine Offers to Pay for Christina Grimmie's Funeral Expenses
Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine is offering to pay for the late Christina Grimmie's funeral, Grimmie's brother Marcus reported on his Facebook page.
Levine -- who was Grimmie's coach when she competed on the sixth season of The Voice -- reached out to her family over the weekend after hearing the news that the 22-year-old was shot and killed by a deranged fan Friday night (June 10).
"I found out this morning that Adam Levine personally called my mother and said he will pay for her funeral and her plane flight, and I was blown away," he shared in a post.
A Look at Christina Grimmie's Career
In addition to Levine's generosity, Marcus said that the GoFundMe page set up by manager Brian Teefey is helping with funeral expenses in this difficult time. At the moment, donations have topped $100,000.
"Words cannot express," Marcus wrote. "Words cannot express...literally I have no words. I promise both my parents and I will read every one of these personalized messages. I'm so blown away by everything right now. But all I can say is thank you. And Christina will be missed and never ever forgotten.
Grimmie was gunned down by 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl -- who was quickly tackled by Grimmie's brother before shooting himself -- on June 10 after opening for pop-rock band Before You Exit at the Plaza Live. She was signing autographs at a meet and greet after the show when Loibl shot her.
Levine shared his grief on Twitter after he heard the tragic news. | – Adam Levine was Christina Grimmie's coach during her time on reality competition The Voice—and now the Maroon 5 singer has offered to pay for her funeral, Billboard reports. Grimmie was murdered after a concert Friday night; her brother, Marcus, wrote on Facebook Sunday night that Levine "personally called my mother and said he will pay for the funeral and her plane flight, and I was blown away." On Saturday, Levine tweeted a picture of himself with Grimmie. "Behati and I are absolutely devastated and heartbroken by Christina Grimmie’s death," he wrote. "Our hearts go out to her family." In his post, Marcus Grimmie added that his sister's manager, Brian Teefey, has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with expenses; it's raised more than $170,000 so far. Teefey writes on the page that Grimmie "was like a second daughter to me." |
The estate of the late artist Dash Snow is fighting to protect his legacy against the dreaded label of “sellout.” Jade Berreau, the late artist’s former girlfriend and current estate manager, is suing McDonald’s for copying Snow’s graffiti tag, and using it to decorate a number of restaurants without permission.
In June 2016, Burreau first asked McDonald’s to remove Snow’s recognizable graffiti tag, “SACE,” from the locations that had been redesigned in the graffiti-covered, industrial theme, to no avail. Burreau is now formally suing McDonald’s for “copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, falsification of ‘copyright management information’ under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and negligence,” reports the Fashion Law.
The artist, who died in 2009 at the age of 27, began his career as a street artist in the 1990s, part of a graffiti crew known as IRAK. In a memorial essay, photographer Ryan McGinley wrote that Snow was “number one on the vandal-squad’s most wanted list,” tagging ambitious locations like New York’s Brooklyn Bridge and High Line, and even paying homeless people $20 to tag the clothes on their backs.
In the McDonald’s in question, the lawsuit claims, the appropriated “SACE” tag is “so prominently placed,” and “was the only element singled out and spotlighted in media coverage surrounding McDonald’s display campaign.” The plaintiff claims that media coverage implied that Snow authorized the use of his work on the walls of the corporate chain.
The McDonald's in Brixton has been covered in fake graffiti https://t.co/yoa8qVML96 pic.twitter.com/mWGY1s9biI — Evening Standard (@standardnews) March 4, 2016
Unsurprisingly, Snow, although born into a privileged life, took an anti-commercial stance, and it is safe to assume that he would never have aligned himself with a brand like McDonald’s.
“He has never made his original art available on the internet, in retail stores, or in restaurants—partly for artistic reasons but also because doing so would diminish the value of his work. Nothing is more antithetical to Mr. Snow’s outsider ‘street cred’ than association with corporate consumerism—of which McDonald’s and its marketing are the epitome,” the lawsuit continues.
Memo to Brixton McDonalds – your new graffiti lampshades SUCK pic.twitter.com/T1gyGLZWjV — Hannah T-W (@hannahteedub) March 4, 2016
Back in March, a refurbished McDonald’s in the gentrifying district of Brixton, South London generated controversy for the questionable graffiti-covered décor. Locals took to Twitter to vent their frustration about the “edgy” designs. One twitter user, @bernehxoxo, replied to a tweet from the Evening Standard, “stoked about the sace throw! Rip”. Needless to say, SACE’s family is not so “stoked.”
Follow artnet News on Facebook: ||||| The late American artist Dash Snow may not be a household name to the average McDonald’s customer—but his artwork might look familiar to frequent diners.
Seven years after the artist passed away, his estate has filed a lawsuit against the fast food chain, alleging McDonald’s used several of Snow’s signature designs as fake graffiti décor in numerous locations around the world.
One of the designs in question is actually Snow’s spray-painted pseudonym “S-A-C-E.”
The images below both appear in the lawsuit as evidence of copyright infringement. On the left is a Snow original "SACE" signature, and the right features a similar-looking design from the wall at a McDonald's location in London:
“Inexplicably, Defendants [McDonald's] are using Mr. Snow’s artwork as décor in hundreds of McDonald’s restaurants, and are using his name and signature in a manner suggesting that Mr. Snow created all of the surrounding artwork (which adorns the entirety of McDonald’s graffiti themed restaurants),” reads the suit, filed by the late artist’s girlfriend Jade Berreau with whom he has a daughter, and is the administrator of his estate.
In addition to claiming that the fast food chain violated Snow’s copyright by using his work without permission, the plantiff argues that McDonald’s use of the late artist’s designs could harm the value of Snow’s original artworks—which have sold for hundreds of thousands at auction houses like Sotheby’s.
Snow, born Dashiell Snow, “carefully avoided any association with corporate culture and mass-market consumerism… He has never made his original art available on the internet, in retail stores, or in restaurants,” argues the lawsuit. McDonald’s is “clearly attempting to trade on Mr. Snow’s name and reputation."
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 3 in a federal court in Los Angeles, claims that Snow’s family previously asked McDonald’s to remove the graffiti artwork in June but that the chain “arrogantly refused to comply” with the request.
More from Page Six. ||||| Seven years after artist Dash Snow passed away, his estate is accusing McDonald’s of brazenly swiping one of his signature designs to use as fake “graffiti” decor on eateries around the world.
When we say “signature,” we don’t just mean that this particular work was intimately associated with Snow; we also mean that the design was actually the spray-painted signature for Snow’s pseudonym “SACE.”
The two images below are taken from the complaint [PDF]. On the left is a Snow original SACE signature. On the right is a very similar design as seen in a London McDonald’s:
This image from the Evening Standard shows that the lookalike graffiti isn’t actual tagging by vandals, but is part of the restaurant’s decor:
The McDonald's in Brixton has been covered in fake graffiti https://t.co/yoa8qVML96 pic.twitter.com/mWGY1s9biI — Evening Standard (@standardnews) March 4, 2016
In addition to claiming that the fast food chain violated Snow’s copyright by using his work without permission, the late artist’s estate argues that the value of the rest of his artwork — which has sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction, according to the complaint — could be harmed by possibly giving people the impression that the other faux spray paint on the wall was created by Snow.
This is particularly problematic, argues his estate, because Snow “carefully avoided any association with corporate culture and mass-market consumerism… He has never made his original art available on the internet, in retail stores, or in restaurants.”
McDonald’s is, per the complaint, “clearly attempting to trade on Mr. Snow’s name and reputation.” His estate points out that the allegedly infringing design is the largest and most prominent part of the McDonald’s wall decor, and the “only element ‘created’ by a famous artist.”
The estate claims that Snow’s family asked McDonald’s in June 2016 to remove the allegedly offending work, but that the fast food chain has “arrogantly refused to comply.”
[h/t Page Six] | – McDonald's is being sued for allegedly appropriating the work of a deceased graffiti artist without his estate's permission, Consumerist reports. According to Artnet, Dash Snow, who went by the tag SACE, was known for spray painting high-profile locations like the Brooklyn Bridge and even clothes being worn by homeless people. He died in 2009 at the age of 27. Years later, McDonald's redecorated hundreds of its locations with a graffiti motif, Fox News reports. A lawsuit filed Monday by Snow's former girlfriend and current estate manager, Jade Berreau, accuses McDonald's of using Snow's SACE signature as the major element in that redesign without permission. The lawsuit points out that the SACE-ish tag is not only the largest element of the graffiti-themed decor but also the "only element 'created' by a famous artist." It says Snow "carefully avoided any association with corporate culture and mass-market consumerism," of which McDonald's is the "epitome." The lawsuit claims Berreau originally asked McDonald's to remove the offending tag in June, but it "arrogantly refused to comply." She's now suing the company for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, and more. In addition to going against what Snow stood for, the lawsuit claims McDonald's' use of his art could hurt the value of his actual pieces, which have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. |
CNN's unconscionable coverage of the Steubenville Rape Case verdict is pissing everyone off. Newscaster Candy Crowley, general correspondent Poppy Harlow, and legal expert Paul Callan all did their very best to focus solely on the guilty verdict's repercussions on the two rapists. There's next to no coverage of the girl who was brutally raped; instead, they talk almost exclusively of the rapists— the two teenagers who had such bright futures, and now their lives are completely ruined from this one little indiscretion. Isn't it a shame how they suffer?
Let's not forget that these boys committed truly despicable acts and to all appearances showed no remorse or regret until they were faced with real-world consequences. But still, wasn't it so sad when they broke down crying upon learning they'll spend a few years in juvie? It was so sad that CNN forgot to talk about the sixteen-year-old girl whose life will be spent dealing with the ramifications of rape. After all, she left the house with a vagina; she KNEW the consequences.
Here's what actually happened on CNN:
When Crowley said she couldn't imagine how emotional it was in the courtroom, Harlow — who was there and had been inside the courtroom — responds:
I've never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional, incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures — star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart...when that sentence came down, [Ma'lik] collapsed in the arms of his attorney...He said to him, 'My life is over. No one is going to want me now.' Very serious crime here, both found guilty of raping the sixteen-year-old girl at a series of parties back in August. Alcohol fueled parties; alcohol is a huge part of this.
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Then, after the verdict is read, we watch Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond speak.
Mays says "I would truly like to apologize to [the girl], her family, my family, and community. Those pictures shouldn't have been sent around, let alone taken."
"I had no intentions of doing anything like that, and I'm sorry I put you guys through it. I'm sorry," said Richmond. He was held and comforted; his back was pat.
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On top of all that, Harlow makes a big deal out of Ma'lik Richmond's lawyer — this guy — telling her that today was the first day Ma'lik's dad told him he loved him — doesn't your heart just bleed for him? Because without a father's love, a boy just has to rape.
CNN legal contributor Paul Callan then enters the chat.
Crowley inquires:
You know, Paul, a sixteen-year-old now just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, the other one just seventeen, a sixteen year old victim, they still sound like sixteen-year-olds... The thing is, what's the lasting effect, though, on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially?
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Callan responds:
Well, you know, Candy, we've seen here a courtroom drenched in tears and tragedy.... The most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law...That will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Employers, when looking up their background, will see that they're registered sex offenders. When they move into a new neighborhood and somebody goes on the Internet, where these things are posted, neighbors will know that they are registered sex offenders.
Jesus — this stops just short of becoming a full piece on athletes overcoming rape. Such a tragic story for the two teenagers who raped a girl in multiple locations and took pictures and video of it. So sad for them.
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Here's what should've happened on CNN:
When Crowley said she couldn't imagine how emotional it was in the courtroom, Harlow — who was there and had been inside the courtroom — responds:
Incredibly difficult to watch what happened; these two young rapists that had such promising futures — star football players, very good students, rapists — literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart because they brutally raped a girl...when that sentence came down, rapist [Ma'lik] collapsed in the arms of his attorney...the rapist said to him, 'My life is over. No one is going to want me now.' Very serious crime here, both found guilty of raping the sixteen-year-old girl at a series of parties back in August. Alcohol fueled parties; alcohol is a huge part of this, and I'm saying this right now to explain away rape, which is unacceptable.
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Then, after the verdict is read, we watch Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond speak.
Mays says "I would truly like to apologize to [the girl], her family, my family, and community. Those pictures shouldn't have been sent around, let alone taken." Also, this.
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"I had no intentions of doing anything like that, and I'm sorry I put you guys through it. I'm sorry," said Richmond.
CNN legal contributor Paul Callan then enters the chat.
Crowley inquires:
Sixteen-year-old rapists just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football player rapists they are, they still sound like sixteen-year-old rapists...what's the lasting effect, though, on two young rapists being found guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially ?
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Callahan responds:
Well, you know, Candy, we've seen here a courtroom drenched in tears of a rapist and the tragedy of rape... The most severe thing with these rapists is being labeled as registered sex offenders, and how fucking sad is it that? One gets just two years in a juvenile detention facility, and the other gets JUST ONE YEAR. Isn't that insane, Candy; doesn't it just blow your damn mind? And who knows what kind of rehabilitation they'll actually get; probably next to none. They will most likely exit even more fucked up than they entered, always thinking the worst thing they did was get caught. Perhaps they'll learn to not live-tweet and record their rapes, because jail is probably even worse than juvie — and they'll probably be tried as adults next time. They won't be taught not to rape; the adults around them continue to make damn sure of that. Their lives should be made difficult by this, but they should also get support and education. In reality, they will only get the first thing, and in all the wrong ways. It's a real shitshow, and heartbreaking to say the least. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law...That will haunt them for the rest of their lives, kind of. Employers, when looking up their background, will see that they're rapists. When they move into a new neighborhood and somebody goes on the Internet, where these things are posted, neighbors will know that they are rapists. That is the worst thing that will happen to them — can you believe how good they have it? Now, let's spend the rest of this hour long program talking about what the real victim — you know, the sixteen-year-old girl who was violently raped by her classmates — will deal with on the difficult, never-ending road that is the life of a rape survivor. Because the rapists might have a little trouble finding an apartment to rent in the future, but she'll be dealing with the trauma of rape for the rest of her life.
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That's a little better.
Let's hope we can all stay on message because this isn't over yet. Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said yesterday that the state will convene a grand jury to investigate further charges in the case.
"This has been particularly hard for the victim and her family," DeWine said. "As I said already, any rape is a tragedy. But, it is even more of a tragedy when that victim is continually re-victimized in the social media."
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He's right about the social media thing — there's already plenty of shitty things flying around — and it's true that mainstream media can do better, too.
Update: Much like Fox News, CNN failed to redact/censor the victim's name from footage of Trent Mays' courtroom apology. We've since removed the video.
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Previously: Steubenville Football Players Found Guilty of Rape
[Raw Story] ||||| As expected, the Internet lit up after the judge announced the guilty verdict in the Steubenville rape trial. As expected, some reactions were just awful. Unexpectedly, one of them came from CNN.
Candy Crowley probably didn't mean to steal the spotlight on Sunday afternoon, when she reported on the breaking news from the Steubenville courtroom where Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond had just been found guilty. After the verdict came in, the CNN anchor turned to correspondent Poppy Harlow, who expressed some strange mixture of emotions. "Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart," said Harlow. Crowley turned to legal expert Paul Callan, who sounded almost apologetic when explaining how the rape conviction will mean that the Steubenville rapists will now be registered sex offenders and how that "will haunt them for the rest of their lives." None of these things said were untrue. But the tone was certainly a little off.
The segment, in general, didn't do CNN any favors. While they're not necessarily rooting for the rapists, even the slightest bit of sympathy didn't go over well, especially once it was lumped together with all of the outrageously offensive reactions of true Steubenville rapist sympathizers. Sarcastic example tweet: "The Steubenville story is all too familiar. Be responsible for your actions ladies before your drunken decisions ruin innocent lives." Sincere example tweet: "So you got drunk at a party and two people take advantage of you,that's not rape you're just a loose drunk slut." Of course, cases like the Steubenville rape trial can be polarizing, and we've long known how distorted some notions of justice can be.
The blogosphere went to town on CNN. Gawker's Mallory Ortberg really didn't appreciate Crowley and company waxing sympathetic about the damage done to the rapists' "promising futures." She wrote, "Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richardson raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly." Ortberg added, "Reporting like this presents viewers with anonymous female victims and dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures." That's a strong point, especially since we didn't really hear from the victim until nearly the end of the trial.
That said, the media's actually been grieving the ends of these rapists' young lives for a few days now. It's just a little more infuriating now that they're officially guilty. Just before the trial started, for instance, Good Morning America published a sprawling preview under the headline, "The Steubenville Rape Case: What You Haven't Heard." What follows is a retelling of the whole saga with plenty of attention paid to the "honors student" Mays and wrong-side-of-the-tracks Richmond. The piece ends on a sympathetic note, almost bemoaning the fact that the two teens "face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football." Feeling sorry for the boys was a little bit more acceptable before they were convicted, but still, it hardly feels like objective reporting.
If all this upsets you, don't use up all your rage now. The Steubenville case is hardly over. Next, the state of Ohio will convene a grand jury to investigate further charges, and the media circus will get an encore, if not an entirely new act. All any decent person can do is hope for a little bit more balance. "As I said already, any rape is a tragedy," Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine said after the verdict on Sunday. "But, it is even more of a tragedy when that victim is continually re-victimized in the social media." Let's hope the mainstream media doesn't do the same.
Update, Monday: Even as questions grow about the grand jury hearing, one thing is clear: CNN is not alone — MSNBC and Fox let the victim's name get on air, too.
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Adam Clark Estes ||||| CNN on Sunday aggressively covered the breaking news of the verdict in the Steubenville rape case. Star football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl. Propelled by social media and mainstream media, the Steubenville case has long held a high profile.
Defense attorney Walter Madison, right, holds his client, 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond, second from right, while defense attorney Adam Nemann, left, sits with his client Trent Mays, foreground, 17, as the judge reads the decision. (Keith Srakocic/Associated Press)
The scrutiny that comes with its profile descended on CNN. In repeated segments yesterday, CNN featured reports from reporter Poppy Harlow, who was in Ohio for the verdict. Here’s the transcript of some of the coverage at the 11 a.m. hour:
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN ANCHOR: I’m Candy Crowley in Washington. RELIABLE SOURCES is just ahead.
But, first, a breaking story we’re following.
Two star football players in Steubenville, Ohio, have been found guilty of raping a West Virginia teenager. The story has attracted national attention. The judge just ruled a few minutes ago. Listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUDGE THOMAS LIPPS, HAMILTON COUNTY FAMILY COURT: In this case, you know, regarding the charges of rape, both defendants Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays are committed to the Department of Youth Services for a minimum of one year and a maximum period until you’re 21.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CROWLEY: Again, this case was played out in juvenile court, that is why there was a judge, no jury. He decided on the verdict, as well as, you heard there, talking about the sentence.
We want to go now to CNN’s Poppy Harlow. She is in Steubenville, and has been covering this trial.
I cannot imagine having just watched this on the feed coming in. How emotional that must have been sitting in the courtroom.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I’ve never experienced anything like it, Candy. It was incredibly emotional — incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart.
One of — one of the young men, Ma’lik Richmond, when that sentence came down, he collapsed. He collapsed in the arms of his attorney, Walter Madison. He said to me, “My life is over. No one is going to want me now.”
Very serious crime here. Both found guilty of raping this 16- year-old girl at a series of parties back in August, alcohol-fueled parties. Alcohol is a huge part in this.
[…]
I want to bring in Paul Callan, our CNN legal contributor.
You know, Paul, a 16-year-old now just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, still sound like 16 year olds. The other one, 17. A 16-year-old victim.
The thing is, when you listen to it and you realize that they could stay until they’re 21, they are going to get credit for time served. What’s the lasting effect, though, on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially?
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you know, Candy, we’ve seen here a courtroom drenched in tears and tragedy and, you know, Poppy’s description, I think, you know, sums it all up. But across America scenes like this happen all the time.
I know as a prosecutor and defense attorney, when that verdict is handed down, usually it’s just the family and families of the defendants and the victims, there’s always that moment of just lives are destroyed. And lives have already been destroyed by the crime. And we got a chance to see that.
But in terms of what happens now, yes, the most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law and, by the way, the laws in most other states now require such a designation in the face of such a serious crime.
That will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Employers, when looking up their background, will see they’re registered sex offender. When they move into a new neighborhood and somebody goes on the Internet where these things are posted. Neighbors will know they’re a registered sex offender.
It’s really something that will have a lasting impact. Much more of a lasting impact than going to a juvenile facility for one or two years.
CROWLEY: Paul, thanks. I want to bring Poppy back in — because, Poppy, there’s — you know, the 16-year-old victim, her life, never the same, again. And I understand you have been talking to some of the families involved.
HARLOW: Her life never the same again. Absolutely, Candy. The last thing she wanted to do was sit on that stand and testify. She didn’t want to bring these charges. She said it was up to her parents.
But I want to tell our viewers about a statement that her mother just made, just made in the court after the sentencing. Her mother just said that she has pity on the two young boys that did this. She said human compassion is not taught by teachers or coaches. It’s a God-given gift, saying that you displayed a lack of compassion, a lack of moral code, saying that you were your own accuser throughout this for posting about this all over social media. And she said she takes pity on them. ||||| Journalists took to Twitter Sunday to criticize the media’s coverage of the two teenage boys who were found guilty in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case.
Lauren Wolfe, Xeni Jardin and others called out CNN’s Poppy Harlow and Paul Callan for sympathizing with the men and highlighting that the woman who was raped was “allegedly drunk.” On Monday, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC aired the woman’s name. Think Progress called the move “an act of serious journalistic negligence.”
“What I’m so furious about, after the act perpetrated on this young woman, is our media’s take. Mainstream media, of course, reflects society — so in this case, they reflect rape culture. But shouldn’t we expect more from the media? Aren’t there such things as news judgment and context and analysis?” said Wolfe, director of the Women’s Media Center’s Women Under Siege project.
“Why is nearly no outlet … bothering to ask what’s wrong with masculinity in this country, with the arrogance of those defending a football team rather than a young woman who was violated? How could the media possibly be putting the emphasis on [the fact that] the girl drank? Did the boys not drink?”
Wolfe also criticized Nightline for saying the Steubenville debacle is a “cautionary tale for teenagers living in today’s digital world.”
“As if the problem was what the boys did online, not that they raped a 16-year-old girl and then bragged about it publicly,” Wolfe said.
CNN’s Harlow talked about how the charge against the two young men “literally watched as their life fell apart.” She didn’t talk, though, about the traumatic effects that rape can have on young women.
Several times in the past, news organizations have left out important context or used language that suggests the rape victim was at fault. The New York Times was criticized for doing this in 2011 while covering a gang rape in Cleveland, Texas.
When journalists first began covering the Steubenville case earlier this year, they revealed little about the young woman. Because she hadn’t spoken out and her identity was being protected, coverage focused mostly on the men. In January, for instance, Matt Lauer interviewed the attorney and ex-guardians of Ma’lik Richmond, one of the teenagers who has been found guilty.
Richmond’s ex-guardians portrayed him in a positive light and said they supported him. Childhood photos of Richmond flashed across the screen as they talked. At the time, it was hard not to wonder, “How is this affecting the young woman? Is there anyone to advocate for her?”
There was also a lot of talk in the media about the teenage boys’ roles as football players, aka “glorified athlete suspects.” In January, BuzzFeed’s Katie Heaney wrote that an accuser’s athletic achievements can serve as “a legitimate alibi absolving them of wrongdoing.”
Salon’s Irin Carmon touched upon this issue when describing CNN’s coverage (which Gawker also criticized).
“Yes, networks are limited in how much footage they can show when it comes to the victim and her family, whereas they can show the boys’ emotional breakdowns, but Harlow was narrating events and not limited to footage. Yes, these boys are young. But the seriousness of their crimes was utterly glossed over in favor of a sideshow about whether a father told his son he loved him,” she said via email. “We rarely see such compassion evinced for young offenders when the crime isn’t rape, or when they lack the social status of football players.”
Wolfe and Carmon both pointed to a journalist who did a good job covering Sunday’s Steubenville news: Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel. Wolfe praised his column for “going beyond the obvious” and “smashing victim-blaming.”
Wetzel wrote about the complexities of town where “a culture of extreme arrogance collapse[d] in two tearful rape convictions.”
Put in the spotlight was the local football team, which, critics said, allowed players to brazenly operate seemingly above the law for years. Social-media accounts, self-made videos, photos and classless text messages exposed an entire world that seemed like a Hollywood script of a high school team out of control.
He also offered context about the seriousness of rape:
Rape, experts say, is a crime of power and control more than sex. Underlying all of that is arrogance, and in Steubenville it was taken to the extreme.
There’s no doubt that covering rape is difficult; it takes time and resources to report on the nuances of the crime, offer context about how common rape is, and explore both sides of the story. But that’s exactly the kind of reporting we need more of.
[&amp;lt;a href="//storify.com/mallarytenore/reactions-to-media-coverage-of-steubenville-rape-c" target="_blank"&amp;gt;View the story "Reactions to media coverage of Steubenville rape case" on Storify&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;] ||||| 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. ||||| CNN's coverage of the verdict in the Steubenville rape case appeared to be curiously weighted on Sunday, focusing on the effect the guilty verdict would have on the lives of the now-convicted rapists and their families, rather than that of the victim and her family.
Steubenville High School football players Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, were accused of raping a severely intoxicated 16-year-old West Virginia girl who also attends the Ohio school. Thousands of text messages introduced in the case presented a picture of teens swapping graphic stories about the assault.
In a Sunday afternoon segment, anchor Fredricka Whitfield followed the straight news of the guilty verdict (which she described as rape occurring "after a night of heavy partying") by showing the rapists' parents' weeping in court. Footage of Richmond, his mother and father offering emotional appeals to the victim's family dominated the segment.
Whitfield threw the story to reporter Poppy Harlow, but not before reiterating that Mays and Richmond's "family members tried their hardest to plead for some forgiveness from the victim's family, as well as from the judge."
To her credit, Harlow appeared to try and correct the segment's tone: "That's true Fredricka," she said of the tears of the convicted rapist's families, "but this is an incredibly serious crime, it's the crime of rape."
And yet, the effects of the rape on the victim seemed to be an afterthought: "It was incredibly emotional, it was difficult for anyone in there to watch those boys break down," Harlow said. "[It was] also difficult, of course, for the victim's family."
"Also difficult, of course?" Over the course of the segment, CNN twice aired Richmond's father's appeal for forgiveness in full and also included footage from an interview in which Harlow asks Richmond if it's true that he told Ma'like he loved him for the first time after the verdict came down. The father emotionally explained that he blames himself for the incident because he wasn't "around" enough. "I want to stress that parents need to get involved more in their kids' lives," Nathaniel Richmond said.
CNN did air the entirety of the victim's mother's statement on the verdict, but that came after the tears of the Richmond, his mother and father.
The Sunday afternoon segment was hardly the first time CNN had fumbled its coverage of the case. Earlier on Sunday, anchor Candy Crowley expressed her deepest sympathies for Mays and Richmond.
Harlow set up the scene, which she said was "incredibly difficult" to watch, thusly: "These two young men -- who had such promising futures, star football players, very good students -- literally watched as they believed their life fell apart."
"What's the lasting effect though on two young men being found guilty juvenile court of rape essentially?" Crowley asked CNN's legal analyst Paul Callan.
The slant of the day's coverage was revealing in two capacities. First, CNN appears to have bet on the emotions of those it could show on camera -- for obvious reasons, the victim's identity has been protected, and the victim's family was not shown weeping in court. Networks know that people crying make for great TV. Secondly, it's telling that this tone continued over multiple segments, despite a cadre of tweets and blog posts deriding the network's earlier coverage.
Later on Sunday, Whitfield wrapped the first segment of her coverage on the case by describing it as "a heart-breaking case to watch, no matter how you look at it." That CNN can find so many ways to look at a rape trial is perhaps to blame for their embarrassing and damaging coverage.
Correction: This post incorrectly attributed the quote describing the courtroom scene as "incredibly difficult" to Candy Crowley and has since been corrected to note that the quote comes from Poppy Harlow.
WATCH:
Others noticing CNN's faulty coverage:
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Flavia Dzodan CNN a month ago: OMG SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE FOR THOSE POOR INDIAN WOMEN! CNN today:poor defendants #Steubenville! what abt their future!
Sharon So far @cnn has made no comments on Candy @crowleyCNN s thoughts on the #Steubenville rapists? Didn't fire her yet? Good w/rape?
Flavia Dzodan CNN seems to want us to believe that rape culture is "other people's problems" and not pervasive and toxic in the West as well
Matt Bors CNN's reaction to the Steubenville rape verdict is shameful http://t.co/V6lHy0kmff
Danice Andrus RT @Anniefromkansas: HOW ABOUT RAPE VICTIM???CNN grieves that guilty verdict ruined ‘promising’ lives of Steubenville rapists | http://t.co/p4NOWXwIN2
Rhonda Hansome Not the #rape but guilty verdict ruined ‘promising’ lives of #SteubenvilleRapists? #RealMenDoNotRape http://t.co/uA8p1aWMq6
Txue Yang RT @HalloweenBlogs: .@jmcaninch68 They were doing the same sympathetic nonsense on #AlexWitt on @msnbc - RAPE is RAPE @cnn #CNNFail #MSNBCFail #EpicFail
Muffin's Mom CNN promoting rape culture! #SCUM CNN grieves that guilty verdict ruined ‘promising’ lives of Steubenville rapists | http://t.co/koAGibcz7t
LondonFringe RT @tonyajonemiller: Hey @CNN, glad you care so much about the rapists. What about what happens to the rape VICTIM? http://t.co/iq6jC5xqiT (via @MattBors)
maggie RT @usedtobgop: @jungmuse HEY @cnn men who rape AREN'T pillars of society! WAKE THE HELL UP! NO wonder your ratings stink! http://t.co/Cr8x5P7EEy …
Warren 2016 RT @Angie_Coiro: I've always respected @crowleyCNN so much, and hope she will address this publicly: http://t.co/JQcIAOyNB5 … It's just so wrong.
Rodd RT @ScottySSWB: Dear @CNN when reporting a story about rape you probably shouldnt try to make us feel bad for the rapists lives being ruined, #Steubenville
Scott Dear @CNN when reporting a story about rape you probably shouldnt try to make us feel bad for the rapists lives being ruined, #Steubenville
The Notorious B.F.G. @CNN Please rethink your approach on Steubenville. The football players are not the victims so don't portray them as such.
Luis Heras CNN grieves that guilty verdict ruined ‘promising’ lives of Steubenville rapists | The Raw Story http://t.co/uThdDSC6lM
Follow Kia Makarechi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kia_Mak ||||| [There was a video here]
One way to report on the outcome of a rape trial is to discuss the legal ramifications of the decision or the effect the proceedings may have on the life of the victim. Another angle reporters can take is to publicly worry about the "promising future" of the convicted rapists, now less promising as a direct result of their choice to rape someone.
Reporters at CNN today chose the latter technique. General correspondent Poppy Harlow, speaking to anchor Candy Crowley, had this to say about the verdict:
"Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart...when that sentence came down, [Ma'lik] collapsed in the arms of his attorney...He said to him, 'My life is over. No one is going to want me now.' Very serious crime here, both found guilty of raping the sixteen-year-old girl at a series of parties back in August."
CNN also played footage of both convicted rapists tearfully apologizing in court. Harlow went on to describe in detail an emotional exchange between Ma'lik Richmond, one of the defendants, and his estranged father.
Candy asked Paul Callan, a legal expert, to elaborate on the future of the two young men, stressing their youth and emotional vulnerability.
"Sixteen-year-olds just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, they still sound like sixteen-year-olds...what's the lasting effect, though, on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially?" "The most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law...That will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Employers, when looking up their background, will see that they're registered sex offenders. When they move into a new neighborhood and somebody goes on the Internet, where these things are posted, neighbors will know that they are registered sex offenders."
Yes, that is how the sex offender registry works. People who commit acts of sexual violence (rape, for example) and are convicted in a court of law are required to register with the national sex offender public registry, so that future employers and neighbors might do things like check said registry.
For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as "Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays" rather than "Convicted sex offender Trent Mays," try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether.
It's perfectly understandable, when reporting on a rape trial, to discuss the length and severity of the sentence; it is less understandable to discuss the end of two convicted rapists' future athletic and academic careers as if it were somehow divorced from the laws of cause and effect. Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richmond raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly. Had they not raped her, they would not be spending at least one year each in a juvenile detention facility.
It is unlikely that Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow are committed rape apologists; more likely they simply wanted a showy, emotional angle at the close of a messy and sensationalized trial. Since the identity of the victim is protected, and the rapists obliged the camera crews by memorably breaking down and crying in court, they found an angle to match: extremely gifted young men were brought tragically low by... mumblemumblesomething.
That isn't how rape trials ought to be discussed by professional journalists.
Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond are not the "stars" of the Steubenville rape trial. They aren't the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim, the "lasting effects" of whose graphic, public sexual assault are ignored. Small wonder, then, that anyone would find themselves on the side of these men—these poor young men, who were very good at taking tests and playing sports when they were not raping their classmates. ||||| The nation's eyes will be focused this week on what happens inside a tiny Steubenville, Ohio, courthouse. The juvenile trial set to begin there is every parent's nightmare and a cautionary tale for teenagers living in today's digital world.
Steubenville is a town used to having media attention lavished on a much different building. In the middle of this city of 18,000 nestled on the Eastern border of Ohio stands Harding Stadium, the crown jewel of this former steel town. Nicknamed Death Valley, the 10,000-seat structure is home to the Big Red football team, one of Ohio's most storied high school programs.
Steubenville is a place where football is more than just a past time; it's a religion. And residents here worship on Friday nights.
Every time Big Red scores, a sculpture of a stallion named Man O' War breathes a 6-foot stream of fire into the night sky over Harding Stadium. But this past season, the team's second-round playoff defeat was overshadowed by a very different firestorm that engulfed the team and the entire town.
Steubenville Launches Website on Alleged Teen Rape
Just as the season was gearing up late last summer, two Big Red football players were accused of participating in the rape of a 16-year-old intoxicated girl with friends documenting the alleged crime through cellphone pictures and video. The social media frenzy took on a life of its own, with reports going as far as calling the incident a "gang-rape" of an unconscious girl. In reality, prosecutors contend that Trent Mays, 17, and Ma'lik Richmond, 16, used their hands to penetrate her while she was too drunk to consent, By Ohio law, such a crime constitutes rape, as it does in many places.
At least three other Steubenville students say they witnessed the alleged encounters, and still others heard about them and posted messages, photographs and videos about the incident on social media sites.
See the full story on ABC's "20/20" Friday, March 22, at 10 p.m.
The news soon spread beyond Steubenville, leading both hacker-activists and women's advocacy groups to blow the lid off the story nationally, questioning why people who knew about the allegations weren't also charged under an Ohio law requiring people to report crimes of which they're aware.
The uproar surrounding the case soon split the town into two furious camps; one that firmly believes there's a conspiracy to cover up a "rape culture" among the football team, and the other believing that the town's once-stellar reputation is being unfairly tarnished by outsiders who don't know all the facts.
Now, documents and photographs obtained exclusively by "20/20," along with never-before-seen taped police interviews with many of the teenage party goers, are shedding light on many of the facts of the case for the first time.
On the night of Aug. 11, 2012, Big Red ran a scrimmage to show off the team's newest talent. Trent Mays was a quarterback and honors student from a town 15 minutes outside of Steubenville. With a football coach for a father, Trent had the sport in his DNA. Ever since he could remember, he shared a dream that so many boys in this corner of the Ohio Valley do; to one day hear the roar of Big Red fans from the field.
A favorite target for Trent that night was wide receiver Ma'lik Richmond.
Ma'lik came from the rougher side of Steubenville. His earliest memories involve dodging stray bullets in his living room and watching most of his male role models being killed or incarcerated. He had turned to sports early in life as an escape from the realities around him.
That night, Trent and Ma'lik helped propel Big Red to victory. For the faithful who filled the stands, it was tempting to fantasize about winning a 10th state championship. For the players, it was an excuse to party.
Hours after the game, Trent, still relishing his role in Big Red's win, was receiving text messages from a girl he had been flirting with over social media, according to his lawyer. She was from just over the Ohio River in Weirton, W.Va., and, his lawyer says, persuaded him to come to a party where she was with several girlfriends.
Party No. 1:
When Trent and Ma'lik arrived, the narrow street outside the house of the party was crammed with cars. By some estimates, there were as many as 40 to 50 teenagers there and no adults. What was in abundance was alcohol, according to Ma'lik and several of the attendees. Witnesses said the girl who invited Trent was one of the more tipsy teens there.
"She had her arm wrapped around me and one hand on my chest. It just felt like she was coming on to me," Ma'lik told ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas in an exclusive interview for "20/20."
After midnight, the party was breaking up. The intoxicated girl, who would soon be at the center of a rape investigation, made it clear she wanted to leave with Trent, according to the police interviews with several of her friends. They also said she resisted their pleas for her not to leave with a car full of boys.
Nevertheless, the girl got into a car with Trent, Ma'lik and two other boys and drove off. In her interview with police exclusively obtained by ABC News, the alleged victim says there is little she remembers from the time between the first party and waking up the next morning.
"I remember everything that happened at the girl's house I was at but I don't remember anything past the point of me walking off the porch with him," she told them.
Party No. 2:
When the five teenagers arrived at the next house, the group was much smaller. There are contradictory accounts about whether the girl was able to walk into the house on her own or needed help from Ma'lik and Trent.
Feeling ill, the girl was taken to the bathroom where she threw up. When she emerged, a photo of her was taken that would become a flashpoint in the case. The photo shows Trent and Ma'lik's holding the girl by her arms and legs with her head hanging back. It is unclear from the picture whether her eyes are open and witness accounts conflict on the exact context of this photo.
The boy who took it, and ultimately uploaded it to his Instagram account, was another football player for Big Red and an ex-boyfriend of the intoxicated girl in the picture.
"She was just like laughing, we were all talking, just clowning around and that's when her ex-boyfriend was like, 'Let me get a picture of this drunk B. And that's when we took the picture," Ma'lik told ABC News.
The picture, Ma'lik maintains, was intended as a joke; he says the girl was conscious, was playing along and was not carried out of the house that way. The girl's civil attorney, Bob Fitzsimmons, calls this characterization "bizarre."
"It's common sense as to what's going on in that picture," he said.
Adds Fitzsimmons: "My client was unconscious that night. She doesn't have any memory of what happened."
ABC News does not name the victims of alleged sexual assaults.
Several witnesses said that once outside, the girl needed to stop in the street because she was sick again. "She throws up on her blouse and takes her blouse off," Ma'lik said. "And then she asked for something to drink and I gave her my jacket to cover her up."
After several minutes, the girl got back into the car with those same four boys. It is during this ride that prosecutors contend Trent raped the alleged victim. One of Trent's teammates, who was seated in the backseat, told police that he used his phone to videotape Trent exposing the girl's breasts and penetrating her vaginally with his fingers. The girl was talking but he could not decipher her slurred speech, he told police.
But Ma'lik, who was seated in the front passenger seat, told ABC News that she was participating. "I turned around and I can see the flash on his phone. Trent was rubbing on her breasts and she was kissing his neck. And then he was trying to unbutton her pants," Ma'lik said.
Police would never see the video because, by the next morning, he had deleted it from his phone.
Party No. 3
That same boy who videotaped the alleged rape in the car, and who is now a key prosecution witness, testified that when the car arrived at his home, the alleged victim was again taken to the bathroom to throw up.
When the girl emerged, prosecutors say, a second alleged rape occurred. The eyewitness told police that he saw Trent trying to get the girl to perform oral sex on him while she was lying on the floor. Next, he says he saw both Trent and Ma'lik's lying beside her, sexually touching the girl's groin area with their hands. At least one other witness claims to have seen the alleged rape.
"I wouldn't say she was completely passed out but she wasn't in any state to make a decision for herself," one of the eyewitnesses told police.
A defense attorney for Ma'lik told Vargas of "20/20" that the alleged victim was conscious enough to provide the pass codes for her cellphone at some point after the second alleged assault.
"That doesn't sound like a person that's incapacitated to the point where they cannot answer a question, let alone consent," defense attorney Walter Madison said.
The girl's civil attorney challenges such an assessment, saying, "The mere fact that someone presents an argument doesn't make it true."
The Steubenville rumor mill was already beginning to churn with speculation about what happened to the intoxicated girl. Naked photos of the girl that were circulated that night fueled a series of tweets and also one YouTube video of an 18-year-old former Steubenville baseball player named Michael Nodianos. In the rambling 12-minute rant, Nodianos, who wasn't present during the alleged rapes, made jokes about the incident, repeatedly referring to the victim as "dead."
When the sun finally rose over Steubenville the next morning, the 16-year-old alleged victim woke up naked in a home she had never been to before. Her girlfriends, who spent much of the previous night trying to contact her and anxiously reading tweets posted about her, soon were summoned to pick her up.
ABC News has learned that one of the girls who picked up the alleged victim told police, "She and Trent were just lying on the couch together as if nothing happened. She looked hung over but then she got up and was completely fine."
By the next day, so much had been written and uploaded to social networking sites that the town was abuzz with rumors and innuendo. Even the girl's parents found out by word of mouth.
They brought her to the hospital Aug. 13, more than 24 hours after the incident. By then, she had already showered and her clothes from that night had been washed. No physical evidence of a rape was recovered.
Nevertheless, 10 days after the alleged assault, on the strength of the witness accounts, Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays were arrested in the middle of the night and charged with rape and kidnapping (the kidnapping charge was later dropped.) Trent was also charged with disseminating child pornography for texting naked photos of the underage alleged victim.
"They sent three or four police cars," Trent's mom, Linda Mays, told ABC News. "They surrounded the house and it was surreal."
By this time, many of the social media posts and pictures had been deleted. But not all were lost. ABC News has learned that, in addition to the picture of the defendants' carrying the alleged victim, they also recovered two additional photos from Trent's phone. One of the photos shows the alleged victim lying naked and face down on the floor and the other shows her naked on the couch seemingly asleep.
The intersection of idolized athletes, social media over-sharing and reckless teen behavior proved an explosive combination and the story soon went national. In December, the Nodianos video was re-posted by an offshoot of the Internet hacking group Anonymous called Knight Sec.
The video quickly went viral and appeared to be proof to online activist groups and even the National Organization for Women that other athletes either witnessed or knew of the alleged assault and were never charged with a crime.
Such sentiments have fueled much speculation of a cover up in Steubenville. Nodianos, who until this winter was attending Ohio State University on an academic scholarship, told police he only saw the alleged victim in passing that night as she left the second location. The details he talked about in the video came from viewing one photo of the alleged victim and talking to the other boys who were with her that night, he said.
His lawyer has since issued an apology on his behalf for the shameful comments he made on the video posted on YouTube.
Prosecutors have not commented on the specifics of the case but at the probable cause hearing in October, prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter said, "She was a toy to them that night and the bottom line is we don't have to prove that she said no. All we have to prove is when she's being penetrated that she was unresponsive and not in a position to consent and they knew it."
Attorneys for Trent and Ma'lik insist that their clients are not guilty of any crime, claiming that she was sober enough throughout the night to consent.
"What we believe we will be able to support is that she voluntarily proceeded throughout the night with our client," Trent's attorney, Brian Duncan, told ABC News. "There is no indication that she was somehow so intoxicated that she could not have consented to any of the contact that occurred."
Ma'lik's attorney, Walter Madison, is equally confident in his client's innocence. He questions the prosecution's dependence on testimony from the three teenage witnesses.
"They all have immunity and have been granted deals not to be prosecuted for their involvement," he said. "When you give a child an option to have a seat at the trial table or tell us what we need to know and in exchange we won't prosecute you, they're probably going to tell you what you want to hear."
Attorney General DeWine denied that any deals have been made and won't rule out future charges for those witnesses.
The alleged victim is slated to take the stand, but because she says she has little memory of the night in question, her testimony is not expected to clarify the events of Aug. 11-12. Defense attorneys say the intense scrutiny the case has garnered is creating another challenge for them.
"We have found it very difficult to find people willing to talk to us," Duncan, Trent's attorney, said. "People have either not returned calls or they have lawyers that are involved. We have material subpoenas that have been issued."
A West Virginia judge Friday refused to enforce those subpoenas for three juveniles who reside just outside of Ohio. The judge cited a lack of legal precedence for compelling an underage witness to testify in a juvenile proceeding out of state.
When the trial commences Wednesday, there will be no jury involved. Instead, a juvenile judge will decide the fates of Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, who face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football.
See the full story on ABC's "20/20" Friday, March 22, at 10 p.m. | – CNN is getting slammed everywhere from Twitter to the blogosphere to mainstream media today, thanks to its coverage of the Steubenville rape verdict yesterday. After the teen boys were found guilty, anchor Candy Crowley kicked it to her reporter by saying, "I cannot imagine having just watched this on the feed coming in. How emotional that must have been sitting in the courtroom." Correspondent Poppy Harlow responded, "It was ... incredibly difficult even for an outsider like me to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believe their life fell apart." More of the same followed, as Crowley, Harlow, and legal contributor Paul Callan continued to focus on the rapists rather than on the victim. Washington Post has a full transcript. A sample of the reactions: How about calling the boys what they are, suggests Laura Beck on Jezebel. The coverage should have been more along the lines of, "These two young rapists that had such promising futures—star football players, very good students, rapists—literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart because they brutally raped a girl." "Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond are not the 'stars' of the Steubenville rape trial," writes Mallory Ortberg on Gawker. "They aren't the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim." The Huffington Post rounds up some of the incensed tweets, and editor Kia Makarechi calls the coverage "embarrassing and damaging." Other portions of CNN's coverage were similarly problematic, one activist points out to Poynter, such as the fact that the journalists focused on the victim being drunk. And CNN wasn't the only network with issues in its coverage, she adds: Nightline called the case a "cautionary tale for teenagers living in today's digital world." Good Morning America also got in on the act, the Atlantic Wire notes. Before the conviction, the show offered up "a sprawling preview ... with plenty of attention paid to the 'honors student' Mays and wrong-side-of-the-tracks Richmond. The piece ends on a sympathetic note, almost bemoaning the fact that the two teens 'face incarceration in a detention center until their 21st birthdays and the almost-certain demise of their dreams of playing football.'" The Frisky points out that the Onion brilliantly parodied this very circumstance back in 2011. |
'Smoking gun' emails reveal News of the World bribes to police FOUR YEARS ago
An internal report uncovered 'smoking gun' evidence of criminal behaviour at the News of the World four years ago, it emerged yesterday.
The damning dossier was based on 300 emails that suggested hacking was widespread and journalists were paying police.
However it was not handed to Scotland Yard until last month. The revelation adds to mounting claims of a cover-up by News International bosses, who paid hush money to several high-profile hacking victims.
Criminal behaviour: An internal report uncovered 'smoking gun' evidence at the News of the World four years ago, it has emerged
Documents leaked to the Sunday Times, which is owned by News International, allegedly show a ‘cabal’ of six journalists acted as ‘gatekeepers’ to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who carried out hacking for the paper on a huge scale.
Sources said the emails show clear proof of criminal offences.
One told the Sunday Times: ‘During its document trawl on the hacking stuff they discovered some emails which seem to suggest that senior journalists had been paying substantial sums of money to police officers. They were clearly evidence of serious crime.’
Smoking gun: Emails uncovered in an internal investigation revealed reporters were paying bribes to police
Further details of the alleged cover-up were revealed by the BBC’s Robert Peston, who is close to News International’s chief troubleshooter, Will Lewis.
He said that four years ago, the company found emails showing payments were being made to the police for information, although this evidence of alleged criminal behaviour was not handed to the Met until this June.
Although the emails do not identify police officers by name, they cross refer to the company’s cash records which identify the same four-figure sums mentioned in the emails. The total amount is said to be in the region of £120,000.
They also allegedly show that phone hacking went wider than the activities of a single rogue reporter. That was the News of the World’s initial claim when the paper’s royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was jailed in 2007 – the year in which the emails were found.
In a letter presented to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, Harbottle & Lewis confirmed it had been asked by News International to review whether the illegal actions of Goodman were known to his News of the World colleagues.
A further 2,200 News of the World emails, which may contain evidence of criminal behaviour by the paper’s staff, are reported to be missing.
In this letter, dated 29 May 2007, and sent to Jon Chapman of News International, Lawrence Abramson of Harbottle & Lewis said they did ‘not find anything in those emails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman’s illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures’.
The letter from Mr Abramson to Mr Chapman makes no mention of whether the emails contain evidence of wrongdoing by journalists other than Mr Goodman.
However, when Will Lewis and his fellow News International executives re-acquired those emails from Harbottle & Lewis, they found what they perceived to be evidence that the illegal phone hacking went wider than just the activities of Mr Goodman and there were potentially illegal payments to the police.
A further 2,200 News of the World emails, which may contain evidence of criminal behaviour by the paper’s staff, are reported to be missing.
The revelations will pile pressure on News International’s chairman, James Murdoch, son of Rupert, and he could even face criminal charges in both Britain and America.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson has suggested he could be prosecuted under anti-snooping legislation. This is because Mr Murdoch admitted in a statement last Thursday that he had approved out of court settlements to hacking victims.
He said he was not aware of the specific details, but legal action could still possibly be taken under section 79 of the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act 2000, which covers the ‘criminal liability of directors’.
Four years ago the then executive chairman of News International, Les Hinton, told MPs he believed royal editor Goodman was acting alone.
Yates of the Yard faces calls to quit after apology for c**p investigation
By MARTIN DELGADO
Politicians called for a senior Scotland Yard officer to step down yesterday hours after he made an unprecedented apology for his handling of the hacking affair.
John Yates, who is an assistant commissioner in the Met, said he deeply regretted not launching a second probe into the News of the World scandal two years ago.
He said he had let down the victims and the Yard had been damaged.
Apology: Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner John Yates has admitted he let down the victims of phone hacking in the first investigation
‘I didn’t do a review,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph. ‘Had I known then what I know now, all bets are off. I would never have reached this conclusion.
‘I am accountable and it happened on my watch and it’s clear I could have done more.
‘I have regrettably said the initial inquiry was a success. Clearly now that looks very different.’
Mr Yates also dismissed claims – currently doing the rounds in police and media circles – that he had had any sort of relationship with Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International.
Facing police questions: news International chief executive Rebekah Wade
His decision to make his apology in a newspaper, rather than to MPs, prompted a furious political reaction.
Tory ex-minister David Mellor said: ‘If it had been left to the police it would all have been shovelled under the carpet and the heads of the Metropolitan Police would be down stuffing their faces in News International’s boardroom having a jolly old time with Rupert and his chums.’
David Davis, another Tory former minister, said: ‘He should be appearing in front of parliament and answering questions, not putting out effectively a press release himself.’
Mr Yates said News of the World staff had covered up the ‘industrial scale’ of the phone hacking operation by insisting just one rogue reporter was to blame.
‘When we made the arrests in 2006 on the day we went to Wapping there was a Mexican stand-off, a lock down, and they wouldn’t let us in,’ he said.
The initial police investigation led to the jailing of News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
But, despite fresh allegations that thousands of public figures had been targeted, Mr Yates decided in July 2009 that there was no new evidence.
A senior Yard source said Mr Yates would not resign, adding: ‘He is an honourable man and he has done the right thing in making a very public apology.’
Hindsight: Yates said that if he had known then what he knows now, he would have upped the police investigation into the phone hacking
This was despite Yates saying he had never seen the 11,000 pages from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks, which had been seized by police.
'I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags,' he said. 'I am supposed to be an Assistant Commissioner. Perhaps I should have been more demanding. I am accountable, and it happened on my watch, and it's clear I could have done more.'
'NINE JOURNALISTS AND THREE POLICE FACING JAIL
At least nine journalists and three police officers face jail over the phone-hacking scandal, according to reports from inside News International.
Internal papers dating from 2007 are understood to have contained evidence that hacking was more widespread than previously admitted. Scotland Yard was apparently not told about the document at the time but now has a copy.
A News International source was last night quoted as saying: 'We were sitting on a ticking timebomb'.
New documents are said to reveal that six journalists acted as 'gatekeepers' to private detective Glenn Mulcaire. They and three other journalists who knew about Mulcaire's activities may be charged, according to a Sunday Times report.
Separately, a cache of emails and cash records is thought to shed light on potential four-figure payments to police officers.
Meanwhile, News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks faces questioning by police in the coming days. The former News of the World editor is expected to be asked to present herself at a police station to explain, under caution, what she knew about phone-hacking and payments to police officers.
A News International source insisted she would be treated as a witness, not a suspect.
However, both the company and Scotland Yard refused to comment on whether Brooks would be quizzed.
In his extraordinary interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Yates was also forced to deny that he had a relationship with the News of the World's former editor Rebekah Brooks, now News International's chief executive. He dismissed the claims as 'malicious gossip'.
In a remarkable admission, Mr Yates, who has been widely criticised for failing to expose the full extent of the scandal, said: 'Should I have come out so quickly and said there wasn't anything in it? Tactically, I probably shouldn't have.
'I should have cogitated and reflected but it's so bloo dy obvious there was nothing there [that we didn't already know].
'I didn't do a review. Had I known then what I know now – all bets are off. In hindsight there is a shed load of stuff in there I wish I'd known.'
Mr Yates was brought in two years ago to review the results of an earlier police investigation which led to the jailings of Mulcaire and News of the World Royal editor Clive Goodman.
But last night he said: 'Not in a million years did I ever think we would get to this point when I came to it in July 2009. It was relatively straightforward.
'The Guardian had raised a lot of issues. It was a bloody great story but the question was: was there anything new in it for us? The answer was no there wasn't.'
In an unprecedented apology to the victims of phone hacking – and in particular to the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone messages were intercepted – Mr Yates said: 'We are all extremely shocked by it and it is a matter of massive regret we didn't deal with it earlier.
'My byword has always been you look after the victims and the job will always resolve itself. I always put the victim first but here I didn't follow my principle and that is my greatest regret.'
Of the rumours regarding his relationship with Mrs Brooks, he said: 'There has been a huge amount of malicious gossip. I have laughed at it all. It is quite astonishing. I take it with a large pinch of salt. It's not true.'
He said other suggestions of improper relationships, made under the protection of parliamentary privilege, had deeply upset him.
Describing them as 'contemptible, utterly untrue, and cowardly', he said: 'I will take whatever action I can to defend myself on that. It can be shown on any number of levels to be false. Apart from that, I haven't got any strong views about it.'
The £180,000-a-year officer – dubbed 'Yates of the Yard' – split from Louise, his wife of 25 years, in the spring of 2009.
The pair separated, around the time that Yates – educated at fee-paying Marlborough College – was appointed Britain's top anti-terror officer.
He started a relationship with senior Yard Press officer Felicity Ross, who is in her 30s. She worked for Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson, though she has since left the police. Later in the interview, Mr Yates refers to the News International chief executive by her first name.
Asked whether Mrs Brooks should resign, he says: 'I think it is a matter for Rebekah, her company and her conscience. It has nothing to do with us.'
But he said it was a 'surprising development' that Mrs Brooks was still in her job.
He added: 'I have been around this business a number of years and have good relationships with the media, which I think is part of my role to help inform the context and some of them are in the News of the World.'
Mr Yates condemned the News of the World's failure to reveal emails relating to hacking until January of this year.
The newspaper had covered up the 'industrial scale' of its phone-hacking operation by insisting that one 'rogue reporter' was to blame.
He said Scotland Yard's reputation had been 'very damaged' by its failures.
Explaining his much-criticised decision to close the case, he said: 'To have given the go-ahead for a full review of a case of that nature would have involved four or five people and five or six months work and a lot of resources and in July 2009 why would I do that?'
||||| News of the World is accused of hacking phones of 9/11 victims
Murdoch journalists 'wanted phone records of British victims'
Rebekah Brooks may be questioned under caution in coming weeks
Ed Miliband launches bid to postpone BSkyB takeover
Ground zero: News of the World reporters allegedly tried to hack phones of 9/11 victims
News of the World reporters tried to hack the voicemails of dead 9/11 victims, a former New York policeman claimed last night.
He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.
The former cop, who now works as a private investigator, said that reporters wanted British victim’s mobile numbers and details of calls in the days surrounding the tragedy.
The voicemails are likely to have included harrowing messages from distraught relatives desperately trying to contact their loved ones in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001.
A source told the Daily Mirror: 'This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data.
'He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their relatives.
'His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.'
The source said that the journalists were interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.
Under American law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime for American companies to offer corrupt payments to foreign government officials.
If the allegations of payments to police officers are proven, Mr Murdoch could face an American prosecution in his role as deputy chief operating officer the US-listed News Corp.
A former New York police officer has also claimed that News of the World journalists tried to pay him for phone details of British 9/11 victims
Capitalising on grief: Reporters were allegedly tried to get hold frantic calls as the tragedy unfolded
In 2009, the former Hollywood producer Gerald Green was jailed for six months after being prosecuted under the FCPA for making $1.8m (£1.1m) in bribes to a Thai government official. Butler University law professor Mike Koehler, an FCPA expert, said: 'I would be very surprised if the U.S. authorities don't become involved in this News International conduct.'
He said the FCPA could be invoked because News Corp is an American company and because the alleged payments would have been made in order for the newspaper to make money from the stories obtained.
Brett Pulley, media correspondent for the Bloomberg news agency in New York, said: 'If the fall out were to continue, my goodness, if it were to impact James Murdoch, then we start to talk about it impacting News Corp’s succession plan, so that affects the company globally.'
Paul Farhi, media correspondent for The Washington Post, added: 'There’s a whole domino effect. What else falls apart? Do bankers get nervous?
'Rupert Murdoch had one flirtation with bankruptcy in the early 90s. He’s very dependent on the goodwill of Wall Street and of bankers.
“His company is very profitable now — it’s not quite the same as the 1990s — but he doesn’t want these dominoes to keep toppling …
'The fact he shut down a newspaper reflects how seriously the scandal is affecting a whole empire.'
In Slate.com, noted commentator Jack Shafer wrote: 'Like all reverse-ferret manoeuvres, the closing of News of the World is designed to scatter and confuse the audience. It looks like the sacrifice of something very special to him, seeing as it was his first U.K. newspaper acquisition in 1968. But it's not.
'It looks like atonement, but it's not. It's supposed to change the subject, but it's too late for that.
'The most shocking thing to me about the paper's closure is what an empty gesture it is.
'I expected much better from the genocidal tyrant.
'The tricky thing about the reverse ferret is that unless you nab the beast the moment it bursts out of a pant leg, it can be impossible to apprehend.
'From the way News Corp. is acting, it looks to me as if the Murdochs have lost control of their precious ferret. If I were Rupert Murdoch, I'd start wearing my socks over my cuffs. Ferrets will eat anything that looks and smells like meat.'
T he claims came as the disgraced paper's owner Rupert Murdoch flew into London to take personal charge of the phone-hacking scandal.
He first stopped at News International's headquarters in Wapping, East London, where he arrived in a red Range Rover, a copy of the last edition of the News of the World in his hands.
Protective: Rupert Murdoch guides Rebekah Brooks away from the media as they leave his London flat
Family affairs: James Murdoch leaves his father's Mayfair apartment yesterday. He later joined Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks at the Stafford Hotel where they were expected to dine together
Later yesterday he put on an extraordinary show of support for Rebekah Brooks - apparently unconcerned about her imminent interview under police caution.
Mrs Brooks, who has twice offered to resign over the controversy, was seen entering Mr Murdoch's Mayfair apartment at around 5.30pm yesterday.
Later, when asked what was his top priority, the 80-year-old media mogul gestured to Mrs Brooks. 'She is,' he replied.
The pair spent an hour in the apartment on the day the final edition of the News of the World hit news stands.
Then, in front of hordes of photographers, Mr Murdoch walked Mrs Brooks out of the block of flats with his arm firmly around her.
Last hurrah: Editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler, poses with staff outside the newspaper offices for the last time
They had beaming smiles as they crossed the road to the Stafford Hotel, where they were expected to dine together. They were later joined by Mr Murdoch’s son, James, the chairman of News International.
Pictures of the 'Rupert and Rebekah show' will infuriate the victims of phone hacking and those who question her denials.
The phone hacking row erupted last week when fresh allegations emerged that News or the World journalists paid private investigators to hack into the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
They are also alleged to have listened in on voice messages from the family of Soham victims Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
Hordes of advertisers finally abandoned the 'toxic' paper, forcing it to close, when it was revealed that they may have hacked into the phones of war dead.
Alleged victims: The families of murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman are claimed to have had their phone hacked alongside Milly Dowler when she was missing
A string of the paper's senior executives, including Mrs Brooks, face being quizzed as potential suspects or witnesses over their roles in the phone-hacking scandal which brought down the 168-year-old title she once edited.
Mrs Brooks is set to be questioned under caution in London in the next two weeks. She will be asked to give a full account of her actions during the period from 2000 to 2003 when she was editor.
It has also been revealed that at least nine former News of the World journalists, and three police officers, face charges over the hacking and corruption scandal.
Meanwhile, a 63-year-old man arrested on Friday has been bailed. Officers would not confirm reports he is a private investigator
The scandal has threatened Murdoch's controversial bid to take full control of BSkyB.
Labour leader Ed Miliband plans to attempt to force through a Commons vote this week that could see the deal postponed until after the police investigation into phone hacking is complete.
M<r Miliband said yesterday: 'The idea that this organisation, which has engaged in these terrible practices, should be allowed to take over BSkyB... without that criminal investigation having been completed, and on the basis of assurances from that self-same organisation… frankly that won’t wash with the public.' ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rupert Murdoch has met Rebekah Brooks over the phone-hacking scandal
News International found e-mails in 2007 that appeared to indicate that payments were being made to the police for information, although this evidence of alleged criminal behaviour was not handed to the Metropolitan Police for investigation until 20 June of this year.
According to sources, these e-mails were in the possession of the firm of solicitors, Harbottle & Lewis.
They were retrieved from Harbottle & Lewis by lawyers acting for News Interernational and for William Lewis - general manager of News International - who is in charge of News International's clean-up of what went wrong at the News of the World (and who was recruited by News International last July).
The e-mails appear to show Andy Coulson, editor of the News of the World from 2003-2007, authorising payments to the police for help with stories.
They also appear to show that phone hacking went wider than the activities of a single rogue reporter, which was the News of the World's claim at the time.
Mr Coulson, who subsequently became David Cameron's director of communications in 10 Downing Street, was arrested and bailed last week.
In a letter presented to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee, Harbottle & Lewis confirmed that it had been asked by News International to review whether the illegal actions of Clive Goodman - the News of the World's former royal editor, jailed in 2007 for phone hacking - were known to his News of the World colleagues.
In this letter, dated 29 May 2007, and sent to Jon Chapman of News International, Lawrence Abramson of Harbottle & Lewis wrote that it had "reviewed e-mails to which you have provided access from the accounts of Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, Ian Edmondson, Clive Goodman, Neil Wallis, Jules Stenson".
Mr Abramson confirmed to Mr Chapman that it "did not find anything in those e-mails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures".
The letter from Mr Abramson to Mr Chapman makes no mention of whether the e-mails contain evidence of wrongdoing by journalists other than Mr Goodman.
However, when William Lewis and his fellow News International executives re-acquired those e-mails from Harbottle & Lewis, they found what they perceived to be prima facie evidence that the illegal phone hacking went wider than just the activities of Mr Goodman and that there were potentially illegal payments to the police.
William Lewis went looking for these e-mails after the Metropolitan Police of Operation Weeting, who are investigating alleged phone hacking, enquired about the existence of 2,500 e-mails that Colin Myler - who replaced Andy Coulson as editor of the News of the World - mentioned to MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport committee.
Mr Myler told the MPs these e-mails had been trawled through as part of his own inquiry into whether hacking was carried out by others than Mr Goodman.
In response to a question by the MP Philip Davies about whether Mr Goodman was working alone, Mr Myler said: "I conducted this inquiry with Daniel Cloke, our director of human resources. Over 2,500 e-mails were accessed because we were exploring whether or not there was any other evidence to suggest essentially what you are hinting at. No evidence was found; that is up to 2,500 e-mails".
William Lewis and his News International colleagues on a newly created management and standards committee have not found the full 2,500 e-mails mentioned by Mr Myler, just the sub-set of 300 that were passed to Harbottle & Lewis.
The disclosure that News International found 300 e-mails as long ago as 2007, that indicated wider malpractices at the News of the World than those which led to the jailing of Mr Goodman and of the private detective Glenn Mulcaire, will pose very difficult questions for News International's chairman, James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch.
In December 2007, James Murdoch took charge of News International as chief executive of the European and Asian operations of its parent company, News Corporation.
Some four months later, in April 2008, he authorised the payment of a substantial out-of-court settlement, running to hundreds of thousands of pounds, with Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, over the hacking of Mr Taylor's phone.
That settlement - which was agreed by Mr Murdoch and signed by News International's chief operating officer at the time, Clive Milner - contained a gagging clause, making it impossible for either party to talk about the settlement or what led to it (though many of its details were subsequently revealed by the Guardian).
Mr Murdoch has now conceded that it was wrong of him to agree to the settlement with Mr Taylor and also to other out-of-court settlements made at a similar time.
He said on Thursday: "I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret."
There have been allegations that Mr Murdoch, in settling with Mr Taylor, was endeavouring to put a lid on the furore to deter a wider police investigation of the News of the World's behaviour.
News International denies this.
It insists that Mr Murdoch only approved the Taylor settlement and gagging clause because he was ignorant of the alleged transgressions by other News of the World journalists.
In particular, News International says Mr Murdoch had no knowledge of the 300 e-mails that Harbottle & Lewis were asked to review. | – Rupert Murdoch's shamed and now shuttered News of the World tried to pay a New York City police officer for phone records on British victims of 9/11, Reuters reports. The police officer, who now works as a private investigator, turned down the offer because it would "look bad," a source told the Daily Mail. Other substantial sums were apparently paid to British cops for information on a number of other news stories, reports the BBC. Emails dated 2007 indicate that then-editor Andy Coulson authorized payments to cops for inside info, according to sources. That email evidence, uncovered by a law office, was not turned over to investigators until last month. Coulson, who has been arrested in connection with the News of the World's burgeoning phone hacking scandal, was subsequently hired to be Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications—but stepped down early this year. |
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian government will restart cease-fire negotiations with pro-Russian insurgents in the country's east only once the rebels lay down their weapons, the defense minister said Tuesday
Ukrainian tanks roll to the base in Devhenke village, Kharkiv region, eastern Ukraine, Monday, July 7, 2014. There was no word Monday from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had promised to start... (Associated Press)
Ukrainian tanks take their position at the base in Devhenke village, Kharkiv region, eastern Ukraine, Monday, July 7, 2014. There was no word Monday from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who had... (Associated Press)
Valery Heletey's statement, posted on the Defense Ministry website, comes amid growing confidence among government forces after they drove the insurgent militia from their stronghold of Slovyansk.
Last week, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promised cease-fire talks no later than that Saturday, but a series of military successes by the Ukrainian army may have changed minds in Kiev. Instead, on Saturday, Ukrainian troops routed the rebels in Slovyansk, forcing hundreds of militants to regroup in the regional capital, Donetsk — a rare and significant victory for Ukraine, which has often appeared helpless in the face of the spreading insurgency.
On Tuesday, the mayor of Donetsk issued a statement after a meeting with Poroshenko, saying the president suggested talks could take place in Svyatogorsk, a town in the north of the region.
The insurgents would be unlikely to agree to Svyatogorsk, which is controlled by Kiev. "I don't think we will go there. It's not safe," rebel leader Alexander Borodai told Interfax news agency. He said locations acceptable to the rebels include Donetsk, Russia or Belarus.
A 10-day cease-fire that ended in late June was punctuated by frequent clashes and provided no progress in reaching a negotiated settlement. More than 400 people have died and thousands have fled their homes after a nearly three-month-long standoff between the rebels and the new authorities in Kiev, who came to power after the ex-president's ouster in February.
Rebels in Ukraine and nationalists in Russia have called for the Kremlin to protect the insurgents, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far made no comment on the rebels' defeat in Slovyansk, while state media and other officials have downplayed the loss. Putin may be wary of more sanctions being imposed by the West, which slapped visa bans and financial sanctions on Russia's top officials for their role in annexing the Black Sea region of Crimea in March. ||||| As Ukraine laid plans for a siege of pro-Russia separatists' remaining bastions Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a critical decision on whether to answer rebel pleas for military help—a move that could determine what he gains or loses following a monthslong conflict that has roiled global powers.
Russia has encouraged and supported the separatists during their insurgency, but has been unusually quiet since the Ukrainian... ||||| It has been raining for two days in the black earth region of eastern Ukraine, and the soldiers perching on the motley collection of vehicles clogging the southbound lane of the highway into Slavyansk huddle under their ponchos like drowned rats.
But they still manage to flash victory signs at their comrades manning roadside checkpoints. For this is an army on the advance, and the city they are entering was until 48 hours ago their enemies’ most important redoubt.
Ukrainian forces established a ring of checkpoints around Slavyansk in early May, effectively laying siege to the city in an attempt to contain the rebel expansion.
But the blockade was fractured and the isolated checkpoints vulnerable to attacks by rebel forces based in the city.
A little over a week earlier, rebels used tanks to surprise and destroy a checkpoint to the north of the city, in a demoralising blow to government forces.
It was one strike in a scrappy war of raid and counter-raid at which the highly motivated pro-Russian fighters excelled – and which appeared to be locked in a bloody stalemate.
Ukrainian soldiers look at wrecked tanks and armored personnel carriers left by pro-Russian insurgents in Slavyansk, Ukraine (Getty)
That resistance crumbled suddenly and in the early hours of Saturday morning, following several days of artillery bombardment to which the rebels had no answer.
Gathering their remaining tanks and fighting vehicles, Igor Strelkov, the rebel commander, and his men made a desperate dash for Donetsk, the regional capital 60 miles to the south where the self-declared People’s Republic had established its government.
Most – but not all – of the fighters appear to have got through. With the rebel army regrouping, fears are growing of a similar, and perhaps even bloodier, siege in Donetsk, which, with a population of one million, is 10 times the size of Slavyansk.
Two days after the break-out, Slavyansk – scarred by battle, but far from destroyed – is still a long way from a return to pre-war normality. Ukrainian troops are building their own pillboxes to reinforce checkpoints and sandbag bunkers once manned by pro-Russian militiamen.
There is still no running water or electricity. Gas has cut out more than once and few, if any, businesses are open. The streets remain largely deserted, much of the civilian population having fled or remaining indoors.
On Lenin Square, a small crowd of mostly elderly civilians waited for distribution of the “humanitarian” supplies – mostly food, water and medicines – promised by Kiev. Lenin’s statue now supports a shield emblazoned with the stylised trident of the Ukrainian coat of arms.
The exact extent of the damage is still difficult to assess. Access to the city and surrounding area is strictly controlled by the Ukrainians.
“We’ve got nothing. Nothing. I never expected to feel such fear,” said Elena, 51, as she watched Ukrainian troops trying to salvage a tank – it was not clear whose – that had rolled down a nearby gully. “We’ve only survived because we keep a bit of a reserve of water and food.”
Mines lay near a destroyed pro-Russian APC near the city of Slovyansk (AP)
Like many, she declined to voice a preference for one side or the other, only giving thanks that the fear and danger of the past three months appears to be at an end.
A mile further on, just past the roadside monolith welcoming drivers to Slavyansk, the blackened turret of another tank obstructed the northbound lane. The rest of the vehicle had been thrown off the embankment on the other side of the road. Between them was the crater of the explosion that destroyed it.
Nearby, the tangled remains of an armoured personnel carrier sat among Ukrainian anti-tank mines, destroyed vehicle parts, and its own unused ammunition, apparently scattered but not detonated by the explosion that destroyed it.
Major Andrei Tokatsyuk, the Ukrainian paratrooper who has commanded a checkpoint here since early May, said this was all that remained of a rebel armoured column that had tried to break through his checkpoint in the early hours of Saturday.
He claimed to have lost one man, compared with almost the entire rebel force, though he declined to put a number on the enemy dead. One burnt body remained unburied on the hard shoulder.
This appears to be a victory won partly by superior fire power – it is the vast artillery barrage unleashed by the Ukrainians following the end of a ceasefire last week that appears to have finally forced the rebels into retreat.
But it is also a matter of attrition and numbers. Where the “anti-terrorist operation” was once an undermanned, under-equipped shambles, the area is now swarming with thousands of servicemen in a motley mix of uniforms – special forces, regular army, police and the National Guard, which is largely drawn from the revolutionary militias that overthrew Viktor Yanukovych in February. In a strange twist, they now serve alongside men of the Berkut, the elite riot police with whom they fought running battles in Kiev this winter. Even the freelance pro-Kiev militias such as the Donbass battalion, raised and equipped by private individuals and with a previously fractious relationship with the army, appear to have been brought into the fold.
An elderly woman walks away from a damaged house in Slavyansk, Ukraine (Photoshot)
The columns of advancing troops moving south into the newly captured territory over the past two days may be led by armoured vehicles, but many troops travel in buses, police cars, and Nissan pick-up trucks sprayed green and mounted with machineguns.
Neither side in this war is rich and both armies depend on imaginative battlefield improvisation. But the superior numbers and resources of the Ukrainians are beginning to tell.
Out-gunned, outnumbered, and with the Kremlin refusing to respond to their pleas for military intervention, the fighters of the Donetsk People’s Republic appear to be facing certain defeat.
Yet this war is still far from over.
The rebel militia may have suffered a major setback, but their dogged defence of Slavyansk and the breakout itself shows a fighting ability and level of motivation that will make any battle for Donetsk a bloody affair.
On Monday, Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Ahmetov, pleaded with the government not to bomb his home city. Pro-Russian rebels put up new barricades and residents said they feared the potential battle to come. Thousands have already left Donetsk, but most have nowhere to go, local officials said.
Meanwhile the rebels are preparing for the expected government assault, destroying a railway bridge to block the highway north of the city and blowing up bridges on two other roads.
They have even commandeered a vintage Soviet tank from the city’s Second World War museum. “We have got an engine to go in it,” said one rebel. “We have got some experts. We have to add the engine, ease the turret and it will be a working battle tank.” | – Separatists in Eastern Ukraine are starting to complain that Moscow has sold them out, as they prepare for what the New York Times is declaring their "last stand." As they retreated toward Donetsk yesterday, insurgents blew up two road bridges and a railroad bridge behind them. An emboldened Ukraine today said that it would not reopen ceasefire negotiations until the rebels had laid down their weapons entirely, the AP reports. The once undermanned and outgunned Ukrainian force is now noticeably better armed, using buses and pickup trucks alongside its armored vehicles to transport what the Telegraph describes as a "motley mix" of police, special forces, and militiamen. Ukraine says it has succeeded in sealing the Russian border, preventing troops and weapons from flowing to the rebels. But Vladimir Putin has been suspiciously silent, ignoring the separatists' increasingly urgent pleas for help, and many are speculating that he aims to cut his losses, having already taken the real prize of Crimea, the Wall Street Journal reports. Observers believe Moscow has ruled out any military intervention, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov struck a decidedly peaceful tone at a news conference, saying, "A quick end to the bloodshed is in our common interest." But one US official cautioned against declaring victory. "There is only one person who knows what Putin is planning," he said, "and that is Putin." |
YouTube’s top trending content at the moment isn’t an advertisement, music video, or movie trailer. It is not a viral challenge video, nor is it something about Fortnite. Instead, it’s a shockingly raw breakup video featuring two of YouTube’s biggest comedy vloggers, Liza Koshy and David Dobrik.
Liza Koshy, 22, is best known for going to stores and causing improvisational mischief, often featuring random items that anyone can buy. David Dobrik, 21, has also made a name for himself through funny vlogs, many of which feature his relationship with Koshy. Combined, the two have over 21 million subscribers, making them one of the most visible power couples on the platform. Except that the two broke up six months ago, according to a video uploaded yesterday.
The split may come as a surprise to some fans, given that the two have been uploading videos with each other this entire time. Just two weeks ago, Dobrik shared footage of him surprising Koshy with a puppy, and before that, there was another video in which he brings her a monkey. But according to the pair, the two had grown apart enough that staying in a relationship just didn’t make sense anymore: they were leading separate lives.
”Liza broke up with me because she felt like we’ve been kinda distant, because we’ve just been so busy, period,” Dobrik said.
The video’s popularity is not entirely thanks to the viewers who normally follow the everyday minutia of their favorite YouTubers. It’s gone viral because of how obvious it is that the two deeply care for one another. They joke around, they crack up, they cry. They sing each other’s praises and talk about how they’re still best friends. They make jabs about future boyfriends and girlfriends. When Koshy says that she is going through something and that she needs to love herself before she can love someone else, she knows it’s cliché — so you believe her. It helps that she pokes fun at herself. “This is gonna sound so lame, but I really want to spread love but I have to have it first, you know?,” Koshy says, laughing. “It’s like saying you’re gonna spread mayonnaise when you only have mustard.”
Where before partners might consider joining their banking accounts, lovers in 2018 have to think about what it means to merge their brands
At this point, breakups are their own genre of video on YouTube, and plenty of couples have announced a separation in front of the camera. Where before partners might consider joining things like banking accounts or bills, lovers in 2018 have to think about what it means to merge your brand with someone else’s. You don’t have to be a big YouTube star to think about when you make a relationship Instagram official, how much a partner should be mentioned on your social media feeds, or even what labels you publicly use for one another. To what degree should you own your relationship online? How will that relationship define you in the eyes of others on the internet? Even a simple tagged photo carries a much bigger meaning for some of us. You don’t want to give people the wrong idea about where things stand with certain people — or maybe you do want to send a very specific message out there.
While most of us can simply stop tagging an ex on our social media accounts, YouTubers with channels revolving around their lives don’t have that luxury. Their entire livelihoods could be at risk if they disappoint or upset the audience following them. As ridiculous as it might sound, there’s a real need for disclosure regarding where they stand with those regularly featured in their videos. If nothing else, airing everything out this publicly is a preventative measure that could minimize the chance that either person will get harassed by fans who believe one person ought to be blamed for the breakup.
Koshy and Dobrik know they’re operating within this strange space. They waited a long time to tell YouTube fans because they were both angry that they grew apart in the first place. And while we all know that what influencers show us is just a well-edited sliver of a much bigger picture, there’s a subtext of realness here. Koshy jokes that she could have wiped away her tears and fix up her appearance, but that wouldn’t be authentic. You believe her. More than that: you can’t help but watch and think, Man, I wish I had had a breakup as healthy as this one. ||||| This was a very very stupid idea. I got 7 stitches because of us just being idiots lol. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! We had to call an ambulance. Lizas reaction is at the end. Youre gonna cringe!!Video i made with Jason Nash: https://www.youtube.com/wat... ...GO BUY THE NEW MERCH: https://fanjoy.co/collectio... ...LIZA AND I DO A CHALLENGE HERE: https://www.youtube.com/wat... ....Go follow Joe on instagram! he filmed all of this: @UghItsJoeOutro song is by Bishop Briggs! Follow her on insta: @thatgirlbishopComment how much you love our bunny if you read this!ADD ME ON SNAPCHAT TO BE INVITED TO OUR HOUSE NEXT:@DavidDobrikThanks for watching :) Throw it a like if you like throwing stuff!Turn my notifications on these to be the next shoutout!!Twitter: @DavidDobrikInstagram: @DavidDobrikSnapchat: @DavidDobrikVine: @DavidDobrikMusically: @DavidDobrikBusiness email: daviddobrikbusiness@gmail.comOther people in the video:Bignik- Snapchat: @bignikvine Twitter: @BigNik Instagram: @RealBigNikLiza- Twitter; @lizakoshy Instagram; @lizakoshy Snapchat; @lizakoshysnapsSeth - Twitter/Instagram: @whois_sethJack Dytrych: Twitter: @BigJuicyJack Instagram: jdytrych22Cailee: Twitter/Instagram: @CaileeRaeMusicCorinna- Twitter/Instagram: @CorinnaKopfJason Nash- Twitter and Instagram; @JasonNashHeath- Twitter; @HeathHussar Instagram; @HeathHussar Snapchat; @HeathHussarAlex Ernst- Twitter; @AlexErnst Instagram; @Ernst Snapchat; @AlexErnstThe Gabbie Show- Twitter; @TheGabbieShow Instagram; @TheGabbieShow Snapchat; @TheGabbieShowZane- Twitter; @Zane Instagram; @Zane Snapchat; @ZaneHijaziScottysire- Twitter; @imnotscottysire Instagram; @VanillaDingDongToddysmith- Twitter; @todderic_ Instagram; @todderic_Dom: Twitter/Instagram: @DurteDomJulia Abner- Instagram; @JuliaAbnerCarly incontro- Twitter/Instagram: @CarlyIncontroErin Gilfoy- Twitter and Instagram: goddess_eriu Snapchat: erin_gilfoyDom: Twitter/Instagram: @DurteDomElton Castee- Twitter; @EltonCastee, Instagram; @EltonCasteeBrandon Calvillo- Twitter; @BJCalvillo Instagram; @BJCalvillo Snapchat; @BJCalvilloMeghan McCarthy- Twitter: @MeghanWMcCarthyJcyrus snapchat: @Jcyrusvine Show less ||||| Liza’s getting frustrated juggling all the gigs she has to hold down. Does she have so much side hustle that there’s no time for main hustle? She’s determined to find out, but she's distracted by a sick cat, a jigsaw puzzle, and a trip to the hottest dessert pop up in Los Angeles.Available with YouTube Premium - https://www.youtube.com/pre... .... To see if Premium is available in your country, click here: https://goo.gl/A3HtfP ||||| Image copyright David Dobrik / YouTube
YouTube couple David Dobrik and Liza Koshy have announced their separation in an emotional video online.
The pair had dated since 2015 and built a combined audience of more than 20 million Youtube followers.
The say in their video they split six months ago but waited until this week to tell their fans.
"It wasn't healthy for us to continue to be together - for now," says David in the six minute video.
"You never know what could happen, but just not now."
They both admitted the pressure of their YouTube careers had been a factor in their split.
(Warning: contains language some viewers may find offensive)
"Liza broke up with me because she felt like we've been distant because we've been so busy," David added.
"As much as I hate to admit it, I was feeling it on my side too but I just don't have the balls to pull the trigger on that."
"We felt like we were living separate lives but neither of us was coming to terms with it," said Liza.
"So I decided we should break up. We didn't want to tell anybody because we were just so angry at the fact we distanced in the first place."
"We did nothing to each other to cause a break up.
"We have a lot of growth and development and learning and loving to do."
The American couple both insist they are best friends and that their break-up is amicable.
Could the split impact their career?
David and Liza have been described as the Posh and Becks of YouTube. But Tassilo Labuzinski, the founder of branding company Socially Powerful, says their separation should have little impact on their individual status or future earnings.
"I don't see the break-up being a negative thing for either of them," Tassilo tells Newsbeat. "I think it's oversimplified to say they are the Posh and Becks of the internet and they only come as a package."
He also believes fans of the pair's "tongue in cheek, quick and witty" content would be understanding if they got back together.
"The couple are free to take it any way they want," he adds. "They could make another video and say; 'Look, we've actually decided we love each other too much and we want to be together,' and that's going to get more attention.
"I don't think there's going to be a negative backlash on them in any form."
In early 2018, Newsbeat made a documentary about the pressures on YouTube couples to stay together.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ben delves into the world of online couples for the latest Newsbeat Documentary, YouTube couples: How to stay in love
Many fans of David and Liza have reacted with shock and upset to the news.
Others have praised the message shared by the couple in their break-up video.
And some are holding out hope that their split will be temporary.
Follow Newsbeat on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 every weekday on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra - if you miss us you can listen back here. | – It's 2018, which means that when a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old who have become YouTube stars together break up, they don't—they can't—do so privately. And that's how a six-minute video in which popular comedy vloggers David Dobrik and Liza Koshy tearfully discuss their split became, on Wednesday, the top trending content on YouTube. As the Verge (which calls Koshy and Dobrik "one of the most visible power couples on the platform") explains for those unfamiliar, Koshy rocketed to YouTube stardom thanks to prank videos often filmed at stores, while Dobrik's popular video blogs often featured him and Koshy goofing around. Thanks to the intensely public nature of their relationship, it was necessary to come clean to fans about their breakup, which happened six months ago but about which they didn't feel ready to vlog until now. They had been together since 2015 and have a combined 20+ million YouTube followers, the BBC reports. Their breakup video, appropriately titled "we broke up," has received more than 22 million views so far. The coverage is fascinating: |
The founder of a Miami anti-aging clinic has agreed to talk to Major League Baseball about players linked to performance-enhancing drugs, a person familiar with the case told The Associated Press on Tuesday night.
Toronto Blue Jays' Melky Cabrera takes batting practice before a baseball game against the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday, June 4, 2013 in San Francisco. Cabrera wants everyone to know just how sorry... (Associated Press)
FILE - This undated booking photo provided by the Miami-Dade Police Department, on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013, shows Anthony Bosch. A person familiar with the case tells The Associated Press Tuesday June 4,... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this April 26, 2013 file photo, Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun gets ready to bat during a baseball game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Los Angeles. A person familiar with the case tells The... (Associated Press)
FILE - in this April 1, 2013, file photo, New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, who is on the disabled list after hip surgery, talks to reporters outside the Yankees' clubhouse in New York. A person familiar... (Associated Press)
Texas Rangers right fielder Nelson Cruz walks back to position after leaping head-first over the wall trying to catch a homer by Boston Red Sox's Mike Carp in the fifth inning of a baseball game at Fenway... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this July 23, 2012, file photo, New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez watches a home run against the Seattle Mariners in a baseball game in Seattle. A person familiar with the case tells The Associated... (Associated Press)
The person declined to be identified because the investigation was still ongoing.
Information that Anthony Bosch provides MLB on players who came to the now-closed Biogenesis of America clinic could lead to suspensions. Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz and Melky Cabrera are among the players whose names have been tied to the clinic.
The agreement between Bosch and MLB was first reported by ESPN.
In addition to Rodriguez, New York Yankees teammate Francisco Cervelli also was linked to the clinic. Cervelli said he consulted Biogenesis for a foot injury, but didn't receive any treatment.
"We'll let MLB handle everything and we don't really have a comment," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said after a 4-3 win over Cleveland.
Girardi said the Yankees were still planning on Rodriguez rejoining the team after the All-Star break. The star third baseman has been on the disabled list all season.
As for the drug cloud that has hovered over baseball for years, Girardi said: "I think we all had hoped we'd gotten through it. But obviously, we haven't."
Yankees outfielder Vernon Wells said it was too soon to draw any conclusions.
"Everything right now is speculative," Wells said. "We can all sit here and wonder."
MLB has sued Biogenesis of America and its operators, accusing them of scheming to provide banned PEDs to players in violation of their contracts.
Miami New Times reported in January that it obtained purported records detailing drug purchases by Rodriguez, Cabrera, Cruz and former AL Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon.
Yahoo Sports reported that Braun, the 2011 NL MVP, was mentioned in the records.
Most have denied the Biogenesis link, although Rodriguez has admitted using performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career and Colon and Cabrera each were suspended for 50 games last year for testing positive for elevated testosterone levels.
Braun failed a drug test in 2011, but his suspension was overturned by an arbitrator. He has acknowledged that he was mentioned in Biogenesis records because his lawyers had used Bosch as consultant during the appeal.
After the Brewers' 4-3 win in 10 innings over Oakland at Miller Park, Braun said he was done talking about the clinic.
"I've already addressed everything related to the Miami situation. I addressed it in spring training. I will not make any further statements about it," he said.
"The truth has not changed," he said.
Braun said the speculation was not affecting him on the field.
"No, of course not. I've dealt with this for two years now. I'm pretty good at avoiding distractions," he said. ||||| Major League Baseball will seek to suspend about 20 players connected to the Miami-area clinic at the heart of an ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal, including Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, possibly within the next few weeks, "Outside the Lines" has learned. If the suspensions are upheld, the performance-enhancing drug scandal would be the largest in American sports history.
Tony Bosch, right, flat-out denied any knowledge of suspected PED distribution at Biogenesis, his closed South Florida clinic, in an interview with ESPN's Pedro Gomez in April. ESPN
Tony Bosch, founder of the now-shuttered Biogenesis of America, reached an agreement this week to cooperate with MLB's investigation, two sources told "Outside the Lines," giving MLB the ammunition officials believe they need to suspend the players.
One source familiar with the case said the commissioner's office might seek 100-game suspensions for Rodriguez, Braun and other players, the penalty for a second doping offense. The argument, the source said, is the players' connection to Bosch constitutes one offense, and previous statements to MLB officials denying any such connection or the use of PEDs constitute another.
Bosch and his attorneys did not return several calls. MLB officials refused to comment when reached Tuesday. On Wednesday, union executive director Michael Weiner released a statement saying, "The Players Association has every interest in both defending the rights of players and in defending the integrity of our joint program. We trust that the Commissioner's Office shares these interests."
Sources said Bosch will meet with MLB officials in New York on Friday to begin sharing information and materials. He is expected to meet with lawyers and investigators for several days. The announcement of suspensions could follow within two weeks.
Sources said discussions between Bosch and MLB were delayed while Bosch's lawyers spoke to the U.S. Attorney's office to get a sense of what sort of legal jeopardy Bosch might face. Before he would agree to a deal, sources said, he wanted an assurance that MLB could help mitigate any criminal exposure. MLB officials promised to do what they could, but do not have the power to stop a federal criminal investigation.
Investigators have had records naming about 20 players for more than a month. But without a sworn statement from Bosch that the records are accurate and reflect illicit interactions between the players and the self-described biochemist, the documents are little more than a road map.
Sources did not say what other materials, such as receipts and phone records, Bosch might provide, but said he has pledged to provide anything in his possession that could help MLB build cases against the players. Sources said MLB officials were not sure how many players might end up being pulled into the scandal; the 20 or so they know of have been identified through paperwork, but Bosch is expected to provide more. (Because some players are listed by their names and some by code names, officials are not yet certain whether some are redundant.)
The development is a major break for MLB, which has pursued the case vigorously since Bosch's name was brought to MLB's attention last summer. In exchange for Bosch's full cooperation, sources said, Major League Baseball will drop the lawsuit it filed against Bosch in March, indemnify him for any liability arising from his cooperation, provide personal security for him and even put in a good word with any law enforcement agency that might bring charges against him. Sources said negotiations over the agreement, which lasted several weeks, stalled over the last point, as Bosch wanted the strongest assurances he could get that MLB would help mitigate any prosecution.
At the same time, MLB is trying to secure the cooperation of at least two other former Bosch associates who have spoken to MLB investigators, as well as Juan Carlos Nunez, a registered agent who worked for longtime agents Seth and Sam Levinson and who is believed to have been a conduit between Bosch and numerous players.
MLB already has established precedent to suspend a player for two offenses in one shot: Minor league player Cesar Carrillo was hit with a 100-game suspension in March when he was confronted with Biogenesis documents containing his name and then denied having any connection to Bosch or the clinic.
However, because Carrillo was on a minor league contract and thus not a member of the MLB Players Association, he was not entitled to an appeal through arbitration. Major league players accused by MLB are expected to fight any suspension, and efforts to charge the players with multiple offenses would take that fight to another level. In the appeals process, players are allowed to confront witnesses and evidence in a courtroom-like procedure before an arbitration panel.
Corroborating evidence against some players could prove difficult to come by. Several sources told ESPN that Bosch dealt only in cash and usually used friends as couriers, sometimes never seeing some of the athletes he served.
In a recent interview with ESPN, his only one since the scandal broke, Bosch said he knew nothing about performance-enhancing drugs and that media accounts of his alleged PED distribution amounted to "character assassination."
"I have been accused, tried and convicted in the media. And so I think [I] have been falsely accused throughout the media," he told ESPN's Pedro Gomez. "I've done nothing wrong."
But sources said Bosch has been feeling pressure from both the MLB lawsuit, which claims tortious interference, and a potential criminal investigation, and that he sees full cooperation with MLB as one of his only refuges. Several attorneys have said they don't think the lawsuit could survive a legal challenge, but Bosch likely would have to put up a costly fight in order to have the case dismissed. Several sources have told ESPN that Bosch is nearly broke, living alternately with family members and friends, and has tried unsuccessfully so far to revive his "wellness" business.
The Florida Department of Health recently said it had sent Bosch a cease-and-desist letter and referred the case to law enforcement. MLB has tried to enlist the Drug Enforcement Agency, but no sources close to the clinic said they have been interviewed by any law enforcement agents and said they don't know of anyone who has been.
MLB officials, though, traveled to Miami last month to take the deposition of anti-aging specialist Dr. Daniel Carpman, a former acquaintance of Bosch. Biogenesis documents from 2011 included prescription forms purportedly signed by Carpman, who previously told "Outside the Lines'' that he didn't sign the forms.
Bosch first came to MLB's attention in 2009 after Manny Ramirez, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, tested positive for excessive levels of testosterone. While Ramirez appealed that finding, MLB officials discovered a prescription in Ramirez's medical file for human chorionic gonadotropin, another banned substance. The HCG prescription, sufficient evidence to suspend Ramirez, was written by Dr. Pedro Bosch, Tony's father, but sources said at the time that Tony Bosch actually had been facilitating Ramirez's drug use. MLB tried to get the DEA involved, but the agency took a pass. Ramirez was suspended for 50 games and was suspended a second time for 100 games in 2011 after he failed another test.
Tony Bosch resurfaced last summer after several players, all with connections to the Miami area, tested positive for excessive levels of testosterone. Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon and Yasmani Grandal all received 50-game suspensions. When an ESPN reporter asked MLB officials about information that all three might have been connected to Bosch, MLB launched an investigation, sending several members of its Department of Investigations to South Florida, where they have repeatedly visited former Biogenesis employees and Bosch associates, even paying at least one $5,000 for information.
Braun's name appears on at least two documents, one that lists him as owing $20,000 to $30,000 and another that says he owed $1,500 for what sources said were PEDs. Braun issued a statement saying the larger figure was to pay Bosch for consulting on his successful appeal of a 50-game suspension after he tested positive for elevated testosterone in October 2011, and Braun denied ever receiving or using PEDs. During his interview with ESPN, Bosch said he only consulted with Braun, but sources said he is expected to tell MLB he did provide the Milwaukee star with drugs.
In the Brewers' locker room after Tuesday night's game, when informed about the ESPN report, Braun put aside questions on any link to Biogenesis.
"I've already addressed everything related to the Miami situation," Braun was quoted as saying by USA Today. "I addressed it in spring training. I will not make any further statements about it. The truth has not changed. I don't know the specifics of the story that came out today, but I've already addressed it, I've already commented on it, and I'll say nothing further about it."
Yankees manager Joe Girardi was asked about Rodriguez Wednesday and said that while he texts or calls him regularly to check on his rehab, he does not discuss PEDs.
"That's something that the union I think discusses clearly with the players, and they understand that, so that's handled through the union, I'm sure. But personally, I don't," Girardi said. "Players are well-informed, that's the bottom line. You'd have to have your head buried in the sand to know that there are repercussions if you don't do things properly."
MLBPA officials have negotiated with their MLB counterparts to offer limited cooperation from the players but have been concerned the players could expose themselves to further liability.
Bosch's claims in his ESPN interview that he never distributed PEDs are sharply at odds with accounts from numerous sources who say he helped provide banned substances to possibly dozens of athletes. They also contradict paperwork that several sources said was handwritten by Bosch. Shown a list of athletes who allegedly received PEDs through Biogenesis, Bosch told ESPN's Pedro Gomez, "No comment. I have never seen that in my life." The list was one of dozens of documents obtained by "Outside the Lines" and is similar to the documents in MLB's possession.
Some paperwork, taken from company computers rather than Bosch's handwritten notes, lists players by code names. Most, such as Rodriguez, Colon, Cabrera and others, have been identified in media reports, but MLB will want Bosch to say who the code names represented. | – Around 20 MLB players—including stars Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun—could soon be suspended for their ties to the Miami clinic at the center of a long-brewing performance-enhancing drug scandal, inside sources tell ESPN's Outside the Lines. Clinic founder Tony Bosch is reported to have reached an agreement with the league to verify the names of the athletes to whom the now-closed Biogenesis of America supplied PEDs; he'll also reportedly provide supporting documentation. In response, sources say, the MLB will drop its lawsuit against Bosch, indemnify him against any liability, and even provide him with personal security. Bosch's cooperation has been corroborated by the AP. Bosch, who previously denied any knowledge of the PEDs, is reportedly set to begin sharing info with lawyers and investigators on Friday; assuming the league gets the evidence it needs, the suspensions announcement could come within two weeks. The suspensions may be for as long as 100 games, says ESPN, the penalty generally reserved for second doping offenses. The argument is that the players' connection to Bosch is an offense in and of itself, and their previous denials of that connection to league officials is the second. |
Internet phenomenon Ken Bone: Debate 'got very uncomfortable from up close'
From where he sat in his now Internet-famous red sweater, undecided voter and debate attendee Ken Bone said Sunday night’s matchup “almost felt like watching mom and dad fight.”
Bone, who asked the candidates a question about energy policy toward the end of Sunday night’s debate in St. Louis, lamented the “bickering and name calling” that occupied much of the event’s 90 minutes. He praised moderators Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper for their “great job moving us through under difficult circumstances.”
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“It got very uncomfortable from up close. But if you can dig through some of the rhetoric and some of the name calling that went on, I think there really were some substantive answers,” he said in an interview on CNN, still wearing his red sweater. “It's just unfortunate that we have to wade through so much to get to them.”
The mustachioed debate attendee rocketed to Internet fame in the closing moments of Sunday night’s debate, launching a flurry of social media posts about his attire and facial hair. Video showing him photographing the emptying debate hall with what appeared to be a disposable camera only further endeared him to the masses.
Bone joked that his Twitter account had gained hundreds of followers and that he felt he had to reprise his red sweater on the morning after the debate because “it's more famous than me. I just had to bring myself along.”
He also said that he did not know during the debate that Donald Trump had invited an array of women who claimed to have been wronged by the Clintons to sit in the audience on Sunday night, including three who allege that Bill Clinton had either raped or made unwanted sexual advances toward them. The former president has denied all three allegations.
Bone said the move likely would not affect his decision on whom to vote for in November, but he added that inviting the women to attend “was uncalled for.”
“I don’t think that will factor into my decision because I really try to stick to the issues. But if I’m being honest, that was, I feel like that was uncalled for,” he said. “It has very little to do with Hillary Clinton’s ability to be president, her husband’s bad behavior from 20 years ago. And if Mr. Trump wants us to forget his past behaviors, he needs to quit dredging up those of his political opponents.”
Asked whether Sunday night’s debate had given him any clarity on whom he might vote for, Bone said it had done just the opposite. He told CNN that he had been leaning toward voting for Trump but that Clinton’s composure and answers had impressed him.
And asked how he arrived at his now-famous wardrobe choice for the evening, Bone said the sweater was actually a backup plan.
“I had a really nice olive suit that I love a great deal and my mother would have been very proud to see me wearing on television, but apparently I have gained about 30 pounds and when I went to get in my car the morning of the debate I split the seat of my pants all the way open,” he said. “So the red sweater is plan B. I’m glad it worked out. “
Authors: ||||| 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. ||||| View Caption Hide Caption ABC
By now it’s pretty clear who won Sunday night’s presidential debate: Ken Bone. The guy with the cuddly red sweater is trending on Twitter as a nation weary from months of political mudslinging embrace the one figure everyone can support.
The lovable, self-effacing Midwesterner suddenly has more than 27,000 followers even though he’s tweeted just 18 times, including this post that referenced the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song:
@ShehanJeyarajah @vine They wouldn't let us bring any electronic devices. No phones, no lights, no motor cars. Not a single luxury. — Ken Bone (@kenbone18) October 10, 2016
MORE: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump supporters claim victory
Donald Trump tries to stop free-fall with attacks on Hillary Clinton
Ken Bone says he wore the red sweater as a plan B to the debate because he “split the seat of my pants wide open” https://t.co/H9eL2wi5as — CNN (@CNN) October 10, 2016
Now what we want to know: Where can we get that sweater?? Here are a few options.
Venerable American brand JCPenney has this snappy Izod number on clearance. HURRY. (You know people are already thinking of being Ken Bone for Halloween.)
BTW check out this quick tutorial on how to totally win at social media, courtesy of Izod:
There’s no debate. The “Town Hall” look is the one to rock. https://t.co/Bt0XCraZUo pic.twitter.com/eFkERbu6sh — IZOD (@IZOD) October 10, 2016
This one from Charles River Apparel is also a bargain at $33, and seems to most closely exude a Ken Bone aura. The nation’s newest Internet star is an undecided voter. Sort of how this sweater model is undecided on whether to put his hand in his pocket:
Lord & Taylor has this sporty one listed at $98.50. It’s especially cheery and bright.
This one at Joseph A. Bank is $269 which sounds kind of pricey for a sweater. But it’s cashmere and in proud Jos. A. Bank tradition, it’s buy one, get one free:
This one from Vineyard Vines is $80.99 and taught us a new term: Proutsneck. What is that?
Don’t worry ladies, here’s one for you. REI has the Patagonia “Better Sweater” available in Rambling Red: | – Ken Bone and his bright red sweater became Internet famous Sunday night when he rose to ask a question on energy policy of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (The "real hero of the debate," pronounced Quartz, which rounds up some of the social media love.) Bone, for his part, seems to be taking it with a dose of good humor. He appeared on CNN Monday morning, deliberately re-wearing his now-famous sweater. “I had a really nice olive suit that I love a great deal and my mother would have been very proud to see me wearing on television, but apparently I have gained about 30 pounds, and when I went to get in my car the morning of the debate I split the seat of my pants all the way open,” he explained. “So the red sweater is plan B," he said, per Politico. "I’m glad it worked out." As for the debate itself, Bone said it got "very uncomfortable" at times because of the personal digs, almost "like watching mom and dad fight." He added that he's more confused than ever about who to vote for, though he chided Trump for dredging up Bill Clinton's scandals, which "has very little to do with Hillary Clinton's ability to be president." Bone is evidently a former Domino's Pizza manager from Missouri and a classic-car enthusiast, reports Slate. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has you covered if you want to buy a similar sweater. |
CLOSE Director Brian Henson explains how Melissa McCarthy's sugar-snorting scene in "The Happytime Murders" was done. USA TODAY
Maya Rudolph (left) and Melissa McCarthy share screen time with puppets in the comedy "The Happytime Murders." (Photo: HOPPER STONE/STX ENTERTAINMENT)
Hardcore puppet sex and four-letter words that would make Big Bird blush sound like a googly-eyed good time until you’re faced with 90 unfunny minutes of it.
"The Happytime Murders" (★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday) tries hard, and annoyingly so, to be a raucous, adult-oriented departure from the Muppets and denizens of “Sesame Street,” one in which an octopus milks a cow to orgasmic effect and a bunny shops for chicken porn. Stuffed full of rampant badness, the scattershot comedy isn’t nearly as clever or subversive as it thinks it is.
Set in a world where men and puppets co-exist, though the latter are second-class citizens, the noir-ish narrative centers on blue-skinned former cop (and now private eye) Phil Phillips (puppeteer Bill Barretta) and his human ex-partner, L.A. detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy). A violent incident in the past soured their relationship – and resulted in a ban on puppet cops – so when they run into each other at a crime scene, snarky and vicious banter ensues.
Sandra puts the moves on private eye Phil in "The Happytime Murders." (Photo: HOPPER STONE/STX ENTERTAINMENT)
A robbery gone wrong at a puppet sex store and a series of dead bodies (usually with stuffing falling out of them) leads Phil to believe that the stars of cheesy 1990s-style sitcom “The Happytime Gang,” the first hit to feature both human and puppet stars, are being targeted. The show just happens to be up for syndication, which means a windfall for those still alive.
To solve the case, Phil and Connie form an uneasy alliance and begin to reconnect as they delve into a puppet underworld of bunny-filled strip clubs, sugar-snorting poker games and assorted places unfit for colorful characters who look like rejects from a children’s program. ("Sesame Street" notably sued filmmakers and lost, worrying the explicit content would tarnish its brand. No worries there, since the only thing this film ruins is an hour and a half of your life.)
More: 'Happytime Murders' shocks with raunchy puppets (not Muppets)
Also: How Melissa McCarthy really 'snorted' puppet drugs in 'Happytime Murders'
More: 10 movies you absolutely must see this fall, from 'Halloween' to 'A Star Is Born'
There is definite artistry in the puppeteering for director Brian Henson (son of legendary Muppets creator Jim Henson): Phil, his client/love interest Sandra (Dorien Davies), pervy rabbit Mr. Bumblypants (Kevin Clash, formerly Elmo) and others have lived a hard-luck and/or oversexed life, and it shows in their felt bodies. But by the time one character poops plastic eggs and another ejaculates Silly String, the novelty of puppets behaving badly is long gone.
Exotic dancer Jenny (Elizabeth Banks) entertains her rabbit clientele in "The Happytime Murders." (Photo: HOPPER STONE/STX ENTERTAINMENT)
The gags make Fozzie Bear a comedic genius by comparison, but at least the talented human actors keep the film from being a “Happytime” disaster. McCarthy is as sharp-witted as ever with one-liners and caustic put-downs, Maya Rudolph boosts the proceedings as Phil’s loyal secretary Bubbles, and Elizabeth Banks has a fun role as an exotic dancer also connected to the resident gumshoe.
Yet all the film's most interesting aspects have been done better elsewhere. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is the gold standard for portraying cutesy personalities as a disenfranchised population, and "Happytime Murders" completely fumbles that theme. It unfortunately doesn’t fully commit to the raunch the way, say, "Sausage Party" does. And nothing touches "Team America: World Police" when it comes to hilarious puppet intercourse.
At the risk of being as Muppet-y self-righteous as Sam the Eagle, there are much better uses of your time than this travesty of fluffy shenanigans.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2w96Slx ||||| Rescue me, Elmo!
That’s what you’ll shout if you’re trapped in a movie theater playing “The Happytime Murders,” the wretched puppets-behaving-badly comedy directed by Brian Henson.
The son of Muppets creator Jim Henson has delivered a cliché-ridden, laughless bore that wastes lead actress Melissa McCarthy’s prodigious comic talents and beats well-trod territory with a mallet.
“The Happytime Murders” is as fresh as the old “Wayne’s World” jokes it shoves in. It’s a movie in which puppet crabs make cracks about getting pelvic crabs, and the line “Looks like the carpet doesn’t match the drapes” is uttered twice.
As stale as a neglected saltine, the flick is another police-noir parody with all the familiar hallmarks: brooding narration, a cigarette-smoke-filled office, a door with a frosted window and a helpless blond bombshell. Think “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” minus the innovation or fun.
The bawdy tale is set in a decrepit Los Angeles that’s plagued by crime, and where our felt-y friends are an oppressed minority. Kids yell “stupid puppet!” and beat them up, while the word “sock” is now a racial slur.
The smoky office belongs to Phil Philips (Bill Barretta), a puppet private investigator and former cop. He was kicked off the LAPD years earlier when, his bosses believe, he purposefully didn’t gun down a puppet perp. His human partner, Detective Connie Edwards (McCarthy), was nearly killed in the botched operation.
That bumbling duo is thrust back together when puppet and human cast members of popular TV show “The Happytime Gang,” including Phil’s famous stuffed brother, start getting killed off one by one. He goes rogue to solve the case with Connie.
What’s not solved is the film’s No. 1 problem: It’s not funny.
Most bits are either gross or groaners. A gag involving boudoir silly string is amusing until it becomes nauseating. Watching McCarthy snort puppet crack didn’t make me crack a smile. The only cast member who earns some giggles is Maya Rudolph as Phil’s secretary, who’s secretly in love with him. She’s a comedy alchemist who can turn turds into gold.
“The Happytime Murders” is the latest addition to McCarthy’s do-not-see CV. Since “Bridesmaids,” filmmakers have slapped her in mostly dumb schlock like this.
Being a Henson project, you’d expect the film’s puppetry to be the one redeemable factor. But those characters are strangely generic and clumsily handled. Forgettable.
There’s more fun to be had watching a kid play with some socks. ||||| “These aren’t the Muppets,” director Brian Henson might remind us, but his smile and wink would hint at what he really thinks. The son of Muppets creator Jim Henson and the man who filled his dad’s shoes directing The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppets Treasure Island, Henson has decided to cross over to the dark side with his “alternative Muppets” farce, The Happytime Murders. Careful to avoid copyright issues (and to avoid giving kids nightmares), Henson doesn’t give us a faux Kermit or Miss Piggy. However, although all the puppets in The Happytime Murders are new, they are obviously Muppets, regardless of how vociferously the filmmakers may deny it. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more.
Despite being one of the shortest theatrical releases of the year, clocking in at about 75 minutes (not counting end credits), The Happytime Murders feels overlong. That’s probably because the plot is nonsensical and pointless. This is all about the concept of oversexed, hard-swearing Muppets interacting with humans in an alternative universe version of L.A. The film’s “high concept” catches the attention, but it’s like the first time we heard Betty White drop the f-bomb. There was a certain shock value, it was worth a laugh, but where do you go from there? It’s the same thing with nasty Muppets. The transgressive element is edgy and at times amusing, but it wears thin quickly and once it has worn out, we’re left with warmed-over Dashiell Hammett, complete with the Sam Spade-inspired voiceover.
Recognizing that there has to be something more than Muppets cursing, flashing their crotches in imitation of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and doing un-family friendly things, Henson sets up the puppet culture as a thinly-veiled allegory. The social commentary about puppet discrimination and marginalization isn’t subtle but it gives The Happytime Murders a claim to being more than a raunchy look at what happens on Sesame Street when the cameras are turned off.
The Happytime Murders reunites two former partners, (human) LAPD detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy) and (puppet) PI Phil Phillips (voice of Bill Barretta), when an investigation into a series of puppet murders involves them both. For Connie, it’s her job. For Phil, it’s personal – his brother is the second victim. All of the dead “socks” were stars of a once-popular TV show, The Happytime Gang (the first program with a mostly-puppet cast to achieve “crossover” popularity – a nod to The Cosby Show). Additional deaths indicate an inside job and, once the finger of suspicion points to Phil, it’s up to Connie to solve the crime and clear her ex-partner. Aiding her in this endeavor is Phil’s secretary, Bubbles (Maya Rudolph), who has a crush on her boss.
The film’s puppet/human dynamics are strange. All the energy and color resides with the puppets. In an odd reversal of what one might expect, they are more animate than their human counterparts. Melissa McCarthy, for example, has the life of a piece of background furniture – a surprise since, even in her worst films, she’s normally able to dominate the screen. Fading into the background isn’t her style but that’s what happens here. The situation is only a little better with Maya Rudolph and Elizabeth Banks (whose role, as The Happytime Gang’s only human, is small). Leslie David Baker (as Connie’s lieutenant) and Joel McHale (as a racist FBI agent) gain attention by being as cartoonish as possible.
The noir mystery element never works. Fortunately, it’s treated as a framework and the filmmakers aren’t overly invested in attempting to mine deeply into the territory. The Happytime Murders is intended primarily as a comedy and, while there’s a cheeky freshness in the early scenes, it eventually becomes tiresome and a little off-putting. This would seem like the perfect playground for McCarthy, so it’s strange that she seems so out of place.
The obvious antecedent to The Happytime Murders is Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The differences, however, go beyond the derivative nature of the former. While Roger Rabbit felt like a fully-formed story worth telling, The Happytime Murders too often comes across as a skit that runs for too long. Everything about the movie is stunted – from the running time to the production values to the story. Although it might work perfectly well on television (there are enough bawdy laughs to ensure an acceptable level of entertainment), it never gels on the big screen. This is unquestionably a better bet for home viewing than a trip to a theater.
Happytime Murders, The (United States/China, 2018) ||||| 1.5 stars (out of 4)
Hi there, everyone! This Happytime Murders review is brought to you by the letter “I.” Insipid. Imbeciles. Incomprehensible. Insane. You can use that last word in a sentence such as “The person that thought this witless, crude black noire puppet farce would be a rousing crowd-pleaser must be insane.” The letter also can be used on its own, as in “I think we have a strong contender for the worst film of 2018.”
Let’s address the stuffed elephant in the room: This scathing review isn’t a case of a critic not having the bawdy sense of humor gene required to appreciate crass humor, OK? Married with Children and Howard Stern are two of my all-time favorite pop culture touchstones. I have a brother. I’m not offended or shocked by the sight of two puppets having porn star sex. Just make it brutally funny and inspired. The Happytime Murders simply goes for the lowest common denominator of comedy from beginning to end. And those 90 minutes in between are excruciating. Let me put it in italics for emphasis. Excruciating.
This was never going to be a genius hybrid of Avenue Q meets The Great Muppet Caper. Not with this old-timey set-up: Hard-nosed detective Phil Phillips (voiced by Bill Barretta) is the only puppet to have ever served on the police force. Now he’s a private eye working on behalf of marginalized puppets in Los Angeles. After his brother gets stuffed out, he starts investigating and realizes that someone is killing all the stars of a popular 80s kids TV show called The Happytime Gang. Who would do such a thing?!
To solve the case, Phil is paired with his former human partner. She’s played by Melissa McCarthy, who does her usual obnoxious, tough-talking caricature shtick. The two are not on good terms, as evidenced by the fact that McCarthy bites down on Phil’s man part in a moment of pent-up rage. The novelty of puppets acting like lewd rejects from Sausage Party or Team America: World Police is already worn off by the time McCarthy enters the picture. She does nothing with the limp script. Same goes for Maya Rudolph, Joel McHale and Elizabeth Banks.
The tangled web of The Happytime Gang syndication contract negotiations won’t raise anyone’s pulse, so the filmmakers (writer Todd Berger and director Brian Henson) rely heavily on the R-rated shock factor. The piece de resistance, as seen in The Happytime Murders trailer, involves a graphic and messy sexual encounter that drags on and on and on until all traces of laughter have been metaphorically squeezed out. You’ll see that in Act 1. Or, you know, just watch the trailer for free.
There actually is a place and time for puppets behaving badly. Even a family-driven product as accessible as The Muppet Show had an air of subversion — and Kermit the Frog and Justin Timberlake once wrestled each other on a memorable episode of Saturday Night Live. But despite Henson’s lineage as the son of late Muppets creator (and genius) Jim Henson, The Happytime Murders is a terribly misguided move. Indeed, it doesn’t take an investigator with a heart of felt to figure out that a half-baked flick with poorly executed ideas and lazy use of gross-out humor will end up DOA.
The Happytime Murders opens in theaters on Friday, August 24.
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Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! ||||| No Sesame. All Street. THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS is a filthy comedy set in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles where puppets and humans coexist. Two clashing detectives with a shared secret, one human (Melissa McCarthy) and one puppet, are forced to work together again to solve the brutal murders of the former cast of a beloved classic puppet television show. | – Remember the hubbub over this trailer with NSFW puppets? Well, The Happytime Murders is out Friday, starring Melissa McCarthy as a detective probing a series of puppet murders with her puppet partner. Critics, meanwhile, are busy investigating why the R-rated film is, in their opinions, downright awful. (The film has a 26% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) What they're saying: While "there's a cheeky freshness in the early scenes," the film "too often comes across as a skit that runs for too long … probably because the plot is nonsensical and pointless," James Berardinelli writes at ReelViews. McCarthy surprisingly doesn't help, he writes. She "has the life of a piece of background furniture." Brian Truitt argues "McCarthy is as sharp-witted as ever," but his praise basically ends there. With gags that "make Fozzie Bear a comedic genius by comparison," this "scattershot comedy isn't nearly as clever or subversive as it thinks it is," he writes at USA Today, adding "there are much better uses of your time than this travesty." "There's more fun to be had watching a kid play with some socks," Johnny Oleksinski writes at the New York Post, noting the film is "as stale as a neglected saltine." The prevailing problem: "It's not funny," Oleksinski writes. In fact, "the only cast member who earns some giggles is Maya Rudolph." Mara Reinstein is just relieved her viewing experience is over. "The Happytime Murders simply goes for the lowest common denominator of comedy from beginning to end. And those 90 minutes in between are excruciating. Let me put it in italics for emphasis. Excruciating," she writes at US Weekly, calling out the "lazy use of gross-out humor." |
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve took no new steps to support the economy Wednesday, but it said in a statement that it was ready to act if job growth did not improve.
The statement, released after a meeting of the Fed’s policy-making committee, said that the rate of economic growth had slowed in recent months and was likely to remain “moderate over coming quarters.” As a result, the Fed said it expected the unemployment rate to decline “only slowly.”
But the central bank deferred any effort to improve the situation at least until the committee’s next scheduled meeting in mid-September.
“The committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments and will provide additional accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability,” it said.
That was stronger language than it used after its previous meeting in June, when it said that it was “prepared” to act.
And the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, has said that the Fed is “committed to ensuring, or at least doing all we can to ensure” that unemployment continues to decline, suggesting officials may simply be waiting to see the government’s estimates of job growth in July and August, which will be released before the committee reconvenes Sept. 12 and 13.
The absence of action appeared to disappoint some equity investors. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 4 points, or 0.29 percent, Wednesday, to 1,375.32. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped sharply after the Fed’s announcement, and then traded erratically before closing near its session low. It fell 37.62 points, also 0.29 percent, to 12,971.06.
But much of the market’s attention already has turned to the September meeting, when the Fed also will update its economic projections.
“This statement will at least raise some new doubts about whether the Fed will be easing again this year,” Jim O’Sullivan, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. “We still expect they will, assuming that growth remains fairly sluggish, but for now at least the statement keeps the debate open.”
Mr. Bernanke will have an opportunity to clarify his views when he speaks at an annual monetary policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., at the end of August.
Some Fed officials suggested recently that the weak rate of growth required new action. They said that the unemployment rate had stagnated above 8 percent since January, and that the most recent economic forecasts by Fed officials, published in June, projected the rate would decline slightly, if at all, during the second half of the year.
But there were no votes for action at the meeting that ended Wednesday. Among the 12 officials who vote on monetary policy, the only dissent from the decision to stand pat came from an official who has consistently pressed for the Fed to do less, Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
The Fed already is engaged in a wide-ranging effort to spur growth by cutting interest rates, punishing savers and rewarding borrowers. The central bank has held its benchmark rate near zero since late 2008, and said that it planned to maintain that policy at least until late 2014. It has put further pressure on long-term rates by amassing a portfolio of almost $3 trillion in long-term Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities. And it said in June that it would keep buying bonds through the end of the year.
But those efforts have proved insufficient to set off a strong recovery. The economy has slogged along somewhere between crisis and prosperity for more than three years now. Unemployment remains pervasive; more than 23 million Americans cannot find full-time jobs. And the Fed, while insisting that it could do more, has so far declined to prove it.
Some Fed officials remain uncertain that the economy needs help. Economic indicators are imprecise, particularly in times of turbulence. Some officials also doubt the Fed can help. Cheap loans are at best an indirect means of addressing problems like the decline in government spending, tight credit standards and high levels of household debt.
Vincent Reinhart, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley, said that the Fed appeared “resigned to subpar economic performance” because it lacked confidence in the available tools. “If it were more confident, it would have done more,” said Mr. Reinhart, who worked as the Fed’s chief monetary policy staff member under Mr. Bernanke. ||||| WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A cautious Federal Reserve on Wednesday said that the economy was weaker but took no new action to help stimulate demand.
The lack of any policy action was a surprise. Analysts had expected the Fed to at least push out its pledge to hold its benchmark federal funds rate exceptionally low. Instead, the Fed repeated that it would likely hold that rate steady until late 2014. Read text of FOMC decision.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
Many economists had thought that the Fed might announce a major new asset-purchase plan.
U.S. stocks SPX, -1.13% dropped in the immediate aftermath of the Fed decision.
Joe LaVorgna, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, welcomed the Fed’s inaction. “The training wheels need to come off the bike and the economy needs to be left alone,” he said.
As expected, the Fed left unchanged the federal funds rate target at zero to 0.25%, the level it has been at since December 2008.
The central bank downgraded its view on the economy, saying that economic activity had decelerated. Previously, the Fed had said that the economy had been expanding moderately.
Since the recession officially ended in the summer of 2009, the economy has sputtered along with the unemployment rate stuck above 8%.
The Fed did leave the door open for action.
The FOMC promised to “closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments” and said it “will provide additional accommodation as needed.”
This is a slightly stronger promise that in June, when it said that it was “prepared to take action as appropriate.”
Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies, said the Fed is “ready to pull the trigger” if the bar of sustained improvement in the labor market is not met or if downside risks intensify.
But Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said the statement raised doubt about whether the Fed will be easing again this year. “We still expect they will, assuming growth remains fairly sluggish, but for now at least the statement keeps the debate open,” he wrote in a note.
Bernanke will discuss policy options in his annual speech at the Fed’s Jackson Hole retreat on Aug. 31.
Many economists are convinced the Fed will launch a new asset-purchase program, including the buying of mortgage-backed securities, at its next policy meeting in September.
But others are not so sure that more purchases, or quantitative easing, is inevitable.
Expectations too high for Fed, ECB? (3:55) In the context of Mario Draghi's "whatever it takes" comment, are hopes set unattainably high for the Fed and ECB? Spencer Jakab discusses on Markets Hub. (Photo: Reuters)
The Fed will have two more unemployment reports, including one on Friday, before its next meeting. Officials want to gauge whether growth will likely remain moderate and pick up gradually as forecast or if the recent soft patch is becoming something more severe.
The FOMC vote on Wednesday was 11 to 1. The dissenter was Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, who has dissented at every meeting this year.
Lacker wanted the Fed to omit any guidance on how long rates will stay exceptionally low.
Last month, the Fed extended its Operation Twist program until the end of the year. The Fed is selling short-term government securities and buying longer-term Treasurys in a bid to lower long-term interest rates.
John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Capital, said there was no reason for additional stimulus at the meeting as equity markets have firms and credit spreads have been relatively well behaved. “Financial markets are not in need of additional support right now,” he added.
Lonski also said investors would be closely watching European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s press conference following the central bank’s policy meeting Thursday.
If Draghi follows though on his pledge to do whatever it takes to support the Europe, it will relieve pressure on the Fed to take additional action, he commented. Read ECB preview.
More from MarketWatch ||||| Article Excerpt
The Federal Reserve is heading toward launching a new round of stimulus to buck up the weak economy, but stopped short of doing so right away.
The decision to make what amounted to a conditional promise of action came Wednesday at the end of the central bank's two-day policy meeting. In an uncharacteristically strong statement, the Fed said it will "closely monitor" the economy and "will provide additional accommodation as needed to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions." Translation: The Fed will move if growth and employment don't pick up soon on their own. | – Wall Street has been waiting anxiously for a few days now to see what the Fed was going to do about the economy, and the answer arrived this afternoon: Nothing. For now. The Fed sees evidence that the economy has actually decelerated in recent months, reports MarketWatch, but it's not going to enter into new bond-buying or other such stimulus until the picture clarifies in the next month or two. Friday's jobs report might be the first indicator. In Fed-speak: “The committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments and will provide additional accommodation as needed to promote stronger economic recovery and sustained improvement in labor market conditions," said its official statement. The Wall Street Journal parses the wording and thinks the Fed "signaled more strongly" that it will eventually take action. The New York Times, too, calls the language "somewhat stronger" than past statements. |
Jail Source: The Inmates Are Sick of Lindsay Lohan
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As far as reports go, Lindsay Lohan is eating the same meals as regular inmates at the Century Regional Detention Facility . But that doesn't mean she's being entirely treated like the others "She's not treated like if it was anyone else going to jail," Maria Medina, a relative of an inmate at Lohan's jail tells PEOPLE. "Like, if they even want to bring her new clothes or bring her anything, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time."Medina, 40, says residents at the jail, based in Lynwood, Calif., find it unfair that someone they're not even allowed to see is exerting so much control over their stay."All the inmates are sick of Lindsay," Medina says. "It's almost like Lindsay Lohan's here, but she's not. Like if she even moves, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time. For example, just yesterday [Friday], Lindsay had to go to the mini-clinic, and the whole place was on lockdown again."Los Angeles Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore denied Medina's claim. "It's business as usual. Lindsay's getting no special treatment," he told PEOPLE on Saturday. He also said there is no such thing as "lockdowns."As far as Lohan is concerned, she's now apparently in a much better state of mind than earlier this week."[Lindsay's] doing well, she's doing fine," Lohan's lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley tells PEOPLE. "Her outlook is definitely more positive."Despite speculation that Lohan was given exemptions when it came to visitation limits , Holley told reporters her client is playing by the rules, saying,"[Her family's] not allowed any more visits this week."Whitmore earlier this week told PEOPLE that Lohan received her visits during the week to avoid disrupting other families visiting on the weekend with ensuing TV crews and photographers. ||||| Lindsay Lohan throws hissy fit in jail, inmates taunt her with 'fire crotch' nickname: report
McNew/Pool Lindsay Lohan is reportedly facing some mean girls in jail.
LiLo can't handle the mean girls in jail.
Lindsay Lohan reportedly threw a hissy fit and was placed in isolation after several inmates taunted her.
"Some of the inmates in our ward, some of the tougher ones, were yelling 'fire crotch' at her," a prisoner released from the Lynwood, Calif., lockup told Britain's Daily Mirror.
"They just started chanting it at her. Lindsay didn't say nothing. She was crying though."
Inmates said the "Mean Girls" star began screaming at jail guards, who barred her from leaving her cell Friday.
Lohan, 24, is serving a 90-day sentence for violating her probation by skipping out on court-ordered alcohol education classes this year. She is, however, expected to be released as early as next week due to overcrowding in the California jail system. | – Inmates at a California women's prison are finding that being locked up with Lindsay Lohan is cruel and unusual punishment, according to a relative of one of Lohan's fellow prisoners. "All the inmates are sick of Lindsay," she tells People. Like if she even moves, they put the whole facility on lockdown. If they even want to bring her new clothes or bring her anything, they put the whole facility on lockdown. It happens all the time." Jail officials, however, say Lohan isn't getting star treatment. "It's business as usual," a spokesman said. "Lindsay's getting no special treatment." Lohan—who was placed in isolation after being taunted by prisoners chanting "fire crotch" at her, according to the New York Daily News—may be freed as soon as today, less than a week into a sentence that was originally 90 days. |
WASHINGTON — Two and a half weeks after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced an inquiry into e-mail exchanges between Gen. John R. Allen of the Marines and a socialite in Tampa, Fla., some 15 investigators working seven days a week in the Pentagon inspector general’s office have narrowed their focus to 60 to 70 e-mails that “bear a fair amount of scrutiny,” a defense official said.
The official did not disclose the content of the e-mails, but senior Pentagon officials have described the voluminous correspondence between General Allen, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, and the socialite, Jill Kelley, as potentially “inappropriate communication.” Law enforcement officials say the e-mails number in the hundreds and cover a period of two and a half years starting in 2010, when General Allen was the deputy commander of Central Command, based in Tampa.
The investigation, which is delaying and could derail General Allen’s appointment to be the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, is on a fast track but is unlikely to be completed before the end of the year. Investigations of senior officers in the inspector general’s office usually take about seven months on average, although normally there are only two or three investigators assigned to a case.
The defense official, who asked not to be named because of the nature of the inquiry, said investigators were trying to determine whether the e-mails violated Defense Department policy, government regulations or military law. They were discovered in the course of an F.B.I. investigation into anonymous e-mails to Ms. Kelley warning her to stay away from David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director. The F.B.I. found that the e-mails had been sent by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer; he admitted to having had an affair with Ms. Broadwell and resigned on Nov. 9.
Like General Allen, Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star general, was a social acquaintance of Ms. Kelley when he was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, headquarters of the Central Command.
The e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley were sent to the Pentagon by the F.B.I. on Nov. 11. “They just forwarded the evidence,” the official said, referring to the F.B.I. “People have to go through and decide if they fit one of three potential violations.” Those violations include misconduct, which could range from inappropriate language on a government computer to adultery, prohibited under military law; more than an incidental use of government property for personal matters; and security breaches.
The defense official said there was no evidence so far that there had been security violations. General Allen, who is in Kabul planning the drawdown of American forces from Afghanistan, is cooperating with the investigation and has said through associates that he did not commit adultery. The inquiry does not appear to have progressed to interviews with General Allen, 58, who is married and the father of two, or Ms. Kelley, 37, the wife of a cancer surgeon and the mother of three.
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who has been nominated to succeed General Allen as part of a regular military rotation, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate before the end of the year and to be in Kabul by February. General Allen is expected to return to the United States at that time, but it is unclear what he will do.
There have been conflicting accounts of the nature of the e-mails between him and Ms. Kelley. A law enforcement official has described some of them as sexually explicit. Pentagon officials briefed on the matter say they have been told that half a dozen are embarrassing. But General Allen’s associates say they are innocuous and contain little beyond language like “you’re a sweetheart.”
Although Ms. Kelley’s e-mail correspondence with General Allen has not been made public, dozens of her e-mails to Mayor Bob Buckhorn of Tampa have been released under Florida’s public record laws and refer to her friendship with both General Allen and Mr. Petraeus.
A year ago, after inviting the mayor to a birthday party for one of her children, she added a casual P.S.: “I’ll be in DC this weekend with Petraeus, but let’s set up a double date when I return!” Last January, she wrote to a mayoral aide, “I’m up in DC having dinner tonight with Gen. Petraeus and Gen. John Allen.” ||||| FILE - In this Nov 13, 2012 file photo Jill Kelley leaves her home in Tampa, Fla. The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Nov 13, 2012 file photo Jill Kelley leaves her home in Tampa, Fla. The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems... (Associated Press)
Jill Kelley wants the world to know that she didn't do anything wrong when she befriended top military brass.
The Tampa socialite at the center of a scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus has hired a top Washington attorney and seems to be trying to change the narrative about her friendship with the general, her past and her role as an "honorary consul" to the country of South Korea.
On Tuesday, Kelley's attorney Abbe Lowell released emails, telephone recordings and other material that he and Kelley say proves she never tried to exploit her friendship with Petraeus.
Lowell wrote to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa, demanding to know why the name of his client and her husband were revealed during the FBI's investigation of Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell.
Officials said they were led to Kelley because Broadwell sent her threatening messages to stay away from Petraeus. Lowell addressed this in a letter to W. Stephen Muldrow, the assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa.
"You no doubt have seen the tremendous attention that the Kelleys have received in the media," Lowell wrote. "All they did to receive this attention was to let law enforcement know that they had been the subjects of inappropriate and potentially threatening behavior by someone else."
Lowell added that federal privacy laws could be applicable to the couple's information.
"These leaks most certainly had to come, at least in part, from government sources," Lowell said. "The earliest and best example of the leaks would be the release to the media of the names of my clients. As you know, there are several rules and laws that seek to protect United States citizens against such leaks."
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa did not return telephone calls for comment Tuesday.
Kelley, a 37-year-old mother of three, became the focus of national media attention earlier this month. She and her husband, cancer surgeon Scott Kelley, befriended Petraeus and Gen. John Allen when the generals served at U.S. Central Command, which is headquartered at Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base. Kelley became an unofficial social ambassador for the base. She was well known around Tampa's social scene and often hosted parties at her waterfront mansion.
When the FBI investigated Broadwell's emails to Kelley, they also discovered numerous emails between Kelley and the generals. The Pentagon is investigating the emails between her and Allen. Some have called a few of the emails between the two "flirtatious," but sources close to Kelley say they were not.
The scandal this week cost Kelley her appointment as an honorary consul for the South Korean government, which she had gotten because of her friendship with Petraeus. The Koreans said she had misused the title in her personal business dealings.
Lowell sent another letter to a businessman for whom Kelley tried to broker a deal with South Korea.
The businessman, Adam Victor, said he met Kelley in late August at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, where they discussed having Kelley represent Victor's company on a coal-gasification deal it was negotiating with South Korean companies.
On Aug. 30, according to the documents provided by her attorney, Victor sent Kelley an email saying they were seeking bids from four major Korean firms _ Samsung, Hyundai, GS and GK _ and that he expected the bidding to potentially reach $3 billion. There were several back-and-forth emails through mid-September as Victor and Kelley tried to negotiate a fee for her work, with her saying she was seeking 2 percent of the deal and Victor trying to clarify what she meant.
There were no other emails until Victor sent one Nov. 9, when Kelley's name surfaced in the Petraeus scandal. He wrote two more times after that before she responded.
When she finally did, he sent back another email in which he remarked, "When I heard about Petraeus, I thought of you." In a follow-up email, he asked if she was still in a position to help with Korea. She didn't respond.
In a Nov. 14 interview with the AP, Victor said it had become clear that Kelley was not a skilled negotiator and that he had wasted his time dealing with her.
In a letter released Tuesday and dated Nov. 21, Lowell accused Victor of seeking his "15 minutes of fame" by talking to the news media about his client. Lowell said Victor had defamed Kelley with his clients and misstated her desire for 2 percent of the profits by saying she wanted 2 percent of the entire deal. Lowell also accused Victor of unspecified inappropriate behavior toward Kelley.
"If you want to continue seeking publicity for yourself, that is one thing," Lowell wrote to Victor. "However, if you do that by maligning a person, that is something else." He then accused Victor of casting Kelley in a false light and suggested his attorney contact Lowell to discuss the matter.
Victor told the AP late Tuesday that he never accused Kelley of wrongdoing, but had just said she was naive and not an experienced negotiator. He also said his female assistant was present every time he met with Kelley.
"It's not a crime to be a novice," Victor said. "I don't know why they are talking to me."
The third letter was sent from Kelley's attorney Tuesday to the Attorney Consumer Assistance Program, which handles complaints about lawyers on behalf of the Florida Bar. In that letter, Lowell accused Tampa attorney Barry Cohen of breaking attorney-client privilege by publicly speaking about conversations he had with Kelley in 2009 while representing her in a dispute she had with a tenant. In those conversations, Lowell said, they discussed her friendships with various military personnel.
Kelley's sister, Natalie Khawam, once worked as an attorney in Cohen's firm and later sued him for sexual harassment and breach of contract. In court responses, Cohen said Khawam "has a judicially documented recent history and continuing propensity for the commission of perjury."
Cohen said Tuesday evening that he had not seen Lowell's complaint letter and that Kelley had "lost the battle in the court of public opinion."
"No matter how many high-priced lawyers and publicists she employs, she has been exposed for what she is," he said.
Prior to Tuesday, Kelley, her attorney and her publicist had only publicly addressed the situation once, in a statement to the news media when the scandal first broke.
___
Spencer reported from Miami.
Kelley's lawyer also sent letters to a New York businessman who accused her of incompetence in her work trying to set up a deal he was negotiating with South Korean companies and a Tampa attorney who accused her of name-dropping and of being a social climber;
Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush | – The Pentagon inspector general’s office didn't take the Gen. John Allen-Jill Kelley email exchange lightly, assigning 15 investigators toiling seven days a week to review the thousands of pages of documents. They've now sussed out between 60 and 70 emails that "bear a fair amount of scrutiny," according to a defense official, who didn't elaborate on what those emails might contain. The New York Times reports the purpose of the investigation, which likely won't conclude until 2013, is to determine if one of three violations occurred: misconduct (ie, adultery or inappropriate language), substantial use of government property for personal matters, or a security breach. Those investigators aren't the only ones getting busy. A previously silent Kelley is now defending herself, through her attorney. Abbe Lowell, a big-time Washington lawyer who has represented Bill Clinton and John Edwards, yesterday released emails, phone recordings, and more evidence that, he says, prove Kelley did not try to exploit her relationship with David Petraeus. He also sent out three letters connected to the scandal, the AP reports: He asked the US Attorney's Office in Tampa why Kelley's name was released in the first place, adding that federal privacy laws could apply. He wrote another letter to a businessman Kelley was trying to help make a deal with South Korea, before she lost her honorary consul status. The businessman, Adam Victor, has said in interviews that Kelley was not a skilled negotiator, and Lowell says he defamed her in an attempt to bask in his "15 minutes of fame." In a letter to the Attorney Consumer Assistance Program (which fields complaints about lawyers), Lowell accuses attorney Barry Cohen of talking publicly about conversations he had with Kelley in 2009, thus breaking attorney-client privilege. |
Published on Sep 25, 2017
“I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” Megyn Kelly admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family (including her mother and husband, who are in the audience), and describes events that have shaped her, especially the death of her father. Answering a question from the audience, she says, “my biggest challenge is the alarm clock.”
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Megyn Kelly Launches Megyn Kelly TODAY: ‘I’m Done With Politics For Now’ | Megyn Kelly TODAY ||||| Megyn Kelly isn’t playing politics anymore – at least not on camera.
The former Fox News anchor vowed to put aside the hard-edged interviewing style that made her famous and turned her energy Monday full-bore into the launch of a new morning program, in one of the bigger bets NBC has made on a single talent since, perhaps, it named an unknown Conan O’Brien in 1993 to succeed David Letterman at the helm of its wee-hours “Late Night” franchise.
Kelly told a live studio audience in the opening moments of her new “Megyn Kelly Today” that “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” and said she hoped instead to help viewers “get yourself through the day, to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear – and maybe a little hope to start your day. Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing.”
The mission represents a marked change for the popular news host whose prosecutor-like style in Fox News Channel’s primetime made her a star. Kelly has no experience hosting a morning program of this sort, and just months ago was anchoring a Sunday-night newsmagazine program on NBC that at times proved polarizing. But she put all of that in the rear-view mirror Monday as she re-introduced herself to the audience, talking about her upstate New York roots and introducing her husband and mother to the in-studio crowd and the audience at home. It’s a technique that was put to good use by NBC colleague Jimmy Fallon in the opening moments of his run on the network’s late-night franchise “Tonight.”
Related NBC Touts Megyn Kelly’s Softer Side in Bid to Launch New Morning Show To Lure Ad Dollars, NBC Tied Megyn Kelly to ‘Today’
NBC is packaging Kelly as part of its “Today” empire. She’s coming on after colleagues Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie deliver most of the headlines – and a lot of lighter fare, as well. And she’s on before Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford start sipping wine and delving into less serious topics. As the rest of the “Today” anchors came on set to toast her, Kelly offered the assemblage mimosas, meant to represent a transition between the wake-you-up coffee served on the show’s first two hours and the alcohol consumed in its last. But there was no talk of current events: No reference to the devastation in Puerto Rico, or the protests that took place over the weekend across the nation’s various NFL games.
Kelly has long harbored ambitions of filling in the space in the TV-news business once occupied by Barbara Walters or Oprah Winfrey. “Diane Sawyer left her anchor role. Oprah has moved to the OWN network and is doing a different thing now. So why not me?” she told Variety during an interview in 2015.
On Monday, she dove into the role, hosting a multi-segment visit with the cast of “Will & Grace,” the popular NBC sitcom that is getting a reboot this season. She bantered with the rest of the “Today” crew in a taped segment that had Kelly biking to work with Al Roker, and getting advice from Kathie Lee Gifford (“Be authentic!”) as she sat in the makeup chair. The show ended with a long field piece that had Kelly journey to the Windy City to meet a 77-year-old Chicago nun who was working diligently to improve a tough neighborhood. Sister Donna Liette and some of her supporters also joined Kelly in the studio. The title of the segment, “Settle For More,” is borrowed from Kelly’s recent memoir, and looks as if it might be a regular feature on the show about people trying to improve their situation in life. “If you want change, you must seek it,” Kelly told the crowd.
NBC managed to weave promotional support from advertisers into the opening program – much like Oprah Winfrey did over the years. And while there was no mass giveaway of new cars to the in-studio crowd, as Winfrey did in 2004 when she gave free Pontiacs to more than 250 audience members, Kelly was able to offer one man a free trip to California to see a “Will & Grace” taping, courtesy of United Airlines. Coldwell Banker and Ace Hardware coughed up checks on stage to help Sister Liette continue her work. Unilever and General Mills were among the sponsors running multiple commercials during Kelly’s debut.
Daytime TV is notoriously difficult, and reliable operatives including Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira have faced headwinds in their attempts to launch programs similar to Kelly’s. NBC is clearly hoping the force of her personality and an inspirational backstory lend the host an edge – not the polarizing kind – with a broader audience that it was reaching with the previous inhabitant of the 9 a.m. timeslot.
Will Kelly be able to maintain the lighter, inspirational tone of her debut in a swirling news cycle that seems utterly consumed with politics and cultural clashes? Will she want to bring her hard-news chops to bear now and again? The magic of a morning program is that it always has another broadcast waiting in the wings that might allow its host to try those ideas out. ||||| Kelly's much-anticipated new show, 'Megyn Kelly Today,' debuted Monday.
Megyn Kelly, in a series of prelaunch interviews, has been very clear about the show she wants to run every day at 9 a.m. on NBC — one that's light on politics but heavy on inspiration and fun. She followed through on that early vision with the Monday morning launch of Megyn Kelly Today, which replaces the 9 a.m. hour of Today.
"As you heard, we have the entire cast of Will & Grace live, along with the show creator," Kelly told her live studio audience. "And then we'll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh, wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I’m kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all felt it, it's everywhere. And it's just gotten so dark."
The first episode of the show felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly.
Her mother was in attendance, as was her husband, who came out from the audience and gave her a bouquet of roses. Kelly said her husband, unlike her, is "not a TV person" and "likes his privacy."
Kelly began the show by talking about her background and telling the story of losing her father to a heart attack at the age of 15. "We didn't have a lot of money, but we did have a lot of love and a ton of honesty," the former Fox News anchor said.
Kelly also received a very warm welcome from the entire Today show family. In a taped segment, she rode a tandem bike to work with Al Roker and cooked an omelet with Matt Lauer, who earnestly seemed excited to have Kelly as a colleague. "I wish you success, honey," 10 a.m. co-host Kathie Lee Gifford told her. "Mostly, I wish you joy."
Later, the cast of Today came out and held a mimosa toast to Kelly, who had said in a New York Times story last week that "if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa." Lauer led the toast, and said, "Here's the newest addition to our family. Here's to many happy mornings. Here's to Megyn Kelly Today."
Kelly interviewed the entire cast of the rebooted NBC show Will & Grace, and, like a good morning show host, asked at many points, "What did that feel like?" In another dose of corporate synergy, Kelly will have the cast of This Is Us on Tuesday morning's show. ||||| Megyn Kelly has officially made her morning show debut!
On Monday, the former Fox News anchor debuted Megyn Kelly Today, which occupies the NBC morning show’s third hour.
“I’m so excited,” she said. “I’m also a little nervous!”
“We’ll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump — oh no, we will not be doing that,” she said. “The truth is, I am kind of done with politics for now.”
Kelly, 46, encouraged her live studio audience in New York City to “have a laugh with us, a smile, and sometimes a tear” as she celebrated the show’s launch day, getting emotional as she recalled her father dying of a sudden heart attack in their family home when she was 15 years old, just 10 days before Christmas — “the single most devastating event of my lifetime,” as she called it.
Kelly — whose mother was in the audience — said her goal at Megyn Kelly Today is to “deliver hope and optimism, and to have fun.”
Kelly encouraged her audience to ask questions, informing them that every morning would begin with a dialogue between the host and the studio audience.
RELATED: Megyn Kelly Left Fox So She Could Watch Her Kids Grow Up — ‘I Hadn’t Tucked Them Into Bed on a Weeknight in 3 Years’
One audience member asked Kelly, who previously hosted The Kelly File on Fox News before leaving the network in January for a diverse new role at NBC, what has been her biggest joy — and biggest challenge — in transitioning from evening to morning television.
“The biggest challenge by far is the alarm clock,” Kelly joked. “My biggest joy has been so far just all of it — I mean honestly, all of it. Professionally, I feel fulfilled, personally, I’ve been having dinner with my husband and my kids every night.”
One minute to air here in Studio 6A! #MegynToday pic.twitter.com/udDcWXfv9b — Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) September 25, 2017
Kelly’s husband Douglas Brunt then made a surprise appearance, gifting his wife of 11 years with a bouquet of red roses.
“You’ve already made us all laugh and cry,” he said as the two embraced. “Congratulations!”
“That is so sweet, because he is not a TV person,” said Kelly after he exited the stage. “Doug, unlike me, likes his privacy!”
Earlier this month, Kelly told PEOPLE she’s been “having so much fun [at NBC] it’s almost not right.”
“I’ve been having a great time,” she said. “Just today in the audience, there were two people up front who were die-hard Fox viewers and remain die-hard Fox viewers and used to watch me every night on The Kelly File. They were so sweet. They said: ‘Oh we miss you, we miss you.’ The woman held my arm and said, ‘You seem so happy,’ and I am. She saw it and I feel it and it’s just been rewarding.”
Megyn Kelly Today airs weekdays on NBC (check local listings). ||||| Megyn Kelly launched her daytime makeover on Monday with "Megyn Kelly Today," conspicuously trying to reintroduce herself in the mold of Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres -- complete with a caffeinated, cheering studio audience -- while establishing distance from her time as a Fox News anchor.
It's absurdly early, of course, to draw any conclusions about the efficacy of the Kelly experiment. Still, after tepid marks for her prime time newsmagazine and now her addition to "Today," it's worth considering that NBC News brass leapt at the opportunity to snag a high-profile news star without having fully thought through how best to deploy her.
Related: Megyn Kelly turns to daytime for a shot at her own 'Oprah effect'
Wasting no time, Kelly opened the show by essentially seeking to reintroduce herself in this new role, complete with a mission statement and biography, which included discussing the sudden death of her father when she was a teenager.
"The truth is I am kind of done with politics for now," she stated, citing the show's objective as providing the audience a place to share "a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear, and maybe a little hope to start your day."
Given that she was best-known for combatively grilling guests (HBO's John Oliver provided a montage on Sunday) before her run-ins with then-candidate Donald Trump, hope is certainly a change for Kelly. But there she was mounting a charm offensive -- fielding questions from the audience, receiving flowers from her husband and warmly yukking it up with the cast and producers of "Will & Grace," in an interview that wouldn't have looked out of place on any other daytime talk show or "Access Hollywood."
Related: Megyn Kelly makes the case for Alex Jones interview
The same tone characterized a taped piece in which the "Today" team introduced Kelly to her new gig, which simply felt like a hurried attempt to soften the image of the franchise's newest host by adding her to NBC's morning family.
Kelly closed with "Settle for More," a segment designed to provide moments of hope and uplift -- the premiere's focus was a Chicago nun, who received some lovely gifts from sponsors -- but which simultaneously promotes her book.
Kelly told the New York Times that the morning program is "the show that I was born to do. This is what I was meant to do." That sense of mission, of purpose, would only seem to ratchet up the self-imposed pressure, as if much more was needed given NBC's high-stakes investment in her.
Kelly is a polished interviewer. Yet whatever her interests and concerns about psychic health, it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it.
In the aforementioned taped segment, which was followed by a welcoming toast from the "Today" crew, Kelly asked Kathie Lee Gifford for the secret to success in daytime. Her answer: "Being authentic."
Based on first impressions, Kelly is working awfully hard at being herself. And as they say in TV, if she can fake that, the rest should be easy. ||||| CLOSE “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” she admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family and describes events that have shaped her. NBC News’ Megyn Kelly TODAY
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly prepares for her morning debut on NBC's 'Megyn Kelly Today.' (Photo: Peter Kramer, NBC)
Megyn Kelly is "done with politics for now."
The host opened Monday's inaugural episode of Megyn Kelly Today, the 9 a.m. hour of NBC's Today show, with that declarative statement. She noted that politics are everywhere, infused into every facet of our lives, and her new morning show would be far more focused on "fun."
It was a bit of necessary rebranding for the former Fox News anchor, who made her name diving into politics headfirst on the cable news channel, to enter the more lifestyle-focused world of morning TV.
Minus politics, Monday's premiere was a blend of personal stories from Kelly, an audience Q&A, celebrity interviews and an "inspirational" field piece to close out the hour.
More: 'Megyn Kelly Today': 'It's not going to be the Trump channel,' she promises
The combination is tricky, and the first episode was a bit awkward. Like any new series, Megyn has some growing pains, and that was apparent in missed cues, clumsy seating arrangements and some stiffness from Kelly, who, whether because of nervousness or her attempts to develop a new tone, speaks with a strange cadence.
And even an hour of the Today show cannot divorce itself from politics entirely. Her first guests were the cast and creators of NBC's returning Will & Grace, which, as Kelly repeatedly explained, was a groundbreaking show for LGBTQ representation on television. Kelly focused on the impact the series had on that community, except she only mentioned "gays and lesbians," and, in an ill-timed joke that didn't land, asked a superfan in the audience, "Is it true you became a lawyer and gay because of Will & Grace"?
Kelly also devoted a segment to an elderly nun working against gun violence on the south side of Chicago, an area that Kelly called "like a war zone." Chicago's gun violence is another issue that's been politicized, particularly by President Trump, but her focus is on the feel-good aspect of the nun's "Peace Garden," and her efforts to bring the mothers of violence victims and perpetrators together. While that serves its own purpose, it doesn't make the issue entirely apolitical.
That, perhaps, is the biggest hurdle. She can say that she's done with politics, but the subject is (by her own admission) everywhere, and side-stepping it won't make it go away. The show will get better at staging and timing as it goes on, but a purpose is something harder to refine.
There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues. Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2yoaoHg | – Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly made her debut Monday as a morning-TV host, declaring that she's "kind of done with politics for now" and instead focusing on more lighthearted fare, reports Variety. (See video here.) Kelly is hosting the 9am slot of the Today show on NBC, and Monday's show included the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace and a feature on a nun fighting gun violence in Chicago. So how did show No. 1 go? A sampling of reviews: Warm and fuzzy: Episode No. 1 "felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly," writes Jeremy Barr at the Hollywood Reporter. Especially when her husband emerged to give her flowers. Kelly also spoke emotionally about the death of her father when she was a teenager, notes People. Better balance? At USA Today, Kelly Lawler writes that the episode was a "bit awkward" as Kelly, who displayed "some stiffness" at times, transitioned into her new role. "There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues," she writes. "Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance." Questionable strategy: Brian Lowry at CNN also found the debut a little awkward. He cautions that it's too early to draw conclusions, but writes that it seems NBC landed Kelly without a clear sense of how to make use of her talents. What's more, "it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it." Harsh take: At the Washington Post, Hank Steuver delivers a particularly negative review. "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find," he writes. Kelly "moved stiffly" and "interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself." Ouch. |
Mary Anne Forster was attacked by a koala while walking her dogs. Photo: 7News.
A woman has been left bloodied and required a four-day stay in hospital after being attacked by a koala north of Adelaide.
But despite her injuries, she says she doesn’t blame the animal for the brutal attack.
Williamstown woman Mary Anne Forster said she was walking her two dogs a fortnight ago when they pulled her towards a koala at the base of a tree.
“Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply,” she said.
After a struggle, she managed to break free.
“Because it wouldn’t let go, I put my fingers in its mouth and pried its jaws open to release my leg,” Ms Forster said.
The assistant principal hobbled more than two kilometres home and was then taken to hospital.
Ms Forster was taken to hospital after the koala bite. Photo: Supplied.
She needed 12 stitches.
“All wild animals have dirty bites and so it was a matter of covering with the antibiotics because it became very infected, it was very swollen and painful,” she said.
Environmental experts have warned people to keep their distance if they spot a koala out in the wild.
“Just leave them alone, certainly don’t let dogs go near them because they will fight back, they’ve got big claws and big teeth,” Dr Deb Kelly from the Environment Department said. ||||| A koala attack in South Australia left one woman, who was walking her dogs at the time, bitten and bloodied.
Mary Anne Forster took her two dogs for a walk two weeks ago and when they pulled her toward a koala at the base of a tree, 7News Adelaide reported Wednesday. The koala launched into an attack on the dogs, but Forster got caught in the middle.
“Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply,” she told 7News.
The koala latched on to Forster's leg and would not let go, causing a bite that required 12 stitches. In a desperate attempt to get the animal off her leg, she put her fingers in its mouth to get it to release its jaw. It finally released its grip and she stumbled 2km home before being admitted to hospital.
The wound on Forster's leg. Image: 7News Adelaide
Although koalas and dogs have a history of fighting, with 110 koalas killed each year by dog attacks, it is rare for a humans to be involved.
"It should also be remembered that koalas are capable of defending themselves. They have sharp teeth and claws capable of causing deep wounds and any dog that attacks a koala may risk serious injury," the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection states on its website. | – It wasn't the koala's fault, says an Australian woman who was savaged by one of the planet's cutest and most cuddly-appearing creatures. According to 7News Adelaide, Mary Anne Forster was walking her two dogs a couple of weeks ago when they dragged her toward a koala at the bottom of a tree; she got caught in the middle when the koala attacked the dogs. "Obviously the koala felt very threatened because it attached itself with its mouth, jaws, to my leg and bit very hard, bit very deeply," she says. Forster, who had to put her fingers in the koala's mouth to make it let go, needed 12 stitches and spent four days in the hospital after the attack. The bite "became very infected, it was very swollen and painful," she says. The koala had good reason to feel threatened, Mashable reports: Australian authorities estimate that 110 koalas are killed in dog attacks every year, and an environmental department spokesperson warns that people who see them in the wild should "just leave them alone—certainly don't let dogs go near them because they will fight back, they've got big claws and big teeth." (Scientists using thermal cameras have discovered why koalas hug trees.) |
Porn star and escort Devon James is claiming Tiger Woods fathered her secret love child, RadarOnline.com is reporting exclusively.
In a stunning development set to reignite Tiger’s cheating scandal, James claims that Tiger is the father of her son.
James, 29, gave birth to her son in early 2001, before Woods and Elin Nordegren were married.
PHOTOS: Sexy Pics of All of Tiger’s Women
James is one of approximately 15 women linked to Woods, 34, in secret sexual affairs.
A source familiar with the situation told RadarOnline.com that Tiger has not taken or been asked to take a paternity test.
However, RadarOnline.com has seen photographs of the purported love child who bears a striking resemblance to the world’s number one golfer.
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: First Pictures Of Tiger Woods In Sex Rehab
James recently dished about her secret on the set of a forthcoming porn movie in Los Angeles, a source told RadarOnline.com.
Her bombshell accusation comes just a day after headlines blared that Tiger had a secret love child. But those reports did not name the alleged mother.
PHOTOS: Tiger & Wife Through The Years
Now RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively that James is claiming she is the mother of Tiger’s secret son and told him he was the dad in 2006 when she says they reconnected.
“She says Tiger is the father of her child,” one source told RadarOnline.com. “And she’s insistent about it.”
PHOTOS: Tiger Woods New Estate
James claimed to have had a two-and-a-half year affair with the superstar when he paid her and another woman $2,000 each for a “two-girl party.”
The pair engaged in unprotected sex and James became pregnant, a source told RadarOnline.com. Yet it wasn’t until a chance encounter with Woods, six years later, that the Florida woman told Woods that she believed her son was his, according to the source.
PHOTOS: The Costliest Celebrity Divorces
RadarOnline.com has found no evidence that Woods has paid James.
We previously were first to report that alleged “cougar” mistress Theresa Rogers tried to have Woods’ baby.
Rogers had a baby while she was seeing Woods, but sources close to her told RadarOnline.com that Tiger is not the father.
PHOTOS: Hollywood’s Dirtiest Divorces
Tiger is set to play in the U.S. Open. His wife Elin took their two children to China where they are visiting her brother in Shanghai, as RadarOnline.com as first to report. ||||| TROUBLED TIGER WOODS fathered a secret love child, a new TV documentary claims this week.
A journalist who helped the golfer hide affairs says he knows someone who has full details of the girl � and DNA evidence.
Neal Boulton added: "There is a lot more to come out. Tiger will eventually admit to fathering a child."
Rumours about a love child have circulated since dad-of-two Tiger, 34, split from wife ELIN. Theresa Rogers reportedly gave birth to a girl in 2003 and demanded �2million for her silence.
The claims are in Channel 4's Tiger Woods: The Rise and Fall, on Thursday. | – Guess who’s back in the news: Everyone’s favorite golfer…and his love children. Yes, another mistress has come forward claiming to have given birth to Tiger's child in 2001. This time it’s porn star/escort Devon James—whose son, Radar notes, looks an awful lot like the golfer. As if that’s not bad enough, a new documentary airing Thursday in the UK will delve into the mystery of Tiger Woods’ first purported love child, the Sun reports. Tiger Woods: The Rise and Fall includes interviews with journalist Neal Boulton, who says he knows someone who has DNA evidence that backs up the secret-baby claim and adds, “Tiger will eventually admit to fathering a child.” If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because alleged mistress Theresa Rogers—who reportedly gave birth to Tiger’s daughter in 2003 and is the subject of the documentary’s claims—has been crying love child for months. |
AUCKLAND, New Zealand—The New Zealand spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system even as top government officials publicly insisted no such program was being planned and would not be legally permitted.
Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders. Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key (pictured above), who said the law was merely designed to fix “an ambiguous legal framework” by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years, that it “isn’t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders,” and the law “isn’t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations.”
Snowden, in a post for The Intercept published today, accused Prime Minster Key of fundamentally misleading the public about GCSB’s role in mass surveillance. “The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance’, is false,” the former NSA analyst wrote. “The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.”
Snowden explained that “at the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called ‘X KEYSCORE.”” He further detailed that “the GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact.”
Top secret documents provided by the whistleblower demonstrate that the GCSB, with ongoing NSA cooperation, implemented Phase I of the mass surveillance program code-named “Speargun” at some point in 2012 or early 2013. “Speargun” involved the covert installation of “cable access” equipment, which appears to refer to surveillance of the country’s main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross cable. This cable carries the vast majority of internet traffic between New Zealand and the rest of the world, and mass collection from it would mark the greatest expansion of GCSB spying activities in decades.
Upon completion of the first stage, Speargun moved to Phase II, under which “metadata probes” were to be inserted into those cables. The NSA documents note that the first such metadata probe was scheduled for “mid-2013.” Surveillance probes of this sort are commonly used by NSA and their partners to tap into huge flows of information from communication cables in real time, enabling them to extract the dates, times, senders, and recipients of emails, phone calls, and the like. The technique is almost by definition a form of mass surveillance; metadata is relatively useless for intelligence purposes without a massive amount of similar data to analyze it against and trace connections through.
The NSA declined to comment for this story. A GCSB spokesperson would only say: “We don’t comment on matters that may or may not be operational.”
Over the weekend, in anticipation of this report, Key admitted for the first time that the GCSB did plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens, but claimed that he ultimately rejected the program before implementation. Yesterday, after The Intercept sought comment from the NSA, the Prime Minister told reporters in Auckland that this reporting was referring merely to “a proposed widespread cyber protection programme that never got off the ground.” He vowed to declassify documents confirming his decision.
But the documents indicate that Speargun was not just an idea that stalled at the discussion stage. It was a system GCSB actively worked to implement. One top secret 2012 NSA document states: “Project Speargun underway.” Another top secret NSA document discussing the activities of its surveillance partners reports, under the heading “New Zealand,” that “Partner cable access program achieves Phase I.”
Critically, the NSA documents note in more than one place that completion of Speargun was impeded by one obstacle: The need to enact a new spying law that would allow the GCSB, for the first time, to spy on its own citizens as well as legal residents of the country. As one NSA planning document put it, completion of Speargun was “awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013.”
That legislation arose after it was revealed in 2012 that the GCSB illegally surveilled the communications of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a legal resident of New Zealand. New Zealand law at the time forbade the GCSB from using its surveillance apparatus against citizens or legal residents. That illegal GCSB surveillance of Dotcom was followed by a massive military-style police raid by New Zealand authorities on his home in connection with Dotcom’s criminal prosecution in the United States for copyright violations.
A subsequent government investigation found that the GCSB not only illegally spied on Dotcom but also dozens of other citizens and legal residents. The deputy director of GCSB resigned. The government’s response to these revelations was to refuse to prosecute those who ordered the illegal spying and, instead, to propose a new law that would allow domestic electronic surveillance.
That proposal was intensely controversial, prompting large public protests and a concerted campaign against the law. One news broadcaster called it “one of the most polarizing pieces of legislation in recent times.” It was of sufficient interest to the NSA that in March 2013, the director of Prime Minister Key’s Intelligence Coordination Group traveled to NSA headquarters to offer an update on the legislation.
To assuage the public, Key and other top officials repeatedly insisted that the real purpose of the law was merely to provide oversight and to clarify that targeted domestic surveillance which had long been carried out by the agency was legal. Key categorically denied that the law would allow mass metadata collection on the New Zealand public: “There have been claims this Bill offers no protection of metadata and allows for wholesale collection of metadata without a warrant. None of that is true.”
Key told the public that the new law would not permit mass, warrantless metadata surveillance: “So when the GCSB wants to access metadata, it is treated with the same level of seriousness and protection as if the GCSB was accessing the actual content of a communication. And there are protections around that.”
In response to Key’s claims, legal experts extensively documented that the new law would indeed provide “a major increase in the overall role and powers of the GCSB” and would allow the “very broad ‘wholesale’ powers” which Key denied. Yet the Key government, and the prime minister himself, steadfastly insisted that the law permits no mass surveillance. At one point, Key even promised to resign if it were found that the GCSB were engaging in mass surveillance.
Based on Key’s assurances, the New Zealand Parliament narrowly voted to enact the new law on August 21 of last year, by a vote of 61-59. Immediately prior to passage, Key acknowledged that the new law has “‘alarmed’ some people but blame[d] the Government’s opponents for stoking their fears” and again “rejected that by writing into law what the GCSB had already been doing meant an extension of its powers.”
But in high-level discussions between the Key government and the NSA, the new law was clearly viewed as the crucial means to empower the GCSB to engage in metadata surveillance. On more than one occasion, the NSA noted internally that Project Speargun, in the process of being implemented, could not and would not be completed until the new law was enacted. The NSA apparently viewed that new law as providing exactly the powers that Key repeatedly and publicly denied it would vest.
New Zealand’s national election will be held on September 20. Over the last several weeks, Key has been embroiled in a scandal that saw a top minister resign, after independent journalist Nicky Hager published a book, Dirty Politics, documenting ties between Key officials and a right-wing blogger known for attacking public figures and showing that Key officials declassified information for political purposes.
Revelations of illegal GCSB spying prompted the creation of the anti-surveillance Internet Party, which formed an alliance with the left-wing, indigenous Mana Party and is predicted to win several seats in Parliament. The party is funded by Dotcom, and has organized a “Moment of Truth” event for this Monday to discuss revelations of surveillance and other secret government actions. (Disclosure: Glenn Greenwald, one of the authors of this story, is scheduled to speak at that event pursuant to an invitation from the Internet Party, which paid his travel expenses to attend and agreed to donate a speaking fee to a designated charity.)
The disclosure that the GCSB plotted a program of mass surveillance based on this new law is likely to raise further questions about the ethics and credibility of the Key government. The new surveillance planning took place at high levels of the government, and expressly intended to use the new surveillance law as its basis even as Key himself insisted that the law provided no such authority.
Photo: Rob Griffith/AP
Additional reporting provided by Andrew Fishman ||||| Accused government whistleblower Edward Snowden is seen on the computer screen of a journalist on the internet site of the Council of Europe, as he speaks via video conference with members of the Committee on legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of...
WELLINGTON New Zealand was preparing to conduct mass domestic surveillance last year, a U.S. investigative journalist said on Monday, five days before the country goes to the polls, provoking immediate denials from Prime Minister John Key.
The accusations by Glenn Greenwald were based on evidence disclosed by former U.S. National Security Authority contractor Edward Snowden that Key's center-right government planned to exploit amended spying laws to sharply widen domestic spying.
Greenwald said the NSA documents showed New Zealand's electronic spy agency took the first steps towards the surveillance in a project dubbed 'Speargun', by tapping into an undersea telecoms cable into the country, while waiting for the legal authority to do so.
"Phase one entailed accessing that cable, tapping into it, and then phase two would entail metadata probes," Greenwald said on Radio New Zealand National.
Key rejected the charges as "absolutely wrong", and said a business case put up by the agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), early last year aimed at mass cyber protection, but was turned down by his government.
"There is not, and never has been, a cable access surveillance program operating in New Zealand," Key said in a statement, as he released several declassified papers to back his position.
"There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB."
Snowden's material can be accessed at: here
New Zealand law provides that the GCSB, which conducts electronic surveillance and is part of the "Five Eyes" surveillance network along with the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada, can only spy on New Zealand citizens if requested by a domestic law enforcement or intelligence agency.
Key said Greenwald, who was brought to New Zealand by millionaire internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, was being used to try to influence voters ahead of the election.
Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of internet piracy, copyright breaches, and money laundering, has paid for Greenwald's trip to New Zealand.
Greenwald appeared at a public meeting of more than 1,000 people organized by a political party being bankrolled by Dotcom, at which the ebullient German had promised revelations damaging to Key.
Snowden and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange addressed the meeting through video links.
New Zealand media said the revelations involved an alleged email between a Warner Brothers film studio executive and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), suggesting Key colluded with them to allow Dotcom to settle in New Zealand so that it would be easier to detain and extradite him.
Warner Brothers and the MPAA said the email was a fake, and Key said he made no such comments to the film executives.
Controversy around Dotcom's arrest and the protracted ongoing effort to extradite him, as well as charges of illegal spying, have dogged Key's government over the past two years.
In the past month links between his government and right-wing bloggers have prompted separate accusations of dirty tricks against political opponents.
But Key, largely unscathed in opinion polls, remains the favorite to gain a third consecutive term, although he is likely to need the support of minor parties to secure a majority. NZPOLL
(Reporting by Gyles Beckford and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) ||||| Like many nations around the world, New Zealand over the last year has engaged in a serious and intense debate about government surveillance. The nation’s prime minister, John Key of the National Party, has denied that New Zealand’s spy agency GCSB engages in mass surveillance, mostly as a means of convincing the country to enact a new law vesting the agency with greater powers. This week, as a national election approaches, Key repeated those denials in anticipation of a report in The Intercept today exposing the Key government’s actions in implementing a system to record citizens’ metadata.
Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched. At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called “XKEYSCORE.” It allows total, granular access to the database of communications collected in the course of mass surveillance. It is not limited to or even used largely for the purposes of cybersecurity, as has been claimed, but is instead used primarily for reading individuals’ private email, text messages, and internet traffic. I know this because it was my full-time job in Hawaii, where I worked every day in an NSA facility with a top secret clearance.
The prime minister’s claim to the public, that “there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance” is false. The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.
If you have doubts, which would be quite reasonable, given what the last year showed us about the dangers of taking government officials at their word, I invite you to confirm this for yourself. Actual pictures and classified documentation of XKEYSCORE are available online now, and their authenticity is not contested by any government. Within them you’ll find that the XKEYSCORE system offers, but does not require for use, something called a “Five Eyes Defeat,” the Five Eyes being the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and yes, New Zealand.
This might seem like a small detail, but it’s very important. The Five Eyes Defeat is an optional filter, a single checkbox. It allows me, the analyst, to prevent search results from being returned on those countries from a particular search. Ask yourself: why do analysts have a checkbox on a top secret system that hides the results of mass surveillance in New Zealand if there is no mass surveillance in New Zealand?
The answer, one that the government of New Zealand has not been honest about, is that despite claims to the contrary, mass surveillance is real and happening as we speak. The GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB station at Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact. Importantly, they do not merely use XKEYSCORE, but also actively and directly develop mass surveillance algorithms for it. GCSB’s involvement with XKEYSCORE is not a theory, and it is not a future plan. The claim that it never went ahead, and that New Zealand merely “looked at” but never participated in the Five Eyes’ system of mass surveillance is false, and the GCSB’s past and continuing involvement with XKEYSCORE is irrefutable.
But what does it mean?
It means they have the ability see every website you visit, every text message you send, every call you make, every ticket you purchase, every donation you make, and every book you order online. From “I’m headed to church” to “I hate my boss” to “She’s in the hospital,” the GCSB is there. Your words are intercepted, stored, and analyzed by algorithms long before they’re ever read by your intended recipient.
Faced with reasonable doubts, ask yourself just what it is that stands between these most deeply personal communications and the governments of not just in New Zealand, but also the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia?
The answer is that solitary checkbox, the Five Eyes Defeat. One checkbox is what separates our most sacred rights from the graveyard of lost liberty. When an officer of the government wants to know everything about everyone in their society, they don’t even have to make a technical change. They simply uncheck the box. The question before us is no longer “why was this done without the consent and debate of the people of this country,” but “what are we going to do about it?”
This government may have total control over the checkbox today, but come Sept. 20, New Zealanders have a checkbox of their own. If you live in New Zealand, whatever party you choose to vote for, bear in mind the opportunity to send a message that this government won’t need to spy on us to hear: The liberties of free people cannot be changed behind closed doors. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to restore our democracies. It’s time to take back our rights. And it starts with you.
National security has become the National Party’s security. What we’re seeing today is that in New Zealand, the balance between the public’s right to know and the propriety of a secret is determined by a single factor: the political advantage it offers to a specific party and or a specific politician. This misuse of New Zealand’s spying apparatus for the benefit of a single individual is a historic concern, because even if you believe today’s prime minister is beyond reproach, he will not remain in power forever. What happens tomorrow, when a different leader assumes the same power to conceal and reveal things from the citizenry based not on what is required by free societies, but rather on what needs to be said to keep them in power?
Photo: David Rogers/Getty Images | – Edward Snowden's latest revelations target New Zealand: The country's leaders repeatedly told the public that they weren't working on a domestic spying program, the whistleblower says, when in fact they were doing just that. "The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance,' is false," Snowden writes in a piece for the Intercept. "If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched." He cites his NSA work, during which he "routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders." Snowden has revealed top secret documents that appear to point to an effort to intercept communications via an undersea cable that's responsible for most Internet traffic to and from New Zealand, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher write at the Intercept. Ahead of the report, Prime Minister John Key acknowledged this weekend that a surveillance program had been planned, though he says he nixed it before it got under way, the Intercept adds. The country will hold an election Saturday, and Key holds that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who paid for Greenwald's trip to the country, is trying to sway the election, Reuters reports. Dotcom, a New Zealand resident, is facing extradition. |
PARIS (AP) — Ever wonder what Keira Knightley and Rihanna do when they just want to go to the grocers like average people?
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A model wears a creation for the Alexander McQueen ready-to-wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer) (Associated Press)
A model wears a creation for the Alexander McQueen ready-to-wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer) (Associated Press)
A model wears a creation as part of Iris Van Herpen's ready-to-wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (Associated Press)
Models wear creations for Chanel's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (Associated Press)
Actress Keira Knightley and her husband James Righton pose as they attend Chanel's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault... (Associated Press)
A model wears a creation as part of Iris Van Herpen's ready-to-wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (Associated Press)
Model Cara Delevingne gestures towards German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld after the presentation of Chanel's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March... (Associated Press)
A model wears a creation for Valentino's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon) (Associated Press)
Singer Rihanna, second right, watches a model presenting a creation as part of Chanel's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault... (Associated Press)
Models wear creations for Chanel's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) (Associated Press)
A model wears a creation for Valentino's ready to wear fall/winter 2014-2015 fashion collection presented in Paris, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon) (Associated Press)
They go to Karl Lagerfeld's luxury Chanel supermarket, of course.
Tuesday saw the fashion showman put on a "Chanel Shopping Center" fall-winter show that featured an audacious Walmart-sized reconstruction and saw the celebrity pair applaud vigorously from the front row. They clearly didn't seem to mind sitting near the canned goods food section.
However, events took a nose dive after the show when the rowdy fashion crowd looted the set.
Here are the highlights of this and Tuesday's other incredible ready-to-wear shows in Paris.
CHANEL'S SUPERMARKET IS SO LUXURY IT GETS LOOTED
The attention to detail was astounding.
An entire supermarket had been reconstructed across several hundred square meters of Paris' Grand Palais.
Guests stared in disbelief at shelves bursting with consumable products especially made for this show: bottles of "Tweed cola," wine branded "Maison Gabrielle," and even grilled bread stamped "CC."
This was clearly a fall-winter show like no other.
Chanel trolleys at the side led on to a tall pile of coconuts next to writing "1 for the price of 2," a fresh fruits and veg section, and large signs advertising Chanel's latest special offers. Instead of discounts they read "50 percent markup."
"Luxury should be worn like you're going to the supermarket. It's the pop art of the 21st century," said the couturier in high spirits.
At the very least, it's proof that Lagerfeld is fashion's greatest showman.
Though the set was a universal hit, perhaps Monsieur Lagerfeld later had one regret: telling revelers they could help themselves to the produce.
It triggered a stealing-frenzy, with security guards having to swoop in as revelers stripped the shelves. At the exit, fashionistas' bags were actually searched to remove stolen goods. One fashion editor succeeded in making off with a Chanel doormat.
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, RIHANNA AND CHANEL COOKING OIL
"Pirates of the Caribbean" star Keira Knightley — in a monochrome Chanel dress with tiny waist — rocked the front row alongside her husband, Klaxons singer James Righton whom she married last year.
They entered a cordoned-off area after the show alongside superstar Rihanna near some Chanel cooking oil.
It triggered a media frenzy with a worried Knightley saying, "I think there's a fight breaking out."
Her husband, who watched from the sidelines, seemed puzzled by the luxury supermarket concept. "It's my first Chanel show. It was fairly mad. Is this normal?"
Yes, at least in Lagerfeld's world it is.
THE CHANEL CLOTHES CHANNEL YOUTH AND COLOR
Just like a supermarket, Lagerfeld produced a collection that was so varied there was choice for everyone.
With attention given to large rounded shoulders, exaggerated upper torsos, cinched or exposed midriffs and lashings of tweed, Lagerfeld mixed and matched.
Stylish brown tweed was turned into a jumpsuit — with voluminous pockets on the bust and great 80s turn ups.
A section that seemed to channel the designs of artist Vassily Kandinsky provided bursts of color on driving coats and a pair of bold blue and green leggings. It looked very young, but Lagerfeld quipped after the show: "Never young enough for today's standard. The older the (women) are, the younger they want to look!"
For the fun factor, models carried large leather and silver-bound Chanel shopping baskets as they theatrically browsed the catwalk shelving.
If the show seemed to lack the focus of Lagerfeld's best shows, some fantastic single garments made up for it. One black three-quarter length coat had a lovely fluidity with delicate diagonal ribs.
IRIS VAN HERPEN'S SHOCK TACTICS
The human body was in focus at Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen's sublime debut catwalk show on the ready-to-wear calendar.
Van Herpen likes to shock.
In this show the shock-factor saw three models writhing in suspended square plastic bags that had the oxygen sucked out.
It disturbed several guests as it looked as if the models were in discomfort or couldn't breathe.
In the clothes, embroidered beads on mini sheaths resembled shining human cells on models in jutting boots without heels. While some beautifully executed techno-fabric, silver, cocktail dresses glistened like organic fluid.
Several looks also seemed to turn the body inside out: black and white chubby fur tops had the top slashed off to reveal flaps of fabric like exposed flesh.
The collection perfectly towed the line between surreal artistry and wearability, but next time Van Herpen shouldn't try to frighten guests.
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN'S LITTLE BO PEEP HAS LOST HER WEREWOLF
Sarah Burton produced a cryptic but accomplished show for Alexander McQueen set on an emotive green heath.
A-line skirts in broderie anglaise, large white rounded collars, thigh-high lace up boots and tulle embellishments pointed to an 18th century vibe.
Then, the patches of long black and white fur and animal eyebrows at times looked like Burton was going for a werewolf vibe.
Was she chanelling the beginnings of British gothic horror writing that started in the late 18th century?
VALENTINO'S ANSWER TO THE SWINGING SIXTIES
Valentino 's Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli gave their diaphanous, and slightly puritanical designs, an injection of 1960s and Pop Art.
Though the design duo they didn't pay attention to the menswear vibe sweeping fall-winter shows so far — and people don't expect uber-feminine Valentino to, either — this show definitely felt more "trendy" than in previous seasons.
The best look was a shimmering silk purple, silver and pewter baby-doll dress with black color. And some of the harlequin looks were eye-catching, though sometimes a little busy.
It was the couture-infused gowns they did best — after all, couture is almost synonymous with the house.
Fastidiously embroidered butterflies gave a beautiful lift to a sexy sheer tulle cocktail gown and continued with a bird motif on another in deep blue.
___
Thomas Adamson can be followed at Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP ||||| 1 of 5. German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne appear at the end of his Fall/Winter 2014-2015 women's ready-to-wear collection show for French fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais transformed into a 'Chanel Shopping Center' during Paris Fashion Week March 4, 2014.
PARIS (Reuters) - Most designers try to make consumers dream at their fashion shows, but Karl Lagerfeld sought to bring them back into real life by presenting his latest collection in a spoof Chanel supermarket.
Paris' prestigious Grand Palais, where the French brand traditionally hosts its glamorous shows, was filled with endless rows of Chanel-branded pasta, cheeses, sauces, detergents and other products of daily life created solely for the occasion.
"For me the supermarket is the pop art of today," Lagerfeld said on Tuesday after the show, admitting he rarely went to supermarkets himself.
Pushing brightly colored trolleys and pretending to exchange gossip, models picked up products with tongue-in-cheek labels such as Coco beer bottles, Chateau Gabrielle white wine and Chanel crémeuh - or creamoo - milk.
Others carried metallic baskets adorned with Chanel's iconic handbag chains.
The designer's new autumn/winter collection was full of oversized tweed jackets worn over shiny pencil-thin pants complete with flashy sneakers, also spotted at January's haute couture show.
Some models wore comfortable-looking orange woolen jogging suits and fluorescent pink shredded leggings.
Speakers spat out loud pop music, interrupted by public announcements such as "the young Marine is waiting for her parents at the cashiers" or "Mrs Martin is requested at the fresh foods department".
Lagerfeld said Chanel had created more than 500 different labels and put more than 100,000 items on display, some of which would be later given to charity.
No cost or detail was spared to create the atmosphere of a typical French supermarket such as Carrefour.
Hanging over the white aisles, some giant yellow signs offered 20 percent discounts while others said: "the DIY department is open on Sundays," pointing to recent controversy in France over allowing DIY shops to trade on Sundays.
Once the show was over, many members of the audience furiously seized Chanel food products from the shelves.
"The supermarket concept was brilliant as it put fashion into real life," French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, previously the face of Chanel's Coco perfume and lipstick, told Reuters after the show.
Lagerfeld, who turned 80 last year and has spent three decades at Chanel's helm, is credited with having regularly infused fresh life into the brand to keep it modern and in tune with its times while remaining faithful to its heritage.
"It is not because you buy Chanel clothes that you should not be allowed into the supermarket," Lagerfeld said after exchanging hugs and kisses with his A-lists guests such as singer Rihanna and actress Keira Knightley.
(Reporting by Astrid Wendlandt; Editing by Catherine Evans) | – Chanel's show at Paris Fashion Week yesterday had a somewhat pedestrian theme: The Grand Palais, where the show was held, was turned into a Chanel supermarket. There were rows of food and household items, all with Chanel-branded names like Coco beer and Tweed cola, and models pushed shopping carts or carried baskets through the aisles while music and fake announcements played ("the young Marine is waiting for her parents at the cashiers," for example); signs advertised "sales"—like "1 for the price of 2" and "50% markup." Altogether, more than 100,000 items were displayed with more than 500 different labels; some will be donated to charity, Reuters reports, but others were grabbed by audience members after the show ... and things got so crazy that security guards had to intervene, with the AP noting fashionistas' bags were actually searched upon exit, with stolen goods removed, though one apparently made off with a Chanel doormat. "For me the supermarket is the pop art of today," said designer Karl Lagerfeld ... though of course he also said he himself rarely actually visits supermarkets. Chanel last made headlines for featuring models in sneakers. |
Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer toplined the three-hour NBC production, which featured a cavernous set and familiar songs.
It's easy to remember a musical for its songs. That is, after all, what makes a musical different from every other kind of narrative: The characters will shout to the rafters in full throat, revealing things they just can't speak, because the music gives them leave to lay themselves bare.
And the songs in The Sound of Music are sublime. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II knew their way around a tune and these numbers -- from "My Favorite Things" to "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" to the indefatigable "Do-Re-Mi" -- have endured since the Broadway production bowed in 1959 for good reason. But the story lives in the hearts of audiences because of Robert Wise's 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews as Maria, the would-be nun trying to quench her yearning heart, and Christopher Plummer as Captain Von Trapp, the stoic Austrian unwilling to reignite his. Andrews' undeniable empathy and Plummer's prickly sensuality sold that love story to a generation, who've since passed it down to every other.
RELATED: 'Sound of Music' Live: The Best Twitter Reactions
With their live adaptation of the Broadway musical, NBC took a big swing for the fences. They spent a reported $9 million on the production and its cavernous set, which had to house the Austrian countryside, the interior of the Nonnberg Abbey, the Von Trapp estate and the arena where the Von Trapp Family Singers stage their final performance (draped in probably one too many Nazi flags). They engaged Craig Zadan and Neil Meron -- of NBC's calamitous Smash -- to produce. They got Audra McDonald to bring her pipes. They found a clutch of children who didn't have (too much) of that child-performer pomp. And they got Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer to play the lovers. And, well, whoops.
Because while Underwood can deliver the songs -- I'm sure that anyone with the desire to plunge themselves into the American Idol ringer has been singing those songs for most of her life -- she doesn't acquit herself so well when it comes to carrying the emotional weight of the production. And perhaps it was unfair to ask so much of Underwood, to have to make Maria's journey in three scant hours -- whereas Andrews had weeks of production -- while enduring costume changes and remembering choreography and trying not to look at the prompter and not step on anyone's lines or feet. Underwood nails the look of a virginal almost-nun, but goes no deeper than that. Blank stares and placid smiles.
STORY: 'Sound of Music' Live: 5 Standout Moments
Moyer is a better singer than Russell Crowe, I'll give him that. But he's no Hugh Jackman. Or Neil Patrick Harris. Or Taye Diggs. Or even Nathan Fillion. His attempt at conveying an emotional hollowness just reads as mild constipation, his furrowed eyes and pursed lips doing all the work. He doesn't look stoic, he just looks clenched.
The production itself came off without a hitch -- no easy feat with so many moving parts and opportunities for blown lines or stumble down staircases (oh, how I wished for a staircase stumble to lighten the three hours). The supporting cast was strong: Laura Benanti was appropriately sultry as Elsa Von Hottie, while Christian Borle was appropriately hammy as Max Detweiler and someone should find a way to have McDonald sing audiences into every commercial break. And while the camerawork -- by directors Rob Ashford and Beth McCarthy-Miller (who directed 30 Rock's live episodes) -- made everything still feel a little stagebound, the storytelling was clear.
And yet, without Underwood and Moyer selling us on this legendary love story, The Sound of Music Live plays like very expensive karaoke. ||||| Joining all the other things to make one's spirits sink at this time of year – dark mornings, low temperatures, Susan Boyle's inevitable Christmas album – is Thursday night's live NBC production of the Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood. In Times Square, there's a huge poster of her in Austrian drag, teeth blazing like strip lighting, a look on her face that seems to say, "Hey! Come join me in the casual destruction of a staple of the American songbook!" As if that corner of New York couldn't get more depressing.
Well, kind of. As we know in our hearts – come on, dig deep – the Sound of Music is basically terrible: too long, too pious, too laboured in its point-making. Julie Andrews rescued the movie with a sort of weapons-grade gladness , her performance turning on that rare ability to present risible material with absolute conviction. Underwood will, no doubt, sell it for all that she's worth, but there are certain things one doesn't look to winners of American Idol to deliver and guilelessness is one of them.
Neither is acting. Being in a musical isn't just a singing job, which is how Christopher Plummer, a veteran stage actor who started his career in productions of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Euripides, found himself cast as Captain von Trapp, something he has grumbled about ever since. He called it the "Sound of Mucus" and delivered his lines in a tone so sardonic, only Andrews' superior fire power could neutralize them. The clash of her absolute sincerity with his sly knowing style is part of what converted the show into kitsch, wherein lies its real worth.
The other part, of course, is the songs, so slick and convincing that large numbers of people still think Edelweiss is the Austrian national anthem. Poor Austrians. (Up to a point). I went on the native-baiting Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, once, and watched as the baffled and mildly hostile locals strained to look away as hordes of British, American and Australian visitors trudged around town, re-enacting key scenes from the film while screaming.
This kind of fanaticism is inspired as much by indoctrination as by any real value in the show. For most of us, repeated forced viewing since childhood has made the Sound of Music as familiar as a comfort blanket, a constant against which to measure our own progress. As I get older, for example, I find myself increasingly sympathising with the Baroness. Who hasn't been there? Labouring to impress in a power suit when the guy's undeclared taste is for novitiates?
Part of the comfort of the show is its naked didacticism: the nuns' moral surety; the lessons in European history. Who can resist Liesl's executive summary of Lebensraum:
Some people think we ought to be German. They're very mad at those who don't think so.
Or the mythology that now surrounds the production? That day in Salzburg, our tour guide, who had been doing the tour twice-daily for eight years, presented the material with the detachment of one who has long ago retreated to a place where no one can reach her. Until a few years ago, she explained, you could go inside the actual gazebo where Liesl and Rolf frolicked, until an 80-year-old woman jumped off the bench while re-enacting I Am 16 Going On 17 and broke her hip. A lawsuit ensued. Now you could only view it from the outside. At the time, this struck us with the force of a genuine sadness.
However much one mocks it, there is something enduringly and weirdly irresistible about the Sound of Music, although if I watch NBC on Thursday night, it won't be because of that. Where Andrews found a little quietness and subtlety in the score, Underwood, judging by the teasers, will go at it with the pop-eyed mania of someone performing for Simon Cowell. No, I'll be watching because it's live; something will go wrong. ||||| Broadway on TV
Was Carrie Underwood a good Maria? No. Was NBC’s decision to do a live staging of ‘The Sound of Music’ a good one? Maybe not. Was it fun anyway? Actually, kinda.
The poor hills. They finally come alive, only to experience a rotating flurry of emotions so dizzying it's as if the indefatigable Carrie Underwood started spinning on them at the beginning of NBC's The Sound of Music Live! and didn't stop for the entire three-hour broadcast. And, honestly, the country singer tackled her turn as Maria with such grating gusto she'd probably had done just that if she was asked to.
The experience of watching The Sound of Music Live! was a bit of an exhausting one. Not a bad one. Not a good one. But one that took energy.
There was weathering the crippling outrage over the project's mere existence—the nerve of staging a production without Julie Andrews in the lead!—that could very well have grounded the whole affair had NBC not been so bullish on it. Then came the hopefulness, a quick prayer to worn-out Sound of Music VHS tapes we all watched growing up that the production wouldn't be a train wreck. The quick sigh of relief came at the sound of the nuns prettily singing the opening song, only to be followed by the gut-punch suffocation of every breath when, all-of-a-sudden, Carrie Underwood was frolicking manically in a fake forest wearing Austrian drag. Nothing, really, can prepare one for that.
The roller coaster of emotions never really ceased. Are your eyes tired? It's from a combination of excessive cringing and sustained weeping. So much of the broadcast was hard to watch, not so much the fault of the actors as the actually quite subpar show being performed and the whole idea of the live telecast itself. And just as much of it was shockingly moving, thanks in Alps-sized part to the glorious talents of Tony-winners Audra MacDonald and Laura Benanti in scene-stealing supporting roles.
Listen, it takes a lot of effort to twirl energetically on a mountaintop and make it look good. The effort it took to put on The Sound of Music Live! radiated off the screen, draining the energy of the viewers who watched. But, occasionally, it even turned into, as Maria would sing, something good.
Sadly, it wasn't until she sang "Something Good" that Underwood's tireless guile finally succeeded in winning over the audience. Her performance of the song had confidence (now's a good time to lament that "I Have Confidence," a song added just to the film version of The Sound of Music, was not featured in this production) that took the American Idol winner nearly the entire show to properly build. Naturally, Underwood sounded astounding, as alive as those damned hills, every time she was asked to stand on top of things and belt. But whether it was because of nerves or lack of experience, her acting was painfully lifeless and amateur throughout the first two thirds of the lengthy ordeal. The singer, it seems, is a proud graduate of the school of "If I don't blink, they'll think I'm acting!"
To say that Underwood was no Julie Andrews is one of life's greatest certainties, and maybe it's not fair to compare the two stars. But the truth is that millions of people tuned in Thursday night to do just that, compare Underwood to Andrews… and then throw her off an Alps cliff when she didn't measure up. Underwood's performance, however, really just underlined what a tricky role Maria is to pull off, and how astounding it is that Andrews managed to do it. Andrews skipped through the role with the ceaseless ebullience of a baby deer in spring, imbuing that effervescence in everything from a mountaintop spin to yodeling with wooden puppets to a romance with grouchy Christopher Plummer. Girl was brave. Remember that boyish bob?
Underwood was like a deer, too. But one in headlights.
Because of that, one can't really tell if it was a brilliant or boneheaded idea to surround her with a supporting cast of such talented actors. First of all, this telecast featured some of the best singing nuns since Whoopi Goldberg was Back in the Habit. That roller coaster of emotions we were talking about earlier? We were rocketed through some prolific loop-de-loops just two bars into Audra MacDonald's rendition of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" as Mother Abbess. If you didn't shed a tear during that epic performance, you might be an Underwood. I mean a robot. Heck, even Underwood was full-on ugly crying during the performance, likely betraying the inner monologue: "Audra MacDonald is belting this song in my ear and I will never find such happiness again."
Then there's the radiant Laura Benanti as Captain Von Trapp's (Vampire Bill himself, Stephen Moyer) hope-to-be fiancé, Elsa Schraeder. Along with Smash and Broadway alum Christian Borle, she can now be certified as an expert spelunker, for the feats of mining she did to surface errant bits of comedy from the overly earnest script the cast was working with. When Elsa breaks up with Von Trapp and sulks off stage near the end, you hate to see her go. Though Benanti looks good while she leaves. Her costuming was flawless.
(Sidebar conspiracy theory: the wardrobe department was out to sabotage Underwood. Take the party scene. Every guest is outfitted in exquisite ball gowns and tuxedos. Underwood is wearing an oversized milkmaid's dress, frumpier than the milkmaid's dress she wore in the previous scene… but not as frumpy as the one she put on for the next one. So much frump!)
So, yes, the cast did work exceptionally hard, none more than Underwood, to give her the credit she truly deserves, to sell the material. The material, however, is The Sound of Music. And it's not even The Sound of the Music movie, it's the stage show. And The Sound of Music stage show is a bit whack.
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It's a musical where, essentially, three songs are sung six times each at various points throughout the show and you're expected not to get bored of them. It's a show with two major conflicts. In one, a father is upset that his children's clothes are made out of curtains. In the other, the Nazis are invading Austria. They are given the same weight. It's a show where a Mother Superior at an abbey sings an epically moving ballad to a scared young nun, and you later realize that she was just telling the nun to go out there, sex herself up a little, and break up a pending marriage. The Sound of Music: The Story of Maria, the Hussy Nun.
Worse for fans of the movie who may not have even realized that it was also a stage production, there are loads of differences between the stage show and the film, especially in what are now iconic scenes. Maria sings "My Favorite Things" in the abbey to Mother Abbess, not to the children. Love the yodeling puppets from the "Lonely Goatherd" scene? They're not there, because Maria now sings it with the children in her bedroom, sans props. And there's no synchronized bench hopping at all in the choreography of "I Am Sixteen (Going on Seventeen)." It's a tragedy.
The mood of the whole piece was weird, too. Though it was performed live, it was shot as if it was a movie, on what must be the biggest soundstage of all time—the set was massive. So you never saw a proscenium, stage curtains, or an audience. Laugh lines didn't receive laughter. Vamping for applause after a song never actually had applause to vamp to. The hybrid nature of the project ended up zapping the energy from both worlds—film and live theater—rather than combining them. | – Before last night's live production of The Sound of Music on NBC, Emma Brockes summed up everything that was certainly going to be wrong with it in the Guardian: The original, beloved though it may be, "is basically terrible: too long, too pious, too labored in its point-making." But Julie Andrews managed to find "a little quietness and subtlety in the score," whereas "Underwood, judging by the teasers, will go at it with the pop-eyed mania of someone performing for Simon Cowell," Brockes writes. "There are certain things one doesn't look to winners of American Idol to deliver and guilelessness is one of them." So how did it actually end up? Most reviewers seem to agree Brockes was right: In Time, Charlotte Alter sums things up with her headline: "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Carrie Underwood?" She deems the show "so cringe-worthy that it was at least fun to watch" and rounds up nine things that went wrong, including Stephen Moyer, who played Captain Von Trapp: His "accent was sometimes German and sometimes English, which was weird because Underwood’s accent was always Southern." She also offers up suggestions for actors who would have done a better job than Underwood, including Morgan Freeman. On the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon feels basically the same way: "Was Carrie Underwood a good Maria? No. Was NBC's decision to do a live staging of The Sound of Music a good one? Maybe not. Was it fun anyway? Actually, kinda," he writes. "To say that Underwood was no Julie Andrews is one of life's greatest certainties, and maybe it's not fair to compare the two stars. But the truth is that millions of people tuned in Thursday night to do just that, compare Underwood to Andrews ... and then throw her off an Alps cliff when she didn't measure up." As for the production itself, it "came off without a hitch," writes Marc Bernardin at the Hollywood Reporter. That's "no easy feat with so many moving parts and opportunities for blown lines or staircase stumbles (oh, how I wished for a staircase stumble to lighten the three hours)." And the non-Underwood cast, with the exception of a constipated-looking Moyer, was very strong. |
Story highlights Authorities have opened preliminary investigations
Weiner is alleged to have exchanged sexually explicit text messages with a purportedly underage girl
Washington (CNN) Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Anthony Weiner's cell phone and other records, according to law enforcement officials.
The FBI and the New York Police Department have opened preliminary investigations of allegations that the former New York Democratic congressman exchanged sexually explicit text messages with a purportedly underage girl.
Spokespersons for the US Attorney's Office in Manhattan and the FBI declined to comment.
The allegations first surfaced in the Daily Mail
The online sexting relationship allegedly went on for months between Weiner and a girl claiming to be just 15. The Daily Mail reported she said he sent her numerous photos, one of him in a pool and at least one bare-chested.
Read More ||||| FILE - In this July 24, 2013 file photo, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner has acknowledged he communicated... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this July 24, 2013 file photo, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner has acknowledged he communicated... (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Online communications between disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and a 15-year-old girl are being investigated by law enforcement agencies in New York and North Carolina, officials said Thursday.
The office of Jill Westmoreland Rose, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte, has "begun investigative efforts," a spokeswoman said. An FBI task force in New York designed to combat the sexual exploitation of children also is investigating, according to a law enforcement official who wasn't authorized to discuss an ongoing case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The investigations were launched after an online outlet, DailyMail.com, on Wednesday published an interview with the girl in which she describes online and text exchanges with Weiner that went on for several months this year. The girl said that during a Skype chat Weiner asked her to undress and touch herself.
Weiner, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 2011 amid a sexting scandal, didn't return text or email messages seeking comment on Thursday.
But in a statement he gave to The Associated Press on Wednesday he said he had "likely been the subject of a hoax," and he provided an email written by the girl in which she recants her story. He also apologized, noting he had "repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgment about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent."
The girl, whose identity the Daily Mail didn't reveal, said she told her father and a teacher about the relationship. She said she wrote the email because Weiner asked her to but never sent it.
A spokeswoman for the FBI and a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Manhattan declined to comment.
Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, an aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and has a young son with her. He resigned from Congress after it was revealed he had been exchanging sexually explicit messages with multiple women.
He then unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2013 and was leading several polls until it was revealed he had continued his questionable behavior. Abedin left him this month after revelations he had sent more sexually charged messages to another woman. ||||| Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl during which she claims he asked her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits for him on a video messaging application and pressed her to engage in 'rape fantasies', DailyMail.com can exclusively report.
The girl, whose name is being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January while she was a high school sophomore and before Weiner's wife, Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin, announced she was ending their marriage.
Weiner was aware that the girl was underage, according to DailyMail.com interviews with the girl and her father, as well as a cache of online messages.
SCROLL DOWN TO HEAR THE TEEN ON TAPE
Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl online, and even sent her photos of himself, including one of him in a pool
The high school girl, whose name is being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January
In one message, he tells the girl he was 'hard' after thinking of her that morning
In another message, both Weiner and the girl tell each other they feel like they can tell each other anything
The pair even joke about nicknames for each other, and Weiners old name of 'Carlos Danger.' But he says he wants her call her 'mine'
In one Confide message - which deletes the sender's name after the first message is open, Weiner tells the girl 'I would bust that tight p***y. 'The app is designed for confidentiality, and automatically deletes messages and images after the first time they are read or viewed. However, the girl took photos of a few of the messages and images from last February and March, which she shared with the Dailymail.com.
He goes on to say that he would 'bust' it 'so hard and so often that you would be limp for a week'
'I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent,' Weiner told DailyMail.com
In the online messages, Weiner, 51, sent bare-chested photos of himself to the underage girl, repeatedly called her 'baby' and complimented her body, and told her that he woke up 'hard' after thinking about her, according to copies of the conversations.
In one particularly lewd message, he told the teen: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'
When confronted with the claims, Weiner did not deny exchanging 'flirtatious' messages with the teen. He declined to comment on the specifics of the allegations on the record, but provided copies of two emails the girl sent him that he contends raised questions about her claims. DailyMail.com publishes them below.
He gave a statement to DailyMail.com in which he says, in part: ' I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent. I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt.'
WHAT ANTHONY WEINER TOLD DAILYMAIL.COM 'I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgement about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent. 'I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt. 'While I have provided the Daily Mail with information showing that I have likely been the subject of a hoax, I have no one to blame but me for putting myself in this position. 'I am sorry.'
The revelation comes just weeks after Weiner's wife Huma Abedin announced that they had separated in the wake of another sexting controversy.
In August, the New York Post reported on sexual chats between Weiner and a 40-year-old woman, during which the former congressman sent her provocative shirtless photos of him while his four-year-old son was curled up next to him in bed.
Weiner has faced a number of sexting scandals since 2011, when he was forced to resign from Congress after his online sexual messages with a female college student were revealed.
Another sexting scandal in 2013, involving 22-year-old Sydney Leathers, derailed his bid for New York City mayor. In the course of that scandal, his alias Carlos Danger was disclosed.
The former congressman has faced scrutiny over online chats with minors in the past.
In 2011, he admitted to sending five private Twitter messages to a 17-year-old girl, but said the messages 'were neither explicit nor indecent'. The girl's family told the New York Times that the conversation appeared to be harmless.
DailyMail.com reached out to the 15-year-old girl's family earlier this month after receiving information about her relationship with Weiner.
Although the girl said she did not want to press charges because she believes her relationship with Weiner was consensual, she and her father agreed to sit down for an interview out of concern that Weiner may be sexting with other underage girls.
Weiner and Abedin, still living in the same apartment despite their split, left separately Wednesday morning before the DailyMail.com story was posted online
Huma left to meet Hillary Clinton to fly to Orlando to campaign; Weiner went for a walk
The girl first reached out to Weiner on the evening of January 23, 2016, when she noticed his Twitter page allowed non-followers to contact him through private messages
Weiner sent the teen a bare-chested picture of himself with his hand on his crotch
'If there's anybody out there that has a similar story that they can come forward, maybe use my daughter's example to have the courage to come forward,' said her father, whose name is also being withheld to shield the girl's identity.
He explains that he did not contact authorities to report Weiner because his daughter asked him not to. 'I agreed because her mental health is in jeopardy and I didn't want to exacerbate anything that she has mentally going on.'
Through interviews and a collection of online messages from applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Kik, and Confide, DailyMail.com has pieced together a timeline of Weiner's relationship with the underage girl.
The girl first reached out to Weiner on the evening of January 23, 2016, when she noticed his Twitter page allowed non-followers to contact him through direct private messages.
She told DailyMail.com she was interested in politics and had heard about his sexting scandals, and was curious to see what he was like.
It was clear from the messages that she was encouraging Weiner to engage with her in a sexual manner. She told DailyMail.com she didn't consider Weiner her boyfriend, but thought the relationship was a 'romantic' one.
She acknowledged during interviews that she had developed an obsession with Weiner, and sought him out on Twitter in January while trying to write a book about him. She said she continued to write the book as their relationship developed.
'Why did I message you [in January]?' the girl wrote in an email to Weiner last week. 'I was studying you- for a book of course. You were my Hannibal Lecter.
'I wanted to know what made you tick. As we chatted, I pretended to not know EVERYTHING about you. I didn't want to appear suspicious.'
She also told Weiner: 'I was obsessed with you.'
Weiner quickly messaged her back, and they struck up a conversation about the large snowstorms that had hit New York and the girl's home state.
The messages started out as small talk, and during their conversation the girl noticed that Weiner had also found her profile on Facebook and sent her a friend request.
'Where do you go to school?' Weiner asked her.
'[Redacted] High School,' she responded.
Still sexting? Weiner was out and about at the park with his son on Tuesday, but took time out to engage with his phone
Closest aide: Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's closest aide and vice-chair of her campaign. The two's closeness goes back to when Abedin was a teenage White House intern.
Huma Abedin announced that they had separated in the wake of another sexting controversy. when the former congressmen sent a 40-year-old woman provocative shirtless photos of himself while his toddler son was curled up next to him in bed
Early the next morning, Weiner found the girl on Facebook, sent her a friend request and they began messaging
Weiner sent the teen a picture of himself - with this undershirt rolled up to expose his stomach - and his son.
In one Facebook message, the girl tells Weiner that she's 'very good at keeping a secret' from her parents
'You are kinda sorta gorgeous,' Weiner told her, before asking around midnight why she wasn't with a boyfriend that night.
'My dad is overprotective,' said the girl. '[Boyfriends] couldn't be at my house this late.'
The next morning, the girl woke up to find a private message from Weiner on Facebook asking how her night had gone.
'How did you sleep?' the girl asked him.
'Not great. Woke up very, uh, eager,' he replied.
He continued to send her flirtatious messages throughout the day, saying he was 'imagining' her when she was in the shower and saying she must get a lot of male attention at the gym.
At one point, Weiner indicated that he knew the conversation could be a problem.
'[I]f anyone would get the wrong impression we should say goodbye now,' said Weiner. However, he did not stop the conversation.
Instead he told the girl they could talk over other chat applications that would not be monitored by her parents.
They began talking on Kik, an instant message app, where Weiner used the screen name 'T Dog.' He sent her photos of himself shirtless, including one photo of him in a hot tub that showed his face.
'Maybe delete that. Hehe,' he wrote after sending it.
In many of the messages, they discussed Weiner's trips to the gym and love of hockey, and the girl's school activities and her newly acquired learner's permit. But in a number of them, Weiner steered the conversation toward sex.
The pair eventually move to another app, called TK, for conversing, in which they share several photos
After sending a snap from a pool, Weiner tells the girl, 'Maybe delete that. Hehe.'
She then tells Weiner that she doesn't think she would 'look good naked' at the time of messaging
She says she is 'pale' and wants 'to work out more', but Weiner says the flaws 'would no doubt be overlooked'
'I thought of you this am. Hard,' he wrote in one.
The girl asked if she was the reason.
'Yes. And the solution,' responded Weiner, adding an emoji image of squirting water.
'Your body is pretty insane,' he told her at another point.
When the girl told Weiner she'd just gotten home from the gym, he wrote back, 'Hard. Again'.
Several of the messages involve finding times to talk over Skype, a video messaging application, when the girl's parents were asleep or out of the house.
'Skype may have to be a tomorrow thing,' the girl wrote in one message. 'if I skyped you tonight id have to play music as we talked so that my parents couldn't hear me talking and I'd have to keep the lights off.'
'No prob baby,' replied Weiner. 'Some other time. When it's easier.'
The girl told DailyMail.com that she and Weiner first started talking on Skype a few days into the relationship.
'[Weiner's] son was in the bathtub at the time just downstairs,' she said. 'So he would yell at his son to check on him, and then he asked me to take my clothes off, and just started saying these really sexual things.'
Afterward, Weiner sent her a message with a heart-eyed emoji, writing 'I caught a glimpse of your body' and indicating he would like to keep talking over Skype.
She claimed the conversations grew more explicit as time went on, with Weiner allegedly asking her to undress and encouraging her to masturbate over video chat.
She said Weiner would not get fully nude, but was usually shirtless and wearing boxers.
'He would tell me to say his name as I was touching myself,' said the girl. 'He would ask me to take my clothes off.
'He would just have his shirt off. Sometimes he would grab his lower region, but that was about it,' she added.
Although Weiner did not get undressed on video, she alleges that he did send her nude photos of himself when they would sext over a messaging app.
The app, which is called Confide, is designed for confidentiality, and automatically deletes messages and images after the first time they are read or viewed.
However, the girl took photos of a few of the messages and images from last February and March, which she shared with Dailymail.com.
Shirtless: One of the messages from Kik, where Weiner used the alias T Dog
At one point, the girl asks Weiner if she was the reason he 'woke up so eager', and he said she was also 'the solution'
TEXT OF LETTER WEINER ASKED TEEN TO SEND TO TEACHER The teen wrote this letter but sent it to a fake email address and sent a copy to Weiner. Parts of the letter that might identify her are redacted. The teen told DailyMail.com what she had done. Weiner provided a copy of the letter in his belief it was sent to her teacher. Dr. XXXXX Thank you for being the perfect mentor. I remember the first time we met. I was a 'wise 92 year old stuck in a 13 year old's body' as you described me. I was a rising freshman. Above your door was a sign that said 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' At that moment I knew that I'd love your class. I walked in and noticed a stack of all of my favorite literary works. Anything from Martin Amis to Albert Camus. We began chatting and I felt like I had known you my whole life. My freshman year [redacted]. I was the first freshman invited and I was thrilled. I started learning [redacted] at the age of 8 years old. I somehow managed [redacted]. You have brought me sooooo many projects. We started on the writing resources center. You and I would travel to the university to bring students to tutor kids at our school that were having a difficult time learning. I had the opportunity to work with some of the sweetest students at our school. I was able to earn 4 extra English course credits. We [redacted]. The student reporting labs have been an educational and a fun hands on experience. Aside from the plethora of knowledge you have graciously provided me with we have also had our deep, meaningful conversations. We share our writings with each other at least once a week. I have enjoyed reading your writings and I have been thankful for the feedback you have given me on mine. I recently shared with you a story about a former congressman. I contacted Anthony Weiner. Our online chats were never inappropriate, he was always very helpful and kind. I wanted to publish my story. He was the best candidate to pin the story to. The story needed a hoax to ride on. Speaking of candidates the election is coming up and his wife is Hillary Clinton's chief of staff. He doesn't have any credibility, I assumed no one would question the allegations. It was unfair to lie to you and my father. It was unfair to spread this false accusation against Anthony Weiner. He has done nothing to deserve this. I am sorry for lying to you, I hope this doesn't affect the bond we have formed over the years. Sincerely [Redcated]
'When we would Skype, he would tell me that he was very lonely and that it had been a year since he and his wife [Huma] had sex, and that she really didn't pay him any attention,' said the girl. 'We would talk, just chatting for about 30 minutes and it would lead to more sexual things…asking me to undress…he'd comment on my body. He asked me about masturbation, and that kind of thing.'
Sometimes, she claims, Weiner would ask the girl to dress up in plaid skirts and pretend he was her school teacher, she said.
'He would pretend like he was a teacher and I was a student. And he'd talk about me sitting in the front of his class, and him taking me after school,' she said.
He also shared pornographic videos with her, she added.
The girl said she was not uncomfortable with the sexting, except for when Weiner would try to engage her in 'rape fantasies'.
'He had some rape fantasies. It would just be him showing up at my house when my dad was out of town,' she said. 'And just start undressing me, being forceful, asking me if I want to be dominated, strange questions.'
She said when she told him she was uncomfortable with this, he quickly agreed to change the subject.
The girl said she started feeling guilty about hiding the relationship, and told her father and a teacher about it in late April.
When Weiner asks if the girl's boyfriend is 'bigger than' him, she says he's a 'skinny nerdy boy'
Weiner sent the girl a picture of his chest with welts he said he got from his heart check up
'I was scared. I felt bad for talking to [Weiner],' she said. 'I felt a little guilty and I wrote [my dad] a letter telling him.'
But the girl also continued to talk to Weiner. The former congressman pressured her to write two more letters to her father and teacher saying that she lied about the natures of their relationship and the two of them were just friends.
She told Weiner that she would do this, and she sent them to bogus email addresses and sent a copy to Weiner.
'After I told my teacher about the relationship, [Weiner] wanted me to email my dad and my teacher and tell them that was I said was false,' she said. 'That the conversations were appropriate and were never inappropriate, and he was very helpful.'
Weiner sent DailyMail.com a copy of the letter he believed she sent to her teacher.
The girl said she continued to talk to Weiner until July.
'After seeing what he did with his son having him in the picture that was released, I think that he's very disgusting and he needs help,' she said.
She said she never viewed him as her 'boyfriend', and that he made this clear by talking to her about his relationships with other women.
'He talked about women he would meet up with and have sex with, women he would meet at the gym, women he would chat with online,' she said.
'He would also talk about going to different gyms, and getting different gym memberships, just to go watch 18-year-olds work out that would go to NYU and different schools in New York,' she added.
In August, the New York Post reported on sexual chats between Weiner and a 40-year-old woman, during which the former congressman sent her provocative shirtless photos of him while his four-year-old son was curled up next to him in bed
After the girl tells Weiner that Skype will have to wait because her parents would hear, Weiner says 'No prob baby'
When the girl says that she'll 'work out all of the time' if it 'turns you on', Weiner tells her that her 'body is pretty insane'
However, she said he never mentioned relationships with other underage girls.
'I actually asked him if he talked to other minors and he said not that he knew of, which is the risk that he kind of takes when he's talking to women on the internet,' she said.
The girl's father said he was horrified when he learned 51-year-old Weiner had been speaking with his daughter over Skype.
'I couldn't stomach that,' he said. 'That really was the worst part I think, was knowing that inappropriate behavior was available to my daughter by this man.'
He said if he ever met Weiner: 'There wouldn't be any words. There would be no words. I hope I never come in contact with him. I'll be in jail if I come into contact with him.'
While the girl said she does not regret the relationship, her father said the experience has changed her.
'She's gone through some depression, we've sought counselling and been able to help her work through it,' he said.
'She's a bright girl, very smart, so this has somewhat dulled the light that she had previous to this…it's gut-wrenching to see somebody take that away.'
HOW I FELT: THE LETTER THE 15-YEAR-OLD SENT TO WEINER The teen wrote this letter to Anthony Weiner after her interview with DailyMail.com. Weiner gave it to DailyMail.com to publish, which he says indicates that he 'could have been the subject of a hoax.' The teen told us why she wrote it, saying: ' A few months ago Anthony asked me why I wanted to share my story, and I couldn't really give a good answer so I wanted to explain to him why I was doing it.' 'Don't be ashamed of your story. It will inspire others.' This quote lingered in my mind as my posture was consciously congruent to the hard back of my chair. The air was stale. All eyes were on me. My father's eyes wanted me to lie. At that moment, I had the moral backbone of an eclair. Why was I here? I didn't personally know Anthony Weiner. I felt myself hover over my own body. I was watching myself from above. I was not the same girl that I was when I walked into the hotel. Who was I becoming? Did I just sell my soul to the devil at fifteen? We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war's a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that we'd all be millionaires and movie Gods. But we won't. And I'm learning that fact as my lips move. Fear blocked every rational thought. After leaving the hotel, I attempted to justify my every action. It wasn't a difficult task. Anthony continues to make the same mistake and expects a different result each time, he needs to learn his lesson. His wife is already leaving him, what I have done will not tear him apart. He fell in love with something and is letting it kill him. He needs to let go. The list continued to grow. Afterwards, I began to cry. I felt physically ill. I made the decision to not go to school the next day, I felt guilty, guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain- it's roots run too deep into private and long- standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you. I messaged Anthony. He was trying to play victim... AGAIN! He treats me like I'm an invalid. I never call him out. I am used to his manipulative techniques, I know them very well. I used them long before he tried them on me. I see myself in him. I continue to talk to men online. My parents were not surprised that I contacted him. My dad started rattling off all the other occupations of these other guys.. First it was the teacher.. Yada, yada, yada.. They asked me when I would ever stop this kind of behavior. Why did Anthony and I do these ridiculous things? The only difference was that I didn't have to send out a press release every time that I did something like this. I was losing my soul. If you're losing your soul & you know it, then you still have a soul to lose. 'Apology': Why did I message you? I saw that your direct messages were open. I thought you had fallen off the face of the earth. I assumed you would have deleted your twitter for your wife's sake. I had watched a video of you that same night. I was studying you- for a book of course.You were my Hannibal Lecter. I wanted to know what made you tick. As we chatted, I pretended to not know EVERYTHING about you. I didn't want to appear suspicious. Why did you message me? I asked you the other day, you didn't return the question. You never do. You don't care enough about other people. 'It had been my job to get into Anthony's brain, but after nine months, I realized he didn't know a thing about me. I approached him at our post-campaign party and asked, 'Do you know I'm a single mom?' I wanted acknowledgment of what my family and I had sacrificed. He didn't know. 'You must feel good about yourself, accomplishing all of this,' he said, missing my point. Then the conversation turned back to him: 'I'm 50 years old, and I need to find a new career.' I smiled, same old Anthony. I said good night, and I haven't seen him since.' ( Provenz, Jessica. 'I Was Anthony Weiner's Longest-Serving Campaign Staffer. This Is What His Mayoral Run Was Really Like.' Daily Intelligencer. N.p., 2016. Web. 08 Sept. 2016. ) It doesn't just stop here, you did this with me on a numerous amount of occasions. You didn't inspect the emails to my teacher and my father. I made two fake emails. I used a ten minute mail, and created a Gmail. You believed me. I talked to you about committing suicide. You didn't try to stop me. I confided in you. I told you about older men taking advantage of me. You called me a liar. I offered proof. You rejected. It's like you don't want to know the answer to things. I believe that you don't go to therapy for that reason. Why do you continue to sext? Is it an addiction? Is it something psychological? Your brother was addicted to drugs. Does addiction run in your family? I can't fully grasp why I do it. I know that it's nice to feel worshipped. Sydney listed you as one of her heroes. You took advantage of her young, naive mind. She was infatuated with you.You should be glad that I am one of the most disensitized teenagers. I don't think I could ever been in love with someone I met over the internet. I did, however, enjoy listening to your podcasts, watching interviews, C-Span, etc. Talking to you helped me write my book about you. I was obsessed with you, the way one obsesses over a character in a book . One day you're going to mess with the wrong teenager, that has the wrong set of parents. Do yourself a favor and try to prevent that. It doesn't matter that you sext. It matters that you sext women you don't know. You tell me that you're in enormous pain (not sure if you're being honest, or playing victim), you read books such as 'So You've been publicly shamed'. It seems as if you have let these scandals consume you. Why do you let these women brand you with scandals. You WEAR your scandal. You were great at trying to change the world around you, why not try to change yourself?? You were a pleasant guy to talk to when you meditated. We fall in love with things, and we let it kill us. You don't have to do that. You're married to sexting and your wife is married to Clinton. If HRC jumped off of a bridge, your wife would be chasing after her, clutching Hillary's purse and jumping with her. Your image is going to affect your son, even Hugh Hefner has children. If you and your wife are truly being sincere about being dedicated to your son's best interest, pay attention to him. Don't photograph him as you sext. Don't give HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON ALL OF YOUR ATTENTION! You're ruining his life before it has even begun. STOP MANIPULATING PEOPLE!!!! You asked me to lie to my teacher, my father, Sydney Leathers, and anyone that asked about this story. It's sick. You only care about yourself. You play victim ALL OF THE TIME. You attempted to make me feel bad about telling my teacher. You pretended that you were my friend. You said 'I trusted you.I skyped you. I told you that my dad was in the hospital. I sent you pictures of my son.' yada, yada, yada. How many women have seen pictures of your kid??? Every woman in your life? STOP MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR YOUR SCANDALS. It's not their fault you make the same mistakes. I am worried about you. You are messaging anyone that flirts with you online. I am 15 years old. You got catfished by a dude! It will only get worse. It's time to retire. I want you to know that I'm not releasing the story for money. I am doing this to teach you a lesson. I want you to get help. I don't care if you hate me. I don't hate you, I care about you very much. I think this story will help you become a better person. I hope at least. I am also worried about myself. I talk with a lot of men online. I am fifteen years old! I catfish people, including you. I think it's time that I retire too. I think that by releasing this story I am teaching myself a lesson as well. I need to get help. I hate myself. I am trying to make this story into something positive. In order for a flashlight to work properly it requires a battery. The battery requires a negative and a positive, the negative is always larger.. It doesn't have to be that way. Sorry, I'm not sorry. I wish you the best!
At one point, when Weiner questions them talking, the girl says she could give him '100 good reasons as to why we should keep talking' | – Anthony Weiner's sexting wrecked his political career, his comeback attempt, his media career, and his marriage—and now even his freedom could be at stake. The AP reports that the former congressman's alleged online relationship with a 15-year-old girl is being investigated by authorities in New York and in North Carolina, where the girl lives. A spokeswoman for the US attorney's office in North Carolina says they've "begun investigative efforts," and sources tell CNN that prosecutors in New York have already subpoenaed the 52-year-old's phone records and other communication. An FBI task force in New York is also looking into the matter, a law enforcement source says. According to the Daily Mail, which first reported Weiner's communication with the underage girl, Weiner's explicit messages included one where he told the high school sophomore he would "make her limp for a week." The girl says Weiner—who allegedly called himself "T Dog" this time instead of "Carlos Danger"—asked her to undress and touch herself, and the New York Daily News notes that encouraging a child under 17 to "engage in a sexual performance" can carry a 15-year sentence in New York. Weiner has admitted communicating with the girl and demonstrating "terrible judgment" online, but he also claims to have been "the subject of a hoax." |
Police secure an area during a police raid in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of Brussels, Belgium on Friday, March 18, 2016. Two French police officials have told The Associated Press that Salah Abdeslam,... (Associated Press)
BRUSSELS (AP) — The main fugitive from Islamic extremist attacks in Paris in November, Salah Abdeslam, has been arrested in Belgium's capital after four months at large, French police officials said Friday.
The officials told The Associated Press that he was arrested Friday in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek.
Both officials are in contact with people involved in the operation and spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing operation.
Abdeslam, 26, was among the attackers who killed 130 people at a rock concert, the national stadium and cafes on Nov. 13 in Paris.
In addition to Abdeslam, the whereabouts of two Paris attack suspects remains unknown, including fellow Molenbeek resident Mohamed Abrini and a man known under the alias of Soufiane Kayal.
Friday's caputure of Abdeslam comes after Belgian authorities say they found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier this week in another Brussels neighborhood.
In that raid, a man believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam — Mohamed Belkaid — was shot dead, Belgian prosecutors say. But two men escaped from the apartment, one of whom appears to have been Abdeslam.
Federal prosecutor Eric Van der Sypt said it was possible Abdeslam had spent "days, weeks or months," in the apartment.
Abdeslam fled Paris after the Nov. 13 attacks. Most of the Paris attackers died that night, including Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. Brahim Abdeslam was buried in the area Thursday.
Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, a childhood friend of suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is believed to have driven a group of gunmen who took part.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which Belgian nationals played key roles.
On Tuesday, a joint team of Belgian and French police showed up to search a residence in the Forest area of Brussels in connection with the Paris investigation, and were unexpectedly fired upon by at least two people inside. Four officers were slightly wounded.
An occupant of the residence was shot dead by a police sniper as he prepared to open fire on police from a window. Police identified him as Belkaid, 35, an Algerian national living illegally in Belgium.
A Kalashnikov assault rifle was found by his body, as well as a book on Salafism, an ultraconservative strain of Islam. Elsewhere in the apartment, police found an Islamic State banner as well as 11 Kalashnikov loaders and a large quantity of ammunition, the prosecutor said.
Belgian authorities initially said Belkaid had no known background in radical Islamic activities. But Friday afternoon, prosecutors issued a statement saying he was "most probably" an accomplice of Abdeslam who had been using a fake Belgian ID card in the name of Samir Bouzid.
A man using that ID card was one of the two men seen with Abdeslam in a rental car on the Hungarian-Austrian border in September.
Four days after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, the same false ID card was used to transfer 750 euros ($847) to Hasna Ait Boulahcen, Abaaoud's niece. Both Ait Boulahcen and Abaaoud died afterward in a police siege.
Abdeslam slipped through a police dragnet to return to Brussels after the bloodbath in Paris, and though the target of an international manhunt, has not been found since.
In January, Belgian authorities said one of his fingerprints was found alongside homemade suicide bomb belts at an apartment in another area of Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said it wasn't known whether he had been at the address in the Schaerbeek district before or after the Paris attacks, or how long he had spent there.
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Raf Casert in Brussels and Raphael Satter and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. ||||| The most wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks has been "caught alive" after being wounded in a Brussels shootout, say police.
The Belgian asylum minister Theo Francken declared, "We got him", referring to 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man.
Abdeslam suffered leg injuries before being arrested, during a major police operation in the Molenbeek suburb.
Television footage showed armed security forces dragging a man wearing a hooded top out of a building and to a car.
At least 10 shots were heard, grenades launched and police helicopters hovered overhead, while fire engines waited in the street.
A suspect is dragged into a car after a raid in Molenbeek
Footage showed masked, black-clad security forces training their weapons towards upper windows of an apartment block.
White smoke could be seen rising above the building, as police with snarling dogs drove crowds in the streets back away from the scene.
Play video "Suspect Held Outside Brussels Flat" Video: Suspect Held Outside Brussels Flat
Events As They Unfold: Live Blog
About three hours after Abdeslam's arrest, two blasts were heard, before a further suspect - who was still holed up - was detained.
In all, Abdeslam was one of five people arrested in the series of raids, which came after a tip-off to police.
Two of the suspects, including Abdeslam, were injured.
Three of those arrested are being held on suspicion of sheltering Abdeslam and an accomplice.
Play video "Watch: Explosions At Terror Raid" Video: Watch: Explosions At Terror Raid
French president Francois Hollande and Belgian PM Charles Michel left a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on migration amid news of the raid.
Later, the pair held a joint news conference in Brussels where Mr Hollande said France would ask for Abdeslam's extradition.
The French leader said it was clear that the Paris attackers had links to Syria and Islamic State and the terror threat remained high.
The shootout comes after Belgian authorities said that fingerprints in a Brussels apartment raided earlier this week belonged to Abdeslam.
A man shot dead in that raid is believed to have been an accomplice of Abdeslam, Belgian prosecutors said on Friday.
Play video "Terror Standoff In Brussels" Video: Terror Standoff In Brussels
Sky's foreign affairs editor Sam Kiley said that Abdeslam could prove to be "a goldmine of intelligence".
Survivors of the attack at the Bataclan venue in Paris reacted to news of the arrest this evening.
Lydia Berkennou said: "I don’t know why, but deep down in my heart, I knew one of them was him.
"I knew because I didn’t think he would’ve managed to go back to Syria … I knew he was hiding somewhere."
Back in November it was reported that Abdeslam had reportedly returned to Brussels with a suicide vest.
Play video "Ambulances Leave Scene In Brussels" Video: Ambulances Leave Scene In Brussels
A police source had told The Sunday Times of fears "there is a walking bomb" in the Belgian capital.
The source said Abdeslam may have become "trapped and desperate" since fleeing the bloodshed which killed 130 people.
After the Paris attacks, reports emerged of a row between Abdeslam and his brother Brahim, on the night before the massacre.
One of their friends told a French documentary he heard one of the brothers telling the other that he was "not going" without money.
"The other one said: 'No, you’re going!'
1 / 8 Gallery: Gallery: Paris Attacks Fugitive Captured Alive In Belgium The most wanted fugitive from November's Paris attacks has been captured
"He said to him: 'If I don't have any dosh, I’m not budging. Without dosh I’m not going'," the friend told the documentary.
It is unclear whether they were fighting about going to Paris.
Brahim, 31, eventually blew himself up outside a cafe, injuring 15 people, during the co-ordinated attacks.
Abdeslam was also filmed outside a cafe on the night of the massacre, pointing his gun at two women hiding under outside tables.
The women can be seen running for safety after Abdeslam's gun does not go off.
Play video "How Paris Attacks Unfolded" Video: How Paris Attacks Unfolded
Terror expert Dr David Lowe told Sky News: "These people are not working on their own - we are looking at terror cells in operations
"You have to be very very careful before you make the move … you want to gather as much evidence as possible.
"We’re talking about people who are quite willing to use firearms or explosive devices so … it’s a dangerous situation to have." ||||| (CNN) After a four-month search for Europe's most-wanted fugitive, Paris terror attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was captured Friday, Belgian officials said.
Abdeslam was wounded in a gunbattle with authorities in an anti-terror raid in the Brussels' suburb of Molenbeek. Four other people were arrested.
A man named Monir Ahmed Alaaj -- also known as Amine Choukri -- also was wounded and hospitalized, prosecutors said.
Belgian federal prosecutor's office spokesman Eric Van der Sypt said the others detained included three members of a family who helped hide Abdeslam.
Earlier, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters that Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French citizen, and another person were wounded in the raid. Abdeslam had a minor leg wound, Van der Sypt announced.
French President Francois Hollande said Paris prosecutors will urgently request the extradition of Abdeslam. Hollande told reporters he is confident Abdeslam will be sent to France for trial.
"I know the Belgian authorities will respond quickly and favorably to our request for extradition," Hollande said.
Officials said as of Friday night no more suspects were in the building where the raid took place.
After the news broke, many others joined in with laudatory messages, including Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, where Abdeslam allegedly took part in the carnage that left 130 dead
"Congratulations to the police on the arrest of Salah Abdeslam," Hidalgo tweeted.
Lieve Reynebeau, who works on the street where Abdeslam was captured, said she heard loud noises and then looked out to see police all around the scene. She managed to leave the area like others -- "all of us safe" -- by foot.
A photo posted by @lievetxu on Mar 18, 2016 at 9:06am PDT
Armed and heavily protected police, with helmets and shields, converged on the area. Three explosions were heard there later Friday, CNN French affiliate BFMTV reported, though it wasn't clear if those were controlled blasts or part of a continuing operation.
And gunshots rang out shortly after 7 p.m. in the same area.
Police continued to conduct operations in Molenbeek into Saturday morning.
Molenbeek focus of 'foreign fighter problem'
Molenbeek, an impoverished Brussels suburb, has a reputation as a hotbed for jihadism . Several members of its large, predominantly Muslim population -- many of whom are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from North Africa -- have been linked to terror plots and attacks.
Last fall, Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens cited Molenbeek as a place where more needs to be done to address what he called Belgium's "foreign fighter problem."
And in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks, authorities conducted raids there and detained numerous individuals. One was Mohammed Abdeslam, the brother of the wanted man captured Friday, who was taken into custody and later released.
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Mohammed Abdeslam told Belgian state broadcaster RTBF that he thinks Salah at the "last minute ... decided to reconsider" carrying out an attack himself November 13 -- ones that ended, in the other cases, with the assailants dead.
One of those who did follow through was another brother, Ibrahim Abdeslam, the suicide bomber who detonated explosives outside a cafe on Paris' Boulevard Voltaire.
1 killed in Tuesday raid
Earlier Friday, the Belgian federal prosecutor's office revealed that the 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam's fingerprints and DNA were found in a Brussels apartment raided three days earlier. One person was killed and two people escaped that operation, according to authorities.
The man killed by a special forces sniper was Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who used the name Samir Bouzid , and who is believed to have directed the Paris attackers via calls from Belgium, according to the prosecutor's office.
Belkaid is believed to have helped Abdeslam travel prior to the attacks and transferred money to a female cousin of Paris ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud following the attack, the Belgian senior counter-terrorism official told CNN in January.
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Authorities believe Abdeslam was using the apartment as a hideout following the Paris attacks, according to the Belgian counter-terrorism official.
His possible escape spurred an intense manhunt in a country already on guard after last fall's attacks in the French capital.
Van der Sypt noted earlier this week -- prior to Friday's raid -- that authorities had searched more than 100 houses and arrested 58 people as part of the post-Paris probe. Another 23 people have been arrested "in linked investigations," he said then.
Suspect thought to have dropped off Paris bomber
Investigators think Salah Abdeslam may have been the driver of a black Renault Clio that dropped off three suicide bombers near the Stade de France, one of the attack sites near Paris. They also believe he had worn a suicide belt found on a Paris street after the attacks.
JUST WATCHED A father explains Paris tragedy to his son Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH A father explains Paris tragedy to his son 03:16
He is believed to have called friends to take him to Belgium after the attacks. They passed through police checkpoints, but Abdeslam had not yet been identified as a suspect and they were allowed to continue on their way.
Surveillance video emerged of him and another man at a gas station near the Belgian border the day after the attacks.
He has eluded authorities ever since.
In January, authorities found traces of explosives and Abdeslam's fingerprints in another Brussels apartment. | – Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris terror attacks and Europe's most wanted man, was captured alive Friday during a raid in Brussels, Belgian counterterrorism sources tell CNN and the AP. The 26-year-old was believed to be hiding out in a Brussels apartment since the Nov. 13 attacks, and a raid on that apartment earlier this week turned up Abdeslam's fingerprints and DNA. But two people escaped that raid, apparently including Abdeslam. (One person, an Algerian also believed to have been involved in the Paris attacks via calls from Belgium, was killed in that raid.) Friday's raid reportedly involved a shootout that ended with Abdeslam being brought into custody. Abdeslam is a brother of one of the suicide attackers in Paris, and he is believed to have driven three suicide bombers to one of the attack sites. "We got him," Belgium's asylum minister said about Abdeslam Friday, per Sky News. |
Attorney J.W. Carney put his arm around Owen Labrie, who wept when the verdict was announced.
CONCORD, N.H. — Former St. Paul’s School student Owen Labrie was acquitted Friday of raping a 15-year-old girl in a secluded room on the campus in May of last year, but was found guilty on lesser sexual-assault charges involving a minor — a split verdict that left both teenagers in tears.
After about eight hours of deliberations, the jury of nine men and three women determined that Labrie had sex with the girl, then a freshman at the Concord boarding school, but that prosecutors had failed to prove he had acted without her consent, as she had asserted.
Labrie could face a sentence that includes several years in jail — a maximum of seven years on a computer enticement conviction, which is a felony, and as much as a year each on the four misdemeanors. Sentencing was set for Oct. 29.
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In addition, Labrie, who was a straight-A student, will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, a prosecutor said afterward.
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In the emotional close to the two-week trial, Labrie burst into tears at the word guilty, and later shook his head in disbelief. Behind him in the courtroom, his mother buried her head in her hands.
The teenage girl wept in her mother’s arms nearby. In a statement, the girl and her family said the convictions delivered “a measure of justice” for victims of sexual violence.
“While he was not convicted on all charges, Owen Labrie was held accountable in some way by a jury of his peers for crimes he committed against our daughter,” a family spokeswoman read to a throng of reporters outside the courthouse. “There is no joy in this outcome, however, as our daughter can never get back what she has lost.”
Labrie left the courthouse without comment, but his lawyer, J.W Carney Jr., said Labrie was devastated.
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“Owen’s future is forever changed,” Carney said, likening the conviction to a brand that “will stay with him the rest of his life.”
The trial revealed the sexual culture at the highly selective 159-year-old boarding school, whose notable alumni include Secretary of State John F. Kerry and “Doonesbury’’ creator Garry Trudeau. Annual tuition exceeds $50,000, although many students, like Labrie, receive scholarships.
In often-crude testimony, jurors heard how Labrie and his friends sought to “slay” — a slang term for having sex — as many girls as they could, using their status on campus to woo underclassmen in a rite known as the “senior salute.”
In its statement, the girl’s family said they still felt betrayed that the school “allowed and fostered a toxic culture that left our daughter and other students at risk to sexual violence.”
“We trusted the school to protect her and it failed us,” they said.
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The school, in its own statement, did not respond directly to complaints that it had failed to curb such behavior, but it praised the girl for her resolve.
‘’
Electronic messages read during trial indicated that for months, Labrie had a crush on the younger student, a sister of a classmate, before inviting her to meet that night. He brought a blanket and a condom to a secluded mechanical room.
Their stories diverged from that point. The girl tearfully testified that Labrie had sex with her over her multiple objections, ignoring her efforts to keep her bra and underwear on.
Labrie described a playful, consensual encounter in which he decided against having sex after a moment of “divine inspiration.”
Jurors found Labrie guilty of three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault, endangering a child, and using computer services to lure a minor, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.
The sexual-assault charges would commonly be referred to as statutory rape, which is typically a felony. In this case, however, they were misdemeanors because, the indictment read, the difference in age between Labrie and the girl was four years or less.
Carney, meanwhile, said the jury concluded the sexual encounter was mutual and that the convictions for misdemeanor assaults were based on the girl’s age.
“One teenager was found guilty of having consensual sex with another teenager,” he said.
Carney described the computer-enticement charge as “overreaching” and indicated he may appeal. He said the law, which applies to juvenile victims younger than 16, was not meant to apply to teenagers making social plans.
Carney said Labrie’s comments to several friends that he had sex with the girl were the “most damning” evidence against him. Labrie, in his testimony this week, said he lied about what happened in order to show off.
“If he knew then what would result, he would have told his friends the truth,” Carney said.
Carney said he will seek probation with “serious conditions.” Prosecutors declined to specify what sentence they will recommend until a review is conducted before a hearing slated for late October.
Labrie will remain free on $15,000 bail, although prosecutor Catherine Ruffle urged higher bail, saying Labrie could flee now that he has been convicted.
“The circumstances have changed,” she said.
Prosecutors credited the teenage girl for her courage during the trial, and said the convictions “send a message” that victims of sexual assault can find justice.
“It’s a testament to the courage of the young woman,” said Scott W. Murray, Merrimack County attorney. Murray said his office was satisfied with the convictions, and that they “vindicate the victim.”
St. Paul’s School also lauded the girl, whose wrenching testimony was a centerpiece of the trial.
In a statement released after the verdict, Michael Hirschfeld, rector at the Episcopal school, commended the former student’s “remarkable moral courage and strength.”
“Her resolve and unwavering commitment to the truth have been inspiring to us and to many outside our school community,” he wrote. “We can only hope that time will bring some measure of healing and comfort to both her and her family.”
After the verdict, Labrie, whose acceptance to Harvard was rescinded, rested his head on the table and later stared at the ceiling. Sitting behind him, his mother called out to him that she loved him, and he turned to say he loved her, too.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he said, blinking back tears.
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @globepete ||||| Concord, New Hampshire (CNN) A New Hampshire jury on Friday convicted Owen Labrie of five counts -- including one felony -- in connection with the sexual assault of another student at a prestigious boarding school, but it acquitted him of more serious charges.
Labrie, 19, a former student at the elite St. Paul's School, appeared shaken as the verdict was read, at one point nodding his head and reaching for a tissue to wipe tears.
At the time of the assault, the accuser was 15 and Labrie was an 18-year-old senior.
In the end, the jury did not appear to believe the former prep school student's claim that there was no intercourse, but it also seemed to dismiss his accuser's testimony that it was against her will, CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin said.
Labrie was convicted of a felony charge and four misdemeanors: the most serious count being the use of an online service or the Internet to seduce, solicit or entice a child under age 16 in order to a commit sexual assault. He also was convicted of three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault and child endangerment.
At his October 29 sentencing, Labrie faces a maximum sentence of 11 years. Labrie, who will have to register for inclusion on the sex offender list, was released on bail under a 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew.
He was acquitted of the more serious counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault -- punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison -- as well as simple assault, a misdemeanor.
There were no winners in the case, Hostin said.
"In New Hampshire, forcible rape -- the requirement to have force -- is not an issue," she said. "It's only consent. And so the jury clearly did not believe that she did not consent and that's why we have the felonies tossed out. Let's be clear, those were the most important charges for this prosecution."
Labrie's conviction, however, ensures that he's added to the sex offender registry, Hostin said.
"That's a problem with these sex cases," she said. "We have to look at them a little bit differently because no does mean no, and no is not necessarily a word, 'no' can be an action. Our sex laws really need to evolve."
The jury, made up of nine men and three women, deliberated for 7½ hours.
"In essence, what happened as a result of this trial is one teenager was found guilty of having consensual sex with another teenager," Labrie's lawyer, J.W. Carney, said after the hearing.
He said the internet-related charge was actually intended to prosecute people who disguise their age and try to lure unsuspecting children into sexual encounters, not people like his client.
"I believe that this computer statute was never intended for kids getting together consensually at the high school they both attend," he said. "It's overreaching."
The victim's family said: "A measure of justice has been served for victims of sexual violence. While he was not convicted on all charges, Owen Labrie was held accountable in some way by a jury of his peers for crimes he committed against our daughter."
"This conviction requires him to take ownership for his actions and gives him the opportunity to reflect upon the harm he has caused. There is no joy in this outcome, however, as our daughter can never get back what she has lost nor can St. Paul's School ever be our community again."
In the statement, the family said it felt "betrayed that St. Paul's School allowed and fostered a toxic culture that left our daughter and other students at risk to sexual violence. We trusted the school to protect her and it failed us."
St. Paul's Rector Michael G. Hirschfeld, in a statement, commended the "remarkable moral courage and strength demonstrated by the young woman who has suffered through this nightmare."
"Her resolve and unwavering commitment to the truth have been inspiring to us and to many outside our School community. We can only hope that time will bring some measure of healing and comfort to both her and her family. The entire St. Paul's School community has been deeply affected by this incident. It is our responsibility to ensure that our students live and learn together in a community that is built on respect, caring, and support for one another. Anything short of that cannot and will not be accepted."
On Wednesday, Labrie -- with his accuser watching in the courtroom -- took the stand and described the encounter last year as consensual. He said the two of them sneaked into an attic room in a St. Paul's School academic building a few days before graduation and together spread a flannel blanket Labrie had brought with him.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Joseph Cherniske told the jury that the defendant carefully planned out a sexual assault and viewed the taking of the girl's virginity as a source of pride.
"It wasn't the school's fault," he said, rebutting the defense argument that St. Paul's encouraged a tradition known as the "Senior Salute" in which seniors sought to have sexual encounters with younger students.
Carney accused St. Paul's of allowing the "Senior Salute" to flourish.
"The idea that you would wink at a tradition that 'Senior Salute' represents is shocking," he said, denying that his client sexually penetrated the girl.
"It damages children and in this case it damaged both (the accuser) and Owen," he said. "When you saw the culture of St. Paul's, it was one that encouraged, I submit, the concept of 'Senior Salute.' In fact, it was so revered on the campus it became a tradition."
In a statement to the "St. Paul's School Community," Hirschfeld and James M. Waterbury, president of the school board, denied that the "Senior Salute" was a tradition at the 159-year-old prep school.
"The phrase 'senior salute' describes a wide range of behaviors," the statement said. "It was never understood to include the conduct engaged in by Owen Labrie. That behavior was never condoned by the School, and we took action when it surfaced."
The statement said Labrie was banned from the school and his rector's award was rescinded. In addition, the student handbook was revised to "state more explicitly that participation in any 'game' of sexual conquest by any name ... would be grounds for expulsion."
On Wednesday, Labrie testified that sweatshirts, shirts and later pants were removed but the two kept their underwear on.
When a defense attorney asked about their demeanor, Labrie testified they were both giggling and smiling and that the girl held him in an affectionate way.
"I thought she was having a great time," he said.
Labrie, 18 at the time, said he may have gotten carried away at times, leading to bruises she reported on her breasts. They were both aroused, he said, so he went to put a condom on, but he stopped himself.
"It wouldn't have been a good move to have sex with this girl," he told the court. "It would not have been a good choice for me to make."
The liaison awkwardly ended after a few more brief kisses, and Labrie hurried to a choir concert, he said.
Her testimony
The accuser, now 16, testified last week that Labrie penetrated her with his fingers before raping her.
"I was raped!" she said when a defense attorney suggested she had sent conflicting signals to the defendant.
The defense depicted Labrie as a great student, on a full scholarship, who wanted to attend Harvard, take divinity classes and perhaps become a minister.
The prosecution repeatedly questioned him about telling friends after the encounter that he had sex with the girl.
He was bragging and lying, Labrie told the court.
He also said for the first time that his boxers were damp and he may have ejaculated on them before he put on a condom. He didn't tell police about it, he said, because their questions focused on whether the two had sex.
"This was a very difficult case because of Owen's own statements to his friends," defense lawyer Carney said after the trial. "I think the critical evidence was not the testimony of the complainant, it was the testimony of Owen given when he was talking to his friends and acting like a teenager who didn't want to say he had been unsuccessful in his 'Senior Salute.' "
State criminalist Katie Swango said semen and sperm were found on the young woman's underwear. Further testing of sperm cells found on the underwear were inconclusive. However, some of the biological material found on the underwear matched Labrie's DNA, she said.
JUST WATCHED Key DNA evidence presented in prep school rape trial Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Key DNA evidence presented in prep school rape trial 03:16
Another state criminalist, Kevin McMahon, said he examined a swab from the accuser's cervix and found no evidence of sperm. | – The man accused of raping a 15-year-old girl while they were students at a prestigious New Hampshire boarding school was found guilty of misdemeanor sexual assault but acquitted of more serious felony charges today, the Boston Globe reports. The victim claims Owen Labrie, 18 at the time, forced sexual intercourse on her—ignoring her pleas to stop and fighting to remove her underwear—in the attic of a St. Paul's School building in May 2014. In his defense, Labrie, who attended a choir concert following the attack, says the two never had intercourse—he says he started putting a condom on before deciding he didn't want to have sex with the victim—and any sexual contact was consensual, CNN reports. He said it seemed like the victim was "having a great time." During the two-week trial, Labrie's friends testified he bragged about having sex with the victim, and prosecutors claimed Labrie and his friends were competing to see who could "slay" the most girls before graduation, the Globe reports. CNN states the defense attempted to put blame on St. Paul's itself for encouraging a tradition known as "senior salute," in which seniors attempt to have sexual interactions with underclassmen before commencement. The defense claims the school is "failing" its students by tolerating senior salute, which it said harmed both its client and the victim. In addition to misdemeanor sexual assault, the jury found Labrie guilty of using a computer to lure a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. He was acquitted of felony rape. |
Story highlights Trump has been consumed by negative comments about the size of the crowd at his inauguration
Aerial photos have indicated that Obama's first inauguration attracted a larger crowd
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump, angered over a National Park Service retweet comparing his inaugural crowd size to Barack Obama's in 2009, called the acting director of the National Park Service on Saturday to complain, two sources with knowledge of the call told CNN.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also confirmed the call took place.
Trump called Michael T. Reynolds, acting director of the National Park Service, to express anger over the fact the National Park Service's official Twitter account retweeted a message that negatively compared the crowd sizes at the two inaugurations.
Sanders said the call proves Trump "is so engaged, he is so involved and when he sees a problem, he takes action to fix it."
"If he sees an issue, he is going to take action and do something to fix it," Sanders said.
Read More ||||| A view of the crowd at the U.S. Capitol ahead of the inauguration of President Trump on Jan. 20. (Bill O’Leary /The Washington Post)
On the morning after Donald Trump’s inauguration, acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds received an extraordinary summons: The new president wanted to talk to him.
In a Saturday phone call, Trump personally ordered Reynolds to produce additional photographs of the previous day’s crowds on the Mall, according to three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation. The president believed that the photos might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average.
Trump also expressed anger over a retweet sent from the agency’s account, in which side-by-side photographs showed far fewer people at his swearing-in than had shown up to see Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
According to one account, Reynolds had been contacted by the White House and given a phone number to call. When he dialed it, he was told to hold for the president.
For Trump, who sees himself and his achievements in superlative terms, the inauguration’s crowd size has been a source of grievance that he appears unable to put behind him. It is a measure of his fixation on the issue that he would devote part of his first morning in office to it — and that he would take out his frustrations on an acting Park Service director.
(The Washington Post)
Word rapidly spread through the agency and Washington. The individuals who informed The Washington Post about the call did so on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the conversation.
Neither Reynolds nor the Park Service would talk about it.
“The National Park Service does not comment on internal conversations among administration officials,” agency spokesman Thomas Crosson said.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the call simply demonstrated that Trump’s management style is to be “so accessible, and constantly in touch.”
“He’s not somebody who sits around and waits. He takes action and gets things done,” Sanders said. “That’s one of the reasons that he is president today, and Hillary Clinton isn’t.”
On Saturday, the same day Trump spoke with Reynolds, the new president used an appearance at CIA headquarters to deliver a blistering attack on the media for reporting that large swaths of the Mall were nearly empty during the event.
“It’s a lie,” Trump said. “We caught [the media]. We caught them in a beauty.”
1 of 109 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The scene in Washington on Inauguration Day View Photos Trump supporters and protesters gather in the capital as a new presidency begins. Caption Trump supporters and protesters gather in the capital as a new presidency begins. Jan. 20, 2017 Keilaun Wilson of Columbia, S.C., sells T-shirts to Trump supporters leaving parties. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“It looked like a million, a million and a half people,” Trump said, vastly inflating what the available evidence suggested.
[Federal agencies ordered to restrict their communications]
Later that day, White House press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated Trump’s complaints about media coverage of the crowd in a tongue-lashing from the lectern of the briefing room.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said.
The Park Service does not release crowd estimates. Experts, however, have estimated that the 2017 turnout was no more than a third the size of Obama’s eight years earlier.
Reynolds was taken aback by Trump’s request, but he did secure some additional aerial photographs and forwarded them to the White House through normal channels in the Interior Department, the people who notified The Post said. The photos, however, did not prove Trump’s contention that the crowd size was upward of 1 million.
Reynolds, who had served as the Park Service’s deputy director of operations for six months before assuming the post of acting director, is a third-generation employee who has worked there for more than 30 years. As deputy director, he oversaw the Park Service’s $2.8 billion budget and more than 22,000 employees.
In the days since Trump’s election, the Park Service has become an unlikely protagonist in a battle between the new president and some career government employees.
The trouble began late Friday, when the agency’s official Twitter account retweeted two messages that could be perceived as critical of the new administration: the one comparing the relative crowd size for Trump’s inauguration to that of Obama’s 2009 swearing-in, and another that noted policy pages that had been removed from the White House’s website.
That prompted an “urgent directive” to Interior employees that they “shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice,” which was lifted early Saturday morning. Crosson then apologized on Twitter for “mistaken RTs from our account.”
On Tuesday, the Badlands National Park’s Twitter account became a social-media sensation when it posted four tweets in a row about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the threats posed by climate change.
Those tweets were then deleted. An NPS official later explained that Badlands NPS officials learned they were posted by a former employee who still had access to the account, and decided to remove them.
[Interior Department reactivates Twitter accounts after shutdown following inauguration]
Spicer told reporters this week that White House officials had not dictated any agency to impose new restrictions on public communications and that some federal officials, such as those at the Park Service, were not in compliance with their own department’s policies.
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to press the argument that the media has given a misleading account of the crowds that attended his inauguration.
“I had a massive amount of people here,” the president told ABC News anchor David Muir in an interview Wednesday. “They were showing pictures that were very unflattering, as unflattering — from certain angles — that were taken early and lots of other things.”
As he guided Muir through the West Wing, Trump paused at a photo on the wall, taken from behind him as he delivered his inaugural address: “Here’s a picture of the event. Here’s a picture of the crowd. Now, the audience was the biggest ever, but this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.”
Brady Dennis and Lisa Rein contributed to this report. | – President Trump may not have had the biggest inauguration crowd in history, but he may have made a bigger fuss about media coverage of it than any of his predecessors. Sources tell the Washington Post and CNN that on Saturday morning—the first morning of his presidency—Trump contacted Michael T. Reynolds, the National Park Service's acting director, to demand more photos of the crowd on the National Mall. Reynolds, who has worked for the service for 30 years, was "taken aback" by the request, but he sent some aerial photos to Trump, according to the Post's sources. The photos did not, however, provide proof of Trump's claim that more than a million people had gathered to watch his inauguration. Reynolds and the NPS have declined to comment, but insiders say Trump also expressed anger over an NPS tweet comparing his crowd to Obama's, which apparently led to an order for all Interior Department accounts to stop tweeting. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump contacted the NPS. She said the call demonstrated the president is "so accessible, and constantly in touch." "He's not somebody who sits around and waits. He takes action and gets things done," she said. "That's one of the reasons that he is president today, and Hillary Clinton isn't." (Trump was still talking about the size of his inaugural crowd on Wednesday, when he gave his first interview as president.) |
A seriously ill woman denied a medical abortion has had a successful cesarean section to deliver a baby that doctors have given little chance of surviving, El Salvador's Health Ministry announced late Monday.
The 22-year-old woman, known only as Beatriz for privacy reasons, underwent the operation in the afternoon after 27 weeks of pregnancy, the ministry said. Her baby girl was born without a brain.
"No one can say how long she will live," Morena Herrera of the Feminist Collective for Local Development told The Associated Press. "It was painful to see the little creature. That's what the grandmother told us, and the doctors confirmed it."
The country's Supreme Court last week prohibited an abortion for Beatriz, who suffers from lupus and kidney failure and whose lawyers said the pregnancy was threatening her life. Her plight drew international attention and a ruling from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights that El Salvador should protect her life and help her end the pregnancy.
The Health Ministry stepped in late last week after the ruling and said it would allow the C-section because the pregnancy was already at 26 weeks and the country's strict abortion laws were no longer at play. Ultrasound images had indicated her fetus was developing with only a brain stem.
The Health Ministry can determine what is most medically sound for a mother versus the unborn baby and was lauded internationally for working to save the woman's life.
Doctors at the Maternity Hospital had been preparing to perform the C-section at the slightest danger signs to save Beatriz's life, said Maria Isabel Rodriguez of the health ministry.
The woman was recovering under the close watch of doctors late Monday.
El Salvador's laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman's health is at risk. Beatriz and any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would have faced arrest and criminal charges.
A majority of judges on the high court rejected the appeal by Beatriz's lawyers, saying physical and psychological exams by the government-run Institute of Legal Medicine found that her diseases were under control and that she could continue the pregnancy.
Just as the Health Ministry was resolving the case, the Inter-American Court issued its ruling, but it no longer applied in the case.
Abortion opponents said the case was being used to press for legalized abortion in El Salvador, which has some of the toughest abortion laws in Latin America, along with Chile, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Suriname. ||||| SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - The pregnant woman at the centre of an abortion controversy in El Salvador had her malformed foetus delivered on Monday by Caesarean section to save her life and avoid breaking the law, although the baby did not survive.
El Salvador's Health Ministry said doctors attending the woman, who uses the name "Beatriz" to protect her identity, performed a Caesarean to remove the foetus, thereby avoiding an abortion, which is illegal in the country.
The Central American country banned all types of abortion in 1999, but Beatriz's foetus had a serious condition known as anencephaly, which results in only partial brain development. Such a foetus has little or no chance of surviving after birth.
Health Minister Maria Isabel Rodriguez said the operation took place about 2 p.m. (2000 GMT) and that Beatriz, who had been 27 weeks pregnant, was in stable condition.
"She's in good hands, being looked after well," she told Reuters. "I expect things to go well over the next few hours."
Shortly afterward, Rodriguez said that Beatriz's baby daughter died about five hours after the operation.
Beatriz, 22, suffers from lupus and kidney problems, which posed a serious threat to her own health.
The operation followed a non-binding resolution on Thursday by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that called on El Salvador to take action to save Beatriz's life after the country's courts had denied her an abortion.
El Salvador's Supreme Court rejected Beatriz's request for an abortion on the grounds it breached the constitution, which it said protects life from the moment of conception.
The Caesarean delivery provided El Salvador with a way out of the legal wrangle.
Morena Herrera, a spokeswoman for the abortion rights group Colectivo Feminista, said that although Beatriz could have been spared unnecessary suffering, her life had been saved.
Claudia Handal, a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group Red Familia, said the rights of all had been respected.
"We're very happy because as we said from the beginning, it wasn't necessary to perform an abortion, the point was to respect the baby's life and to give Beatriz the care and the right to health that she deserved," Handal told Reuters.
The case has drawn attention to abortion in El Salvador and attitudes toward the procedure in predominantly Roman Catholic Latin America. Some countries such as Colombia are relaxing their rules in order to permit abortions in cases of rape.
(Editing by Dave Graham and Peter Cooney) ||||| A seriously ill woman denied a medical abortion has had a caesarean section to save her life and avoid breaking the law, although the baby did not survive, El Salvador's health ministry announced late on Monday.
The 22-year-old woman, known only as Beatriz for privacy reasons, underwent the operation in the afternoon after 27 weeks of pregnancy, the ministry said. Her baby girl was born without a brain.
Health minister María Isabel Rodriguez said the operation took place about 2pm local time and that Beatriz was in a stable condition.
"She's in good hands, being looked after well," she told Reuters. "I expect things to go well over the next few hours."
Shortly afterward, Rodriguez said that Beatriz's baby daughter died about five hours after the operation.
The country's supreme court last week prohibited an abortion for Beatriz, who suffers from lupus and kidney failure and whose lawyers said the pregnancy was threatening her life.
Her plight drew international attention and a ruling from the Inter-American court on human rights that El Salvador should protect her life and help her end the pregnancy.
The health ministry stepped in late last week after the ruling and said it would allow the C-section because the pregnancy was already at 26 weeks and the country's strict abortion laws were no longer applicable. Ultrasound images had indicated her foetus was developing with only a brain stem.
Doctors at the maternity hospital had been preparing to perform the C-section at the slightest sign of danger to save Beatriz's life, said Rodriguez.
El Salvador's laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman's health is at risk. Beatriz and any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would have faced arrest and criminal charges.
A majority of judges at the high court rejected the appeal by Beatriz's lawyers, saying physical and psychological exams by the government-run Institute of Legal Medicine found that her diseases were under control and that she could continue the pregnancy.
Just as the health ministry was resolving the case, the inter-American court issued its ruling, but it no longer applied in the case.
Abortion opponents said the case was being used to press for legalised abortion in El Salvador, which has some of the toughest abortion laws in Latin America, along with Chile, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Suriname.
Claudia Handal, a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group Red Familia, said the rights of all had been respected.
"We're very happy because as we said from the beginning, it wasn't necessary to perform an abortion, the point was to respect the baby's life and to give Beatriz the care and the right to health that she deserved," Handal told Reuters. | – After being denied an abortion despite serious health concerns, a Salvadoran woman known only as Beatriz has undergone a cesarean section to save her life, the AP reports. The baby girl was born without a brain 27 weeks into the pregnancy and died five hours later, the Guardian reports. El Salvador's health ministry was able to circumvent its strict anti-abortion laws and allow the C-section because the pregnancy had passed the 26-week mark. Beatriz, who had suffered from lupus and kidney failure, is now in stable condition, says the health minister. "She's in good hands, being looked after well." A rep for an abortion rights group says she faced unnecessary suffering, reports Reuters. Last week, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled that the abortion should be allowed, but that ruling came as El Salvador settled the issue with the C-section plan. |
A fugitive who picked her Fort Myers Beach murder victim based on their similar appearances is now suspected of using that woman's identity to try to avoid arrest.
Lois Riess, 56, was already wanted for killing her husband, David Reiss, in Blooming Prairie, Minn. in March.
On Monday, while hiding out in Florida, she shot and killed 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson at Marina Village at Snug Harbor on Old San Carlos Boulevard, deputies said.
Riess targeted Hutchinson because the two looked alike, according to investigators. After killing her, Riess stole Hutchinson's cash, credit cards, ID, and car and is believed to be using her identity.
Authorities are now searching for Hutchinson's white 2005 Acura TL with Florida license plate Y37TAA in a nationwide search.
Riess is possibly hiding out in Texas, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
A warrant for her arrest has been issued for murder, grand theft auto, and grand theft of personal identification in Lee County.
RELATED: Homicide investigation underway on Fort Myers Beach
Minnesota's Dodge County Sheriff's Office also issued a warrant for her arrest for second-degree murder on Thursday.
Dodge County investigators said David Riess was supposed to go on a fishing trip, and when he didn't show up a friend contacted police. Riess was found shot multiple times in his home in Blooming Prairie.
Lois Riess is also accused of taking $10,000 from her husband's business account and transferring the money into his personal account. Authorities said Lois Riess then forged her husband's signature on three checks written from his personal account to herself, totaling $11,000.
© Copyright 2018 WBBH/WZVN (Waterman Broadcasting). All rights reserved. ||||| This undated photo provided by the Dodge County, Minn., Sheriff's Office shows Lois Riess, of Blooming Prairie, Minn., who is being sought in connection with the killing of a Florida woman. Riess is charged... (Associated Press)
This undated photo provided by the Dodge County, Minn., Sheriff's Office shows Lois Riess, of Blooming Prairie, Minn., who is being sought in connection with the killing of a Florida woman. Riess is charged in the shooting death of Pamela Hutchinson of Bradenton, Fla. Authorities don't believe the women... (Associated Press)
This undated photo provided by the Dodge County, Minn., Sheriff's Office shows Lois Riess, of Blooming Prairie, Minn., who is being sought in connection with the killing of a Florida woman. Riess is charged in the shooting death of Pamela Hutchinson of Bradenton, Fla. Authorities don't believe the women... (Associated Press) This undated photo provided by the Dodge County, Minn., Sheriff's Office shows Lois Riess, of Blooming Prairie, Minn., who is being sought in connection with the killing of a Florida woman. Riess is charged... (Associated Press)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota woman who is wanted in connection with her husband's death is now charged with killing a Florida woman who resembled her and stealing the woman's identity as she eluded authorities, officials said Friday.
Lois Riess, 56, of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, has been charged in the shooting death of Pamela Hutchinson, 59, of Bradenton, Florida. Authorities were called to an area of Fort Myers Beach on Monday and found Hutchinson dead, with gunshot wounds.
Authorities aren't aware of any connection between the two women, but they believe Riess shot and killed Hutchinson to assume her identity.
"Ms. Hutchinson's purse was found to be in disarray and all cash, credit cards and identification appeared to be removed," Lee County Undersheriff Carmine Marceno said, adding: "Further investigation revealed that Ms. Hutchinson was targeted by the suspect due to the similarities in their appearance."
Riess is believed to be driving Hutchinson's car, a white Acura TL with Florida license plate Y37TAA. The car has been seen in Louisiana and Corpus Christi, Texas, since Hutchinson died. Riess' 2005 white Cadillac Escalade was found abandoned in a Florida park.
Riess is wanted in Florida for murder, grand theft of a motor vehicle and grand theft and criminal use of personal identification. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
"Riess's mode of operation is to befriend women who resemble her and steal their identity," Marceno said. "U.S. Marshals are actively involved in a national search for this dangerous fugitive. Riess is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached if located."
Riess is also wanted in the March death of her husband, David Riess. Prosecutors are preparing second-degree murder charges in that case. Minnesota's Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose said Friday that authorities believe the same gun was used in both killings.
Anyone who sees Reiss is urged to call 911, and anyone with information on her whereabouts is urged to call the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or Florida authorities.
Riess has been on the run since at least late March, after David Riess's business partner called Dodge County authorities on March 23 to ask them to check on him. The partner said no one at work had seen David Riess in over two weeks.
Authorities found David Riess's body inside his home with multiple gunshots. They couldn't determine how long he had been dead, and investigators could not find his wife.
During the investigation, authorities learned that Lois Riess may have been at Diamond Joe's Casino in Iowa. Authorities from Dodge County, the BCA and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation went to the casino, but Riess had already left. Authorities later learned she was in south Florida.
__
Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti . More of her work at: https://apnews.com/search/amy%20forliti | – Police in two states are looking for a 56-year-old woman accused of a bizarre double slaying. Authorities say that Lois Riess first shot to death her husband in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, last month, reports WBBH. Riess than allegedly fled to Florida, where she was hiding out in Fort Myers Beach. There, police say she killed 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson on Monday solely because Hutchinson bore a resemblance to her, and Riess wanted to assume her identity. Riess allegedly ransacked the woman's apartment and stole her cash, credit cards, and forms of ID. Riess is believed to be on the run again—in Hutchinson's white Acura with Florida plates—and authorities suspect she's on her way to Texas. "Riess's mode of operation is to befriend women who resemble her and steal their identity," says Lee County Undersheriff Carmine Marceno, per the AP. She's considered armed and dangerous. |
It came from outer space, and landed in federal court
Photo: AP Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Ownership of a slice of the Fukang meteorite, smal ler than this 1-ton piece in New York, is in dispute. Ownership of a slice of the Fukang meteorite, smal ler than this 1-ton piece in New York, is in dispute. Photo: AP It came from outer space, and landed in federal court 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A 220-pound rock from outer space has got the earthlings fighting.
It’s not just any rock but the famous Fukang meteorite, a sparkly slab of greenish crystals that is said to be one of the greatest space rocks ever discovered. Exactly who owns it is the subject of a federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco that reads like an Isaac Asimov sci-fi tale.
A Novato man says it’s rightfully his. A Massachusetts couple say they paid the Novato man $425,000 for it and that it’s rightfully theirs.
The Novato man says he canceled the sale when he found out the Massachusetts couple were running a rock museum in Maine. The Massachusetts couple say the Novato man canceled the sale because of seller’s remorse, when he figured he let the $425,000 rock go on the cheap.
Meanwhile, a New York rock broker and two Kansas rock polishers say they’re entitled to a piece of the action, too.
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The tale begins 4 billion years ago, give or take an eon, when the meteorite plummeted to earth and landed in the Gobi Desert of China. In 2000, it was discovered, and pieces of it began to be sold to well-heeled rock hounds, one of whom was Stephan Settgast of Novato, who said he bought a 220-pound slice of it in 2004.
In 2014, court documents say, Settgast agreed to sell the slice to Lawrence Stifler and Mary McFadden of Brookline, Mass., who paid him $425,000 through a New York meteorite middleman.
But after the rock polishers, Keith and Dana Jenkerson of Osawatomie, Kan., who had been hired to spiff up the meteorite for its new owners, said they thought it was worth perhaps $1 million, Settgast decided he wanted his rock back, the Massachusetts couple say.
Settgast went to the Jenkersons’ studio and, while they were away at a rock show, entered the premises and took back the meteorite. It was a clear case of meteorite-napping, said the spurned buyers.
Settgast maintained he was reclaiming the rock because the couple planned to put it on public display at their under-construction museum in Maine. Settgast said that violated the terms of the sale. Stifler and McFadden said a no-museum promise was never part of the deal. They say Settgast has their rock and their money, too.
Settgast sued in federal court in February to invalidate the sale and keep the rock. Stifler and McFadden countersued in March to get their hands on the rock.
Nobody knows what a one-of-a-kind meteorite is worth, according to Settgast’s lawyer, Curt Edmondson.
“It’s not like it’s a Toyota,” he said.
Edmondson denied that Settgast stole back the meteorite or planned to keep the money. He said Settgast had never formally turned over the meteorite, despite being paid for it, and was entitled to take it back because it was still his.
“It’s not like he went to Kansas and jimmied the lock on the back door and put a 220-pound rock under his arm,” Edmondson said.
Court documents suggest one reason the rock polishers valued the rock at $1 million is that they believed they were entitled to 5 percent of its value for their services. They were seeking $50,000 for spiffing it up, instead of the $20,000 they had been promised and eventually accepted.
Rock hounds say rare meteorites of the Fukang variety, known as pallasites, are beautiful and valuable but not particularly scientifically significant.
“This kind of meteorite has been studied and has little new to tell us,” said Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. “It came from the core-mantle boundary of an asteroid. We have studied lots of meteorites of this kind. It doesn’t need to be in a museum. If it was a Martian meteorite, that would be different.”
Settgast, Stifler and McFadden did not return calls seeking comment. A federal judge has scheduled a hearing on the dispute for June 29.
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF ||||| This "Fukang meteorite" in question is at the heart of a battle between Stephan Settgast of Marin County, Calif. and the Maine Mineral And Gem Museum in Maine. Date unknown.
A gold-flecked meteorite that has traveled from the asteroid belt near Mars to the mountains of Fukang, China, and finally Marin County, California, is at the center of a vicious ownership battle being waged in federal court.
The 227-pound iron "pallasite" meteorite is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. First discovered in Fukang, China about 15 years ago, it could be worth as much as $1 million, according to Stephen Settgast, an asteroid collecter who claims he's the rightful owner.
He sued a museum in Maine and a New York meteorite expert in February alleging breach of contract over the sale of the meteorite. But they have now filed a counterclaim, alleging that Settgast, who is staying in Marin County, is behind a "blatant theft of a unique and precious meteorite."
The countersuit alleges Settgast sold the meteorite for $425,000, then engaged in an "outrageous act of seller’s remorse" by stealing back the space rock for himself.
"This isn't a typical theft," said Wayne Minckley, undersheriff in Miami County, Kansas, in a Skype interview with NBC Bay Area.
A sheriff is involved in the out-of-this-world case because authorities aren’t yet ready to decide who stole the meteorite until the suit is settled.
"It’s a complicated case in the mere fact that the individual who sold it to the folks in Maine is our suspect in the theft," Minckley said.
Settgast would not speak on the record. But his attorney, Curt Edmonson of the Oregon firm, Slinde Nelson Stanford, said this is a simple business dispute gone awry.
"Civil suits don’t use terms like ‘steal.' That’s a criminal term," he said. "We didn’t go over the top in our complaint, but they certainly went over the top in their counterclaims."
But Settgast's story is full of holes, according to the founders of the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum — Lawrence Stifler and Mary McFadden of Brookline, Massachusetts — and meteorite expert Darryl Pitt, of New York. All three filed the counterclaim on March 29.
In the suit, Jeff Valle, the trio's Los Angeles attorney, laid out his clients’ argument like this: Noted for his ability to spot beauty and value in meteorites, Pitt suggested to the museum founders that they buy the meteorite in question. Stifler and McFadden agreed to pay Settgast $425,000 to feature the "Fukang meteorite" in their museum, which is not yet open.
In August 2014, Pitt brokered the deal with Settgast. The final of three payments was made in February 2015, the counterclaim contends. According to his website biography, Pitt is the purveyor of the "world's foremost collection of aesthetic iron meteorites," which he describes as "extraterrestrial objects d'art."
Valle and Pitt have declined to be interviewed.
Keith Jenkerson, of KD Meteorites, gives a thumbs up after nearly completing his work on the "Fukang meteorite." Date unknown.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Maine Mineral And Gem Museum
After the money was paid, Pitt and the museum founders waited for the meteorite to be cleaned up and prepared by Kansas duo Keith and Dana Jenkerson, of KD Meteorites. The couple's website twinkles with brightly lit stars and boasts they've been "chasing meteorites since 1990s."
The Jenkersons took almost two years to stabilize, restore and prepare the "Fukang meteorite," the countersuit alleges, and on Jan. 10, Keith Jenkerson told Pitt this was "one of the most awesome meteorites to ever be displayed." He guessed the spiffed-up space rock to now be worth $1 million. But Pitt and the museum founders said this higher price is wildly inflated, the counterclaim states.
Less than two weeks later, the meteorite was reported stolen.
Pitt and the museum founders allege that Settgast, whose lawyer described him as a "world-renowned" fossil hunter who also has a ranch in Montana, went into the Jenkersons' lab on Jan. 23 and stole back the meteorite. Settgast's attorneys claim a condition of the sale was that the meteorite couldn't be shown in a public museum, a point the museum founders' say is simply not true, the counterclaim contends.
How Settgast would have gotten the meteorite out of the lab, at the Jenkersons' home in Osawatomie, Kansas, without detection, and then to Marin County, where Settgast has been living with a relative, has not been clearly explained.
Minckley, from the sheriff’s office, reiterated that it’s his understanding Settgast stole the meteorite from the lab. He said there was no surveillance video to document what might have happened. His office, however, is reserving a final determination on whether a crime was committed, and by whom, until a federal judge makes a ruling on who really owns the meteorite.
As for why the sheriff’s department is letting the civil case play out first, Edmonson said: "That tells you a little bit about how they feel about the criminal action. If they don’t feel there is enough evidence for the claim of theft, then it’s not there."
A hearing is set for June to be heard by Oakland-based U.S District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong. | – The question of who owns a particular chunk of a famed meteorite is heading to federal court with the filing of a lawsuit and countersuit, SF Gate reports. It all started billions of years ago with the Fukang meteorite slammed into China's Gobi Desert. Fast-forward to the year 2000: when the meteorite was discovered and collectors began acquiring slices of it. Among them was Stephan Settgast, currently of California, who says he bought his 220-pound piece in 2004. In 2014, according to court documents, Settgast agreed to sell it to Lawrence Stifler and Mary McFadden of Massachusetts for $425,000. And then it all went bad. Settgast says the couple violated the conditions of the sale by planning to show it in their rock museum. They say not showing the meteorite was never a condition of the sale and suggest that Settgast got "seller's remorse" after learning he might have undervalued it. And, they allege, that remorse manifested in what they call the "outrageous act" of Settgast stealing back the rock from the studio of a pair of Kansas rock polishers who spent two years preparing the stone for the buyers, per NBC News. After all, the rock polishers did tell Settgast the meteorite could fetch up to $1 million (which, documents point out, would bump up their 5% fee to $50,000). How the alleged theft of the gold-flecked meteorite actually went down is unclear. Settgast filed a suit in February alleging breach of contract. Stifler, McFadden, and Darryl Pitt, the meteorite expert who brokered the deal, countersued last month. Local authorities in Kansas say they are going to hang back on pursuing Settgast for theft until a federal judge determines who owns the meteorite. "This isn't a typical theft," Miami County undersheriff tells NBC. (No one noticed this meteor the size of a large living room plowing into the earth.) |
House of Cards is folding: The Netflix drama’s forthcoming sixth season will be the series’ last, TVLine has learned.
News of the political drama’s impending swan song comes less than 24 hours after actor Anthony Rapp accused House of Cards leading man Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance at him when he was 14. Multiple sources confirm, however, that the decision to bring HoC to an end was made months ago and was not in response to the allegations. (A Netlix rep confirms this.)
Last June, TVLine asked House of Cards co-showrunners Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese about an end date, to which they responded, “It’s not entirely up to us,” before acknowledging that the show is in “new terrain” creatively.
At the conclusion of Season 5, Spacey’s Francis handed the Commander in Chief reins over to wife/first lady Claire (Robin Wright) and exited the political arena (at least the official one) altogether. “It’s a significant pivot at the end of Season 5,” Gibson noted. “We’re saying that there’s power beyond the power. That’s a radical thing for the show to say that there’s power beyond the presidency. That’s been the be-all and end-all for five seasons. I think there’s definitely more to dig into there.”
Production on House of Cards‘ sixth and final season began earlier this month despite the fact that Netflix never officially confirmed that it had even ordered a Season 6. (The streamer has always played by its own unique rules when it comes to announcing renewals.)
Regarding Rapp’s allegations, Spacey released a statement late Sunday saying he was “beyond horrified to hear [Rapp’s] story,” adding, “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Spacey also took the opportunity to set the record straight about his sexuality. “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man,” he said. The Oscar winner’s statement was met with a swift backlash from the gay community, with GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis lamenting, “Coming-out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault.”
House of Cards creator Beau Willimon, who stepped away from the series at the end of Season 4, released a statement of his own via Twitter early Monday.
My statement regarding Anthony Rapp and Kevin Spacey: pic.twitter.com/8z6zotHWE5 — Beau Willimon (@BeauWillimon) October 30, 2017
House of Cards‘ sixth and final season will premiere in 2018. | – After actor Anthony Rapp made his explosive accusation that Kevin Spacey attempted to have a sexual encounter with him when Rapp was just 14, Spacey quickly apologized. But that apology itself has been under withering criticism all day, with the main complaint being that Spacey also used his note to come out as gay and, as critics see it, deflect attention from Rapp's allegation. Meanwhile, the upcoming sixth season of House and Cards is still in the works, but it will be the last, a decision that TVLine reports is unrelated to the new controversy. Here's a look at developments: |
For years, cognitive scientist Lars Chittka felt a bit eclipsed by his colleagues at Queen Mary University of London. Their studies of apes, crows, and parrots were constantly revealing how smart these animals were. He worked on bees, and at the time, almost everyone assumed that the insects acted on instinct, not intelligence. "So there was a challenge for me: Could we get our small-brained bees to solve tasks that would impress a bird cognition researcher?" he recalls. Now, it seems he has succeeded at last.
Chittka’s team has shown that bumble bees can not only learn to pull a string to retrieve a reward, but they can also learn this trick from other bees, even though they have no experience with such a task in nature. The study “successfully challenges the notion that 'big brains' are necessary" for new skills to spread, says Christian Rutz, an evolutionary ecologist who studies bird cognition at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom.
Many researchers have used string pulling to assess the smarts of animals, particularly birds and apes. So Chittka and his colleagues set up a low clear plastic table barely tall enough to lay three flat artificial blue flowers underneath. Each flower contained a well of sugar water in the center and had a string attached that extended beyond the table's boundaries. The only way the bumble bee could get the sugar water was to pull the flower out from under the table by tugging on the string.
Video of Hints of tool use, culture seen in bumblebees
The team put 110 bumble bees, one at a time, next to the table to see what they would do. Some tugged at the strings and gave up, but two actually kept at it until they retrieved the sugar water. In another series of experiments, the researchers trained the bees by first placing the flower next to the bee and then moving it ever farther under the table. More than half of the 40 bees tested learned what to do, Chittka and his colleagues report this week in PLOS Biology .
Next, the researchers placed untrained bees behind a clear plastic wall so they could see the other bees retrieving the sugar water. More than 60% of the insects that watched knew to pull the string when it was their turn. In another experiment, scientists put bees that knew how to pull the string back into their colony and a majority of the colony's workers picked up string pulling by watching one trained bee do it when it left the colony in search of food. The bees usually learned this trick after watching the trained bee five times, and sometimes even after one observation. Even after the trained bee died, string pulling continued to spread among the colony’s younger workers.
But pulling a string does not quite qualify as tool use, because it would have to be an independent object that wasn’t attached to the flower in the first place. And other invertebrates have shown they can use tools: Digger wasps pick up small stones and use them to pack down their burrow entrances, for example. But that two bees figured out how to pull the string with no help and further, that other bees could pick up on that ability was “most impressive,” says Ivo Jacobs, a cognitive zoologist at Lund University in Sweden who was not involved with the work. “The fact that bumble bees could learn to do so shows their unexpected behavioral flexibility.”
The findings could also hint at a rudimentary form of culture in bees, Jacobs says. With their ability to learn where others are, find out what they are doing, and experimenting on their own, the insects demonstrated that they can pass on knowledge—a key requirement of culture, normally considered to be a more complex phenomena, he explains. “It's interesting to see that the bees have this capacity."
Rutz is impressed, too, because the work involved almost 300 bees and clearly documented how string pulling spread from bee to bee in multiple colonies. Cognitive studies of vertebrates like birds and monkeys typically involve about an order of magnitude fewer individuals, he notes.
With additional experiments, Chittka hopes to figure out the neural basis of these “smarts” in the bumble bees. He cautions that the insects might not be all that intelligent, but that instead, “these results may mean that culturelike phenomena might actually be based on relatively simple mechanisms.” ||||| Conversely, after 48 h of extensive training (20 instances of string pulling), 11 of the 15 foragers solved the task without feedback from the moving blue flower ( S5 Video ). Latency to obtaining the reward (147 ± 23.44 s) was much higher than for normal blue flower training (22.1 ± 1.5 s; t test: t25 = 6.25, p < 0.0001). The subjects’ success differs significantly from their performance when they were relatively inexperienced (McNemar Test, χ 2 1 = 7.111, p = 0.008), thus indicating that the majority of highly experienced individuals may no longer require visual feedback to perform the necessary sequence of motor actions. In fact, experienced bees may not need the blue flower at all and perhaps have associated the string with the reward.
The success of bees learning such a behavior raises the question about the mechanisms by which the demonstrators learned to pull the string. One possibility is that demonstrators are stimulated to repeat the specific sequence of actions (moving the string with their legs) that induces the conditioned stimulus (i.e., the blue flower positioned under the table) to move a little closer. If so, we would expect bees not to move the string with their legs and fail at the task if the colored target stimulus is not present. To test this prediction, we challenged bees (Colony 2) to access the reward when a string was attached to only a colorless inverted Eppendorf cap containing sucrose solution (Materials and Methods) immediately after their initial stepwise training and then again after extensive experience with blue flowers and strings. Without a colored stimulus, only 2 of 15 bees tested obtained the reward after their initial training. We thus hypothesized that relatively inexperienced bees rely on visual feedback of the colored target moving closer while the string is being pulled. To explore this further, we examined the video material for the unsuccessful bees to see if they would attempt to pull the strings and then abort this action when visual feedback was not forthcoming. However, none of the unsuccessful bees demonstrated even an aborted pulling action on the colorless flower’s string. This suggests that most relatively inexperienced bees require the presence of the blue flower to even begin attempting to string pull. (However, there is also evidence for the importance of visual feedback during pulling from an experiment with coiled strings; see section The Mechanisms of Observational Learning in String Pulling.)
In comparison, we were able to train 23 of 40 individuals (Colony 1) through a stepwise training procedure to successfully pull a string to obtain reward ( Fig 1B horizontal black bar in column 4, S1 – S4 Videos). The stepwise training consisted of four steps of incremental difficulty within which flowers with strings were placed at progressively more distant positions under the transparent table (Steps 1–4, Fig 1A and 1B ). On average, successful training for an individual bee took 309 ± 18 min. Gaining access to the reward in the final step required grasping the string with the forelegs and/or mandibles and pulling it closer ( S4 Video ). The mean time required (latency) to obtain sucrose decreased significantly as a function of experience within each of the four successive training phases (Friedman test, Step 1: χ 2 4 = 59.1, p = <0.001; Step 2: χ 2 4 = 53.1, p = <0.001; Step 3: χ 2 4 = 52.1, p = <0.001; Step 4: χ 2 10 = 92.3, p < 0.001; Fig 1C and 1D ). Eight, three, one, and five individuals gave up at Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively, either because they ceased foraging activity or had irregular foraging activity (n = 11), or because they failed to obtain the reward (n = 6). Three of these successfully trained bees were later used as demonstrators in the social learning experiment.
(A) Arena set up for the observation of string pulling. (B) The various testing procedures. Tests 1 and 2 were identical and consisted of giving 5 min to individual bees to solve the string pulling task. After having been trained to forage from blue artificial flowers, bees were tested a first time (Test 1). Then, demonstrators were trained (see Fig 1 ) and used to display string pulling (two instances, straight strings) during each of five foraging bouts to individual observers (n = 52) placed in a transparent Plexiglas cage. After the observation phase, 25 observers were tested again with the straight-string task (Test 2) and 27 with the coiled-string task. Fifteen different bees observed the flower moving without visible actor so that a forager could then obtain the sucrose solution (“Ghost control”) and, where tested, with the straight-string task subsequently. Untrained bees (n = 25) were also tested a second time with string pulling. (C) Percentage of successful untrained, social, and nonsocial observer bees in Tests 1 and 2. Asterisk: Fisher’s exact test, p ≤ 0.0001. Double S: McNemar test, χ 2 1 = 13.067, p < 0.001. (D) Mean ± s.e. (s) latency in accessing the reward in untrained and observer bees. Observers’ latency was not different from that of the two “innovators” (Mann–Whitney U test, U 15 = 6, p = 0.205), (see S1 Data ).
(A) Stepwise string pulling training protocol. Successive steps: Step 0, pretraining on blue artificial flowers (note that all bees were trained on this step); Step 1, 50% of the flower covered by the transparent table; Step 2, 75% of the flower covered; Steps 3 and 4, 100% of the flower covered. The flower was positioned at the edge in Step 3 and 2 cm under the table in Step 4. (B) Percentage of successful bees in Steps 1 to 4 (n = 40, 32, 29, and 28, respectively). Black horizontal lines within bars indicate the percentage of bees of the original 40. (C) and (D), mean ± standard error (s.e.) (line and shaded area, s) latency to obtain the reward in Steps 1–3 and 4. (C) Mean latency for the five foraging bouts of Steps 1–3. Data points, from left to right, in (D) indicate the latency to reward in Step 4 for the bout with first occurrence of string pulling and the ten foraging bouts that followed. Bees needed 6.17 ± 1.2 foraging bouts before displaying string pulling in Step 4 (see S1 Data ).
To test bees’ capacity to learn the technique of string pulling, we first challenged untrained individuals with a stepwise training procedure (Materials and Methods; S1 – S4 Videos). We presented individual bees with three blue artificial flowers with a string attached to each flower and placed under a small transparent Plexiglas table (Materials and Methods). After learning to associate the reward with artificial flowers in a flight arena (Step 0, Fig 1A ), but prior to string pulling training, none of the bees from the eight colonies in which individuals were tested singly (n = 291) could solve the string pulling task on their first 5-min attempt (Test 1, Fig 2B ). Naïve to the string task but attracted to the artificial flowers, these bees tried to reach the reward from the top of the table through the Plexiglas.
We gave 50 individuals (Colony 1) the opportunity to solve the string pulling task spontaneously after having learnt that blue flowers are rewarding when they were openly accessible during pretraining (for a 5-min observation period). None of these individuals solved the task. When given a second 5-min opportunity, two of 25 untrained bees succeeded in obtaining the reward ( S6 Video ). However, they were more than ten times slower at obtaining the reward than experienced string pullers (22.1 ± 1.5 s, mean ± standard error [s.e.], Mann–Whitney U test, U 23 < 0.001, p = 0.024), requiring a relatively long latency of 245 ± 3.53 s. These two bees were exceptionally explorative, trying a wide variety of methods, and solved the task in several attempts by moving the string accidently while trying to reach the flower under the table (see S6 Video and legend for more information). This shows clearly that string pulling can be learned individually by some bumblebees, but this may be an exceptionally rare ability. Across experiments (see below), 291 naïve individuals were tested once, and a total 110 were tested twice, but no further “innovators” were found. In one experiment (the transmission chain experiment below, in which control colonies were not seeded with a skilled demonstrator), bees were given extensive opportunities. After 5 d of foraging, with a maximum number of 18 foraging bouts per individual, no single bee learned to pull the string. Of the 165 bees tested in this experiment in total, nine individuals were tested more than 10 times, and 26 more than 5 times, but all were invariably unsuccessful. Thus, solving a string pulling task spontaneously is a relatively rare occurrence in bumblebees and might either reflect an unusually explorative “personality” in these individuals or simple “luck” in the process of random exploration.
Finally, because smaller bees might be able to reach further under the table than larger bees, we examined whether body size influenced success in solving the task (Colony 1). Thorax width (as a proxy for body size) was not different between demonstrators (n = 40), observers (n = 25), and untrained bees (n = 25) (ANOVA, F 69 = 0.728, p = 0.486). Thorax width affected neither demonstrators’ (Student’s t test, t 26 = 0.659, p = 0.516) nor observers’ success rate (Mann–Whitney U test, U 23 = 79, p = 0.846). Similarly, the latency to obtain the reward was not affected by thorax width of demonstrators (Pearson correlation, r 23 = -0.086, p = 0.696) or observers (Pearson correlation, r 15 = 0.375, p = 0.169).
We also wished to disentangle the effects of demonstrator copying and object movement copying in how string pulling was learnt by observation. To this end, we used an experimental “ghost control” ([ 40 ], S8 Video ). We trained 15 nonsocial observers (Colony 3) in exactly the same manner as above with the modification that the flowers were moved without a visible actor: an experimenter pulled the flowers with thin nylon threads attached to the strings while the observers were locked inside the observation chamber (Materials and Methods). Once the string had been pulled, an untrained forager was released into the arena to feed from the now accessible flower. Without direct demonstration of string pulling by a bumblebee forager, none of the observers managed to solve the string pulling task. Nonsocial observers mostly tried to obtain the reward from the top of the table, indicating that the bees need to observe string pulling actions demonstrated by conspecifics to learn the technique. However, because no video material is available to show that observer bees directed their gaze towards the moving flower, it is also possible that in the absence of a conspecific demonstrator, observers simply failed to attend to the movement of the flower.
We explored whether uninformed bees (Colony 1) could learn this novel foraging technique via observation. After pretraining on blue flowers and Test 1 (Materials and Methods), an uninformed observer bee was placed in a transparent chamber ( Fig 2A ) where it could observe a demonstrator solve the string pulling task ten times. These observers (n = 25) were subsequently tested on the string pulling task alone (Test 2, Fig 2B ). In this experiment, observers never interacted directly with demonstrators in the flight arena and had access only to visual social information ( S7 Video ). Sixty percent of the individuals (15 of 25) that had the opportunity to observe a skilled demonstrator managed to pull the string and obtained the reward on the first trial after having observed the demonstration (Test 2, Fig 2C , S6 Video ). These bees, however, were initially almost as slow as the two individuals that solved the tasks without demonstration (181 ± 19 s; Fig 2D ). We speculate that the observers picked up the correct location to access the reward from observing skilled demonstrators but did not learn from them the actual technique of string pulling (further explored in the section beneath about the mechanisms of social learning).
Finally, trial-and-error learning was also evident in the learning process. Because individuals might only learn where to obtain the reward and then learn the string pulling by trial-and-error, observer bees (n = 27, Colony 5) were tested with a coiled-string paradigm where trial-and-error learning of actions causing the rewarding object moving closer is ineffective. After a standard demonstration of string pulling (Materials and Methods), a 14 cm string was attached to the flower and coiled under the table so that initial tugs on the string would provide no visual feedback of the flower moving closer to the bee. Such coiled-string tests have in the past been used to test whether animals can solve a string pulling puzzle by means-end comprehension, without the perceptual feedback of the reward coming closer [ 44 , 45 ]. Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) [ 47 ] and wolves (Canis lupus) [ 48 ] have indeed been shown to solve the task even if the string is coiled. However, none of these observer bees were able to solve this task (n = 27, Fig 2B , S10 Video ), indicating that observers did not glean information about the string pulling technique itself by observing a demonstrator but instead were merely guided to the demonstrator’s previous location (by local enhancement) and the position of the string (stimulus enhancement). The actual act of string pulling relied on individual trial-and-error learning, which in turn necessitates the sensory feedback of tugging on the string, resulting in the target moving closer. We also tested eight experienced individuals (with an experience of more than 20 instances of string pulling) with the coiled-string test; three of these bees succeeded in pulling the coiled string to obtain the reward ( S11 Video ), indicating that highly experienced individuals do not necessarily require the feedback from seeing the flower move closer while they pull the string. In summary, these results suggest that observational learning of the string pulling task does not involve the “understanding” of the task (“insight”) but the combined use of several simple associative mechanisms and trial-and-error learning.
(A) Regions of interest used for the video analysis of bee behaviors (not true to scale): the original region (where the demonstrator pulled a string, solid dark grey), top region (on the table, solid light grey), the two regions where the string could be presented when it was at variance with the location during the observation phase in the stimulus enhancement tests (thin grey stripes on black) and the adjacent regions where no string was presented (thin black stripes on grey). When testing stimulus enhancement, bees were challenged with a string protruding on the opposite side of one of Plexiglas tables or at 90° compared to the location where it was seen during observational conditioning (dotted lines). Regions were all 16 cm 2 (adjacent areas: 8 x 2 cm; top region 4 x 4 cm). (B) Mean ± s.e. (s) time spent by unsuccessful observer (n = 10) and unsuccessful untrained bees in two of the four regions of interest in their first attempt to retrieve the reward (Test 1) the second attempt (Test 2). Light grey: top of table; dark grey: region where string protruded during observation. Asterisk: Friedman test, p < 0.01; letters and figures: post-hoc Tukey test. (C) Percentage of time spent by observer bees in the four regions of interest when the string was protruding in the region where bees had observed demonstrators (left bar, unsuccessful observers, n = 10) or the region of the table where the string protruded when it was incongruent with that seen from the observation chamber (right bar, bees tested for stimulus enhancement, n = 14). The shades in the various regions of the stacked bars correspond to the shades in Fig 3A (see S1 Data ).
To examine the local and stimulus enhancement possibilities, we analyzed the video footage to determine the time bees spent in four different regions of the arena (see Fig 3A , Materials and Methods). In Test 2, unsuccessful observers (n = 10, Colony 1) spent more time in the region where the demonstrator was observed (Friedman test, χ 2 3 = 14.160, p = 0.003, Fig 3B ), and untrained bees (n = 23, Colony 1) spent more time on top of the table closest to the flower (Friedman test, χ 2 3 = 35.162, p < 0.001, Fig 3B ) than in Test 1, indicating that local enhancement played a part in learning. None of the bees managed to obtain the reward when the string protruded in an area incongruent with that seen during demonstration. However, the string itself also played a role. If the string protruded from a different side of the table compared to the location during the observation period, observer bees (Test 2, n = 14, Colony 4; S9 Video ) spent more time exploring the region with the string than the region where the demonstrator had been observed (Mann–Whitney U test, U 22 = 105, p = 0.038, Fig 3C ), indicating that observers had noticed the string during the observation period and were thus attracted to it. In theory, however, these longer dwelling times in the string region might be explained by bees randomly exploring the edges of the table and simply stopping at a region that contains any protruding object. To explore this possibility, we also evaluated bees’ first approach flights after being released from the observation chamber before they had a chance of interacting with the string. If the string was in the same location as during observation, 92% of observers flew straight to the side of the string. When the location of the string was incongruent with demonstrator location, only 28.5% of observers first visited the region where the demonstrator had been observed (where chance expectation is 25%). The choice frequencies for the four sides of the table are significantly different depending on whether the string was in the correct location (Chi-square of fit, χ 2 4 = 206.857, p < 0.0001), indicating that bees were able to see the string from the observation chamber and responded differently when it was presented in an unexpected location. However, there was no appreciable attraction to the string when its location was at variance with that seen from the observation chamber (28.5%). Taken together, these results indicate a strong role for local enhancement (bees were attracted to the location where they had observed a demonstrator) and a subordinate role for stimulus enhancement (bees were attracted to the string when its location was concordant with that during prior observation) [ 25 , 46 ].
What mechanisms were the observers using to copy the behavior? To answer this question, we explored several associative mechanisms: local enhancement [ 30 , 41 , 42 ], whereby observers are attracted to the location of their conspecific; stimulus enhancement [ 30 , 43 ], an attraction to the item handled by the demonstrator; and perceptual feedback [ 44 , 45 ], a form of trial-and-error learning in which action causing movement of the rewarding object towards the animal produces positive feedback for continuing that action. We found that all three associative mechanisms were involved in the learning of the string pulling process.
The Spread of String Pulling in a Transmission Chain Experiment
Can the combination of multiple simple social learning mechanisms mediate the establishment of a culture-like phenomenon (e.g. group-specific behaviors, such as foraging techniques, that are transmitted via social learning and retained in the group over long periods)? We tracked the diffusion of an experimentally introduced string pulling behavior among foragers of test colonies (Colonies 6, 7, 8) to explore the speed of diffusion and also the retention of the technique in the group beyond the demonstration provided by the first knowledgeable individual. To seed the technique, we trained a single demonstrator per colony to pull the string. Subsequently, we allowed pairs of bees to engage with the string pulling task and tracked the diffusion of the technique among the foraging population (Materials and Methods, Fig 4). Pairs of bees were tested in the order in which they arrived in the corridor connecting the hive to the arena; pairs could be any combination of bees regardless of whether they were naïve, the seeded demonstrator, or a successful learner (S12 Video). As a control, foragers of three separate colonies were tested in the same manner without a seeded demonstrator (Colonies 9, 10, 11).
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 4. Cultural diffusion paradigm. Bees were group-trained to feed from blue flowers in the foraging arena. Three bees were trained to pull a string to obtain an artificial flower from under a table where they would get reward (sucrose solution; see Fig 1A). These three demonstrators were placed in colonies 6, 7, and 8 (one each; seeded colonies), and bees that came out of the colony were paired up in order of exit from the hive to forage within the arena and tested with the string pulling task. Each bout was capped at 5 min, and we recorded 150 foraging bouts (150 bee pairs). In colonies 9, 10, and 11 (control colonies), no trained demonstrator was present. 150 foraging bouts were recorded (150 bee pairs) (see S2 Data). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564.g004
After only 150 paired foraging bouts, a large proportion of each of the test colonies’ forager population (Colony 6: n = 25/47, Colony 7: n = 17/29, Colony 8: n = 12/28) learnt to string pull, whereas none of the control colony foragers (Colony 9, 10, 11: n = 51, 58, 57) learnt to pull the string (Fig 5, Materials and Methods, S13–S18 Videos). We conducted additional foraging bouts in two of the tested colonies and found that the technique continued to spread among the foragers for as long as we allowed the spread to progress (Colony 6: 34/47, Colony 8: 18/28, Fig 5, S13 and S15 Videos).
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 5. Diffusion of string pulling in bumblebee colonies. (A–F) Nodes represent individual bees. Lines indicate that two bees interacted at least once. Thickness of lines represent total number of interactions between two individuals—one interaction equals one point line thickness and each interaction increases the line thickness by one point. See top insert for indication of line thickness and number of interactions. Size of nodes indicates number of interactions of that individual bee with any other bee—each interaction increases the size of a node by 15% of the original size (3% of the plot width). See middle insert for indication of node size and interactions. Color represents experience (learning “generation”) of that bee: prior to any experience, nodes are grey. After a bee interacts for the first time in the foraging arena, its node turns white. The “seeded” demonstrator (D1), pretrained to pull a string, is marked yellow and at the twelve o’clock position. Once a bee learns to string pull, its node turns from white to another color: orange for a first-order learner (D2, interacting with the seeded demonstrator and lower-order bees); pink for a second-order learner (D3, interacting with first-order and lower-order bees); blue for a third-order learner (D4, interacting with second-order and lower-order bees). See bottom insert for indication of node color and learning generation. Networks for the experiments (A–C) only show interactions within bouts where at least one bee pulled the string at least once. (A) Network for test colony 6 (bout n = 189). (B) Network for test colony 7 (bout n = 114). (C) Network for test colony 8 (bout n = 249). (D) Network for control colony 9 (bout n = 149). (E) Network for control colony 10 (bout n = 150). (F) Network for control colony 11 (bout n = 150) (see S2 Data). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564.g005
We quantified the behavioral changes in learner bees over the time of the diffusion experiments. We first screened 81 of the total 419 available videos (~20%) of the paired bouts between demonstrators and learners and inventoried the repertoire of behavioral interactions. We listed 11 types of interactions (Table 1), the frequency of which changed with increasing experience of the learners (Fig 6). Behaviors went through a series of steps with increasing competence, which typically followed the following sequence. During an observer bee’s first few bouts, she would spend most of her time flying around the arena, occasionally landing on top of the table (NI, No Interaction) and spend little or no time near the table, strings, or the other bee. She would gradually start to land beside a bee who had already pulled a string for reward, thereby gaining reward without pulling a string (Sc, scrounging). The observer thus learns to associate the other bee with reward and typically begins following her around the table, keeping in close contact as they both walk (Fo, following). After one or more occurrences of scrounging, the observer bee would begin to reach under the table, sometimes extending her proboscis towards the flower, seemingly in an attempt to gain access to the flower without manipulating the string. While moving around the edge of the table and trying to reach under it, the observer bee might accidentally move a string, but make no subsequent effort to continue moving it (AMS, Accidentally Moving String). Often the observer bee would then position herself next to the bee already pulling a string. She would be in direct contact with the string pulling bee throughout the pull, usually not touching the string (A, Attending), although in some instances ineffectively manipulating the string (STA, String Touching while Attending), and ultimately gaining reward through the other bee’s efforts. Eventually, while in direct contact with a more knowledgeable bee, the observer bee would pull the string, but not enough to move the flower close enough to the edge of the table, extract it, and obtain the reward (PA, Pulling Action with demonstrator). In this phase, she would still rely on the efforts by the more experienced bee to obtain the reward (RP, Rewarded Pull). After more experience, the observer bee would attempt to pull the string on her own without interacting with the other bee, for example, while the demonstrator was flying around the arena. On the first few attempts to string pull on their own, the observer bees did not move the flower enough to be able to obtain the reward (PAa, Pulling Action alone). Finally, after few unrewarded attempts, and typically when paired with a less knowledgeable bee, the observer bee would learn to pull the string on her own to the point of extracting the flower from underneath the table and gaining reward (RPa, Rewarded Pulling alone) and become a trained observer.
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 6. Change in learners’ behavioral interactions. Stacked bars represent the proportion of interactions observed as a function of experience (number of paired foraging bouts). Colors indicate behavioral interactions (abbreviations, see Table 1). We evaluated the behavior of 15 randomly selected individuals (5 from each test colony that had been seeded with a trained demonstrator) for these interactions, scrutinizing 174 5-min videos totaling 14.5 h of footage (see S2 Data). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564.g006
These changes in behavior are reflected in the relative frequencies of behavior classes as a function of experience (Fig 6). Whilst nonsocial interactions such as NI and Sc represented more than 55% of the interactions at the onset of the diffusion experiment, they decreased rapidly to 0% over time (Fig 6). In comparison, the percentage of pulling actions displayed by the learners continuously increased with experience from 15% of the interactions at the onset to 60% after 11 bouts. Overall, no major change was observed for the other behavior classes. These results show that learners progressively changed their foraging behaviors from scroungers to competent string pullers.
In test colonies, on average 2 ± 0.06 string pulls were performed per foraging bout and 20 ± 3.9 pulls were displayed per individual over the whole diffusion experiment. Bees needed to be shown 5 ± 0.45 instances of string pulling by an experienced demonstrator before being able to pull the string themselves without demonstration and subsequently demonstrate the technique. Notably, 15 of 104 foragers (Colony 6, 7, 8: n = 10, 3, 2, respectively) picked up the technique very rapidly after only one or two observations. There was a significant variation between tested colonies in the average number of string pulls displayed per bee (Colony 6, 7, 8: n = 13 ± 4.7, 15.4 ± 9.2, 34.5 ± 7.6, respectively; Kruskal–Wallis test, H 2 = 8.790, p = 0.012) and the number of observations necessary for a bee to learn the technique (Colony 6, 7, 8: n = 4.1 ± 0.4, 7.6 ± 1.1, 5.9 ± 0.9, respectively; Kruskal–Wallis test, H 2 = 17.179, p ≤ 0.001). In addition, some bees did not manage to acquire the technique despite having been shown the same number of string pulling by other bees (5.6 ± 0.7; Mann–Whitney test, U 93 = 1075.5, p = 0.261). These results suggest colony and individual variation in social learning ability.
To determine whether experience of the second bee influenced the observer bee’s choice of string to pull, we analyzed the pulling behavior of 25 randomly selected observer bees over the complete sequence of their foraging career during the diffusion experiment (282 paired foraging bouts). We found that observer bees more often pulled the same string as the other bee when paired with a more experienced observer bee or the seeded demonstrator (42 RP instances) than when paired with a less experienced bee (9 RP instances). In contrast, observer bees more often pulled a string alone when paired with a less experienced bee (72 RPa instances) than when paired with a more experienced observer bee or a seeded demonstrator (27 RPa instances).
To test whether bees might cooperate during string pulling, we needed to compare whether experienced bees performed more efficiently when paired with another experienced individual than when foraging alone. Because the diffusion experiment contained only trials with dyads of foragers, the only way to make a direct comparison was to use trials in which an experienced demonstrator was paired with a fully naïve individual that had not shown any pulling action (PA, PAa, RP, or RPa) and thus did not interact or interfere with the skilled forager, who pulled the string singly. Such pairings were compared with instances where both bees were experienced (had already displayed a pulling action). We hypothesized that if cooperation was occurring, strings would be pulled faster and reward obtained quicker in such dyads. However, when paired with an experienced bee, demonstrators (n = 16 randomly chosen individuals) took 2.5 times longer to pull the string and obtain the reward (39.9 ± 9 s) than when the same individual demonstrators were paired with an experienced observer who did not interact or interfere with them (15.6 ± 2.1 s; Wilcoxon test, Z 30 = 3.409, p < 0.001). These results suggest that bees do not cooperate to pull the string but in fact hinder each other’s efforts to some degree.
Of particular interest for culture-like phenomena is the question of whether a socially learnt behavior routine persists in the population for longer than the original knowledgeable individual can serve as a demonstrator, so that former observers can themselves become demonstrators. If this is the case, then group-specific behavior routines can at least potentially be retained over biological generations. Our network analysis indeed indicates that the technique spread across sequential sets of learners, whereby some bees that learnt the technique never interacted with the seeded demonstrator. In fact, despite the death of the seeded demonstrator in one of the test colonies (Colony 6) after 58 paired foraging bouts, the technique continued to spread among foragers. Moreover we found that there were up to four sequential learning “generations” (as opposed to true biological generations) in two of the three colonies (Fig 5). Learners had string pulling demonstrated to them by up to eight different demonstrators (2.1 ± 0.13), and each demonstrator displayed the technique to 5.3 ± 0.93 learners. Overall, seeded demonstrators displayed eight times more string pulling (119.7 ± 26.5) than the other foragers (14.6 ± 3) (Mann–Whitney, U 68 = 4, p = 0.004) and demonstrated the technique to five times more foragers (19 ± 2.8) than the other foragers (4.2 ± 0.7) (Mann–Whitney, U 36 = 2, p = 0.006). This preponderance of the pretrained demonstrators could be a result of higher motivation simply because they obtained reward with every bout, whereas untrained bees often (in the beginning of the experiment) were unrewarded (i.e., unsuccessful until they were paired with a demonstrator or until they learned to pull the string themselves).
To test whether string pulling was diffused socially, we performed network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA). We used the time-based approach described by Hoppitt et al [49]. The Aikake Information Criterion (AIC) was used to determine if string pulling was diffused socially by comparing a social and a nonsocial model for each of the diffusion experiments. We found that for all three experiments, social transmission was more likely than asocial transmission (Table 2).
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 2. Results of network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA). The difference between the fit of the nonsocial model and the fit for the social model is denoted by the change in AIC (ΔAIC). Therefore, positive values indicate a better fit for the social model (p values indicate significance). The social transmission estimate reflects the degree to which social interactions between bees influence the diffusion of string pulling. Positive social transmission estimates that do not cross zero (intervals) indicate significant influence of social interactions. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564.t002
We also analyzed the structure of the social networks using exponential-family random graph modeling [50] and found that for all diffusion experiments as well as the control experiments without a demonstrator bee, the structure of the networks was significantly different from random (see Table 3). This indicates that certain bees were more likely to forage together than other bees. Although this could be interpreted as certain individuals preferentially foraging together, given the open-diffusion paradigm and experimental design (in which bees could not freely distribute themselves in space but were forced through the “bottleneck” of the nest entrance tunnel to the foraging arena), this likely reflects temporal factors such differences in when bees began to forage each day, daily changes in foraging activity across bees, and how long each bee takes to return to foraging from the hive. ||||| Scientists taught bumblebees to pull a string to get a food reward, and then those bees spread the learned technique to others. The groundbreaking study is the first to show that insects have the ability to learn and pass on knowledge and skills. (Reuters)
The bumblebee brain is puny, at least compared with the massive and fatty organ locked in your skull. At about 0.0002 percent the volume of yours, bee brains are close in size to the seeds stuck on a hamburger bun. Thinking about insect brains in terms of size alone, however, is a trap. The intelligence of sesame-brained bugs should not be underestimated.
A study reported in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, for instance, takes bee smarts in a surprising direction: Scientists from the Queen Mary University of London suggest that the “insects possess the essential cognitive elements for cultural transmission,” as they wrote in their new paper. It is possible to teach a single bee a new trick, in other words, and a different bee can learn that behavior from her peer.
That ability is not the only ace found up the clever bee’s sleeves. A recent experiment published in the journal Science, for instance, suggested that bees have their own version of optimism, as The Washington Post reported at the end of September. (Unless they were just buzzed on sugar.) Bees are also capable of an intricate form of communication called a waggle dance, with which they signal the location of nearby food. Every 75 milliseconds a waggle lasts, roughly speaking, indicates to other honeybees that a nectar source is an additional 330 feet further from the colony.
“Bees have some amazing cognitive abilities,” wrote Clint Perry, a behavioral ecologist at Queen Mary University and an author of the paper, in an email to The Washington Post. They can count, he pointed out, at least up to four.
It has long been understood that some animals can teach their peers to perform new tasks. But the most famous examples involve stereotypically brainy critters, like primates or ravens: Japanese macaques show other monkeys how to wash sweet potatoes in streams. A certain group of chimps knows to fish for insects by prodding termite mounds with sticks, nibbled into brushes for maximum scoopage.
[‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes]
In their paper, the researchers demonstrate for the first time that a new skill can pass from bee to bee. To that end, they had to teach bumblebees to do something strange, a task the insects would not know how to perform in nature. The scientists turned to a “coiled-string test,” similar to other tests used previously in animal cognition research.
“We wanted to know whether bees, with a dynamic social structure and the ability to socially learn from each other, might have the basic capacities for cultural transmission of a novel behavior,” Perry said. “And this is what we showed.”
During the test, a bee needed to extract a blue disc, hidden beneath a clear Plexiglas table, by tugging on a string attached to the puck. These bees had an incentive. The blue disc mimicked a flower, to which the scientists added a tasty drop of sugar water in its center.
When left to their own devices, however, zero out of 50 bees could figure out how to pull the disc out from under the table. (Given a second chance, two out of 25 managed to figure it out, but they were sluggish tuggers.)
[As bees vanish, bee heists multiply]
So the scientists trained a batch of bees in several steps. First they familiarized the animals with the flower mimic, leaving it out in the open. The researchers then tucked the disc progressively further under the table, until the only way for the bee to reach the sugar water would be to yank on the disc’s string.
The scientists successfully trained 23 of 40 bees. (It took about 5-and-a-quarter hours per bee.) Of the 23 pulling bees, three were selected as demonstrators. The scientists put an untrained bee in a separate cage, and let her watch the demonstrator. Out of these bees, 15 in 25 figured out how to pull on the string.
[Morning Mix Bees from hive of 800,000 kill Arizona landscaper, injure others]
Once trained bees were allowed to interact with their colonies, knowledge of the string-pulling behavior spread. In two colonies, the researchers recorded the pulling behavior at four degrees of social separation. In other words, bee D learned to pull the string from bee C, who learned from bee B, who learned from bee A.
If that is the case, why don’t we see more honey bees dragging strings around the garden? It is not necessarily that insects lack the intelligence, or their undersized brains, wrote Perry’s colleague and co-author Sylvain Alem in an email to The Post. Instead, “the reason we don’t see string-pulling culture in wild bees and other insects is not lack of ability,” the scientist said, “but lack of opportunity and adequate challenges.”
The takeaway, to hear the scientists tell it, is that “cultural transmission does not require the high cognitive sophistication specific to humans, nor is it a distinctive feature of humans.” Despite our flashcards and our SAT-prep books, we should not feel special in our ability to learn.
[Bee hotels: One way to help native bees]
This post has been updated. | – Ever wondered how tiny a bumble bee's brain is? Imagine a sesame seed clinging to a burger bun, reports the Washington Post—in other words, it's about 0.0002% the volume of a human brain, as calculated by Science. But that doesn't mean you can't teach a bee a new trick, as behavioral ecologist Clint Perry tells the paper: "Bees have some amazing cognitive abilities," including counting up to at least four. And now he and colleagues from Queen Mary University of London are reporting in the journal Plos Biology that bees can not only learn an entirely new skill to get food but also pass on their knowledge, which is one of the basic aspects of culture. In their study, researchers placed blue discs with sugar water beneath a clear plastic table, just out of reach, but affixed a string to each one that, if tugged, would move it within reach. Out of 110 bumble bees individually introduced to the task, some tugged at the strings before eventually quitting, and only two sorted out how to pull on the string to get the sugar water. However, when bees got to watch the ones retrieving the sugar water, more than 60% of them were able to pull the string when it was their turn. One of the researchers tells Science that, as exciting as the findings are, the explanation isn't necessarily that bees are smart, but that "culturelike phenomena might actually be based on relatively simple mechanisms." (One type of bumblebee has nearly gone extinct in 20 years.) |
Secret files exposing evidence of widespread match-fixing by players at the upper level of world tennis can today be revealed by BuzzFeed News and the BBC.
The sport’s governing bodies have been warned repeatedly about a core group of 16 players – all of whom have ranked in the top 50 – but none have faced any sanctions and more than half of them will begin playing at the Australian Open on Monday.
It has been seven years since world tennis authorities were first handed compelling evidence about a network of players suspected of fixing matches at major tournaments including Wimbledon following a landmark investigation, but all of them have been allowed to continue playing.
The investigation into men’s tennis by BuzzFeed News and the BBC is based on a cache of leaked documents from inside the sport – the Fixing Files – as well as an original analysis of the betting activity on 26,000 matches and interviews across three continents with gambling and match-fixing experts, tennis officials, and players.
The files contain detailed evidence of suspected match-fixing orchestrated by gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy, which was uncovered in the landmark 2008 probe, and which authorities subsequently shelved. “They could have got rid of a network of players that would have almost completely cleared the sport up,” said Mark Phillips, one of the investigators. “We gave them everything tied up with a nice pink bow on top and they took no action at all.”
BuzzFeed News began its investigation after devising an algorithm to analyse gambling on professional tennis matches over the past seven years. It identified 15 players who regularly lost matches in which heavily lopsided betting appeared to substantially shift the odds – a red flag for possible match-fixing.
Four players showed particularly unusual patterns, losing almost all of these red-flag matches. Given the bookmakers’ initial odds, the chances that the players would perform that badly were less than 1 in 1,000. (Read more about the analysis here.)
Tennis is the latest sport to be caught up in allegations of corruption following the scandals that have engulfed world football and athletics.
It can today be revealed:
Winners of singles and doubles titles at Grand Slam tournaments are among the core group of 16 players who have repeatedly been reported for losing games when highly suspicious bets have been placed against them.
One top-50 player competing in the Australian Open is suspected of repeatedly fixing his first set.
Players are being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $50,000 or more per fix by corrupt gamblers.
Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches – including at Wimbledon and the French Open.
The names of more than 70 players appear on nine leaked lists of suspected fixers who have been flagged up to the tennis authorities over the past decade without being sanctioned.
Nigel Willerton, who leads the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) set up to enforce fair play following the 2008 investigation, acknowledged that authorities had drawn a line under the evidence uncovered in the 2008 probe. The leaked files show that investigators implicated 28 players in suspected fixing and urged that they face a full disciplinary investigation. But Willerton said that tennis authorities took no action against them.
Players are being targeted in hotel rooms at major tournaments and offered $50,000 or more per fix by corrupt gamblers. ID: 7783665
He said the evidence was shelved because lawyers had advised that a new integrity code introduced in the wake of the investigation could not be enforced retrospectively. “As a result,” he said, “no new investigations into any of the players who were mentioned in the 2008 report were opened.”
Match-fixing has been explicitly outlawed by every previous version of the rules enforced by the game’s governing bodies. Moreover, since the new code took effect, tennis authorities have been warned that at least nine of the players who escaped further investigation have continued to play in suspicious matches.
Willerton insisted that the sport takes “a zero-tolerance approach to all aspects of betting-related corruption” and that “all credible information received by the TIU is analysed, assessed, and investigated by highly experienced former law-enforcement investigators.” And he pointed out that the Tennis Integrity Unit has disciplined 13 male players (all low-ranking) for fixing and banned five for life even though, Willerton said, prosecuting corruption cases is “notoriously difficult”.
“I can assure you that tennis is not treating this lightly,” said Chris Kermode, the president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, which governs the men’s game, last night. “The idea that tennis is not acting appropriately is ludicrous.”
But, as the 2016 Grand Slam season begins on Monday with the Australian Open, former integrity chiefs from within world tennis are breaking ranks to accuse the sport of failing to stamp out match-fixing.
Among them is Ben Gunn, the former police chief who led the review that recommended the formation of the integrity unit after the 2008 probe. He said the authorities had missed a “perfect opportunity” to clean up the sport and instead created a feeble and understaffed integrity unit that ignored key betting evidence. “What they did is a plastic solution which was not effective then and it’s not effective now,” he said.
Richard Ings, the former executive vice president for rules and competition at the Association of Tennis Professionals, said that match-fixing was a “regular thing” in the sport. He said the integrity unit’s response to the problem has been “very disappointing” and it is “far too secretive”.
The 2008 probe was triggered by a notorious match between the world number four, Nikolay Davydenko, a Russian, and the Argentine player Martin Vassallo Arguello, which attracted millions of pounds’ worth of highly suspicious betting triggered by accounts in Moscow.
The tennis authorities announced at the end of the investigation that they had found no evidence of rule-breaking by Vassallo Arguello or Davydenko. But the files reveal that Vassallo Arguello had exchanged 82 text messages at a previous tournament with the suspected ringleader of an Italian gambling syndicate that made hundreds of thousands of pounds betting on his other matches. Inquiries into the Russian gamblers who placed suspicious bets on Davydenko stalled when one threatened violence. These Italian and Russian gambling syndicates and another in Sicily were found to have placed suspicious bets on 72 matches involving the 28 players that the investigators flagged to the authorities.
Weeks after tennis authorities were handed the evidence, Bill Babcock, the head of the International Tennis Federation’s Grand Slam committee, declared that tennis was “healthy” and there was no corruption inside the sport. But the Fixing Files show that allegations of widespread corruption have continued to pour into the integrity unit in the years since.
The whistleblowers from inside world tennis who handed over the Fixing Files have asked to remain anonymous. But Phillips and two other investigators who conducted the probe said the evidence they found was “as strong as any evidence we’ve had” and the authorities “did nothing”.
In all, more than 20 gambling industry officials, international police detectives, and sports integrity experts told BuzzFeed News that world tennis is failing to confront a serious problem with match-fixing. BuzzFeed News and the BBC have chosen not to name the players whose matches have repeatedly been flagged for attracting highly suspicious betting, because without access to phone, bank, or computer records it is not possible to prove a link between the players and the gamblers. The integrity unit has the power to demand all that evidence from any tennis professional, yet many of the individuals whose activity attracted the most serious concern are still playing at a high level. Meanwhile, tennis has grown to a multibillion-dollar global phenomenon.
Today the secret evidence of corruption at the heart of the “gentlemen’s game” can be laid bare for the first time.
Peter Andrews / Reuters Czarek Sokolowski / ASSOCIATED PRESS Nikolay Davydenko of Russia (left) in the 2 August 2007 match against Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina (right) at the Orange Prokom Open ATP tennis tournament in Sopot, Poland. ID: 7783601
In pristine whites, Nikolay Davydenko looked in typically commanding form as he stepped out onto the clay court in Sopot, Poland, to defend his title as reigning champion of the Orange Prokom tournament. It ought to have been an easy victory: Davydenko was the world’s fourth-best tennis player, while his Argentine opponent, Martin Vassallo Arguello, languished far below him at number 87 in the rankings.
The wiry Russian played all his usual penetrating groundstrokes to win the first set and swiftly broke his opponent’s serve in the second. To the fans enjoying Polish kabanos sausages in the stands, play seemed to be progressing exactly as anyone would have expected.
But before the first ball had even been struck at the match on 2 August 2007, warning lights had begun flashing on the monitoring systems at the Betfair gambling exchange in London. Hundreds of thousands of pounds had begun flooding into the market that morning, backing Vassallo Arguello to win. By any objective measure Davydenko was the near-certain victor, but the amount of money stacking up against him was so significant that the odds had tipped to make his opponent the favourite to win.
Even after play began and Davydenko went a set and a break up, still greater sums of money continued crashing in against him. In total, £3.6 million was wagered on the game – more than 10 times the usual volume of cash for a tournament at that level – and much of the money being bet against the Russian was coming in from nine linked accounts registered to users in Moscow. Everything in the rankings and the way play was progressing on court pointed towards a resounding victory for Davydenko, and yet the Russian account holders seemed sure he would lose. What did they know that the bookmakers didn’t?
Davydenko (right) receives treatment on his foot during his second-round match with Vassallo Arguello at the Prokom Open, 2 August 2007. Czarek Sokolowski / ASSOCIATED PRESS ID: 7783612
Alarmed, the head of Betfair’s anti-corruption team in London picked up the phone to Gayle Bradshaw, the executive vice president of the Association of Tennis Professionals, to tell him something deeply suspicious was happening in Sopot. From the ATP’s office in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Bradshaw got straight on the phone to the tournament supervisor in Poland, who rushed down to the courtside to watch the rest of the match. No sooner had he arrived than the contest took a dramatic turn.
Davydenko suddenly began hobbling. He repeatedly requested medical time-outs, complaining of pain in his ankle and then his toe, and he lost the second set to Vassallo Arguello. Three games into the third set, he threw in the towel and announced he was forfeiting the game due to injury.
Immediately after he walked off court, Betfair suspended the market and later announced – for the first time in its history – that all bets placed on the game were void. The market, it said in a statement, “quite clearly wasn’t fair”. It promised to turn over all its betting records to the tennis authorities.
The move caused a global sensation, and Davydenko was engulfed by the first major match-fixing scandal to hit world tennis. From the outset, the Russian insisted he was innocent. “I don’t know how to throw a match,” he told reporters. “I know that if you are in pain and can’t play on, you withdraw.” But the game had been shaken to the core, and the ATP announced it would conduct a full investigation.
Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News ID: 7783605
Betfair and other bookmakers had been warning the ATP of the threat of gambling corruption in tennis for several years before the situation came to a head in Sopot. “This was something that we had been watching build,” recalled Betfair’s co-founder Mark Davies.
Bosses at the betting exchange felt they had to protect honest bettors who could lose huge sums of money if corrupt gamblers were rigging the market. Crisis talks were convened in London.
Six or seven players, including Davydenko and Vassallo Arguello, had repeatedly attracted suspicious betting activity, Davies recalled, and the management committee decided to take a drastic step: They would suspend all bets on those players.
The ATP’s own Richard Ings, who served as the association’s executive vice president for rules and competition until 2005, had compiled a list of 20 players who had been implicated in suspicious matches flagged by bookmakers – including both Davydenko and Vassallo Arguello. “There were consistently matches across the depth and breadth of men’s pro tennis with extremely suspicious shifts in betting odds,” Ings told BuzzFeed News and the BBC. “What became very clear is that, whilst there were lots of matches with suspicious betting patterns, you tended to see the names of the same players cropping up again and again.”
Players were widely rumoured to be “tanking” – deliberately forfeiting matches by not giving their best efforts – when they were tired or carrying minor injuries and wanted to preserve their energy for more important tournaments. Sometimes, it was said, players would carve up the spoils of victory: One would deliberately lose but get to keep the prize money, while the other would win and bag the coveted ranking points. Now, however, the ballooning phenomenon of online gambling meant billions of pounds were being bet each year on tennis, and a tip about a player’s intention to tank a match could yield vast winnings. Prize money at lesser tournaments can be paltry, and a year on the tennis tour can set a player back more than £100,000, making it tempting to cash in on the occasional fix.
“If you were to invent a sport that was tailor-made for match-fixing, the sport that you would invent would be called tennis.” ID: 7783669
Ings recalled that he had talked to a “great many players” about the problem and it became clear that fixing was “a regular thing within the sport”. He said five or so players told him they had been approached and offered sums “in the vicinity of fifty-thousand U.S. dollars to throw a first-round match at a middle-level ATP tournament”.
He began to realise that tennis was particularly vulnerable to corruption because tens of thousands of matches are played each year, with billions of pounds at stake on the gambling markets, and it only took one player to fix the outcome. “If you were to invent a sport that was tailor-made for match-fixing, the sport that you would invent would be called tennis,” he said. “It doesn’t take much effort on a player to throw a match without the opponent or the officials or the fans or even the media being aware. Where it does become apparent is in the betting market.”
Ings had wanted to find out why the same names kept cropping up in bookmakers’ reports of suspicious matches, but at that time officials lacked the power to investigate further. “Identifying whether someone has fixed a match is incredibly difficult without betting records, without access to telephone records, without access to financial transactions,” he said. So Ings introduced a new anti-corruption code that compelled players to hand over their phone and bank records to the ATP if they were suspected of fixing matches. Those powers were to be crucial in investigating the match in Sopot.
Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News ID: 7783606
A team of former detectives and betting investigators from the British Horseracing Authority – whose integrity unit was considered the gold standard in world sport – were recruited by the ATP to get to the bottom of the Sopot mystery. They set up a temporary office on Shaftesbury Avenue in London’s theatre district, where they were led by Paul Scotney, the horseracing authority’s integrity director; Paul Beeby, its head of intelligence; and Phillips, its top betting investigator.
Scotney and Beeby were a pair of veteran organised crime detectives who in retirement had turned their hand to policing gambling corruption. “When you go to a murder scene and there’s a body, you know someone’s dead,” Scotney told BuzzFeed News. “On some betting markets you know there’s a body, and the Davydenko match was one of those. The odds just did not match with their rankings at all, and the amount of money that had gone into Betfair was totally disproportionate.”
While his colleagues set about preparing to interview the players and their entourages, Phillips was tasked with analysing the gambling data. He quickly found that about a fifth of the £3.6 million traded on the Betfair exchange had flooded in from a network of nine Moscow accounts, which were accessed from the same group of computers. “This strongly suggests that either all accounts were being controlled by one person or that the account holders were ‘working’ together,” Phillips noted in his formal statement to the ATP.
BuzzFeed News ID: 7783611
The betting odds should have reflected the fact that Davydenko was a far stronger player and had won the whole tournament in Sopot the previous year, but the sums of money bet against him were so vast that before play had even begun the odds were stacked heavily in Vassallo Arguello’s favour. By the time Davydenko was up two games to one in the first set, Phillips reckoned that Vassallo Arguello’s odds to win should have been around 5/1, which meant anyone betting on him would win £5 for every £1 wagered. Such odds would have implied a 17% chance that Vassallo Arguello would defeat Davydenko. But just 15 minutes into the match, one of the Russian accounts took odds for Vassallo Arguello’s victory at just 1/7, suggesting nearly 90% probability the underdog would win and only £1 could be won for every £7 bet on him.
Phillips concluded: “In almost 20 years of working in the gambling industry, as an on-course bookmaker, an odds compiler/trader, and as a betting investigator, I have never seen a match or race where so much of the money wagered was done at such unrealistic odds and by linked accounts.”
The betting analyst was then tasked with examining which other matches the Moscow ring had been betting on. His main brief was to crack the Sopot case, but he also took a wider look at suspect gambling patterns he was seeing on tennis matches across the Betfair exchange.
Meanwhile, the former detectives were tracking down the owners of the nine suspicious accounts. With the help of Betfair, they were traced to an affluent area of Moscow, and in January 2008, the investigators began calling the individual bettors.
The first account holder to pick up was a 31-year-old Muscovite called Julia Tsoy who had bet more than £260,000 against Davydenko by the time he had won the first set and would have almost doubled her money had Betfair not voided the market. She was hesitant in answering questions but acknowledged that she knew two of the other account holders. She said she researched the players from publicly available information before the match and had seen articles about Davydenko’s injuries. Then she told the investigators they needed to speak to her fiancé, Rustem, if they wanted to know more.
Rustem Ersainov owned at least two of the other accounts that had stood to make a huge profit on Davydenko’s loss, and he had started betting one minute after his fiancée had finished. He refused to talk about the bets he had placed and instead raged about Betfair’s decision to void the market. The investigators went on to contact the other Moscow gamblers but found them impossible interviewees. “The account holders were all drunk when we phoned them,” Phillips said. “One of them said people are going to get hurt over this. Some of them got angry, and some of them were just laughing.”
The computer sharing evidence, the betting patterns, and the interviews led the investigators to conclude that Ersainov was likely to be the ringleader in Moscow. They also found that the accounts he controlled had bet heavily on a string of suspicious matches involving other high-ranking players.
But shortly after the phone calls, Ersainov got in touch with Betfair and threatened “physical harm” to its main account manager in Russia if it didn’t call off the ATP investigators. Immediately, Betfair moved the manager out of the city. Neither Ersainov nor Tsoy could be reached for comment by BuzzFeed News.
The Betfair integrity unit were furious that the manager in Moscow had been put at risk. “We had advised the investigators how to approach the account holders, but they went in with their size 12s,” one source recalled. The unit’s manager wrote a stern email to the investigators. He said that Tsoy, another account holder, “and, in particular, Mr Rustam are three of our clients who did not wish to be contacted by the ATP” and that “the first two were cordial to you, but the last has provided us with an unequivocal warning that physical harm will be done to our employee. It is a significant problem which needs the sting taking out of it promptly in order to best help protect our employee. Would it be possible to send them a letter, at the soonest opportunity, apologising for contacting them?”
The manager got a terse email back from Beeby, reluctantly agreeing to send the letter, but complaining: “I have some serious concerns about what has been happening here,” adding that “I don’t think we needed to apologise to anyone for the action we took.”
BuzzFeed News ID: 7783614
The blockage in Moscow was a major setback to the investigation – particularly because Phillips was unravelling a trail leading from the Russian betting ring to a whole range of other suspicious matches where the account holders appeared to have used inside information to bet heavily on a particular player to lose. The investigators were becoming increasingly certain that what had apparently happened in Sopot was going on around the world. And it wasn’t just the Russian account holders cashing in. Phillips was confident he was closing in on evidence that gambling syndicates in north Italy and Sicily were also profiting on inside information.
He noted a clear pattern in the way play progressed during these matches that mirrored what had gone on in Sopot. “They were the set-and-break mob,” Phillips said. “The favourite will win the first set and go a break up in the second so the money comes in and the odds on him are as high as they can be – and then they’ll lose all their games from then on. That’s how it works.”
Meanwhile, the former detectives had also interviewed everyone connected with the match in Sopot. They spoke to the match umpire, who said Davydenko had not shown any sign of intending to throw the match during play, and the crowd had clearly not suspected anything untoward. “If he did tank the match he did it in a professional way and with style,” according to the report on what the umpire said. But the ATP manager who had rushed down to courtside after receiving the warning from Betfair noted that “it was very strange to see Mr Davydenko playing all return games in a very relaxed way and never getting close to break point.”
The physiotherapist who had attended to the Russian during his repeated medical time-outs told the investigators that the player had remarked: “What’s the point of staying on? The hard-court season is coming up.” Davydenko had then asked what the physiotherapist considered a “strange” question about his foot: “Is this a medical reason to retire?” He answered that it was, and Davydenko played three more games before pulling out. It seemed to the investigators as if his mind was made up that he wasn’t going to carry on playing some time before he withdrew.
If he did tank the match, the referee noted, he did it in a professional way and with style. ID: 7783675
An examination of the player’s medical records found that he had been diagnosed with an inflamed tendon in his foot, a common complaint among tennis players, three days before the match against Vassallo Arguello. Davydenko’s managers told the media that he had subsequently been diagnosed with a stress fracture. But while several doctors confirmed he had visited them shortly after the match, this diagnosis was not found in his records.
The detectives interviewed the Russian tennis star at the Sheraton Hotel at Frankfurt Airport in September 2007 along with his wife, his brother, and his coach. He denied having any relationship with the Russian account holders or being involved in any gambling. No one had approached him in advance about the Sopot match, and he hadn’t told anyone that he would retire injured. But he acknowledged he had told some other players, his wife, and his brother that he was carrying a foot injury. According to the notes of the interview, he said it was “normal, during a small tournament, that players might not try so hard during a match if they had an injury or, if there was a big tournament (such as a Grand Slam) coming up.” But this, he insisted, was not what had happened in Sopot. He also said he barely knew his opponent and they had not communicated before the match.
The player’s wife said she had not spoken to anyone about her husband’s foot injury. But his brother, Eduard, said he often received phone calls from journalists asking about Davydenko’s form and whether he was injured before a match, and that the player “does not keep his injuries quiet when speaking with Russian supporters”.
Davydenko declined to hand over his mobile phone – or those of his wife and brother – for forensic examination. On the advice of his lawyer, he resisted handing over his call records for so long that, by the time he was compelled to release them, much of the data was irretrievable. Investigators also suspected that he used more than one phone. “The situation with obtaining Davydenko’s complete telephone billings and/or an explanation for other phones he was suspected of using has not satisfactorily been resolved,” they noted.
The Russian’s lawyer, meanwhile, was fulminating about the way the investigators had treated his client. “What has happened here to Nikolay is just incredible,” Frank Immenga told ESPN. “From the first day, he was pushed into the corner and treated like a criminal.”
“I know that my client is truly innocent, so they will reveal nothing,” he said in another interview. “Davydenko was hurt; he had something on his foot; this was already seen before the match,” he continued. “There are people looking for information … When they find out that somebody is already hurt they are going to bet against him. That is exactly what happened.”
Vassallo Arguello, too, leapt to the defence of his opponent. “I don’t think the investigation is going to show that Davydenko was involved in anything,” he said in an interview. “Everything that happened on the court seemed very normal to me.”
ID: 7783642
Davydenko’s Argentine opponent also denied in his interview with investigators that he had ever discussed the outcome of a match with anyone connected with betting, though he acknowledged gambling on soccer and women’s tennis. Unlike his opponent, however, Vassallo Arguello handed over his phone, and that of his coach. This led to a series of discoveries.
The first was a mobile number stored under the name Davydenko – which was curious because the Russian had said he and his opponent did not know each other. The rest of the discoveries were about matches that had nothing to do with Davydenko and, the investigators felt sure, would “form the basis for future investigations concerning this player”.
The detectives found that Vassallo Arguello had the numbers of several Italian Betfair account holders in his phone memory. The investigators sent the phone for forensic examination, which revealed text messages that the Argentine had deleted. Experts were able to recover the first few words of each of them.
Meanwhile, Phillips had identified a ring of Sicilian account holders who had cashed in on suspicious matches Vassallo Arguello had played during a previous European tournament. As with the Russian accounts, these were connected by computer sharing, suggesting to Phillips that they were being controlled by one person. The analysis of Vassallo Arguello’s phone showed he had exchanged 82 text messages with one of the account holders, a 43-year-old man called Fabrizio Guttadauro living in Sicily. And the phone numbers of other account holders were stored on Vassallo Arguello’s phone.
The first contact with Guttadauro was the day before an early match when Vassallo Arguello received a text message from him. As with all the deleted messages, investigators were only able to retrieve the first few words. They read: “This is my number, please if…” Then on the day of the match, Vassallo Arguello received another text: “Are you awake? Can I call you? Room 1.” Two more messages followed: “Don’t call from the mobile but from the room,” and “I would like to talk to you because of the match.”
To the investigators, it appeared that the two had then discussed the outcome on their hotel phones and agreed that Vassallo Arguello would approach his opponent, because at 1:15pm he texted the Sicilian with disappointing news: “He doesn’t want to do it. He intends to win and force…” But then 11 minutes later he sent another message: “I’ll come,” and, a little after that, “All okay.” The four Sicilian accounts then bet heavily on Vassallo Arguello to win the match. His opponent won the first set before losing in the second and third. The Sicilian bettors won more than £300,000 off the back of Vassallo Arguello’s victory.
The phone records revealed Vassallo Arguello had texted both the suspected Sicilian fixer and his opponent about the outcome of another match during the same tournament. The night before the game, the Argentine received a text from the player he was due to face saying simply, “Where are you?” Twenty minutes later, he texted Guttadauro, saying, “He’s replying to me this evening.” Later, the other player texted Vassallo Arguello giving his room number and asking, “Can we talk?” It was impossible to know what the opponents had discussed, but the following morning Vassallo Arguello sent another frustratingly truncated message to the Sicilian. “I’ve spoken with [him]. He asked me for a…” it said.
Sicilian money poured into the Betfair exchange before and during the match, and Vassallo Arguello lost heavily. As well as Guttadauro, the investigators linked another of the account holders to a number stored in the player’s phone. After the match, the other player texted Vassallo Arguello: “Martin, we have to talk. These guys are…” Four hours later, Vassallo Arguello wrote to Guttadauro, “Unfortunately he can’t be trusted.”
Reached by BuzzFeed News, Guttadauro initially said he did not know Vassallo Arguello and claimed his phone must have been hacked during the tournament. Then he called back, wanting to know if it was the Argentine who handed over his number, and whether he was in trouble with the FBI. He refused to answer any questions about his communications with the player, but added that under the right circumstances he might be able to provide “a scoop”. “You can make me an offer,” he said, “and then maybe I can tell you many more things.”
When they saw the text messages, the investigators told BuzzFeed News they thought the combination of the phone records and the betting patterns they had observed was “a smoking gun”. They found a further five highly suspicious matches played by Vassallo Arguello, on which the north Italian and Sicilian betting rings had gambled heavily.
Overall, the Russian and Italian gambling syndicates had bet on more than 72 matches in a way that Phillips thought looked overtly corrupt. There were 28 players whom Phillips suspected of rigging the outcome of those matches, with a core of 10 against whom he felt the case was overwhelming. And these were not all obscure games at small-time tournaments. Three of them had taken place at Wimbledon, and one was at the French Open.
BuzzFeed News ID: 7783628
Phillips prepared a report on the three suspected gambling syndicates in the spring of 2008. “It was absolutely conclusive to me that the players in my final report were fixing,” he told BuzzFeed News. He said he put in only the most egregious matches, but there were 40 or 50 more that he considered highly suspicious.
As for the gamblers apparently cashing in on the games, Phillips had found 11 highly suspicious Betfair accounts in Russia and concluded: “There is no doubt in my mind that these accounts are in receipt of inside information, at the very least, regarding Russian players.”
In Sicily, he found 10 betting accounts and 12 matches that warranted further investigation. “The betting patterns on some of these matches are nothing short of remarkable,” Phillips wrote. “The accounts appeared to know exactly how the games would pan out and backed the winning players at odds so far short of where they should have been that it made the betting markets on the matches completely farcical and obvious to anyone with betting analysis experience that the result was almost certainly a foregone conclusion.”
But the most disturbing group was in north Italy, where Phillips determined that six accounts were responsible for apparently fixing 29 matches. Eight players, most of them Argentine or Spanish, featured heavily on the list of suspicious matches – including Vassallo Arguello. “This group of accounts,” Phillips wrote, “are a bigger threat to the integrity of the sport than either the Russian or the Sicilian groups.” He added, “The way these accounts traded on some of these suspect matches, it would strongly suggest that both players in the match are involved in the conspiracy.”
When they drafted their report for the ATP following the Davydenko–Arguello match, the investigators concluded that a corrupt betting syndicate in Russia “knew … the outcome of the match in question before its conclusion” and that “it was this knowledge that allowed them to bet with such confidence prior to and during the match and would have allowed them to make a profit of £354,799 had Betfair not voided all bets.” There was “no doubt” in the investigators’ minds that advance word of Davydenko’s decision to retire injured had been passed to Moscow “from one of the players or their support”, but between the player’s refusal to turn over his phone and the threat to Betfair’s employee, the investigators had hit a brick wall. It just wasn’t possible to determine who the guilty party was in relation to this match.
So they concluded that the investigation had “been unable to find any evidence to support the possibility of Nikolay Davydenko or Martin Vassallo Arguello being involved in any corrupt practices surrounding their second-round match in Sopot on 2nd August 2007. It is felt that had we had the full support of Betfair account holders and all requested itemised telephone billings then this investigation may well have had a different conclusion.”
But the January after the Sopot match, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the game’s overarching governing body, had launched a sweeping review of integrity across the whole sport, and that was still underway.
ID: 7783625
The review was led by Ben Gunn, the former chief constable who had set up the British Horseracing Authority’s integrity unit, and Jeff Rees, a former detective chief superintendent with the Metropolitan police who had gone on to found the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption department. The Sopot team handed over their evidence of the 72 suspicious matches they had found, and of the gambling networks in Russia and Italy. They knew Gunn well and trusted him to get to grips with it.
Armed with this evidence, the two detectives flew around the world interviewing players and observing tournaments. They concluded that, though tennis was not “institutionally corrupt”, “cheating at tennis for corrupt betting purposes” was the “most serious threat … to the core of the integrity of the sport”. In their landmark Environmental Review of Integrity in Professional Tennis, Gunn and Rees identified “specific concerns” about 45 of the matches that Phillips had highlighted, which they said warranted further investigation. Furthermore, they said, “Patterns of suspected betting activity have been noted on 27 accounts in two different countries.”
There was, the review warned, “no room for complacency”. World tennis must adopt a “co-ordinated and focused Anti-Corruption Programme with an adequately resourced Integrity Unit”.
Prize money at lesser tournaments can be paltry, and a year on the tennis tour can set a player back more than £100,000, making it tempting to cash in on the occasional fix. ID: 7783679
Bill Babcock, the ITF’s Grand Slam director who had overseen their investigation, publicly accepted the recommendation, but he put an optimistic spin on it. “This review is a positive statement,” he declared. “Tennis is a healthy sport. There are corruptors around the sport but not inside.”
What the world did not know was that, behind closed doors, a schism had opened up between Gunn and Rees over the proper model for the integrity unit. Gunn proposed including full-scale betting risk analysis capability to monitor the markets and proactively flag suspicious gambling just as Betfair had done on the Sopot match. It would be accompanied by a team of investigators to pursue cases against players once serious suspicions had been raised. Gunn’s model required six high-paid investigators, but Rees countered with a proposal for a much lighter-touch, less costly unit of just three. The Rees proposal would rely on tips from the gambling industry rather than initiating its own analyses or tracing heavily skewed bets back to their source.
The colleagues descended into a major shouting match, insiders say, with Gunn accusing Rees of “trying to do this with two men and a dog”. They were told to put both their proposals into their final report and allow world tennis to decide which it preferred.
Four months later, in September, Gunn learned that the authorities had opted for Rees’s approach, with half the number of investigators he had proposed, and no one to analyse betting data. Gunn was livid. “They were trying to do it, in my mind, with one hand tied behind their back,” he told BuzzFeed News and the BBC.
Willerton told BuzzFeed News that the decision not to employ a betting analyst was not a “soft option or a decision based on cost” but was “the recommendation of a highly qualified investigator”. And he cautioned against overemphasising the value of betting statistics, which he said should be treated as information rather than evidence: “Betting data alone is not sufficient to bring forward a prosecution; it has to be considered, assessed, and verified along with the TIU’s many other sources of intelligence.”
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The newly formed Tennis Integrity Unit was unveiled in September 2008, headed by Rees. The same day, the ATP announced that it had found “no evidence of a violation of its rules by either Mr Arguello or Mr Davydenko or anyone else associated with the match” in Sopot. But no mention was made of the other alarming things the investigation had turned up: threats from the Moscow betting ring or the Argentine’s telephone links with Sicilian gamblers betting on other matches. As far as the public was allowed to know, the case was closed.
The investigators were then invited to hand over their wider evidence in a private meeting with the new unit at an exclusive hotel in London. They gave a PowerPoint presentation, published today by BuzzFeed News and the BBC, setting out their case.
The presentation laid out the text messages Vassallo Arguello had exchanged with suspected fixers and described the “very suspicious betting” by the Sicilian and Russian accounts. It listed all the matches and players that investigators believed were implicated in corrupt betting worldwide, and recommended that they all face a full disciplinary investigation.
“We said, ‘This is what you need,’ and we handed them over around five ring-bound files with all the hard evidence, and we also gave them the electronic evidence as well,” said Phillips.
“From my experience of working on dozens of cases for British horseracing, this evidence was very strong. It was really as strong as any evidence we’ve had.”
But Phillips, who now runs a private betting monitoring firm called Global Sports Integrity, recalled that Rees and his men “looked nonplussed” during the presentation and “didn’t ask questions”. Having gone in with high hopes, he said, “We finished the presentation and it was ‘Thank you, there’s the door.’”
BuzzFeed News ID: 7783620
Still, they continued to hope that the newly formed unit would pursue their evidence. “We waited and expected to hear that these players were being called into disciplinary hearings,” Phillips said. “Even if they had only done the half-dozen strongest, it would have sent the message that needed to be sent. But they did nothing.”
Shortly after the inception of the unit, a new code was introduced, and every professional player was forced to sign up to its terms. Like the previous anti-corruption rules, it outlawed all forms of fixing and gave investigators the power to compel players to hand over their phone and bank records if they came under suspicion. The burden of proof it adopted in order to merit a ban from the game was low. Investigators just had to establish that an offence had been committed based on the “preponderance of the evidence” – there was no requirement to prove the allegations beyond reasonable doubt, as a court of law would require.
But in their joint statement to BuzzFeed News, tennis authorities said the new integrity code applied only to future offences. A top US law firm “confirmed” that they could not apply new rules retrospectively, the statement said.
The ATP’s previous anti-corruption code had also plainly outlawed any “attempt to contrive the outcome or any other aspect of any event” – but the authorities said they had decided there was not enough evidence to bring any prosecutions under those rules. And they have not opened any new investigations based on the evidence handed over by the Sopot team.
The upshot was that the 28 players implicated in the 2008 report were never given a second look. Since 2009, the Tennis Integrity Unit has been warned again about nine of them.
The newly formed integrity unit also adopted a policy of withholding all details of its investigations from the public. “We accept that our confidentiality policy is not popular,” Willerton wrote in his statement to BuzzFeed News, “but we make no apology for it.” The policy, he said, protects players from “malicious allegations”, retains the element of surprise, and assures witnesses of confidentiality. But it also leaves the rest of world in the dark, even in cases where players have been punished, about what evidence went before it and on what basis its decisions were made.
The lack of transparency has rankled those who believe the sport is failing to confront a global problem effectively. “It’s a very secretive unit,” said Ings, the former ATP rules executive who set up its anti-corruption code. “We don’t know what it’s investigating, and when it does find violations the information that’s disclosed is so minimal that we really can’t get a handle on exactly how it’s operating,” he continued. “That’s a very disappointing aspect of the Tennis Integrity Unit at the moment.”
Meanwhile, the disbanded Sopot team carried on monitoring the markets and, from time to time, tried to warn the tennis authorities about matches that looked “hooky”.
After one such letter, Rees sent a stinging response.
“I have hesitated before writing to you, but I think I need to make you aware that in my view it is only a matter of time before a tennis player brings an action for libel against organisations, individuals, newspapers, those who make wild and irresponsible allegations,” he wrote, adding that he was already aware of the match that had been flagged. “As the Tennis Integrity Unit is charged with combating corruption in tennis we do, as I have already said, of course welcome any information about apparently suspicious betting patterns which helps us meet our responsibilities. However, as this and many other cases show, it is unwise to rely simply on betting patterns unequivocally to describe a tennis match as ‘fixed’.”
After that, the investigators stopped trying.
Matt Chase for BuzzFeed News ID: 7783619
In the years since, other investigators, bookmakers, foreign police, and gambling regulators have continued to warn the unit about some of the same players – and many more besides.
BuzzFeed News and the BBC have seen a total of nine lists of suspected fixers handed to the world tennis authorities over the past decade, comprising more than 70 names. Of those, a core of 16 names appear repeatedly – in several cases as many as seven times.
At least six of the 15 players identified by the BuzzFeed News analysis of 26,000 matches have been flagged to tennis authorities by outside sources. The same analysis shows that the players whom the Sopot investigators first flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit in 2008 have gone on to lose at least 112 matches where heavily lopsided betting appears to have significantly shifted the odds.
Willerton said the Tennis Integrity Unit did not need to employ a betting expert to perform this kind of analysis, because it got “immediate real-time access to gambling market intelligence” through cooperative agreements with the betting industry. But he downplayed the importance of this information, which he said was of limited use in prosecuting players. “Information supplied by betting operators can be an indicator of suspicious activity but is certainly not proof that corruption has taken place,” he said.
Bookmakers have told BuzzFeed News that, in many cases, when they tried to warn the Tennis Integrity Unit about suspicious matches they got no response. The tennis authorities often did not follow up to request in-depth information – such as the betting history and computer details of the suspicious gamblers – to which only bookmakers have access. Without that information, they say, a thorough investigation would be virtually impossible.
The European Sports Security Association, which collects suspicious betting alerts from bookmakers, has sent the Tennis Integrity Unit warnings from its members about suspicious matches involving 15 of the players whose names have repeatedly been flagged to the authorities. In one case, the integrity unit was sent four alerts about a particular player and warned to take note of his “relentless abuse”.
In addition, the European Sports Security Association alerted the Tennis Integrity Unit to 49 suspicious matches in the first three quarters of last year alone and warned in three successive reports that tennis attracts more dubious betting activity than any other sport.
By 2011, Betfair had flagged up at least 20 players who were attracting heavily skewed betting on their matches to the integrity unit – five of whom had also been in the Sopot files. No disciplinary action was taken against anyone named on the list, and in many cases, sources at Betfair said they heard nothing back from the integrity unit and were not asked to supply further information about the suspicious betting accounts.
“I mean, there were so many guys. And of course, it’s, like, big money in the game,” he said. “For one stupid match, just losing.” ID: 7783742
FederBet, a nonprofit sport betting watchdog, said it had flagged more than 20 matches to the tennis authorities in the last quarter of 2015 to no avail. “The problem of match-fixing in tennis is getting bigger and bigger,” said general director Francesco Baranca. He said bookmakers “try hard to fight against this because they realise they are losing a lot of money”, but he complained that the tennis authorities are unreceptive. Four other bookmakers also complained that their reports had met with inaction.
Willerton said that the integrity unit assesses “all credible information” and that investigations can take years. He added that “it is not the role of betting companies to make judgments about corrupt activity” and gambling sources “are simply not qualified to make statements about whether investigations have or have not taken place”.
International police sources, too, share evidence with the Tennis Integrity Unit. In 2013, a former player was prosecuted for corrupt betting on matches. As part of a plea bargain, he handed police a list of 28 players he said were involved in fixing. Six of them had previously been flagged to the tennis authorities by either the Sopot investigators or Betfair. He had placed asterisks against the names of seven players who he said he knew for certain had tanked matches. Officers sent the list to the integrity unit at Wimbledon, but say they heard nothing back. None of the players the fixer said he knew to be involved in corruption have been sanctioned. (One low-ranking player from the wider list was recently disciplined for failing to cooperate with the integrity unit in relation to unspecified offences.)
Last year, Italian police swooped in on two of the players who were flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit by the Sopot team in 2008. Potito Starace and Daniele Bracciali were accused of match-fixing by judicial authorities in Cremona based on intercepted phone and internet conversations. Bracciali had allegedly discussed fixing a match in Rhode Island with an accountant who was later arrested, while the owner of a betting parlour had allegedly been overheard saying Starace agreed to fix the result of a final in Morocco in 2011. The evidence was passed to the Italian Tennis Federation, which briefly banned both players for life last August before its appeal court decided to clear Starace entirely and reduce Bracciali’s ban to one year in October. The federation did not publicly explain the appeal court’s reasoning. The pair, who deny the allegations, are still facing criminal charges in Italy. The Tennis Integrity Unit has not publicly sanctioned them for fixing. Both men deny the charges.
And a source in the Victoria police, whose sporting integrity unit guards against corruption at the Australian Open, said officers had tried to report concerns about fixing to the unit but had been frustrated by its unwillingness to discuss the problem. “The TIU need to be more proactive,” the source said. “Tennis is one of the easiest sports to corrupt, because there’s only one person up against the other, and because there’s so much money involved,” he went on. “You’re better off getting it out there and you might suffer a lot of short-term pain, but it’s better to weed out the problem.”
Daniel Köllerer, 2010 Matthew Stockman / Getty Images ID: 7783736
World tennis issued its first life ban against a player – the Austrian Daniel Köllerer – in 2011 for taking money to fix matches. No details of the charges against him, which he still denies, were provided. Speaking for the first time about his ban, Köllerer claimed that authorities were targeting him instead of pursuing stronger evidence against other players.
The Austrian was a deeply unpopular figure – known as “the most hated player on the tour” for brawling, spitting at opponents, and ridiculing ball boys. When he was eventually banned for match-fixing, he said that he had been approached three times – including one time at the French Open – by gamblers and asked to fix matches for sums ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. But he denied ever accepting the offers and said he had reported the approaches to the authorities.
Köllerer said that match-fixing was a widespread problem and claimed he knew of other players who were implicated. “They were losing matches on purpose,” he said. “Sometimes they were talking, like, in the next locker,” he went on. “I mean, there were so many guys. And of course, it’s, like, big money in the game,” he said. “For one stupid match, just losing.”
In a statement, the Tennis Integrity Unit said that the approaches Köllerer reported “proved to be from unidentifiable individuals on social media which could not be validated” and that he did not provide helpful information during his investigation.
The year after Köllerer’s ban, Rees stepped down from the unit and was replaced by Nigel Willerton, another retired senior detective from the “flying squad” – Scotland Yard’s armed robberies division.
Davydenko went on to enjoy a glittering career at the top of the game before retiring in November 2014. He reached four Grand Slam semi-finals and beat both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to win the ATP World Tour in 2009. When he announced his withdrawal from the game, he said, “Unfortunately, for some years now, I have been struggling with injuries. It’s hard for me to talk about it.”
His lawyer, Frank Immenga, told BuzzFeed News that his client had been cleared of wrongdoing. “Nikolay has finally been able to overcome the emotional distress suffered by this unjustified proceeding and does not want to be part of any further speculations,” he said. “Therefore, he will not be giving further answers to questions that he has answered already.”
Vassallo Arguello climbed to 47th in the world rankings in 2009 before his career began to tail off. He has never officially announced his retirement, but his last professional game was in 2011. He now works as a coach in Argentina. When contacted by BuzzFeed News, the player initially offered an interview but then stopped responding to calls and emails and never answered the questions that had been put to him.
Seven years after handing over their evidence, Gunn and the Sopot investigators still meet regularly at bars in London’s West End to share their frustration, over bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, at the missed opportunity to clean up the sport. “It would do a great deal of damage to the image of the game, but in order to clean it up they’ve got to clear up what corruption’s there now,” Beeby said.
“Tennis hasn’t got a problem because they don’t want to have a problem.”
ID: 7785000
||||| Secret files exposing evidence of widespread suspected match-fixing at the top level of world tennis, including at Wimbledon, can be revealed by the BBC and BuzzFeed News.
Over the last decade, 16 players who have ranked in the top 50 have been repeatedly flagged to the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) over suspicions they have thrown matches.
All of the players, including winners of Grand Slam titles, were allowed to continue competing.
The TIU- which was set up to police the sport - said it had a zero-tolerance approach to betting-related corruption.
Chris Kermode, who heads the Association of Tennis Professionals, rejected claims evidence of match-fixing had "been suppressed for any reason or isn't being thoroughly investigated".
But he added: "While the BBC and BuzzFeed reports mainly refer to events from about 10 years ago, we will investigate any new information."
The cache of documents passed to the BBC and Buzzfeed News include the findings of an investigation set up in 2007 by the Association of Tennis Professionals, the organisation Kermode heads.
Its job was to look into suspicious betting activity after a game involving Nikolay Davydenko and Martin Vassallo Arguello.
Both players were cleared of violating any rules, but the investigation developed into a much wider enquiry looking into a web of gamblers linked to top-level players.
Media playback is not supported on this device ATP president Chris Kermode tells the BBC he is aware there is match-fixing within tennis but says it is at an 'incredibly small level'
The documents we have obtained show the enquiry found betting syndicates in Russia, northern Italy and Sicily making hundreds of thousands of pounds betting on matches investigators thought to be fixed. Three of these matches were at Wimbledon.
In a confidential report for the tennis authorities in 2008, the enquiry team said 28 players involved in these matches should be investigated, but the findings were never followed up.
Tennis introduced a new anti-corruption code in 2009 but after taking legal advice were told previous corruption offences could not be pursued.
"As a result, no new investigations into any of the players who were mentioned in the 2008 report were opened," a TIU spokesman said.
In subsequent years, there were repeated alerts sent to the TIU about a third of these players. None of them was disciplined by the TIU.
A group of whistle blowers inside tennis, who want to remain anonymous, recently passed the documents on to the BBC and Buzzfeed News.
We contacted Mark Phillips, one of the betting investigators in the 2007 enquiry, who told the BBC that they discovered repeated suspicious betting activity about a clear group.
"There was a core of about 10 players who we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem," he said.
He has never spoken publicly about the material he gathered, which he said was as powerful as any he had seen in over 20 years as a betting investigator.
"The evidence was really strong," he added. "There appeared to be a really good chance to nip it in the bud and get a strong deterrent out there to root out the main bad apples."
Media playback is not supported on this device Mark Phillips is a betting analyst who worked on an investigation into suspicious gambling in tennis
The BBC and Buzzfeed were also passed the names of other current players the TIU have repeatedly been warned about by betting organisations, sports integrity units and professional gamblers.
Many of these players have been on the radar of the tennis authorities for involvement in suspicious matches going back to 2003.
The BBC and Buzzfeed News have decided not to name the players because, without access to their phone, bank and computer records, it is not possible to determine whether they may have been personally taking part in match fixing.
However, tennis' integrity unit does have the power to demand all this evidence from any professional tennis player.
"There is an element of actually keeping things under wraps," said Benn Gunn, a former police chief constable who conducted a major review of betting in tennis that led to the creation of the Tennis Integrity Unit.
It's the first time he has publicly spoken about his concerns.
Media playback is not supported on this device In 2011, Daniel Koellerer was banned for life from professional tennis over alleged match-fixing but denied the claims.
"If they were really serious about dealing with this, then they really need to create an integrity unit with teeth," he said.
The European Sports Security Association, which monitors betting for leading bookmakers, flagged up more than 50 suspicious matches to the TIU in 2015.
The organisation declared that tennis attracts more suspicious gambling activity than other sport.
While he welcomed the support of the betting industry, Nigel Willerton, director of the TIU, said "it is not the role of betting companies to make judgements about corrupt activity".
He added: "All credible information received by the TIU is analysed, assessed, and investigated by highly experienced former law-enforcement investigators."
The problem of suspicious betting and match-fixing is not going away.
Eight of the players repeatedly flagged to the TIU over the past decade are due to play in the Australian Open which starts on Monday 18 January.
Analysis
BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller:
"The TIU has a full-time staff of just five and relies on intelligence from players and betting companies to alert them to potential corruption. They have a presence at between 20 and 30 tournaments a year, and their investigations over the past two years have resulted in seven players and one official being banned for between six months and a lifetime.
"Only one of those players has ever reached the top 200, and there are clearly temptations for lower-ranked professionals. Players outside the top 200 are unlikely to earn much more than £40,000 in prize money each year, and that is before coaching, travel and hotel expenses are taken into account.
"It is highly debatable whether enough resources are directed towards the TIU, and another potential flaw is that representatives from the sport's four governing bodies decide whether the evidence gathered is strong enough to be presented to an independent hearing. Professional Tennis Integrity Officers from the ITF, ATP, WTA and the Grand Slams make that call, and as a result the process is not as transparent as it should be." | – First FIFA, now this? Yep, evidence has emerged of possible widespread match-fixing in the pristine world of professional tennis. According to documents obtained by the BBC and Buzzfeed, investigators hired by the Association of Tennis Professionals uncovered signs of corrupt betting syndicates and gamblers buying off well-ranked players—but little was done to fix the problem. "There was a core of about 10 players who we believed were the most common perpetrators that were at the root of the problem," says Mark Phillips, an investigator in a landmark 2007 enquiry. "The evidence was really strong." Yet tennis officials shelved their conclusions, saying lawyers advised them that strict new rules couldn't be applied to players retroactively. Among the accusations: Corrupt gamblers have contacted players in their hotels and offered them $50,000 or more to fix a match. Gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy then placed "highly suspicious bets on scores of matches—including at Wimbledon and the French Open," says Buzzfeed. More than 70 players are suspected of taking part, but Buzzfeed and the BBC decided not to print names because the suspects' computer, bank, and phone records weren't available as conclusive proof. Suspects include winners of Grand Slam singles and doubles titles, and eight players slated to play in the Australian Open starting Monday. "There is an element of actually keeping things under wraps," says an investigator. But Nigel Willerton, who heads the unit designed to police tennis, denies the accusations: "All credible information received by the [Tennis Integrity Unit] is analysed, assessed, and investigated by highly experienced former law-enforcement investigators," he says. |
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. ||||| See more of Brooke Francev on Facebook ||||| “I wore it for fun because I’m just one of those people, I like to go all out,” Lacey told KTLA.
His classmates loved the costume and asked to take selfies with him. ||||| MENIFEE: Boy ordered to remove Elsa ‘Frozen’ costume Share Pin It More Galleries This image released by Disney shows a teenage Elsa the Snow Queen in a scene from the animated feature "Frozen." A male student at Ethan A. Chase Middle School in Menifee was told to remove the Elsa costume he wore for a Disney-themed school spirit day Thursday because it was causing a disruption. UNCREDITED , UNCREDITED AP Related article »
A Menifee middle school student wearing an Elsa costume to a school spirit day was ordered to remove his gown and wig by school officials who said it was causing a disruption.
The incident occurred before school Thursday in one of the school’s quad areas and involved a large number of students, many snapping pictures, on a day they were encouraged to dress up as Disney characters, according to Romoland School District Superintendent Julie Vitale.
The Ethan A. Chase Middle School student – identified as Austin Lacey, 13, in a KTLA report – and his mother said they were surprised by the reaction of school officials.
“I wore it for fun because I’m just one of those people,” Austin told KTLA. “I like to go all out.”
In a statement issued on Friday, Vitale said: “At no time was there an indication that the student was expressing any particular message by his actions and the (principal’s) action was based upon the need to stop a general disruption.”
Vitale said the student does not face any discipline for the incident and completed the school day.
After school Friday, several students said the incident was not a big deal.
“It wasn’t a disruption,” said Kassandra Melara, 14. “Everybody was taking pictures with him. Nobody had a problem with it.”
Another eighth-grader, Natalia Alvarez, said she knew Austin and supported his campaign for ASB president.
“He’s a really good kid,” she said. “He’s helpful. He’s a straight-A student. He gets along with everybody.”
Contact the writer: 951-368-9682 or tsheridan@pe.com ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video
Students at Ethan Chase Middle School in Menifee were encouraged to wear Disney costumes for spirit day on Thursday.
Austin Lacey, 13, chose to dress as Elsa from the movie "Frozen."
The eighth-grader told KTLA that his classmates loved the idea and asked him to pose for selfies.
But, the school principal apparently felt it was inappropriate and told him to take off the costume.
A statement from Romoland School District Superintendent Dr. Julie Vitale read in part:
"This action was taken in accordance with district policies. At no time was there an indication that the student was expressing any particular message. The Principal's action was based upon the need to stop a general disruption to the school environment," Vitale stated. | – Students are in an "uproar"—in the words of one parent—after a middle school principal in California forced a 13-year-old to change his clothes Thursday. When students at Ethan Chase Middle School were given the opportunity to dress as a Disney character for spirit week, eighth-grader Austin Lacey went "all out," KTLA reports. "I'm just one of those people," he says. Austin showed up to school in a sparkly blue dress and long blonde wig, unmistakably the trademarks of Elsa from the popular film Frozen. But he was almost immediately told to take the costume off by his principal. "The principal's action was based upon the need to stop a general disruption to the school environment," KTLA quotes a statement from the district's superintendent as saying. But BuzzFeed reports that's not what Austin's mother, Brooke Francey, heard. Lacey "was informed the principal does not agree with boys dressing like girls," she writes on Facebook. And she says the principal told her the same. "The statement made to me was, 'It is not okay for boys to dress like girls or girls to dress like boys.'" Austin, who was told to remove the costume before school even started, says classmates were cool with it and were posing for photos with him. "It wasn't a disruption," a fellow student tells the Press-Enterprise. "Nobody had a problem with it." According to a second Facebook post from Francey, students are passing out flyers encouraging everyone to cross-dress next week to support the LGBT community. "This is a real problem, and as students it is our job to fix this," the flyer states. (These boys were asked to leave school after dressing as Nikki Minaj and Miss America for spirit week.) |
WASHINGTON—Investigators are re-examining conversations detected by U.S. intelligence agencies in spring 2015 that captured Russian government officials discussing associates of Donald Trump, according to current and former U.S. officials, a move prompted by revelations that the president’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer last year.
In some cases, the Russians in the overheard conversations talked about meetings held outside the U.S. involving Russian government officials and Trump business associates or advisers, these... ||||| The younger Mr. Trump said the meeting with the Russian lawyer yielded no useful information about Mrs. Clinton, and instead turned into a discussion about a Russian-American diplomatic dispute. By happenstance or not, in the days and weeks after the meeting with the Russian lawyer, emails purloined from Democratic computers were made public, which investigators tied to Russian hacking.
As a candidate, the elder Mr. Trump, who had expressed admiration of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, took positions that summer that caused head scratching. He expressed openness to lifting sanctions on Russia that were imposed after its annexation of Crimea, and suggested he might not defend NATO allies that did not spend enough money on their own security. The Republican platform at the party convention in July 2016 was crafted to keep out a call to provide arms to Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists.
The president’s legal team declined to comment about the close timing of some of these events. A White House official said the president’s threat to air allegations about Mrs. Clinton on June 7 was part of a long-planned speech and was not related to his son’s decision to meet with the Russian lawyer. At a briefing on Wednesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, dismissed the latest articles about the emails and meeting as “much ado about nothing.”
Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was not aware of the June 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer at the time. “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” he told Reuters. He did not fault his son for sitting down with the lawyer. “I think many people would have held that meeting,” Mr. Trump said. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not fault his son Donald Trump Jr. for meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential election campaign and that he was unaware of the meeting until a few days ago.
Asked if he knew that his son was meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year, the president told Reuters in a White House interview: “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this.”
(Transcript highlights: reut.rs/2sRVuHc)
Trump Jr. eagerly agreed to meet the woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow’s official support for his father’s campaign, according to emails the son released on Tuesday.
Seated at his Oval Office desk, Trump said he did not fault his son for holding the meeting, writing it off as a decision made in the heat of an upstart, non-traditional campaign.
“I think many people would have held that meeting,” Trump said.
“It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I’m hearing,” Trump said. “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that.”
The emails were the most concrete evidence that Trump campaign officials might have been willing to accept Russian help to win the Nov. 8 election, a subject that has cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency and prompted investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and Congress.
Donald Trump Jr., in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, said: “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.”
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump in Washington, U.S. July 12, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
TRUST PUTIN?
In the White House interview, the president said he directly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin if he was involved in what U.S. intelligence says was Russian meddling in the presidential campaign and that Putin had insisted he was not.
Trump said he spent the first 20 or 25 minutes of his more than two-hour meeting with Putin last Friday in Germany on the election meddling subject.
“I said, ‘Did you do it?’ And he said, ‘No, I did not. Absolutely not.’ I then asked him a second time in a totally different way. He said absolutely not,” Trump said.
Asked if he believed Putin’s denial, Trump paused.
“Look. Something happened and we have to find out what it is, because we can’t allow a thing like that to happen to our election process. So something happened and we have to find out what it is,” he said.
About Putin, he added: “Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn’t have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.”
Slideshow (3 Images)
While U.S. intelligence agencies and even members of Trump’s Cabinet have said Russia meddled in the election, Trump has wavered on the subject, at times suggesting that other actors might have been involved.
Trump equivocated on whether he felt he could trust Putin. He said Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both look out for their countries’ interests, as he looks out for U.S. interests.
“I am not a person who goes around trusting lots of people. But he’s the leader of Russia. It is the second most powerful nuclear power on earth. I am the leader of the United States. I love my country. He loves his country,” Trump said.
As in the past, Trump said there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.
“There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.
The Republican president said Democrats had used the accusations to justify Clinton’s loss in November, saying: “The White House is functioning beautifully despite the hoax made up by the Democrats.”
Although he and Putin were able to forge a ceasefire agreement in part of Syria, Trump said their interests collided over other issues. He said his U.S. military buildup and drive to increase U.S. energy production were in direct conflict with Putin, whose nation is dependent on energy exports.
Their differences made him wonder whether Putin really had supported him last year, as many news reports have suggested.
“It’s really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: Were you actually supporting me?” | – Investigators are re-examining overheard conversations in which Russian government officials discuss dealings with Donald Trump's associates, given confirmation of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer, US officials say. Though the conversations were recorded by US intelligence in early 2015, months before Trump announced his campaign for the presidency, investigators are interested in mentions of meetings between Russian officials and Trump associates, some of which reportedly occurred outside of the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. It isn't clear if the associates referred to were involved in Trump's business interests in Russia or later became part of his presidential campaign. Officials say it's commonplace for Russian officials to discuss players with major business interests in the country, Trump among them. Indeed, intelligence agencies initially took little from the conversations. But Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has since renewed interest. President Trump said Wednesday he only became aware of the meeting with the lawyer "a couple of days ago," per Reuters. Hours after Trump Jr. confirmed the meeting on June 7, 2016, however, Trump promised in a speech to address Clinton's "corrupt dealings" to give "favorable treatment" to "the Russians," in what the White House is calling a coincidence, reports the New York Times. |
This is a basic principle: until it is proven otherwise, beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s important to extend the presumption of innocence to Dylan Farrow, and presume that she is not guilty of the crime of lying about what Woody Allen did to her.
If you are saying things like “We can’t really know what happened” and extra-specially pleading on behalf of the extra-special Woody AllenHi, The Daily Beast!, then you are saying that his innocence is more presumptive than hers. You are saying that he is on trial, not her: he deserves judicial safeguards in the court of public opinion, but she does not.
The damnably difficult thing about all of this, of course, is that you can’t presume that both are innocent at the same time. One of them must be saying something that is not true. But “he said, she said” doesn’t resolve to “let’s start by assuming she’s lying,” except in a rape culture, and if you are presuming his innocence by presuming her mendacity, you are rape cultured. It works both ways, or should: if one of them has to be lying for the other to be telling the truth, then presuming the innocence of one produces a presumption of the other’s guilt. And Woody Allen cannot be presumed to be innocent of molesting a child unless she is presumed to be lying to us. His presumption of innocence can only be built on the presumption that her words have no credibility, independent of other (real) evidence, which is to say, the presumption that her words are not evidence. If you want to vigorously claim ignorance–to assert that we can never know what happened, in that attic–then you must ground that lack of knowledge in the presumption that what she has said doesn’t count, and we cannot believe her story.
To be blunt: I think Woody Allen probably did it, though, of course, I could be wrong. But it’s okay if I’m wrong. For two reasons. First, because my opinion is not attached to a juridical apparatus—because I have not been empowered by jails and electric chairs and states of exception to destroy people’s lives—it isn’t necessary for me to err heavily on the side of “we need to be really fucking sure that the accused did it.” It’s a good thing, generally, that juries are empowered to say “We think the accused is probably guilty, but we’re not sure beyond a reasonable doubt, so we will not convict.” That bar is set high for a reason; if you’re going to lock a person in a cage for a long time, you need to be really sure. But we are also empowered to say the same thing. We are also empowered to say “We think Woody Allen probably molested a seven year old.” And because we are not in a court of law, we don’t even need to say the second part. The fact that we will not convict him doesn’t even need to be implied. He is not, after all, on trial.
The second reason it’s okay if I’m wrong is that I’m probably not wrong. It’s much more likely that I’m right. Because I am not on Woody Allen’s jury, I can be swayed by the fact that sexual violence is incredibly, horrifically common, much more common than it is for women to make up stories about sexual violence in pursuit of their own petty, vindictive need to destroy a great man’s reputation. We are in the midst of an ongoing, quiet epidemic of sexual violence, now as always. We are not in the midst of an epidemic of false rape charges, and that fact is important here. All things being equal, it’s more likely that the man who has spent a lifetime and a cinematic career walking the line of pedophilia (to put it mildly) is a likely candidate. All things being equal, the explanation that doesn’t require you to imagine a conspiracy of angry women telling lies for no reason is probably the right one. It’s a good thing that juries can’t think this way, that they can’t take account of Occam’s Razor, because—in theory—the juridical system needs to get it right every single time (or at least hold tenaciously to that ambition). But you and I can recognize the bigger picture, because we aren’t holding a person’s life in our hands. Especially in situations like this one, the overwhelmingly more likely thing is that he did it. The overwhelmingly less likely thing is that a pair of bitter females—driven by jealousy or by the sheer malignity of the gender—have been lying about him for decades.
What is the burden of proof for assuming that a person is lying? If you are a famous film director, it turns out to be quite high. You don’t have to say a word in your defense, in fact, and people who have directed documentaries about you will write lengthy essays in the Daily Beast tearing down the testimony of your accusers. You can just go about your life making movie after movie, and it’s fine. But if you are a woman who has accused a great film director of molesting you when you were seven, the starting point is the presumption that, without real evidence, you are not telling the truth. In the court of public opinion, a woman accusing a great film director of raping her has no credibility which his fans are bound to respect. He has something to lose, his good name. She does not, because she does not have a good name. She is living in hiding, under an assumed name. And when she is silent, the Daily Beast does not rise to her defense.
In a rape culture, there is no burden on us to presume that she is not a liar, no necessary imperative to treat her like a person whose account of herself can be taken seriously. It is important that we presume he is innocent. It is not important that we presume she is not making it all up out of female malice. In a rape culture, you can say things like “We can’t really know what really happened, so let’s all act as if Woody Allen is innocent (and she is lying).” In a rape culture, you can use your ignorance to cast doubt on her knowledge; you can admit that you have no basis for casting doubt on Dylan’s statement, and then you can ignore her account of herself. A famous man is not speaking, so her testimony is not admissible evidence. His name is Woody Allen, and in a rape culture, that good name must be shielded and protected. What is her name? ||||| What is the burden of proof for assuming that a person is lying? If you are a famous film director, it turns out to be quite high. You don’t have to say a word in your defense, in fact, and people who have directed documentaries about you will write lengthy essays in the Daily Beast tearing down the testimony of your accusers. You can just go about your life making movie after movie, and it’s fine. But if you are a woman who has accused a great film director of molesting you when you were seven, the starting point is the presumption that, without real evidence, you are not telling the truth. In the court of public opinion, a woman accusing a great film director of raping her has no credibility which his fans are bound to respect. He has something to lose, his good name. She does not, because she does not have a good name. She is living in hiding, under an assumed name. And when she is silent, the Daily Beast does not rise to her defense.
In a rape culture, there is no burden on us to presume that she is not a liar, no necessary imperative to treat her like a person whose account of herself can be taken seriously. It is important that we presume he is innocent. It is not important that we presume she is not making it all up out of female malice. ||||| As anyone with access to a computer knows, Woody Allen has been pilloried of late across the internet, over allegations that 21 years ago, he molested the daughter he and Mia Farrow adopted in 1985. Countless people have weighed in on this, many of them without the slightest idea of what the facts are in this matter. I consider myself allergic to gossip and tabloids, and go out of my way to avoid them. So when a celebrity is being devoured by the two-headed piranha of gossip and innuendo, I usually have minimal understanding of what they did, or were alleged to have done. Woody Allen is an exception.
I produced and directed the two-part PBS special, Woody Allen: A Documentary , that premiered in the U.S. on the “American Masters” series. I also supervised and consulted on the brief clip montage that aired as part of the recent Golden Globes telecast, when Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement.
When I went online the morning after the Globes broadcast, I found more than one email asking if I had seen the previous night’s tweets from Mia Farrow and her son, Ronan. A quick search led me not only to the accusatory tweets, but to the explosion of internet chatter that followed in their wake. The more benevolent comments suggested Woody should rot in jail. Others were demanding his head on a pike.
Last fall, Vanity Fair magazine ran an article about Mia and her family, which included an interview with the 28-year-old Malone (née Dylan), who, at the age of seven, was at the center of Mia’s allegations that made headlines during the brutal custody battle between her and Woody. In the recent interview, Malone stands behind her mother’s accusation. It was the one-two punch of the Vanity Fair piece and the Farrow tweets that stirred up the hornet’s nest that had remained somewhat dormant over the past 20 years.
My documentary covered Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn (Mia’s adopted daughter and Woody’s wife of 16 years) and the ensuing fall-out, but I chose not to go down the rabbit hole detailing the custody case, as my film was primarily about his work, and I had no interest in allowing it to turn into a courtroom drama. I did, however, thoroughly research the entire episode in order to reach my own conclusions about what did or didn’t take place.
My association with Woody is primarily a professional one, though we’ve remained friendly since the documentary and still occasionally correspond by email via his assistant (since Woody still types on a 60-year old manual typewriter) . When I wrote him the day after the ceremony, he was vaguely aware that Mia and Ronan had badmouthed him (again), but he wasn’t certain what Twitter was. (He’s heard of blogging and always confuses the two.) Because he doesn’t go online, he was blissfully unaware of how much ink (sorry, bandwidth) the story was getting. If he had known, he still wouldn’t have cared. Mia’s accusations were old business, and the fact that Ronan was publicly chiming in meant nothing to Woody, who hadn’t even seen his (alleged) son for 20 years. I also knew Woody would never publicly respond to any of this. His indifference to the gossip has always struck me not as a decision so much as an involuntary and organic reaction. In fact, during a written exchange that day in which I mentioned the tweet attack, he was more focused on giving me advice about a stye I had on my eyelid that I joked was probably a brain tumor: “I agree, you probably do have a brain tumor. You should get your affairs in order quickly as those things can move rather rapidly. You’ll probably start to have some problems with your balance—don’t panic—it’s quite natural for a brain tumor.” He then counseled me not to use up my “remaining days” fretting over Mia.
As the day progressed, it seemed the misinformation on the internet was growing exponentially spurious by the minute. The more even-keeled bloggers and pundits were asking, “Is it possible to separate the art from the artist?” or “Is America ready to forgive Woody Allen?” The very phrasing of these questions presumed that Woody had done something terrible, and we had to decide how much we would let it bother us. My wife suggested that in absence of a response by Woody, he was being swiftboated. His silence created a vacuum that everybody with a keyboard was going to fill with whatever they believed or thought they believed or heard from someone else who heard from someone who linked to the Vanity Fair article.
I considered whether to enter the fray, since my credentials were in order, so to speak. I had researched these events, I knew Woody—was friendly with him, but we weren’t so close that anyone could rightfully accuse me of being in his pocket. Quite the opposite in fact, as Woody had already advised me not to get involved. But as I came across more and more articles and blogs filled with misinformation, my wife said something to me that struck a chord: “You have just as much right to weigh in on this as anyone else, regardless of what Woody thinks.”
So here I go—contributing to the very noise I’ve been complaining about.
******************
There are basically two issues at play here. One is Woody’s starting a romantic/sexual relationship with Mia’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, in 1991. The other is Mia’s accusation—used during their custody battle for their three shared children—that Woody molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan. People tend to confuse these two issues, so let’s examine them separately.
First, the Soon-Yi situation:
Every time I stumble upon this topic on the internet, it seems the people who are most outraged are also the most ignorant of the facts. Following are the top ten misconceptions, followed by my response in italics:
#1: Soon-Yi was Woody’s daughter. False.
#2: Soon-Yi was Woody’s step-daughter. False.
#3: Soon-Yi was Woody and Mia’s adopted daughter. False. Soon-Yi was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. Her full name was Soon-Yi Farrow Previn.
#4: Woody and Mia were married. False.
#5: Woody and Mia lived together. False. Woody lived in his apartment on Fifth Ave. Mia and her kids lived on Central Park West. In fact, Woody never once stayed over night at Mia’s apartment in 12 years.
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#6: Woody and Mia had a common-law marriage. False. New York State does not recognize common law marriage. Even in states that do, a couple has to cohabitate for a certain number of years.
#7: Soon-Yi viewed Woody as a father figure. False. Soon-Yi saw Woody as her mother’s boyfriend. Her father figure was her adoptive father, André Previn.
#8: Soon-Yi was underage when she and Woody started having relations. False. She was either 19 or 21. (Her year of birth in Korea was undocumented, but believed to be either 1970 or ’72.)
#9: Soon-Yi was borderline retarded. Ha! She’s smart as a whip, has a degree from Columbia University and speaks more languages than you.
#10: Woody was grooming Soon-Yi from an early age to be his child bride. Oh, come on! According to court documents and Mia’s own memoir, until 1990 (when Soon-Yi was 18 or 20), Woody “had little to do with any of the Previn children, (but) had the least to do with Soon-Yi” so Mia encouraged him to spend more time with her. Woody started taking her to basketball games, and the rest is tabloid history. So he hardly “had his eye on her” from the time she was a child.
Let me add this: If anyone is creeped out by the notion of a 55-year old man becoming involved with his girlfriend’s 19-year old adopted daughter, I understand. That makes perfect sense. But why not get the facts straight? If the actual facts are so repugnant to you, then why embellish them?
It’s understandable that Mia would remain furious with Woody for the rest of her life. If I were in Mia’s position, I’m sure I’d feel the same way. (Though I’d likely handle it as a private matter and not be tweeting about him being a pedophile, just before tweeting, “omfg look at this baby panda.”) I also understand the simmering anger of Ronan Farrow (née Satchel), who has famously said of Allen, “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression.” However, this particular dilemma might be resolved by Mia’s recent revelations that Ronan’s biological father may “possibly” be Frank Sinatra, whom Farrow married in 1966, when she was 21 and the crooner was 50.
While we’re on the subject, a word about this Sinatra business: To even say that Ronan is “possibly” Sinatra’s son implies that Mia was fooling around with her ex-husband decades after their divorce. Backdating from Ronan’s birthdate, it means that Farrow and Sinatra “hooked up” in March of 1987 when Mia was 42 and Old Blue Eyes was 71. This sort of dispels the myth that Woody and Mia had this idyllic, loving, monogamous relationship until Woody threw it all away in 1992, since Mia was apparently diddling her ex, five years earlier. If Mia was “just kidding” about the Sinatra scenario, it was an awfully insensitive thing to say, considering the fact that Sinatra’s wife, Barbara, is still very much alive. Did Mia stop to think how her coy tease might be perceived by the widow Sinatra? One can only wonder if this also fits Ronan’s definition of a “moral transgression.” (One may also wonder whether Woody is owed a fortune in reimbursement for child support.)
I am not here to slam Mia. I think she’s an exceptional actress and I seriously admire her political activism. (I even follow her on Twitter.) But those who hate Woody “for what he did to Mia,” should be reminded that if Sinatra was indeed Ronan’s biological father, it’s not the first time Mia had a child by a married man. In 1969, at the age of 24, she became pregnant by musician/composer André Previn, 40, who was still married to singer/songwriter Dory Previn. The betrayal is said to have led to Dory Previn’s mental breakdown and institutionalization, during which she received electroconvulsive therapy. She would later write a song called, “Beware of Young Girls” about Mia. Maybe sleeping with your friend’s husband doesn’t earn as many demerits as sleeping with your girlfriend’s adopted daughter, but if you’re waving the “Never Forget” banner in Mia’s honor, let’s be consistent and take a moment to also remember the late Dory Previn. (Or better yet, let’s forget the whole damn thing, considering it’s none of our business.)
******************
Now, on to the more delicate issue of Mia’s accusations during the custody case that Woody sexually abused Dylan/Malone.
A brief but chilling synopsis of the accusation is as follows: On August 4, 1992, almost four months after the revelation about Woody and Soon-Yi’s relationship understandably ignited a firestorm within the Farrow household, Woody was visiting Frog Hollow, the Farrow country home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, where Mia and several of her kids were staying. During an unsupervised moment, Woody allegedly took Dylan into the attic and, shall we say, “touched her inappropriately.” Later in the day, it was alleged that the child was wearing her sundress, but that her underpants were missing. The following day, Mia’s daughter allegedly told her mother what had happened, and Mia put the child’s recounting of the story on videotape as evidence.
Did this event actually occur? If we’re inclined to give it a second thought, we can each believe what we want, but none of us know. Why does the adult Malone say it happened? Because she obviously believes it did, so good for her for speaking out about it in Vanity Fair. Her brother Ronan believes it happened, so good for him for sticking up for his sister in 140 characters or less. They’ve both grown up in a household where this scenario has been accepted as indisputable fact, so why shouldn’t they believe it?
I know I’m treading a delicate path here, and opening myself up to accusations of “blaming the victim.” However, I’m merely floating scenarios to consider, and you can think what you will. But if Mia’s account is true, it means that in the middle of custody and support negotiations, during which Woody needed to be on his best behavior, in a house belonging to his furious ex-girlfriend, and filled with people seething mad at him, Woody, who is a well-known claustrophobic, decided this would be the ideal time and place to take his daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing.
Even people who give Woody the benefit of the doubt and defend him on the internet are often confused on a few points. Some mistakenly say that the court found him “not guilty” of the molestation charges. The fact is there was never such a ruling because he was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim.
Let’s back up a bit: Mia’s allegations of molestation automatically triggered a criminal investigation by the Connecticut State Police, who brought in an investigative team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose six-month long inquiry (which included medical examinations) concluded that Dylan had not been molested. I’ve since read a recurring canard that Woody “chose” the investigative team. Yet nobody has suggested how or why Mia’s team would ever outsource the investigation to a team “chosen” by Woody. Others have said that the investigators talked to psychiatrists “on Allen’s payroll” before letting him off the hook. The only way I can explain this is that the investigators, naturally, would have spoken with Woody’s shrinks before giving him a clean bill of health. So technically, yeah, Woody’s shrinks would have been paid a lot of money by Woody over the years. (Let’s even call it an annuity.) The same would be true of his dentist, his eye doctor, and his internist.
As for the evidentiary videotape of young Dylan’s claims, it’s been noted that there were several starts and stops in the recording, essentially creating in-camera “edits” to the young girl’s commentary. This raises questions as to what was happening when the tape wasn’t running. Was Mia “coaching” her daughter off-camera, as suggested by the investigators? Mia says no—she merely turned the camera on whenever Dylan starting talking about what Daddy did. Maybe we should take Mia at her word on this. Since I wasn’t there, I think it’s good policy not to presume what took place.
The videotape and the medical exams weren’t the only problems Mia faced in bringing abuse charges against her former lover. There were problems with inconsistencies in her daughter’s off-camera narrative as well. A New York Times article dated March 26, 1993 , quotes from Mia’s own testimony, during which she recalled taking the child to a doctor on the same day as the alleged incident. Farrow recalled, “I think (Dylan) said (Allen) touched her, but when asked where, she just looked around and went like this,” at which point Mia patted her shoulders. Farrow recalls she took Dylan to another doctor, four days later. On the stand, Allen’s attorney asked Mia about the second doctor’s findings: “There was no evidence of injury to the anal or vaginal area, is that correct?” Farrow answered, “Yes.”
In the midst of the proceedings, on February 2, 1993, a revealing article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, headlined: “Nanny Casts Doubt on Farrow Charges,” in which former nanny Monica Thompson (whose salary was paid by Allen, since three of the brood were also his) swore in a deposition to Allen’s attorneys that she was pressured by Farrow to support the molestation charges, and the pressure led her to resign her position. Thompson had this to say about the videotape: ““I know that the tape was made over the course of at least two and perhaps three days. I recall Ms. Farrow saying to Dylan at that time, ‘Dylan, what did daddy do… and what did he do next?’ Dylan appeared not to be interested, and Ms. Farrow would stop taping for a while and then continue.”
Thompson further revealed a conversation she had with Kristie Groteke, another nanny. “She told me that she felt guilty allowing Ms. Farrow to say those things about Mr. Allen. (Groteke) said the day Mr. Allen spent with the kids, she did not have Dylan out of her sight for longer than five minutes. She did not remember Dylan being without her underwear.”
On April 20, 1993, a sworn statement was entered into evidence by Dr. John M. Leventhal, who headed the Yale-New Haven Hospital investigative team looking into the abuse charges. An article from the New York Times dated May 4, 1993, includes some interesting excerpts of their findings. As to why the team felt the charges didn’t hold water, Leventhal states: “We had two hypotheses: one, that these were statements made by an emotionally disturbed child and then became fixed in her mind. And the other hypothesis was that she was coached or influenced by her mother. We did not come to a firm conclusion. We think that it was probably a combination.”
Leventhal further swears Dylan’s statements at the hospital contradicted each other as well as the story she told on the videotape. “Those were not minor inconsistencies. She told us initially that she hadn’t been touched in the vaginal area, and she then told us that she had, then she told us that she hadn’t.” He also said the child’s accounts had “a rehearsed quality.” At one point, she told him, “I like to cheat on my stories.” The sworn statement further concludes: “Even before the claim of abuse was made last August, the view of Mr. Allen as an evil and awful and terrible man permeated the household. The view that he had molested Soon-Yi and was a potential molester of Dylan permeated the household… It’s quite possible —as a matter of fact, we think it’s medically probable—that (Dylan) stuck to that story over time because of the intense relationship she had with her mother.” Leventhal further notes it was “very striking” that each time Dylan spoke of the abuse, she coupled it with “one, her father’s relationship with Soon-Yi, and two, the fact that it was her poor mother, her poor mother,” who had lost a career in Mr. Allen’s films.
Much is made by Mia’s supporters over the fact that the investigative team destroyed their collective notes prior to their submission of the report. Also, the three doctors who made up the team did not testify in court, other than through the sworn deposition of team leader Leventhal. I have no idea if this is common practice or highly unusual. I won’t wager a guess as to what was behind the destruction of the notes any more than I’ll claim to know why Mia stopped and started her video camera while filming her daughter’s recollections over a few days, or who was alleged to have leaked the tape of Dylan to others, or why Mia wouldn't take a lie detector test. (Woody took one and passed.) In any event, destruction of the notes may have been part of the reason that, despite the very conclusive position taken by the investigators that Dylan was not abused, presiding Judge Elliot Wilk found their report “inconclusive.”
Judge Wilk would ultimately grant Mia custody of Satchel and Dylan. 15-year-old Moses chose not to see Woody, which was his right. It was a hard-won victory for Mia who returned home with eight of her nine children intact. She would go on to adopt six more, including Thaddeus Wilk Farrow, named in honor of the Honorable Judge Wilk.
Woody was granted supervised visitation of Satchel, but his request for immediate visitation with Dylan was denied until the young girl underwent a period of therapy, after which a further review of visitation would be considered. As a legal matter, the investigation of possible criminal abuse would continue.
Almost four months after Wilk’s decision, the Connecticut authorities abandoned the criminal investigation, resulting in an unusual statement from Litchfield, Connecticut County Prosecutor Frank Maco, who dismissed the abuse charges against Woody, but still maintained that he had “probable cause” to believe Dylan. In the minds of many, the decision would leave Woody in a kind of moral limbo. Legally, he was cleared of everything—except a dark cloud of suspicion. Woody was furious, and called a press conference in which he referred to the state’s attorney office as “cowardly, dishonest and irresponsible. Even today, as they squirm, lie, sweat, and tap-dance, pathetically trying to save face and justify their moral squalor… there was no evidence against me. There is none now. I promise you, smear as they may, they will always claim to have evidence; but notice that somehow they will manage to find reasons why they can’t quite show it to you.”
Woody’s ad-hoc press conference made for good television and was widely covered in the press. Less widely disseminated was a news item that appeared in the New York Times five months later (Feb. 24, 1994), which reported that a disciplinary panel found the actions of County Prosecutor Frank Maco (the “probable cause” guy) were cause for “grave concern” and may have prejudiced the case. It winds up that Maco sent his “probable cause” statement to the Surrogate’s Court judge in Manhattan who was still deciding on Allen’s adoption status of Dylan and Moses, which Mia was trying to annul. The panel wrote, “In most circumstances, [Maco’s comments] would have violated the prosecutor’s obligation to the accused. [His actions were] inappropriate, unsolicited, and potentially prejudicial.” The article states that the agency could have voted sanctions against Maco ranging from censure to disbarment. Though the decision was quite damning, Maco got what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Two years later, the reprimand was overturned, but Mia was unsuccessful in her bid to annul the adoptions. Legally, Woody remains the adoptive father of Dylan and Moses.
Moses Farrow, now 36, and an accomplished photographer, has been estranged from Mia for several years. During a recent conversation, he spoke of “finally seeing the reality” of Frog Hollow and used the term “brainwashing” without hesitation. He recently reestablished contact with Allen and is currently enjoying a renewed relationship with him and Soon-Yi.
******************
Life would go on for both Woody and Mia, respectively. Aside from tending to her growing family, Farrow would come to be recognized as a leading human rights advocate, with special concern for the plight of children in conflict-torn regions. She has worked diligently to bring attention to the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, and has made many trips to the region, receiving several awards for her humanitarian efforts in the process. Woody Allen would continue his ritual of writing and producing a film per-year—an unprecedented pace he’s maintained since 1969. The accolades and awards continue to pour in, and no one is less impressed than Allen, who has traditionally stayed away from all awards shows.
In 1997, Woody and Soon-Yi would marry in Venice, Italy, and over the next few years adopt two daughters. Anyone who has adopted is familiar with the vetting process conducted by social workers and licensed government agencies charged with looking out for the child’s welfare. Suffice it to say, the case of Woody and Soon-Yi was no exception, especially considering the highly-publicized events of 1992-93. Both adoptions, in two different states, were thoroughly reviewed by state court judges who found no reason why Woody and his wife shouldn’t be allowed to adopt. The girls, now aged 15 and 13, are named Bechet (after jazz saxophonist/clarinetist Sidney Bechet) and Manzie (after jazz drummer Manzie Johnson).
It took me little more than two years to complete my film, Woody Allen: A Documentary. I conducted hours of filmed interviews with Woody, who put forward no ground rules about questions I could ask, or topics to avoid. Although I shot some film on location with Woody in London and Cannes, most of our filming took place in New York City. On more than one occasion, when I was planning to interview Woody, I found I had to schedule around mornings when he’d walk his kids to school, or attend parent-teacher conferences. The normalcy of his domestic life was somehow surprising to me. I’ve not spent a lot of time with his kids, but I’ve met them on a few occasions where I’ve received the cursory “hello,” as they went about their business doing girl stuff with their friends. The only parent-child tensions I’ve been privy to are that his girls think their father’s mean for not letting them have a dog, and that he’s an idiot for not knowing how to work a computer. Lest anyone accuse me of being in Woody’s pocket, I’ll confess that I side with his kids on both counts.
My more recent professional association with Woody took place last month, when I was asked to work on the Allen clip montage for the Golden Globes. The montage editor, Nicholas Goodman, and I wanted to include a brief moment from The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which Mia appeared. The producers were concerned about whether she would sign a release for the clip. (The Screen Actors Guild maintains very strict rules about obtaining authorization from any actor who appears in a clip excised for compilations.) I thought it unlikely that Mia would object, as I had obtained a signed release for my documentary, in which she granted permission for her appearance in many lengthy clips from several Allen films. At the time, I was extremely grateful for her cooperation, for without it, I would have had a 12-year gap in my film, and Mia would have been extremely conspicuous by her absence. I even took it as a possible sign that 20 years after the fact, perhaps the healing process had begun to take hold. As a further sign of good will, Mia agreed to the use of her “Purple Rose” clip in the Golden Globe montage. The producers of the show were grateful. Everyone agreed it would have been a shame not to acknowledge Mia’s contribution to so many of Allen’s best films.
At the ceremony in Beverly Hills, actress Emma Stone, having just worked with Woody on his latest film Magic in the Moonlight, introduced the montage, followed by Diane Keaton’s surrogate acceptance speech, which was typically sentimental, loopy, and very Keatonesque. Woody, who would have never stopped throwing up had he been there, was instead in New York at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre for the opening of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, whose book was written by Woody’s friend Doug McGrath. Woody had already told me that if the show let out early enough, he was hoping to get home in time to catch the last quarter of the football playoffs.
Apparently, Mia and Ronan assigned more significance to the festivities than did Woody, seeing the televised occasion as a perfect opportunity to bring him down a few pegs. The first of Mia’s tweets, issued as the Woody segment commenced, was restrained and kind of cute: “Time to grab some icecream & switch over to #GIRLS.” I smiled when I read it, and thought, “Why not? You already saw the montage when you approved the use of your clip.” Her second tweet, referencing the recent Vanity Fair article, was nastier: “A woman has publicly detailed Woody Allen’s molestation of her at age 7. GoldenGlobe tribute showed contempt for her & all abuse survivors.”
This one puzzled me. I thought it was odd to say the Globe tribute showed contempt for abuse survivors when Mia willfully participated in the festivities by expressly agreeing to the use of her clip, when she had every opportunity to decline. She certainly wasn’t pressured, and we had an alternative version of the montage (sans Mia) all ready to go in case she passed. It seemed Mia either wanted it both ways, or simply assumed no one would ever learn that she was complicit in the tribute. By the time I saw her third tweet, asking, “Is he a pedophile?” and linking to the Vanity Fair article, my most charitable thought was that this woman needs to get over herself. A more mischievous part of me wanted to repost her tweet, but swap out her link for one leading to an article about the recent 10-year jail sentence received by her brother, John Charles Villiers-Farrow, for multiple counts of child molestation—a topic she’s been unusually quiet about, considering her penchant for calling out alleged (let alone, convicted) molesters to whom she’s exposed her children.
I was actually somewhat impressed with Ronan Farrow’s now-famous tweet from the summer of 2012: “Happy father’s day—or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.” The target was fair game, and I remember thinking Ronan had inherited his father’s wit—before his actual paternity came into question. (A good sense of humor and the ability to think on his feet will serve him well on his own show on MSNBC.) But his tweet the night of the Globes was a bit more vicious: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute—did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Brevity may be the soul of wit, if not nuanced accuracy. Had he stated that a woman publicly “alleged” molestation, it probably wouldn’t have triggered quite the reaction Ronan was looking for, just weeks before his show debuts. To remind readers that the woman is recalling memories from the age of seven, when a six-month investigation characterized her as being “emotionally disturbed,” and making statements that were likely “coached or influenced by her mother,” takes a little more than 140 characters.
I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating: I know Dylan/Malone believes these events took place, and I know Ronan believes so too. I am not in a position to say they didn’t, any more than all the people on the internet calling for Woody’s head can say they did. The point is that accusations make headlines; retractions are buried on page twelve, and coerced accusations are as much a reality as coerced confessions. Since Woody literally pays no mind to this stuff, and he continues to work and have a happy home life, I would never suggest he’s a victim in this case. The real victim has always been Malone. For me, however, the real questions are: who’s doing the victimizing, and does pain really heal better in the public spotlight? I don’t pretend to have answers for either question.
Malone, who is now a writer and artist, and happily married to an information-technology specialist, had been living a seemingly quiet life out of the spotlight. Obviously, if she feels that an interview with Vanity Fair is a necessary part of her healing process, that’s her right. I can only hope it brought her some closure, and I sincerely wish her all the happiness and peace she’s been looking for. I can even clear up one tiny mystery for her, of which I have personal knowledge. In the Vanity Fair article, Malone says that while a senior in college, she received in the mail a stuffed, manila envelope from Woody, filled with old photos of the two of them. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, but “(the envelope) had a fake return name: Lehman.” When I was working on my documentary, I’d occasionally request material from Woody’s office, which would be mailed to me by his assistant whose name would appear on the return address. During Malone’s senior year in college, Woody had an assistant whose surname was Lehman. So there’s one mystery solved. If only all the others were so easy.
As to the overall reliability or objectivity of Vanity Fair, I can’t really take a position. I do know that the publication was sued for libel in 2005 by director Roman Polanski who, in 1977, pled guilty to unlawful intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl in Los Angeles that year. The magazine published an article stating that in 1969, Polanski was seen fondling and hitting on a young model at Elaine’s restaurant in New York City on his way to the funeral of his late wife Sharon Tate, who had been brutally slain by the Manson family. One of the witnesses who testified on Polanski’s behalf was Mia Farrow, who, I’m told, remains friendly with the director to this day. I commend her for standing by her friend and going on record as a character witness. That’s what friends do. In fact, her support of Polanski is so steadfast that when he won the Oscar for best director for his 2002 masterpiece, The Pianist, Mia never even suggested that the Motion Picture Academy showed contempt for all abuse survivors in so honoring him. But then again, those were the days before Twitter.
Polanski won his libel suit against Vanity Fair. It was proven that the director wasn’t even in New York on his way to his wife’s funeral, which took place in Los Angeles.
* * * * Editor's note: Subsequent to publishing the above piece, an open letter from Dylan Farrow appeared in Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times. When asked for comment, Weide sent this reply: “This continues to be a very sad story from every angle. I can only say I found nothing in Dylan’s letter that hasn’t previously been alleged in the two previous Vanity Fair articles, which I’ve already addressed. I also see nothing that contradicts what I wrote for The Daily Beast. If I wrote it today, it would be exactly the same piece. As I’ve already stated in my article, I hope she finds closure, and I sincerely wish her all the happiness and peace she’s been looking for."
Robert B. Weide is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker whose documentaries have covered the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Kurt Vonnegut. He was also the Executive Producer and director of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. He tweets mostly nice things @BobWeide. ||||| Dylan Farrow's Brother Moses Defends Woody Allen
A Family Divided
Jane Read Martin / Globe
Dylan's Response
Painful Memories
Rick Maiman / Sygma / Corbis
'Horrible Tragedy'
Dylan Farrow's Feb. 1 open letter to The New York Times detailing sexual molestation she says she suffered at the hands of her father Woody Allen reignited a controversy that has divided their family bitterly for more than 20 years.Now her brother Moses Farrow is speaking out to defend Allen – and accuse their mother, Mia Farrow , of poisoning the children against their father."My mother drummed it into me to hate my father for tearing apart the family and sexually molesting my sister," Moses, 36, tells PEOPLE in the magazine's new issue. "And I hated him for her for years. I see now that this was a vengeful way to pay him back for falling in love with Soon-Yi."Moses and Dylan, 28, both adopted by Allen and Farrow, and their brother Ronan, 26, were in the center of a 1993 custody battle in which both sides testified about Allen's affair with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen went on to marry in 1997. Farrow was awarded custody of the couple's three children. (In total, she has 14 kids from her marriages and solo adoptions.) Allen, 78, who was investigated but not charged with molestation, has for decades denied abusing Dylan, maintaining that Farrow, 69, coached Dylan, an accusation Farrow has always denied."Of course Woody did not molest my sister," says Moses, who is estranged from Farrow and many of his siblings and is close to Allen and Soon-Yi. "She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him. The day in question, there were six or seven of us in the house. We were all in public rooms and no one, not my father or sister, was off in any private spaces. My mother was conveniently out shopping. I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible."Dylan insists that she is telling the truth."This is such a betrayal to me and my whole family," she tells PEOPLE in response to her brother's comments. "My memories are the truth and they are mine and I will live with that for the rest of my life.""My mother never coached me," Dylan says. "She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them. She was distraught when I told her. When I came forward with my story she was hoping against hope that I had made it up. In one of the most heartbreaking conversations I have ever had, she sat me down and asked me if I was telling the truth. She said that Dad said he didn’t do anything. and I said, 'He's lying.' "Moses accuses Farrow of bullying him as well. "Our mother has misled the public into believing it was a happy household of both biological and adopted children," he says. "From an early age, my mother demanded obedience and I was often hit as a child. She went into unbridled rages if we angered her, which was intimidating at the very least and often horrifying, leaving us not knowing what she would do.""I don't know where he gets this about getting beaten," counters Dylan. "We were sent to our rooms sometimes.""I will not see my family dragged down like this," she adds. "I can't stay silent when my family needs me and I will not abandon them like Soon-Yi and Moses. My brother is dead to me. My mother is so brave and so courageous and taught me what it means to be strong and brave and tell the truth even in the face of these monstrous lies."Farrow, who declined to respond to Moses's accusations, Tweeted , "I love my daughter. I will always protect her. A lot of ugliness is going to be aimed at me. But this is not about me, it's about her truth."Moses, a family therapist, says that his own life has been made better by spending time with Allen."I think my sister is missing a great deal in life in not reconnecting with her father, who had always adored her," he says. "It’s important that she assert her independence from our mother and not go through life with the false impression that she has been molested by my father. I am very happy I have come into my own power, separating from my mother, which has led to a positive reunion with my father."Allen's family says that the director is devastated by Dylan's letter."This is a horrible, horrible tragedy," Allen's sister Letty Aronson tells PEOPLE. "He feels very badly for Dylan, that she has been so poisoned by her mother."Dylan, of course, feels very differently."I have a wonderful family," she says. "We are brave and we are truthful and anyone who says anything otherwise does not know us."For much more on this story, including details of Dylan's and Woody Allen's lives now and an update on all of Farrow's children, look for this week's issue of People on newsstands Friday | – Moses Farrow, brother to Dylan Farrow and adopted son of Woody Allen, minces no words when it comes to his sister's allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of their father: "Of course Woody did not molest my sister," Moses, 36, tells People. "She loved him and looked forward to seeing him when he would visit. She never hid from him until our mother succeeded in creating the atmosphere of fear and hate towards him." He goes on to say that on the day in question, everyone who was in the house was in public, and neither Woody nor Dylan ever went off privately. "I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother," Moses says, claiming that Mia Farrow often hit him when he was a child and went into rages if she was not obeyed. Moses is now estranged from his mother and many of his siblings, but is close to Allen and his wife, Moses' adopted half-sister Soon-Yi Previn. Moses calls the whole fiasco Mia's "vengeful way to pay [Allen] back for falling in love with Soon-Yi." In a piece written last month, Allen documentarian Robert B. Weide noted that while Moses, 15 at the time Dylan accused Allen, initially refused contact with his father, he recently told Weide he's now "finally seeing the reality" of what happened and used the term "brainwashing." Dylan was quick to respond to her brother's public change of heart: She tells People, "My brother is dead to me," adding, "My mother never coached me. She never planted false memories in my brain. My memories are mine. I remember them." She also denies her mother hit anyone. Moses isn't the only one publicly doubting Dylan's story: Stephen King made waves Monday when he responded to a New Inquiry piece on the allegations by saying, "Boy, I’m stumped on that one. I don’t like to think it’s true, and there’s an element of palpable bitchery there, but..." Of course, Salon reports, he followed that up with a tweet: "Have no opinion on the accusations; hope they're not true. Probably used the wrong word." |
Published on Feb 17, 2015
"While you were chairman of the Commerce Committee, that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations."
- Steve Carell
Footage from Comedy Central's Indecision 2000 coverage by The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart) ||||| Jon Stewart (The Daily Show host, 1999-2015):
My wildest dream for The Daily Show when I started was “This will be fun. Hopefully we’ll do it well.” Success for me would’ve been feeling like I figured it out. That I got to express the things I wanted to. It was never “I want this to be a cultural touchstone . . . but only for a very small portion of America.” And I was hoping to stay on TV longer than nine months this time.
The Daily Show premiered on Comedy Central on July 22, 1996, at 11:30 P.M. The format loosely tracked that of a conventional newscast: five or so opening minutes called “Headlines,” read by former ESPN anchor Craig Kilborn, followed by “Other News,” then usually a pre-taped “field piece” with a correspondent, and finishing up with Kilborn interviewing an actor or a musician.
Some segments played off the hard news of the day, like the presidential contest between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. “There was more of a pop-culture-and-lifestyle component only because what we were satirizing—particularly local news—was doing a lot of that stuff,” co-creator Lizz Winstead says. “We would make fun of the conventions of news. Like when TV reporters talk, how do you create drama in a story that doesn’t exist?”
The day-to-day creative process of the first few years of The Daily Show centered on Winstead, fellow co-creator Madeleine Smithberg, and the writing staff. “My first day on the job,” Winstead says, “I have to pull the writers into my office and say, ‘Guys, you can’t have your mushroom dealer come up to the office.’ ” Kilborn came up with the signature “Five Questions” conceit for guest interviews, but otherwise largely read from the script.
In November 1996, Comedy Central’s executives moved The Daily Show to 11 P.M., to replace Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, which had jumped to ABC, but also to counter-program the late local news.
Kilborn’s Daily Show would peak at a nightly average of 357,000, yet Kilborn’s audience was growing, and the show was generating critical buzz. Perhaps more important than the chatter was the fact that it was indeed reaching the younger male viewers Comedy Central president Doug Herzog had targeted in the first place. The combination caught the attention of CBS, and in 1998 it offered Kilborn the slot following Late Night with David Letterman, at 12:30 A.M.
“He starts to get a little heat, we’re starting to get a little attention with The Daily Show,” Herzog says, “and then the next thing you know Kilborn goes and signs with CBS without even telling us.”
Panic, followed by auditions: David Alan Grier, Michael McKean, Greg Proops, Bill Weir, and Mike Rowe came to the studio and sat in the host’s chair. Daily Show correspondents Beth Littleford and Stephen Colbert got tryouts, too. But Herzog and other Comedy Central executives wondered about a black-leather-jacket-wearing stand-up comic, a guy who had hosted a short-lived MTV talk show produced by Smithberg. He had lost out to Conan O’Brien as Letterman’s NBC replacement; he had written a book of satirical essays; he had played Eve Harrington to Garry Shandling’s Margo Channing on The Larry Sanders Show; and lately he’d had some supporting roles in Hollywood rom-coms. Herzog didn’t think the highly regarded, slightly adrift comedian would be interested in the job. But, hey, what did he have to lose in buying lunch for Jon Stewart?
From The Neal Peters Collection.
JAMES DIXON (manager for Jon Stewart, 1987-):
After The Jon Stewart Show was canceled, he was . . . not burnt on being on TV, but he wanted to kind of wet his feet with film. We had this nice deal with Harvey Weinstein.
JON STEWART: At the time, I was obviously making my mark in such films as Wishful Thinking and Dancing with Architecture, or Dancing About . . . Oh, no. They ended up calling it something else. Playing by Heart, I think it was.
Getting fired from the talk show was the real turning point for me. Because I thought that, after appearing on Letterman, now I’m a made man. I thought losing The Jon Stewart Show meant I was an unmade man. I realized you still have to make your act better. The goal is to produce, the goal is to make things. So I spent some time writing and performing on The Larry Sanders Show, and I learned a lot from Garry Shandling.
JUDD APATOW (stand-up comic, writer, director):
Garry had the foresight to write about the talk-show wars and this very subtle aspect of it, which is you support a young comedian, and slowly the network likes him more than it likes you, and then that younger guy, in ways that he understands and might not understand, slowly pushes you out of your job. Similar to what really happened with Leno and Conan and Fallon. So there was a moment when Garry was considering continuing The Larry Sanders Show and changing the name of it to The John Stewart Show, with an h so it wouldn’t really be Jon. Everyone was excited about it for a while, but it went away.
JON STEWART: The Daily Show wasn’t necessarily on the radar. I think they called and said, “Hey, man, would you be interested in talking about this?”—something along those lines, something as romantic as that.
JAMES DIXON: I definitely advocated for him to do it. I just said to him, “You can put this through your prism. You can make it smarter and different than what it’s been.” Now, I definitely didn’t see the show becoming the political lightning rod that it evolved into.
DOUG HERZOG (executive, MTV, 1984-95; president, Comedy Central, 1995-98; executive, Viacom, 2004-):
In the summer of ‘98, when we announced that Jon was going to take over The Daily Show, we had a little press conference in the lobby of the old Comedy Central offices. And Stephen Colbert showed up, as a member of the press representing The Daily Show, wanting to know why he didn’t get the job.
STEPHEN COLBERT (correspondent, 1997-2005):
“You told me he wasn’t funny.” That’s what Jon said to Doug Herzog.
MATT LABOV (publicist for Jon Stewart, 1994-2008):
The stakes for Jon were fairly high at that point, because he’s not a super-young guy anymore, and he’s had shots, and people easily disappear and go into the woodwork. He didn’t get the Conan job on NBC; he didn’t get the 12:30 job after Letterman. If this doesn’t work on fucking cable, then where would Jon have ended up?
JON STEWART: A couple of months before I officially started as host there was a meeting with the writers and producers. Let’s call that “Jonny’s surprise party.” I knew that the people working on the Kilborn show were rightfully proud of it. It had done well. It was not the sensibility that I thought was right for me, and so when they approached me for the show, I was pretty clear about the direction I thought I wanted to take it. Seemed like everybody was on board with that, and so this was my first chance to meet with all the people who, I had been told, were so excited about that. So excited. They’re so happy you’re here.
And I walked in, and it was a room full of people who, as it turned out, were annoyed that I had an idea about where I wanted to go, who thought that I was going to MTV it up. I was told, “This isn’t about bands. We do a real show here.” I just sat there like “Oh, fuck.” It felt a little bit like “Wow, none of this was in the brochure. The brochure said that this was oceanfront property.”
JAMES DIXON: I had to talk Jon down. Not from a tree—from a skyscraper. Because they basically said to him, “Welcome aboard. This is how we do shit here. Grab a chair.” It was bullshit.
PAUL RUDD (actor):
Technically I was Jon’s first Daily Show guest interview. I went to the University of Kansas, and my roommate, Stewart Bailey, became a segment producer who was with the show from the very beginning. I’d been on Kilborn’s Daily Show. When Jon replaced Craig, they wanted to do a test show so Jon could get used to the format.
Stewart made his debut on Monday, January 11, 1999. His first joke was that Kilborn was “on assignment in Kuala Lumpur.” His first headline, “The Final Blow,” was about the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. His first guest was Michael J. Fox, then starring on ABC’s Spin City. But Stewart looked, for the first months, very much the guest himself. Other than a new couch and desktop—and blue script pages for Stewart to scribble on portentously, replacing Kilborn’s white paper—the set design was largely unchanged. The theme song, Bob Mould’s “Dog on Fire,” was the same. And Stewart’s suits were so ill-fitting that they looked like they were inherited from his much taller predecessor.
By Mike Blake/Reuters.
JUSTIN MELKMANN (post-production supervisor; segment producer; later supervising producer, video department; 1997-):
During the Kilborn era, it was about “How can we seem like we’ve gone too far?” With Jon, we went from creating the news—creating funny spoof headlines—to making fun of the news. That was a big change.
MO ROCCA (correspondent, 1998-2003):
Shortly after Jon arrived, we had done a bit about Dana Plato dying, and Jon felt bad about delivering a joke when the end of her life had been so pathetic. We had a meeting where he said he had resolved that the show needed to have a point of view and couldn’t just be the kid at the back of the classroom throwing spitballs in all directions. I remember people trading the kind of glances that said, “Oh shit, this is going to be a disaster.”
JON STEWART: To be fair to the writers who stayed from Kilborn’s show, they had a successful thing going. They thought of it as a continuation of their show. I thought it was a new show. To me it wasn’t edgy or provocative to just take napalm to a bush for no reason. You wanted it to be pointed, purposeful, intentional, surgical.
I felt like I walked in there with a very open “O.K., so this will be great,” and it was “Hey, motherfucker, you came here to kill a baby.”
KENT JONES (writer, 1996-2001):
Well, I would not agree with that. I don’t remember any of this being as hostile as it has been portrayed. I just don’t.
MADELEINE SMITHBERG (co-creator; executive producer, 1996-2002):
Because of the point of view that had been created by Craig Kilborn sitting in the chair, the writers’ role had inflated. Yeah, they were spoiled rotten, because almost every show in late night is talent driven. They got too big for their britches.
JON STEWART: Six or eight weeks in, the writers called me into their office. They’re like, “You can’t change our jokes anymore.” I didn’t know what to say.
So after a weekend of pacing and smoking and having tremendous Lincoln-Douglas debates on the couch by myself, I went back in, and it was horrible. I basically told them all to fuck off. “You work for me. And if you don’t like the direction, O.K. I get that. Don’t work here.”
“THERE WERE POINTS WHERE I THOUGHT . . . I’VE GOT TO LEAVE,” SAYS STEWART OF THE EARLY TURMOIL.
There were points where I thought, I made the wrong decision. I’ve got to leave. But I don’t give up very easily. It was open hostility, which is so enjoyable. It became that sense of “O.K., let’s arm-wrestle.” This will give you a hint of my personality of grudges.
I didn’t really have a game plan. I knew what I didn’t want. But then turning it into what you did want was the next scenario, and that was going to take time, and effort, and accomplices. What I needed most were accomplices.
BEN KARLIN (head writer, later executive producer, 1999-2006):
I was living in Los Angeles, working with a bunch of guys from The Onion, selling pilots and doing punch-up on movies. We did a pilot for Fox called Deadline Now, at about the same time The Daily Show was launching. We kind of did the exact opposite. We didn’t want to be winking at the audience. We wanted to play it straight and not really acknowledge we were a comedy show. We hired actors and went about trying to produce a news show that was very much in the spirit of the Onion newspaper. And, frankly, we were quite scornful of the Kilborn Daily Show.
Our template host, when we’d come up with show ideas, was always Jon Stewart. We loved Jon Stewart. So when it was announced that Jon was taking over The Daily Show, our little comedy-snob nerd group thought it was a bad move. For him. Comedy Central was still pretty second-tier, and that might even be nice. And Jon was the Letterman heir apparent.
I got a call from my agent saying, “Listen, Jon is looking for a new head writer, loves The Onion, has heard that you’re kind of the de facto leader of the Onion guys’ group out in L.A. Would you be willing to come out to New York and meet with them?”
JON STEWART: I really liked his sensibility. Ben seemed to be concerned with hypocrisy and the silly façades of politics. He seemed to know where the absurdity was, and that was an important change in focus for what we wanted to do. There’s also a certain steeped-in-neurosis bathos that probably was a rhythm that we both clicked on. That similar Jewie Jewerman from Jewville.
The big thing was to find somebody who had thoughts, who cared, who had an opinion. Part of what The Onion is, and part of what Ben was steeped in, was the idea of deconstruction as your first step of re-creation. So Ben was a natural fit, although he had not had the TV experience.
From Comedy Central.
BEN KARLIN: I was friendly with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. They were kind of like the grand Pooh-Bahs of the alternative-comedy scene in L.A.—Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Patton Oswalt. It was that whole wave of comics. Bob and David said The Daily Show sounded like a great opportunity. So I sublet my apartment, sold my Harley, found someone to take my dog for a while, and came to New York with three duffel bags.
JON STEWART: Ben walked into a buzz saw.
BEN KARLIN: I’m not going to talk shit about anybody. But the staff had its allegiances, and the things that they liked to do, and the way they liked to do it. Now you’ve got this guy, Jon, who is a writer, who has a strong point of view.
LIZZ WINSTEAD (co-creator; head writer, correspondent, 1996-1998):
As much as I loved the original writers, I created some little monsters. Once Jon realized he needed to take charge, you can’t afford to have people who are not in the Jon Stewart business. And so there’s a bit of Kool-Aid drinking that has to take place.
Karlin arrived as head writer in April 1999 and quickly formed a complementary duo with Stewart. Karlin pushed for a higher quotient of righteous anger in The Daily Show’s jokes; Stewart had an innate sense of what would get big laughs.
BEN KARLIN: We were very kindred spirits, with very similar points of view, and my critique of the show was very much in line with his problems with the show: Why are we going after these helpless targets? Maybe we should focus the power of this kind of big news show on things that are actually newsworthy, rather than just look through the paper for what seems funny.
Clashes, pitting Stewart and Karlin against some of the holdover Kilborn writers, would flare for the next year, with one confrontation—which became known inside the show as “the fuck-you meeting”—being leaked to the New York Post’s “Page Six.”
JON STEWART: I think that was the meeting where I said, “You’re not a group. You’re not a unit. You’re not ‘the writers.’ You’re individual writers that have been hired, and you will be judged within that.” It was just an attempt to reclaim some semblance of order. It was an absolute flat-out power struggle, but one that I felt blindsided by.
BEN KARLIN: At one point during the battle for the heart and soul of the show, one of the writers snuck into Madeleine’s office and replaced some of the items on the board that tracks the stories we’re doing with personal insults. Some of them were about me; some were about other people. It was the most juvenile thing in the world. Jon and I used to have this thing: crazy out, sane in. We wanted to try to build a show of smart, funny, reasonable people with a similar vision who were hard workers.
An enormous step in that direction was Karlin’s first addition to the writing staff: a dizzyingly fast-thinking, cheerfully caustic 27-year-old who would become a major figure in the creative life of The Daily Show.
DAVID JAVERBAUM (writer, later executive producer, 1999-2010):
I’d gone to Harvard and written for the Lampoon and Hasty Pudding, then I went to graduate school for musical-theater composition, at N.Y.U. It’s arguably the most useless master’s degree even by master’s-degree standards. I had a lot of creative things I was interested in, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was temping for three years at law firms and Merrill Lynch.
I knew Ben Karlin from a teen tour that we were on together, the thing where Jewish middle-class kids go around the country and pretend to rough it for six weeks. Ben, after college at Wisconsin, wound up working at The Onion, and he said, “Do you want to contribute?” So I began writing a lot of Onion headlines and some articles, and I had the idea for the book Our Dumb Century.
Then I spent a year at Letterman as a writer, and I hated that. Not the people, per se, but it all comes from the top down, and Letterman, even at that point, which was ‘98 to ‘99, was just a detached, aloof figure who would stay there for, like, 13 hours a day for no reason. And I quit. I was making six figures. I’d never made the upper half of five before, but it just was not worth it. It was crushing my soul.
Ben was hired as the head writer for The Daily Show, and once again he called me and said, “Are you interested in writing?” So I owe Ben for both of those opportunities. I think I was Ben’s first writing hire, in July 1999.
BEN KARLIN: D.J. has genius-like qualities, almost to the point where—it’s not Asperger-y, because he’s a funny, normal guy. But the way he can hold information, the speed with which his mind works, it’s almost like he’s got a broken brain that works really well in this way. I’ve known him since he was 16 years old. He always was like this.
Usually in a writers’ room you know that this guy is my joke guy, that one is my story guy, that’s my structure person. And D.J. has the ability to pitch individual jokes that are funny; he can come up with overarching structures that are funny; he can take over someone’s script and make it better.
In Karlin, and now Javerbaum, Stewart had hired invaluable off-camera allies. But he quickly recognized that he had inherited an indispensable on-camera co-conspirator. Stephen Colbert had a subversive streak that was greatly abetted by the fact that he looked like a trustworthy middle-American insurance salesman.
By Al Levine/Comedy Central.
STEPHEN COLBERT: It was a complete happy accident that I ended up at The Daily Show. I had been working for ABC at The Dana Carvey Show in 1996. That show got canceled, my wife wasn’t working, and we had a baby. I desperately needed a job. Someone from the entertainment division recommended to the news division that if they were looking for somebody who was funny but looked really straight, for a correspondent for Good Morning America, that they should consider me. They hired me. I did exactly two reports. Only one of which ever made it to air.
After those two reports, I pitched 20 stories in a row that got shot down. At the same time, my agent, James Dixon, who also represented Madeleine Smithberg, said, “You should meet with Madeleine. She’s doing this other show, and I bet that they would do those stories.” They had me on for a trial basis, and for the next nine months I worked at The Daily Show occasionally, during Craig Kilborn’s second year. But it was totally a day job. I never expected to stay, because I did sketch comedy and I wrote, and I really didn’t think that The Daily Show was going to go anyplace.
JON STEWART: The first bit Stephen did on the show after I arrived, I think it was something about baby-back ribs. You could just feel: “This guy knows how to perform in a scene, is present, has an ease with language.” The key then was “What do we do with that?”
STEPHEN COLBERT: I don’t really know why Jon and I worked together so well. It’s hard to quantify, but it happened very early. When Jon first got there, he had a rough ride with some of the people who had worked with Craig. But I immediately knew he was a guy I should listen to. I saw how thoughtful he wanted to be about political comedy and how he invited us to have our own thoughts, invest the jokes with our own beliefs. And maybe he thought he could trust me.
Changing the lineup of correspondents and contributors, the on-air faces of the show, was crucial, if less contentious. A. Whitney Brown and Brian Unger left when Kilborn did; Colbert, Rocca, Beth Littleford, Frank DeCaro, and Stacey Grenrock Woods stayed on. Stewart’s first correspondent addition was Vance DeGeneres. Then Colbert helped recruit another major talent.
STEVE CARELL (correspondent, 1999-2003):
I got a call from Stephen Colbert. He and I were on The Dana Carvey Show together in the spring of 1996, and one of the sketches that we did was called “Waiters Who Are Nauseated by Food.” And Madeleine Smithberg, who had hired Stephen onto The Daily Show, saw that and asked who I was—asked Stephen—and then Stephen called me and said, “Would you be interested maybe in doing a field piece?” And then Madeleine called and followed up and asked if I’d do a field piece out here in Los Angeles. Nancy [Walls Carell] and I were living out here at the time, and I had a holding deal with ABC. So we were just watching a lot of the Game Show Network.
“I REALLY DIDN’T THINK The Daily Show WAS GOING TO GO ANYPLACE,” SAYS COLBERT.
We decided to stage the field piece right underneath the HOLLYWOOD sign, up in the Hills, and that I was going to do the walk-and-talk as I was essentially walking up the side of a mountain, and obviously play up the fact that I was really out of shape, that it was a very bad correspondent to have chosen for a walk-and-talk.
Apparently Madeleine really liked that moment within the piece and thought that that was a good choice. They asked if I’d move out to New York and be a regular on The Daily Show.
No one was really familiar with this show. My agent didn’t see it as a positive step in my career. Let’s put it that way. They just saw it as a little nothing cable show. A job, but nothing that was going to amount to much. Jon had just become the host about six months before.
JON STEWART: Carell, I knew very little about him. These guys didn’t come from stand-up. I knew stand-ups. I knew Dave Attell, I knew Lewis Black. I did not know Vance, Mo, Steve, Stephen.
BEN KARLIN: So much of the writing of The Daily Show actually comes down to brainstorming and coming up with the big-picture ideas. Once we started realizing what an incredible tool Carell and Colbert were, we said we’ve got to bring more of that into the studio. Let’s not just see them once a week or once every two weeks in a field piece. Let’s get both those guys on the show several times a week in one form or another. They’re too talented.
What Stewart and his colleagues could not have known was that they had arrived at the perfect moment, with the media and political worlds on the cusp of upheaval. When Stewart first sat behind the fake anchor desk, the anchors of the real news were still a trio of white male eminences: Tom Brokaw at NBC, Peter Jennings at ABC, and Dan Rather at CBS. But the network news hegemony had been rattled by the arrival of CNN, and especially by its coverage of the 1990 Gulf War. Now Fox News and MSNBC—both launched, coincidentally, within months of The Daily Show’s 1996 debut—were rapidly expanding their footprints on cable systems. Soon the Internet would flatten the traditional TV news industry. And a wised-up, postmodern generation of viewers was hungry for what The Daily Show would soon deliver.
The turn of the century was also a boom time for network newsmagazines. NBC was airing Dateline five nights a week. ABC had 20/20 and Primetime; CBS had 48 Hours. Syndicated shows including Inside Edition added an even cheesier, tabloid flair to the genre. The TV-newsmagazine formula—leaning heavily on sensationalized crime stories, breathless celebrity profiles, and consumer-product scares—was ripe for parody. As were the self-serious anchor-reporter stars of TV newsmagazines: the style of The Daily Show’s correspondents drew special inspiration from the overinflated gravitas of Dateline’s Stone Phillips.
MADELEINE SMITHBERG: I always say that Stone Phillips deserves a “created by” credit for The Daily Show, because I was obsessed with the guy, and we studied him.
RORY ALBANESE (production assistant, later executive producer, 1999-2013):
Colbert will tell you his character for years was just Stone Phillips.
In the Kilborn era, field-department pieces frequently featured obscure eccentrics—say, a man who pulled his own teeth and replaced them with driveway gravel. Those kinds of bits didn’t go away immediately under Stewart.
KAHANE CORN COOPERMAN (field producer, later co-executive producer, 1996-2015):
I produced a field piece, with Stacey Grenrock Woods as the correspondent, about a guy, Alexander P., who had been a rock star in Ukraine and came here and was now a waiter in a hotel restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This piece may well have been in the works before Jon arrived. But it airs, and after the show you have a postmortem. And Jon was not happy. He said, “Your targets are just wrong. They shouldn’t be people on the fringe. Our targets need to be the people who have a voice, and that’s politicians, and that’s the media.”
STACEY GRENROCK WOODS (correspondent, 1998-2003):
I heard Jon was very unhappy with that piece, and I don’t blame him at all. I didn’t like it, either, but it was given to me. I think it ended up being a policy-changing piece.
STEVE CARELL: The correspondents had their own little thing going on with the field pieces. Jon left it up to us in terms of what sort of characters we were developing.
I saw my character as a former local-news anchor who had been demoted to reporting on a nondescript cable news show and was a little bitter about it. Everyone to a certain degree had different variations on blowhard or idiot reporter. But I mean, let’s face it—we didn’t know what we were doing.
NANCY WALLS CARELL (correspondent, 1999-2002):
No.
STEVE CARELL: None of us are correspondents. None of us have backgrounds in journalism.
NANCY WALLS CARELL: Mo was pretty knowledgeable, actually.
STEPHEN COLBERT: There was a very specific way we were supposed to present ourselves when we set up field pieces: “I’m from The Daily Show.” “What’s The Daily Show?” “Well, it’s an alternative news-and-entertainment program.” “What channel is it on?” “Well, I don’t know what channel it is where you live. Where we live it’s Channel 29.” Anything other than saying the words “Comedy Central.” We were never allowed to lie, but let’s not advertise we were on Comedy Central, because not being a famous show was really useful to us in the early days.
I was the first correspondent to be sued. After a piece ran, a guy claimed I claimed I was from CNN. I never said that. But if you make a man comedically look like Hitler and it turns out that he is a retired lawyer with a lot of time on his hands, you’re going to get sued. That’s the lesson for today, children.
STEVE CARELL: The field pieces with eccentrics and oddballs, those were uncomfortable. For all of us. I almost didn’t . . . I won’t say I almost didn’t do the show, but I had some major reservations about doing it for exactly that reason, because I didn’t like the idea of making fun of people only because they were eccentric or different, and . . .
NANCY WALLS CARELL: Duping them.
STEVE CARELL: Yeah. Shooting fish in a barrel is easy. When you go after someone who is intolerant or racist or has any sort of hateful nature, that’s a different story. I think that’s fair game. So part of what I tried to do with my character is put the impetus on myself, the comedic impetus, that I was the bigger idiot.
During his first year as host Stewart devoted far more energy to retooling the staff and the process inside the building. But it was the field department, in a series of excursions to New Hampshire to “cover” the presidential primaries, that really began pointing The Daily Show’s tone and point of view in a new direction. Initially intimidated by the straight political media pack, correspondents Rocca, Walls Carell, DeGeneres, and Carell played jester.
Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.
STEVE CARELL: When we went up to the first Republican debate we had our jackets with “The Daily Show” embroidered on them, and we’re walking around with microphones. It was terrifying because people didn’t know that we were fake. So we could get away with a lot of stuff. Bush looked at us like we were insane.
CINDY McCAIN (wife of Senator John McCain):
All of a sudden there were these guys in these crazy jackets, popping up at campaign events, and nobody knew who they were. But they were funny.
STEW BAILEY (field producer, later co-executive producer, 1996-2005):
There was a Republican debate in New Hampshire, so we were going to do a piece from the spin room. And the spin room even then was acknowledged as the least newsworthy event of all time. Our premise was that it’s essentially a parlor game, and if that’s the case, let’s really turn it into a parlor game. I had each of the correspondents asking questions from Trivial Pursuit to the candidates.
MO ROCCA: All of us were nervous as hell, and so I just went for it: “Senator McCain, who became the hottest pop star to come out of Iceland in the mid-1990s?”
STEW BAILEY: Immediately our other correspondents start yelling, “Don’t skirt the question, Senator! You have to answer!”
MO ROCCA: And McCain showed why he almost upended George W. Bush in that race, because he played along, making this silly face. I remember the CNN people looking at us like, “O.K., that was funny. But who are you guys?”
JON STEWART: When we went up to New Hampshire we were under the mistaken assumption that we had to integrate ourselves with the political media’s process and become them to parody them. Turns out we didn’t have to do that. We had thought, Oh, you’re a political reporter on television, which must mean something. Turns out it doesn’t mean anything. All it means is that somebody pointed a camera at you and lit it. So that was a revelation, and not a positive one.
Then, in December 1999, came a breakthrough—a five-minute segment that pushed past the silly and into the satirical. Carell climbed onto McCain’s bus and changed the entire trajectory of The Daily Show.
STEW BAILEY: Remember, McCain that year was a huge deal. He won the New Hampshire primary. That was really his moment. And his big gimmick was his bus, the Straight Talk Express.
I was supervising in the field department. Our idea was that we were trying to get on the Straight Talk Express, but we couldn’t. There was a secondary press bus. If you’re in the rollover bus you just don’t feel like you matter. So the premise was going to be: if Steve Carell finally does get on the Straight Talk Express, that means we were at the table with all the big important players. To get on McCain’s bus was a coup for us; it meant that somebody was going to allow us to bring our reindeer games into a legitimate political moment.
CINDY McCAIN: The actual press bus, which was completely different from ours, was really awful, in fact. Steve Carell was talking about, did we feed the press, or did we just lock them in the bus? They were pleading with me—is there any way I can get them on the main bus? They were a hoot to be around, so John invited them on the Straight Talk Express.
STEW BAILEY: We needed to then have Carell basically ask one question that is going to get us kicked off. The idea was going to be we had a brief moment of glory, we asked a question, and then we lost our privileges.
STEVE CARELL:) [On board the Straight Talk Express, reading from a legal pad as McCain grins.] Let’s do a lightning round: your favorite book?
SENATOR JOHN McCAIN: For Whom the Bell Tolls.
STEVE CARELL: Favorite movie?
McCAIN: Viva Zapata!
CARELL: Charlton Heston?
McCAIN: Marlon Brando.
CARELL: Close enough. If I were a tree, I would be a . . .
McCAIN: If I were a tree, I would be a root. [Pause.] What does that mean?
CARELL: Senator, how do you reconcile the fact that you were one of the most vocal critics of pork-barrel politics and yet while you were chairman of the Commerce Committee that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations? [Four seconds of silence that feel like four hours.] I was just kidding! I don’t even know what that means! [McCain looks at ceiling, shrugs in relief, awkwardly slaps hand to his own face. Carell shuffles sheepishly down the bus stairs and out the door, then stands on a highway median.] Oh, they all laughed at my little question. But two things were abundantly clear. It was the wrong question to ask, and I was going to be walking.
STEW BAILEY: Carell and Nick McKinney, the producer, had pulled the question out of Time on the way there, driving to the shoot. Just the fact that Steve Carell can get those words out of his mouth and that it sounded like something a smart person would say really threw McCain off. There was such a delay.
STEVE CARELL: It was really funny because all of McCain’s handlers . . . you could feel the whole bus tense up. I thought McCain might just laugh it off, or probably give me some sort of joke response.
BEN KARLIN: I remember seeing it in the editing room. I remember Jon called me down, and seeing it and thinking, Yeah, this is what we should be doing. This is the goal. It was one of Carell’s most incredible moments. He asks McCain a question in a way that no journalists were talking to the candidates. And it was like, Oh shit, we are able, in this weird, unintentional way, to add a level of insight to the process that doesn’t exist. That was really, really exciting. It meets the standard of being funny; it meets the standard of being relevant.
JOHN McCAIN (U.S. senator, Arizona, 1987-; Republican presidential nominee, 2008):
That was great. I still remember Steve Carell on the bus. I was certainly aware of Jon and the show early on, and knew they would try to have some fun with us. I wanted to be funny. I wanted these young people to know that I’m a guy with a sense of humor. I’m not some dull, dry, old senator.
BEN KARLIN: That moment, it was the beauty and the weakness of The Daily Show. You had this incredibly pregnant moment where you forced a politician to go off-book, and it was uncomfortable, and it was honest. Then, because of our role as a comedy show, you have to take the air out of it, and it let McCain off the hook.
STEVE CARELL: Yeah, to press it—we really hadn’t set ourselves up in that context to start going after him. It was making fun of a gotcha moment. And I think that a lot of what we do on The Daily Show is making fun of journalistic tropes, and I think that was one of them.
MO ROCCA: That was the first time we were in The New York Times—in a news-analysis piece, not the TV column.
JON STEWART: The real revelation for the show, covering the 2000 campaign, was that before everything that happens publicly in politics there’s a meeting—so what’s that meeting? That’s what’s interesting. It always struck me as “We’re always covering the wrong thing. We’re always covering the appearance, but we’re never covering that meeting.” When you watch that pack of cameras follow a presidential candidate, you go, “That’s not interesting. What’s interesting is to stand behind them and watch that,” because then you learn a little bit about the process.
That’s when the idea of deconstructing the process came to the fore of how we were going to make the show. Before, it was just . . . we were making jokes. Some of them were insightful; some of them were not. The show came to exist in the space between what they’re telling you in public and the meeting that they had where they decided to do it that way. Seeing that was the aha of “That’s the show.”
CINDY McCAIN: I still have those jackets, by the way. I talked them out of their big New Hampshire jackets. They were around John so much, and I finally said, “Look, these jackets are too good. I’ve got to get one from you, please.” They gave them to me. It’s a great souvenir.
Adapted from The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests, by Chris Smith, with a foreword by Jon Stewart, to be published this month by Grand Central Publishing; © 2016 by Busboy Productions. | – Jon Stewart took over as host of the Daily Show in January 1999, but when did the program truly start becoming the Daily Show that legions of fans would come to love? Try December of that year, when Steve Carell boarded John McCain's campaign bus "and changed the entire trajectory" of the show, writes Chris Smith at Vanity Fair. The article is a fascinating oral history of the show's beginning that includes interviews with Stewart, Carell, Stephen Colbert, and pretty much everyone involved. The first year was rough for Stewart as he fought with the holdover writing staff from previous host Craig Kilborn and sought to put his stamp on the show. Things came together in that Carell interview, in which he peppers McCain with softball questions, then springs a policy zinger. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Carell says, "I was just kidding! I don’t even know what that means!" And the tense moment subsides. (See the clip.) Carell: "It was making fun of a gotcha moment. And I think that a lot of what we do on The Daily Show is making fun of journalistic tropes, and I think that was one of them." Head writer Ben Karlin: "I remember seeing it in the editing room. I remember Jon called me down, and seeing it and thinking, Yeah, this is what we should be doing. This is the goal. It was one of Carell’s most incredible moments. He asks McCain a question in a way that no journalists were talking to the candidates. And it was like, Oh s---, we are able, in this weird, unintentional way, to add a level of insight to the process that doesn’t exist. That was really, really exciting." Click for the full piece, in which Stewart talks about how that 2000 campaign provided his "aha moment" of how to present the show—by "deconstructing the process." |
Published: January 31st, 2012 | Tags: Super Bowl XLVI, Mark Herzlich, Media Day, New York Giants
INDIANAPOLIS — Mark Herzlich knows what it takes to defeat a powerful opponent.
His Giants have yet to play the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, but the rookie linebacker won the biggest battle of his life when he overcame Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of bone cancer.
That story of survival led Herzlich to tweet this message upon the Giants’ Monday night arrival at Indianapolis International Airport: “2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in The #SuperBowl. #TakeThat**** Cancer.”
“I was very pleased and very happy that so many people got to see it because that’s part of what my goal is and what my mission is,” Herzlich said Tuesday at Media Day. “This week’s all about football and all about playing, but there are people that are out there going through cancer right now and saying, ‘He’s doing it. I can do it.’ …
“It’s a real privilege and a blessing to play in it. I’ve come from a different, tough place in my life with being sick, and just two short years later, to be able to play in the Super Bowl, that’s great.”
According to Herzlich, football was the second-biggest motivator, only behind his family, in his battle with cancer. He even made a highlight tape of himself from Boston College’s 2008 season to help him “through the bad days” of chemotherapy.
Since he was a Boston College student at the time of his diagnosis, Herzlich received a lot of support in New England. Although most of those fans will pull for the Patriots on Sunday, a few likely will cheer for Herzlich, too.
“It’s interesting to have Boston fans root for any sort of Giant, but I appreciate everything, and the support I got all through school was unbelievable,” Herzlich said. “Even today, I got tweets from people saying, ‘I am a Patriots fan. I hope you lose, but I wish you well in your life and career.’ ”
— Matt Florjancic, Special to NFL.com
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New York Giants' rookie linebacker Mark Herzlich stepped off the plane in Indianapolis to play against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI and immediately took to Twitter to express his gratitude. He was thankful not just to be there, but to be alive.
"2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in The #SuperBowl. #TakeThatSh*tCancer," he tweeted.
In 2009, Herzlich was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. The cancer was isolated to his left leg and the initial prognosis was not positive for the promising Boston College football star.
"They felt the NFL was a long shot," Herzlich's father, Sandy, told ESPN last summer. "They were first happy if they could save his life and they were happy if they could save his leg."
Herzlich was told there were three possible outcomes.
"The worst-case scenario is obviously [that] it gets into other parts of your body and it completely kills you," he told ESPN. "Second worst-case scenario is if they saw a small fracture in the bone and it was seeping out. Then they would have to amputate my leg right away within hours of finding it out. … Then better than that would be to remove that portion of the leg, putting in a cadaver bone and being in a cast for six months from the waist down, not ever being able to run again."
It turns out there was a fourth and even better option.
Herzlich responded phenomenally to aggressive chemotherapy and radiation. He was given the choice to forgo surgery and continue treatment, saving his football career, but increasing the likelihood that the cancer could return, or have surgery, ending his football aspirations, but likely eliminating the cancer.
Herzlich decided to keep his dream alive.
After missing the 2009 college football season to undergo treatment, he took the field for Boston College in 2010. He started in all 13 games, but did not catch the eye of NFL scouts and went undrafted.
Herzlich continued training and eventually signed as a free agent with the New York Giants.
Now, one year into his NFL career he's walked off the plane in Indianapolis and is getting ready to run onto the field at Lucas Oil Stadium, two things, that just three years ago seemed nearly impossible.
ESPN contributed to this report. | – Rookie Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich is happier than most to be playing in the Super Bowl: “2 yrs ago I was told I might never walk again. Just WALKED off plane in Indy to play in the Super Bowl. Take That Sh*t Cancer," Herzlich tweeted after arriving in Indianapolis yesterday. Herzlich was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in 2009. He had been expected to be a first-round draft pick from Boston College, but instead spent the year undergoing treatment, choosing chemotherapy and radiation over a leg amputation that would have ended his dream of playing in the NFL, ABC reports. Herzlich, who went undrafted and joined the Giants as a free agent this season, says he sees his arrival in Indianapolis to take on the New England Patriots as an opportunity to inspire. "This week’s all about football and all about playing," he tells NFL.com, "but there are people that are out there going through cancer right now and saying, ‘He’s doing it. I can do it.’" |
The ominous silence around the Trump administration's national security advisor, retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, deepened Sunday as a senior White House official in a televised interview declined to say if the president still has confidence in him.
"That's the question that I think you should ask the president, the question you should ask Reince [Priebus], the chief of staff," Stephen Miller, the White House senior policy advisor, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" when asked if Trump still has confidence in Flynn.
"So the White House did not give you anything to say," asked the show's host, Chuck Todd.
"They did not give me anything to say," Miller responded.
Miller's silence on Flynn was significant because the White House had booked him on several of the major Sunday television interview programs as the administration's spokesperson this weekend.
White House officials appear to have deliberately chosen Miller, whose portfolio does not include foreign policy, in part to avoid having to give a definitive answer about Flynn.
Flynn's future with the administration is at issue because of indications that he may have misled his colleagues, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the weeks before Trump's inauguration. That would normally be a severe problem for someone in Flynn’s position, but Trump may not want to appear to be dropping an aide under pressure from the media and Democratic critics.
The FBI has been examining Flynn’s contacts with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to multiple news reports. Agents are looking at whether Flynn tried to undermine the Obama administration’s move to toughen sanctions against Moscow after concluding that Russia had meddled in the U.S. election.
Flynn had publicly denied discussing sanctions with Kislyak. But on Thursday, a Washington Post account , citing nine current or former U.S. officials, flatly contradicted those denials. The article quoted a representative for Flynn as backing away from his previous statements, saying that though Flynn “had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”
Since the Post published its report, the White House has passed up several opportunities to publicly back up Flynn. Trump, asked about the report on Friday, said he was unaware of it.
Shortly after Miller's appearances on "Meet the Press" and ABC's "This Week," Trump tweeted his approval of Miller's statements, again without mentioning Flynn. ||||| "First reason, it doesn't really make us safer. It doesn't really focus on the areas where we really need to tighten up," Schumer said. | AP Photo Schumer: Trump should throw travel ban 'in the trash'
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered a recommendation Sunday: President Donald Trump should toss any travel-ban executive order "in the trash."
The comment, made by the top Senate Democrat in an interview on "Face the Nation" with CBS' John Dickerson, came in response to a question about the Trump administration looking to introduce a new executive order similar to a travel ban for seven majority-Muslim countries blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Story Continued Below
Earlier, during interviews on multiple Sunday shows, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller suggested that the White House was looking into putting a travel plan in place through a new executive order or alternatives.
"I think he ought to throw it in the trash," Schumer said. "I think this executive order is so bad and so poisoned and its genesis is so bad and terrible that he ought to just throw it in the trash can."
Schumer gave two reasons.
"First reason, it doesn't really make us safer. It doesn't really focus on the areas where we really need to tighten up," Schumer said. The second reason, the New York Democrat continued, "is something called the visa waiver program."
"It's very easy to come to America from countries that we've always regarded as friendly. There are, I think, 27 of them," Schumer continued. "But these days there are would-be terrorists who have infiltrated places like Belgium and France, and they could come into this country much more easily than someone who's a refugee from the seven countries the president mentioned. That needs real tightening up."
Schumer went on to say the Trump executive order "is just un-American and unconstitutional."
"A religious ban just goes against the American grain. We believe in immigrants in this country, and we don't believe in a religious test," Schumer said. "And finally, it hurts us economically. When immigrants don't come to this country, it hurts our job creation, our job growth. Silicon Valley is very worried that a lot of their jobs are going to have to go to Vancouver or Canada, where Canada has a much more forward looking immigration policy." ||||| FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2016 file photo, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stands in front of his airplane as he speaks during a rally in Bentonville, Ark. No matter what issue Trump... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2016 file photo, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stands in front of his airplane as he speaks during a rally in Bentonville, Ark. No matter what issue Trump is addressing, he seems either to know somebody with a relevant personal experience or he’s got a firsthand... (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times EST):
11:05 a.m.
A top White House aide says it's not up to him to say whether President Donald Trump retains confidence in national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Policy director Stephen Miller says the White House didn't give him anything specific to say about Flynn during Miller's appearances on the Sunday news shows. Miller calls it "an important matter" and "a sensitive matter" best answered by Trump, Vice President Mike Pence or chief of staff Reince Priebus.
At issue is whether Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions in calls with Russia's ambassador while President Barack Obama was still in office. The conversations may have broken U.S. law aimed at barring private citizens from conducting diplomacy.
A Washington Post report last week contradicted Flynn's previous denials, as well as those made by Vice President Mike Pence in a televised interview.
___
9:35 a.m.
President Donald Trump is praising the actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for the recent "enforcement surge" that officials say is targeting immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records.
Trump tweets that "the crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!"
Advocacy groups contend the government has rounded large numbers of people as part of stepped-up enforcement. The agency calls the effort no different from enforcement actions carried out in the past.
Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that the emphasis is on deporting those he calls "criminal aliens" and who "pose a threat to public safety."
Miller says "we're going to focus on public safety and saving American lives and we will not apologize."
___
9:20 a.m.
President Donald Trump's chief policy adviser says the White House is exploring "all of our options" after a federal appeals court handed the administration a legal setback on Trump's executive order on immigration.
Stephen Miller tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that the White House could pursue "additional executive actions" — as Trump suggested on Friday — as well as judicial appeals.
Miller says the goal is to pursue "every single possible action to keep our country safe from terrorism."
He's also criticizing judges for taking "power for themselves that belong squarely in the hands" of the president. | – The White House wasn't exactly resounding on Sunday in its defense of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. "That's the question that I think you should ask the president, the question you should ask Reince [Priebus], the chief of staff," senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told Meet the Press on Sunday, per the Los Angeles Times, when asked if the White House still had confidence in Flynn. "So the White House did not give you anything to say," asked Chuck Todd. "They did not give me anything to say," Miller confirmed, which the Times notes is ominous given that he was the only White House rep made available to the Sunday talk shows. Miller calls it "an important matter" and "a sensitive matter," reports the AP. At issue is whether Flynn discussed US sanctions in calls with Russia's ambassador while President Obama was still in office. The conversations may have broken US law aimed at barring private citizens from conducting diplomacy. A Washington Post report last week contradicted Flynn's previous denials. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial: Miller says that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's emphasis is on deporting those he calls "criminal aliens" and who "pose a threat to public safety." Miller says "we're going to focus on public safety and saving American lives and we will not apologize." President Trump tweeted that "Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!" Miller says the White House is exploring "all of our options" after a federal appeals court handed the administration a legal setback on Trump's executive order on immigration. Chuck Schumer had succinct commentary on the travel ban, per Politico: "I think he ought to throw it in the trash," Schumer said. "I think this executive order is so bad and so poisoned and its genesis is so bad and terrible that he ought to just throw it in the trash can." |
amfAR Gala Cannes—25th Anniversary Edition!
The unforgettable evening featured spectacular performances by Sting and Shaggy, Grace Jones, Ellie Goulding and Jason Derulo, and a stunning fashion show curated by longtime amfAR supporter Carine Roitfeld. The looks were then auctioned off as a collection, which fetched $1.7 million. Other auction highlights included a Pierce Brosnan original painting, which sold for $1.4 million; a restored 1964 S3 Bentley Convertible, introduced by Heidi Klum and Benicio Del Toro, which sold for over $800,000; and a Joe Bradley painting, which brought in nearly $1 million.
The black-tie event was presented by Bold Films and Chopard.
Event produced by AAB Productions/Andy Boose
DATE
Thursday, May 17, 2018
LOCATION
Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc
Cap d’Antibes, France
HONORARY CHAIRS
ALESSANDRA AMBROSIO
POPPY DELEVINGNE
LINDA EVANGELISTA
SILVIA FENDI
AILEEN GETTY
KATE HUDSON
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
MILLA JOVOVICH
HEIDI KLUM
DAPHNA KRIM
KAROLINA KURKOVA
SIENNA MILLER
ANGELA MISSONI
MARY PARENT
KATY PERRY
NATASHA POLY
AISHWARYA RAI
VANESSA REDGRAVE
JOELY RICHARDSON
CARINE ROITFELD
CAROLINE SCHEUFELE
IRINA SHAYK
LARA STONE
DONATELLA VERSACE
MICHELLE YEOH
CONTACT FOR SPONSORSHIP/LEADERSHIP
Andy Boose at (212) 219-0297 or aboose@aabproductions.com
CONTACT FOR TICKET/TABLE INFORMATION
Christina Christofi at (212) 806-1611 or amfargalacannes@amfar.org
CONTACT FOR PRESS INQUIRIES
Bennah Serfaty at (212) 806-1607 or bennah.serfaty@amfar.org
Presenting Sponsors
Signature Sponsor
PHOTO GALLERY
... ||||| Pierce Brosnan I Got $1.4M for My Dylan Painting!!! Buyer Has Kimye Ties
Pierce Brosnan's Bob Dylan Painting Sold to Kimye's House Buyer
EXCLUSIVE
Pierce Brosnan's Bob Dylan painting sold for more than $1 million, and TMZ's learned the new owner is none other than the woman who plunked down $17.8 mil on Kim and Kanye's Bel-Air mansion.
We're told Ukrainian billionaire Marina Acton snapped up 007's painting of Zimmy earlier this week at the 25th annual amFAR Cannes charity gala.
Pierce, who first took up painting back in the '80s, has gotten more serious about it, and the price tag on his work proves it -- Marina dropped $1.4 million.
As for Acton ... she's quickly building a rep for pricey Hollywood collectibles. You already know about the Bel-Air crib Kim and Kanye initially bought for $9 million back in 2013.
Not long after that purchase, Acton also shelled out another $2 million for some Beatles history.
Kanye, Dylan and the Fab Four? She has good taste and deep pockets. ||||| Pierce Brosnan really is somewhat of a double agent.
The former James Bond star, 65, who was trained as a commercial artist and worked as an illustrator, just auctioned off one of his original paintings for $1.4 million. Brosnan donated the piece, depicting the singer Bob Dylan, for the 25th annual gala amFAR Cannes charity event, Cinema Against AIDS on May 17.
Courtesy Pierce Brosnan
Along with the celebrity auction, this year’s event included performances by Grace Jones, Sting and Shaggy and Ellie Goulding. Brosnan, who has been painting for more than 20 years, also included a lunch date with himself in the sale.
At home in Malibu with his wife of 16 years, Keely Shaye Smith, the actor has an art studio in the couple’s bedroom. “I paint in oils, I paint in acrylics,” Brosnan told Origin magazine last year. “I paint figurative and landscape portraits. It’s all in my own kind of style.”
Pierce Brosnan at the amfAR Gala Dave Benett/WireImage
Despite his success as an actor, Brosnan told the magazine that in recent years his art has “gotten more serious. Thinking about and hoping I will put on an exhibit and make a book shortly,” he added. “Maybe next year.” ||||| The former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan has been open about his side gig as an artist—he even got in trouble with TSA when he accidentally packed a knife for sharpening pencils in his carry-on luggage. Now, his prowess with a paintbrush is paying off. Last week, the actor sold his portrait of Bob Dylan for $1.4 million at the 25th annual amFAR Cannes charity gala.
The painting’s new owner also won a lunch date with the 65-year-old actor, reported People.
“I started painting in 1987 when my late wife had cancer,” Brosnan told the crowd, according to the Daily Mail. His first wife, Cassandra Harris, died in 1991 of ovarian cancer, the same disease that claimed the life of their daughter Charlotte in 2013. “I had been painting out of pain, and now the pain sometimes comes through in color.”
The actor was reportedly speechless when the bidding stopped. He described himself as “deeply proud, humbled and just plain old over the moon joyous” in a post on Instagram.
Before getting into the movie business, Brosnan studied commercial illustration at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. He nevertheless described his current brand of landscapes and figurative paintings as “self-taught” in an interview with ORIGIN magazine in 2013. “I’ve painted for many, many years. Now the last few years it’s gotten more serious. Thinking about and hoping I will put on an exhibit and make a book shortly.”
The amFAR benefit, titled Cinema Against AIDS, was held Thursday night, and also included the sale of an $800,000 restored 1964 S3 Bentley Convertible and a nearly $1 million painting by Joe Bradley. The evening also featured a fashion show presented by former Vogue Paris editor Carine Roitfeld, the looks from which were then auctioned off as a collection for $1.7 million.
Follow artnet News on Facebook: | – Pierce Brosnan has joined the ranks of celebrity painters in a major way, reports People. A portrait of Bob Dylan painted by the former James Bond star sold for $1.4 million at the 25th annual amFAR Cannes charity auction held in Antibes last week. "I am deeply proud, humbled and plain old over the moon joyous following the sale of this painting for 1.2 million euros at last nights auction," Brosnan posted on Instagram the next day. The buyer was Ukrainian billionaire Marina Acton, who paid $17.8 million for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Bel-Air mansion, reports TMZ. Brosnan, who took up painting in 1987, according to artnet, is a trained commercial artist and has worked as an illustrator. He even has a studio in his bedroom, where he paints landscapes and portraits in oils and acrylics. (To read about a painter-in-chief, go here.) |
The San Jacinto fault, a twitchy system that cuts through the East County, could produce larger earthquakes than scientists believed and may rival the San Andreas in power, according to research led by San Diego State University.
"A magnitude 7.5 was generally accepted to be the largest earthquake that would like occur on the fault," said Tom Rockwell, an SDSU seismologist and the study's leader. "We have shown that the central and northern sections of the San Jacinto fault appear to fail together at times, and that would be in the magnitude 7.6 to 7.7 range.
SDSU's Tom Rockwell is one of the world's foremost authorities on the San Jacinto fault. — Gary Robbins Share Photo
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✉ SDSU's Tom Rockwell is one of the world's foremost authorities on the San Jacinto fault. — Gary Robbins
"If it ruptures onto the San Andreas fault, it could approach a magnitude 8.0, although we don't see evidence that that has happened in the past couple of thousand years. The take home here is that earthquakes on the San Jacinto fault potentially rival those on the San Andreas fault."
The San Jacinto system is a 130-mile strike-slip fault that stretches from Imperial County through Anza, Ocotillo Wells and Borrego Springs into Riverside County and the San Bernardino Valley. Rockwell oversaw field studies that examined 21 seismic events that have occurred on the fault over the past 4,000 years. The study, recently published in the journal Pure and Applied Geophysics, was centered at Hog Lake, a spot near Anza.
The San Jacinto is part of the larger San Andreas fault, the dividing line between the Pacific and North American plates. Scientists say that the two faults are responsible for roughly 80 percent of the slippage along the plates. Rockwell has played a major role in revealing the path of the San Jacinto and reconstructing its history. Records show that the fault produced a magnitude 6.5 quake in April 1968. A different strand of the fault, known as Superstition Hills, produced a 6.7 quake in November 1987 that was strongly felt in San Diego.
Could San Andreas quake destroy the Hoover Dam
UC San Diego shoots stark aerial image of Salton Sea ||||| 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. | – Here's an unfortunate hypothetical: An earthquake strikes along the San Andreas fault, damaging three aqueducts that cross it some 32 times. Those aqueducts supply Los Angeles with all but 12% of its water—meaning a serious quake could ultimately leave 22 million people without water. (There would be about six month's worth of water stored on the LA side of the fault, but fixing busted aqueducts could take more than twice that long.) Officials have been aware of the potential for a single quake to hit all three aqueducts since 2008, but as the Los Angeles Times reports, they're now moving to do something about it for the first time. But any solution is pretty far off, in terms of time and money—in terms of the latter, the LAT uses the word "billions." None of the aqueducts has yet had to deal with the scenario; the last huge quake (magnitude 7.9) along the fault was in 1857. The Los Angeles aqueduct travels across the fault under a mountain, by way of the five-mile-long concrete Elizabeth Tunnel. Building a brand new tunnel is the priciest option; sending water over the mountains via an electric pumping mechanism is another idea. In the case of the Colorado River Aqueduct, a quake could raise a section of the pipe by 13 feet, and there aren't any pumps in place to ferry the water to LA. The mayor last week requested that proposals on the issue be submitted by July. Meanwhile, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that there may be another fault to fear: It points to new research that shows the San Jacinto fault could generate an earthquake as powerful as what the San Andreas fault is capable of. |
FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, model Kendall Jenner has makeup applied backstage before the Michael Kors Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, in New York. Pepsi... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, model Kendall Jenner has makeup applied backstage before the Michael Kors Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, in New York. Pepsi is not saying whether it will continue to run an ad, featuring Jenner, that is being widely criticized... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, model Kendall Jenner has makeup applied backstage before the Michael Kors Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, in New York. Pepsi is not saying whether it will continue to run an ad, featuring Jenner, that is being widely criticized... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, model Kendall Jenner has makeup applied backstage before the Michael Kors Spring 2017 collection is modeled during Fashion Week, in New York. Pepsi... (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Pepsi on Wednesday pulled an ad after it was widely mocked and criticized for appearing to trivialize protests for social justice causes.
"Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding," the company said. "Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize."
It said it was "removing the content and halting any further rollout."
The ad shows Kendall Jenner, a member of the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" reality TV family, stepping away from a modeling shoot to join a crowd of smiling, young protesters. The protesters cheer after Jenner hands a can of Pepsi to a police officer, who takes a sip.
PepsiCo Inc. had previously said the ad was created by its in-house team and that it would "be seen globally across TV and digital" platforms.
It initially described the spot as featuring "multiple lives, stories and emotional connections that show passion, joy, unbound and uninhibited moments. No matter the occasion, big or small, these are the moments that make us feel alive." That description was also derided on social media.
The Purchase, New York, company had stood by the ad late Tuesday. By Wednesday, it was apologizing to Jenner for putting her "in this position."
Critics say the image of Jenner handing the officer a Pepsi evoked a photo of Black Lives Matter protester Ieshia Evans approaching an officer at a demonstration in Baton Rouge last year. Others criticized the protesters' signs for being comically innocuous, with messages like "Join the Conversation" and heart and peace signs. The website Gothamist expressed a common sentiment online in calling the ad "gloriously tone-deaf."
Among those mocking the ad was Bernice King, who tweeted a photo of her father, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., being confronted by a police officer at a protest march. "If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi," the tweet said.
Larry Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at Pace University, said that the backlash was in part because Pepsi was a couple years "late to the party" with its message about unity, making its ad seem exploitive.
Still, he also noted that the fallout wouldn't necessarily be that damaging, since a lot of the negative sentiment expressed on social media is "easily washed away overnight."
It isn't the first time PepsiCo has backpedaled and apologized for an ad. In 2013, it pulled a Mountain Dew ad that was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and appearing to make light of violence toward women. It pulled that ad from online channels, and said it was never intended to run on TV.
___
Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi ||||| Yesterday, the Internet was devastatingly angered by Pepsi’s latest Kendall Jenner-starring advert that trivialised the Black Live Matter movement to promote their cola.
While the company may have pulled the advert, claiming they “we missed the mark”, that didn’t stop late-night comedians ripping into Pepsi.
Kicking things off was Stephen Colbert: “We have a deeply divided nation,” the Late Show host said. “But today, it seems that everyone has come together to join the protest against the new protest ad from Pepsi.”
The 52-year-old then began to dissect exactly what happens throughout the advert, barely containing his own laughter: "It starts with a throng of beautiful, multi-ethnic people protesting in the streets of, I’m gonna guess Newport, Rhode Island.
Pepsi and Kendall Jenner criticised over new advert that 'co-opts police brutality'
“So far, we don’t know what has caused all of America’s hot extras to take to the streets. But I’m guessing it’s a protest for ‘Attractive Lives Matter.’”
Black Lives Matter organizes march to Trump tower
15 show all Black Lives Matter organizes march to Trump tower
1/15 Kandy Freeman participates in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
2/15 People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
3/15 Hawk Newsome, a Black Lives Matter activist, leads a protest outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
4/15 Hawk Newsome (C) leads a chant during a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, US. January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
5/15 People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
6/15 An NYPD officer speaks with a Black Lives Matter leaders during a protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
7/15 Kandy Freeman participates in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
8/15 An NYPD officer speaks with a Black Lives Matter leaders during a protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
9/15 Carol Garza, a Black Lives Matter supporter, protests outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
10/15 People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
11/15 A Black Lives Matter supporter protests in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
12/15 Black Lives Matter activists march in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty
13/15 Black Lives Matter activists march in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty
14/15 Black Lives Matter supporters protest in the snow outside Trump Tower in New York City on January 14, 2017. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images
15/15 Black Lives Matter Kandy Freeman marches in front of Trump Tower on January 14, 2017 in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty
Colbert then pointed to the signs each model was holding, commenting in particular on the “Join the Conversation” banner, calling it “the most corporate message ever,” adding it should have read: “We are all the corporate demographic.”
One last target: the absurdity of Kendall Jenner doing a fashion shoot seemingly for “aluminium siding” and ripping off her wig. Colbert then zoomed in on the woman Jenner hands the wig too, who Colbert says “is not thrilled about being Kendall’s wig caddie.” Watch below.
Meanwhile, Colbert recently had Louis CK on his show, the stand-up comedian calling President Donald Trump “a gross crook dirty rotten lying sack of sh*t” ||||| Uploaded on Apr 5, 2017
Kendall Jenner stars in a Pepsi ad critiicised for co-opting the resistance movement for commercial use. The saccharine setting portrays Jenner as a model who turns into peace maker between smiling protesters and police by offering the beverage to restore harmony while being photographed by a woman wearing a hijab | – Pepsi has given up trying to defend what some people are calling the worst ad of all time. The company has pulled its widely ridiculed ad featuring Kendall Jenner as a model who joins a protest and hands a can of Pepsi to a riot cop, the AP reports. "Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace, and understanding," the company said in a statement. "Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize." Pepsi also apologized to Jenner for putting her "in this position." The ad, which showed protesters with signs like "Join the Conversation," was strongly criticized for hijacking the imagery of real protest movements like Black Lives Matter to sell soft drinks. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., delivered one of the most powerful criticisms, tweeting a photo of her father being pushed back by police at a protest march and quipping: "If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi." Stephen Colbert was among the late-night hosts poking fun at the ad on Wednesday, the Independent reports. "We have a deeply divided nation," said the Late Show host. "But today, it seems that everyone has come together to join the protest against the new protest ad from Pepsi." He described the "Join the Conversation" banner as "the most corporate message ever." |
New Orleans mayor imposes dusk-to-dawn curfew
More than 817,000 without power across 5 states
Isaac's maximum sustained winds slip to 60 mph
Emergency crews rescue people stranded by floods
Refresh this page for the latest updates or read the full CNN story here.
[Updated 10:28 p.m. ET]
[Updated 10:20 p.m. ET] Water that overtopped levees was trapped in Plaquemines Parish with nowhere to drain. Officials were considering intentionally breaching a levee downstream to allow some of the floodwater to flow back out of the inundated area, Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
Parish President Billy Nungesser said parish officials will go out at low tide to check the back levee - a second line of defense - at the town of Braithwaite and determine where to punch holes in it. It will be Saturday, at the earliest, before crews can cut the levee open, letting water flow out into the marsh.
[Updated 10 p.m. ET]
[Updated 9:52 a.m. ET] New Orleans officials said there had been 12 incidents of looting. Police said arrests were made in each case, but didn't specify how many people were involved.
[Updated 9:48 p.m. ET] Lake Pontchartrain's water levels are "beginning to stabilize," St. Tammany Parish officials said, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Water had spilled out from the lake and flooded low-lying areas of the parish.
Rescues continue in areas around the vast Louisiana lake, including Lewisburg, Guste Island, Lacombe and Slidell, the newspaper's website reported.
[Updated 9:29 p.m. ET] Joey Amann gathered family and friends into his home in Hancock County, Mississippi, to ride out the storm, he told CNN affiliate WALA.
"You know, we just figured we'd be safer in numbers. Since our house is eight feet off the ground, we figured we'd be safer there but the water just kept coming," Amann said.
"It was scary. I mean, I've never seen the water raise this fast on this road and I've been here all my life. It just came out of nowhere."
The group ended up being rescued by emergency personnel in boats.
Amann told the station he lost his home to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"Thirty-six years I've lived here, and it's just devastating," he said. "Seven years ago, we were going through the same thing. No one thought it would be this bad, but it's worse than we anticipated."
[Updated 9:18 p.m. ET] Power has been restored earlier than expected to most of Dauphin Island, Alabama, CNN affiliate WALA reported. The western end of the island in Mobile Bay remains in the dark because roads there are impassable, Alabama Power said.
[Updated 9:07 p.m. ET] Jefferson Parish Council member Chris Roberts said "tar patties," presumably from the 2010 BP oil spill, had washed up on Grand Isle, Louisiana, during the storm.
[Updated 8:59 p.m. ET] A volunteer in the St. John the Baptist Parish sheriff's office said more than 200 residents in LaPlace, about 25 miles northwest of New Orleans, had been rescued from rising water coming from Lake Pontchartrain.
[Updated 8:05 p.m. ET] Tropical Storm Isaac's top sustained winds slipped to 60 mph in the National Hurricane Center's latest update. The storm was centered 30 miles south of Baton Rouge and 60 miles west of New Orleans, and had slowed its northwestern crawl even further to 5 mph.
[Updated 7:37 p.m. ET] The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in coordination with U.S. Northern Command, deployed four UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters from Norfolk Naval Air Station, Virginia, to assist in search and rescue efforts.
National Guard troops moved 112 residents from a nursing home in Plaquemines Parish to another facility.
[Updated 7:16 p.m. ET] New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu assured residents the drinking water has remained safe to drink throughout the storm, and the sanitary sewer system is operating perfectly, so no one needs to restrict toilet flushing.
[Updated 7:01 p.m. ET] "It appears that the worst of this storm is moving past us now," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told CNN affiliate WWL, but he reiterated that a curfew remains in place until 6 a.m. Thursday. He also warned those who do travel the streets that many traffic signals are down, so drivers should treat every intersection as a four-way stop.
"What we got today was terrible, but I think we did a pretty good job," he added. "... A Category 1 can be as bad as a Category 5 if it hangs around."
Landrieu advised people to be very careful during the cleanup phase, when more than half of hurricane-related deaths occur.
The mayor also reminded residents that police are employing a no-tolerance policy for looting. "They're on it like gravy on rice," he told WWL.
[Updated 6:45 p.m. ET] The first line of defense in any disaster is neighbors helping neighbors.
[Updated 6:35 p.m. ET]
[Updated 6:28 p.m. ET] A 21-foot seawall built in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina is "holding up very well," Mayor Les Fillingame told CNN affiliate WWL.
"Every storm has its own personality, its own footprint. ... This, for a Category 1 storm that made landfall really not that close to us, has had such persistence," he said. "This may be the new norm."
He said perhaps 100 homes will end up being flooded by the time the storm blows over, rather than the 1,000 that might have been flooded before the seawall was built and building elevation standards improved.
[Updated 6:18 p.m. ET] A new tornado warning was issued for Harrison County, Mississippi, as a persistent rain band continues to race north from the Gulf of Mexico, CNN affiliate WWL reported.
[Updated 6:01 p.m. ET] Floodwater has overtopped a third levee in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, Parish President Billy Nungesser told CNN.
[Updated 5:54 p.m. ET] Biloxi, Mississippi, police are stopping vehicles on city streets and enforcing a curfew until further notice, Officer Jackie Rhodes told CNN affiliate WLOX. People who were arrested for looting during Hurricane Katrina seven years ago are still in prison, he said.
[Updated 5:46 p.m. ET] The National Hurricane Center said 17 inches of rain has fallen during Tropical Storm Isaac at Audubon Park in New Orleans.
[Updated 5:41 p.m. ET] More than 817,000 customers are without power, utilities along the Gulf Coast report.
[Updated 5:06 p.m. ET] Coffins float out of flooded graves in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, CNN affiliate WWL reports.
[Updated 4:52 p.m. ET] The National Hurricane Center says the storm is now centered 60 miles west of New Orleans and 35 south of Baton Rouge, still packing 70 mph winds and moving northwest at 6 mph.
[Updated 4:49 p.m. ET] Harrison County, Mississippi, is under a tornado warning until 4:15 p.m.
[Updated 4:44 p.m. ET] As many as 800 homes may have suffered significant water damage in Plaquemines Parish alone, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says.
Meanwhile, water is said to be 12 feet deep and rising in Madisonville, Louisiana, CNN affiliate WWL reports.
[Updated 4:36 p.m. ET] Flash flood warnings are in place for all or portions of the following counties:
In Louisiana: Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, Livingston, Orleans, St. Charles, St. John The Baptist, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Washington
In Mississippi: Forrest, George, Greene, Harrison, Lamar, Marion, Pearl River, Perry, Stone, Walthall
In Alabama: Mobile
[Updated 4:30 p.m. ET] The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration provides tools to keep abreast of weather developments.
[tweethttps://twitter.com/NOAA/status/240890920696958976]
[Updated 4 p.m. ET] New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the city until further notice.
"I'll make it really simple: if you loot, you get an orange suit," says @MayorLandrieu #NOLAready —
NOLA Ready (@nolaready) August 29, 2012
[Updated 3:42 p.m. ET] CNN affiliate WWL reports major flooding in LaPlace, Louisiana, and boat rescues are taking place.
[Updated 3:21 p.m. ET] Public and private schools throughout southern Louisiana will not reopen until Tuesday, CNN affiliate WGNO reports.
[Updated 3:04 p.m.] Isaac has weakened to tropical storm status, as its sustained winds have dropped to 70 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm's location at 3 p.m. ET was about 50 miles west-southwest of New Orleans and 55 miles south-southeast of Baton Rouge. It was crawling northwest at 6 mph.
[Updated 2:49 p.m.] Granted, this storm is no Katrina, but it's still disastrous to many people - and animals - in its path.
[Updated 2:40 p.m.] Hurricane Isaac has knocked out power to more than 725,000 customers in five states, the affected utilities report.
[Updated 2:32 p.m. ET] President Barack Obama received a briefing from federal officials on the impact of Hurricane Isaac and held a conference call Wednesday with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the mayor of New Orleans, the White House said.
"The president heard from the governors and mayor about the current conditions on the ground and the steps their teams are taking to respond. The president asked the governors to continue to identify any additional needs if they arise as the effects of Isaac and the response efforts continue," the White House said.
[Updated 2:25 p.m. ET Wednesday] Power could be out in some areas of Louisiana for as much as a week, Bill Mole, CEO of Entergy Louisiana, tells CNN affiliate WWL.
[Updated 2:19 p.m. ET Wednesday] Hurricane Isaac's slow, rainy march through Louisiana is expected to cause as much as $1.5 billion in insured losses, according to one disaster modeling firm, CNNMoney reports.
[Updated 2:18 p.m. ET Wednesday] Heavy squalls spawned by Hurricane Isaac continue to slap New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the National Weather Service said. The storm's center is 45 miles southwest of New Orleans and 55 miles south-southeast of Baton Rouge, it says.
[Updated 2:13 p.m. ET Wednesday] The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Harrison County, Mississippi, including the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport.
PIC: Tombs, caskets floating in flood water from above ground cemetery near Braithwaite, LA. #Isaac #wfaaisaac ow.ly/i/Td77 —
Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) August 29, 2012
[Updated 2:09 p.m ET Wednesday] At least 673,039 customers are without power in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas because of Hurricane Isaac, according to the latest numbers from power providers.
[Updated 2:07 p.m. ET Wednesday] On the lighter side, we have an iReport that may spark some smiles during this tough time for the Gulf Coast.
Greg Taylor of Mandeville, Louisiana, sent his wife and two children to Alabama to escape the storm. Taylor stayed behind and when he went into his daughter Ashley's room to feed her fish, a beta named Tom Brady, Taylor found that the 8-year-old had left behind a list of instructions for her stuffed animals.
Among them: "Noises: Scoot close to your buddy" and "When I'm gone: Stay Calm. No Partys."
[Updated 1:46 p.m. ET Wednesday] Dozens of road closures have been reported by the Louisiana State Patrol over the past 24 hours. Click here for the latest information.
[Updated 1:40 p.m. ET Wednesday] Gov. Bobby Jindal says there's an unconfirmed report of a fatality in a fire at a commercial building in Gretna, near New Orleans. News reports say heavy winds from Isaac kept firefighters from battling the blaze.
[Updates 1:34 p.m. ET Wednesday] More than 8,200 National Guard personnel are available for relief operations in Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal says. As of this morning, 4,130 people are in shelters across Louisiana, the governor added.
[Updated 1:32 p.m. ET Wednesday] Entergy Corporation, which provides power in New Orleans and parts of Mississippi and Texas, has 10,000 workers and contractors from 24 states responding to power outages, said spokesperson Chanel Lagarde. The company says it has more than 550,000 customers without power.
[Updated 1:26 p.m. ET Wednesday] Authorities are using high-water vehicles to evacuate nursing home residents in flooded areas of Plaquemines Parish, Gov. Bobby Jindal says.
[Updated 1:25 p.m. ET Wednesday] Gov. Bobby Jindal says authorities are considering intentionally breaching part of an east bank levee in Plaquemines Parish to relieve pressure on the levee.
[Updated 1:23 p.m. ET Wednesday] The Mississippi Highway Patrol reports the following road closures:
- U.S. 90 between Bay St. Louis and the Biloxi Bay Bridge.
- Highway 43/603 between U.S. 90 and I-10
- Highway 604 north of U.S. 90 at Pearlington
- Highway 43/603 at Jourdan River
- U.S. 90 at Whites Bayou near Pearlington
Closures are expected to last until 5 pm Friday.
[Updated 1:02 p.m. ET Wednesday] Gulf Power Company announced that it has restored power to more than 20,000 customers in Northwest Florida, CNN affiliate WKRG reports.
Scattered outages remain, and spokesman Jeff Rogers warned that more outages are possible throughout the day.
Feeling sad. #Isaac took the home @JamesHPerry and I just bought. All safe. House was vacant except for my dreams. http://t.co/h62AkGPB —
Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) August 29, 2012
9.26" of rain has fallen in New Orleans so far, 5.21" in Mobile, and 3.42" in Gulfport, all as of 10am CDT. —
Weather Underground (@wunderground) August 29, 2012
[Updated 12:39 p.m. ET Wednesday] The University of Louisiana-Monroe is canceling classes as of 4 p.m. today through Labor Day, school President Nick J. Bruno announced on the university's website.
[Updated 12:35 p.m. ET Wednesday] Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is scheduled to hold a news conference at 12:55 p.m. ET in Baton Rouge, while New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will hold one at 1:30 p.m. ET.
State Officials Ask Residents to Report Oil, Oily Material or Oiled Debris #Isaac emergency.louisiana.gov/docs/2012-08-2… —
Louisiana GOHSEP (@GOHSEP) August 29, 2012
[Updated 12:27 p.m. ET Wednesday] Seventy-five people have been rescued from flooded homes and rooftops in the Louisiana town of Braithwaite in Plaquemines Parish, CNN affiliate WWL reported, citing parish President Billy Nungesser. At least 25 others were "awaiting rescue on the parish's east bank on rooftops and in attics," the station reported.
[Updated 12:24 p.m. ET Wednesday] Residents have been ordered to evacuate from new areas of Plaquemines Parish, CNN affiliate WVUE reports. Water will start rising from the Oakville flood gate to Venice. School buses will be sent through the area to pick up people, the reports says.
[Updated 12:14 p.m. ET Wednesday] Not even Isaac can stop one of Louisiana's favorite pastimes: LSU still plans to play its football game against North Texas on Saturday night in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, coach Les Miles tells CNN affiliate WBRZ.
[Updated 12:08 p.m. ET Wednesday] The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Hancock, Harrison and Pearl River counties in Mississippi.
[Updated 12:06 p.m. ET Wednesday] Interstate 10 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is closed because of high water, state Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson tells CNN affiliate WDSU.
[Updated 11:59 a.m. ET Wednesday] Petty officer Ryan Tippets says all Coast Guard assets are in standby mode and “as soon as the storm passes, the Coast Guard will be out there.”
[Updated 11:43 a.m. ET Wednesday] Gas prices that are rising because of Hurricane Isaac could begin to drop as early as Monday, said the Oil Price Information Service, which reports petroleum pricing news.
[Updated 11:32 a.m. ET Wednesday] Nearly 654,000 customers are without power in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas as a result of Hurricane Isaac, power companies reported Wednesday.
[Updated 11:28 a.m. ET Wednesday] iReporter Alekz Londos is a freelance photojournalist who traveled from Santa Cruz, California, to cover Isaac. He’s submitted video of waves crashing into the Orleans Marina on Lake Ponchartrain.
[Updated 11:22 a.m. ET Wednesday] There may be a silver lining to Isaac’s arrival in the Gulf states. Though it’s too late to benefit summer crops such as corn and soybeans, the rain from the storm could bring some much-needed hydration to parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Tennessee and Missouri, AccuWeather reports.
If the rain moves far enough westward it could also benefit the wheat crops in the central and southern Plains. Wheat is generally planted in September, AccuWeather says.
[Updated 11:19 a.m. ET Wednesday] Residents of Plaquemines Parish made more than 150 calls to be rescued from rising flood waters since 2:30 a.m. this morning, parish Cmdr. Terry Rutherford tells CNN.
Sheriff's boats, National Guard boats and civilians are participating in the rescue operations, Rutherford said.
Rutherford says there is 5 feet to 14 feet of flood water in the east bank area of the parish.
Hurricane safety tips: What to do when the lights go out
[Updated 11:15 a.m. ET Wednesday] Louisiana State University will remain closed through Thursday because of Hurricane Isaac, according to a release posted to the schools website.
[Updated 11:10 a.m. ET Wednesday] Despite annual improvements for the last several years to the Plaquemine Parish levees, they just couldn’t stand up to Isaac’s storm surge, said parish President Billy Nungusser.
“This storm was not a Category 1. This storm delivered a punch, and we saw water come over those levees more than (during) Gustav and Ivan. And it continues to flow,” he told CNN.
In Woodlawn, an area along the Mississippi River that saw no flooding during Katrina, there is 5 feet of water. In other areas along the river’s east bank, there are reports of 12 to 14 feet of water that has stranded people in attics and on roofs.
“This storm continues to just pump water into that area like we’ve never seen before.,” Nungusser said, adding that residents along the west bank are worried that Isaac could deliver destruction across the river before it passes through the area.
[Updated 11:06 a.m. ET Wednesday] At 11 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center says Isaac remains a hurricane with winds of 75 mph, gusting to 100 mph. The center is directly over Houma, Louisiana, about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans. Tropical storm warnings for coastlines east of the Alabama-Florida border have been discontinued. Hurricane warnings remain in effect for coastlines east of Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Mississippi-Alabama border, including the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.
[Updated 11:03 a.m. ET Wednesday] The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, a 24-mile-long bridge over the lake connecting the New Orleans suburb of Metairie with Mandeville on the north side of the lake, is closed because of high winds and will likely remain so through Wednesday, the Times-Picayune reports.
[Updated 10:48 a.m. ET Wednesday] At least 5,200 people spent the night in Red Cross shelters in the storm area, Jonathan Aiken, a spokesperson for the Red Cross tells CNN. The Red Cross operates 80 shelters in six states.
[Updated 10:46 a.m. ET Wednesday] iReporter Eileen Romero of New Orleans found two homes that had collapsed in the Mid-City neighborhood. You can see her photos here and here.
[Updated 10:40 a.m. ET Wednesday] Hurricane Isaac has left at least 559,332 customers without power in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama, power companies said Wednesday. The bulk of the outages are in Louisiana.
[Updated 10:38 a.m. ET Wednesday] Mobile Regional Airport authorities say the facility's runways will be open Wednesday and passengers will be kept informed of today's flight operations. Mobile is a southwestern Alabama city on the Gulf Coast, which has been slammed by Hurricane Isaac.
[Updated 10:31 a.m. ET Wednesday] All of Dauphin Island is without power – and this time it’s not totally Isaac’s fault.
According to CNN affiliate WPMI, a boater had to be rescued from his sail boat because of the nasty conditions on the water. The abandoned ship still had its sails raised, and it floated down toward the Dauphin Island Bridge, where it hit a power line that pumps electricity to the island’s 1,200 residents.
The ship then turned back into the Gulf and crews are trying to get the boat under control. Meanwhile, the causeway is closed and a curfew will go into effect later today.
[Updated 10:24 a.m. ET Wednesday] Hurricane Isaac is weakening "slightly" as it moves inland over southeastern Louisiana, the National Weather Service said. The storm has maximum sustained winds of 75 mph, and its center is about 50 miles south-southwest of New Orleans. A storm becomes a hurricane when those winds reach 74 mph.
[Updated 10:24 a.m. ET Wednesday] Tornado warnings have been issued for Washington Parish in Louisiana and Hancock and Pearl River counties in Mississippi, the National Weather Service says.
[Updated 10:22 a.m. ET Wednesday] Deputies and residents in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish were working to reach people trapped in attics and on roofs by high water spawned by Hurricane Isaac, CNN affiliate WWL reported.
[Updated 10:15 a.m. ET Wednesday] Public schools in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, will not reopen until Tuesday, the district says in a posting on its website.
[Updated 10:13 a.m. ET Wednesday] A tornado warning is in effect for parts of Hancock and Harrison counties in Mississippi, the National Weather Service says.
[Updated 10:07 a.m. ET Wednesday] Water was encroaching on an evacuation shelter in Raceland, in Lafourche Parish, reports Gina Swanson from CNN affiliate WDSU.
The majority of the city of Baker is without power. #isaac #isaacon9 —
(@WAFB) August 29, 2012
[Updated 9:58 a.m. ET Wednesday] Tulane University in New Orleans has canceled all classes until Tuesday, the school has announced on its website.
"Students on campus are safe and still sheltering in place in residence halls," the school said.
[Updated 9:49 a.m. ET Wednesday] Hurricane Isaac is posing a significant threat for inland flooding. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration such flooding "the hidden danger of tropical cyclones." Inland flooding accounts for more than 50% of hurricane-related deaths, NOAA says. Check out their web page on the dangers.
#Isaac Let friends/family know you're OK by sending a text or updating your social networks. Limit voice calls to emergencies only. —
FEMA (@fema) August 29, 2012
[Updated 9:40 a.m. ET Wednesday] After Katrina, carpenter Bill Boesch rebuilt his and his wife’s house with an extra level “just in case.” As Isaac approached, he was prepared with coolers and a generator, but the storm conjured some unpleasant memories from seven years ago.
“It just brings all of that back up – you know, that whole experience and the loss,” he said.
Wind sustained at 43 mph with a wind gust to 58 mph at Baton Rouge Metro Airport! #Isaac is showing up now! —
WBRZ News (@WBRZ) August 29, 2012
[Updated 9:22 a.m. ET Wednesday] In Mississippi, there are about 2,132 evacuees housed in 31 shelters across the state, CNN affiliate WCBI reports. The station said about 4,000 homes were without power as of 5:30 a.m. CT.
If you're in Mississippi and need to evacuate, the Red Cross has a list of available shelters on its website.
The Louisiana Red Cross has a list as well.
Disaster Distress Helpline offers crisis counseling & avail 24/7 for states in path of #Isaac: 1800-985-5990 / text TalkWithUs to 66746 —
Distress Helpline (@distressline) August 28, 2012
Tornado Warning issued in Perry, George, Stone counties in MS #Isaac —
(@WKRG) August 29, 2012
[Updated 9:20 a.m. ET Wednesday] A couple, their 6-month-old baby and family dog were rescued from a houseboat on the Pearl River this morning, according to The Sun Herald, a newspaper that covers the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The incident occurred in Pearlington, just 100 feet from the Louisiana state line. Emergency and wildlife officials brought the family to safety after rising water trapped the family on the boat, the paper reported.
[Updated 9:17 a.m. ET Wednesday] 522,228 customers are without power in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to power providers Entergy, Alabama Power, and Cleco.
[Updated 9:15 a.m. ET Wednesday] The center of Hurricane Isaac is 40 miles southwest of New Orleans, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory Wednesday. Strong squalls from the storm are battering southeastern Louisiana and heavy rains and a "dangerous storm surge" are likely to continue into the evening, the advisory said.
[Updated 9:14 a.m. ET Wednesday] An elderly Florida may have been disoriented from heavy rain associated with then-Tropical Storm Isaac when she drove into a retention pond and drowned Monday, CNN affiliate WFTV in Orlando reports.
The body of 89-year-old Margaret Langewisch was found in her Mazda in the 18-foot-deep pond in Winter Springs on Tuesday.
"We had a torrential downpour for 10 or 15 minutes and I think that's what the problem was because she must have missed the first right and thought she was going to the clubhouse," resident Tony Palmiotti is quoted as saying.
[Updated 9:07 a.m. ET Wednesday] Alabama Power reports that about 5,600 customers are without power, mostly on Dauphin Island, in Bayou la Batre and other areas in south Mobile County. Another 1,100 are without power in the Theodore area. Alabama Power says all customers should have power restored by day's end.
[Updated 9:05 a.m. ET Wednesday] With Isaac now moving at the torpid pace of 6 mph, National Hurricane Center Director Richard Knabb tells CNN that the storm's eye has yet to pass through the region and residents in the area can expect pounding rain "all day today, into tonight, into tomorrow."
"For many people, it's not even half over," Knabb said.
[Updated 9:01 a.m. ET Wednesday] As Isaac's winds and rain continue to hamper government services in Louisiana and Mississippi, the city of Pensacola, Florida, has announced it is back to business, according to CNN affiliate WALA. City Hall, libraries, garbage service and the Pensacola International Airport were all operational as of this morning, the station reported.
[Updated 8:53 a.m. ET Wednesday] Three adults and one infant in Mississippi were rescued overnight from a houseboat as Hurricane Isaac hit the region, the state's emergency operations center said Wednesday.
[Updated 8:42 a.m. ET Wednesday] Today is the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast seven years ago. CNN has put together a few pieces in remembrance of the natural disaster that killed hundreds and left the region reeling. There's a photo gallery as well as a video package revisiting the destruction left in Katrina's wake.
[Updated 8:36 a.m. ET Wednesday] The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for several Louisiana cities, including Timberlane, Metairie, Marrero, Kenner, Harvey, Avondale, New Orleans, New Orleans East, Chalmette and Hahnville. The warnings, which affect St. Bernard, St. Charles, Orleans and Jefferson parishes, are in effect until 9:45 a.m. CT.
[Updated 8:31 a.m. ET Wednesday] Please remember, if you're on or near the Gulf and have stories, photos or videos to share, please send them to iReport. Thanks!
WEATHER UPDATE: Flash flood warning extended through 9:45 a.m. fb.me/1Q3S7pIQU —
St. Charles Parish (@stcharlesgov) August 29, 2012
[Updated 8:28 a.m. ET Wednesday] Mississippi and Louisiana residents who didn't evacuate and aren't in danger should stay put until the winds and rain pass, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said.
"We have resources ready to go, but until the winds come down, we're really asking people, if you're not somewhere that's dangerous, stay where you're at unless you're told to evacuate," he told CNN.
[Updated 8:06 a.m. ET Wednesday] In Destin, Florida, more than 200 miles east of New Orleans, there are reports of heavy damage, including a broken-down boardwalk near a condominium development. CNN affiliate WEAR reported that waters from the Gulf essentially swallowed the beach before flooding the streets in the resort town that styles itself as "The World's Luckiest Fishing Village." More than 11,000 people live in the city, which is located on an isthmus separated from the Florida mainland by the Choctawhatchee Bay.
Resident Kris Thurman told WEAR, "It seems like we've been in this pattern where every season if a tropical storm or a hurricane gets anywhere near the Gulf, even if it's not a direct hit, the sea rises and it washes out the beach."
According to the Public Service Commission, at least 486,298 people in Louisiana are without power. #Isaac —
Louisiana GOHSEP (@GOHSEP) August 29, 2012
[Updated 7:48 a.m. ET] Several environmental groups have expressed concerns that Isaac could stir up some of the remnant crude from the BP oil spill more than two years ago. BP rejected the notion in a statement to Huffington Post.
SkyTruth, an environmental group specializing in remote sensing and digital mapping is encouraging residents in the area to post photos of any oil pollution they see to the SkyTruth website.
"That's the most obvious way that the oil might come back into the public eye. Erosion could expose and churn up tar balls and tar mats," SkyTruth President John Amos told HuffPo.
[Updated 7:44 a.m. ET] A tornado watch remains in effect for southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi until 4 p.m. CT Wednesday, the National Weather Service says.
[Updated 7:41 a.m. ET] Gas prices shot up by nearly 5 cents a gallon nationwide Wednesday after Hurricane Isaac cut output from refineries along the Gulf Coast, CNNMoney reports.
But experts say the price spike is likely to be short lived, especially since the winds associated with the Category 1 storm are not believed to have caused lasting damage to the refineries in the region.
Wholesale gas prices were already falling Tuesday ahead of the storm making land, and were sharply lower Wednesday.
Click here for state-by-state gas prices.
[Updated 7:37 a.m. ET] Because Isaac is moving so slowly, it is not expected to complete the 70-mile trek from New Orleans to the capital, Baton Rouge, until late morning or early afternoon, several Louisiana news outlets are reporting.
According to CNN affiliate WFAB, forecasters are saying Isaac could take 12 hours to travel from south of the Crescent City to the capital and that the center of the storm is expected to pass through Wednesday afternoon. Tropical storm-force winds are expected for a "prolonged period," the station reported.
[Updated 7:34 a.m. ET] The National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for Gulfport, Biloxi and Long Beach in Mississippi.
[Updated 7:27 a.m. ET] The Louisiana attorney general has issued a statement reminding the state's sex offenders the evacuating because of the storm foes not relinquish them of the responsibility to notify law enforcement of their whereabouts, CNN affiliate WAFB reports.
They can either phone law enforcement or register their location on the internet at www.offenderwatchexpress.com.
"Under Louisiana law, you are required to notify law enforcement of any changes in residence, including any temporary situation that may cause an absence from your usual place of residence for more than seven days," according to the release.
[Updated 7:24 a.m. ET] "The water came up so quick it looks like we lost everything," a Plaquemines Parish resident tells CNN affiliate WWLTV. Listen as he talks to the station from his attic.
[Updated 7:10 a.m. ET] Its large size and slow motion are worsening the effects of Hurricane Isaac, making it seem a stronger storm than the Category 1 storm it is, Richard Knabb, director of National Hurricane Center, tells CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.
[Updated 7:03 a.m. ET] Three people have been rescued from flooding in Plaquemines Parish, including one woman rescued from a roof, parish President Billy Nungesser, tells CNN's Soledad O'Brien.
[Updated 6:54 a.m. ET] 438,150 customers are without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, according to power provider Entergy's storm information site.
@nolaready I'm digging that the official emergency preparedness handle of #nola just coined this hash tag #TurnAroundDontDrown —
LAUREN ALEXiS (@1aurenalexis) August 29, 2012
[Updated 6:47 a.m. ET] Louisiana Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater announced that all state government offices will be closed today, CNN affiliate WAFB in Baton Rouge reports.
Winds so strong near New Orleans, the Lakefront ASOS detecting the rain drops as snow. Lakefront Airport 08:53 Light Snow Fog and Windy. —
Alan Crone (@alancrone) August 29, 2012
[Updated 6:42 a.m. ET] Animal shelters in New Orleans and Gulfport, Mississippi, were forced to ship several pets awaiting adoption to North Texas, according to CNN affiliate WDSU. The two shelters sent a collective 175 cats and 105 dogs to two Texas shelters.
To make room for the animals, which arrived yesterday, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is offering discounts on adoption fees, the station reported.
The NWS is receiving reports of up to 5 feet of water in the areas of the overtopped levee near Braithwaite, LA. Residents saying up to 10ft —
CNN Weather Center (@CNNweather) August 29, 2012
[Updated 6:36 a.m. ET] The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Jackson County in southern Mississippi.
[Updated 6:32 a.m. ET] CNN's Brian Todd in New Orleans reports rising waters in the streets.
[Updated 6:25 a.m. ET] The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for portions of Hancock and Harrison counties in Mississippi.
A state-by-state look at the effects of Hurricane Isaac
415,000 without power, according to Entergy map, nearly 300,000 in Jefferson and Orleans bit.ly/f8kHaI —
WWL-TV (@WWLTV) August 29, 2012
[Updated 5:49 a.m. ET] Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser is a personal victim of Hurricane Isaac, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
Winds have ripped parts of the roof off his home and water has been pouring in, the paper reported.
[Updated 5:44 a.m. ET] There have been reports of 10 to 12 feet of water in homes in Plaquemines Parish, parish President Billy Nungesser told CNN's “Early Start” anchor Zoriada Sambolin.
Nungesser said Isaac has pushed more water into some areas than Katrina did seven years ago. He said the Woodlawn area had no water in it from Katrina and has five feet of water in it now.
[Updated 5:34 a.m. ET] In its 5 a.m. ET advisory, the National Hurricane Center says Isaac is still a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph.
[Updated 5:26 a.m. ET] Billy Nungesser, Plaquemines Parish president, told CNN what happens when a levee is overtopped:
"As that water flows over the top, it eventually will eat out portions of that levee, which then it washes away.
"Either that or the inside of the levee will fill up.
"One or the other will happen. Either way that area’s going to be totally inundated with water."
[Updated 5:19 a.m. ET] Billy Nungesser, Plaquemines Parish president, spoke to CNN about the overtopping of a levee in the parish:
“We knew we were going to have trouble with the projected storm surge, but we were hoping this storm wasn’t going to sit out there as long as it has done, backtracked, and keep pumping this water up against the levees. And there’s only just so much that it can take."
[Updated 5:12 a.m. ET] Officials are reporting "overtopping of a levee on the east bank" from Braithwaite to White Ditch in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, which will "result in significant deep flooding in the area," the National Weather Service said.
[Updated 5:05 a.m. ET] The National Weather Service warned early Wednesday that heavy rainfall across metropolitan New Orleans and nearby coastal communities will likely result in flash floods.
[Updated 4:05 a.m. ET] The storm has resumed moving, slowly, toward the west-northwest at 8 mph, the National Hurricane Center says, after being stalled for part of the morning.
[Updated 3:15 a.m. ET] Hurricane Isaac is stationary near the coast of southeast Louisiana, the National Weather Service says. It's expected to resume a slow northwestern movement later today.
@donnabrazile: Please RT: Everyone practice good #FireSafety when using candles during #Isaac in order to avoid fires. #NOLAReady —
NOLA Ready (@nolaready) August 29, 2012
[Updated 2:03 a.m. ET] "The center (of the storm) has wobbled westward and has moved back over water," the National Hurricane Center wrote in a late-night "forecast discussion." "A northwestward motion has recently resumed and a second landfall should occur later tonight near Grand Isle (Louisiana). ... Little change in strength is expected during the next 12 hours or so as the center moves across the bayous of southeastern Louisiana. Steady weakening should commence later Wednesday as the center moves farther inland."
[Updated 1:55 a.m. ET]
12:30am update w/all reported road closures, downed trees, flooding & other infrastructure issues at ready.nola.gov #Isaac #NOLAReady —
NOLA Ready (@nolaready) August 29, 2012
[Updated 1:52 a.m. ET] More than 256,000 Entergy Louisiana customers were without power at last count.
[Updated 1:44 a.m. ET] Cameron County, Texas, officials closed the Padre Island and Boca Chica beaches Tuesday evening because of dangerous tides and currents, CNN affiliate WBRZ reported. Three shelters - one in Dallas, two near the Louisiana line - were opened in Texas for storm-driven evacuees, the station reported.
[Updated 1:25 a.m. ET] As of 1 a.m. ET, Hurricane Isaac was 60 miles southeast of Houma, Louisiana, and 70 miles south of New Orleans, still maintaining 80 mph winds and dumping large amounts of rain on Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the National Hurricane Center said. Dangerous storm surge conditions were observed all along the northern Gulf Coast.
"The combination of a storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters," the NHC advisory said. Surge levels could reach 6 to 12 feet in Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana; 3 to 6 feet in Alabama and south-central Louisiana; 2 to 4 feet along the Florida Panhandle and Apalachee Bay; and 1 to 3 feet along the rest of Florida's west coast, the center predicted.
A surge of 11 feet already had been recorded at Shell Beach, Louisiana, it said.
Isaac is expected to produce total rainfall amounts of 7 to 14 inches, with up to 20 inches possible in spots, leading to "possibly significant lowland flooding," the NHC said.
Isolated tornadoes are possible along the central Gulf Coast region and parts of the lower Mississippi Valley through Wednesday, it said.
People also should beware of rough surf and dangerous rip tides all along the coast for the next couple of days, the NHC warned.
[Updated 1:17 a.m. ET] The season-opening college football game Thursday between Louisiana Tech and Texas A&M has been postponed because of the hurricane, CNN affiliate KTVE reported. The game will be played in Ruston, Louisiana, on October 13, which was an open date for both teams, Louisiana Tech officials said.
[Updated 12:49 a.m. ET] According to CNN affiliate WGNO, the following locations are under flood warnings because of storm surge and/or heavy rain: St. Tammany, Tangipahoa and Washington in Louisiana; Pearl River and Hancock in Mississippi.
[Updated 12:34 a.m. ET] Rain fell with a vengeance along the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Isaac slowly skidded along the Louisiana coast like a Roomba bumping into a wall.
TUESDAY LIVE BLOG ||||| Some local residents with boats have begun rescue efforts for Plaquemines Parish residents stranded by Hurricane Isaac along its east bank, outside the federal levee system. So far at least half a dozen people have been picked up, according to parish officials. Dozens of people on Plaquemines' east bank, south of St. Bernard Parish, reportedly are stranded, some in attics to escape flood waters that may have reached 5 to 9 feet in certain areas.
There are also as many as 65 people on the Belle Chasse/Scarsdale ferry landing in Plaquemines Parish, officials said. A search and rescue operation is underway there. Officials have received reports that the water is a foot from the top of the levee.
There is a nursing home in the Jesuit Bend area on the west bank that was not evacuated, and the Governor's office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness wants to try to evacuate it.
The parish levees on the east bank are about 8.5 feet, though some are as high as 12 feet. Some estimates have storm surge at 13 feet; corps officials this morning put the figure at 12.5 feet. Corps officials are saying that there are no confirmed reports of breaches, which suggest failures in levees.
Story by Benjamin Alexander-Bloch and Rebecca Mowbray Staff writers
The National Guard was to launch a larger rescue effort this morning, coming into the east bank through St. Bernard Parish. After the wind subsides, other water and air rescue efforts will follow.
While federal levees in the area appear to be holding, problems in Plaquemines Parish are occurring in areas not protected by the federal system, which was revamped after Katrina.
Along with the problems at Braithwaite, the levee overtoppings on the east bank are also affecting the Bel Air near White Ditch at River Mile 65. Parish officials have also received calls from a woman at Willspoint on the east bank who is claiming she received 9 feet of water and is in her attic. There are reports that the Woodlawn fire station, between Braithwaite and White Ditch, which received no water during Katrina, has been inundated with 5 feet of water.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he wants to cut a hole in the Mississippi River levee to drain the Braithwaite area. But the Army Corps is opposed to the plan and hopes to get pumps brought to the area.
"My reaction is big and as many as you've got," Col. Edward Fleming, district commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said of the pumps.
When the storm is over, the distinction between a federal and non-federal levee will become salient, but for now, the Corps is able to help. Corps engineers are working on getting Plaquemines officials a hydrograph of the back of the levees by Jesuit Bend, so they can get a better handle on what they might be dealing with there.
Col. Fleming said Plaquemines officials need to think about getting better pumping capactity down there for future storms.
Guy Laigast, director of Plaquemines Parish's emergency preparedness, said some points may have seen winds of up to 110 mph.
"The devastation of my house is worse than Katrina and the flooding in Woodlawn is worse than Katrina, so those things tell me that the damage on the east bank is worse than Katrina," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said this morning.
When the daylight hit, parish officials and others were planning to get out and start examining the parish, "like fleas," said James Madere, a parish GIS analyst who will help assess damage.
Mark Riley, the deputy director of Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness who is stationed in Plaquemines this morning, told a Times-Picayune reporter that rescue operations would occur as soon as it was safe.
"The standard is we don't want to put first responders' lives in jeopardy and until there stops being an immediate threat to their lives we cannot put their lives at risk," Riley said.
It appears from current reports that as Isaac moves upward, it might start pushing water out of the east and into the west. Parish officials are now heavily monitoring Barataria Bay, which reportedly raised 2 feet in the last 90 minutes, from about 4:30 a.m. to 6 a.m.
The fear is that water would get pushed into Plaquemines' west bank levees and affect residents in Myrtle Grove and the Jesuit Bend area. While many of the homes along the levee in Myrtle Grove are raised about 14 feet, many of the Jesuit Bend are not as high. ||||| Utility companies say more than 500,000 have lost power as Hurricane Isaac moves through southeast Louisiana, bringing wind, rain and flooding.
Most of the outages Wednesday are in areas around New Orleans as Isaac lashes the area with 80 mph winds.
The Category 1 hurricane has pushed water over a rural levee to flood some homes, knocked out power and immersed beach-front roads in Louisiana and Mississippi as it makes a drenching slog inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
Wind gusts of more than 60 mph and sheets of rain pelted New Orleans, where people braced themselves for the storm behind levees that were strengthened after the much stronger Hurricane Katrina hit seven years ago to the day. ||||| A tornado warning has been issued in southern Mississippi as Hurricane Isaac hits Louisiana and Mississippi with high winds and drenching rains.
The National Weather Service says the tornado warning area Wednesday includes the cities of Long Beach and Gulfport, which are west of Biloxi on Mississippi's Gulf Coast.
The warning comes as Category 1 Isaac moves inland in Louisiana, bringing flooding and power outages after making landfall Tuesday evening.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center warns Isaac's dangerous storm surges and flooding threats from heavy rain are expected to last all day and into the night as it crawls over Louisiana. | – Today is the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and for residents of Plaquemines Parish, it's deja vu all over again, according to the parish president. Billy Nungesser tells NPR that the parish, located some 95 miles from New Orleans, has already seen damage that rivals, and could even surpass, that heaped upon it by Katrina. With the levee overrun, Nungesser says parts of the parish that had escaped unscathed in previous hurricanes now sit under five feet of water. "I don't know who's calling this a Category 1, but this is no Category 1," Nungesser said. "My house has more damage than it did during Katrina." More on the situation in Plaquemines, and beyond: The parish's levees range from 8.5 feet to 12 feet in height. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates the storm surge hit 12.5 feet, but have yet to confirm a breach. This implies the levees, which are not part of the federal levee system, failed, reports the Times-Picayune. While the director of Plaquemines Parish's emergency preparedness says winds may have hit 110mph, CNN reports that Isaac has weakened a bit since, with maximum sustained winds of 75mph (the hurricane threshold is 74mph). As of about 10:30am ET, Isaac's center was located about 50 miles south-southwest of New Orleans. The AP reports that 500,000 are without power in the areas around New Orleans. In Southern Mississippi, a tornado warning has been issued. |
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This is no April Fool’s joke!
Jon Gosselin will bare it all come Saturday, Apr. 1.
The former reality star, 39, and father of eight will put on his first adult dance number at Dusk nightclub’s “Untamed Male Revue” show in Atlantic City, N.J.
“I work at Dusk Nightclub in Atlantic City, N.J.,” Gosselin told Entertainment Tonight. “I’m a member of the Senate DJ group and I also help with promotion. I DJ at the club sometimes, but I find promotion is more rewarding both financially and emotionally. I like taking care of people and making others feel welcome.”
Of his routine, Gosselin bills it as an “integral” part of the evening.
“Being part of something is a blessing,” he added. “Since I joined Senate DJ I’ve felt like I belong to something and I’m not just out there on my own — I feel as if I’m part of a fraternity or brotherhood.”
Stripping happens to be one of many odd jobs Gosselin has taken on since quitting “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”
In July 2016, Page Six reported Gosselin was a working as a cook at T.G.I. Fridays. While he donated his check, it’s unclear what he’ll do with his earnings from stripping.
A request for comment from Gosselin’s rep wasn’t immediately returned. ||||| You’ve seen Jon Gosselin minus Kate — now see him minus his clothes!
The 39-year-old former reality star — who rose to fame on Jon and Kate Plus 8, the TBS series which about his then-wife and their eight children — is joining the dancers at Caesars Atlantic City’s Untamed Male Revue for a one-night-only event on April 1.
Owner Eric Millstein confirmed Gosselin’s gig at the New Jersey hotel and casino’s Dusk Nightclub to PEOPLE, saying “it is R-rated, not X-rated.”
The performance will feature choreography from an ex-Vegas showgirl with costumes, he explains.
“Jon has been rehearsing every every week,” Millstein says, adding that the club plans to feature different celebrities in the future.
Untamed Male Revue describes itself as “Vegas style performance featuring the best male dancers in Atlantic City.” Mellstein compares the show to numbers seen in the 2012 film Magic Mike and in the popular Australian export Thunder from Down Under.
FROM COINAGE: 5 Financial Mistakes to Avoid in Your 20s
“It’s not cheesy or sleazy,” he says, emphasizing that the evening’s emcees are all women.
Gosselin’s gig is on April 1 — his 40th birthday.
TMZ was first to report the news. ||||| Jon Gosselin -- reality star, father of eight, DJ and… stripper?
It's true. After rumors began swirling that the former Jon & Kate Plus 8 star was going to perform as a male entertainer in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Gosselin, 39, confirmed the news to ET on Saturday.
WATCH: Kate Gosselin Says Her 'Ex-Husband Doesn't See the Value in Uplifting His Children'
"I work at Dusk Nightclub in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I'm a member of the Senate DJ group and I also help with Promotion," he explained. "I DJ at the club sometimes, but I find promotion is more rewarding both financially and emotionally. I like taking care of people and making others feel welcome."
Gosselin also revealed he's performing in the nightclub's Men Untamed Revue Show, exclusively telling ET his first night is April 1st.
"I'm an integral part of the show," he added. "Being part of something is a blessing. Since I joined Senate DJ I've felt like I belong to something and I'm not just out there on my own -- I feel as if I'm part of a fraternity or brotherhood."
But when asked if stripping was something he ever imagined himself doing, he responded, "No way!"
WATCH: Jon Gosselin Details Estrangement From His Kids
ET caught up with Gosselin last November, where he got candid on where his relationship stands with his ex-wife, Kate, and their eight children.
Hear highlights from the interview in the video below!
-Reporting by Jennifer Peros
| – "Being a part of something is a blessing," former reality TV star Jon Gosselin tells Entertainment Tonight. The "something" he's referring to is a group of people, but not the one he originally became famous for. The 39-year-old confirms that he'll be stripping in Atlantic City's Dusk Nightclub on April 1 as part of its Men Untamed Revue Show. "I'm an integral part of the show," the one-time TLC star says. This is not an April Fool's joke, confirms the New York Post. As for how risque the Saturday show will get, club owner Eric Millstein tells People "it is R-rated, not X-rated." Gosselin already works at the New Jersey club as part of the Senate DJ group and promotions team, and has been rehearsing regularly for his expanded role, says Millstein, who adds that he intends to pull in other celebrities to participate in the Magic Mike-style act. For Gosselin, it's perhaps a step up from this 2013 gig? |
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