document
stringlengths 0
267k
| summary
stringlengths 190
5.91k
|
|---|---|
The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid plummeted last week to seasonally adjusted 339,000, the lowest level in more than four years. The sharp drop offered a hopeful sign that the job market could pick up.
In this Friday Sept. 28, 2012, photo, a group of veterans listen during a session with one of the employers at a job fair introducing veterans to careers in the security and private investigations industry... (Associated Press)
The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications fell by 30,000 to the fewest since February 2008. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped by 11,500 to 364,000, a six-month low.
The positive figures follow a report last week that said the unemployment rate fell in September to 7.8 percent. It was the first time since January 2009 that the rate dropped below 8 percent.
A Labor Department spokesman cautioned that the weekly applications can be volatile, particularly at the start of a quarter. And the spokesman said one large state accounted for much of the decline. The spokesman did not name the state.
Unemployment benefit applications are a proxy for layoffs. When they consistently drop below 375,000, it suggests that hiring is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.
Some economists said they want to see more data before suggesting the job market is turning around.
"Should this level hold for another week, it would flag a meaningful improvement in October" hiring, said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, in a note to clients.
Dan Greenhaus, chief market strategist at BTIG LLC, is also reserving judgment. "Are things that much better all of a sudden? Perhaps. We're going to wait for some corroborating data."
The total number of people receiving unemployment benefits also fell, the Labor Department said. A little more than 5 million Americans received benefits in the week ending Sept. 22, the latest data available. That's down about 44,000 from the previous week.
Last week's report noted that the unemployment rate declined to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent in August because a government survey of households found that 873,000 more people had jobs. It was the biggest jump in nearly 10 years, although it was largely because of an increase in part-time employment.
Still, a separate survey of businesses showed that employers added only 114,000 jobs in September. That's generally enough to keep pace with population growth but not enough to rapidly bring relief to more than 12 million who are unemployed.
Hiring over the summer was stronger than previously estimated. The economy gained an average of 146,000 jobs a month in the July-September quarter. That's more than double the monthly pace in the April-June quarter.
Another report Wednesday suggested hiring will likely remain modest. Employers posted slightly fewer open jobs in August compared with July, the Labor Department said. It was the second straight monthly drop and the fewest openings since April.
A key problem is the economy is not growing fast enough to generate much hiring. Growth slowed to a tepid annual rate of 1.3 percent in the April-June quarter, down from 2 percent in the previous quarter. Most economists see growth staying at or below 2 percent in the second half of the year. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. unemployment rate plunged in April to its lowest level since September 2008 as employers added 288,000 jobs, the most in two years.
The figures are a clear sign that the economy is picking up after a brutal winter slowed growth.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent in March. But the drop occurred because the number of people working or seeking work fell sharply. People not seeking work aren't counted as unemployed.
Employers also added more jobs in February and March than previously estimated. The job totals for those two months were revised up by a combined 36,000.
Job creation is accelerating: Employers added an average of 238,000 jobs the past three months. That's up from 167,000 in the previous three. | – The unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% last month, but the economy only added 120,000 jobs, when 203,000 new jobs had been predicted, according to today's jobs report. Reaction on the Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat Blog was swift: "Woah!!! Bad number." The unemployment rate, however, is better news; it had been expected to hold steady at 8.3%. But the AP notes that the dip is mostly due to more Americans giving up on seeking employment. |
Shelly Sterling still wants to retain partial ownership of the Clippers. (Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
Shelly Sterling has signed her divorce papers but is holding off on filing them against her husband Donald, partly because her camp knows that proceeding could disrupt the situation involving the NBA and the Los Angeles Clippers, a person familiar with the Sterling case told USA TODAY Sports.
But that might be her strongest leverage against the league — a nuclear option that could place the Clippers under the jurisdiction of a California divorce court and delay any sale of the team indefinitely.
MAGIC: No place for Shelly in NBA
SHELLY: Says Donald has dementia
The question is whether Shelly Sterling will use that leverage in her quest to keep her 50% ownership share of the Clippers. She has been advised not to file yet, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation.
A decision by either Shelly or Donald Sterling to move forward with a divorce immediately could make it difficult for the NBA to force a sale of the franchise as quickly as desired by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. In the case of divorce, the couple's many assets, including the Clippers, could be subject to a temporary restraining order by the court as the couple tries to divide their community property and reach a resolution about who gets what, a situation that sometimes takes years.
Shelly Sterling prefers to continue a dialogue with the league in her bid to keep her half of the team, the person said.
Donald Sterling is worth about $1.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine, and owns a substantial amount of property in Southern California.
Silver wants to move quickly to force a sale of the team as it tries to completely wash its hands of Donald Sterling and his racist comments about African-Americans. But the fact that Donald and Shelly Sterling are already estranged is a potential problem.
"As soon as one of them files (for divorce), the family court is going to argue it has some jurisdiction over how that property gets disposed of," said Sharon Kalemkiarian, a family law specialist in San Diego who is not involved in the Clippers case.
VIDEO: Magic shows class where Sterling showed crass
Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share USA TODAY Sports' Jeff Zillgitt breaks down Magic Johnson's response to Donald Sterling's CNN interview.
Even if the NBA succeeds in forcing a sale of the team, as many expect, a divorce filing could drag out the case and keep the ownership situation in limbo indefinitely, a complication that the league, sponsors and players wouldn't like.
The NBA might have to petition the presiding family court to take over the team in the case of a divorce.
Shelly Sterling has said she will fight to keep her half of the team because she doesn't believe she did anything wrong. But many NBA players, fans and sponsors see the couple as intertwined even though they are separated.
They have been married for than 50 years and have owned the team since 1981. They also were co-defendants in lawsuits that accused them of housing discrimination in their rental properties. In 2009, they reached a $2.8 million settlement with the federal government without admitting any wrongdoing.
RIVERS: Didn't much care for Sterling's CNN apology
ARMOUR: Shame belongs on Sterling, not Johnson
After Donald Sterling's private comments about African-Americans were recorded and leaked to the gossip website TMZ, Silver banned him from the league for life and fined him $2.5 million. He also said he would move to force him to sell the team with a three-quarters vote of league owners.
Though Silver said his ruling applies "specifically to Donald Sterling and Donald Sterling's conduct only," the league said a vote to force a sale of the team would include all ownership stakes.
"Under the NBA Constitution, if a controlling owner's interest is terminated by a 3/4 vote, all other team owners' interests are automatically terminated as well," according to a statement from NBA spokesman Mike Bass.
In an interview that aired Monday with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Donald Sterling said he didn't want to fight other league owners, though it's unclear if he will if they vote him out.
"People want me to hire a wall of lawyers and them to have to hire a wall of lawyers and go to war," Donald Sterling said. "I don't think that's the answer."
He referred to Shelly as his "ex-wife," though that's not yet official. When and if it becomes official could decide when this controversy finally goes away.
Follow Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer. E-mail: [email protected]
GALLERY: Donald Sterling through the years ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — In her first interview since the NBA banned her estranged husband, Shelly Sterling says she will fight to keep her share of the Los Angeles Clippers and plans one day to divorce Donald Sterling.
(Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.)
ADVERTISEMENT (Click Prev or Next to continue viewing images.)
Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Shelly Sterling, below, watches the Clippers play the Oklahoma City Thunder along with her attorney, Pierce O'Donnell, in the first half of Game 3 of the Western Conference... (Associated Press)
Shelly Sterling spoke to Barbara Walters, and ABC News posted a short story with excerpts from the conversation Sunday.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has banned Donald Sterling for making racist comments and urged owners to force Sterling to sell the team. Silver added that no decisions had been made about the rest of Sterling's family.
According to ABC's story, Shelly Sterling told Walters: "I will fight that decision."
Sterling also said that she "eventually" will divorce her husband, and that she hadn't yet done so due to financial considerations. | – Shelly Sterling plans "eventually" to divorce her estranged husband Donald, she tells Barbara Walters at ABC News. As for her stake in the Los Angeles Clippers, she plans to keep it, the AP notes. Sterling says she would "absolutely" fight any NBA decision to force her to sell the team. The team is her "legacy" to her family, she says. "To be honest with you, I'm wondering if a wife of one of the owners … said those racial slurs, would they oust the husband? Or would they leave the husband in?" |
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (AP) — A small, private jet has crashed into a house in Maryland's Montgomery County on Monday, killing at least three people on board, authorities said.
Preliminary information indicates at least three people were on board and didn't survive the Monday crash into home in Gaithersburg, a Washington, D.C. suburb, said Pete Piringer, a Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesman.
He said a fourth person may have been aboard.
Piringer said the jet crashed into one home around 11 a.m., setting it and two others on fire. Crews had the fire under control within an hour and were searching for anyone who may have been in the homes.
Television news footage of the scene showed one home nearly destroyed, with a car in the driveway. Witnesses told television news crews that they saw the airplane appear to struggle to maintain altitude before going into a nosedive and crashing.
An FAA spokesman said preliminary information shows the Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100 twin-engine jet was on approach at the nearby Montgomery County Airpark. The National Transportation Safety Board is sending an investigator to the scene. ||||| GAITHERSBURG, Md. (WJLA) - A small plane crashed into a house in the 19700 block of Drop Forge Lane off Snouffer School Road in Gaithersburg on Monday, killing six people - three people aboard the plane and three local residents on the ground.
Continue reading
The two-story, wood-frame home was gutted by the crash impact and ensuing blaze. The first floor was nearly completely blown out and smoke drifted from a gaping hole in what was left of the collapsing roof. Two adjacent homes also had significant damage as the debris and fire spread.
"The plane sliced through the roof of one home, and the main part of the fuselage and the tail landed against a second house. One of the wings "catapulted" into a third house, where the majority of the fire damage occurred, Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference.
Montgomery County firefighters had the blaze under control within an hour, but it took a few more hours to sweep the homes and find the bodies of a missing mother and her two young children.
Authorities said it appeared 36-year-old Marie Gemmell and her two sons, 3-year-old Cole and month-old infant Devon, sought refuge from the fire in a second-floor bathroom after the plane's wing tore into their home. While the official causes of death weren't yet determined, investigators speculated it might be smoke inhalation.
Gemmell's husband and their other child, age 5, survived -- they weren't home at the time of the crash.
The plane was ripped to shreds when it slammed into the neighborhood about 10:45 a.m. Authorities said the pilot and two passengers aboard the Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100 twin-engine jet, built in 2009, likely died upon impact.
ABC7 News confirmed the plane's owner, Dr. Michael J. Rosenberg - CEO of North Carolina-based Health Decisions, a clinical research organization - was among the three fatalities on the plane. He was described as "an experienced pilot." The identities of his two passengers were not immediately known.
Rosenberg's family, which lives locally, said they were "in shock" and also "devastated" to find out others were killed in the crash.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, which originated its flight in Chapel Hill, N.C., crashed while on approach to the nearby Montgomery County Airpark. It went down less than a mile from the airpark and the house it hit was in line with Runway 14 at the airport.
Rosenberg had survived a March 2010 crash into some trees near the same airpark, totaling his $1.4 million turbo-prop plane at the time. "The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control while performing a go-around" was cited by the NTSB as the crash cause.
Witnesses to Monday's crash told ABC7 News that they saw Rosenberg's airplane "struggling desperately" to maintain altitude before going into a nosedive and crashing.
"It did not appear to me that the pilot was in control of the aircraft," said Larry Matthews, an eyewitness who lives in the neighborhood.
Fred Pedreira, 67, who also lives near the crash, said he had just returned home from the grocery store and was parking his car when he saw the jet and immediately knew something was wrong.
"This guy, when I saw him, for a fast jet with the wheels down, I said, 'I think he's coming in too low,'" Pedreira said in an interview with ABC7 News. "Then he was 90 degrees - sideways - and then he went belly-up into the house and it was a ball of fire. It was terrible.
Byron Valencia, 31, who lives nearby too, said that he was in his kitchen when he heard a jet engine flying overhead, and then a big thump shortly after.
"When I opened my window, I could see smoke over the trees and I heard a small explosion, like a pop," he told the Associated Press. "I could see the smoke rising ... It's scary."
Emily Gradwohl, 22, who lives two doors down from the house the jet hit, was home at the time of the crash and ran outside to see what had happened.
"I heard like a loud crash, and the whole house just shook," Gradwohl told the AP. "We got jackets on, ran outside and saw one of the houses completely set on fire."
She said planes fly low over the neighborhood every day but she had never worried about a crash until now.
National Transportation Safety Board records reviewed by ABC7 News indicated there have been at least 14 plane crashes in Gaithersburg since 1995. Two were deadly with five total fatalities in those prior crashes.
The most recent incidents - which didn't result in any fatalities - occurred in August and September, according to federal records, and were labeled a forced landing and a "landing overrun."
The NTSB's Sumwalt said his agency would look into everything involving what could have led to this latest crash, including crew experience and proficiency, training and procedures, equipment performance and weather.
"Our mission is to find out not only what happened but why it happened because we want to make sure something like this never happens again," he told reporters Monday evening.
He said investigators recovered the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from the downed plane, and that they were in good condition.
Air traffic control tapes obtained by ABC7 News indicated there were large numbers of birds reported near the airpark just before Monday's crash. It was unclear if birds being caught in the plane's engines played a role in the crash, but bird strikes have been a factor in other crashes - most notably the so-called 'Miracle on the Hudson' airliner emergency landing on a river in New York City.
ABC7 meteorologist Jacqui Jeras said there was light snow in the vicinity of the Montgomery County airport at time of the crash, with a temperature just below freezing at 30 degrees - but there were no reports of any icing issues.
Monday's crash was "incredibly unusual," observed ABC News aviation analyst John Nance.
"These jets are incredibly safe," he said of the Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100, adding that lost engines or fuel starvation could have been to blame for downing the aircraft. | – A twin-engine Embraer jet that the FAA describes as "on approach to Runway 14" at the Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, crashed into a home this morning, engulfing that home in flames and setting two others on fire. Three people are dead, but the count could grow. A Montgomery County Fire rep says three fliers were killed in the crash, but notes the corporate plane may have had a fourth person on board, reports the AP. A relative of the owner of the home that was hit tells WUSA 9 that a mother with three children pre-school age and under should have been home at the time; there's no word on the family's whereabouts. The crash occurred around 11am on Drop Forge Lane, and the fire was extinguished within an hour. Crews are now searching the wreckage. A witness noted the plane appeared to "wobble" before the crash; the airport is no more than 3/4 mile from the crash scene. NTSB and FAA will investigate. |
On Monday night, while the rest of the world was watching Charlie Sheen flame out live on CNN, Tucker Carlson took to Twitter to make some impolitic statements of his own.
"Palin's popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan," he wrote.
By the next morning, the tweet was deleted and he had apologized, writing, “Apparently Charlie Sheen got control of my Twitter account last night while I was at dinner. Apologies for his behavior.”
But that wasn’t enough to spare him the ire of conservative women on the blogosphere and Twitter.
On Tuesday, before Carlson’s first apology, Stacy Drake, writing on Conservatives4Palin, praised Carlson’s works at The Daily Caller, particularly the leaks of the Journolist emails, saying that’s why his tweet stung so badly.
Aside from Tucker’s sheep-like response to warped poll numbers, he also failed to take ownership of his sexist comment. He deleted the original (which is why I had to link to a retweet) obviously aware that what he had posted was wrong. Unfortunately for him, many people had already seen it and responded. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, Tucker.
Is this the sort of treatment that Conservative women, who want to get involved in the process, are expected to put up with? Is it okay for male columnists (Conservative or otherwise) to continue objectifying women in the world of politics? No it’s not!
She was unimpressed with his first apology, and called for him to apologize to Palin while continuing to denounce him for sexism on her Twitter account.
Michelle Malkin joined the calls Tuesday, tweeting: “I am not down with @karlrove @tuckercarlson misogynist mockery of @sarahpalinusa. Sick of it.”
Later Tuesday, Carlson obliged: “I’m sorry for last night’s tweet. I meant absolutely no offense. Not the first dumb thing I’ve said. Hopefully the last.”
Some bros have come to Carlson's aid. Tuesday, Erick Erickson tweeted, "Maybe my sense of humor needs to be recalibrated, but when I heard @TuckerCarlson's MILFistan comment, I laughed then got out my passport."
(Needless to say, Drake was not amused.)
But by Wednesday, the thing had escalated into a full-blown war of the sexes within the conservative blogosphere, with Whitney Pitcher taking Carlson's tweet as inspiration for her post on Conservatives4Palin: "MILF–Misogynists (and Elites) I’d Like to Fulminate."
Perhaps an additional reason that Governor Palin does not win the respect of the Elite and Establishment is that you cannot be praised for your “perfectly creased pants” if you often wear a skirt, right David Brooks? The continued line of attack from the Establishment and Elite men in the GOP have come as a result of Governor Palin’s genetic makeup.
This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Stacy Drake's first name. ||||| Tucker Carlson Exposes His Own Sexism on Twitter (Updated)
Tucker Carlson has done some good work in the past… His site, The Daily Caller, is a frequent stop of mine and many other Conservatives. They were responsible for exposing the Journolist scandal, which highlighted the planning and coordination of many members of the left-wing press. I will always be grateful to Tucker’s team for bringing that story to light. This is also why I am so angered by Tucker’s recent actions. I thought he was better than this.
If you haven’t heard by now, Monday evening, Tucker Carlson posted a disturbing tweet about Governor Palin which said:
Palin’s popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan
Aside from Tucker’s sheep-like response to warped poll numbers, he also failed to take ownership of his sexist comment. He deleted the original (which is why I had to link to a retweet) obviously aware that what he had posted was wrong. Unfortunately for him, many people had already seen it and responded. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, Tucker.
Is this the sort of treatment that Conservative women, who want to get involved in the process, are expected to put up with? Is it okay for male columnists (Conservative or otherwise) to continue objectifying women in the world of politics? No it’s not!
The best thing Tucker Carlson could do, is admit that what he tweeted was wrong, apologize to Governor Palin, and urge his fellow colleagues to be respectful with their language and written word. What he did was demeaning and offensive, and there is no place for it in Conservative circles.
Update: This is a poor attempt at an apology. Tucker Carlson tries to cover his tracks this morning by repeating the same mistakes he made last night. He wrote:
Apparently Charlie Sheen got control of my Twitter account last night while I was at dinner. Apologies for his behavior.
He didn’t take responsibility for his comment and he fails horribly at humor. Try again, and Tucker… you’re not funny.
Update II: Almost a day later, he finally apologizes:
I’m sorry for last night’s tweet. I meant absolutely no offense. Not the first dumb thing I’ve said. Hopefully the last. ||||| A time-honored parlor game for political pundits is to expose the glaring hypocrisies of their opponents with pithy zingers, a tradition that has flourished in the 140-character universe of Twitter. The boilerplate is something like this: Party A is demanding X, but when the issue is Y, Party A demands the opposite! A liberal-friendly example:
GOP says mental health care not gun safety will prevent deaths. So why are they are turning down Medicaid expansion? eclectablog.com/2013/01/what-y… — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 20, 2013
And a conservative one, referring to President Obama's inaugural address:
"We cannot treat name-calling as reasoned debate." But we can treat it as good, old-fashioned fun, right? Romnesia! — Timothy P Carney (@TPCarney) January 22, 2013
These devastating juxtapositions have not, of course, led either side to reexamine its positions or forge a more conciliatory path forward. However, they at least possess the virtue of making a modicum of sense. It's hard to say the same of a recent attempt in the genre by Tucker Carlson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative Daily Caller. In response to the news that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta would lift a ban on women in combat, a subject upon which people can reasonably disagree, Carlson fired off this tweet:
The administration boasts about sending women to the front lines on the same day Democrats push the ViolenceAgainst Women Act. — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 24, 2013
Critics, of course, pounced. Some have lectured Carlson as if he were a child…
@tuckercarlson hey Tucker, fighting for your country is not the same as being beaten by your boyfriend or husband. Sad you don't get that. — Copperbird (@copperbird7) January 24, 2013
…questioned his manhood...
@tuckercarlsonObviouslythe chivalrous thing for you to do is to enlist and spare a woman the horrors of war. #chickenhawk — TBogg (@tbogg) January 24, 2013
…and attacked his sartorial pretensions.
@copperbird7 The bow tie cut off his supply of oxygen, it would seem... — Caris Severn (@CarisSevern) January 24, 2013
Jonathan Chait at New York compared Carlson's powers of analogy to those of Lindsay Bluth, not exactly the brightest member of the Bluth family in Arrested Deveopment:
This is a Lindsay Bluth–level retort. ("You know, we're not the only ones destroying trees. What about beavers? You call yourself an environmentalist, why don't you go club a few beavers?") Serving on combat is a choice citizens make, accepting risk in order to serve their country. [New York]
And Comedy Central's Indecision blog fears what else may be on Carlson's mind:
Thank goodness for Twitter's character limit or all of Carlson's comments would end with "and what are we going to do when their menstruation attracts bears??" [Comedy Central]
There's plenty more — even from Carlson, who is pretty clearly in no mood to back down. Here's his follow-up: ||||| One tweet too many
X marks the spot where Denis Finley, editor of the paper in Bernie Sanders' hometown, screwed up. If Oprah Winfrey was the media's Big Winner for her Golden Globes peroration on sexual harassment, Finley was a (fortunately less-publicized) Big Loser due to ham-handed tweets.
Even the most sober of mainstream media get bollixed up over page views and reader engagement as they seek to be more refined P.T. Barnums of a digital age. Being provocative for provocation's sake is increasingly rationalized as a way to promote your handiwork, no matter how tenuous and fleeting the actual loyalty manifested (perhaps with help from a Drudge Report link) might be.
But, as Finley, executive editor of the Gannett-owned Burlington Free Press, unwittingly reminds us, there's a difference between being responsibly provocative and perhaps tone deaf to your audience — especially in the digital age.
Vermont plans to join Oregon and Washington, D.C., in offering drivers a third option in listing gender on licenses. So M, F or X. In liberal Burlington, where Sanders was mayor, it's not unpopular. And it just prompted one citizen's tweet, "This is awesome! // #VT Is One Step Closer To Offering A Third Gender On Driver's Licenses." But Finley, who came to the Free Press from Virginia in 2016 after a long stint as Norfolk Virginian-Pilot editor (and, briefly, as publicist for a Norfolk museum), felt compelled to respond: "Awesome! That makes us one step closer to the apocalypse."
If Winfrey played brilliantly to her audience, Finley fumbled in recognizing his. The Vermont online universe is now filled with mostly outrage, and claims of canceling subscriptions. In fact, it was only the third in a succession of curious tweets by Finley. They underscored the tempting perils of journalists, even newsroom bosses, who feel compelled to opine on, well, just about anything.Thus, Finley saw an Associated Press tweet on how fans of Frank Lloyd Wright are seeking to prevent the demolition of a Montana office building designed in 1958. This inspired a response: "I don't care who designed them, destroy all office buildings."
Fine. Chalk that up to lame humor. Then, after word from none other than The New York Times that "Former President Barack Obama is to be the first guest on David Letterman's new monthly Netflix talk show," he sought to exhibit his inner Jimmy Kimmel with this: "Another reason not to subscribe to Netflix." That was lame, with a smidgen of the obtuse.
As outrage quickly manifested itself over the gender matter, Finley seemed to dig a deeper hole. A Tim Sinnott tweeted that the state policy was awesome "because recognition is awesome" and Finley responded, "All recognition? Any recognition, Tim? What if someone said it's awesome they are going to recognize pedophiliacs on licenses? I'm not being snarky, I'm just asking. Not all recognition is awesome."
Finley was either high-mindedly engaged in a Socratic inquiry, as if teaching a constitutional law seminar, or manifesting Jonesean (as in Alex Jones, of InfoWars) subtlety cum derision. If I'm a top Gannett official, I might now be wondering if a second bomb cyclone affecting New England is actually on my payroll.
"So you think trans people are the equivalent of pedophiles?" Anderson asked.
When tracked down by Vermont's Seven Days about the flap (He declined comment when I contacted him, saying, "Maybe in a few days"), Finley said, "I really just wanted to ask the question: 'Why is that awesome? And why is that necessary?' That’s all, and I think any journalist would ask that question." He said use of the word apocalypse was inspired by a Sports Illustrated feature, "Signs of the Apocalypse."
When I passed through Burlington last summer, there were still Sanders T-shirts in store windows. How long before some retail outlets offer a tie-dyed image of Finley with a big, fat "X"?
"Denis Finley doesn't seem to care that, when he enters the arena as executive editor, he carries the reputation of his news organization with him. 'Reader engagement' is not making provocative statements and then picking fights with people who disagree," says Tom Kearney, deputy managing editor of the Stowe Reporter, Waterbury Record and News & Citizen of Morrisville, and executive editor of the Shelburne News and The Citizen, which serves Charlotte and Hinesburg.
Then there's Jon Margolis, who was an A-list national political writer during his heyday with The Chicago Tribune. That was a pre-internet world where reporters and editors weren't tweeting their views on everything from whom they'd seen at lunch, a referee's call in the NFL game they were watching or, of course, every breathing moment of Donald Trump.
"Why this urge to tweet so often?" asks Margolis, who is retired in South Burlington, a few blocks from the Burlington city line. "I do not think the world breathlessly awaits my latest witty aphorism or my personal take on what happened today. If I have something to offer that’s worthwhile, I’ll write a piece about it. That means reporting — online, on the phone, at somebody’s office. And then writing, as well as possible, which means as succinctly as possible but always more than 280 clicks of the keyboard."
"Tweeting is like artificial turf. The technology makes it possible, not advisable. That would apply even where the tweet is not as aggressively ignorant as Finley’s. But just think: Were he writing an article instead of a blurt (essentially what a tweet is) he might have read it over and then altered (or deep-sixed) it. Or had somebody else edit it, which even the boss should always do. Amazing how the conventional processes of newspapers can save us from ourselves."
Jake Tapper vs. Stephen Miller
Jousting between cable TV hosts and guests is now a performance fixture. Bill O'Reilly rode it to riches before his sexual harassment self-immolation. In its most pedestrian post-O'Reilly form, it brings some well intentioned but weak liberal saps served up as red meat for Fox's Tucker Carlson.
In a fairer tussle, it brought us CNN's Jake Tapper and White House aide Stephen Miller. And Tapper giving him the boot.
Tapper is evolving into his network's prime skeptic of all things Trump and, unlike Carlson, not reflexively given to pillorying lightweight guests. And Miller is the unbridled partisan who has reveled in public combat ever since his high school days at a largely liberal Los Angeles high school
As The New York Times' Matt Flegenheimer has put it in a profile of Miller, his life "is a triumph of unbending convictions and at least occasional contrivance. It is a story of beliefs that congealed early in a home that he helped nudge to the right of its blue-state ZIP code, and of an ideology that became an identity for a spindly agitator at a large and racially divided public high school."
"These formative years supplied the template for the life Mr. Miller has carved out for himself in Washington, where he remains the hard-line jouster many of Mr. Trump’s most zealous supporters trust most in the White House — and many former peers fear."
This all began with the equally pro forma, and dungeon's host salutation, "Stephen, thanks so much for joining us and happy new year, good to see you."
On Sunday, Miller called Michael Wolff the "garbage author of a garbage book," a rather mediocre pre-meditated line for someone of his acerbic and calculating essence. He called Trump a "political genius." He called it a "work of pure fiction." And "a pile of trash."
It was mostly solid, fair-minded inquisition by Tapper for about six minutes, until it first got a tad personal and each started cutting off the other. Miller referred to CNN's Trump coverage as hysterical, and Tapper suggested it was Miller who was being hysterical. As if Miler were a child, Tapper asked him to "settle down, settle down."
At the nine-minute mark, what had seemed a small lull turned sour as Tapper brought up a letter that Miller wrote on the subject of firing then-FBI Director James Comey. Miller stumbled a tad before Tapper broached the president's bizarre Saturday tweet on his own purported genius.
Tapper correctly persisted in broaching the public discourse on Trump's rationality, as Miller sought to divert the topic to his theme of CNN being out of touch with a working America that his boss understands and CNN doesn't.
Then, Tapper had enough. He said that Miller was being "obsequious," playing to an audience of one (Trump) and not answering his question. He simply cut him off. It was rather abrupt and could have been executed in a less peremptory manner. It came off as a host losing control, as much as Trump critics loved the scene and think Miller deserved it. But if you don't want to fight the lions, stay away from their pen.
Regardless, both Miller and Tapper surely came away thinking they'd won (maybe all the more so as Miller was escorted out by security). Predictably, Trump soon tweeted some venom Tapper's way: "Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!"
New York Times unveils ad on Golden Globes
Truly salute The New York Times for actually trying to market excellence in a way that's about 20 years late for most of the newspaper industry. It unveiled the next part of its "The Truth is Hard" brand campaign during NBC's Golden Globes broadcast.
Similar to its first ad on last year's Oscars, the ad features black type against a white background. "He said, she said" are the first words you see. Then they are repeated multiple times until it's just, "She said, she said, she said, she said," with the ad ending "The truth has power. The truth will not be threatened. The truth has a voice."
The "truth has a voice" is a simple and potent notion. But, as a TV spot, it falls a bit flat. As one top advertising executive told me, it's unlikely that most viewers connected the paper's incredible sex harassment reporting, including on Harvey Weinstein, and the ad. For those who who did — the event was filled with unavoidable talk of sex harassment in Hollywood, including Seth Meyers' opening monologue — the ad was preaching to the choir.
Potency of advertising involves melding the right media and the right audience. In a narrow sense, the Golden Globes might seem a good target — but only in a narrow sense. The Times has a great narrative to spin as to why it should be trusted, including its admirable attention to fact-checking and precision (even with some hotly disputed cuts in the copy editing force). Perhaps a larger campaign can include such factors.
It's because the challenge for quality media involves more than the mere declaration of virtue. As with changing the attitudes of Americans toward sex harassment, changing attitudes toward even the best of media — especially when it comes to people paying for content — will involve a military-like campaign, with no one-size-fits-all-messages and the unavoidable (and very expensive) need to make the case with unprecedented regularity and persistence.
TV news viewing continues to head south, Trump aside
As Poynter reports, "Until now, local TV news viewership has been declining slowly. But a new Pew research study shows that from 2016 to 2017, the decline picked up speed."
Younger Americans' turn from TV news is important. But, somewhere in the mix, is surely ideology, though the study does not point explicitly to what's been previously shown to be the sharp decline in Republicans' confidence in "mass media."
A revealing photo history
The Associated Press put together a gallery of photos of what actresses have tended to wear at the Golden Globe Awards over the years, as opposed to the black dresses they pointedly wore last night.
The morning Babel
CNN opened with Trump defending his mental fitness and, no surprise, a very brief take at colleague Tapper's spat with Miller. It gave rather more time to social media hurrahs about Winfrey's Golden Globes speech and the notion of her running for president.
"When you think of the Democratic lineup for 2020 ... you pretty quickly run out of star power," said Brian Stelter, media reporter cum political analyst. "If you want to fight fire with fire, Trump is a reality TV star and Oprah Winfrey has been on TV in some ways longer than he has. There are a lot of reasons why this might make sense to Democratic insiders. That speech if anything, gave people more reason to dream it up." For sure, there was a smattering of speculation. But, one might hope, it quickly encounters recognition of what's playing out before us: the obvious limits of electing somebody with no experience in the arena.
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" backed Tapper's performance ("I would have cut it short after the second answer," said Mika Brzezinski) and was the latest to get time with author Michael Wolff. And, before then, there was Axios' Jonathan Swan on what appears to be Trump's shrinking work schedule and also the co-hosts' riff on Trump's insecurity. The latter included the co-hosts venturing into the topic of TV stars, no names mentioned, being self-absorbed ("We've met a lot of people in television who are narcissistic and stupid," Brzezinski said). Hmmm.
But it was a different tone on Trump's favorite morning show, "Trump & Friends," where co-host Brian Kilmeade surfaced at Pancake Pantry in Nashville, Tenn., for breakfast and generally supportive Trump chat. Oh, he was also giving away free to diners copies of new books both by himself and co-host Ainsley Earhardt. Call it a celebration of American commerce.
Sending individuals back to harm
Sarah Stillman, who heads the Global Migration Project at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has been compiling a database of individuals essentially deported to harm, even death in Central America. With the help of a dozen students, and lots of activists involved in immigrant rights, humanitarian aid and other organizations, she's now uncovered patterns of awful consequences to what can at times seem almost frivolous infractions and, too, insufficient government due diligence and articulation to individuals of their rights. The melancholy bottom line is underscored in this New Yorker piece.
Terrific women in a mostly male soccer universe
Watching loads of English soccer over the past week, I was reminded of the terrific in-studio hosting work of Brit Rebecca Lowe for NBC's fine coverage of Premier League matches, as well as Brit Kate Abdo (who is also fluent in Spanish, German and French) for Fox Sports' solid (not quite as strong and measured as NBC's) coverage of the related FA Cup tournament. The latter is one in which the top rank teams are thrown into a mix with lower division ones in frequent David vs. Goliath contests (often at the very quaint fields of the Davids). Sunday, mighty Arsenal was such a victim.
And yet, they are surrounded by a sea of men, in studio and out, with all the match announcers men and, with a single seeming exception, glimpsed in an Arsenal-Nottingham Forest match yesterday, all the refs and linesman are male (there was a female linesman).
New England hoopla
New England Patriots fans have reason to be suspicious of ESPN, as Boston.com columnist Chad Finn, underscores. An us-versus-the-world mindset is partly fueled by some inaccurate reporting on the Patriots by ESPN. But when it comes to its chronicle of rising tensions among the owner, coach and star quarterback, Finn defends reporter Seth Wickersham
The reflexive doubts are too bad, he writes, since "if the story is read with clear eyes and all rooting interests aside, it’s far more illuminating than it is salacious."
Are we so sure that Mueller is investigating Trump for obstruction?
Writing in the excellent Lawfare blog, Harvard Law's Jack Goldsmith raises the possibility that the seeming lack of recusal by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the Mueller Russia investigation might suggest that there's not the obstruction investigation that folks assume (speculation fueled further by a Michael Schmidt opus in The New York Times last week).
"One possibility is that Rosenstein has no conflict because Mueller is not actually investigating the president for obstruction. It has been widely reported for months in multiple reputable outlets that Mueller is conducting such an investigation. Schmidt’s story implies that he is, and reports that Mueller has evidence in his possession that appears relevant only to an obstruction investigation."
The reader over your shoulder
There's unavoidable counsel to journalists in a blog in the Paris Review, the literary bastion founded by the late George Plimpton, as Patricia O'Conner an author and former staff writer at The New York Times Book Review, discusses a 1940s work by poet-novelist Robert Graves, "The Reader Over Your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose.”
The book turned on the notion that writers should imagine a bunch of readers standing over their shoulder, in the process laying out 41 core principles and, then, annealing 50 excerpts of writing from famous authors to school headmasters. Graves was pretty fearless in underscoring lack of clarity.
As O'Conner puts it, "Those forty-one principles work both ways; they make for better reading as well as better writing. They can show a reader what’s wrong with something that rings false or doesn’t make sense or leaves questions unanswered. In a climate where rumors, impressions, and outright lies are sometimes treated as fact, informed readers are more important than ever. No democracy can afford to be without readers who can ask the right questions, who can critically judge what they read, who can mentally peer over an author’s shoulder."
And tonight's big college football championship game
It's Alabama versus Georgia and, reports The Wall Street Journal this morning, "ESPN, armed with new data about its viewers, is more aggressively selling its female audience, starting with the College Football Playoff, which culminates in Monday’s championship game. The timing couldn’t be better. Advertisers are looking for new ways to reach women, and more efficiently reach broader audiences, as consumer viewing habits change."
"Financial services firm Northwestern Mutual is among the advertisers using college football to reach women and families. The company wasn’t new to the playoff, and knew that the sporting event reached a 'healthy mix of men and women and families,' but a new pitch and compelling data from ESPN helped the company 'come up with different ad spots' targeting women and families, said Aditi Gokhale, Northwestern Mutual’s chief marketing officer."
Corrections? Tips? Please email me: [email protected]. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here. | – Tucker Carlson is in deep doodoo with conservative women after an ill-advised tweet referencing Sarah Palin that he posted, then removed, Monday night. "Palin's popularity falling in Iowa, but maintains lead to become supreme commander of Milfistan," he tweeted—and we probably don't need to tell you where that is. His first attempt at an apology, which he tweeted the next morning: "Apparently Charlie Sheen got control of my Twitter account last night while I was at dinner. Apologies for his behavior.” That wasn't good enough for many conservative women, Politico notes, rounding up reactions from bloggers to Michelle Malkin calling his behavior sexist and misogynistic. By late Tuesday, Carlson had offered up a more sincere-sounding apology: “I’m sorry for last night’s tweet. I meant absolutely no offense. Not the first dumb thing I’ve said. Hopefully the last.” But at least one man—Erick Erickson, editor of RedState.com—was on Carlson's side, tweeting his reaction to the post in question: "I laughed then got out my passport." |
Image caption A man has admitted removing another man's testicle during an "unauthorised" surgery
An amateur surgeon in Australia has pleaded guilty to removing the left testicle of a man who could not afford professional medical treatment.
Allan George Matthews, 56, admitted to "removing tissue" from the man "without consent or authority" at a motel in Port Macquarie, north of Sydney.
Police said the 52-year-old victim posted an online ad "requesting assistance with a medical issue".
He had been suffering for years after being kicked in the groin by a horse.
Police became aware of the case in June when the man attended hospital after the wound he suffered during the operation became infected.
Officers raided Matthews' home and seized medical equipment, firearms and four bottles of what they suspected to be amyl nitrate.
Prosecutors alleged that Matthews was not authorised to perform such a procedure as he was not a qualified or registered medical practitioner.
He also pleaded guilty in court this week to illegally possessing a gun and two counts of possessing or attempting to prescribe a restricted substance. ||||| A man accused of removing another man's testicle during a meeting in a Port Macquarie motel room has pleaded guilty to a string of charges.
Allan George Matthews, 57, appeared in Port Macquarie Local Court on Wednesday morning for the first time since his arrest in Glen Innes, last month.
SHARE
Share on Facebook SHARE
Share on Twitter TWEET
Link A man has pleaded guilty after 'unauthorised' surgery to remove another's testicle.
During the proceedings, Matthews' solicitor Douglas Hannaway entered pleas of guilty to removing tissue from the body of another without consent or authority.
He has pleaded not guilty to the more serious charge of reckless grievous bodily harm.
Magistrate Dominique Burns ordered police to compile a brief of evidence by next month and serve it on Matthews' defence before it returns to court in mid-August.
The charges stem from an incident in a motel room in Port Macquarie on May 16.
Advertisement
Police allege Matthews met a 52-year-old man and surgically removed his left testicle.
It is the crown's case that Matthews is not qualified or authorised to perform such a procedure, and is not a qualified or registered medical practitioner.
The 52-year-old alleged victim attended the motel room after posting an advertisement online requesting assistance with a medical issue, police claim.
After the alleged incident, the man then attended hospital a week later to repair the wound he suffered to his testicle.
The hospital visit triggered an investigation by Mid North Coast police who raided Matthews' home in Glen Innes on June 23.
They seized medical equipment, electronic equipment, seven firearms and four bottles of what they suspected to be amyl nitrate.
In court, Matthews pleaded guilty to not keeping a pistol safely, possessing an unauthorised firearm, not keeping a firearm safely, and two counts of possessing or attempting to prescribe restricted substance.
According to court documents, the 57-year-old did not enter a plea to the charge of causing grievous bodily harm.
Matthews remains on conditional bail.
The Port News ||||| AAP
A DIY “doctor” accused of slicing off a man’s testicle in a NSW motel room has pleaded guilty to a charge of illicitly removing another person’s bodily tissue.
Police say Allan George Matthews, 56, responded to an online advertisement posted in May by a 52-year-old man requesting help with a medical issue.
The two men then met at a motel in Port Macquarie, on the state’s mid-north coast, where the younger man’s left testicle was allegedly surgically removed by Matthews, who police say was not a qualified doctor.
A week later, the younger man showed up at hospital seeking help with a wound he had sustained during the illicit operation.
Matthews faced Port Macquarie Local Court on Wednesday and entered a guilty plea to a charge of removing tissue from the body of another person without proper consent or authority.
He has also admitted charges of possessing a prescribed restricted substance, unauthorised possession of a firearm and failure to keep a firearm safely, but will fight a charge of reckless grievous bodily harm, according to court records.
He is yet to enter a plea to the charge of causing grie`vous bodily harm with intent.
Matthews will remain on bail until his case returns to court on August 18. | – What are the three most horrifying words in the English language? Wrong. The correct answer is "amateur testicle surgery." The BBC reports 56-year-old Allan Matthews pleaded guilty Wednesday to removing another man's left testicle at an Australian motel despite not being qualified to practice medicine. The unsanctioned surgery took place in May after a 52-year-old man posted an ad online seeking help for a medical issue, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The man was apparently still suffering after being kicked in the groin by a horse years earlier but couldn't afford an actual doctor. A week after Matthews allegedly removed the man's testicle, infection set in. The man went to the hospital, and the police launched an investigation. Authorities say a raid of Matthews' home last month turned up medical equipment, seven guns, and four bottles of what may be amyl nitrate. In addition to performing surgery without being a doctor, Matthews also pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges. He did not plead guilty to inflicting "reckless grievous bodily harm." AAP reports Matthews is out on bail until another hearing next month. (An Oregon man claimed surgery left him with an 80-pound scrotum.) |
The deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain in a single week have led to a sharp increase in calls to suicide prevention hotlines.
Publicity around the suicides of famous people has been linked to increases in suicide, and the phenomenon is nothing new: Marilyn Monroe’s death in August 1962 was followed by a 12 percent increase in suicides nationwide, and 303 more people died than in August of the previous year, according to a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
The thought of more people needing to call is upsetting, but at least indicates people are reaching out for help. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.
Also Read: What's the Future of CNN's 'Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown' After His Death?
“We’ve definitely seen an uptick,” Lauren Foster, the executive director of HopeLine, a non-profit suicide hotline in Raleigh, North Carolina, told TheWrap. “We contacted our volunteers and made sure we had extra people on today.”
Foster said the organization, which usually receives around 800 calls and texts a month, has already answered about 400 this month.
The National Suicide Prevention Hotline, the largest in the country, told TheWrap it experienced a 25 percent increase in call volume over the past two days compared to the same time period last week.
“The Lifeline phone number is being shared widely as a resource by the media and on social media platforms, resulting in more people being aware of the resource and calling the Lifeline to get help,” the hotline’s communications director, Frances Gonzalez, said.
Also Read: Asia Argento 'Beyond Devastated' by Anthony Bourdain's Death: 'My Love, My Rock, My Protector'
A third suicide hotline, REAL Crisis Intervention, which receives an average of 250 calls per day, had already fielded more than 200 calls by Friday afternoon. Last month was one of the busiest yet, with 8,146 calls — nearly 1,000 more than the month before. The death of Swedish DJ Avicii may have been a factor, Tracy Kennedy, the hotline’s assistant director, told TheWrap.
Tuesday, the day Spade was found dead, was the busiest day of the year so far, with 333 calls.
Kennedy said she also brought in extra staff on Friday.
Foster said news of Bourdain’s death Friday led to fears of a “suicide contagion,” a phenomenon defined by the Department of Health and Human Services as an increase in suicides due to “the exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors within one’s family, one’s peer group, or through media reports of suicide.”
“When people who have suicidal thoughts see seemingly happy, famous and wealthy people dying of suicide, it makes them feel more hopeless,” Foster said. “They think if they died, what’s to stop me?”
Also Read: CNN to Remember Anthony Bourdain With Tribute Specials This Weekend
Robin Williams’ death by suicide in 2014 similarly caused a 10 percent increase in suicides in the five months after his passing, according to a recent study published in the journal, PLOS ONE.
But increases in calls to suicide hotlines are positive, in that they indicate people are looking for help.
“When someone we admire dies of suicide, it makes us reflect on our own lives and stresses,” Kennedy said, “and that helps people reach out, which is important.”
If you or someone you care for needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 24 hours a day, at 1-800-273-8255. ||||| CLOSE On average, there are 123 suicides per day in the United States. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. USA TODAY
Anthony Bourdain speaks during South By Southwest at the Austin Convention Center on Sunday, March 13, 2016, in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Rich Fury, Invision via AP)
The deaths of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade this week have led to an uptick in calls to suicide prevention hotlines.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline saw a 25% increase in volume over the last two days compared to the same time period last week, said Frances Gonzalez, director of communication for the Lifeline.
Gonzalez said that since the 1-800-273-8255 phone number has been shared widely by the news organizations and on social media, more people are "calling the Lifeline to get help," Gonzalez said. "The Lifeline has been proven to de-escalate moments of crisis and help people find hope."
The high-profile deaths has led to an increase of about 25% to 30% in inquiries to crisis lifelines and text services from those who may be struggling with suicidal thoughts as well as concerned loved ones, according to Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE).
“We’re so extremely busy. Every time we put down the phone another call comes in. We are glad people are reaching out who are in need though. That’s what we’re here for," said Rachel Larkin, director of crisis prevention at EveryMind, a nonprofit in Montgomery County, Md., that operates a suicide hotline. “I think we’re all worried and it’s been very, very busy. Both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain are people a lot of people related to.”
In New Jersey, the NJ Hopeline received 49 calls between 6 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Friday. That's a 70% increase from normal call volume, according to Ellen Lovejoy, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Health.
"More people are calling out of concern about someone else. They are asking about warning signs and guidance on what to do," Lovejoy said. "Several callers specifically mentioned the news about Anthony Bourdain’s death." Bourdain, who was born in New York and raised in New Jersey, died Friday at age 61.
CLOSE Anthony Bourdain's passion for food and travel inspired us to taste and see the world. The iconic chef, author and TV host was found dead of an apparent suicide in Strasbourg, France, where he’d been filming segments for his CNN show ‘Parts Unknown.' USA TODAY
When asked if Reidenberg has seen a similar increase in calls following previous suicides of stars such as Robin Williams in 2014, "It's been even greater just this morning. From around the world I can see the level of interest and people wanting to help," he said.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found Thursday that suicide deaths in the United States have increased nearly 30% since 1999, putting a major spotlight on suicide prevention awareness among the American public.
Reidenberg said that in times of tragedy, one of the main suicide prevention goals is to make sure that people have the right information as a means to prevent another death.
"We need to have people understand that just because there was a high profile death by suicide it doesn’t mean it has to be your outcome, too," he said.
More: Suicide warning signs: Here's what to look for when someone needs help
Jane Pearson, chair of the Suicide Research Consortium at the National Institute on Mental Health, said that the suicide prevention community is on "high alert" with the close timing of the two celebrity deaths.
"We’re concerned about how our crisis resources are responding," Pearson said. "We already know we could need more (prevention) resources."
Reidenberg noted that despite the influx in volume of calls, people should know that if they reach out in a time of need that their calls will not go unanswered.
"Everyone will get service. People are going to get help," Reidenberg said. "It may just take a little bit longer."
In the case of celebrity deaths, those who identify with or admire that specific celebrity may also be at an increased risk for suicide.
"When you’re talking about celebrity so many more people are going to know about that person, and that person is going to touch those peoples’ lives. Thus, more people are going to be affected," said Heather Senior Monroe, director of program development at Newport Academy, a rehabilitation center.
Reidenberg encouraged those who may be struggling with thoughts of suicide or are impacted by the recent celebrity deaths to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or reach out to a local crisis center.
"We know that one of the best ways to help in people feeling disconnected is allowing them to feel connection with other human beings," Monroe said.
Jill Harkavy-Friedman, vice president of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said that these are teachable moments to educate the public about prevention.
"What we want to make sure is that people struggling identify with suicide prevention options rather than the people who have died by suicide," she said.
That's why an uptick in calls to a suicide prevention hotline can be positive because it means that those individuals are "showing up wherever they need to show up to get some help," Harkavy-Friendman said.
Harkavy-Friendman believes people can make it through moments of suicidal thoughts.
"If you’re thinking about taking your life, don't." she said. "Take a moment and reach out to somebody."
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2JrDhZ7 ||||| Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
COLLIN COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) – It will be a somber and tough day for students at Plano East Senior High School. Administrators, staff, teachers and students are all mourning the loss of two young women. Police think the girls both committed suicide over the weekend.
As the Murphy Police Department continues to investigate the two deaths, grief counselors prepare to help students as they return to class.
Those grief counselors will be at the school for the second day in a row. A district spokesperson says about 100 people, including students and families, were at the campus Sunday to get help from the counselors.
According to police, family members found the body of 17-year-old Ritu Sachdeva at her home. Hours later, police found her classmate, Hillary Kate Kuizon. The body of that 17-year-old was found in a wooded area close to Kimbrough Stadium. According to investigators there was no evidence of foul play detected at either location.
Police say the young women were friends, and those that knew them describe both girls as smart, beautiful and nice. Student Christian Lewis didn’t know the girl’e personally but said, “I’ve seen them probably a couple times in the past. They were good students, always on time, always kept their grades up.”
Some students of campus said if there is anything good that can come out of the tragedies, it’s that maybe there will be more of an open dialogue when it comes to talking about suicide or suicidal thoughts. Student Praharsha Sunkara said, “I don’t know what the school can do, or anyone else can do to prevent stuff like this really. But I really think that just talking about it would help.”
Murphy Police Chief Arthur Cotton issued a statement saying —
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the two families. We are treating these two cases with the care and compassion they deserve, and will continue to seek answers for the families.”
Police say they’re still trying to determine if the deaths are related, but at this point it’s not clear if there is a connection. The medical examiner will determine the exact cause of both deaths.
Anyone contemplating suicide or is dealing with the suicide death of someone they know is encouraged to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to talk with a skilled, trained counselor at a crisis center in their area. Call 800-273-TALK — that’s 800-273-8255.
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.) ||||| One day after the apparent suicide of his daughter Kate Spade, her nearly 90-year-old father said she'd be gratified to know that something good might come from the worldwide discussion of her death.
"One thing we feel is that any talk that they do that helps somebody else, Katy would have liked that," her father, Frank Brosnahan, said from his house in Kansas City on Wednesday. "She was always giving and charitable. If that helped anybody avoid anything — fine, she'd be delighted."
Brosnahan said he was aware that the most famous of his six children was having troubles. "She'd been taking some pills, which I advised her not to take," he shared. But he also said that he spoke to her on Monday, the evening before she died.
"Well, I don't know what happened," he said. "The last I talked with her, the night before last, she was happy planning a trip to California to look at colleges. She doted on her daughter."
Premium content for only $0.99 For the most comprehensive local coverage, subscribe today.
Spade's daughter, 13-year-old Frances Beatrix, was not home when her mother, at age 55, apparently hanged herself in their New York condominium.
SHARE COPY LINK Kate Spade, a fashion designer known for her sleek handbags, was found hanged in the bedroom of her Park Avenue apartment in an apparent suicide, police confirmed at a press conference Tuesday.
Andy Spade File photo
Spade's husband and business partner, Andy Spade — the brother of actor and comedian David Spade — told The New York Times on Wednesday that he and his wife had been living apart for the last 10 months but they had no plans to divorce. They maintained different apartments a few blocks from each other, continued to take vacations together, and their daughter split her time between them.
Spade, in a lengthy statement, also said his wife began suffering serious bouts of depression about six years ago.
The day of Spade's death, her 57-year-old sister, Reta Saffo, emailed The Star to say her sister's suicide was "not unexpected." She told of how her sister battled mental illness, perhaps bipolar disorder, for several years, and eschewed efforts to be hospitalized. Her revelations about her sister, whose name is synonymous with a billion-dollar fashion brand, were spread by media outlets worldwide.
Their brother, Earl Brosnahan, told The New York Times that Saffo had been estranged from the family for more than 10 years, and that Spade was the only sibling she had been speaking to. He was taken aback that Saffo "should surface now with very definitive statements that I think are grossly inaccurate.”
But their father, Frank Brosnahan, who contacted The Star on Wednesday, supported Saffo's decision to openly discuss her sister's death and struggles.
"Well, that's up to her," he said. "She's a grown woman and we love her and she means nothing but love for her sister."
He said he suspects and hopes that his daughter's body may come home to Kansas City.
"I think so," said Brosnahan, speaking broadly for the family. "At least that's what I would like. I'd like for her to be buried with her mother. They were very close."
In 1999, Kate Spade (center) came home from New York for the annual Amy Thompson Run to Daylight to benefit the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City. She attended a benefit reception with (from left) her mother, June Brosnahan (who died in 2010), Byron G. Thompson, Karen VanAsdale and Jeanne Thompson. Laura R. Hockaday The Kansas City Star
Spade is also survived by three other sisters, Missy, Ann and Eve. Her mother, June Mullen Brosnahan, a former flight attendant and Realtor, died in March 2010 and is buried in Kansas City's Calvary Cemetery, 6901 Troost Ave. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful.
But in a statement to the New York Daily News and other outlets, the family said, "We are all devastated by today’s tragedy. We loved Kate dearly and will miss her terribly. We would ask that our privacy be respected as we grieve during this very difficult time."
Spade is also the aunt of television actress Rachel Brosnahan — Earl Brosnahan's daughter — who won a Golden Globe this year for her starring role in Amazon's "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."
Rachel Brosnahan won best performance by an actress in a television series - musical or comedy for "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards. She is the niece of Kate Spade. Jordan Strauss Invision/AP
On Instagram, the young actress posted a video of Spade dancing to a mariachi band and wrote:
"Knowing Katy, this is how she would want to be remembered. She had a light that words can’t capture but touched everyone she came into contact with. She was exceedingly kind, beautifully sensitive, insanely talented, funny as heck and one of the most generous people I have ever known. She was effervescent. Hug your loved ones extra tight today."
Frank Brosnahan was asked how his family was faring.
"I think they're all right," he said. "We're a large family and all close. We'll get through it.
"But we certainly miss our bright, sun-shiney little person." ||||| CLOSE On average, there are 123 suicides per day in the United States. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. USA TODAY
Amanda Southworth is founder of Astra Labs (Photo: Amanda Southworth)
Sitting alone in a lifeguard tower watching the sun sink below the horizon, Amanda Southworth had a decision to make.
This Los Angeles teen, gripped by depression and anxiety, could continue on as she had, not eating, addicted to painkillers and attempting repeatedly to kill herself, or she could grab a lifeline and use her love of coding to save her own life and others.
On that chilly summer evening in 2015, she hatched the idea for AnxietyHelper, a mobile app that offers the resources she herself needed and embarked on a journey of healing and recovery that has led to a career in the tech world.
“I can honestly say that technology has saved my life,” Southworth said. She says she hasn't harmed herself or attempted suicide since. “When I found something greater than myself, I realized that I am not just a person with a life. I am a person who has something to contribute.”
Now 16, she has dropped out of high school and last month started her own company — but not the way most young technology entrepreneurs do. Astra Labs is a software nonprofit funded by donors and a $25,000 grant from the TOMS Social Entrepreneurship Fund. She spoke to USA TODAY from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, on Friday.
Southworth's commitment to creating mobile apps and other software that help others was reinforced this week. The deaths of designer Kate Spade and chef and television host Anthony Bourdain were grim reminders of the toll of suicide, the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States and one of three that is increasing, particularly for teens.
The suicide rate for white children and teens ages 10 to 17 rose 70 percent between 2006 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although black children and teens kill themselves less often than white youth do, the rate of increase was higher, 77 percent.
Southworth estimates she has been mentally ill for more than half her life. She says she attempted suicide at least seven times.
The bottom fell out when, as a nerdy kid, she moved to a new town for middle school, where she had no friends and felt like an outsider. Southworth used to send her future self emails that reflected her feelings of isolation and worthlessness: “I hope you’re not alive to get this email.” She daydreamed at school about killing herself. She'd wake up in the morning and cry that she was still alive.
More: Anthony Bourdain highlights the rising suicide rate among middle-aged adults
More: Suicide warning signs: Here's what to look for when someone needs help
More: 'We're so extremely busy:' More calling suicide prevention hotlines since celebrity deaths
More: A friend's Facebook, Instagram post may be a suicide warning sign. Here's what to do next
What saved her: a sixth-grade robotics club in 2011, which introduced her to the possibilities of technology and inspired her to soak up knowledge about web development and artificial intelligence from the internet and textbooks.
Her first app, AnxietyHelper, a mental health resource guide, debuted in the app store in September 2015 during her ninth-grade Latin class. Her excited classmates downloaded it, and she finished the day with 18 users. Even that small achievement gave her belief in her own power and a sense of purpose, Southworth says.
“I was always very destructive toward myself. Coding is the opposite. It’s about creating. It’s about taking different characters on a keyboard and transforming them into something bigger than you,” she said.
In May 2017, she launched a mobile app called Verena for the LGBTQ community after friends were bullied in the tense political climate around the presidential election. Verena, which means protector in German, locates hospitals, shelters and police stations and users can create a list of contacts to be alerted in an emergency.
"Everything in my life has shown me that both good and bad things in this world will continue to happen and that's out of our control. But it's what we do with the things that happen to us that can make all of the difference," she said in a TedX talk last November in Pasadena, California. "My name is Amanda Southworth, I’m 15 years old, a junior in high school and I'm still alive."
"I can honestly say that technology saved my life," says Amanda Southworth, founder of Astra Labs. (Photo: Amanda Southworth)
Building apps relieves stress and helps her cope and problem solve, she says. And helping others has helped her heal herself.
“The more I work, the more I do what I love, the better I feel,” she said.
Until she started Astra Labs, Southworth bootstrapped her apps, working random tech jobs. The apps are free, and she runs no ads and does not collect user data. “My core philosophy is that people should not have to pay for something if their life would be ended without it,” she said.
Three more apps are in the works: one to help turn handwritten class notes into study guides and practice tests, another to help people follow political and social issues they care about and a third that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help those with schizophrenia determine when they are experiencing hallucinations.
People come up to Southworth and say: Your app stopped me from killing myself. One user told her the app helped her after a rape. A facilitator at a tech summit confided that if her friend had had the Verena app, that person might still be alive.
Stories of suicide, like that of Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, whose music helped Southworth through dark passages in her life, still haunt her.
“Maybe if I worked a little harder on this," she said. "I could have gotten help to him or to someone else thinking about suicide.”
Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn on Twitter @jguynn
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2sL8nET | – Calls to suicide hotlines have spiked dramatically since the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain—not an unusual phenomenon in the wake of celebrity suicides. The Wall Street Journal reports on a 25% uptick at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) since Spade's death, while USA Today attributed a similar rise to both celebs, and a New Jersey hotline experienced a 70% increase in calls Friday morning. "We're so extremely busy," says Rachel Larkin, who heads a crisis-prevention center in Maryland. "I think we’re all worried. ... Both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain are people a lot of people related to." Celebrity suicides have been linked to suicide increases before. Marilyn Monroe's 1962 death, for example, preceded a 12% spike in suicides nationwide, the Wrap reports. "When people who have suicidal thoughts see seemingly happy, famous and wealthy people dying of suicide, it makes them feel more hopeless," says Lauren Foster, who heads a hotline in Raleigh, North Carolina. "They think if they died, what’s to stop me?" But suicide-prevention advocates are emphasizing that hotlines do help and people's calls will go through, despite the surge this week. Check out Buzzfeed to learn what happens on hotline calls and see what resources are available. |
A photo series on the popular Humans of New York Facebook page may have went viral and captured the nation’s attention last Tuesday, but for Daniel Kang, the post really hit home.
When Kang, a junior studying computer science at the University of Michigan, heard that the refugee pictured and his family were relocating to his hometown of Troy, Mich., he said he knew he had to help.
“I was really inspired by how intelligent he was and I knew a lot of people wanted to welcome him, so I thought, why not it be me?” he said.
On the Humans of New York Facebook page with over 16 million likes — including comments from President Obama — the seven-part picture series’ captions detail one Syrian scientist and his family’s tale of loss after a missile strike destroyed their home, forcing them to to flee to Turkey, now with plans of coming to the United States.
“Everything ended for us that day. That was our destiny. That was our share in life,” the scientist said. Battling stomach cancer, the loss of a home, career and seven family members, the man, whose name remains confidential to protect his identity as a refugee, expressed his hope for a new life in the United States.
“I learned today that I’m going to Troy, Michigan,” he said. “I know nothing about it. I just hope that it’s safe and that it’s a place where they respect science. I just want to get back to work. I want to be a person again. I don’t want the world to think I’m over. I’m still here.”
Knowing that refugees come to the United States with little more than they can carry, Kang quickly organized a crowdfunding campaign to help establish the man in his new home.
In four days, the GoFundMe page has raised over $16K in donations from over 700 people. On Saturday afternoon, actor Edward Norton also began a fundraiser for the scientist, raising even more for the refugee who says he “just wants to be a person again.”
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Kang. “A lot of people thanked me for doing a nice thing but I really feel like I was doing what anyone else would have done.”
Kang said he’s received many messages from people expressing their gratitude, those who want to reach out to the man personally, as well local companies interested in working with the scientist. This includes invitations to lecture at local colleges, research job opportunities and potential help from local medical facilities in treating the man’s stomach cancer.
“There’s definitely a lot of interest in helping him out,” he said.
The biggest concern, said Kang, are those skeptical of how the money will reach the man.
Kang, who has successfully crowdfunded in the past, is working closely with GoFundMe, the local refugee relocation agency Lutheran Social Services of Michigan, and is in communication with the Humans of New York staff to make sure all funding goes to the scientist.
In the end, Kang said he just hopes the scientist receives the welcome he deserves.
“If I could talk to him right now, I’d just tell him how sorry I am for everything he’s been through and that he’s coming to a great place. One of the things he said that resonated with me the most is that ‘I hope Troy is a place that appreciates science.’
I’d say out of all the cities in Michigan, Troy is the best place to raise a family, be a scientist and we can’t wait to have him.”
Oona Goodin-Smith is a student at Oakland University and a member of the USA TODAY College contributor network. ||||| The actor's gesture follows his plagiarism of the graphic novelist, and his lifted apologies on Twitter from Alec Baldwin, Russell Crowe and others' infamous controversies.
Shia LaBeouf is looking up to ensure he follows through on his New Year's resolution.
ANALYSIS: In Defense of Shia LaBeouf
The Charlie Countryman and Nymphomaniac actor -- who found himself in the middle of a plagiarism controversy when graphic novelist Daniel Clowes accused LaBeouf of borrowing shamelessly from his 2007 comic, Justin M. Damiano, for the short film Howard Cantour -- commissioned an apology to the artist written in the sky on New Year's Day.
He had the words "I am sorry Daniel Clowes" displayed over the Los Angeles area Jan. 1, and tweeted a photo:
CLOUD: - vapor floating in the atmosphere - remote servers used to SHARE DATA - to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791 -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014
The apologetic gesture seems to be original, as the actor has been ceaselessly tweeting remorseful reflections ever since the controversy first unfolded in mid-December.
However, he began pasting excerpts of other famous apologies from the likes of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, artist Shepard Fairey and Tiger Woods, to name a few, and was criticized for copying once again.
From Mark Zuckerberg's open letter in 2006:
I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry. -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 19, 2013
From Russell Crowe's apology after tweeting comments on circumcision in 2011:
Personal beliefs aside I realize, some will interpret this as me mocking the rituals and traditions of others, not the case, I am very sorry -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 26, 2013
From Alec Baldwin's statement on his homophobic comments in November:
I did not intend to hurt or offend anyone with my choice of words, but clearly I have - and for that I am deeply sorry. Words are important. -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 20, 2013
On New Year's Eve, LeBeouf apologized for the lifted apologies, also saying that his 2014 resolution is to "work on being a less controversial tweeter."
I am sorry for all the plagiarized tweets, they all were unintelligent, ambiguous and needlessly hurtful. -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013
2014 Resolution - I need to work on being a less controversial tweeter. -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013
You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realizing I was mocking you. -- Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 31, 2013
Twitter: @cashleelee ||||| PLEASANTON, Calif. (CN) — A gag gift that a black employee did not find funny has landed a Bay Area construction company owner in court, for giving her a photo of himself dressed as Donald Trump in front of a Confederate flag, inside a rhinestone purse also emblazoned with the Stars and Bars.
Tishay Wright sued Southland Construction Management and its supervisors and co-owners Kenneth and Anita Hayden on Thursday in Alameda County Court, on 12 causes of action, including racial discrimination and harassment, retaliation, assault and battery and wrongful firing.
Wright, a project administrator at the Pleasanton business, says that Kenneth Hayden retaliated for her objecting to his calling her a “bitch�? by giving her a rhinestone purse at the company Christmas party, emblazoned with the Confederate flag.
Inside the purse, she says, were photographs of Kenneth Hayden dressed as Trump, and his wife as a Trump supporter, both posing in front of Confederate flags hung above Wright’s desk. The slogans “The Southland Shall Rise Again�? and “Make Southland Great Again�? were written on the flags in capital letters.
In one photograph, the gift purse hung from Anita Hayden’s shoulder.
Wright “returned home in tears after opening the gift, horrified, humiliated and deeply fearful that the owners of Southland would go to these lengths to silence and intimidate her after her multiple complaints to management,�? she says in the complaint. Her “shock and horror over the purse and pictures depicting racist symbolism and a hostile potential violent message caused her to become increasingly nauseous and anxiety-ridden.�?
Southland could not be reached for comment after business hours Thursday.
Wright, who began working for Southland in 2015, says the Haydens used racist language openly and regularly around their employees, with “we’ll just make the Mexicans do it�? a common refrain. When the Haydens were unhappy with their work, they would say Mexicans are lazy and would work for beer, according to the complaint.
Wright says Kenneth Hayden told a Sikh intern to “go get your people before they blow something up.�?
Wright says the Haydens gave her the purse as payback after she complained to management that Kenneth Hayden had called her and another female employee into his office and told them: “Ya’ll are my bitches and you’re going to take notes for the smaller projects coming up.�?
When she objected to the language, she says, Kenneth Hayden told her: “This is the way I talk and if you don’t like it and can’t work with me then you don’t have to.�?
The Haydens then reduced her job responsibilities, taking her off a large project and effectively demoting her to a receptionist, she says. They fired her in March, she says, after she told Anita Hayden it was unacceptable to give a black employee the gifts they had given her.
She seeks damages and punitive damages, for charges that include racial and gender harassment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
She is represented by Christopher Dolan in San Francisco, who could not be reached for comment after hours Thursday.
Like this: Like Loading... ||||| Video (00:42) : Minnesota residents and fans of Garrison Keillor expressed sadness and disappointment at news that he has been accused of improper behavior.
Garrison Keillor, whose soothing voice and gentle humor helped define the world’s view of Minnesota, has been dropped by Minnesota Public Radio for “inappropriate behavior” toward a co-worker.
MPR said Wednesday it is severing all ties to the longtime host of radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” The show, which he handed off last year to hand-picked successor Chris Thile, will be retitled — Keillor holds the trademark — and his old broadcasts no longer will be aired.
Officials at the network would not comment beyond a statement saying they were notified last month of allegations relating to Keillor’s conduct while he was responsible for producing “PHC.”
“I put my hand on a woman’s bare back,” he told the Star Tribune by e-mail minutes after MPR’s statement. “I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”
The 75-year-old humorist who helped make MPR a powerhouse seemed more hurt, resigned and defensive than apologetic.
“It’s astonishing that 50 years of hard work can be trashed in a morning by an accusation,” he said in a Facebook post Wednesday evening. “I always believed in hard work and now it feels sort of meaningless. Only a friend can hurt you this badly. I think I have to leave the country in order to walk around in public and not feel accusing glances.”
He later deleted that public comment and then, in a post to Facebook friends (including some journalists), said he had just had a good conversation “with my dear friend who I am married to, on the subject of What Do We Really Need in Life. It’s very simple. I need her and I need to have work to do and I need to live someplace where we can both be happy. I have about ten years of work to do, sitting in my computer. I want to write a couple movies, write a weekly column (preferably humorous), write a book called Gratitude. I think we should move east and leave the past behind.”
MPR details its decision
Although he stepped away from “Prairie Home,” Keillor retained a producer credit and continued to record his daily feature, “The Writer’s Almanac,” for syndication by MPR’s distribution arm, St. Paul-based American Public Media.
Gallery Grid Prev 1 /25 Next Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor rehearsed before his last show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in 2016. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor rehearses a song with Aoife O'Donovan, left, and Heather Masse, right, during rehearsal at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor rehearses a song with Aoife O'Donovan, center, and Heather Masse, right, during rehearsal at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor performs with singer Aoife O�Donovan during the live broadcast at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor jokes around with Sara Watkins during rehearsal at the State Theatre. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor thanks the audience after the show at the State Theatre. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor performs a few more songs for the audience after the live broadcast has ended at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor reads the "News from Lake Wobegon" during the live broadcast at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor reads the "News from Lake Wobegon" during the live broadcast at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor gets ready for the live broadcast in his dressing room at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor sings with the audience during the encore. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor takes a bow with the performers after the show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor talks with singer Heather Masse outside his dressing room after the show. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor greets fans at the State Theatre after the show. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor poses for a selfie with sisters Janna Graham, left, of Plymouth, and Julie Berninghaus of Eagan after the show at the State Theatre. Leila Navidi – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor signs a poster for fan Carol Montgomerie of Franklin, Tenn. after the show. Jerry Holt – Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor talks about the early days of "Prairie Home Companion" when it originated at Macalester College. Mike Zerby – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor outside the World Theater in downtown St. Paul in 1993, where he welcomed himself back home to the gathered crowd. He narrated a big-screen slide show on the history of "A Prairie Home Companion" at the welcome back street party given by Minnesota Public Radio. About 1,000 folks were treated to free entertainment and free corn on the cob. For $5, one could get meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Stormi Greener – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor signed autographs in 1990 during a benefit luncheon at the Greenhaven Country Club. Proceeds went to the Anoka County Community Action Program and to the Anoka-Ramsey Community College Foundation. Duane Braley – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Fans of Garrison Keillor got conversation as well as his autograph Tuesday in Minneapolis in 1987. Donald Black – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor in 1969. Stormi Greener – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor in 1987. Rpa - Gallery: Garrison Keillor in 1984. Handout Gallery: Garrison Keillor in the late 1970s. Mike Zerby – RPA - Minneapolis Star Tribune Gallery: Garrison Keillor in 1974.
MPR said it would halt that feature. It also will separate itself from the Pretty Good Goods online catalog, which sells Keillor merchandise, and the website PrairieHome.org.
“I’m in shock,” new host Thile wrote on Twitter. “I know nothing beyond what’s contained in the MPR statement but I trust that the proper steps are being taken.”
The “Prairie Home” team is in New York City for three weekends of live shows beginning Saturday. Representatives refused to comment, but a Hawaii Public Radio e-mail said the working title is now “The Chris Thile Show” and its host will address the situation in his monologue Saturday.
MPR said it was aware of no similar allegations involving other staff, but “the investigation is still ongoing.”
“While we appreciate the contributions Garrison has made to MPR and to all of public radio, we believe this decision is the right thing to do and is necessary to continue to earn your trust and that of our employees,” MPR President Jon McTaggart told members in an e-mail.
Keillor later posted a statement on his website.
“I’ve been fired over a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard,” he said. “Most stories are. It’s some sort of poetic irony to be knocked off the air by a story, having told so many of them myself, but I’m 75 and don’t have any interest in arguing about this. And I cannot in conscience bring danger to a great organization I’ve worked hard for since 1969.
“I am sorry for all the poets whose work I won’t be reading on the radio and sorry for the people who will lose work on account of this. But my profound feeling is that of gratitude, especially to my wife Jenny, and for this painful experience that has brought us even closer together.”
He and Jenny Lind Nilsson, a violist for the Minnesota Opera, have been married since 1995. It is his third marriage.
Garrison Keillor speaking in 1994 about sexual harassment.
‘Prairie Home’ history
MPR was just two years old in 1969 when its founder, Bill Kling, hired Keillor as an announcer. Together they launched “Prairie Home” on July 6, 1974, with a live broadcast from Macalester College witnessed by a handful of people.
The show began airing nationwide in 1980 and grew into a hit that fueled MPR’s growth into one of the nation’s largest public radio operations. At its peak, Keillor drew 4 million listeners every week while serving as Minnesota’s cultural ambassador, with tales of the mythical Lake Wobegon that skewered the state’s work ethic, good-hearted earthiness and humble nature. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine. His book “Lake Wobegon Days” sold more than 1 million copies in 1985. Playgirl named him one of the sexiest men in America.
In his e-mail to the Star Tribune, he said “anyone who ever was around my show can tell you that I was the least physically affectionate person in the building. Actors hug, musicians hug, people were embracing every Saturday night left and right, and I stood off in the corner like a stone statue. If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the belt line, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order.”
A tireless writer, Keillor authored more than two dozen books, hosted cruises, contributed to major magazines and scripted a 2006 film, “A Prairie Home Companion,” a fictionalized story about the show with an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Lindsay Lohan.
He continued a busy schedule after leaving “Prairie Home,” touring the country with a similar live show — a performance Wednesday night in Pittsfield, Mass., was canceled — and writing occasional columns for the Washington Post News Service & Syndicate. The service said it was taking the allegations “seriously and is seeking more information about them.”
Column defending Franken
Coincidentally, Keillor defended Minnesota Sen. Al Franken in a syndicated column this week after Los Angeles radio news anchor Leeann Tweeden reported that Franken kissed and groped her without her consent during a 2006 USO tour.
“He did USO tours overseas when he was in the comedy biz,” Keillor wrote. “He did it from deep in his heart, out of patriotism, and the show he did was broad comedy of a sort that goes back to the Middle Ages. … Miss Tweeden knew what the game was and played her role and on the flight home, in a spirit of low comedy, Al ogled her and pretended to grab her and a picture was taken. Eleven years later, a talk show host in L.A., she goes public with her embarrassment, and there is talk of resignation. This is pure absurdity and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness. No kidding.”
Keillor mentioned the Franken controversy in an e-mail to MPR News on Wednesday.
“I think the country is in the grip of a mania — the whole Franken business is an absurdity — and I wish someone [would] resist it,” he wrote, “but I expect MPR to look out for itself, and meanwhile I feel awfully lucky to have hung on for so long.”
Mark Vancleave Video (03:31): July, 2016: Garrison Keillor reflects on the art of the performance as "Prairie Home" celebrated 40 years with a live show at Macalester College in St. Paul. Video (03:31): July, 2016: Garrison Keillor reflects on the art of the performance as "Prairie Home" celebrated 40 years with a live show at Macalester College in St. Paul. ||||| Image copyright PA Image caption Sir Tim Hunt was speaking at a conference in South Korea
Scientist 'sorry' over girls comment
A Nobel laureate has apologised for any offence after he made comments about the "trouble with girls" in science - but said he had "meant to be honest".
Sir Tim Hunt, who is a Royal Society fellow, reportedly told a conference in South Korea women in labs "cry" when you criticise them and "fall in love" with their male counterparts.
He told the BBC he "did mean" the remarks but was "really sorry".
The society said Sir Tim's comments did not reflect its own views.
'Emotional entanglements'
Sir Tim, 72, who was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2001 for his work on how cells divide, reportedly told the World Conference of Science Journalists: "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said he was "really sorry that I said what I said", adding it was "a very stupid thing to do in the presence of all those journalists".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sir Tim Hunt suggested 'girls' should stay out of the laboratory because they distract men
The British biochemist, who was knighted in 2006, said the remarks were "intended as a light-hearted, ironic comment" but had been "interpreted deadly seriously by my audience".
He went on to say he stood by some of the remarks.
"I did mean the part about having trouble with girls," he said. "It is true that people - I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it's very disruptive to the science because it's terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.
"I found that these emotional entanglements made life very difficult.
"I'm really, really sorry I caused any offence, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually."
'Stony-faced audience'
On his remarks about women crying, he said: "It's terribly important that you can criticise people's ideas without criticising them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth.
"Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science."
Connie St Louis, a lecturer in science journalism at City University, was in the 100-strong audience in South Korea.
"Nobody was laughing, everybody was stony-faced," she told the BBC News Channel.
"The Korean female scientists who hosted us looked aghast and he just ploughed on for about five to seven minutes.
"It was just really shocking. It was culturally insensitive and it was very sexist. I just thought, 'Where in the world do you think you are that you can be making these kind of comments in 2015?'"
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Lecturer Connie St Louis described the mood in the room as Sir Tim Hunt made his remarks
Dr Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London, added: "I think it was clear he was trying to be funny. But people will interpret his comments as having a kernel of truth underneath. And as a Nobel laureate, I know he's a human being, but he does have some sort of responsibility as a role model and as an ambassador for the profession."
Imran Khan, chief executive of the British Science Association, said Sir Tim's comments were "careless".
"Sadly, dealing with sexism and other forms of discrimination are a daily reality for many people, and I imagine it's hard to find Sir Tim's comments funny if you've been held back by systemic bias for years - whether those remarks were intended as a joke or not," he said.
The Royal Society, which promotes and supports scientific advances, said: "Too many talented individuals do not fulfil their scientific potential because of issues such as gender and the society is committed to helping to put this right.
"Sir Tim Hunt was speaking as an individual and his reported comments in no way reflect the views of the Royal Society." | – Public apologies making headlines this week include a scientist and a senator trying to show how funny they are: Prize winner: "I'm really, really sorry I caused any offense, that's awful. I certainly didn't mean that. I just meant to be honest, actually."—Tim Hunt, Nobel-winning scientist, after he made light of "girls" working in labs. He added that it was a "stupid" thing to say in front of journalists, which is partly why a writer at the Washington Post calls this the "non-apology of the year." New name, please: "We are sorry that wording which could be considered offensive has been used, as this has not been our intention at all."—Lego, after it described a strange-looking new Lego model as a "window-licker," a derogatory term for people with learning disabilities. If it's on Facebook, it must be true: "I want to apologize as well to all our listeners for having made an erroneous statement. I am sorry for the mistake. However, I am glad to play a role in putting this rumor to rest."—Diane Rehm of NPR, after she informed Bernie Sanders that he had Israeli citizenship during an interview. He doesn't. She had seen it on Facebook. Unsportsmanslike: "We apologize to all fans watching the game on television, to both teams and to our guests from Italy for the Nazi symbol."—Tomislav Pacak, a Croatian Football Federation spokesman, referring to the faint but unmistakable imprint of a large swastika on a soccer field. He's a what? "(He) was joking with his colleague and immediately apologized to anyone offended by his remark."—Spokesperson for Sen. Mark Kirk, after he described his bachelor colleague Lindsey Graham as a "bro with no ho." (A Sun-Times columnist thinks he owes a specific apology to residents of Chicago's South Side.) All business: "Please accept the apologies from my previous letter, which should not have been sent."—Homeowners association in Brentwood, Tenn., after threatening to sue a family for putting up a wheelchair ramp. The homeowner, a pastor, just had brain surgery. The HOA had second thoughts when the story went public. |
Education Secretary John King speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)
U.S. Education Secretary John King is urging school districts nationwide to stop hitting and paddling students, saying corporal punishment is “harmful, ineffective, and often disproportionately applied to students of color and students with disabilities.”
In a “dear colleague” letter being issued Tuesday, King asks educators to “eliminate this practice from your schools, and instead promote supportive, effective disciplinary measures.
“The use of corporal punishment can hinder the creation of a positive school climate by focusing on punitive measures to address student misbehavior rather than positive behavioral interventions and supports,” King writes. “Corporal punishment also teaches students that physical force is an acceptable means of solving problems, undermining efforts to promote nonviolent techniques for conflict resolution."
Recent research suggests that more than 160,000 children in 19 states are potential victims of corporal punishment in schools each year, with African-American children in a few southern school districts about 50% more likely than white students to be smacked or paddled by a school worker.
The prevalence of corporal punishment in schools has been steadily dropping since the 1970s, according to findings published last month by the Society for Research in Child Development, a Washington, D.C.-based policy group.
Half of states banned school corporal punishment between 1974 and 1994, but since then, researchers say, only a handful more states have followed suit.
University of Texas researcher Elizabeth Gershoff and a colleague found that 19 states still allow public school personnel to use corporal punishment, from preschool to high school. The states are all in the south or west: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
In his letter, King says that more than one-third of students subject to corporal punishment in schools during the 2013-2014 academic year were black, though black students make up just 16% of public school student population.
He also notes that boys overall, as well as students with disabilities, were more likely to be punished physically: boys represented about 80% of corporal punishment victims, and in nearly all of the states where the practice is permitted, students with disabilities were subjected to corporal punishment at higher rates than students without them.
“These data and disparities shock the conscience,” King wrote.
Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2fMDLxh ||||| BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Education Secretary John B. King Jr. is urging governors and school leaders in states that allow student paddling to end a practice he said would be considered “criminal assault or battery” against an adult.
King released a letter Tuesday asking leaders to replace corporal punishment with less punitive, more supportive disciplinary practices that he said work better against bad behavior.
More than 110,000 students, including disproportionate numbers of black and disabled students, were subjected to paddling or a similar punishment in the 2013-14 school year, said King, citing the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
Corporal punishment is legal in 22 states.
“The practice has been clearly and repeatedly linked to negative health and academic outcomes for students,” King said during a conference call with reporters. “It is opposed by parent organizations, teachers unions, medical and mental health professionals and civil rights advocates as a wholly inappropriate means of school discipline.”
Coming toward the end of President Obama’s term, the push to end corporal punishment builds on the administration’s “Rethink Discipline” campaign to create safe and supportive school climates, King said. It also lines up with Mr. Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, meant to address persistent opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color, he said.
Eighty organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, NAACP, Association of University Centers on Disabilities and American Federation of Teachers, signed an open letter released by the National Women’s Law Center supporting an end to the practice. Students are regularly paddled for minor or subjective infractions like dress code violations, cellphone use or disrespecting staff, the letter said.
“Corporal punishment of adults has been banned in prisons and in military training facilities, and it’s time we do the same for our nation’s schoolchildren,” said Fatima Goss Graves of the Women’s Law Center.
Although its use has been diminishing, there are corners of the country where corporal punishment remains deeply woven into culture and tradition. School administrators say it has broad support from parents and preserves learning time that would be lost to a suspension.
Fifteen states expressly permit corporal punishment: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. In seven states, there is no state law prohibiting it. They are: Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire and South Dakota.
“There are better, smarter ways to achieve safe and supportive school environment,” King said, adding that the education law passed late last year supports using funding for positive intervention and supports.
President-elect Donald Trump has not yet announced his choice for education secretary. He met last week with Michelle Rhee, a former chancellor of the District of Columbia schools.
“It doesn’t actually matter who the secretary of education is or what people’s view is about the election,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said on the call with King. “This is a moral matter. ... We must all be about safe and welcoming places for all students.” ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
/ Updated
The indictment of Vikings running back Adrian Peterson for allegedly using a wooden "switch" to punish his 4-year-old son has put a spotlight on corporal punishment. Though on the downswing in the United States, physical discipline is still common in homes and schools and spanking, in particular, is widely supported. Here's a snapshot of the situation:
AT HOME: Corporal punishment is technically legal in all 50 states. Statutes vary from state to state but generally say that the physical punishment must be reasonable or not excessive, although Delaware passed a law in 2012 that said it couldn't cause any injury or pain. Proposed legislative bans in several states have failed to pass, and courts have generally upheld parents' right to spank. This summer, New York's second highest court ruled that it was "reasonable use of force" for a father to use his open hand to hit an 8-year-old boy who had cursed.
AT SCHOOL: Nineteen states allow corporal punishment in public and private schools. Federal data collected for 2009, the most recent available, estimates 184,527 students without disabilities were physically disciplined in schools across the country that year. The numbers reveal boys are more likely than girls to receive corporal punishment, and it was disproportionately applied to blacks.
PUBLIC OPINION: A Harris poll last year found that 81 percent of Americans say parents spanking their children is sometimes appropriate, while 19 percent say it is never appropriate. Two-thirds of parents said they had spanked their children while a third said they had not.
RESEARCH: Dozens of studies have examined the effect of corporal punishment or child abuse on behavior and mental health, with mixed results. A 2012 study published in the journal Pediatrics found harsh physical punishment such as pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, hitting in non-abusive households increased the odds a child would develop mood, anxiety or personality disorders and alcohol or drug addiction.
IN-DEPTH
—Tracy Connor ||||| November 21, 2016
An Open Letter to Local and State Educational Agencies & Policymakers:
On behalf of the National Women’s Law Center and the undersigned organizations and individuals, we call on local, state, and federal policymakers to address the damaging use of corporal punishment against our nation’s schoolchildren. It is important to eliminate the use of corporal punishment in both public schools and private schools, which serve students receiving federal services, as well as assist in creating a safer learning environment for every child. Instead, we urge policymakers to ensure that our schools are places where students and educators interact in positive ways that foster students’ growth and dignity.
More than 109,000 students were subjected to corporal punishment in public schools in the 2013-14 school year —down from 163,333 in the 2011-12 school year. Despite the decline in instances and the many problems associated with the hitting or paddling of students, corporal punishment is a legal form of school discipline in 19 states. Corporal punishment is often used for a wide range of misbehaviors; for example, 37 percent of corporal punishment used in North Carolina during the 2013-14 school year were for minor or subjective offenses like “bus misbehavior, disrespect of staff, cell phone use, inappropriate language and other misbehaviors.” Aside from the infliction of pain and physical injury that often result from the use of physical punishment, these violent disciplinary methods impact students’ academic achievement and long-term well-being. Harsh physical punishments do not improve students’ in-school behavior or academic performance. In fact, one study found that schools in states where corporal punishment is used perform worse on national academic assessments than schools in states that prohibit corporal punishment.
Moreover, evidence indicates that corporal punishment is disproportionately applied against certain groups of students. In seven states in which corporal punishment was legal in the 2011-12 school year, Black children were three to five times more likely to be corporally punished than white students. Similarly, in several states in the 2011-12 school year, students with disabilities were over five times more likely to experience corporal punishment than students without disabilities. These students are often punished simply for behaviors related to their disabilities, such as autism or Tourette’s syndrome. Hitting any student should be an unacceptable practice, but the disproportionate application of corporal punishment against these populations further undermines their educational environment. Furthermore, corporal punishment of adults has been banned in U.S. prisons and military training facilities. And every state has animal cruelty laws that criminalize beating animals so long and hard that it causes injury—even while allowing students to be subject to corporal punishment.
Eliminating the use of corporal punishment in schools will assist in ensuring the safety of all students and educators. Families should be allowed to protect their children and states should prohibit the use of physical punishment against students and ensure that a plan is in place to alert school personnel and parents of policies eliminating corporal punishment for students.
In addition, policymakers should also give schools and educators new tools to foster a positive school climate by encouraging the use of school-wide positive behavior supports, an evidence-based approach to school discipline proven to reduce school discipline referrals and support improved academic outcomes. Local and state educational agencies should also take advantage of grants from the Every Student Succeeds Act, which provides funds to educational agencies to develop and implement restorative justice and positive behavioral supports and interventions in classrooms and schools and train teachers and staff in these methods.
All local and state educational agencies have a significant interest in ensuring a positive learning environment for the nation’s students. By eliminating the harmful practice of corporal punishment and implementing positive, evidence-based policies, local and state leaders can help students achieve access to a safe and high-quality education.
Sincerely,
National Women’s Law Center, joined by the following organizations:
Academy on Violence and Abuse
ACLU
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
American Association of University Women
American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
American Humanist Association
American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children
American Psychological Association
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Americans Against Corporal Punishment in Public School
Association of University Centers on Disabilities
Attachment Parenting International, Atlanta Chapter
Barton Child Law and Policy Center, Emory Law School
Center for Civil Rights Remedies, Civil Rights Project at UCLA
Center for Effective Discipline
Champion Women
Child Safe of Central Missouri, Inc.
Children’s Advocacy Institute
Children’s Defense Fund
Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues
Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth
Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates
Dane County District Attorney’s Deferred Prosecution Program
Dignity in Schools Campaign
Division 7: Developmental Psychology, American Psychological Association
Education Law Center-PA
Family Services Network
Futures Without Violence
Girls Inc.
GLSEN
Gundersen Health System
Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center
Gwinnett Parent Coalition to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline (Gwinnett SToPP)
Integrated Clinical & Correctional Services
Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Lives in the Balance
Massachusetts Citizens for Children
Minnesota Communities Caring for Children, Home of Prevent Child Abuse MN
NAACP
National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE)
National Association of School Psychologists
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)
National Autism Association
National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools
National Disability Rights Network
National Down Syndrome Congress
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)
National Education Association
National Organization for Women
National PTA
NC Child
NCLR (National Council of La Raza)
Nollie Jenkins Family Center, Inc.
Otto Bremer Trust Center for Safe and Healthy Children
Parent Trust for Washington Children
Partnership for Violence Free Families
Prevent Child Abuse Illinois
Project KnuckleHead
PsycHealth, Ltd.
Rights4Girls
Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law
SelfWorks
SisterReach
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
Southern Poverty Law Center
StopSpanking.ORG TASH
Tennesseans for Non Violent School Discipline
The National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan
The Parenting Network
TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project)
U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children
University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law Juvenile and Special Education Law Clinic
Upbring
Women’s Law Project
Youth Service, Inc. | – Education Secretary John King has a message for states where physical discipline is permitted in schools, per USA Today: Quit it. In a letter to governors and state school chiefs, King says 22 states—mostly in the South and West—still allow corporal punishment or don't forbid it. He implores them to stop the "harmful" and "ineffective" practice, saying it teaches kids that getting physical is OK to solve problems. He also points out that some corporal punishment taking place in schools would be considered criminal assault or battery in real-world settings. About 80 groups—including the NAACP—lent their support to a similar letter penned Monday by the National Women's Law Center, reports CBS News. "Corporal punishment of adults has been banned in prisons and in military training facilities, and it's time we do the same for our nation's schoolchildren," an NWLC rep says. King also notes that physical punishment isn't applied equitably to all students. For example, even though black students make up about 16% of attendees in public elementary and secondary schools, they're on the receiving end of one-third of the corporal punishment. Boys are subjected to 80% of such acts, while students with disabilities also tend to be victims more so than other students. "These data and disparities shock the conscience," King writes. (Alabama paddled 19K students in one school year.) |
Vantage Energy operates the natural gas drilling site on the grounds of Lake Arlington Baptist Church. (Photo: WFAA)
ARLINGTON — Two months ago, 100 homes in Arlington had to be evacuated as fracking fluid spilled out of a drilling site onto the city streets.
Now we know officially what happened, why it happened, and why Arlington officials are blaming the drilling company for "unacceptable behavior."
A series of video recordings obtained by News 8 shows the scene behind the walls of a fracking site 600 feet from a cluster of homes in the state's seventh largest city. In the incident, 42,800 gallons of fracking fluid — boiling up from thousands of feet underground — spewed into the streets and into Arlington storm sewers and streams.
WFAA obtained this video that shows a leak of fracking fluid from an Arlington drilling site (Photo: WFAA)
Four attempts and 24 hours later, experts were finally able to plug the natural gas well.
Nearby residents and Arlington officials feared the worst. Now, two months later, fire officials have concluded their investigation.
"Clearly there was a release of unpermitted materials into the stormwater system," said Arlington Fire Chief Don Crowson as he addressed Arlington City Council members on Tuesday.
The good news, according to Crowson: Despite numerous toxic substances being released into the environment, tests show it was not in amounts that did significant damage to the environment.
The bad news? He said the drilling company mishandled the spill.
"For my concerns, the main issue I articulated to you a few months ago was the delayed notification of 911," Crowson said. "It's not acceptable."
According to the report, Vantage Energy first contacted 911 nearly two hours after fracking water first started to spill. What's more, the call to 911 came not from the site, but from corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania.
"This is unacceptable behavior," said City Council member Robert Rivera. "The citizens of Arlington do not appreciate the lack of ability to control the site."
LABC gas well leak (Photo: WFAA)
The official causeof the spill at a site adjacent to Lake Arlington Baptist Church is listed as equipment failure. Vantage Energy was issued a citation and has agreed to reimburse the city $84,000.
But this was not included in the city's report: Records uncovered by News 8 of another 1,500-gallon spill at the same site one month earlier.
Despite numerous toxic substances being released into the environment, tests show it was not in amounts that did significant damage to the environment.
Arlington Resident Kim Feil said the two incidents one month apart reinforce her fears that drilling so close to homes is not safe.
"I just assumed this was a residential area and it would be free from industrial hazardous operations," Feil said. "Now we see it's not."
In the meantime, drilling operations remain shut down and will not resume until the city does a final inspection and the folks across the street and those affected are given official notification.
Read or Share this story: http://on.wfaa.com/1MJMRSg ||||| The Fire Department has taken a gas well operator to task and imposed rules to make sure a leak like the one that occurred in southwest Arlington on April 11 doesn’t happen again, top fire officials told the City Council at an afternoon work session Tuesday.
A pipe sprung a softball-size hole at the Vantage Energy well site at 3016 Little Road, allowing nearly 43,000 gallons of fracking water and chemicals to gush into the city storm-water system and sparking fears that natural gas would follow, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said.
More than 100 families living within 1/8 mile were evacuated as a precaution.
“Some were displaced as long as 21 hours,” Self said.
Never miss a local story. Sign up today for a free 30 day free trial of unlimited digital access. SUBSCRIBE NOW
No gas leaked, but Vantage employees, trying to fix the problem themselves, waited two hours to call 911.
“That’s unacceptable behavior,” Councilman Robert Rivera said.
Self and Fire Chief Don Crowson assured the council that they have taken steps to clarify the city’s expectations in such emergencies. Step 1: Call 911 before doing anything else.
“We’re not kidding around about the 911 issue,” Crowson said during a break. “It was a very serious situation. It could have ended in a bad outcome. Two hours’ advance notice could have helped alot. Luckily, we were prepared and we worked well with [Vantage], and we were able to resolve the issue.”
The pipe began leaking about 1 p.m. It was carrying water and solvents that had been used, under high pressure, to fracture shale and release its natural gas. At any moment, the frack-water leak could have become a gas leak.
Stopping the leak took almost 24 hours.
City officials praised Vantage officials for their cooperation. City Manager Trey Yelverton said Vantage hasn’t been the only focus. The city’s expectations have been communicated to all drilling operators in Arlington.
In other business, the council told parks officials to work both a senior center and a “multigenerational” activities center into the ongoing update of the parks master plan.
Parks Director Lemuel Randolph estimated the senior center’s cost at $25 million and the all-ages facility at $40 million. He said the master plan was virtually finished in November when a new senior center became a priority.
About 25 older residents in red T-shirts attended the afternoon session to lend silent support for a stand-alone senior center. Then at the evening council meeting, they weren’t so silent. Several walked to the lectern at the end of the meeting to lobby.
Elva Roy, head of Age-Friendly Arlington Action Brigade, asked that the city dedicate the last quarter-cent available in the city sales tax to raising money for a senior center, and put the issue on the November election ballot.
Seniors now use portions of two aging activities center, called Eunice and New York. The seniors want something like the Summit, the $23 million 50-and-over senior center in Grand Prairie that opened in 2010, Roy said.
“When you walk into the Summit, it’s just so tranquil,” she said. ||||| Arlington fire officials indicated the site of a gas well that leaked thousands of gallons of fracking fluid back in April could be close to reopening. (Published Tuesday, June 16, 2015)
An Arlington gas well site that leaked thousands of gallons of fracking fluid in April could soon resume drilling.
All operations at Vantage Energy's Lake Arlington Baptist Church site along Little Road have been suspended since that leak occurred.
The company said a well head component malfunctioned, causing a back flow of fracking fluid to spill out. No natural gas leaked from the well, but the incident forced dozens of families in the area to evacuate their homes.
On Tuesday, Arlington Fire Chief Don Crowson gave the City Council an update on the cleanup efforts.
92-Year-Old Woman Arrested in Denton Fracking Protest
A 92-year-old mother and son were the latest arrests in Denton’s fracking protests Tuesday; only that mother also happens to be a great grandmother. (Published Tuesday, June 16, 2015)
( Tue Jun 16 16:40:54 PDT 2015 $__output )
"I will give Vantage credit for this," said Crowson. "They've owned it. They've owned the responsibility for it."
Through the course of their investigation, fire officials determined more than 42,000 gallons of fracking fluid escaped into the city's storm water system. They don't believe the city's water supply or the public are in any danger.
"Arlington Environmental, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the EPA tested the water and soil samples in several locations and found pollutant material below levels that will require further remediation," said Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self.
Crowson said Vantage has identified the faulty component that caused the well head to malfunction and has taken steps to fix the problem on that well and others.
The company has also paid the city more than $82,000 to reimburse taxpayers for the response to the leak. That doesn't include additional fines Vantage had to pay for three citations the city issued following the incident.
"Our relationship with Vantage has been very good historically," said Crowson.
Crowson did not mince words, though, when he discussed Vantage's decision to wait nearly two hours before reporting the leak to 911. He called the company's actions "unacceptable" and said he's met with Vantage and other energy companies to make sure they understand that.
"Call the fire department immediately," said Crowson. "That's been carefully and directly communicated."
In an email to NBC 5, a spokesperson for Vantage said, "We've worked collaboratively with the fire department on revised notification procedures."
Crowson said the site has to pass one last inspection before drilling can resume. When that happens, he said the public will be notified. | – A massive leak of fracking fluid poured into the streets of Arlington, Texas, two months ago and forced the evacuation of a hundred homes. Now city officials have taken Vantage Energy to task for its "unacceptable" handling of the 43,000-gallon spill, WFAA reports. During a city council meeting yesterday, it emerged that Vantage had taken nearly two hours to call 911 despite the risk of a gas leak. "This is unacceptable behavior," says an Arlington city council member. According to Fire Chief Don Crowson, the two-hour delay was no joke: "We’re not kidding around about the 911 issue," he tells the Star-Telegram during a break in city council. "It could have ended in a bad outcome. Two hours’ advance notice could have helped a lot." Still, officials say the environmental damage was not extensive and Vantage has been cooperative. So what happened, exactly? According to the city's report, a Vantage well site sprung a leak on April 11, which allowed fracking water and chemicals to boil up into Arlington's streets, storm sewers, and streams. Because the fracking fluid had been fracturing shale and freeing gas under high pressure, natural gas could have leaked at any time. Now WFAA says a 1,500-gallon spill occurred at the same location a month before, and NBC-Dallas/Fort Worth reports that the site is close to reopening. "I just assumed this was a residential area and it would be free from industrial hazardous operations," says a resident after hearing about the earlier spill. "Now we see it's not." |
A woman said a man skipped out on a meal with her at an LA restaurant,; she later learned the same man had done this before, to at least two other women. (Source: KCAL/KCBS/CNN/social media photos/surveillance video stills)
LOS ANGELES (KCAL/KCBS/CNN) - The dine-and-dash dater has struck again. A California woman came forward this week to say a man who’s been accused of dining and ditching on the bill with two other women also did it to her.
As she scrolled through her text messages with Paul Gonzales, the woman, who asked to be identified as Beth, said she thought she was just going on a typical blind date.
Gonzales asked if she was available for dinner over the weekend, and she said yes. Beth, who wanted to protect her identity, said she met Gonzales on the dating app Bumble. There, he called himself Dave Gonzales. He has since taken down his profile.
She said when she met him at BJ’s in Pasadena, he ordered right away and after he scarfed down most of his meal, he got up.
“Left maybe half a baked potato and then received a phone call and said, ‘Oh, I need to take this call. Make sure they don’t take the rest of my meal,'” Beth said of her date.
But she said he never returned, leaving her with the bill.
“I was shocked that anybody would do this. And I even texted him, ‘Is everything OK?’ And obviously he never responded,” she said.
Beth said she went online and discovered previous stories about Gonzales - how he had dined and dashed last summer, leaving at least two other women with large bills.
Police said he committed a snip-and-ditch when security video caught him leaving a Burbank hair salon with his smock on after getting a cut and color last year.
Beth said the restaurant was nice enough to comp Gonzales’ meal. She only had to pay for his glass of wine. She now hopes this doesn’t happen again to another unsuspecting date.
What she wants is “for him to stop doing this to people. It’s just disgusting.”
Copyright 2017 KCAL/KCBS via CNN. All rights reserved. ||||| LONG BEACH (CBSLA.com) — A second woman has come forward to tell the tale of a romantic date gone wrong when the man she met on social media dined, dashed and stiffed her with bill.
KCAL9’s Andrea Fujii on Thursday talked to the woman who didn’t want to be identified.
She had no problem identifying her date — Paul Gonzales. She said they met on a dating website in May.
The plan was a romantic first date at a restaurant in Long Beach.
“[He was] very complimentary, very chatty, seemed to have similar interests,” she said.
The woman said things got weird when he ordered over $100 worth of food for himself.
“This guy is obnoxious,” she thought. “First of all, who orders two entrees? But he excused it by saying he was a bodybuilder.”
She said when she didn’t reciprocate his advances, he took off and left her holding the check.
“He says ‘I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back’ and he never did,” she said.
The woman acknowledges she is very embarrassed but said she came forward after seeing another women tell her similar story on Wednesday evening on the KCAL9 News at 10 p.m.
“He had an appetizer, he ordered a steak. This restaurant is all ala carte,” said Diane Guilmette.
Police said the alleged dine-and-dasher also did the same thing to a Burbank hair salon in February.
RELATED LINK: Police Look For Man Who Allegedly Committed ‘Snip And Ditch’ At Hair Salon
Security video allegedly caught Gonzales walking out of the salon still wearing his smock.
Police told Fujii he was arrested on July 23 in that incident but it’s not clear if he’s still behind bars. The LA County DA’s Office says they have two pending petty-theft cases against him.
The women he dashed out on in May said she didn’t file a police report but now says she will.
“So, now is my retribution time,” she said.
Fujii reports that since our story aired Wednesday evening, she also heard from another Burbank hair salon that said Gonzales skipped out on his bill.
She said she tried reaching out to Gonzales via Facebook, but as of Thursday had not heard back. ||||| Photo: Roy Hsu
In the low-down world of dining and dashing, there are classy thieves and then there are people like Paul Gonzales, an alleged “serial” check-skipper from L.A., whose method involves setting up a dinner date, then ditching the woman before the check arrives. CBS Los Angeles reports that his latest victim is a Bumble match he invited to the local BJ’s brewhouse, where he ordered a steak, a Caesar salad with a side of shrimp, a baked potato, and a glass of wine. Once he’d worked his way through most of that haul (“he left maybe half a baked potato,” the woman says), he said he needed to take a phone call. That’s the last anyone at the restaurant saw of Paul Gonzales.
He’s reportedly swindled at least two other women with this same trick. One of them says he showed up “very complimentary” at a “romantic” restaurant in Long Beach, but things got weird really fast: He ordered more than $100 worth of food, including an extra entrée he claimed was necessary because he’s “a bodybuilder.” On that occasion, he disappeared during an alleged bathroom trip.
Not surprisingly at all, Gonzales has a police record with multiple misdemeanors, two warrants out for his arrest, and once even committed something called a “snip and ditch,” which involved him fleeing a hair salon still wearing a smock. Amazingly, when it comes to online dating, women can somehow still do worse. | – Paul Gonzales' approach to dating is similar to that of many men. He meets women online and invites them out to dinner. But here's where he allegedly diverges: According to CBS Los Angeles, 44-year-old Gonzales has been dining and dashing at area restaurants, leaving behind unsuspecting women he's asked out on blind dates. CBS reported in August that Gonzales had left two women to pay the bill after walking out on restaurant dates last summer. One of the women described how he'd eaten $100 worth of food at a restaurant in Long Beach—explaining he had to order two entrees because he's a bodybuilder—before saying he was going to the bathroom. She never saw him again. Now, the man Grub Street identifies as perhaps "the world's worst dinner date" appears to have struck again. A woman, identified by WTOL as Beth, says she met "Dave Gonzales" on Bumble before agreeing to dinner at a restaurant in Pasadena. Gonzales ordered "a glass of pinot, a Caesar salad with a side of shrimp, a steak, and a baked potato" and ate most of the meal before excusing himself to take a phone call, Beth says. He never returned, a text went unanswered, and his Bumble profile was later removed, adds Beth, who soon after learned of Gonzales' alleged notoriety. She says she wants his "disgusting" ruse to stop. According to police, Gonzales has also walked out of a salon, still clad in a smock, without paying for a haircut and color. He's wanted on two bench warrants as a result of misdemeanor charges, including petty theft. (This blind date was more shocking.) |
WTF?!
Howard Stern recently completed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and shared a video of the do-gooder act on YouTube. While Stern doing the bone-chilling charitable act is nothing out of the ordinary, you may be scratching your head when you hear who he nominates to undertake the challenge next.
"Hey everybody, it's Howard Stern ready to take the Ice Bucket Challenge," a shirtless Stern says in the video. "I'm accepting the challenge of...who challenged me? Matt Lauer and Jennifer Aniston." ||||| After both Jennifer Aniston and Matt Lauer nominated him, Howard Stern finally accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge - and you won't believe who he nominated!
Remember, all this ice bucket nonsense is for a good cause - donate to the ALS Association and help Strike Out ALS!
And watch Beth Stern take the ice bucket challenge too! | – Howard Stern has nominated an interesting trio to complete the ice bucket challenge after him. Trouble is, one of them is dead, reports E! Online. In a bizarre video posted to YouTube yesterday, a bare-chested Stern plops an ice cube into a shot glass of water, then pours it over his head, immediately succumbing to mock shivers before hopping off camera. But first he challenges the very much alive Barbara Walters and Mark Consuelos, plus the quite dead Casey Kasem, to douse themselves with ice water next. Stern is aware of Kasem's death at age 82, E! notes, as he's discussed it on his radio show. |
A judge has agreed to step down from a case after complaining his luggage had gone missing during a BA flight while he was presiding over an unrelated dispute involving the same airline.
Mr Justice Peter Smith, one of the country’s most senior judges, withdrew from the £3 billion case amid accusations of bias, after he raised the matter of his missing luggage in his own court room.
A new judge will now be appointed to preside over the case, over a European Commission ruling that BA was guilty of colluding to fix air cargo charges.
The High Court judge was hearing a dispute involving BA, tens of thousands of firms and 30 other airlines, which dates back to 2006,
By coincide he had sent emails to BA’s chairman using his judicial title after his baggage went missing on a recent trip to Italy, in which he accused airline staff of deliberately leaving behind all the plane’s luggage and deceiving passengers.
The judge’s bags ‘spontaneously’ turned up at his home last week.
But Mr Justice Smith went on to raise the matter in court, threatening to order BA’s chief executive to appear in front of him to explain how a whole aeroplane’s luggage could go missing
He told BA’s legal team, led by Jon Turner QC: “Right, Mr Turner, here is a question for you: what happened to [the] luggage?”
But when the barrister replied that they were not dealing with that issue Mr Justice Smith persisted with his line of questioning, saying: “I am asking you – what has happened to the luggage?”
Mr Turner again declined to address his request, at which point Mr Justice Smith warned: “In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today?”
Despite being told it would not be appropriate to discuss a personal dispute, the judge persisted: “What is inappropriate is the continued failure of your clients to explain a simple question, namely, what happened to the luggage? It has been two weeks since that happened.”
He added: “I do not believe for a minute that the reasonably-minded observer would think that merely because I had raised issues about the non-delivery of my luggage, that it should raise the possibility of bias.”
But when BA’s legal team applied for the judge to stand aside Mr Justice Smith he agreed.
One of the legal circuit’s more colourful characters Mr Justice Smith once hid a message in a High Court judgment relating to the Da Vinci Code copyright trial.
In 2006, he ruled in favour of the novel’s author, Dan Brown, after rival authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh sued publisher Random House, claiming he had stolen their ideas.
Italicised letters in the first seven paragraphs of the judgment spelt out ‘Smithy Code’ in a reference to his own name.
Other apparently randomly italicised letters read: “Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought”. This appeared to relate to one of the judge’s own interests – Admiral Lord Fisher, who designed the battleship HMS Dreadnought.
It was thought to be the first time that a message had been hidden in a formal High Court judgment.
Mr Justice Smith refused to confirm that the letters were a code at the time, saying only: “They don't look like typos, do they? I can't discuss the judgment, but I don't see why a judgment should not be a matter of fun.”
In May this year Mr Justice Smith blamed a father for the horrific injuries that led to the death of the man's baby daughter, even though the man was cleared by a jury.
He lifted the normal anonymity rules that apply to family court judgments to name Martin Thomas, 30, as responsible for brutal attacks on four-month-old Evie Thomas from Wigan, Greater Manchester.
The judge said the law would be “a screen to hide the truth” if the father was allowed to remain unnamed.
In 2010 Mr Justice Smith was due to oversee a £100million trial over the controversial Chelsea Barracks development, but was replaced at the last moment after reportedly upsetting the Qatari royal family.
He had overseen the pre-trial hearings involving Qatari Diar, the property arm of the Qatari royal family, which was sued by Christian Candy, a London property tycoon, for breach of contract.
But the Qataris were said to be upset when a number of decisions went against them.
It was later ruled that the royal family's property company had breached its contract when it withdrew a planning application for the £3bn Chelsea barracks development after the intervention of Prince Charles. ||||| The behaviour of Mr Justice Peter Smith, who reluctantly agreed to step aside from the case last week after BA’s lawyers complained of “a real risk of bias”, has now been revealed in full after a transcript of the court exchanges was posted online.
The document, which The Independent has confirmed is accurate, shows how the judge subjected the airline’s legal counsel Jon Turner QC to a barrage of questions about the whereabouts of his luggage, which had been mislaid during a trip to Florence with his wife.
“Right, Mr Turner, here is a question for you. What happened to [the] luggage?” the judge asks a few minutes into the hearing. When the QC replies that his clients do not want to get involved in the issue, he shoots back: “In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today?”
Justice Peter Smith emailed the BA chairman personally to complain about his lost luggage. File photo (Getty)
After Mr Turner delicately suggests that doing so would be “an inappropriate mixture of a personal dispute” with the multi-billion pound case, the judge cuts him off. “What is inappropriate is the continued failure of your clients to explain a simple question: namely, what happened to the luggage? It has been two weeks since that happened now,” he says.
A lengthy debate follows, culminating in Mr Justice Smith darkly suggesting that BA is fighting to have him recused because the airline is worried that the case is not going in its favour. “The next judge might not be on your solicitors’ acceptable judge list,” he says.
After a break in which Mr Turner contacts his instructing solicitor – before regretfully informing the judge that “she does not know what has happened to your luggage” – Mr Justice Smith says he has “no alternative” but to recuse himself.
A spokesman for the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office, which handles complaints about the judiciary, said that Sir Peter was being “investigated under the conduct regulations”. Mrs Justice Vivien Rose has been appointed to hear the case in his place.
The remarkable courtroom exchanges took place during one of the biggest competition battles to reach the UK courts. The case stems from a European Commission ruling that BA and a number of other airlines colluded to fix air cargo charges, with the firms now being sued by hundreds of companies for losses and damages.
Will Gant, a reporter for the specialist legal magazine PaRR, witnessed the judge’s outburst. “I’ve been a court journalist for several years, and must have seen thousands of hearings, but frankly I was absolutely blown away by the unprofessional attitude that Mr Justice Peter Smith displayed at this one,” he told The Independent.
“The room was packed with dozens of lawyers, and two or three reporters from specialist legal publications, and as this unfolded we all silently exchanged looks of complete amazement. I’ve never seen a judge allow their personal life to affect their work like this, and it was sad to watch. It was an embarrassment to British justice.”
Another source familiar with the case added: “Frankly, it’s the sort of thing you might expect in other areas of the world, but not here.”
In a parting shot, Mr Justice Smith then used a written judgment to chastise BA still further, suggesting that his luggage and that of his fellow passengers had been “deliberately bumped off for a more profitable cargo”. He had emailed BA’s chairman, Keith Williams, because he felt the incident “might be something that is strikingly similar to some of the allegations in this case”, he wrote.
He continued: “I do not believe for one minute that the reasonably minded observer…would think that merely because I have raised issues over the non delivery of my luggage of itself should lead to the possibility of bias.” He also warned BA that he would continue his investigation into what happened to the bags “in a private capacity” and “with the vigour for which I am known”.
Both British Airways and its legal advisers, Slaughter & May, declined to comment.
Court records: Out of order
According to a transcript, Mr Justice Peter Smith repeatedly harangued the British Airways barrister Jon Turner QC about what happened to his missing luggage. Here are some edited extracts:
Mr Justice Peter Smith: Right, Mr Turner, here is a question for you. What happened to [the] luggage?
Jon Turner: My Lord, the position remains that set out in the letter from Slaughter and May of 15 July, that we are not dealing with that as parties in these proceedings.
PS: I am asking you: what has happened to the luggage?
JT: My Lord, so far as the parties to these proceedings … are concerned, we have said, and we maintain, that we are not getting involved because we trust that that will be dealt with expeditiously, in the ordinary course of events.
PS: In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today?
JT: I do not wish your Lordship to do that; and I would say, if your Lordship will permit me to develop my submissions, that that would be an inappropriate mixture of a personal dispute ...
PS: What is inappropriate is the continued failure of your clients to explain a simple question, namely, what happened to the luggage? It has been two weeks since that happened now....
JT: Our position, my Lord, is that where your Lordship initiates a personal dispute with British Airways…
PS: I didn’t initiate a personal dispute. BA’s associated company retained my luggage. It is not my fault that that happened. I am the victim. I read the whole of your correspondence. The more I read it, I got the impression that BA was trying to portray itself of the victim of this case and being oppressed by wicked Mr Justice Peter Smith. It is just ridiculous...
PS: As far as I am concerned, the key fact in this case is: what happened to the luggage; and your clients know what happened to the luggage and they are not telling me. And your solicitors and you are deliberately not asking...
PS: If there is a perfectly understandable operational reason as to why the whole of the flight’s luggage was left behind in Florence ... then I will accept that. That has been my stance ever since I contacted the chairman. I contacted the chairman because the BA helpline is misdescribed. Because when I contacted them, they said, “It is nothing to do with us, it is down to Vueling [BA’s Spanish partner airline]”, despite the fact that I booked my flight with BA and BA took my money. The Vueling helpline was even worse. They couldn’t even tell me where the luggage was till it, without warning, spontaneously arrived at my house last Thursday. In those circumstances, I went to the BA website and the BA website says the chairman is anxious to have comments from customers, and there is his email address, so I sent him an email. Apparently he likes reading customers’ emails. It doesn’t appear to be necessarily he does anything about it, but he obviously likes reading them over his breakfast...
PS: BA as a group, as a company in a group, clearly know what happened to the luggage, because ... they cannot have accidentally left the whole of the flight’s luggage off the plane, can they? I mean, I am intrigued. It might be for some reason they only had three gallons of fuel in the plane, it would run out unless they took everything off, which is a bit difficult because the plane was actually being refuelled when we got there. But equally, it is impossible to believe that the pilot, who has to sign the documentation as to what is the weight and composition of the weight in the plane, did not know that his hold was empty; and it is equally impossible for the ground staff not to know that the luggage was not there. These are things which, I accept, I am struggling to find a rational explanation for. ||||| What appears to be court stenographer’s note appears online after Mr Justice Peter Smith stands up for airline passengers everywhere
A document appearing to be the full transcript of a judge’s bench badgering of British Airways over his lost luggage has emerged.
Fleet Street last week cast the Chancery Court’s Mr Justice Peter Smith — whom The Times newspaper described as “one of the legal profession’s more colourful figures” — as the common air travellers hero after he castigated lawyers for the “world’s favourite airline”.
But the bench-slapping had nothing to do with their submissions in the £3 billion lawsuit Smith was hearing — a spat in which BA was accused of colluding to fix air cargo charges. Instead it related to an entirely unrelated incident which had seen Smith’s luggage go missing on a BA flight during a recent trip to Italy.
Legal Cheek cannot verify the authenticity of the document that is doing the rounds of legal London. However, it appears to be a comprehensive transcript of the court stenographer’s note.
Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways
Taking the brunt of Smith’s ire was Jon Turner, a silk of nine years’ standing from Monkton Chambers in Gray’s Inn. As BA’s lead counsel on the day, Turner came in for repeated questioning regarding the loss of Smith’s luggage during his recent trip Florence.
At one stage the judge threatened to haul BA’s pugnacious Irish chief executive, Willie Walsh, before the court to answer some pretty searching questions on the missing luggage front. Sadly that didn’t happen, as it would have been one hell of a bout.
Now, Smith is no stranger to courtroom antics. The judge once famously inserted his own coded message into a judgment he handed down on a copyright case concerning best-selling thriller novel “The Da Vince Code”.
In the most recent case, according to the transcript, Smith repeatedly cross-examined BA’s lawyers about the lost luggage, while, in turn, they desperately tried to bring the proceedings back to the matter of the trial.
In the end, frustrated lawyers, who included the airline’s law firm, Slaughter and May (whose partners presumably know a thing or two about international holiday travel), applied for Smith to recuse himself. The grounds were clear: anyone so arsed off with one of the litigants — no matter how legitimately in a customer service context — would not be able to hear case impartially.
Smith adamantly disagreed, but he stood down nonetheless. He didn’t go quietly, telling the court:
I do not believe for one minute that the reasonably minded observer … would think that merely because I have raised issues over the non-delivery of my luggage of itself should lead to the possibility of bias. I believe a reasonably minded observer would see a judge with a problem trying to resolve that issue and finding the parting question being obstructive and unwilling to address the issue and find a solution. A simple dispute as to the luggage cannot possible be grounds for recusal. However, BA and its solicitors have simply escalated the problem almost immediately.
Nonetheless, Smith saw the writing on the wall in terms of public perception:
I however cannot allow my presence in the case and its difficulties to distract the parties from this case. And therefore, regretfully, I feel that I have no choice, whatever my feelings about it, but to recuse myself from the case …
BA’s legal team will be relieved. The rest of us will still shed a tiny tear as the case of Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways is destined to be a damn sight less entertaining than it was a week ago.
Read the judgment in full below:
Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways ||||| Mr Justice Peter Smith was furious at BA after his luggage went missing on a flight from Florence Tim Boyle/Getty Images
The judge who stepped down from a £3 billion dispute involving British Airways after complaining about his lost luggage is being investigated by judicial conduct authorities.
Mr Justice Peter Smith fired off angry emails to British Airways after his luggage failed to arrive at Gatwick after a trip to Florence — and then berated counsel when the dispute came before him in court.
He agreed to step down from the case after BA’s legal team, led by Jon Turner, QC, raised questions of bias in court last week, and applied for him to stand aside.
Another judge, Mrs Justice Rose, has now been appointed to succeed Mr Justice Peter Smith on the mammoth dispute which relates to a 2010 European Commission ruling that BA and… | – Anyone whose luggage has been lost by an airline now has a patron saint in the form of Justice Peter Smith in Britain. When lawyers for British Airways showed up in his court to argue a $4.6 billion price-fixing case, Smith had smaller fish to fry: He wanted to know why the airline lost his luggage on a recent trip to Italy, reports the Legal Cheek blog. The questioning of BA counsel Jon Turner is priceless, as relayed by the Independent: "Mr Turner, here is a question for you. What happened to [the] luggage?” When Turner replies that they're actually in court for a different matter, Smith won't be put off: “In that case, do you want me to order your chief executive to appear before me today?” Turner again tries to deflect the questioning, but Smith responds, “What is inappropriate is the continued failure of your clients to explain a simple question: namely, what happened to the luggage? It has been two weeks since that happened now." This goes on for a while, and the BA lawyers ask Smith to recuse himself from the case they're supposed to be arguing because he's biased. Smith reluctantly agrees to do so. Entertaining yes, but whether it was good judgeship remains to be seen—the Times of London reports that judicial conduct authorities are investigating. The same judge once inserted a secret message ("Smithy Code") into his ruling in a copyright case involving the Da Vinci Code, notes the Telegraph. (If you'd like to be berated by an American judge, try this.) |
Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains Sue Ogrocki / AP A monster tornado hit Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon, leaving scores dead as the threat for more storms continues. Launch slideshow
About 9.5 million people remained under the threat of more "large and devastating" tornadoes Tuesday as the storm system that devastated the suburbs of Oklahoma City moved east, forecasters warned.
Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth said early Tuesday that the threat area appeared to be east and south of Oklahoma City.
"Tornadoes, damaging wind gusts and large hail are possible throughout the threat area," Roth said.
More from weather.com
The greatest tornado threat will exist in northeast Texas, far southeast Oklahoma, southwest Arkansas and northwest Louisiana. A few strong tornadoes are possible in those states. On Tuesday afternoon The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for Bowie County, Texas, which borders Arkansas in the northeast part of the state.
Michael Welch captures dramatic video of twister from a KFC parking lot in Newcastle, Oklahoma.
Roth said that cities including Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Shreveport, Texarkana and Little Rock were among the cities "close to the the larger tornado threat."
A tornado watch was issued for Dallas-Fort Worth as well as all of north and central Texas until 8 p.m. ET. The Dallas zoo closed Tuesday afternoon due to the forecast. Strong wind gusts have been reported in the area but so far no tornadoes.
Areas of Arkansas were under a tornado watch until 11 p.m. ET.
"Another day of large and devastating tornadoes is possible this time from central/east Texas into central Arkansas," Roth said.
"Severe threat continues farther to the east Wednesday, although the overall severity appears to be lower."
Weather Channel forecaster Bill Karins told MSNBC that 9.5 million people lived in the area at most risk of more tornadoes. He said the likely pattern for twisters was the same as in recent days, with the biggest risk being in the late afternoon.
The National Weather Service said storms were expected Tuesday "from the Great Lakes across the Mississippi River Valley and into central Texas."
The agency issued a tornado watch late Monday for portions of east central Illinois, western and central Indiana, western Kentucky and southeast Missouri. The watch was in effect until 5 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET).
According to Roth, severe storms appeared possible from southeast New York to east Maryland on Thursday.
He added: "An early look at Memorial Day Weekend shows that most of the country should be quiet. The stormiest weather appears to be across the Plains and Midwest with scattered showers and thunderstorms."
Related:
NBC's Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report
This story was originally published on ||||| (CNN) -- The storm system behind Monday's Oklahoma twister brought strong rainstorms to parts of the South on Tuesday evening before heading toward the Great Lakes and the Tennessee Valley.
Tornado watches continued for portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. Those watches were set to expire by 10 p.m. CT Tuesday.
What to know about tornadoes
The threat of a few strong tornadoes, large hail and thunderstorm wind gusts remained in northeastern Texas, southwestern Arkansas, extreme southeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Louisiana, CNN Meteorologist Sean Morris said.
"The threat for strong tornadoes will rapidly diminish in these areas after sunset, with the main threat becoming damaging straight line winds during the overnight hours," Morris said. "Isolated tornadoes will still be possible."
Rainstorms pushed through the Dallas area on Tuesday afternoon. A ground stop at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was later lifted.
Storms are expected to move east on Wednesday and will extend from the Great Lakes south-southwestward into the Ohio River Valley and into the Deep South.
Primary threats will be damaging winds and large hail, according to the National Weather Service. Isolated tornadoes also will be possible.
Storms weren't restricted to the Great Plains and Midwest.
The National Weather Service said weather spotters on Tuesday afternoon reported a possible tornado near Copake, New York, near the Massachusetts border.
Track the severe weather
Mobile tools to help you survive tornado season
10 deadliest U.S. tornadoes on record | – The tornado threat isn't over: "Large and devastating" storms could continue today, forecasters say. "We could have a Round 3," says a CNN meteorologist. "Hopefully, it won't be as bad." But "tornadoes, damaging wind gusts, and large hail" could hit areas east and south of Oklahoma City, with cities from Dallas to Little Rock also at risk, says a Weather Channel forecaster. Some 9.5 million people could face further major tornadoes, a forecaster tells MSNBC, while CNN says 53 million could see severe weather today. Areas from Dallas to Shreveport face the biggest danger "from mid-afternoon to late evening hours," says another CNN expert. Storms could also strike "from the Great Lakes across the Mississippi River Valley and into central Texas," according to the National Weather Service. The threat moves further eastward tomorrow, "although the overall severity appears to be lower," adds a Weather Channel expert. Click for more. |
People gather at makeshift memorial at a tour bus stop in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct 25, 2016. The tread on four of the eight tires on a tour bus that slammed into a truck and killed 13 people on Interstate... (Associated Press)
People gather at makeshift memorial at a tour bus stop in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct 25, 2016. The tread on four of the eight tires on a tour bus that slammed into a truck and killed 13 people on Interstate 10 were below government standards, an official said Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016, though the cause... (Associated Press)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The treads on half the tires of a tour bus that slammed into a tractor-trailer on a desert freeway, killing 13 people, were worn down to an unsafe level, a federal investigator said as authorities worked to determine the cause of one of California's deadliest highway crashes.
The condition of the four faulty tires meant the 1996 bus was out of compliance with federal standards and could have been taken out of service, Earl Weener, a board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference Tuesday in Palm Desert, near the site of Sunday's crash that also injured 31 people on Interstate 10.
Despite the discovery, the cause of the crash remained undetermined and the NTSB was expected to take about a year to complete its investigation.
The California Highway Patrol has said there was no indication that the driver, Teodulo Elias Vides, applied his brakes before hitting the truck that was going about 5 mph because of utility work being done in the area. The bus was traveling at freeway speed, officials said.
Vides was among those killed in the crash.
Records kept by the CHP show that USA Holiday had been deemed unsatisfactory on several levels in the past, though it had not received that rating since 2010, when an unnamed company driver received an "unsatisfactory" rating overall and in relation to "controlled substance and alcohol testing results," the records show.
An unsatisfactory rating could be a paperwork issue or a genuine safety concern, and because the CHP only retains records for four years, none of the original reports from 2010 and before on USA Holiday still exist, the agency said.
Vides' overall inspection record was not alarming, a top CHP safety manager told The Associated Press.
"This is not out of the norm. Commercial motor vehicle operation and the requirements that go along with that are complex and extensive," said Cullen Sisskind, manager of the CHP's motor carrier safety program.
USA Holiday had past problems but then appears to have self-corrected "and has had a very good record" over the past few years, Sisskind said.
From 2005 through 2008, the company received a cluster of unsatisfactory ratings for maintenance, equipment and issues involving a driver. In 2011, Vides was pulled over for going more than 80 mph in a 70 mph zone a few miles from the site where the crash occurred Sunday.
He was also cited for driving with a suspended license but the charge was dropped when Vides later produced a valid license, according to court records.
Vides, who is listed as the company's only driver in federal and state records, liked to joke with customers and playfully urged them during gambling excursions to casinos o save enough money for hamburgers, said Alba Martinez, a former customer. He told customers in Spanish as they returned to Los Angeles at sunrise from their weekend jaunts, "We've arrived at reality."
Martinez, 43, once asked Vides why he joked with his customers and he replied: "It's so they have some fun."
Martinez's friend, Dora Galvez de Rodriguez, was among the dead. On Tuesday, the CHP identified the 13th fatality — 50-year-old Tony Mai of Los Angeles.
Rosa Ruiz was returning from her second bus trip to a casino within a 24-hour period when she was killed in Sunday's early morning crash, her daughter said.
Jenny Ruiz said she last saw her mother on Friday evening before she boarded a bus for the Pala Casino, about 2 1/2 hours away in San Diego County. Before she left her apartment in Los Angeles for the evening, Ruiz turned to her daughter and asked as she often would "do I look pretty?"
"You look gorgeous," Jenny Ruiz said she told her. "You're the most beautiful person in the world."
A dozen people who had ridden with Vides gathered to share memories of those who had died and to leave candles, flowers and memories at a makeshift memorial on a street corner in Los Angeles where casino-bound passengers regularly boarded the bus with Vides.
Tony Arceo, 31, said he was lucky his parents were sitting in the back of the bus when it crashed on Sunday.
His mother, a candy factory worker, broke her jaw in three places after she was trapped beneath another passenger. His father, a retired car wash worker, was pinned between two seats.
"I'm glad they're alive," said Arceo, who brought a candle.
Elena Castillo, 68, said she began traveling with Vides in 2000 and recalled how the driver would chat with passengers sitting up front. She said he was friendly and took his work seriously. She remembered him offering her words of comfort when she was going through a divorce.
Blanca Lopez said she had gone to gamble at another Southern California casino on Friday night and was headed out again Saturday with Vides' group when her sister stopped her, saying she was only going to lose more money.
"I was going with my purse, and I just stayed, sitting on the couch," said Lopez, 70, a retired seamstress originally from El Salvador. "I would have died."
___
Associated Press writers Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles and Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report. Spagat reported from San Diego. ||||| Updates with name of 13th victim, Tony Mai
All 13 people who died in a Palm Springs-area bus crash Sunday have been identified by the Riverside County Coroner's Office.
They were killed when a tour bus crashed into a semi on Interstate 10 early Sunday. The bus was headed back to the Los Angeles area from Red Earth Casino in Thermal.
Those identified by the Coroner's Office are:
• Tony Mai, 50, of Los Angeles
• Zoila Aguilera, 72, of Los Angeles
• Conception Corvera, 57, of Palmdale
• Dora Galvez de Rodriguez, 69, of Los Angeles
• Ana Gomes de Magallon, 71, of Los Angeles
• Milagros Gonzales, 72, of Los Angeles
• Gustavo Green, 62, of Los Angeles
• Isabel Jimenez Hernandez, 66, of Los Angeles
• Yolanda Mendoza, 69, of Los Angeles
• Rosa Ruiz, 53, of Los Angeles
• Elvia Sanchez, 52, of Los Angeles
• Aracely Tije, 63, of Los Angeles
• Teodulo Vides, 59, of Los Angeles (who owned the bus company)
All of the victims died at the scene, on the freeway about two miles east of the Highway 62 exit, according to the coroner. The CHP said Sunday that most of them were in the front of the bus and most were asleep when the bus plowed into the back of the semi.
Another 31 people were injured, five of whom remained in intensive care Sunday evening.
This story is developing. Check back for updates. ||||| Authorities continue their investigation at scene of tour bus crash that killed at least eight people and injured 38 people. The bus, left, was carrying group from Tijuana, Mexico when it collided with two other vehicles just north of Yucaipa, Calif. on Feb. 3, 2013. / AP
Last Updated 11:25 a.m. ET
YUCAIPA, Calif. At least seven people were killed and 38 injured Sunday when a tour bus careened out of control while traveling down a Southern California mountain road, struck a car, flipped and plowed into a pickup truck, authorities said.
Calif. tour bus crash kills at least 8 Tour bus crashes in Calif.
The accident occurred around 6:30 p.m. about 80 miles east of Los Angeles and left State Route 38 littered with debris, the bus sideways across the two lanes and its front end crushed.
Authorities lowered the death count from 8 to 7 on Monday.
Emergency crews worked to free passengers who were trapped in the bus, which was returning to Tijuana, Mexico, California Highway Patrol spokesman Mario Lopez said.
A representative of the Mexican consulate was on-scene, reports CBS Los Angeles Station KCBS, citing the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).
The violence of the crash and severity of the injuries made for a chaotic scene, and authorities had a difficult time determining how many people were injured or killed. Lopez said at least seven and perhaps 10 were dead, and 38 transported to hospitals.
Caltrans spokeswoman Michelle Profant said the scene was shocking.
"It's really a mess up there with body parts," she said.
The bus driver survived and told investigators the bus suffered brake problems as it headed down the mountain, Lopez said. It rear-ended a sedan and flipped, then struck a pickup truck pulling a trailer.
Lettering on the bus indicated that it was operated by Scapadas Magicas LLC, a company based in National City, Calif. Federal transportation records show that the company is licensed to carry passengers for interstate travel and that it had no crashes in the past two years.
A call to the company was not immediately returned.
Jordi Garcia, a manager for InterBus Tours, said his company ran Sunday's trip. He told U-T San Diego that 38 people departed Tijuana at 5 a.m. for a day of skiing at Big Bear.
"The information that we have is that the bus' brakes failed and the accident occurred," he said.
Route 38 runs through the San Bernardino National Forest and leads to Big Bear. The accident occurred as the bus was headed south and leaving the forest.
Patients were taken to several area hospitals with injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday it was sending a team to the crash.
The California crash comes less than a day after a bus carrying 42 high school students and their chaperones slammed into an overpass in Boston. Massachusetts state police said 35 people were injured and that the driver had directed the bus onto a road with a height limit. | – If tour bus company owner-driver Teodulo Elias Vides hadn't been one of 13 people killed in a horrific crash on Interstate 10 near Palm Springs, Calif., on Sunday, authorities would probably have some tough questions for him. Authorities say half the tires on the bus he was driving, including both steer axle tires, were worn down to an unsafe level, which would have been enough for inspectors to take the bus out of service, the AP reports. The bus, which was on its way to Los Angeles from the Red Earth Casino in Salton Sea Beach, plowed into the back of a big rig and it's not clear whether Vides attempted to brake first. The full National Transportation Safety Board investigation could take up to a year. Vides, 59, had been sued twice for negligence over incidents involving his USA Holiday company, which is listed as having just one bus, the Los Angeles Times reports. In a 2007 incident, three people died when a USA Holiday bus hit a Honda Civic on a freeway in Riverside, Calif. The company also received at least six "unsatisfactory" ratings from the California Highway Patrol for issues including maintenance, and Vides had several traffic citations on his record. The victims, whose ages range from 50 to 72, were mostly seated near the front of the bus, reports the Press Enterprise. Another 31 people were injured. |
[SPOILER ALERT: Do not read until you have watched Sunday night’s episode of The Simpsons, titled “Clown in the Dumps.”]
Say a prayer — Jewish, preferably—for Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, who passed away Sunday night on the season premiere of The Simpsons. The stern, principled father of Krusty the Clown (voiced by Jackie Mason, who won an Emmy in 1992 for the role), expired while telling his down-and-out son who was in the throes of a comedy career crisis, “If you want to know my honest opinion of you, you’ve always been… eh.” The poignant father-child story, which prompted Lisa to fret that Homer would be next to go, ended a yearlong mystery over which character would meet his/her demise. EW spoke with Simpsons executive producer Al Jean about the good rabbi’s demise, what this means for Krusty moving forward, the hype around the event, and yes, that eerie, unsettling, trippy couch gag by Don Hertzfeldt, who wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated short film Rejected.
EW: Why was Rabbi Krustofsky marked for death?
AL JEAN: I was just trying to think of a story and I thought, “It would be a good father-son story if the rabbi passed away and the last thing he said to his son was, “I think you’re eh.” That the last word that Krusty heard from his dad was “eh,” and that he had to try to reconcile himself with that, and try to find an answer for this lifetime relationship. I thought we did it in a way that I hope is touching but is real and is just the little ways that people make peace with their past…. Then [last fall, journalists] were asking me on a phone conference what shows we had coming up and instead of just saying that, I thought it would be a little sneaky to say that the character had won an Emmy and the next thing I knew it was a huge, worldwide story. So from that point on, we tried to tease it as best as possible but as you can see, there’s really about three clues you can give. It’s pretty obvious. What’s funny is at the [Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour in July], we said, “Okay, we’ll make the title kind of easy and it should be really obvious,” so I said, “Clown in the Dumps.” And then there were people going, “(gasps) You’re killing Krusty???” And I was like, “What? In the dumps doesn’t mean you’re dead. It means you’re sad.” I thought it was so obvious. I would be nuts to kill Krusty. Everybody loves that character.
EW: What do you say to fans who might be disappointed that a bigger character didn’t die? Do you think the hype got away from you guys?
JEAN: No, for three reasons. For about six months, I’ve been saying this is overhyped. People said it’s an iconic character [who dies], but I never said it’s an iconic character. I never used those words.
EW: Right. You said “beloved.”
JEAN: He is beloved. Jackie Mason is wonderful. And he’s still with us. Secondly, we’re not the kind of show that does these really horrific things to its characters. Everybody loves these characters, and I would never kill Krusty. I thought I was never even implying that. But people misinterpreted “Clown in the Dumps,” and then once I was tied into this craziness, I said, “Okay, I guess we should go with it.” But the third thing is I think it just works as a sweet show, which is most important. It was something that would be a good exploration of the characters. I thought it’d be good to say, “This is what people think of heaven but it’s not exactly what you’re going to get—it’s more what you do on Earth that matters.”…. If you look back at the clues we gave, everything adds up, so I would find that satisfying. I wouldn’t feel like I was misled.
EW: Could Rabbi Krustofski still return in flashbacks or dream sequences?
JEAN: Sure. We told the actor that didn’t mean the end of his part in the show. He certainly could come back as a memory of Krusty.
EW: Are there plans for that?
JEAN: We haven’t recorded him yet, but it’s likely.
EW: How did Jackie take the news?
JEAN: Our casting director, Bonnie Pietila, deals with the guest cast, so she called him and said, “Well, we’re going to kill the character, but this doesn’t mean it’s the end of you being on the show.” He’s great, and actually he’s a real rabbi too. [Mason was ordained as a rabbi before quitting to become a comedian.] As a character, being a rabbi and exploring death is a good thing to do, and I think we dealt with different traditions of death… He was fine [with it.] He was happy to do it. He found out about it a week after it all broke. Julie Kavner [who voices Marge] came up to me because she didn’t know, and she said “Who’s going to die?” And I said, “It’s Krusty’s dad and the last thing he says is, ‘Krusty, you’re eh,’ and she says “That’s a good story!” She might have been afraid that we were killing Selma or something—she didn’t know.”
EW: Will we see a kinder, different Krusty in subsequent episodes?
JEAN: Actually, yes. That’s one of the few changes that we would make is that he would actually be a little bit more of a generous person. He is who he is because he thought his father had never given him the respect that he wanted and actually [his father] did, so I think Krusty will be a little more confident and a little more generous.
EW: The opening couch gag? That was so crazy. My mind melted.
JEAN: That was all Don. And it turns out that it looks a little bit like a reference to the FXX marathon, which I thought was cool. It’s definitely the most insane one we’ve ever done. And it’s got so many layers. I give him all the credit. What an amazing thing to start the show off with.
EW: Did you just say to him, “Go nuts and do whatever you want”?
JEAN: We had seen his work. He was recommended to us by our director Mike Anderson and he did that Oscar-nominated short Rejected. We knew this was the kind of thing he would do. He said he wanted to do the Simpsons in the deep, deep future, so we had an inkling, but it was even crazier than we thought, which I thought was great. That guy’s really brilliant. I hope this exposes a lot of people to his work. ||||| As promised, The Simpsons‘ 26th season premiere saw the highly anticipated demise of a “beloved” Springfield resident on Sunday.
So now, we gather here to mourn the loss of Krusty’s father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky (voiced by the great Jackie Mason), who’s been a part of the Simpsons universe since reuniting with his estranged, red-nosed son in 1991.
RELATED Family Guy Meets The Simpsons: 14 Photos From the Crossover Episode
Let’s begin with what I’m sure is the first question on all of your minds: Why Krusty’s dad?
“I just thought it would be a good story about someone who’s had a tough relationship with his father — having Krusty’s father die without him ever getting that warmth or connection he really wanted, then finally finding it in a surprising way,” executive producer Al Jean explains to TVLine. “If we could get a sweet moment out of that, that’s all we wanted. We didn’t want a crazy death, or anything shocking, just true human emotion.”
And even though The Simpsons doesn’t serialize things too often, Jean acknowledges that Krusty’s father’s death is likely to have an impact on the character moving forward.
“One of the reasons Krusty’s been such a loose cannon is because his father disapproved of him, and he never felt like he got that sort of love that he wanted,” Jean says. “He might have a little more confidence now that he has that. … A little more.”
RELATED The Simpsons EP on Season Premiere Death: ‘It’s An Emotional Story’
But fear not; despite this highly publicized death, Jean says the show is not going to go on a stunt-killing spree. In fact, as long as The Simpsons team is putting yellow pen to paper, your favorites are safe.
“We’re never going to kill off Homer, or even Krusty,” he admits. “This show is always running in syndication, and we don’t want you to feel bad every time you see an old character that you loved. … Totally inadvertently, and very sadly, now whenever I see Mrs. Krabapel [her portrayer, Marcia Wallace, passed away in 2013], I’m always a little sad, where I never was before.”
So… Were you surprised by the season premiere’s big death, or did you already guess the victim? Grade the episode below, then drop a comment with more of your thoughts.
– ||||| It should come as no surprise that the much-ballyhooed decision to kill off an important character in Springfield on the first episode of the 26th season turned out to be a lame play for attention by a show desperate to stay relevant. Because the person who died was not Homer, Sideshow Bob, Grandpa or Krusty the Clown as some had guessed but … Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky. Who?
It’s Krusty’s father, voiced by comedian Jackie Mason. You may or may not remember him, since he made nine, mostly minor, appearances on the show. Only four of those were voiced by Mason and only one of which was in the show’s golden era in the ’90s.
His death isn’t exactly an “Itchy and Scratchy” bloodbath, either: After Krusty suffers through a brutal Comedy Central-style roast (featuring real-life roasters Jeff Ross and Sarah Silverman), he visits his father to get parental approval for his comedy. After telling Krusty he finds his humor very “eh,” the rabbi dies, sitting at his desk.
And, boom, that’s it, he’s off to yellow heaven with Bleeding Gums Murphy and Maude Flanders.
The episode tries desperately to milk this moment for some kind of emotional resonance with viewers, but the pathos udders are painfully dry. After the rabbi’s death, Lisa becomes fraught with paranoia that her own father, with his non-stop donut and Duff consumption, is in danger of dying.
But instead of pulling out a humorously poignant moment (remember when Homer’s mother had to run away in Season 7?), the writers went slapstick, having her encase Homer in bubblewrap in case he should get hit by a bus or something.
Krusty spends most of the episode trying to reconcile with his father’s disappointment, and the climax — where Krusty discovers a rabbi his father admired maybe stole some of Krusty’s lame jokes, I guess? — leaves you feeling kind of “eh” yourself.
It does lead to one of the episode’s actual funny moments, when he hallucinates Jewish heaven, with a Joe Lieberman presidential library and “free egg cream” day at Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants are still playing. But compare this to the mortality gut check that Lisa got when Bleeding Gums Murphy died in Season 6, and Krustofsky’s death seems like a pointless plea for attention.
The show’s writers opened with an oh-we’re-so-clever moment by having Bart write on the chalkboard “Spoiler alert: unfortunately my dad doesn’t die.” Then it goes into a couch gag scene by Oscar-nominated artist Don Hertzfeldt that is both overly long and perhaps one of the strangest in the show’s history, reimagining the Simpson family as distorted microbial blobs from the future.
Kelsey Grammer makes a brief cameo as the murderous Sideshow Bob, but strangely, David Hyde Pierce, Grammer’s co-star from “Frasier” who played Sideshow Bob’s brother in a classic episode from Season 7, also appears, though he’s playing himself.
No one expects much of a creativity payoff from this long-running sitcom, but even the 1999 death of Maude Flanders — a frequent but largely unremarkable presence on the show — felt like it was worth the build-up, as we watched Ned Flanders deal with life when it’s not so okely dokely.
So next time “The Simpsons” tries to get your attention by killing off a major character, you can simply shake your head and say, “Eh.” ||||| The major character dying on "The Simpsons" may have been revealed, and we're not clowning around.
Fans have been speculating for months on what character would be killed off in the Seasons 26 premiere of "The Simpsons," and now it appears that Krusty the Clown is set for his final act.
The show's executive producer Al Jean caused a frenzy when he announced the first episode in the new season of the show would be called "Clown in the Dumps." Jean has also said that the actor who voices the soon-to-be-departed character has won an Emmy for his/her work, something that the voice of Krusty, Dan Castellaneta, has done.
Even with the strong evidence that Krusty will take his final bow, Jean still chose to play coy, saying, "I didn’t say I was killing Krusty ... I didn't say I wasn't," during the Television Critics Association press tour, according to Mashable.
With that, some of the other characters that are still on the chopping block include: Krusty's dad Rabbi Hyman Krustofski (Jackie Mason), Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer), Bart (Nancy Cartwright), Marge (Julie Kavner), Lisa (Yeardley Smith) and the many characters voiced by Hank Azaria.
So whether or not Krusty dies in the end, it appears that Jean will have the last laugh. | – Fans of The Simpsons who thought they'd be yelling "Doh!" last night were ranting "Dud!" this morning. Viewers had been warned for months that what was rumored to be a major character would be killed off during the premiere of the show's 26th season last night, the Los Angeles Times reports. There was a character who kicked the cartoon bucket, but it wasn't exactly a major one: It was Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, Krusty the Clown's dad, voiced by comedian Jackie Mason, a character that only appeared in "a handful" of episodes, the Times notes. Reaction to the "Clown in the Dumps" episode ranged from mild, NPR-style disappointment to outright irritation: Tim Donnelly writes in the New York Post that the death (and preceding teasers) were "a lame play for attention by a show desperate to stay relevant." One Twitter user quoted in the Times complained, "Krusty's dad died... Um, Krusty had a Dad? Never heard of him. Wasted anticipation." Producer Al Jean insists he has always said the untimely death was "overhyped" and that he never promised it would be one of the more-popular characters. "I never said it’s an iconic character—I never used those words," he tells Entertainment Weekly. In fact, he assures fans that favorites will never be purposely annihilated before series' end. "We're never going to kill off Homer, or even Krusty," he tells TVLine. "This show is always running in syndication, and we don't want you to feel bad every time you see an old character that you loved." |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration formally notified Congress on Wednesday of a $1.83-billion arms sale package for Taiwan, including two frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles and other equipment, drawing an angry response from China.
AAV-P7A1 amphibious assault vehicles of the Taiwan Marine Corps are seen as part of a parade during Taiwan's National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei October 10, 2011. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang
The authorization, which Reuters on Monday reported was imminent, came a year after Congress passed legislation approving the sale. It is the first such major arms sale to Taiwan in more than four years.
The White House said there was no change in the longstanding U.S. “one China” policy. Past U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan have attracted strong condemnation in China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province.
The White House said the authorization followed previous sales notifications by the administration totaling more than $12 billion under the Taiwan Relations Act.
“Our longstanding policy on arms sales to Taiwan has been consistent across six different U.S. administrations,” a National Security Council spokesman, Myles Caggins, said. “We remain committed to our one-China policy,” he added.
Although Washington does not recognize Taiwan as a separate state from China, it is committed under the Taiwan Relations Act to ensuring Taipei can maintain a credible defense.
The sales come at a period of heightened tension between the United States and China over the South China Sea, where Washington has been critical of China’s building of man-made islands to assert expansive territorial claims.
China summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Beijing, Kaye Lee, to protest and said it would impose sanctions on the companies involved, state news agency Xinhua reported.
“Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory. China strongly opposes the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan,” Xinhua quoted Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang, who summoned Lee, as saying.
Zheng said the sales went against international law and basic norms of international relations and “severely” harmed China’s sovereignty and security.
“To safeguard our national interests, China has decided to take necessary measures, including imposing sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sale,” Zheng said.
The U.S. State Department said Raytheon (RTN.N) and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) were the main contractors in the sales.
Related Coverage China says no cooperation with U.S. firms selling Taiwan arms
It was not clear what impact sanctions might have on the companies, although in 2013, Lockheed Martin signed a pact with the Thailand-based Reignwood Group to build an offshore plant to supply energy for a luxury resort on Hainan island in southern China.
“U.S. companies participating in arms sales to Taiwan gravely harm China’s sovereignty and security interests,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
“China’s government and companies will not carry out cooperation and commercial dealings with these types of companies.”
However, previous Chinese sanction threats have not been followed up by Beijing.
China’s Defense Ministry said the sale would also inevitably affect military-to-military ties, but did not elaborate.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said the new weapons would be phased in over a number of years and would enable Taiwan to maintain and develop a credible defense.
U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the decision was based solely on Taiwan’s defense needs.
“The Chinese can react to this as they see fit,” he said. “This is nothing new. ... There’s no need for it to have any derogatory effect on our relationship with China.”
Kirby said Washington wanted to work to establish a “better, more transparent more effective relationship” with China in the region and had been in contact with both Taiwan and China on this on Wednesday. He declined to elaborate.
David McKeeby, another State Department spokesman, said the arms package included two Perry-class guided-missile frigates; $57 million of Javelin anti-tank missiles made by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin; $268 million of TOW 2B anti-tank missiles and $217 million of Stinger surface-to-air missiles made by Raytheon, and $375 million of AAV-7 Amphibious Assault Vehicles.
The State Department said the frigates were being offered as surplus items at a cost of $190 million. The package also includes $416 million of guns, upgrade kits, ammunition and support for Raytheon’s Close-in Weapons System.
Analysts and congressional sources believe the delay in the formal approval of the sales was due to the Obama administration’s desire to maintain stable working relations with China, an increasingly powerful strategic rival but also a vital economic partner as the world’s second-largest economy.
U.S. Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday they were pleased the administration had authorized the sale but called for a more regular process for such transactions.
John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this would “avoid extended periods in which fear of upsetting the U.S.-China relationship may harm Taiwan’s defense capabilities.” ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration announced a $1.83 billion arms sale to Taiwan on Wednesday, drawing an immediate rebuke and threats of retaliation from Taipei's rival Beijing.
FILE - IN this Sept. 10, 2015 file photo, Taiwan's military fire artillery from self-propelled Howitzers during the annual Han Kuang exercises in Hsinchu, north eastern Taiwan. China on Wednesday, Dec.... (Associated Press)
The arms package is the first offered by the U.S. to the self-governing island in four years. Even before its announcement, Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory, demanded it be scrapped to avoid harming relations across the Taiwan Strait and between China and the U.S.
That was followed by a formal diplomatic protest late Wednesday, although at a lower level than in previous such instances.
"China resolutely opposes the sale of weapons to Taiwan by the U.S.," Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang said in a meeting with Washington's second-highest ranking diplomat in Beijing.
"In order to safeguard the nation's interests, the Chinese side has decided to take necessary measures, including the imposition of sanctions against companies participating in the arms sale to Taiwan," Zheng said, according to a statement posted on the ministry's website.
Such sanctions have been threatened in the past, although there's no evidence they've had any meaningful effect. American and European Union companies are banned from selling military technology to China, and Chinese companies have extensive links with major overseas firms that often have weapon-making divisions.
A U.S. Embassy spokesman, speaking on routine condition of anonymity, declined to comment on the meeting, saying, "we don't get into the content of our diplomatic discussions."
The U.S. maintained there's no need for it to hurt the relationship, which has also been strained by China's island-building in the South China Sea and alleged cybertheft.
The administration notified Congress that the proposed arms package includes two decommissioned U.S. Navy frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles. There's also support for Taiwan's capabilities in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and a weapons system to defend against anti-ship missiles.
Congress has 30 days to review the sale, but it's unlikely to raise objections. There's been mounting bipartisan concern that Taiwan is inadequately armed to defend itself against an increasingly powerful mainland China.
U.S. lawmakers welcomed the announcement. There were calls from both parties for more frequent arms sales to Taiwan.
New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the sale would contribute to peace and stability across the strait. "I wish we would see them on a regular basis," he said.
The committee's Republican chairman, California Rep. Ed Royce, said the administration had "needlessly dragged out" the approval process, and that other Taiwanese requests "have still not seen the light of day."
Sen. John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. should avoid extended periods during which "fear of upsetting the U.S.-China relationship may harm Taiwan's defense capabilities."
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry cheered the announcement as a sign of healthy ties between Taipei and Washington and rejected claims it would harm relations with Beijing.
The sale will "help maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and increase our confidence as we engage in dialogue and improves relations across the Taiwan Strait," the ministry said in a statement.
"It also highlights the fact that U.S.-Taiwan relations are indeed at their best ever," the statement said.
However, a pro-Taiwan business group in the U.S. lamented the amount of time taken to process the sale and questioned whether it was adequate in the face of China's rapid military advancements.
"While China has deployed new fighters, submarines, and missiles during the last four years, the U.S. has consistently refused to consider providing Taiwan access to similar platforms, or even aiding their indigenous development," Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, said in a statement.
The administration has announced more than $12 billion in arms sales to Taiwan since 2010, but none since $5.9 billion in sales in September 2011 that included upgrades for Taiwan's F-16 fighter jets. That drew a high-level diplomatic protest from Beijing, which suspended some military exchanges with the United States. It did not seriously impair ties.
In the meantime, President Barack Obama has sought greater cooperation with China on issues such as climate change, and the two sides have increased military exchanges to reduce the risk of conflict.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. was in contact with both Taiwan and China about the sale, which he said was consistent with U.S. support for Taiwan's ability to defend itself under the Taiwan Relations Act.
"There's no need for it to have any derogatory effect on our relationship with China," Kirby told reporters. "We still want to work to establish a better, more transparent, more effective relationship with China in the region and we're going to continue to work at that."
Relations across the Taiwan Strait have undergone a steady improvement over the past two decades, especially under the China-friendly administration of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou.
___
Bodeen reported from Beijing. ||||| The decision by the United States to sell arms to Taiwan was “wrong” and violated a consensus reached when Chinese President Xi Jinping met US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in April, Beijing told Washington.
The announcement of the US$1.4 billion deal comes a week ahead of Xi’s planned meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
China’s ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai, told reporters that China firmly opposed the deal.
“We have expressed firm opposition to the US and we will reserve our right to take further action,” Cui told reporters at an event in Washington to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China.
A statement issued later by the Chinese embassy in Washington DC criticised the move as a breach of the consensus reached between the two leaders ar their first ever meeting.
“The wrong move of the US side runs counter to the consensus reached by the two presidents in Mar-a-Lago and the positive development momentum of the China-US relationship,” its said.
The arms sales package was announced by a US State Department spokeswoman on Thursday.
It comprises seven items, including technical support for early warning radar, anti-radiation missiles, torpedoes and components for SM-2 missiles, Associated Press reported.
The US Congress had been notified of the sale, State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, told a daily press briefing.
A US State Department official added in an email: “Today’s notifications are consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act and our support for Taiwan’s ability to maintain a sufficient self-defence capability.
“There is no change to our longstanding ‘one-China’ policy based on the Three Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act.”
The announcement came a day after the US Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bill that would allow regular stops by US naval vessels at Taiwan’s ports as part of an annual defence policy measure.
China responded to the bill with anger. “We are strongly concerned about and firmly opposed to the bill approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Lu Kang, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Thursday.
“The Taiwan question bears on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and belongs to China’s domestic affairs,” Lu said. “We urge the US to honour its commitment on the Taiwan question, immediately stop military contact and arms sales to Taiwan and avoid causing damage to the bilateral relationship and bilateral cooperation in a broader range of areas.”
Taiwan soothed by US arms sales support after Panama picks Beijing over Taipei
China’s Defence Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Wu Qian also condemned the move.
“We are always firmly opposed to any form of official contact and military interaction between Taiwan and the US.
“We urge the American side to abide by its commitment to the Chinese side with regard to the Taiwan issue and stop military contacts with Taiwan, so as not to cause damage to the relations between the two militaries and the two countries as well as to the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Wu said in a press briefing.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway Chinese province and tries to deter all countries from having formal ties with the island. US defence ties with Taiwan are a particularly sensitive issue.
Trump’s meeting with Xi at the G20 will be their second since the US president took office in January. The two met for a summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in April, which set the course for a series of high-level dialogues.
The Taiwan Relations Act, which guarantees US support for the self-governing island’s defence capacity, was signed in 1979, shortly after the US switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Expedite Taiwan arms sales, US House committee urges Trump administration
“We are always aware that there are some negative things in our relationship”, Ambassador Cui said in Washington. “Our job is to make sure the positive development will be overwhelming, and we will continue to try the best to keep the relations on the right track.”
The last round of US arms sales to Taiwan was approved by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama in 2015. The US sold about US$1.8 billion worth of equipment to Taiwan in that round, including frigates, missiles and amphibious assault vehicles, according to the Federal Register, a US government publication.
Every US president has approved arms sales to Taiwan since the Taiwan Act became law, starting with Jimmy Carter in his last year in office. ||||| (CNN) The US' decision to go ahead with the sale of a $1.4 billion arms package to Taiwan threatens to undermine US-Chinese relations, China's ambassador to Washington said.
Speaking to the People's Daily newspaper Thursday, Ambassador Cui Tiankai said recent US moves eroded the trust built when US President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida in April.
"US arms sales to Taiwan and the sanctions against Chinese enterprises have damaged the basis and mutual trust between the two countries, it also contradicts the spirit and consensus of the two leaders' meeting in Mar A Lago," said Cui.
A statement released by the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that the sale of arms to Taiwan "grossly interferes" in China's domestic affairs. "The Chinese side has lodged serious representation to the US side, and reserves every right to take further action," read the statement.
On Thursday, the Trump administration notified Congress of its plans to go ahead with the controversial arms package, the first such sale under President Trump.
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said the agreement included "seven proposed defense sales for Taiwan," adding that the deal was valued at "about $1.42 billion."
A US official familiar with the deal told CNN that the package would include advanced missiles and torpedoes including the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon and MK 48 6AT Heavy Weight Torpedoes.
It will also include technical support for an early warning radar system.
The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, signaled strong support for the sale, calling it "long overdue" in a statement issued shortly after its announcement.
Congress has 30 days to raise any objections to the deal.
The announcement of the arms sale comes the same day the US Treasury Department announced a series of sanctions and measures that would among other things, sever US financial ties with China's Bank of Dandong, which the administration claims acts as a pipeline to support alleged illicit North Korean financial activity.
Both announcements came during Trump's meeting with South Korea's new president Moon Jae-in at the White House. Both leaders are anxious to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile program.
US relations with China
The unexpected timing of the deal -- which comes while Chinese President Xi is in Hong Kong commemorating the 20th anniversary of the city's return to China -- surprised many analysts. Zhang Baohui, professor of political science at Lingnan University, said until this week many high-profile Taiwanese had believed the US was moving away from them.
"(This arms deal) didn't go through for a while and some people suspected it was due to Trump's so-called reliance on China to resolve the North Korea issue ... so I think this arms sale could boost confidence (in US)," he said.
China considers self-governing democratic Taiwan a renegade province and Beijing has not ruled out using military force to bring Taiwan under its rule.
The US does not recognize Taiwan -- officially known as the Republic of China -- as an independent country, and adheres to the "one China" policy, which means it does not maintain an official relationship with Taiwan.
Nauert added that there was no change to the "one China" policy.
"Today's notifications are consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, and our support for Taiwan's ability to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability," a US official familiar with the sale told CNN.
Under the Taiwan Relations Act the US is legally required to provide Taiwan with the ability to defend itself.
JUST WATCHED Trump makes call to Taiwan's President Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Trump makes call to Taiwan's President 01:24
In a move that seemed to portend a shift in US policy, President-elect Trump spoke to Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-Wen i n a phone call in December , upending decades of diplomatic protocol.
However, the Trump administration has since said that it remains committed to the decades-long "one China" policy.
China has long criticized US arms sales to Taiwan.
Taiwan's Ministry of Defense said in a statement Friday morning they were "sincerely grateful" for the US decision to go ahead with the arms deal.
"The arms sale was proposed by our country last year. The package includes eight types of equipment and system, which will boost our combat capabilities in air and sea," the statement said.
The State Department also issued a statement marking the 20th anniversary of the transfer of Hong Kong from the UK to China, saying the US was "concerned about any infringements on civil liberties" in Hong Kong.
It is unknown how the announcements will impact on Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the meeting of the G20 next month. | – The US stands by the "one-China" policy, but that doesn't mean it can't sell weapons directly to Taiwan, citing ithe Taiwan Relations Act to ensure Taiwan can adequately defend itself—and China isn't happy about it. The Obama administration announced a $1.8 billion arms package sale to Congress on Wednesday, Reuters reports, including guided-missile frigates, anti-tank missiles, Amphibious Assault Vehicles, and $416 million worth of guns, ammo, and other supplies. The announcement came amid reports that the US had stalled the sale to avoid hearing about it from China, which still claims Taiwan as a territory, per the Wall Street Journal. Reuters notes the sale comes as US-China relations simmer over the latter's man-made islands in the South China Sea and US patrols in those waters. China notes it's going to sanction the companies involved in the sale (including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon), with a foreign ministry official telling Xinhua that the sale flouts international rules and "severely" damages China's sovereignty. "China's government and companies will not carry out cooperation and commercial dealings with these types of companies," a ministry spokesman says. A Pentagon spokesman gave the equivalent of an eyeroll Wednesday, per the New York Times, noting, "The Chinese can react to this as they see fit. … It's a [clear-eyed], sober view of an assessment of Taiwan's defense needs. … There's no need for it to have any derogatory effect on our relationship with China." Meanwhile, the AP notes that China has issued similar threats before, with "no evidence they've had any meaningful effect." (All this despite a lengthy handshake last month.) |
CENTENNIAL — Prosecutors in the Aurora theater shooting case say they are "extremely unlikely" to accept an offer from suspect James Holmes to plead guilty unless they hear more details from him.
In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors write that after Holmes offered to plead guilty, they asked him and his attorneys to provide "specific access to information that would allow them to fully assess the Defendant and his alleged acts for purposes of determining a just outcome to this case." They say Holmes and his attorneys have repeatedly denied access to that information.
Because of that, prosecutors say Holmes' offer — which his attorneys disclosed in a court filing Wednesday — is not acceptable.
"There is not — and has never been — an actual or unqualified 'offer' to plead guilty," they write in the Thursday filing.
Significantly, the prosecution's filing was signed by 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler and not one of the deputy district attorneys more directly involved in the case.
In the Wednesday court filing, Holmes' attorneys said Holmes has offered to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence in prison without parole. His attorneys wrote that the only thing preventing the case from concluding as early as Monday — the date of the next scheduled hearing — is if prosecutors decide to press ahead seeking the death penalty.
Advertisement
"Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved," Holmes' lawyers wrote in their motion.
Holmes' attorneys wrote that they would likely file numerous pretrial motions if the case goes forward and that they may present a mental-health defense at trial.
In the lengthy response filed Thursday, Brauchler angrily denied Holmes' characterization of the plea offer and suggested that Holmes' attorneys are not acting in good faith by disclosing the offer in a public court filing. Brauchler called the defense filing "unusual and unprecedented" in revealing plea negotiations to the judge and suggested Wednesday's motion was a publicity ploy that violates the case's gag order. Holmes' lawyers had "no legitimate reason" to disclose the offer in court papers, Brauchler wrote.
Brauchler also disputed arguments by Holmes' lawyers that the case would require many months of hearings before even getting to trial. And Brauchler took issue with apparent comments made by the head of the state Public Defender's office that were paraphrased in an Associated Press article Wednesday. That, too, he said, violated the gag order.
"The misrepresentation — now published by media outlets throughout the world — appears to be an attempt to deliberately prejudice the public, witnesses and victims against the People," Brauchler wrote in his filing. "The People believe that this needs to be corrected."
In recompense, prosecutors are asking that the judge deny a separate defense motion for sanctions against the prosecution — one that alleges law enforcement officials broke the gag order and leaked information to Fox News. That motion has dragged in the Fox News reporter who wrote the story, and she has been subpoenaed to turn over her notes and testify during Monday's hearing about her sources.
The Fox News reporter, Jana Winter, has fought the subpoena, and the prosecution's request on Thursday has offered her an unexpected lifeline.
The two court filings this week forecast a dramatic showdown during Monday morning's hearing, when Brauchler said he will announce if he will seek the death penalty against Holmes.
The revelation of Holmes' plea offer — and Brauchler's furious response to that revelation — adds new complications to the death-penalty decision. Brauchler and his staff have been talking with victims of the theater shooting to gauge their feelings about pursuing execution for Holmes. Victims have expressed mixed feelings .
Holmes is charged with killing 12 people and injuring 58 others with gunfire during the July 20 attacks at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater.
John Ingold: [email protected], 303-954-1068 or twitter.com/john_ingold ||||| The fate of the man who allegedly fired into a crowded Aurora movie theater depends mostly on this question: Was it the act of a madman living in his own reality or that of a calculating, cold-blooded killer?
Prosecutors likely will seek the death penalty for James Eagan Holmes, 24, who is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie Friday, numerous lawyers said Sunday. And, they said, his attorneys are almost sure to pursue an insanity defense.
"You just have to imagine that there is something in his psychiatric makeup that will be exploited by his defense team," said former Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant. "I don't know what the hell else they are going to say."
Defense attorneys typically use misidentification — the "it-wasn't-me" defense — or claim a murder was justified in self-defense.
"Neither of those is going to be available, to put it mildly," said Peter Hedeen, who represented Colorado death- row inmate Robert Ray.
It could take six months or more before the Arapahoe County district attorney's office announces a decision on whether to seek death for Holmes, accused of one of the most horrific mass killings in U.S. history.
"If in fact he is sane, it's a hopeless case for the defense," said Scott Robinson, a Denver legal analyst. "They caught him literally gunpowder-handed with his weapons, with his tactical gear. They clearly have the right man."
Advertisement
The public defenders assigned to Holmes' case — Daniel King and Tamara Brady — are expected to seek a competency evaluation to determine whether Holmes is capable of assisting his defense team. If not, a judge could send him to the state mental hospital in Pueblo.
If he is competent to stand trial, Holmes' lawyers will file a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity at his arraignment, experts predicted.
"There are some crimes, the nature of which just scream out 'crazy.' This is one of those cases," said lawyer David Lane, who has represented 25 people charged with death-penalty offenses.
Lane said that based on news reports of Holmes' behavior, intelligence, age and lack of a criminal record, his defense lawyers might construct a case that he has schizophrenia, a mental illness that makes it hard to tell what is real.
"This looks like the guy is crazy," Lane said. "If you are seriously mentally ill, the death penalty is not going to be on the table."
Insane, by the legal definition, means lacking the ability to know right from wrong at the time of the crime. It's not related to intelligence. It's not the same as evil, experts cautioned.
Holmes, a neuroscience student, allegedly planned the massacre for months, amassing ammunition and weapons and booby-trapping his apartment, but it's possible his mind resided in his own version of reality, legal experts said.
"Maybe he believed he was Batman," said Phil Cherner, a longtime Denver criminal-defense attorney who represents death-row inmate Nathan Dunlap, convicted of killing four people at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in 1993.
"Do they have a case against a defendant who is mentally ill, or is this a cold-blooded killer?" Cherner asked.
The fact Holmes surrendered to officers without incident outside the movie theater makes it seem "he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing," Cherner said, calling the idea just a "hunch."
Holmes' lawyers will try as hard as they can to keep the case from going to trial, pursuing instead a plea deal that would ensure he spends life in prison, said Denver defense attorney Dan Recht. But for prosecutors to consider such a deal, defense attorneys would need evidence of mental illness or serious emotional damage in Holmes' past, such as a claim he was tortured as a child.
"It will be very difficult to persuade a jury that he is insane, because a jury will understand that's a way of him escaping full responsibility," Recht said. "The prosecution will be aware of that and will think that increases their odds significantly of getting a death penalty."
If the state seeks death, Holmes' sentencing is two to four years away, attorneys said.
Regardless of any possible mental-health claims, the political pressure to seek an execution will be massive, experts said.
"If you don't pursue the death penalty in this case, you may as well throw away the statute," said Craig Silverman, former Denver County chief deputy district attorney.
Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, [email protected] or twitter.com/jbrowndpost | – Prosecutors have all but nixed James Holmes' reported offer of a guilty plea to dodge the death penalty. They're "extremely unlikely" to accept the proposal without "specific access to information" on Holmes that, so far, his team has refused to provide, they say, per the Denver Post. What's more, "there is not—and has never been—an actual or unqualified 'offer' to plead guilty," prosecutors wrote in an angry filing yesterday accusing Holmes' team of a misleading publicity stunt. The prosecutors' filing, signed by district attorney George Brauchler himself rather than a deputy, also took issue with defense suggestions about a lengthy series of pretrial hearings, among other concerns. Brauchler accused the defense of "an attempt to deliberately prejudice the public, witnesses, and victims against the People." Meanwhile, he called on the judge to reject a defense motion calling for action against the prosecution for allegedly leaking information to the press. Brauchler is poised to announce whether he'll seek the death penalty on Monday. |
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis, starting Holy Week services leading to Easter, urged young people on Sunday to keep shouting and not allow the older generations to silence their voices or anesthetize their idealism.
Pope Francis blesses faithful gathered to attend the Palm Sunday Mass in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, March 25, 2018 REUTERS/Tony Gentile
Francis spoke a day after hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month’s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States to demand tighter gun laws.
He did not mention the demonstrations. Catholic News Service (CNS) said Gabriella Zuniga, 16, and her sister Valentina, 15, both students from Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, where 17 people were killed in February, attended the service with their parents.
CNS posted a photo of the two holding up signs in St. Peter’s Square, with one reading, “Protect Our Children, Not Our Guns.”
The 81-year-old Francis led a long and solemn Palm Sunday service before tens of thousands in the square, many of them young people there for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Youth.
Pope Francis holds palm as he leads the Palm Sunday Mass in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, March 25, 2018 REUTERS/Tony Gentile
Carrying a woven palm branch known as a “palmurello,” Francis led a procession in front of the largest church in Christendom to commemorate the day the Bible says Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was hailed as a savior, only to be crucified five days later.
“YOU HAVE IT IN YOU TO SHOUT”
Drawing on biblical parallels, Francis urged the young people in the crowd not to let themselves be manipulated.
“The temptation to silence young people has always existed,” Francis said in the homily of a Mass.
“There are many ways to silence young people and make them invisible. Many ways to anesthetize them, to make them keep quiet, ask nothing, question nothing. There are many ways to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive,” he said.
“Dear young people, you have it in you to shout,” he told young people, urging them to be like the people who welcomed Jesus with palms rather than those who shouted for his crucifixion only days later.
Slideshow (10 Images)
“It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: Will you cry out?”
The young people in the crowd shouted, “Yes!”
While Francis did not mention Saturday’s marches in the United States, he has often condemned weapons manufacturing and mass shootings.
Palm Sunday marked the start of a hectic week of activities for the pope.
On Holy Thursday he is due to preside at two services, including one in which he will wash the feet of 12 inmates in a Rome jail to commemorate Jesus’ gesture of humility toward his apostles the night before he died.
On Good Friday, he is due to lead a Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession at Rome’s Colosseum. On Saturday night he leads a Easter vigil service and on Easter Sunday he delivers his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message. ||||| A view of St. Peter's Square filled with faithful as Pope Francis celebrates a Palm Sunday Mass, at the Vatican, Sunday, March 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) (Associated Press)
A view of St. Peter's Square filled with faithful as Pope Francis celebrates a Palm Sunday Mass, at the Vatican, Sunday, March 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) (Associated Press)
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday urged young people not to be silent and let their voices be heard during Palm Sunday celebrations.
The pope's message comes on the heels of a meeting of young Catholics who told the Vatican they want a more transparent and authentic church, and a day after tens of thousands of young people marched in the United States with others to demand greater gun control.
Francis said "the temptation to silence young people has always existed," and cited the many ways to keep them quiet, "to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive. "
But he told youths "you have it in you to shout" even if "we older people and leaders, very often corrupt, keep quiet." | – A day after hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets to call for gun control, an old man used his bully pulpit to urge them to keep shouting, reports Reuters. Speaking at his Palm Sunday Mass, 81-year-old Pope Francis warned that "the temptation to silence young people has always existed," along with ways "to sedate them, to keep them from getting involved, to make their dreams flat and dreary, petty and plaintive." But, reports the AP, he told young people that "It is up to you not to keep quiet. Even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders, some corrupt, keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy, I ask you: Will you cry out?" The response from the crowd: "Yes!" |
DENVER, March 24, 2015 -- Chocolate has many health benefits -- it can potentially lower blood pressure and cholesterol and reduce stroke risk. But just as connoisseurs thought it couldn't get any better, there's this tasty new tidbit: Researchers have found a way to make the treat even more nutritious -- and sweeter.
They will describe their research here today at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features nearly 11,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held here through Thursday.
Cocoa undergoes several steps before it takes shape as a candy bar. Workers cut down pods from cocoa trees, then split open the pods to remove the white or purple cocoa beans. They are fermented in banana-lined baskets for a few days and then set out to dry in the sun. Roasting, the next step, brings out the flavor. But some of the healthful polyphenols (antioxidants) are lost during the roasting process, so the researchers wanted to figure out a way to retain as much of the polyphenols and good flavors as possible.
"We decided to add a pod-storage step before the beans were even fermented to see whether that would have an effect on the polyphenol content," says Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, Ph.D., who is at the University of Ghana. "This is not traditionally done, and this is what makes our research fundamentally different. It's also not known how roasting affects polyphenol content."
Afoakwa's team divided 300 pods into four groups that were either not stored at all or stored for three, seven or 10 days before processing. This technique is called "pulp preconditioning." After each storage period passed, fermentation and drying were done as usual. He reports that the seven-day storage resulted in the highest antioxidant activity after roasting.
To assess the effects of roasting, the researchers took samples from each of the storage groups and roasted them at the same temperature for different times. The current process is to roast the beans for 10-20 minutes at 248-266 degrees Fahrenheit, he explains. Afoakwa's team adjusted this to 45 minutes at 242 degrees Fahrenheit and discovered that this slower roasting at a lower temperature increased the antioxidant activity compared to beans roasted with the conventional method.
In addition, the beans that were stored and then roasted for 45 minutes had more polyphenols and higher antioxidant activity than beans whose pods were not stored prior to fermentation, says Afoakwa. He explains that pulp preconditioning likely allowed the sweet pulp surrounding the beans inside the pod to alter the biochemical and physical constituents of the beans before the fermentation. "This aided the fermentation processes and enhanced antioxidant capacity of the beans, as well as the flavor," he says. He adds that the new technique would be particularly useful for countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America where cocoa beans produce a chocolate with a less intense chocolate flavor and have reduced antioxidant activity.
Looking to the future, he says the team will be studying in more detail the effects of roasting on the flavor of freshly picked compared to stored cocoa beans. They will be testing different temperatures and roasting and storing times to determine if even higher amounts of antioxidants can be retained through the process.
The researchers acknowledge funding from the Belgium Government under the VLIR TEAM Cocoa Project between Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, and the University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, March 24, at 11 a.m. Mountain time in the Colorado Convention Center. Reporters may check-in at Room 104 in person, or watch live on YouTube http://bit. ly/ ACSLiveDenver . To ask questions, sign in with a Google account.
###
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact [email protected].
Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Follow us: Twitter | Facebook
Title
Roasting effects on phenolic content and free-radical scavenging activities of pulp pre-conditioned and fermented cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans
Abstract
Polyphenols are phytochemicals responsible for the astringency, bitterness, green flavours and antioxidant activities in cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans. These are degraded during fermentation, drying and roasting affecting the antioxidant activity of the beans. However, the extent of degradation of phenolics during roasting remains unknown. This work was aimed at investigating the changes in total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and antioxidant activity (free-radical scavenging activities) during roasting of pulp pre-conditioned and fermented cocoa. A 4×4 full factorial design with the principal experimental factors as pod storage and roasting time were used. Samples were analyzed for total polyphenols, o-diphenols, anthocyanins and antioxidant activity using standard analytical methods. Variable decrease in total polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins were observed with increase in pod storage and roasting durations. However, variable trends were observed for the % free-radical scavenging activities. The total polyphenols, anthocyanins and o-diphenols in the cocoa beans after 45 minutes roasting decreased from 132.24 to 57.17 mg/g, 6.71 to 1.07 mg/kg and 15.94 to 8.25 mg/g respectively for 0, 3, 7 and 10 days pod storage treatments. The total polyphenols for the fermented, dried and unstored cocoa beans was 132.25 mg/g which reduced to 122.14 mg/g (7.642% degradation), 116.721 mg/g (11.7% degradation) and 92.22 mg/g (30.3% degradation) for pod stored for 3, 7 and 10 days respectively. Increasing roasting time caused continuous decreases in the % free-radical scavenging activity from 89.10% to 74.31% after 45 minutes for the unstored pods. Pulp pre-conditioning by pod storage and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness caused by polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins in cocoa beans whilst increasing the antioxidant activity imparted by cocoa. ||||| Polyphenols are phytochemicals responsible for the astringency, bitterness, green flavours and antioxidant activities in Theobroma cacao beans. Polyphenols degradation in cocoa beans during roasting is crucial to the flavour outcome and it is influenced by factors such as temperature, time and pod storage. Antioxidants are compounds that help to inhibit oxidation reactions caused by free radicals such as singlet oxygen, superoxide, peroxyl radicals, hydroxyl radicals and peroxynitrite thereby preventing damage to the cells and tissues. Their mechanisms of action include scavenging reactive oxygen and decreasing localised oxygen concentration thereby reducing molecular oxygen’s oxidation potential, metabolising lipid peroxides to non-radical products and chelating metal ions to prevent generation of free radicals in humans. The study aimed at investigating changes in total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and antioxidant activity (free-radical scavenging activities) after roasting of pulp preconditioned and fermented cocoa beans using standard analytical methods. A 4×4 full factorial design with the principal experimental factors as pod storage time (0, 3, 7 and 10 days) and roasting duration (0, 15, 30 and 45 minutes) at 120oC were used to study the changes in the total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and % free-radical scavenging activities of the cocoa beans. Variable decrease in total polyphenols, odiphenols and anthocyanins were observed with increase in pre-conditioning (pod storage time) and roasting duration. However, variable trends were observed for the % free-radical scavenging activities. The total polyphenols, anthocyanins and o-diphenols in the cocoa beans after 45 minutes roasting decreased in the range 132.24 to 57.17 mg/g, 6.71 to 1.07 mg/kg and 15.94 to 8.25 mg/g respectively at all pod storage treatments. The total polyphenols of the fermented, dried and unstored (freshly harvested) cocoa beans was 132.25 mg/g which reduced to 122.14 mg/g (7.6% degradation), 116.721 mg/g (11.7% degradation) and 92.22 mg/g (30.3% degradation) after storage for 3, 7 and 10 days, respectively. The optimum decrease in the % freeradical scavenging activity was 7 days and above of pods storage. Increasing roasting time caused a continuous decrease in the % free-radical scavenging activity from 89.10% to 74.31% after 45 minutes for beans from the unstored (freshly harvested) pods. However, pod storage caused an increase in the % free radical scavenging activities during roasting. Pulp pre-conditioning (pod storage) and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness caused by polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins in cocoa beans as well as increase the antioxidant activity imparted by cocoa.
Key words: Cocoa, pod storage, roasting, polyphenols. | – One of your vices could one day be a little more virtuous: Scientists are today announcing that they've figured out how to make chocolate healthier. The findings will be detailed by researchers from Belgium's Ghent University and the University of Ghana at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver, and center around how antioxidant-rich the sweet is. As a press release explains, it all comes down to tweaking the process. Cocoa beans are removed from pods, fermented in baskets, sun-dried, and then roasted. It's during that last step, the roasting, that polyphenols, which act as antioxidants, are partially lost. In a bid to up the polyphenol content, researchers added a nontraditional step that "makes our research fundamentally different," explains Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa: pulp preconditioning. That simply means they stored the pods—in the case of their experiments, for zero, three, seven, or 10 days—before removing the beans and beginning the fermentation process. A sweet pulp rests between the pod and the beans, and Afoakwa believes the preconditioning gives the pulp time to affect those beans. Indeed, the researchers found that those stored for a week showed the highest antioxidant activity after roasting—which they also adjusted. Rather than heat the beans for the typical 10 to 20 minutes at 248-266 degrees, they lowered the temp to 242 and upped the roasting time to 45 minutes, and discovered that slower and lower was also best in terms of antioxidant activity. The researchers' abstract notes another benefit: "Pulp preconditioning and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness," improving chocolate's flavor. (Also presented at the ACS meeting: what's really in your pot.) |
CLOSE President Donald Trump picks OMB director Mick Mulvaney to replace departing White House chief of staff John Kelly. USA TODAY
CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney (Photo: Alex Brandon, AP)
WASHINGTON - Mick Mulvaney, who was tapped this week to replace Gen. John Kelly as the president's acting chief of staff, once called Donald Trump a "terrible human being."
While campaigning to retain his South Carolina House seat during the 2016 election, Mulvaney denounced Trump, who is now his direct boss. Still, Mulvaney said he was forced to support the then-Republican nominee because the alternative was Democrat Hillary Clinton.
"We have perhaps two of the most flawed human beings running for president in the history of the country," Mulvaney said during a forum with Democratic challenger Fran Person, according to the local newspaper, The State.
"Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being. But the choice on the other side is just as bad," Mulvaney continued.
Video of his remarks was uncovered by The Daily Beast on Friday, just hours after Trump announced he had chosen Mulvaney as his acting chief of staff.
More: President Donald Trump names Mick Mulvaney as acting White House chief of staff
More: Key moments from John Kelly’s tumultuous tenure as White House chief of staff
NEW: Trump's next chief of staff Mick Mulvaney called him a "terrible human being" just before he was elected president. https://t.co/C5q5csnhrlpic.twitter.com/IU5isoZRib — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) December 15, 2018
Mulvaney ended up winning the election to retain his seat in the state's 5th Congressional District but was pulled into the Trump administration as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
He was promoted on Friday and given the daunting but high-profile position of acting chief of staff, taking over the task of managing a president who doesn't like to be managed.
Mulvaney, 51, will take over the role from John Kelly, who is expected to leave by the end of the year. The president said in a tweet that Mulvaney will serve as acting chief of staff, though it's unclear how long he will remain in the role.
More: White House departures: Who's been fired and who resigned
The White House said he would not resign from the Office of Management and Budget. His deputy, Russell Vought, is to handle operations for OMB, a move that will potentially delay a confirmation hearing for a new director.
"Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration," Trump said in a tweet on Friday, ending days of speculation about the position. "I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
CLOSE President Donald Trump’s administration continues to see turnover as he announced John Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff, will be leaving by the end of 2018. USA TODAY
Mulvaney, a lawyer and former South Carolina congressman, will have to accommodate a boss who likes to stage events on a moment's notice, often overrides aides' advice, and makes policy and staff announcements by tweet.
The selection process for a new chief of staff began Saturday after Trump announced that Kelly would be leaving. A day later, however, Trump's favorite for the job – Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence – turned down the presidential job and said he planned to leave the administration instead.
Days later, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another potential candidate for the role, also pulled out of the running, saying in a statement: "Now is not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment."
Trump will be the first president to have three chiefs of staff in less than two years, assuming Mulvaney starts before the Jan. 20 anniversary of his 2017 inauguration.
Contributing: David Jackson
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/15/mick-mulvaney-chief-staff-called-donald-trump-terrible-human/2323384002/ ||||| “Do I like Donald Trump? No," White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said of President Donald Trump one week before the 2016 election. | Alex Wong/Getty Images White House Mulvaney called Trump a 'terrible human being' ahead of 2016 election
Mick Mulvaney called then-candidate Donald Trump “a terrible human being” in a video from November 2016 that re-surfaced Friday, hours after the president named him as acting White House chief of staff.
The remarks came one week before the presidential election during a debate between Mulvaney, then a Republican congressman from South Carolina, and his Democratic challenger at a middle school in York, South Carolina, according to The Daily Beast, which first published the footage.
Story Continued Below
Asked if he was supporting his party’s candidate for the White House, Mulvaney replied: “Sure. If I have any chance to accomplish what the majority of the Fifth District of South Carolina sent me to Washington to do, Donald Trump has to be president. Period. That’s it.”
Revising America’s health care system, balancing the federal budget and other policy goals popular among his constituents could only be accomplished if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was defeated on Election Day, Mulvaney argued.
“Do I like Donald Trump? No,” Mulvaney said, insisting that the real estate mogul and reality TV showman was “absolutely not” a role model for his two sons. But Mulvaney also said that Clinton was not a role model for his daughter, adding: “I don’t like her very much, either.”
“We have perhaps two of the most flawed human beings running for president in the history of the country,” Mulvaney said. “So I have to step back and look and say, ‘OK, what do y’all, the majority of the folks who vote for me, want me to do?’ In order to accomplish that, I have to support Donald Trump, and he has to win.”
Mulvaney warned that Clinton’s election would not be an extension of her husband’s time in office, but instead would amount to a third term for the more liberal agenda of former President Barack Obama. “That’s a four years we can’t take,” he said.
“Yes, I’m supporting Donald Trump,” Mulvaney said. “I’m doing so as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being. But the choice on the other side is just as bad.”
Trump, in a tweet Friday, announced that Mulvaney would take over as his top aide following White House chief of staff John Kelly’s departure in January. Mulvaney has served as the director of the administration’s Office of Management and Budget since the outset of Trump’s presidency.
“I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....” Trump wrote online.
In another post, the president continued: “....I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! John will be staying until the end of the year. He is a GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!”
Mulvaney, quoting Trump’s message later Friday evening, tweeted: “This is a tremendous honor. I look forward to working with the President and the entire team. It’s going to be a great 2019!” ||||| Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget director who President Donald Trump tweeted Friday would serve as acting chief of staff after John Kelly departs in January, has been a loyal Trump supporter—but he didn’t always like him so much.
During a debate with his then-congressional challenger, Democrat Fran Person, on Nov. 2 of 2016, less than a week before Trump was elected president, then-congressman Mulvaney was blunt with those gathered at York Middle School in York, South Carolina.
After decrying the Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as a liberal who would take the country in the wrong direction, Mulvaney said he was supporting Trump, essentially by default.
“Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being,” he said, according to a report in The State newspaper.
Mulvaney won his race by more than 20 points, with Trump carrying the same area by 19 points.
A video of the debate remarks was obtained by The Daily Beast.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mulvaney is far from the first person in the administration to openly criticize Trump before signing on for a job in his administration, but he is certainly one of the most high-ranking.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump opponent Rick Perry called the future president’s campaign a “cancer on conservatism.” Perry now serves as President Trump’s Secretary of Energy. Before Kellyanne Conway became Trump’s 2016 campaign manager during the homestretch of the race, Conway had publicly criticized candidate Trump for refusing to release his tax returns and for his “vulgar” rhetoric. Conway currently serves as one of Trump’s most ardent defenders and as his White House counselor.
Even if Mulvaney had never uttered a critical word about Trump, the chances he would last long in a chief of staff post would have likely been slim regardless. Two knowledgeable sources told The Daily Beast on Friday that Mulvaney has indicated in recent weeks that he definitely would not want the chief of staff position beyond a temporary, interim assignment.
“Why would he? He's a sane man,” one administration source said, bluntly, referencing the routine humiliation, reputational damage, and backstabbing that Trump’s current and past chiefs of staff had famously experienced. | – If you've ever called your boss a "terrible human being," it turns out you sort of have something in common with the president's next acting chief of staff. Mick Mulvaney, who was named as John Kelly's replacement on Friday, used those choice words in reference to Donald Trump one week before the 2016 election. Politico reports Mulvaney was up for re-election in the House (he won), and referred to Trump and Hillary Clinton during a South Carolina debate as "perhaps two of the most flawed human beings running for president in the history of the country" when asked whether he was throwing his support behind the GOP candidate. He zeroed in on Trump specifically, saying "Do I like Donald Trump? No" and noting he didn't see Trump as a role model for his sons. And there's this: "Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being. But the choice on the other side is just as bad." USA Today reports it was only hours after the Mulvaney news broke on Friday that the Daily Beast posted video of those comments. Mulvaney himself had more positive words on Friday, tweeting, "This is a tremendous honor. I look forward to working with the President and the entire team. It’s going to be a great 2019!" (Mulvaney will hold onto his other jobs in the administration.) |
Chinese deputy ambassador to the U.N. Wu Haitao speaks at the Security Council, Friday, Dec. 22, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. The council voted on proposed new sanctions against North Korea,... (Associated Press)
Chinese deputy ambassador to the U.N. Wu Haitao speaks at the Security Council, Friday, Dec. 22, 2017, at United Nations headquarters. The council voted on proposed new sanctions against North Korea, including sharply lower limits on its refined oil imports, the return home of all North Koreans working... (Associated Press)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved tough new sanctions against North Korea on Friday in response to its latest launch of a ballistic missile that Pyongyang says is capable of reaching anywhere on the U.S. mainland.
The resolution adopted by the council includes sharply lower limits on North Korea's refined oil imports, the return home of all North Koreans working overseas within 24 months, and a crackdown on ships smuggling banned items including coal and oil to and from the country.
But the resolution doesn't include even harsher measures sought by the Trump administration that would ban all oil imports and freeze international assets of the government and its leader, Kim Jong Un.
The resolution, drafted by the United States and negotiated with the North's closest ally China, drew criticism from Russia for the short time the 13 other council nations had to consider the draft, and last-minute changes to the text. Two of those changes were extending the deadline for North Korean workers to return home from 12 months to 24 months — which Russia said was the minimum needed — and reducing the number of North Koreans being put on the U.N. sanctions blacklist from 19 to 15.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said after the vote that "the unity this council has shown in leveling these unprecedented sanctions is a reflection of the international outrage at the Kim regime's actions."
The Security Council has stood united for the 10th time "against a North Korean regime that rejects the pursuit of peace," she said.
President Donald Trump tweeted the 15-0 vote, adding: "The World wants Peace, not Death!"
China's deputy U.N. ambassador, Wu Haitao, said it's "imperative" to pursue a peaceful settlement and resume dialogue and negotiations at an early date, warning that resorting to force "will only lead to disastrous consequences."
Deputy Russian Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov also demanded that key parties display "openness to genuine, meaningful political dialogue." Stressing the importance of "creative approaches," he said that "isolation and pressure must give way to dialogue and talks."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called for a political solution, "which requires de-escalation and open communication channels now," his spokesman said.
Haley recalled that the previous sanctions resolution approved in September, when combined with earlier measures, would ban over 90 percent of North Korea's exports reported in 2016.
That resolution, adopted in response to North Korea's sixth and strongest nuclear test explosion on Sept. 3, banned North Korea from importing all natural gas liquids and condensates. It also banned all textile exports and prohibited any country from authorizing new work permits for North Korean workers — two key sources of hard currency for the northeast Asian nation.
Haley told the council Friday that the new resolution "bans all remaining categories of major North Korean exports — a loss of nearly $250 million in revenue to the regime."
Here are key provisions of the new sanctions:
—The import of refined oil products, including diesel and kerosene that are key to North Korea's economy, is capped at 500,000 barrels a year. That represents a reduction from the 4.5 million barrels North Korea imported in 2016, and a cap of 2 million barrels in September's resolutions. And it means the North's refined oil imports have been cut by 90 percent.
—The import of crude oil is capped at 4 million barrels a year and countries supplying oil are required to provide quarterly reports to the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions on North Korea.
—North Korea is banned from exporting food and agriculture products, machinery, electrical equipment, earth and stones, wood and vessels — and all countries are banned from importing these items.
—All countries are banned from exporting industrial machinery, transportation vehicles, iron, steel and other metals to North Korea.
—All countries must expel North Korean workers and safety monitors by the end of 2019. The resolution expresses concern that earnings from these workers are being used to support the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. According to the U.S. Mission, there are nearly 100,000 overseas North Korean workers, with about 50,000 in China and 30,000 in Russia.
—U.N. member states are authorized to seize, inspect and impound any ship in their ports or territorial waters suspected of being involved in illegal smuggling and evasion of U.N. sanctions. The resolution expresses "great concern" that North Korea is illegally exporting coal and other prohibited items "through deceptive maritime practices and obtaining petroleum illegally through ship-to-ship transfers."
—All countries are banned from providing insurance or re-insurance to North Korean-affiliated ships believed to be involved in illegal smuggling and sanctions evasion and are required to de-register these vessels.
—Fifteen North Koreans, including 13 representing banks overseas, and the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces were added to the U.N. sanctions blacklist. The two others facing a travel ban and asset freeze are Kim Jong Sik, identified as a leading official guiding North Korea's development of weapons of mass destruction, and Ri Pyong Chul, an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and first vice director of the Munitions Industry Department.
North Korea's test on Nov. 29 of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile yet was its 20th launch of a ballistic missile this year, and added to fears that it will soon have a military arsenal that can viably target the U.S. mainland.
British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said the Security Council was sending "a very strong united signal to the North Korean regime that enough is enough — that they must stop their nuclear program and they must stop their intercontinental ballistic missile program."
France's U.N. ambassador, Francois Delattre, said: "We believe maximum pressure today is our best lever to a political and diplomatic solution tomorrow ... (and) our best antidote to the risk of war."
The new resolution reiterates the Security Council's regret at North Korea's "massive diversion of its scarce resources toward its development of nuclear weapons and a number of expensive ballistic missile programs." It notes that 41 percent of the population is undernourished.
The resolution reaffirms the council's support for a resumption of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program aimed at the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
It also reiterates the importance of maintaining peace and stability in northeast Asia and "expresses its commitment to a peace, diplomatic and political solution to the situation ... through dialogue." ||||| Launches follow unanimous security council resolution imposing toughest restrictions on trade in decades against regime over nuclear and missile tests
North Korea has fired a volley of short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast after the UN security council unanimously approved the toughest sanctions against the regime in two decades over its nuclear and rocket tests.
South Korean defence spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said the launches came from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan. Another South Korean official from the joint chiefs of staff said the six projectiles flew about 100-150km (60-90 miles) before landing in the sea.
The US State Department said it had seen reports of the launches and was monitoring the situation.
North Korea has previously carried out live firing near or across its borders when facing international condemnation.
Thursday’s launch was seen as a low-level response to the UN sanctions, with Pyongyang unlikely to launch any major provocation until a landmark ruling Workers’ party convention in May, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
The US and North Korea’s increasingly uneasy ally China spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions passed by the security council on Wednesday. They include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by sea or air, a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang, and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in “illicit activities”.
The US, its western allies and Japan pressed for new sanctions that went beyond the North’s nuclear and missile programs but China, Pyongyang’s neighbor, was reluctant to impose measures that could threaten the stability of North Korea and cause its economy to collapse. Nonetheless, Beijing did agree to several economic measures.
The resolution bans the export of coal, iron and iron ore being used to fund North Korea’s nuclear or ballistic missile programs and it prohibits all exports of gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth minerals. It also bans aviation fuel exports to the country, including “kerosene-type rocket fuel”.
“The international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people,” Barack Obama said in a statement.
US ambassador Samantha Power told the council after the vote that “part of the perverse reality that has no equal in this world” is that North Korea prioritizes its nuclear and ballistic missile programs over the basic needs of its own people.
“Virtually all of the DPRK’s [North Korea] resources are channeled into its reckless and relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” she said.
The resolution stresses that the new measures are not intended to have “adverse humanitarian consequences” for civilians, the majority who face economic hardships and food shortages.
In the financial and banking sector, countries are required to freeze the assets of companies and other entities linked to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. Under a previous resolution, they were encouraged to do so.
The resolution also prohibits all countries from opening new branches, subsidiaries and representative offices of North Korean banks, and bans financial institutions from establishing new joint ventures or establishing or maintaining correspondent relationships with these banks. It also orders countries to close all North Korean banks and terminate all banking relationships within 90 days.
Under the four rounds of UN sanctions imposed since the country’s first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea is banned from importing or exporting nuclear or missile items and technology as well as luxury goods. The new resolution expands the list of banned items, adding luxury items such as expensive watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and lead crystal.
It also adds 16 individuals, 12 “entities” including the National Aerospace Development Agency which was responsible for February’s rocket launch, and 31 ships owned by the North Korean shipping firm Ocean Maritime Management Company to the sanctions blacklist. That requires the freezing of assets and, in the case of individuals, a travel ban as well.
The resolution bans Pyongyang from chartering vessels or aircraft, and call on countries to “de-register” any vessel owned, operated or crewed by the North.
As with previous resolutions, the test will be whether UN member states enforce the sanctions. A UN panel of experts monitoring the sanctions has repeatedly pointed out that enforcement in a significant number of cases has been weak.
North Korea has ignored many demands, and tried to circumvent others.
It started off the new year with what it claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on 6 January and followed up with the launch of a satellite on a rocket on 7 February. It was condemned by much of the world as a test of banned missile technology.
The resolution calls for a resumption of six-party talks leading to the goal of “the verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner”. North Korea withdrew from the talks in 2008.
The North’s launches in to the Sea of Japan also came shortly after Seoul approved its first legislation on human rights in North Korea.
The South Korean bill passed ahead of the UN security council vote on sanctions.
A total of 212 South Korean lawmakers voted for the bill and 24 others abstained in the floor vote. It becomes law when it is endorsed by the cabinet council, considered a formality.
North Korea’s state media has warned that enactment of the law would result in “miserable ruin.”
With Reuters and the Associated Press | – The US and China have settled on a new round of sanctions against North Korea, and Pyongyang is responding by ratcheting up its usual bluster, threatening to cancel the 1953 ceasefire that ended the Korean War if sanctions go forward and US-South Korean military drills that began March 1 continue. Specifically, the North is warning of "surgical strikes at any time" and a "precision nuclear striking tool" that will seek to "advance our long-cherished wish for national reunification," reports the AP. The US-China deal is aimed at punishing Pyongyang over February's nuclear test, in a joint deal that heads to the UN Security Council today. In addition to new sanctions—whose specifics aren't yet known—the planned resolution enforces current ones, the Wall Street Journal reports. Right now, sanctions include a ban on ballistic missile and nuclear tests and a ban on the import of arms and luxury goods; some in the country face financial and travel restrictions, and the new measures could expand them. China was expected, however, to refuse an oil embargo, believing that such a blow to the North Korean economy could bring refugees to China. The sanctions deal is expected to be adopted this week, says a diplomat. |
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s first loss against Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) in a U.S. patent case could mean a ban on imports of some older devices including the iPhone 4 while lessening prospects of the largest smartphone makers ending their legal battles.
The U.S. International Trade Commission’s decision, posted in a notice on its website yesterday, covers the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 3G sold for use on networks operated by AT&T Inc. (T), T-Mobile US Inc. (TMUS) and two regional carriers, General Communication Inc. (GNCMA) in Alaska and CT Cube LP in Texas.
With dozens of lawsuits spread across four continents in their battle for a greater share of the $293.9 billion market for smartphones, each side can now claim a victory in the U.S. With plenty of litigation remaining, Samsung’s victory probably won’t bring the two sides closer to settling, said Will Stofega, a program director at Framingham, Massachusetts-based researcher IDC.
“There’s too much skin in the game now,” he said. “It’s almost so ugly I don’t think they’ll come to any agreement. Both companies have a lot of cash and are generating a lot of money. It’s not like they have to worry about paying the legal bills.”
Obama Review
The ITC’s import-ban order is subject to review by President Barack Obama. The president can overturn it on public-policy grounds, though that rarely happens. Apple can keep selling the devices during the 60-day review period.
Photographer: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg A man uses a Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S III smartphone to record a video outside the Apple Inc. store in Sydney, Australia. Close A man uses a Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S III smartphone to record a video outside... Read More Close Open Photographer: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg A man uses a Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy S III smartphone to record a video outside the Apple Inc. store in Sydney, Australia.
“Historically, the president does not interfere in these sorts of things,” said Lyle Vander Schaaf, a patent lawyer with Brinks Hofer in Washington. “It shows the commission is a very bold agency that they are willing to take these steps despite the popularity of the Apple products.”
Apple won a $1 billion verdict last year in California that has since been cut to about $600 million. It was based on a jury finding that Samsung devices copied the look and unique features of the iPhone and iPad. The commission is scheduled to release a final decision in Apple’s trade case against Samsung in August.
Apple shares slipped 1.1 percent to 342.35 euros in German trading. The stock is down 16 percent in New York trading this year.
Samsung shares declined 1.2 percent to 1,521,000 won in Seoul today as South Korea’s currency rose the most in more than six weeks. Samsung shares are little changed this year, compared with a 1.9 percent decline in the benchmark Kospi index.
Hot Seller
A new trial on some of the damages in the California case must be held and a second lawsuit, involving newer models by both companies, is scheduled for next year. An appeals court could hear arguments later this year on Apple’s request to halt sales of Samsung products found by the jury to infringe its patents.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg Apple faces U.S. import ban on some devices after Samsung win; Apple violates one Samsung patent, U.S. trade agency says. Close Apple faces U.S. import ban on some devices after Samsung win; Apple violates one... Read More Close Open Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg Apple faces U.S. import ban on some devices after Samsung win; Apple violates one Samsung patent, U.S. trade agency says.
“We believe the ITC’s final determination has confirmed Apple’s history of free-riding on Samsung’s technological innovations,” Adam Yates, a Samsung spokesman, said yesterday. “Our decades of research and development in mobile technologies will continue, and we will continue to offer innovative products to consumers in the United States.”
Apple pledged to appeal the ITC decision. The underlying findings will be reviewed by a U.S. appeals court specializing in patent cases.
“We are disappointed that the commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “Today’s decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States.”
‘Copycat’ Reputation
Park Hyun, a Seoul-based analyst with TongYang Securities Inc., said the ITC ruling may help remove the “copycat label” from Samsung.
“It seems inevitable that the latest ruling will have a negative impact on Apple,” Park said. “Combined with rising branding power in the U.S., the ITC ruling may give Samsung a chance to narrow its market-share gap with Apple in the U.S.”
The decision could mean fewer choices for AT&T and T-Mobile customers who want to get an iPhone without paying for the more expensive iPhone 5. Samsung told the commission that Cupertino, California-based Apple could drop the price of the iPhone 5 if it was worried about losing potential customers. All iPhones are made in Asia.
The three-year-old iPhone 4 is still a hot-selling product, said Marcelo Claure, chief executive officer of Brightstar Corp., a mobile-phone distributor with operations in 50 countries.
“Anytime you can’t sell your entire portfolio, it’s a big deal,” he said. Unlike Samsung, which sells dozens of models, Apple sells only the iPhone 4, 4S and 5.
Mutual Destruction
Together, Apple and Samsung make about half the smartphones sold in the world. Samsung is the biggest, while Apple dominates in the U.S.
“It’s like Ford and GM -- they should approach some rapprochement or they’ll end up weakening each other’s market share,” said Scott Daniels, a patent lawyer with Westerman Hattori in Washington. “At some point they just need to resolve it because they just hurt themselves commercially if they don’t.”
Samsung had been Apple’s biggest components supplier, though Apple has been trying to diversify its supply chain.
It may take new innovations in devices to bring them back together, Stofega said.
“There’s a big push into display technology, like flexible screens,” he said. “Samsung has proven it can do things no one else can, and that might bring them together. Apple would be a good partner, given their emphasis on display. It can be: ‘We hate each other, but we need each other.’”
Patent Trolls
In the ITC case, Apple was found to infringe a patent for a widely used way that phones transmit data. Apple argued that Samsung was obligated to license the patent on fair terms because it was part of an industry standard and, instead, the company demanded an unreasonable royalty.
Obama’s administration and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in January urged the ITC to closely look at patents that relate to industry standards before issuing any import bans.
“Samsung is using a strategy which has been rejected by courts and regulators around the world,” Huguet said. “They’ve admitted that it’s against the interests of consumers in Europe and elsewhere, yet here in the United States Samsung continues to try to block the sale of Apple products by using patents they agreed to license to anyone for a reasonable fee.”
Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, contended Apple infringes four patents, including two covering data transmission. U.S. trade Judge James Gildea sided with Apple in September, saying Apple didn’t infringe any of the patents and that one, for a way to detect movement on a touch screen, was invalid.
Fair Licensing
The fourth patent in the case is for a way to detect phone numbers in e-mails so they can be dialed or stored in the phone’s contact list.
The commission agreed with the judge on the other three patents.
Apple contends Samsung never made a fair offer and demanded that Apple pay 2.4 percent of the average sales price of every iPhone and cellular-enabled iPad, according to filings with the agency.
The iPhone generated $78.7 billion in sales for the fiscal year ended Sept. 29, or about 50 percent of Apple’s revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its iPad brought in $30.9 billion, and the iPod generated $5.6 billion.
In its filings, Samsung said it’s been offering Apple a license since November 2010 and “Apple has never been willing to take a license on any terms.”
Samsung’s case against Apple is In the Matter of Electronic Devices, Including Wireless Communication Devices, 337-794, and Apple’s case against Samsung is In the Matter of Electronic Digital Media Devices, 337-796, both U.S. International Trade Commission (Washington).
To contact the reporter on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at [email protected] ||||| Samsung Electronics won a significant legal victory against Apple: a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling that threatens to halt U.S. sales of some older iPhones and iPads. The WSJ's Min-Jeong Lee has the story.
Samsung Electronics Co. won a significant legal victory against Apple Inc. that threatens to halt the sale of some iPhones and iPads in the U.S.
George Stahl explains the ramifications of a significant victory Samsung won over Apple in its patent case and how it is likely to result in a series of cross-licensing agreements between the companies. Photo: Getty Images.
The U.S. International Trade Commission on Tuesday ruled that Apple violated a Samsung patent covering technology used to send information over wireless networks.
Unless vetoed by President Barack Obama or blocked by an appeals court, the ruling would bar the importation of certain iPhones and iPads made to work on AT&T Inc.'s network. Among them are the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, the iPad 3G, the iPad 2 3G and the iPad 3.
The latest Apple products, including the iPhone 5 and the fourth-generation of the iPad, were unaffected.
Once close business partners, Samsung and Apple have become increasingly intense rivals, sparring over the market for smartphones around the globe, with much of the momentum accruing to Samsung in recent months.
The rivalry has spilled into the courts, where barrages of competing patent claims have been lobbed in both directions. Last year, Apple won a jury trial and $1 billion in damages against Samsung over iPhone patents. Tuesday's ruling, which Apple has vowed to take to a federal appeals court, raises the incentives for the two sides to reach a more comprehensive settlement. But so far, both sides offered no hint at a settlement.
The ruling also came on the day Mr. Obama took steps to rein in companies that buy and enforce patents rather than make their own products and services—firms known as patent trolls by their detractors. He is also trying to reduce the growing use of the ITC to settle patent disputes.
The ITC, which has jurisdiction over certain trade practices, is an appealing legal option for patent holders, particularly tech companies, because the trade body can issue orders banning the importation of products that infringe upon another company's patents. Legal observers say it is easier to win an import ban at the ITC than it is to win a federal court ruling that would block product sales.
The ITC's decision against Apple was largely unexpected, particularly because the initial review by a judge at the agency had found Apple's products weren't infringing Samsung's patents.
The patent itself is a highly technical one, described in patent documents as "an apparatus and method for encoding/decoding a transport format combination indicator (TFCI) in a CDMA mobile communication system."
"We are disappointed that the Commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal," said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. She said the decision "has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States."
Apple doesn't detail sales for each individual product in its quarterly reports, but it has said that the iPhone makes up more than half of its global revenue. Sales in America, where the ban would take place, represented less than a third of overall sales. And aside from the iPhone 4S, which Apple said is popular with customers, the company hasn't detailed sales of its older models.
Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimates that world-wide sales of the iPhone 4—which stands to be affected by the ITC order—brought Apple $3.4 billion in revenue in the quarter ended in March. That compares with his estimate of $14.9 billion for the newer iPhone 5, which isn't affected.
The iPhone 4 has been marketed as a low-cost option alongside newer models. AT&T offers it for as little as 99 cents with a new contract. An AT&T spokesman didn't return a request for comment.
Apple's Ms. Huguet added that "Samsung is using a strategy which has been rejected by courts and regulators around the world."
Adam Yates, a spokesman for Samsung, said the decision affirmed the company's patents. "We believe the ITC's Final Determination has confirmed Apple's history of free-riding on Samsung's technological innovations," he said.
AP The Apple store in Santa Monica, Calif.
The ITC ruled against a key Apple theory across its recent litigation, which seeks to limit plaintiffs from using a broad class of patents to win injunctions against sales of infringing products. Such patents are submitted to industry groups that are setting key technology standards, and are deemed as essential to create products in certain categories—such as creating handsets that can communicate using a particular generation of cellular networks.
Apple has argued that in return for becoming part of an industry standard, companies usually promise those groups to license use of their patented technology under fair and reasonable terms. Apple says Samsung isn't doing that.
But the ITC said Apple's argument wasn't valid, potentially hurting Apple's continuing efforts to change the way standards-based patents are used in legal cases.
Brian Love, an assistant professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, said it was unclear whether Apple could find a technical workaround for the ruling. He said that companies are sometimes "overzealous" about labeling patents as essential parts of technology standards.
Kevin Taylor, an intellectual property lawyer at Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP, said this is "a solid win for Samsung."
But he said whether it would set any precedent would depend on the outcome of any appeal in federal court. He said it wouldn't be unusual for a court to temporarily delay the ruling from going into effect, allowing Apple to continue selling its devices during the appeal, which could take months or longer.
But, Mr. Taylor said, if "upheld on appeal, Apple has a big problem."
Lyle Vander Schaaf, an intellectual property lawyer at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione, noted that it is rare for federal appeals courts to delay exclusion orders during appeals. And presidential vetoes are even more rare.
There hasn't been a veto "since the Carter administration," he said. "On first blush, this seems like a really impactful decision."
—Don Clark and Brent Kendall contributed to this article.
Write to Ian Sherr at [email protected] and Jessica E. Lessin at [email protected] | – A big win for Samsung in its long-running patent feud with Apple: The US International Trade Commission has banned imports of the AT&T models of older Apple products including the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 3G after deciding Apple violated a Samsung patent, the Wall Street Journal reports. Newer Apple products like the iPhone 5 are not affected by the ruling, which Apple says it is "disappointed" by and will appeal. The ruling will take effect in 60 days unless it is vetoed by President Obama, a move analysts say is nearly as unlikely as the two companies deciding to settle their difference amicably. "There’s too much skin in the game now," a spokesman for technology research firm IDC tells Bloomberg. "It’s almost so ugly I don’t think they’ll come to any agreement. Both companies have a lot of cash and are generating a lot of money. It’s not like they have to worry about paying the legal bills." |
German Gummi Bear billionaire Hans Riegel died Tuesday from heart failure, according to the Haribo candy company that Riegel spent nearly 70 years running. The candy entrepreneur had an estimated net worth of nearly $3 billion when he died at the age of 90. He was divorced and had no children.
Riegel’s father -- Hans Riegel Sr. -- founded the confectionery company in Bonn, Germany, in 1920, and soon after created the chewy, fruit-flavored bear candies that eventually became a household name worldwide. He died in 1945. After being released from POW camps post-World War II, the younger Hans Riegel and his brother Paul took over Haribo, dividing the labor with Hans handling distribution, sales and marketing and Paul handling production. The set-up proved successful and continued thereafter, helping the two brothers build Haribo into the multi-billion dollar global empire it is today. Haribo is notoriously tight-lipped, but estimated revenues exceed $3 billion. Among Haribo’s current top sellers are the gummi bears, Happy Cola, twin cherries and raspberries.
"We all mourn a unique entrepreneur and as an outstanding personality will remain many people as a friend and supporter, as a mentor, and last but not least as inspiring role model in memory," the company said in a statement. "With his pioneering spirit, he has created a worldwide unparalleled company and a brand which fame and popularity is second to none."
Riegel is credited with inventing more than 200 sweets, including Vademecum sugar-free gum and Maoam fruit chewies, and has said he gets his inspiration from reading comic books and watching movies for children. Riegel earned a doctorate in business economics from the University of Bonn.
Riegel was still running the company when he died, and had recently been recovering from surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. The heart failure was sudden and unexpected, according to the company.
Hans and Paul Riegel each owned 50% of Haribo, though Paul died in 2009 and left his share of the company to his heirs. After Paul's death, brother Hans established a supervisory board shared by both halves of the family and dictated that his foundation would represent him after he passed away. The company is thus likely to remain controlled by the Riegel name that founded it more than 90 years ago, even if the relatives don’t inherit the riches. ||||| Hans Riegel, who made the rainbow-colored, fruit-flavored, teddy bear-shaped gelatin sweets known as gummi bears a global favorite, died on Tuesday in Bonn. He was 90.
The cause was heart failure, Haribo, the company he led for nearly seven decades, said in a statement, adding that he had surgery to remove a benign tumor in his brain several months ago.
Mr. Riegel transformed his family-owned company from a local candy maker with 30 workers into an internationally recognized brand with 6,000 employees around the world and annual sales of $2 billion to $2.7 billion.
Mr. Riegel’s father, also named Hans Riegel, founded Haribo in 1920. (The name is an acronym derived from his first and last name and the city where it was registered, Bonn.) ||||| In June in 1986, Hans Riegel told one of the jokes for which he had become well-known. The Haribo CEO told a reporter he had just swallowed Maoam. All Riegel had to do was wait a second for a question in response: "The candy?" "No," he answered triumphantly. "The company. It was a lot of fun -- they used to be a competitor."
It would be hard to find another executive in Germany as multifaceted as the former head of Bonn-based gummy bear empire Haribo. Riegel was equal parts tenacious businessman, jokester, workaholic and bon vivant. Above all, he was the man associated with Haribo -- few entrepreneurs have been as closely identified with their brands as he has been. In his 67 years at the helm, he transformed his father's small candy company into a global sweets giant with an estimated 2 billion ($2.7 billion) in annual sales of gummy bears and other candies in 110 countries around the world.
Riegel died on Tuesday at the age of 90.
He was the archetype of the old-school German capitalist from the Rhineland -- hardworking, responsible, persistent and full of business acumen. After having just returned from being a prisoner of war after World War II, Riegel and his brother Paul assumed responsibility for the family business, which at the time had 30 employees, 10 sacks of sugar and the secret recipe for gummy bears that still guarantees the company's success today. Paul, who was more behind the scenes, developed the machines used to make the company's liquorices. The more outgoing Hans worked on the company's first commercials.
The Man Who Turned Warren Buffet Away
The division of labor between the two brothers was a success, and it didn't take long before the company's motto, "Kids love it so," created by their father, was known by youth all across Germany. Although the company's gummy bears soon became a gold mine, financial success eluded the young entrepreneur. One day, when the local bank tried to seize bags of sugar at the Haribo plant because the company had been late on a loan payment, Riegel swore he would never borrow money to grow the company again.
It's a position he stuck to for the rest of his life. When star investor Warren Buffett came knocking on his door in 2008, Riegel sent him away. "Money was never my motivation," he said at the time. "I don't even know when I made my first million."
Riegel wanted to maintain control of his own company. Indeed, each gummy creation at Haribo had to be approved by the boss before it could go into serial production. He knew what customers wanted, too. Whereas other companies developed the products for the tastes of the masses, Riegel continued to stubbornly make his gummy candies according to his family recipe. He made a few name changes to his father's products here and there, but adding adults to the company's slogan was one of the few large additions. The company had a tendency to hang on to things that worked.
An Eccentric Leader
At times, though, Riegel's management could be a bit eccentric. Each morning he would read his executives' letters before personally sharing the details with them. Employee emails were also monitored if there was a reason. Riegel said he did such things out of concern for the company. "Otherwise troublesome letters would have just disappeared into people's drawers," he once said. "And I would also lose oversight."
But "Hans II," as some liked to call him, was more a benevolent dictator when it came to his 6,000 employees. He paid them well and rented his properties to them cheaply. He also hired famous German bands to play at company parties and even sometimes played the saxophone himself. Riegel was never a cheapskate concerned only with his business. As a young man, he brought a badminton set back with him during a business trip to Denmark and became the first German champion in the men's double competition. Later, he discovered his passion for helicopters and for hunting deer on his 4,800 hectare property in Austria's Steiermark region.
But work remained his greatest passion: "I'm at the office almost every day," Riegel proudly said not long ago. In the "pulpit," as he called his glass-covered command center overlooking the Bonn facility, he tinkered with new types of fruit gummies: lemon-ginger for adults, gummy pacifiers for children, marshmallow footballs for sports fans and gummy bears for everyone.
'He Who Retires Gets Older Faster'
Even at an advanced age, he didn't lose sight of his core customers: Riegel remained a child at heart, watching cartoons and eating gummy bears from the package.
Haribo was not only his life's work, but also his fountain of youth. He worked far beyond Germany's statutory retirement age and was fond of adages like, "He who retires early gets old faster." He liked to say that without the company, he would have fallen ill.
One has to grant him that, because until the end he served his company well. When he had to have a tumor removed from his brain in July 2013, representatives took over marketing and sales for several months. The company's continued existence as a family business was guaranteed after the death of Paul Riegel in 2009. Hans Riegel and his nephew Hans-Guido led the newly formed holding company from that point on. Now Riegel is leaving a thriving business to the next generation.
"I just wanted to make something of my father's life work," the billionaire once said. It was a simple wish -- and one Hans Riegel spent a lifetime fulfilling. | – He was the world's first and surely last "gummi bear magnate," as the headline in Der Spiegel puts it. Hans Riegel, who ran Germany's Haribo candy company and made the chewy little bears a worldwide phenomenon, has died at age 90. The bears were a concoction of his father, the founder of Haribo, but it was the younger Riegel whose deft marketing turned them into a global hit. (Gummi trivia: The jellied bears were originally made of licorice, notes the New York Times.) Riegel and his brother first sold them as "gold bears" in 1960s before changing the name. They introduced them throughout Europe in the 1970s and then set up Haribo of America in Baltimore in the early 1980s. It all paid off: Forbes says the company's revenues are north of $3 billion today. "I just wanted to make something of my father's life work," Riegel once said. |
BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Globe has suspended columnist Kevin Cullen without pay for three months after inconsistencies were found in his remarks following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Newspaper publisher John Henry and editor Brian McGrory announced Friday an independent review found Cullen likely fabricated some anecdotes he shared in interviews after the bombing, which killed three people and injured hundreds more.
The review also noted an uncorrected error in one of Cullen's marathon bombing columns but didn't find signs of fabrication in other works.
Cullen, who was part of the Globe team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014, didn't immediately comment, but Henry and McGrory say he has apologized.
Cullen has been on paid leave since April, when Boston sports radio station WEEI noted inconsistencies in Cullen's work and the paper launched its investigation. ||||| The Boston Globe suspended its columnist Kevin Cullen for three months without pay on Friday after a review found fabricated details and inconsistencies in comments he made in radio interviews and at public appearances about the Boston Marathon bombings.
“Our review leads us to a conclusion that Mr. Cullen damaged his credibility,” John W. Henry, The Globe’s publisher, and Brian McGrory, its editor, wrote in a statement. “These were serious violations for any journalist and for The Globe, which relies on its journalists to adhere to the same high standards of ethics and accuracy when appearing on other platforms.”
Mr. Cullen, part of the Globe team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for reporting about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, will work as general assignment reporter for two months before returning to his role as a columnist.
He will also be barred from giving outside broadcast interviews for six months, after which time his appearances will face “heightened editorial scrutiny,” the statement said. ||||| The Boston Globe launched parallel reviews of the work of Kevin Cullen after issues were publicly aired on radio station WEEI in April. We are now making the results, including the full versions of both reports, public.
The first review, performed by retired AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll and Boston University dean of the College of Communication Thomas Fiedler, is of Mr. Cullen’s column work and broadcast appearances in the aftermath of the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombings.
The second review, conducted by Globe assistant managing editor for projects and investigations Scott Allen, deputy projects editor Brendan McCarthy, and former Globe staff writer Joseph Kahn, is of a sampling of 100 randomly selected columns, checking for authenticity and accuracy.
Advertisement
The first review revealed significant problems, particularly a series of radio appearances by Mr. Cullen early in the morning of April 16, 2013, that, in the words of Ms. Carroll and Mr. Fiedler, “raise the concern of fabrication.” Specifically, the review found that Mr. Cullen details “scenes in which he was centrally involved but, to the best of our knowledge, didn’t occur.” Mr. Cullen described conversations he had with members of the Boston Fire Department that don’t appear to have happened. When asked about these radio appearances in two meetings in April and May, Mr. Cullen failed to provide an adequate explanation. In addition, Mr. Cullen appeared on a journalism panel in August 2013, broadcast on C-SPAN, in which he offered details of a scene on the night of the bombings that Ms. Carroll and Mr. Fielder conclude was a “complete fabrication.”
Get Fast Forward in your inbox: Forget yesterday's news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here
The problematic assertions made by Mr. Cullen in broadcast interviews never appeared in the pages of The Boston Globe, which explains at least in part why editors did not learn about them until five years later, when they were publicly raised. But Mr. Cullen did make a key mistake in his first-day column that was never corrected – a violation of Boston Globe standards and practices. This was an editorial breakdown that should have been corrected by both Mr. Cullen and his editor, Jennifer Peter, when they became aware of the mistake on April 16.
The second review was of a broader sampling of Mr. Cullen’s columns unrelated to the Marathon bombings. Approximately 100 columns were fact-checked, including calling sources who were quoted and people who were mentioned as well as comparing columns, when applicable, to other media accounts. The columns revealed the work of a diligent journalist who would very often go to the scenes of stories, personally meet the people involved, and make follow-up calls to confirm facts. The reviewers found no instances of fabrication in Mr. Cullen’s columns. The reviewers found Mr. Cullen’s writing to be “among the most appealing that appears in the Globe -- precise, well observed and often standing up for the forgotten man and woman with profound effect.” But they also found that his columns at times employed “journalistic tactics that unnecessarily raise questions about his accuracy” that “may open the door to providing seriously misleading information to the public.”
Our review leads us to a conclusion that Mr. Cullen damaged his credibility. These were serious violations for any journalist and for the Globe, which relies on its journalists to adhere to the same high standards of ethics and accuracy when appearing on other platforms.
Our review also leads us to believe that Mr. Cullen did not commit irrevocable damage. His long Globe career has been an exceptional one, from his start as a crime reporter to his role helping to uncover the protection Whitey Bulger received from the FBI, to his key contributions to Spotlight’s work revealing the Catholic Church pedophile scandal. He has written hundreds of highly read and often impactful columns about people from every walk of life without this organization receiving any complaints about the authenticity of his work. He has also acknowledged his failures and the issues they have created. “I own what I did,” Mr. Cullen said in a recent email, adding, “I accept responsibility for these shortcomings and I’m sorry that it has allowed some to attack the Globe itself.”
Advertisement
Mr. Cullen has been given a three-month unpaid suspension for his violations of our ethics policy, in addition to the two months of paid leave he has already served, for a total of five months. When he returns, he will work as a general assignment reporter for the first two months before returning to his role as a columnist. He will be barred from outside broadcast interviews for the first six months after his return, and subsequent appearances will be given heightened editorial scrutiny.
In terms of the system breakdowns, when we fall short of accuracy, we must immediately fix what went wrong – and we do. While there was chaos unfolding the entire week of the Boston Marathon bombings, it’s in the most trying circumstances that we must perform at our very best. And on all other fronts in our coverage of the bombings, the Globe did just that, including correcting, immediately and transparently, another mistake in our coverage that week.
I (Brian McGrory) have had a direct conversation about this breakdown with Ms. Peter, an otherwise very strong editor. While there’s no indication it was willful, it should not have happened, and she understands that. The column has now been corrected. Mr. Cullen’s primary oversight will shift from Ms. Peter to senior deputy managing editor Mark Morrow. I (Brian McGrory) also accept responsibility. While I can’t be aware of all mistakes, I am accountable for the system, and when it fails, I have as well.
We owe a significant debt of gratitude to Ms. Carroll, Mr. Fiedler, Mr. Kahn, Mr. Allen, and Mr. McCarthy for their time and wisdom, as well as to former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent, who has reviewed both reports and offered his guidance. In addition, Kelly McBride, vice president at The Poynter Institute with a specialty in journalism ethics, gave us her insight into the completed report. We are thankful to all.
Finally, just to be clear, we are committed to accuracy and fairness at the Globe, hour by hour, day after day. That commitment is unyielding, and we apologize to our readers that we did not live up to it with these episodes. We have absorbed the lessons and renewed our commitment, even as we remain proud of the exceptional work performed by the entire staff in those days and weeks after the bombings.
Advertisement
John W. Henry, publisher
Brian McGrory, editor | – The Boston Globe has suspended columnist Kevin Cullen without pay for three months after inconsistencies were found in his remarks following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Per the AP, newspaper publisher John Henry and editor Brian McGrory announced Friday an independent review found Cullen likely fabricated some anecdotes he shared in interviews after the bombing, which killed three people and injured hundreds more. The review also noted an uncorrected error in one of Cullen's marathon bombing columns but didn't find signs of fabrication in other works. Cullen, who was part of the Globe team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014, didn't immediately comment, but Henry and McGrory say he has apologized. Cullen has been on paid leave since April, when Boston sports radio station WEEI noted inconsistencies in Cullen's work and the paper launched its investigation. Per the New York Times, Cullen described in an interview the tale of a firefighter he claimed to have spoken with. He said the firefighter described rescuing a 7-year-old girl whose lower leg had been blown off. However, the firefighter denied having ever spoken to Cullen. The Times also says Cullen, while speaking on a panel in 2013, claimed he witnessed a firefighter outside a bar on the phone with a fellow firefighter, who was apparently traumatized by the bombing, to come out for the night. The Globe has called the account "problematic" and calls into question whether it occurred at all. "Our review also leads us to believe that Mr. Cullen did not commit irrevocable damage," the Globe said in a statement Saturday. "He has also acknowledged his failures and the issues they have created." |
Five guilty of killing Russian journalist Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya was best known for her reports in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper
Continue reading the main story Related Stories
A court in Moscow has found five men guilty of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
One man was found guilty of the shooting and the other four of organising the killing. Three of the men were brothers from Chechnya.
Ms Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old investigative reporter and vocal critic of Russia's war in Chechnya, was shot in a lift in her block of flats.
Three of the men had been acquitted of the murder in a 2009 trial.
The initial verdict was overturned by Russia's supreme court, which ordered their retrial.
One of the brothers, Rustam Makhmudov, was found guilty of pulling the trigger. His brothers were found guilty of acting as getaway drivers.
The brothers' uncle and a retired policeman were also found guilty of organising the killing.
Ms Politkovskaya's reporting for Novaya Gazeta newspaper won international renown for her dogged investigation of Russian abuses in Chechnya.
But her pieces, which were highly critical of President Vladimir Putin, then serving his second term, and the Chechen leadership, angered many in authority.
The five men, who face possible life terms, will be sentenced on Wednesday morning.
A committee set up to investigate the shooting said it was still looking for the person who ordered the operation.
Her family welcomed the verdict but also expressed disappointment that the mastermind of the killing had not yet been found.
Last year a former police officer, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for supplying the murder weapon.
Magnitsky sanctions
In a separate development, the US announced on Tuesday that it was imposing sanctions on a further 12 Russians believed to be involved in the death of a Moscow lawyer in 2009.
Sergei Magnitsky found evidence of a $230m tax-refund fraud
Sergei Magnitsky died in prison, allegedly because of torture and neglect, after accusing Russian officials of tax fraud.
Following his death, the US passed the Magnitsky Act, aimed at punishing officials involved in his death, and last year published a list of 18 individuals banned from entering the country.
Among the names added to the list on Tuesday are three doctors alleged to have withheld treatment from Magnitsky while he was in custody.
One of them, Larisa Litvinova, was chief physician at Butyrka maximum security jail where Magnitksy died while another, Dmitry Kratov, was its deputy director.
A judge involved in a posthumous prosecution of Magnitsky for tax fraud has also been added to the sanctions list.
The US says the sanctions are "independent of Russia's actions in Ukraine". ||||| People hold portraits of slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya on the sixth anniversary of her death, next to her block of flats in central Moscow October 7, 2012.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Five men were convicted on Tuesday of murdering 2006 of investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, including three defendants who had been acquitted in a previous trial.
Politkovskaya's killing drew attention to the risks faced by Russians who challenge the authorities and deepened Western concerns for the rule of law under President Vladimir Putin, who was then serving his second term.
Another jury's 2009 acquittal of three of the men who were found guilty of murder on Tuesday embarrassed Russian prosecutors and was later thrown out by the Supreme Court, which ordered a new trial.
The defendants were three Chechen brothers, one of whom was accused of shooting Politkovskaya in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, as well as their uncle and a former police officer.
The convictions are a victory for Russian prosecutors and the state, but rights activists and relatives of Politkovskaya say that justice will not be done until those who ordered her contract-style killing are identified and convicted.
"The murder will only be solved when the name of the person who ordered it is known," a lawyer for Politkovskaya's family, Anna Stavitskaya, was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.
She welcomed the jury's verdict but said the men found guilty "are only a few of the people who should be brought to justice", RIA reported.
A spokesman for the federal Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said the authorities were doing all they can to identify and track down the person behind the killing, Russian news agencies reported.
Kremlin critics say they doubt that will ever happen because of suspicions the trail could lead too close to the government.
Politkovskaya, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta who was 48 when she was shot dead while returning home after shopping for groceries, was best known for her dogged reporting on human rights violations in the North Caucasus province of Chechnya.
Lawyers for the defendants - Rustam Makhmudov, his brothers Ibragim and Dzhabrail, their uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, and former Moscow police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov - said they would appeal.
Investigators say Gaitukayev organised the logistics of the killing while in jail for another matter, while Khadzhikurbanov was in charge of preparing for the slaying and Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov helped track her.
Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov and Khadzhikurbanov were previously acquitted.
The five men will be sentenced by a judge at a later date and could face life in prison. Prosecutors will recommend sentences at a court session on Wednesday, RIA reported.
(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Mark Heinrich) ||||| FILE - In this Oct. 2004 file photo reporter Anna Politkovskaya attends a rally against war in Chechnya in downtown Moscow, Russia. Renowned journalist Politkovskaya, 48, was shot to death in the elevator... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Oct. 2004 file photo reporter Anna Politkovskaya attends a rally against war in Chechnya in downtown Moscow, Russia. Renowned journalist Politkovskaya, 48, was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building in October 2006. Dozens of journalists have been killed and brutally... (Associated Press)
MOSCOW (AP) — The brazen killing of exiled Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Tuesday evening has highlighted the dangers of working as a journalist in Russia.
Dozens of Russian journalists have been killed or brutally beaten in recent years, in clear retribution for their work. In most cases, their attackers walked free.
Here's a look at some of the high-profile cases:
ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA
Anna Politkovskaya was a prominent journalist at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper who was famous for her critical coverage of the war in Chechnya. She was shot dead in her apartment block in 2006.
Politkovskaya chronicled the killings and torture of civilians by the Russian military. She wrote a book critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his campaign in Chechnya, documenting widespread abuse of civilians by government troops.
Politkovskaya frequently received threats and was vilified by state media as being unpatriotic.
Five men were convicted in the killing but the investigators never found those who ordered the murder, and her family blamed the government for its unwillingness to go after the masterminds.
___
MIKHAIL BEKETOV
Beketov suffered brain damage and lost a leg after a brutal assault in 2008 following his reporting and campaign against a highway project against Moscow. He died five years later.
Beketov wrote about corruption in Khimki, a town near the $8 billion highway. The founder and editor of a local newspaper, Beketov was among the first to raise the alarm about the destruction of the local forest and suspicions local officials were profiting from the project.
In November 2008, Beketev was beaten so viciously that he was left unable to speak. He was in coma for several months and spent more than two years in hospitals. His attackers were never found.
___
ANASTASIA BABUROVA
Freelance journalist Baburova was shot and killed in 2009 on a sidewalk in central Moscow as she attempted to intervene when a human rights lawyer, renowned for his work on abuses in Chechnya was also murdered by a masked gunman.
Lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot in the back of the head at close range in broad daylight by a gunman who followed him from a news conference. Baburova, who was walking back with the lawyer from the news conference, was also killed as she attempted to help Markelov.
Baburova, a freelance journalist in her mid-20s, had worked for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, also Politkovskaya's employer.
___
OLEG KASHIN
Intrepid reporter Kashin was viciously beaten by two unidentified attackers outside his home in November 2010 and narrowly escaped death. He spent days in an induced coma with a fractured skull, and had one finger partially amputated. He survived and eventually recovered.
Kashin has written on a wide range of social and political issues, some politically sensitive. Shortly after the attack, Kashin said he suspected then-Pskov governor Andrei Turchak to be behind the attempt on his life as a reaction to a critical post he wrote about him on his blog.
Russia's then-President Dmitry Medevdev at the time pledged to solve the attack. Kashin was originally full of praise for the investigators who appeared to be trying to find his attackers, but the probe stalled shortly afterward.
Frustrated with lack of progress in the investigation, Kashin conducted his own probe into the attack and several years later publicly accused Turchak of placing an order to cripple or kill him. Turchak has never been questioned, and has denied the accusations. He currently holds a senior post in the ruling pro-Kremlin party.
___
KHADZHIMURAD KAMALOV
Kamalov, founder of a newspaper in Russia's North Caucasus critical of authorities, was gunned down outside his office in Makhachkala, capital of the Dagestan region, in December 2011.
Kamalov's leading independent weekly paper Chernovik has reported extensively on police abuses in the fight against an Islamist insurgency that originated in neighboring Chechnya and has spread across the region.
In 2008, authorities brought a criminal case against several Chernovik journalists under anti-extremist legislation after they published an interview with a former guerrilla leader. A court acquitted them earlier this year.
Kamalov's killers were never found.
___
ARKADY BABCHENKO
Babchenko served in the Russian army and fought during Russia's two wars in Chechnya during the 1990s, first as a conscript, later as a contract soldier. He then became a journalist and worked as a military correspondent for several Russian media outlets. He has written several memoirs of his time as a soldier.
A scathing critic of the Russian government, Babchenko covered Russia's war with Georgia and the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, blaming Russia for targeting civilians.
In December 2016, Babchenko outraged many when he wrote in a Facebook post that he wasn't sorry for the military band and state television journalists who died in a plane crash on their way to Russia's military base in Syria. Several Russian lawmakers even called for stripping Babchenko of his citizenship over the comment, and Russian state media called him a traitor.
Babchenko fled Russia in February 2017, fearing for his life. He moved to Kiev last fall where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station, ATR.
Babchenko was shot dead in Kiev on Tuesday, and was found in his apartment by his wife. | – Five men have been found guilty in the 2006 slaying of 48-year-old Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, whose investigative reporting criticized President Vladimir Putin, the war in Chechnya, and Chechen leadership. Three of the men are brothers from Chechnya, one of whom has been found guilty of the shooting itself, which NBC News reports took place "execution-style" in the elevator of her apartment building. The other two brothers were found guilty of tracking Politkovskaya and acting as getaway drivers, and their uncle and a retired police officer were found to have organized and prepared for the murder, respectively. All face life in prison. Three of the conspirators now convicted were acquitted in 2009, but a retrial was ordered. Another ex-cop was convicted of supplying the murder weapon last year, the BBC reports. The defendants' lawyers plan to appeal the convictions, Reuters reports. Politkovskaya’s family is disappointed that it's still not clear who ordered the killing, saying in a statement that the men convicted "are only a few of the people who should be brought to justice." Though an investigation into the murder continues, critics suggest the mastermind will never be found because, as Reuters puts it, "the trail could lead too close to the government"—Politkovskaya's work angered quite a few important people. |
BERLIN (Reuters) - Portugal's decision to seek international aid removes a cloud of uncertainty over the euro zone and has a good chance of ending the spread of debt market crises to fresh countries in the region.
Investors had believed for months that a bailout for Portugal was almost inevitable, so the announcement by caretaker Prime Minister Jose Socrates on Wednesday is unlikely to hurt financial markets. The euro barely moved in the initial hours after the announcement.
The expected size of the bailout, 60-80 billion euros ($86 billion - $115 billion) according to a senior euro zone source, will not strain the euro zone's 440 billion euro bailout fund, especially since the International Monetary Fund is likely to be involved. Based on past bailouts, it would contribute about a third of the amount.
Many investors will see the request for aid as positive since it promises to avoid a worst-case scenario in which Portugal would have limped along under a minority government until general elections scheduled for June 5, refusing to seek help and digging an ever-bigger economic hole for itself.
This would have continued to push up Portuguese bond yields and threatened a collapse of its finances that might have prompted markets to start attacking Spain, widely seen as the next potential domino in the euro zone.
Other governments in the zone have therefore been pressing Portugal to request a bailout, and Lisbon's willingness to comply -- despite its bad memories of IMF-ordered austerity in the 1980s -- suggests the region remains able to summon enough political unity to address its debt problems.
"This is good news. We've been saying for a while that Portugal's finances were not sustainable at these rates," Erik Nielsen, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs, told Reuters. "We think the contagion stops here."
SPAIN
As recently as the turn of the year, it seemed likely that markets would target Spain if Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in seeking a bailout.
But the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has unveiled a series of reforms of the labor market, pensions and banking sector in past months. A stabilization of Spanish bond spreads shows many investors now believe it can avoid the fate of its smaller neighbor.
Portugal will have to agree to tough austerity targets to obtain a bailout, and how quickly a deal can be negotiated is unclear. Socrates resigned abruptly last month after his latest package of austerity measures was voted down in parliament, and his caretaker government has said it lacks the authority to negotiate an economic adjustment program.
European Union officials may also be loath to pursue an agreement before a new government emerges in the aftermath of the June 5 elections. In the case of Ireland, the EU sealed a bailout deal with a lame duck administration only to face demands for changes from a new government in Dublin.
However, now that it is requesting aid, Portugal has much better prospects of obtaining some kind of bridging loan if that is necessary to tide it over until a full bailout deal.
And unlike Ireland, where crumbling banks have been a black hole for state funds, and Greece, which is struggling against ingrained tax evasion and corruption, Portugal may be a relatively straightforward case for the EU and the IMF.
The country already has an austerity plan in place which has received the blessing of EU governments and IMF officials.
Also, Europe has learned lessons from the two previous bailouts. There is now a broad consensus in policymaking circles that the rescue terms for Greece and Ireland were too onerous, straining their economies and finances, so Portugal can hope to get somewhat softer terms in some areas.
"Investors no longer seem to be worried about a full-blown euro zone crisis and the potential demise of the common currency because they assume mechanisms are now in place to prevent the crisis from escalating out of control," said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at U.S. firm Dwight Asset Management.
DEBT, BANK RISKS
Still, while a Portuguese bailout may end the geographical spread of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone, it will not remove two big risks faced by the weakest countries: the possibility of sovereign debt restructurings, and the threat of deeper problems in the banking sector.
Some senior government officials in the zone are now acknowledging for the first time in private that some form of debt restructuring for Greece may be inevitable, even though officials publicly deny it will happen.
A number of economists believes the same fate may await Ireland and Portugal, although probably at a later date.
Those fears are likely to keep market interest rates in all three countries very high for years, even if the countries do carry out the economic and fiscal reforms demanded by the EU and the IMF.
Joao Leite, head of investment at Banco Carregosa in Lisbon, said international aid would solve Portugal's financing problems but that the country still faced a daunting task addressing its large deficits, competitiveness problems and weak growth.
"Unfortunately, the solutions to these problems will only have an impact over the longer term. Until then the Portuguese have a hard road ahead."
(Additional reporting by Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Editing by Andrew Torchia) ||||| Portugal has joined Greece and Ireland on the casualty list of Europe's sovereign debtors after its prime minister, José Sócrates, requested a European Union bailout.
The dramatic decision came in the middle of a political crisis that has left the country in limbo and with spiralling interest rates on its debt.
"I want to inform the Portuguese that the government decided today to ask ... for financial help, to ensure financing for our country, for our financial system and for our economy," Sócrates said in a televised address. "This is an especially grave moment for our country," he added. "Things will only get worse if nothing's done."
Sócrates said that the bailout, which analysts said could be between €70bn (£61bn) and €80bn was "the last resort".
The move was immediately welcomed in Brussels. "This is a responsible move by the Portuguese government for the sake of economic stability in the country and in Europe," the European commission's economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, told Reuters.
Sócrates did not say how much aid Portugal had asked for, but promised to negotiate the best possible conditions.
Analysts said Portugal was expected to need up to €80bn, an amount the EU's bailout fund, the European financial stability facility, can easily cover. The European commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, promised a swift response.
Portugal's troubles differ from Ireland, which pledged to cover huge losses at its banks, and Greece, which lied about its debt. Instead, it had allowed debt to mushroom during a decade in which its economy grew at just 0.7% a year.
The yield or interest on Portugal's 10-year bonds, which stood at 5.8% a year ago, was at 8.54% on Wednesday.
Economists had said that anything over 7% was too high for Portugal, which has growing unemployment and is predicted to enter a double-dip recession this year.
Ratings agencies had downgraded Portugal's bonds to a notch above junk level and even its own bankers warned they could not keep buying national debt as they tussled with liquidity problems of their own.
The caretaker government immediately blamed opposition parties for rejecting an austerity package on 23 March, bringing Sócrates's socialist government down and forcing 5 June elections. It came on top of three earlier packages of cuts and tax hikes.
"The country was irresponsibly pushed into a difficult situation in the financial markets," Portugal's finance minister, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, told the Jornal de Negócios shortly before the announcement.
The call for help comes from a weak caretaker government which may hand over the reins of the country to a minority centre-right government led by the Social Democrats after the elections.
Teixeira dos Santos said that other political parties would have to fall into line with the bailout request. "Faced with a difficult situation that could have been avoided, I believe it is necessary to use the financial mechanisms that are available in Europe within the terms of the current political situation," he said. "That will need, as well, the involvement and compromise of the main political forces and institutions in the country."
Social democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho said his party supported the aid request. "This needs to be seen as the first step in not hiding the truth," he said.
The government had admitted earlier on Wednesday that the political crisis was causing "irreparable damage" as borrowing costs rocketed.
Portugal sold a billion euros in short-term debt yesterday but saw the yield on 6-month and 12-month bills hit spikes of over 5%.
Portugal admitted last week that the 2010 budget deficit had been 8.6 percent of gross domestic product, far above its 7.3 percent target.
The caretaker government still claimed this year's goal of 4.6% would be met.
As Portugal became the third eurozone domino to fall, attention was expected to switch to Spain, though it has seen its debt yields improve recently as austerity measures bring down its deficit and growth returns.
International Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn told El País newspaper yesterday that Spain - a far larger and more important economy - was safe from a bail-out. | – Portugal is biting the bullet and admitting that it desperately needs a massive bailout from its European Union partners to stay afloat. Caretaker prime minister Jose Socrates told the nation that the decision to seek a bailout was "a last resort" as interest rates on its short-term debt skyrocket, reports the Guardian. Analysts believe the bailout will cost the EU some $114 billion. Portugal, which will have to commit to an economic adjustment program in exchange for the funds, joins Ireland and Greece on the eurozone's casualty list. The bailout request was widely expected, and analysts see it as a positive move because it will prevent a Portuguese collapse that could have made Spain the next target for markets searching for signs of weakness. "This is good news. We've been saying for a while that Portugal's finances were not sustainable at these rates," a Goldman Sachs economist tells Reuters. "We think the contagion stops here." |
More than 70,000 Syrian refugees who are stranded in dire conditions on the Jordanian border could be about to receive long-awaited aid after an announcement by Jordan’s government of plans to use a crane to deliver supplies.
Epidemic warning over 'ghost' refugees stuck at Jordan-Syria border Read more
Jordan first shut its border to refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war in mid-2014. About 75,000 Syrians have since been trapped in no-man’s land, unable to either enter Jordan or return to Syria.
Aid groups managed to deliver food and supplies by lorry until June this year when Jordan sealed the border to all traffic after a car bomb in the area. In the four months since, refugees at the “berm” – as the border fortifications are known – have been virtually without humanitarian aid.
Without formal shelter, refugees had dug holes in the ground to escape a Russian bombing raid. At the height of summer, when temperatures reached 50C (122F), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said those at the berm were experiencing “some of the most extreme conditions on Earth”.
But there was a glimmer of hope on Monday when the Jordanian government said aid could be delivered without opening the border – by using a crane to regularly lift supplies over the berm, or sandy ridge.
Aid groups in Jordan told the Guardian nothing had been confirmed. But Mohammed Momani, a government spokesman, said in interviews with the Jordan Times and Associated Press (AP) that a plan had been set in motion.
“The new mechanism will be delivering aid on the berm through cranes, and the aid will be given to community leaders of groups of Syrians so they can distribute it accordingly,” he told AP. Aid was previously delivered using a crane once in August.
If the plan goes ahead, the aid could alleviate a dire humanitarian situation on the border, where Amnesty International says disease is rife owing to the absence of medical care since the start of summer.
Several people have died of hepatitis, and satellite footage obtained by Amnesty last month showed refugees had begun to create makeshift burial grounds in which to inter the corpses. “Many people have died,” one refugee at the border told the charity. “The humanitarian situation is very bad, the situation of children in particular is very bad. We have drinking water but hardly any food or milk … [it] is awful.”
Amnesty cautiously welcomed Monday’s announcement, but warned that cranes were no substitute for allowing aid workers direct access to the 75,000 refugees.
Khairunissa Dhala, a refugee researcher for Amnesty, said: “News that humanitarian assistance will be resumed to tens of thousands of refugees stranded at the berm comes as a welcome relief. However, Amnesty International is extremely concerned about reports that aid will be delivered by crane rather than through a response that would allow for organisations to have unfettered humanitarian access to refugees at the berm who continue to live in inhumane conditions.
“Furthermore, this short-term solution must not distract the Jordanian government and the international community from finding a sustainable longer–term solution for the stranded refugees. Jordan, must allow refugees at the berm into the country while carrying out necessary checks in line with international standards, to allay security concerns. World leaders must also relieve the pressure on host countries like Jordan by assuming their fair share of responsibility and significantly increasing resettlement places offered.”
The situation highlights the worsening prospects for displaced Syrians hoping to reach safety outside their home country. In the early years of the Syrian war, refugees could easily flee to neighbouring countries, with about 2.5 million escaping to Turkey, 1.2 million to Lebanon and more than 650,000 to Jordan. Syrian refugees now make up about a fifth of Lebanon’s population and a 10th of Jordan’s.
But as the war dragged on, Middle Eastern countries gradually shut their borders, particularly once it became clear that western countries would not share the responsibility by resettling significant numbers in Europe and North America.
Syrian refugees must now choose between living under regime rule; fleeing to refugee camps in rebel territory, which have at times been overrun by jihadis or bombed by the government; or risk being shot on the Turkish border as they smuggle themselves across. ||||| FILE - In this Wednesday, June 22, 2016 file photo, Syrians walk through the Ruqban refugee camp in Jordan's northeast border with Syria. An official says Jordan will permit regular aid drops by crane... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this Wednesday, June 22, 2016 file photo, Syrians walk through the Ruqban refugee camp in Jordan's northeast border with Syria. An official says Jordan will permit regular aid drops by crane to Syrian refugees stranded on its sealed border. The comments by government spokesman Mohammed Momani... (Associated Press)
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan is willing to allow regular aid drops by crane from its territory to tens of thousands of Syrians stranded on its sealed desert border, the government spokesman said on Monday.
The comments by Mohammed Momani signaled an apparent shift in Jordan's position in talks with international aid agencies over access to the displaced.
However, two aid officials said nothing has been finalized. They spoke on condition of anonymity because talks are ongoing.
The pro-Western kingdom sealed its border with Syria in June, after a deadly cross-border attack claimed by Islamic State extremists killed seven members the Jordanian security forces. This has left more than 75,000 Syrians stuck between a war zone and a sealed border, without regular access to food, water and medicine.
The displaced live in two makeshift tent camps in an area where the frontier is marked by two parallel low earthen walls, or berms. Conditions have become increasingly dire, with aid officials reporting the spread of disease, including whooping cough and hepatitis.
Before the border closure, aid was sent from Jordanian soil. In August, Jordan permitted an aid drop by crane, in what was described at the time as a one-off shipment.
U.N. agencies have since proposed setting up an aid distribution center between five and seven kilometers west of the largest encampment, known as Rukban, within the strip marked by the two berms, an aid official said. This would presumably have drawn the Syrians away from a Jordanian military base that is close to Rukban.
However, Momani told The Associated Press on Monday that this is no longer being considered.
"The new mechanism will be delivering aid on the berm through cranes, and the aid will be given to community leaders of groups of Syrians so they can distribute it accordingly," he said, adding it would be up to the aid agencies to decide on the pace of shipments.
Momani said the border will remain sealed, citing an ongoing security threat to Jordan. The camps at the berm have been infiltrated by criminals, smugglers and extremists, he said.
"You can describe part of it as a Daesh enclave," he said, referring to the extremist Islamic State group by its Arabic acronym.
The two aid officials said nothing has been agreed on. One of the officials, who has direct access to the talks, said he was not aware of an emerging agreement on crane drops. He said another meeting was set for Tuesday.
The suffering at the berm has caused some friction between Jordan and the international community.
Aid agencies have been pressing for a resumption of aid from the Jordanian side.
Jordan has said the international community needs to take responsibility for those stranded at the berm, and that the kingdom has already done more than its share in taking in Syrian refugees. In the past, Jordan has argued that this aid needs to come from Syrian territory, not Jordan.
Momani said Jordan has taken the "moral high ground" by offering to help.
Close to 5 million Syrians fled civil war in their country since 2011, including close to 660,000 who settled in Jordan. ||||| Shelters at the Jordan-Syria border by the Rukban crossing, in September 2016. (CNES 2016 Distribution AIRBUS DS)
Over the past five years, Jordan has become one of the biggest recipients of refugees fleeing its war-torn neighbor, Syria. Almost 700,000 Syrians have been registered as refugees in the country, which has a population of just 6.5 million. Those are just the ones who have registered; Jordanian officials say the real number is far over 1 million.
But Jordan's hospitality may have hit a limit.
In the past year, as the trickle of new refugees entering the country slowed to a crawl, thousands of Syrian refugees have become trapped in an isolated no man's land between Syria and Jordan known as "the berm." Current estimates suggest more than 75,000 people are stuck in this area, but Jordanian authorities refused to allow access to the site for journalists and only limited access for aid groups.
A report from Amnesty International published Wednesday evening shows just how dire the situation on the berm has become. Using information from satellite images, video footage and a number of first-person accounts, Amnesty was able to show not only a dramatic growth in the size of the settlement at the border, but also what may be evidence of death and disease at the site.
The satellite imagery appears to show a dramatic growth in shelters at Rukban, one of two border crossings between Syria and Jordan, over the past year. While there were just 363 shelters at the site one year ago by Amnesty's count, by July 2016 there were 6,563. The most recent imagery released by Amnesty shows 8,295 shelters in September 2016.
Graphic showing the approximate number of shelters at the Syria-Jordan border in September 2016. (CNES 2016, Distribution AIRBUS DS. Data via UNOSAT)
A growing population that is increasingly isolated from food and medical treatment is creating serious health problems, the report noted.
Sources told Amnesty researchers that poor hygiene and sanitation problems at Rukban had led to an outbreak of hepatitis that had killed at least 10 refugees, many of whom were children, since the beginning of June. Aid workers also say that there have been nine childbirth-related deaths since June 21.
Video footage released by Amnesty appears to show graves and burial mounds. The organization also pointed to two separate sites in satellite images that look to be makeshift grave sites at the Rukban crossing. Amnesty said that it was not possible to get a fuller picture of a death toll at the site because of continuing issues with access.
Possible grave site in displacement camp at Syria-Jordan border. (CNES 2016, Distribution AIRBUS DS. Image from video obtained via the Tribal Council of Palmyra)
Image of what appears to be a grave site in displacement camp at Syria-Jordan border. (CNES 2016, Distribution AIRBUS DS. Image from video obtained via the Tribal Council of Palmyra)
“The situation at the berm offers a grim snapshot of the consequences of the world’s abject failure to share responsibility for the global refugee crisis. The . . . effect of this failure has seen many of Syria’s neighbors close their borders to refugees,” said Tirana Hassan, crisis response director at Amnesty.
While it has long been of concern, the situation on the berm appears to have deteriorated noticeably in recent months.
Previously, aid agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jordan and the U.N. refugee agency were allowed access to the site to distribute food and provide basic medical services. Refugees were often held up at the border because of stringent security checks by the Jordanian government, but people did get through.
In March, The Washington Post interviewed a number of refugees at the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, who gave varying accounts of their time there. Some said they had stayed for as many as five months. Often, the families allowed through include women who are in the late stages of pregnancy.
The situation changed when a suicide bombing by the Islamic State killed seven Jordanian border guards near the Rukban crossing on June 21. Jordan had long warned that the Syrian refugees at the border had been infiltrated by extremists; after the bombing, it closed the border for good.
Aid groups lost direct access to the berm. In early August, United Nations aid agencies were forced to use a crane to lower 650 metric tons of food and hygiene kits to the stranded refugees. It was unclear if Jordan would allow more deliveries in the future. "If this continues like it is now, we will soon see starvation, dehydration and we will be confronted with preventable deaths at the berm," Benoit De Gryse, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, told reporters.
The Jordanian government has acknowledged the situation at the berm a number of times over the previous year, but justified the tight control at the border because of security concerns about the Islamic State. However, there are also considerable tensions within Jordan over the Syrian refugees who have already arrived in the country. Some Jordanians say these refugees have pushed wages down and prices up. Others point to the considerable amount the government must spend on refugees.
In an interview with the BBC in February, King Abdullah II of Jordan suggested that his country was reaching its limit with refugees, and other nations should not criticize unless they were willing to do more themselves. “If you want to take the moral high ground on this issue, we’ll get them all to an air base and we’re more than happy to relocate them to your country,” he said.
Read more:
Refugee camp is partially empty while thousands wait at Jordanian border ||||| Border Guards help Syrians cross the border into Jordan in this May 4 photo (Photo by Hassan Tamimi)
AMMAN — Based on recent developments and upon further discussions with international agencies, Jordan will allow the delivery of aid to the berm through cranes, to be collected by the community leaders of the displaced Syrians near the border for distribution.
In remarks to The Jordan Times on Sunday, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Government Spokesperson Mohammad Momani said the distribution process will be monitored "in different ways".
Asked if the new measures entail any change to Jordan’s policy regarding the berm, the no-man's land between the Jordanian and Syrian borders where the displaced Syrians are gathered, Momani said Jordan will maintain its sealed border policy, and this delivery of aid will not affect that.
The injured and humanitarian cases will be allowed entry based on the assessment of agencies on the ground.
According to the UN, more than 85,000 Syrians are stranded at Rakban settlement in the no-man’s-land between Jordan and Syria.
Momani explained aid would be transported by cranes directly from the northeastern border to the other side.
Community leaders in Rakban will receive the aid once lowered and distribute it to the refugees there.
Members of the Tribal Council of Palmyra and Badia, a Syrian rebel group in charge of running the Rakban camp’s daily affairs, told The Jordan Times that the preliminary agreement entails the resumption of aid delivery as of next week.
Jordan declared the northern and northeastern border areas a closed military zone in June in the aftermath of a terrorist attack that targeted a military post serving refugees near the border, killing seven troops and injuring 13 others.
Since then, Jordan has agreed with international relief agencies to allow a one-off aid delivery to the area in August, while global stakeholders were expected to seek alternative solutions to continue the mission. | – Since mid-2014, about 75,000 Syrian refugees have been in limbo in the "berm"—what the Guardian describes as the "no-man's land" at the border between Jordan and Syria. And since June of this year, those refugees have been living in what Doctors Without Borders has called "some of the most extreme conditions on Earth," enduring temperatures over the summer that surpassed 120 degrees Fahrenheit and watching humanitarian supplies and food come to a halt in June after Jordan cut off deliveries following a car bomb. But government spokesman Mohammad Momani told the Jordan Times on Sunday that while the borders remain sealed, a new method of delivery will be used: cranes that will lower the goods from the northeastern side of the border to the other side (there was a one-off delivery like this in August). And it sounds like the aid is coming just in time. Per the AP, the refugees are living in tents and suffering not only from hunger and exposure to the elements, but also from serious illness, including whooping cough and hepatitis. Last month, Amnesty International released chilling video footage and satellite images that showed graves and burial mounds in the berm, per the Washington Post. "Many people have died," a refugee living in one of the camps told the group, saying conditions were "awful." "The mood among the people … is below zero." Two anonymous aid officials tell the news agency there's been no final confirmation, but Momani says the plans are being put in place to expedite the deliveries. "The aid will be given to community leaders of groups of Syrians so they can distribute it accordingly," he says, noting the aid groups will make the call on the pace of the deliveries. (One star offered comfort to refugees: Lindsay Lohan.) |
Image copyright ADAM BUTLER Image caption Eight-inch floppy disks date back to the early days of computer systems
The US nuclear weapons force still uses a 1970s-era computer system and 8-inch floppy disks, a government report has revealed.
The Government Accountability Office said the Pentagon was one of several departments where "legacy systems" urgently needed to be replaced.
The report said taxpayers spent $61bn (£41bn) a year on maintaining ageing technologies.
It said that was three times more than the investment on modern IT systems.
The report said that the Department of Defence systems that co-ordinated intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft "runs on an IBM Series-1 Computer - a 1970s computing system - and uses eight-inch floppy disks".
"This system remains in use because, in short, it still works," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt Col Valerie Henderson told the AFP news agency.
The floppy disk - what is it?
Image copyright Eyewire
Also called diskette or disk, it became popular in the 1970s
A standard 8in (200 mm) floppy disk had 237.25kB of storage space, enough for 15 seconds of audio
You would need more than 130,000 8-inch floppy disks to store 32GB of information - the size of an average memory stick
In the 1990s, the 3.5in floppy became the norm, with a 1.44MB of memory
Dell stopped making computers with inbuilt floppy disks in 2003. Very few manufacturers still make them
They are still in use in some 1990s technical equipment too valuable to scrap
"However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with secure digital devices by the end of 2017."
She added: "Modernisation across the entire Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications enterprise remains ongoing."
The report said that the Pentagon was planning to fully replace the system by the end of 2020.
According to the report, the US treasury also needed to upgrade its systems, which it said was using "assembly language code - a computer language initially used in the 1950s and typically tied to the hardware for which it was developed". ||||| The Pentagon and other US agencies still rely on outdated technology to carry out important functions — including some nuclear operations — according to a new government report. The report, published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), shows that a command and control unit tasked with coordinating "the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces" still uses 8-inch floppy disks and runs on an IBM / Series 1 computer — a model that was first produced in 1976. Other agencies, including the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Veteran Affairs, reported using IT systems that are at least 50 years old.
The report once again raises concerns over the government's use of obsolete technologies, and the costs associated with them. According to the GAO, taxpayers spent $61.2 billion last year to maintain outdated systems, while just $19.2 billion went toward updating federal technology. The Pentagon says the nuclear command and control unit will phase out floppy disks by the end of 2017, and that it will fully modernize the system by 2020.
"This system remains in use because, in short, it still works," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Valerie Henderson told the AFP.
The Office of Management and Budget has launched an initiative to replace old IT systems, but it has not yet been finalized. Until it's put into place, the report says, "the government runs the risk of maintaining systems that have outlived their effectiveness." ||||| Call the engine room and get Scotty to the bridge: When the long-lost words of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were found on 5.25-inch floppies—yes, floppy disks—it would take a Starfleet-level engineering effort to recover them.
Roddenberry, who died in 1991, apparently left behind a couple of shoebox-sized containers of those big floppy disks.
The problem? As any techie knows, floppy drives went out off fashion around the turn of the 21st century. Even if you bought a used 5.25-inch floppy drive off of Cyrano Jones on space station K7, you wouldn't be able to read the files on a modern computer, let alone plug in the drive.
Roddenberry's estate knew of two possible computers the author had used to write those final words. One had been sold off in a charity auction and the second wouldn't boot when plugged in.
George Chernilevsky Most of Gene Roddenberry's lost work was stored on the 1970s and 1980s era 5.25-inch disk, which here is flanked by the older 8-inch and newer 3.5-inch versions.
The computer's dead Jim
Rather than accept that no-win scenario, Roddenberry's estate turned to DriveSavers Data Recovery. The lack of an operative computer was less than ideal, but Mike Cobb, director of engineering of DriveSavers, was optimistic, considering the company's ability to recover data from most forms of computer media known today.
According to Cobb, the majority of the disks were 1980s-era 5.25-inch double-density disks capable of storing a whopping 160KB—that's kilobytes—or about one-tenth the capacity you can get on a $1 USB thumb drive today. Cobb said a few of the disks were formatted in DOS, but most of them were from an older operating system called CP/M.
CP/M, or Control Program for Microcomputers, was a popular operating system of the 1970s and early 1980s that ultimately lost out to Microsoft's DOS. In the 1970s and 1980s it was the wild west of disk formats and track layouts, Cobb said. The DOS recoveries were easy once a drive was located, but the CP/M disks were far more work.
"The older disks, we had to actually figure out how to physically read them," Cobb told PCWorld. "The difficult part was CP/M and the file system itself and how it was written."
As the data recovery firm couldn't get Roddenberry's old computer to power on, it had to sleuth the physical layout of the tracks on the disk. That alone took three months to reverse engineer; Cobb credits his own "Scotty," Jim Wilhelmsen, with figuring it out.
DriverSavers Data Recovery DriveSaver's Mike Cobb and Jim Wilhelmsen with Gene Roddenberry's dead computer and a pile of the floppy disks they helped recover.
To make matters worse, about 30 of the disks were damaged, with deep gouges in the magnetic surface. As luck would have it, Cobb said most of the physical damage was over empty portions of the disks and he believes about 95 percent of the data was recovered.
Besides seeking the technical expertise required for the task, the estate also wanted high security, according to Cobb. The estate wasn't going to just drop all 200 disks in a FedEx box and pray to the shipping gods they wouldn't get lost. No, only small batches of the disks were doled out at a time, and each batch was hand-delivered to DriveSavers' secure facility in Novato beginning in 2012.
Once DriveSavers had recovered the data, the data had to be converted into a format the estate could open. It's not like you can feed a 1980s-era CP/M word processor format into Microsoft Word, so Cobb personally converted each file to a readable text file.
The big reveal
All told, Cobb said when the operating system files were excluded, about 2-3MB of data was recovered from the 200 floppies. That may seem like a minuscule amount by today's standards, but in the 1980s, document files were small. Roddenberry's lost words were substantial.
So what's actually on the disks? Lost episodes of Star Trek? The secret script for a new show? Or as Popular Science once speculated, a patent for a transporter?
Unfortunately, we don't know.
Cobb ain't saying. Understandably, when DriverSavers is contracted to recover data, it's also bound by rules of confidentiality. PCWorld reached out to the Roddenberry estate but was told it had no comment on the data or its plans for the newly discovered writing of Gene Roddenberry.
DriverSavers Data Recovery For their work in recovering The Great Bird of the Galaxy's lost writing, DriveSavers received a signed photo of the Star Trek creator in front of his computer from his son. ||||| (CNN) Want to launch a nuclear missile? You'll need a floppy disk.
That's according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found that the Pentagon was still using 1970s-era computing systems that require "eight-inch floppy disks."
Photos: Gadget graveyard Photos: Gadget graveyard Floppy discs – Eight-inch floppy discs became commercially available in the 1970s. They allowed up to 1.2 megabytes of storage capacity. Today, a flash drive can hold up to 1 terabyte and comes in all sorts of practical novelty designs. Hide Caption 1 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard Polaroid – Long before there was Instagram, Polaroid was king. The Polaroid celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2012. But by then most of us had no more need to ever shake a Polaroid picture again. Not entirely resurrected, Polaroids are retro-cool and often pop up at weddings and other celebrations. Hide Caption 2 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard CDs – CDs and Discmans may have fallen out of favor in the iTunes world, but creative minds always find new uses for the reflective music carriers. Hide Caption 3 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard Pagers – People slapped these suckers on their hips, feeling important whenever they beeped or vibrated. Then they'd frantically have to find a few coins to use a payphone. The RIM 850 (before it was called BlackBerry) pager could send messages and emails but never nailed the art of the selfie. Hide Caption 4 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard Pocket PC – The pocket PC and Palm Pilot brought your calendars, addresses, contacts and a calculator into one handy dandy tool instead of hand-scrawled notebooks. Downsides apart from the original green screen? They couldn't make calls. Worse than that, the pen/pencil/stylus/thingy would always vanish. Hide Caption 5 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard VHS – The clunky plastic cassettes would sometimes tangle in the machine and, over time, stretch to produce warped purple colors on the TV. But boy, did we love VCRs and video nights. And boy, did we hate programming them. Hide Caption 6 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard Walkman – The Walkman gave a valid excuse to shut out parents, oncoming traffic and most forms of social interaction. Various models included a waterproof Walkman, graphic equalizer, LCD radio screens, Mega Bass and, in original versions, two headphone jacks. The greatest invention since the Walkman -- and possibly sliced bread -- remains auto-reverse, saving users the hassle of having to eject and flip the cassette over. Hide Caption 7 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard MiniDisc – The MiniDisc was something of a hybrid of small CD and plastic cassette. Journos loved them, particularly if you worked in radio as editing was a breeze. These durable gadgets took up little space and were anti-skip, unlike (pre-memory) CD players. Per the original Walkman, it was a Sony product. The company laid the MD to rest earlier this year. Hide Caption 8 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard LaserDisc – Stalwarts of the LaserDisc player maintain the format offered higher-quality video and audio than the videocassette. But then the DVD came along. Hide Caption 9 of 10 Photos: Gadget graveyard Classic consoles – Atari brought the first in-home console to market during the 1970s with the addictive "Pong" and "Centipede." But Atari went from high score to game over, when it filed for bankruptcy in January this year. The rise of gaming on PCs and mobile devices has impacted the console videogame industry. Hide Caption 10 of 10
Such disks were already becoming obsolete by the end of that decade, being edged out by smaller, non-floppy 3.5 to 5.25-inch disks, before being almost completely replaced by the CD in the late 90s.
Except in Washington that is. The GAO report says that U.S. government departments spend upwards of $60 billion a year on operating and maintaining out-of-date technologies.
That's three times the investment on modern IT systems.
Read More | – To anyone born after 1995, the floppy disk is better known as that thing that resembles the "save" icon. To the Pentagon, it's the gizmo that controls America's nukes. A report from the Government Accountability Office finds US government agencies spend $60 billion a year operating and maintaining outdated systems—three times more than is spent on upgrades, per CNN. One such system: the Pentagon's IBM Series-1 computer which uses 8-inch floppy disks "in a legacy system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces," including intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers. For youngsters, the big floppy disks were the precursor to the 3.5-inch ones, before the CD came around. "This system remains in use because, in short, it still works," a Pentagon rep tells the AFP, per the BBC, which notes you'd need 130,000 8-inch floppy disks to get the storage capacity of a 32GB memory stick. "However, to address obsolescence concerns, the floppy drives are scheduled to be replaced with secure digital devices by the end of 2017," the rep says. Other system upgrades are expected by 2020. "Maybe we'll have Nintendo Gameboys controlling our nukes by the next presidential election," quips CNN's Jake Tapper. The Treasury, Commerce, and Veteran Affairs departments should also look into upgrading. The report finds all three use computer code introduced in the 1950s, per the Verge. (Floppy disks are partly to blame for lost scientific data.) |
Two new deaths linked to a mysterious bacterial outbreak in Europe blamed on tainted vegetables were reported Tuesday, including the first outside Germany, as the number of people falling ill continued to rise.
A market seller speaks on his cell phone behind a display of cucumbers and other vegetables in Malaga, southern Spain, Monday May 30, 2011. Vegetables from Spain are suspected of carrying the dangerous... (Associated Press)
The deaths brought to 16 the total number of fatalities linked to the E. coli outbreak, with northwestern Germany the hardest-hit region.
Hospital officials in Boras, Sweden, announced the death of woman in her 50s who was admitted on May 29 after a trip to Germany. In Paderborn, Germany, the local council said an 87-year-old woman who also suffered from other ailments had died.
In Germany, the national disease control center said 373 people were sick with the most serious form of the outbreak _ hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, a rare complication arising from an infection most commonly associated with E. coli. That figure was up from the 329 reported Monday.
Susanne Glasmacher, a spokeswoman for the Robert Koch Institute, said another 796 people have been affected by the enterohaemorrhagic E.coli, also known as EHEC, bacteria _ making a total of more than 1,150 people infected.
Hundreds of people also have been sickened in other European countries, but until Tuesday Germany had seen the only deaths.
Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment is still warning consumers to avoid all cucumbers, lettuces and raw tomatoes as the outbreak is investigated.
European Union officials have said that German authorities identified cucumbers from the Spanish regions of Almeria and Malaga as possible sources of contamination and that a third suspect batch, originating either in the Netherlands or in Denmark and traded in Germany, is also under investigation.
They have also noted, however, that the transport chain is long, and the cucumbers from Spain could have been contaminated at any point along the route.
The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said Tuesday that no traces of EHEC bacteria were found in tests conducted over the weekend.
"There is therefore nothing that indicates that Danish cucumbers are the source of the serious E.coli outbreak that has infected several patients in Germany, Denmark and Sweden," the agency said.
In the meantime, Russia's chief sanitary agency on Monday banned the imports of cucumbers, tomatoes and fresh salad from Spain and Germany pending further notice. It said in a statement that it may even ban the imports of fresh vegetables from all European Union member states due to the lack of information about the source of infection.
______
Karl Ritter contributed to this story from Stockholm. ||||| (CNN) -- Infectious disease detectives worldwide rushed Thursday to find the cause of an outbreak of a rare strain of E. coli that has spread to 10 countries and is blamed for at least 16 deaths and hundreds of illnesses.
Nine patients in Germany had died of a form of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, according to the World Health Organization, which cited Tuesday figures as its most recent. Six had died of enterohemorrhagic E. coli, EHEC, a strain of E. coli that causes hemorrhaging in the intestines and can result in abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. One person in Sweden has also died.
Across Europe, 499 cases of HUS and 1,115 cases of EHEC have been reported, WHO said on its website.
In addition to Germany and Sweden, cases have been identified in Austria, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
All but two of the cases occurred in people who had recently visited northern Germany or, in one case, had contact with a visitor from northern Germany, the organization said.
Scientists at the Beijing Genomic Institute said the outbreak of infection in Germany is caused by a new "super-toxic" E. coli strain, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the strain has been seen before.
"We have very little experience with this particular strain, but it has been seen before," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's division of foodborne diseases.
The CDC said the strain is very rare and added that, while it is not aware of any cases ever having been reported in the United States, it is aware of a few previous reports of the strain in other countries. Britain's Health Protection Agency has said that the strain suspected in the outbreak is "rare" and "seldom seen in the UK."
Though WHO said it does not recommend any trade restrictions related to the outbreak, Russia announced a ban Thursday on fresh vegetable imports from the European Union.
Russia imposed the vegetable ban because "no one wants to get sick. It is a natural protective measure taken in response to events that are happening in Europe today," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Thursday.
Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Health and Consumer Rights, issued a statement saying the ban will remain in effect "until we become convinced that this situation is resolved."
Customs officials have been instructed to prevent the produce from entering the country, according to Onishchenko, while supermarkets and food chains in Russia were told to withdraw European vegetables from their produce bins.
Frederic Vincent, the European Commission's health spokesman, called the move "disproportionate."
"The commission will be writing today to the Russian authorities, and we will be liaising and working with them in the coming days to try to find a solution," Vincent said. The commission is the EU's executive body.
Yelena Skrynnik, Russia's agriculture minister, issued a statement assuring Russians that, despite the ban, "the volume of home-grown vegetable production combined with exports (from other countries) is sufficient to fully meet Russia's domestic demand."
In 2010, the imports of tomatoes and cucumbers from the EU amounted to, respectively, 11% and 5% of all imports of those vegetables into Russia, the Russian Agriculture Ministry said.
The ban could potentially affect some larger cities in the European part of the country, where about 90% of vegetables are imported, said Sergey Shugayev, chairman of the Rural Russia Association.
China and Turkey are the two largest exporters of fresh vegetables into Russia, according to the Russian Greenhouses Association.
The European Food Safety Alert Network initially said EHEC was found in organic cucumbers originating from Spain, packaged in Germany and distributed to countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg and Spain.
But authorities said Thursday the source had not been pinpointed.
Spain's Ministry of Health, Social Politics and Equality said Thursday that all samples of Spanish produce that it analyzed had proved negative.
Spain's ambassador to Britain, Carles Casajuana i Palet, told CNN that Spanish produce had been "completely cleared" and are "safe for all consumers." But, he added, the matter had damaged the country's growers "and we are sure there will have to be compensations" through the European Union.
Britain's Health Protection Agency on Thursday confirmed that there were four new cases in England suspected to be related to the outbreak, bringing the total number of cases in the country to seven.
The agency said that it was "reminding people traveling to Germany to follow the advice of the authorities and avoid eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and leafy salad including lettuce, especially in the north of the country, until further notice. In addition, anyone returning from Germany with illness including bloody diarrhea should seek urgent medical attention and make sure they mention their recent travel history."
The ban on fresh vegetables from the European Union comes three days after Russia blocked the import of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and salad greens from Germany and Spain. On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates imposed a temporary ban on cucumbers from Spain, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
CNN's Maxim Tkachenko contributed to this report. | – A deadly E. coli outbreak in Europe linked to tainted cucumbers and other vegetables is getting worse, report the Wall Street Journal and AP: The toll: Sixteen people are dead (15 in Germany and one woman in Sweden who had just traveled to Germany); more than 1,000 people are sick in Germany alone, with 373 having the most serious form of E. coli. Hundreds more cases are reported throughout Europe. The source: Germany blames cucumbers from Spain, specifically the Almeria and Malaga regions. A third batch from the Netherlands or Denmark is under investigation. Spain angrily denies being the source, and EU officials say the vegetables could have become tainted anywhere along the supply chain. The fallout: Russia has banned some imports from Spain and Germany (and may expand it to all EU nations); Italy, Austria, and other nations have stopped short of that but are ramping up inspections at supermarkets. |
Adding more evidence to the fact that social media doesn’t make us feel better, a new study indicates those Facebook likes are pretty shallow. According to the preliminary research, receiving attention via likes on social media does nothing to improve mood or make you feel better about yourself.
It turns out, those thumbs up or heart icons don’t make much of a difference when it comes to our happiness. The study also found that people who went to extremes to receive more love, going as far as paying or asking others to like their posts, were more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and to be less trusting. This assessment was also true for those who deleted posts or changed their profile pictures based on how many likes a photo received.
Read: Why Your Mid-20s Is the Best Age For Making Random Choices
Researchers enlisted 340 participants who completed personality questionnaires, in addition to answering how much they agreed or disagreed with 25 statements about self worth and finding value from social media. Examples included assertions like, “The attention I get from social media makes me feel good” and “I consider someone popular based on the amount of likes they get.”
Pixabay
"The proliferation of social media use has led to general concerns about the effects on our mental health,” said lead study author Dr. Martin Graff, Ph.D and psychology researcher at the University of South Wales, in a statement. “Although this is just a relatively small scale study, the results indicate that the ways we interact with social media can affect how we feel and not always positively."
Graff will present this study Wednesday, May 3, at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference.
This definitely isn’t the first time that social media has been found to be inadequate in making us happier. Previous research has shown that using social media can actually make us more depressed. A study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that those who spent more time on social media were likelier to suffer from depression. The team surveyed 1,787 adults from 19 to 32 years old.
Dr. Brian Primack, MD, Ph.D, and co-author of that study told Cosmpolitan.com there were many factors causing foul moods. FOMO, feeling inadequate compared to others’ “perfect” lives and wasting time browsing the timeline are just a few influences driving that spike in depression.
Read: Irregular Sleep Patterns Could Make You Less Creative And Attentive
Maybe the realization that social media isn’t good for our egos is spurring people to break up with different platforms. A recent survey by the Associated Press found that most teens, about 60 percent of respondents 13-17 years old, have taken a break from popular apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
See Also:
Can Dairy Be A New Way To Treat Depression? Low-Fat Milk And Yogurt Linked To Lower Depressive Symptoms
What's Up With The Freudian Slip, And Does It Reveal My Inner Desires? ||||| Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
Jochen Eckel/dpa/Corbis
How long do you spend on Facebook?
Do you log on often?
Or do you keep it on your screen all day, checking and checking? Do you occasionally post?
This may say something about you. Or it may not. It may also say something about Facebook and other social media. Or, again, it may not.
A new study from the University of Pittsburgh suggests those of us who are heavy users of social media are 2.7 times more likely to suffer from depression than those of who check less frequently.
Moreover, those in the study who spent the most time on social media were 1.7 times more likely to suffer from depression than those who spent least time.
The study looked at the use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.
It examined 1,787 adults between the ages of 19 and 32. Average social media use was 61 minutes per day and the average number of visits to a social media site was 30 a week.
It's easy to leap to the conclusion that Facebook makes you miserable. Indeed, 2013 research from the University of Michigan suggested that Facebook actively "undermines" well-being in young adults.
As far back as 2009, research from Stony Brook University concluded that too much Facebook makes teenage girls depressed.
However, in this case, lead researcher Lui yi Lin said even though the link between one factor and the other seems strong, the deep truth behind the link may be complex.
"It may be that people who already are depressed are turning to social media to fill a void," she said on the University's Web site. There's also the possibility, she added, that social media might cause depression, which then causes more social media use.
Dr. Brian Primack, director of Pitt's Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health insisted that not all social media interaction or usage is the same.
"Future studies should examine whether there may be different risks for depression depending on whether the social media interactions people have tend to be more active vs. passive or whether they tend to be more confrontational vs. supportive," he said.
Perhaps it's just like any other interaction with the world. Some work out for our psychological benefit, others don't.
There's also the issue of potential short-term benefits and potential long-term harm.
It's easy to preach moderation, but much harder to act on it yourself. Facebook and the like have partly become so powerful because everyone has chosen to participate and many have clearly become hooked.
It's enough to make you miserable. ||||| Main Content
Social Media Use Associated With Depression Among U.S. Young Adults
PITTSBURGH, March 22, 2016 – The more time young adults use social media, the more likely they are to be depressed, according to new research from the – The more time young adults use social media, the more likely they are to be depressed, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
The findings could guide clinical and public health interventions to tackle depression, forecast to become the leading cause of disability in high-income countries by 2030. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health , is published online and scheduled for the April 1 issue of the journal Depression and Anxiety
This was the first large, nationally representative study to examine associations between use of a broad range of social media outlets and depression. Previous studies on the subject have yielded mixed results, been limited by small or localized samples, and focused primarily on one specific social media platform, rather than the broad range often used by young adults.
“Because social media has become such an integrated component of human interaction, it is important for clinicians interacting with young adults to recognize the balance to be struck in encouraging potential positive use, while redirecting from problematic use,” said senior author Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ph.D. , director of Pitt’s Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health.
In 2014, Dr. Primack and his colleagues sampled 1,787 U.S. adults ages 19 through 32, using questionnaires to determine social media use and an established depression assessment tool.
The questionnaires asked about the 11 most popular social media platforms at the time: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.
On average the participants used social media a total of 61 minutes per day and visited various social media accounts 30 times per week. More than a quarter of the participants were classified as having “high” indicators of depression.
There were significant and linear associations between social media use and depression whether social media use was measured in terms of total time spent or frequency of visits. For example, compared with those who checked least frequently, participants who reported most frequently checking social media throughout the week had 2.7 times the likelihood of depression. Similarly, compared to peers who spent less time on social media, participants who spent the most total time on social media throughout the day had 1.7 times the risk of depression. The researchers controlled for other factors that may contribute to depression, including age, sex, race, ethnicity, relationship status, living situation, household income and education level.
Lead author Lui yi Lin, B.A., who will be graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine this spring, emphasized that, because this was a cross-sectional study, it does not disentangle cause and effect.
“It may be that people who already are depressed are turning to social media to fill a void,” she said.
Conversely, Ms. Lin explains that exposure to social media also may cause depression, which could then in turn fuel more use of social media. For example:
• Exposure to highly idealized representations of peers on social media elicits feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier, more successful lives.
• Engaging in activities of little meaning on social media may give a feeling of “time wasted” that negatively influences mood.
• Social media use could be fueling “Internet addiction,” a proposed psychiatric condition closely associated with depression.
• Spending more time on social media may increase the risk of exposure to cyber-bullying or other similar negative interactions, which can cause feelings of depression.
In addition to encouraging clinicians to ask about social media use among people who are depressed, the findings could be used as a basis for public health interventions leveraging social media. Some social media platforms already have made forays into such preventative measures. For example, when a person searches the blog site Tumblr for tags indicative of a mental health crisis—such as “depressed,” “suicidal” or “hopeless”—they are redirected to a message that begins with “Everything OK?” and provided with links to resources. Similarly, a year ago Facebook tested a feature that allows friends to anonymously report worrisome posts. The posters would then receive pop-up messages voicing concern and encouraging them to speak with a friend or helpline.
“Our hope is that continued research will allow such efforts to be refined so that they better reach those in need,” said Dr. Primack, who also is assistant vice chancellor for health and society in Pitt’s Schools of the Health Sciences and professor of medicine. “All social media exposures are not the same. Future studies should examine whether there may be different risks for depression depending on whether the social media interactions people have tend to be more active vs. passive or whether they tend to be more confrontational vs. supportive. This would help us develop more fine-grained recommendations around social media use.”
Additional authors of the study were Jaime E. Sidani, Ph.D., Ariel Shensa, M.A., Ana Radovic, M.D., M.Sc., Elizabeth Miller, M.D., Ph.D., Jason B. Colditz, M.Ed., Beth Hoffman, B.Sc., and Leila M. Giles, B.S., all of Pitt. ||||| These are the findings of a preliminary study presented at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Conference in Brighton on Wednesday 3 May 2017, by Dr Martin Graff from University of South Wales.
A total of 340 participants recruited via Twitter and Facebook completed personality questionnaires. They were also asked to say how much they agreed or disagreed with 25 statements relating to the ways people appreciate being valued on social media. For example ‘the attention I get from social media makes me feel good’ or ‘I consider someone popular based on the amount of likes they get’.
Analysis revealed that participants who said they went out of their way to get more likes (such as asking others or paying) were more likely to have low self-esteem and be less trusting. The same was true of those who admitted deleting posts or making a picture their profile picture on account of the number of likes it received.
The results also showed that receiving likes didn’t actually make people feel any better about themselves or make them feel better when they were down.
Dr Graff said: | – Teens aren't necessarily as in love with social media as they're portrayed to be. The results of an AP poll released last week show that nearly 60% of teens in the US have taken social media breaks—most of the time voluntary ones that last at least a week. Now researchers at the University of South Wales have presented findings to the British Psychological Society that suggest even what are perceived to be straightforward perks of social media—such as getting attention via likes—may not exactly elevate the end user's mood. "Although this is just a relatively small-scale study, the results indicate that the ways we interact with social media can affect how we feel, and not always positively," one researcher says. To test this, the team reports in a Science Daily news release that it recruited 340 participants on Twitter and Facebook to complete personality questionnaires and then agree or disagree with 25 statements. Key findings include that people who go out of their way to rack up more likes tend to have low self-esteem and be less trusting of others, and that those likes don't actually lift their mood or how they see themselves. Previous research has looked not at more likes, but at more time, reports Medical Daily. It cites a study published in 2016 that surveyed 19- to 32-year-olds and found "individuals in the highest quartile of [social media] site visits per week ... had significantly increased odds of depression." (Young people average at least an hour a day on social media.) |
A new North Korean propaganda video shows the U.S. Capitol being hit by a missile. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
An image of the U.S. Capitol being hit by an explosion has been posted on a North Korean propaganda website.
The video, published by the semi-official Uriminzokkiri agency and posted on its YouTube account, at first shows still images of North Korean artillery, missiles and soldiers.
It then moves on to film of numerous missiles being fired, before showing what appears to be a gun sight zeroing in on the White House and then the U.S. Capitol.
"The White House is caught in the panoramic sight of a (North Korean) long-range missile. This hotbed of war is in the scope of a nuclear bomb blow," a caption on the video says, according to a translation by the South Korean news agency Yonhap.
An explosion hits the dome of the Capitol building, leaving a gaping hole. The four-minute film then continues with yet more images of rockets being fired.
A video showing an American city that looked like New York engulfed in flames after a missile attack was posted on the same website last month.
Yonhap via EPA An image taken from a North Korean propaganda website Monday appears to show the U.S. Capitol -- wrongly identified as the White House -- being hit by a missile.
It was part of a dream sequence in which a photographer circles the earth in a fictional North Korea space shuttle. It was accompanied by an instrumental version of the song “We are the World.”
"Black smoke is seen somewhere in America," text that accompanied the video said. "It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire it started."
'Petulant child'
Tension has been high on the Korean Peninsula since the North carried out a rocket test in December and then a nuclear bomb test in February.
It also took the opportunity to threaten South Korea with “final destruction” during a United Nations Conference on Disarmament last month.
A propaganda video posted on YouTube by the North Korea government shows a missile launch and a city that appears to be New York, in flames. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
And then on March 9, the North threatened to exercise its “right to a pre-emptive nuclear attack" as new sanctions were unanimously agreed by the United Nations Security Council.
Heather Williams, a research fellow at the U.K.’s Chatham House website, said North Korea was “almost like a petulant child,” constantly wanting to remind people of its existence by acting out.
She said images like the Capitol and New York explosions fitted the theme of previous propaganda from Pyongyang, but added “at the same time, it’s a more serious situation than we have seen in quite a while.”
“It is a reminder of the situation and that things could escalate,” she said.
Williams said Kim Jong Un was a “young, new leader” who still needed to “prove himself” to the country’s powerful military.
“My take is that it is overwhelmingly bluster for domestic reasons, not international ones,” she said.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress he was "very concerned" about North Korea's recent rhetoric as well as the rocket and nuclear bomb tests, The Associated Press reported.
"These programs demonstrate North Korea's commitment to develop long-range missile technology that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns," Clapper told the Senate Intelligence committee.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related:
Kim Jong Un supervises North Korea artillery drills near disputed border with South
Video: Kim Jong Un directs army to 'annihilate the enemy'
North Korea's poets of propaganda stay true to their muse despite world's laughter ||||| N. Korea video shows US city under attack
SEOUL — North Korea, poised to conduct a nuclear test any day now, has posted a video on YouTube depicting a US city resembling New York engulfed in flames after an apparent missile attack.
The footage was uploaded Saturday by the North's official website, Uriminzokkiri, which distributes news and propaganda from the state media.
The video is shot as a dream sequence, with a young man seeing himself on board a North Korean space shuttle launched into orbit by the same type of rocket Pyongyang successfully tested in December.
As the shuttle circles the globe -- to the tune of "We Are the World" -- the video zooms in on countries below, including a joyfully re-unified Korea.
In contrast, the focus then switches to a city -- shrouded in the US flag -- under apparent missile attack with its skyscrapers, including what appears to be the Empire State Building, either on fire or in ruins.
"Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing," runs the caption across the screen.
"It seems that the nest of wickedness is ablaze with the fire started by itself," it added.
The video ends with the young man concluding that his dream will "surely come true".
"Despite all kinds of attempts by imperialists to isolate and crush us... never will anyone be able to stop the people marching toward a final victory," it said.
The North is expected to conduct its nuclear test as a defiant response to UN sanctions imposed after its December rocket launch.
Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved. More » | – Apparently New York in flames was not enough. Now a quasi-official North Korean news agency has posted a new video—this one of the US Capitol exploding, NBC News reports. Intercut with images of North Korean artillery and missiles, the video also shows a target homing in on the White House. "The White House is caught in the panoramic sight of a long-range missile," reads a caption. "This hotbed of war is in the scope of a nuclear bomb blow." The video comes after months of alarming moves by Pyongyang. The North has tested a rocket and a nuclear weapon, threatened to nuke the US, and announced the end of the armistice that has kept peace on the Korean peninsula. One analyst blames the escalation on new leader Kim Jong Un's need to "prove himself" to North Korea's military: "My take is that it is overwhelmingly bluster for domestic reasons, not international ones," she says. (Click to see the video of New York being firebombed, accompanied by an instrumental version of "We Are the World.") |
HAMDEN, Conn. (AP) — Dr. Sherwin Nuland, the author of an award-winning book about death called "How We Die," has died at age 83.
FILE - In this Nov. 16, 1994, file photo, The National Book Awards prize winning writers, William Gaddis, left, Sherwin B. Nuland, center, and James Tate greet each other after the awards ceremony in... (Associated Press)
FILE - In this May 28, 1996, file photo, Dr. Sherwin Nuland sits on the desk in his home study in Hamden, Conn. Nuland, the author of 1994 National Book Award winner "How We Die," has died at age 83.... (Associated Press)
He died of prostate cancer on Monday at his home in Hamden, said his daughter Amelia Nuland, who recalled how he told her he wasn't ready for death because he loved life.
"He told me, 'I'm not scared of dying, but I've built such a beautiful life, and I'm not ready to leave it,'" she said Tuesday.
Sherwin Nuland was born in New York and taught medical ethics at Yale University in New Haven. He was critical of the medical profession's obsession with prolonging life when common sense would dictate further treatment is futile. He wrote nature "will always win in the end, as it must if our species is to survive."
"The necessity of nature's final victory was accepted in generations before our own," he wrote. "Doctors were far more willing to recognize the signs of defeat and far less arrogant about denying them."
"How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter" was published in 1994 and won a National Book Award for nonfiction, beating out a book about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and three other finalists. In it Nuland describes how life is lost to diseases and old age. It helped foster national debate over doctor-assisted suicide and end-of-life decisions.
Nuland, a surgeon, said in a 1996 interview he hoped that when his time came he would go gently "without suffering and surrounded by loved ones." He said then, when he was 65, that if his death certificate were to read, "Died of Old Age," he thought that "would be very nice."
His daughter said he and his family had talked all the time about his illness and his impending death. She said there were times when he was "very much at peace" and occasional times toward the end when he seemed scared and sad.
"He wasn't scared of death itself, but he loved everything about his world and the people in his world and life and life," she said. "And he didn't want to leave." ||||| With the death last week of Yale surgeon Dr. Sherwin Nuland, the New York Times obituary credited his 1993 best-selling book, “How We Die,” with being the catalyst that spurred many conversations about end-of-life care.
Yet 20 years later, many doctors still have a hard time initiating such conversations with their patients, especially those dying before their time from, say, metastatic cancer. Evidence of this comes from a troubling new Dana-Farber Cancer Institute study, which found that more than half of end-stage cancer patients receive chemotherapy during the last few months of their life, and those who received such treatment were more likely to die in a hospital intensive care unit, hooked to a ventilator, rather than at home as they would have preferred.
Continue reading below
These patients were also less likely to have discussed their end of life wishes with their oncologist compared with other end-stage cancer patients who opted not to continue chemotherapy, according to the study of 386 terminally ill cancer patients published last Tuesday in the British Medical Journal.
“There’s a subtle dance that happens between oncologist and patient,” said study leader Dr. Alexi Wright, “where doctors don’t want to broach the subject of dying because it makes those patients think we’re giving up on them.”
She and her colleagues found that chemotherapy didn’t prolong survival but did increase the likelihood of a more medicalized death: 65 percent of those on cancer drugs died in their preferred place compared with 80 percent of those who stopped treatments. | – Dr. Sherwin Nuland, whose book How We Die sparked national debate over end-of-life decisions, has died from prostate cancer at his Connecticut home. The 83-year-old surgeon's award-winning 1994 book on death argued that death with dignity was rare and doctors too often tried to prolong life when further treatment was futile, the New York Times reports. "I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die," he wrote. "The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail." In a 1996 interview, he said he hoped he would go "without suffering and surrounded by loved ones" when it was his time. His daughter says he often spoke to his family about his illness and impending death and while he was very much at peace most of the time, there were times of sadness and fear toward the end. "He wasn’t scared of death itself, but he loved everything about his world and the people in his world and life,” she tells the AP. "And he didn’t want to leave." |
Johnnie Walker Time's Up!!! Icon Gets Female Partner
Johnnie Walker Company Prepping to Introduce Jane Walker
Exclusive Details
Behind every great man is a great woman -- and apparently the same goes for drunk men, because the folks at Johnnie Walker whisky are about to roll out his female counterpart.
Diageo, the company that owns Johnnie, filed paperwork in early January to trademark the name Jane Walker for all alcoholic beverages except beer ... according to new docs.
It's unclear exactly what the Jane Walker products would be, but in the midst of the #timesup movement ... gender equality and female empowerment seem like probable themes.
This isn't the first time Jane's name has been tossed around either -- around the time of the 2016 election, Walker reportedly had an ad campaign titled "Jane Walker" in the works ... but scrapped it after Hillary Clinton lost.
Apparently that wound has healed, 'cause Jane's ready to go. Bottoms up? ||||| Another new label has surfaced from the US in December 2017. This time it’s from Diageo and their Johnnie Walker brand.
Jane Walker Edition. No information regarding Jane Walker can be found besides these new labels. Whether it’s Johnnie’s sister or not will be revealed in due time.
However, already in 2016 during the presidential election campaigns there was a rumor about a Jane Walker Edition release and ad campaign. The whole project was scrapped, or mothballed for the time being as it now seems, since Diageo’s then current Johnnie Walker campaign was already seen by many as a celebration and support for the Democratic party. The outcome of the presidential election probably didn’t make things better for Jane Walker.
Time has passed and 2018 seems to be Jane Walker’s year! ||||| Anomaly has made some significant changes to the Johnnie Walker “Keep Walking” work since winning the account away from BBH in December 2014. Its debut campaign was the liquor brand’s biggest ever, and it followed with a sequel to the “Gentleman’s Wager” ad starring Jude Law.
The latest Walker ad “This Land” debuted the day before the election, and it was political, if not explicitly partisan, in nature. The spot celebrated American progress and diversity in the abstract without commenting directly on the upcoming vote, but some saw it as an endorsement. U.K. blog More About Advertising summed it up with the headline “Johnnie Walker Backs Clinton in Anomaly’s Election Ad.”
Multiple sources told us this week that the planned sequel to that spot was supposed to be even more political. Its title was to be “Jane Walker,” which implies that its themes concerned gender equality and women breaking boundaries. This message would have been particularly timely if Hillary Clinton had won the election, but that didn’t happen. These sources claim that client and agency had to scrap the campaign as soon as the result became clear on Tuesday night.
We have no idea what the alleged work would have entailed, and now it will almost certainly never be seen by the public.
Anomaly has not responded to queries regarding the campaign. We also reached out to Johnnie Walker’s parent company Diageo earlier today but have yet to receive a reply.
Comments | – Tarzan had his Jane, and so, too, will Johnnie. Thanks to the "Me Too" and "Time's Up" movements, gender equality is gaining new awareness in the workplace, and now perhaps in your whisky: TMZ reports that Diageo, parent company of the Johnnie Walker brand, put in the paperwork earlier this month for a Jane Walker trademark that would cover a bevy of unspecified beverages. A post at Drampedia notes that labels bearing the name "Jane Walker Edition" have turned up, but no details are available on any new products. "Whether it’s Johnnie’s sister or not will be revealed in due time," per the post. It appears this isn't the first time the female-monikered concept, which TMZ assumes will focus on "gender equality and female empowerment," has been broached by Diageo. Adweek noted right after the 2016 presidential election that a Jane Walker ad campaign was in the works, but it was apparently nixed after Hillary Clinton lost, sources said at the time. |
A pregnant woman was shot and killed in her sleep when someone opened fire on her southern Arizona home early Saturday, but doctors were able to deliver her baby, according to police.
The Tucson Police Department said in a news release several people in the home were awoken at 4:30 a.m. to the sounds of 19-year-old Jasmine Vega screaming before becoming "unresponsive."
Arriving officers found Vega unconscious and transported her to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Vega was six months pregnant at the time, according to police.
"Hospital staff were able to successfully deliver her unborn child, who is currently being treated at the hospital," Tucson police said.
The baby's father, Anthony Rivera, told Tucson News Now the baby boy is in critical condition and on life support.
TEXAS WOMAN WHO HAD MISCARRIAGE STABBED FRIEND TO DEATH, TOOK INFANT, POLICE SAY
Evidence at the scene, including "several projectile holes in the walls of the residence," indicates multiple gunshots were fired into the home, police said.
It's not yet known if anyone was specifically targeted in the shooting. No one else was injured in the shooting, police added.
Authorities have not identified any suspects, and are asking anyone with information about the shooting to contact police. ||||| Jasmine Vega, 19, was 6-months-pregnant when she was shot and killed (Source: Anthony Rivera).
A young Arizona family was shattered days before Christmas when a random shooting took the life of a sleeping pregnant woman.
The Tucson Police Department said Jasmine Vega, 19, was shot early Saturday, Dec. 23, while inside a home in the 1500 block of West Calle Guadalajara.
The TPD confirmed the shots were fired from outside the home and they are investigating the incident. There are no suspects in custody.
Vega, who was 6 months pregnant, died at the hospital but staff were able to deliver her son.
Anthony Rivera, Vega's boyfriend, said his young son is in critical condition and on life support.
"All I was thinking was I wish your mom was right here to see you," Rivera said. "It sucks. It sucks seeing your baby like that."
The family knows moving forward won't be easy, but remembering Vega does bring some relief on these dark days.
"She was amazing, fun, loving, outgoing, big heart," Rivera said.
Angelina Ruelas, Rivera's mother, said things will never be the same.
"We were just wrapping presents last night," Ruelas said. "She was happy to be a mom, she wanted a baby so bad. "I'm not going to tell him it's going to be OK, because it's not."
MOBILE USERS: Download our Tucson News Now app for Apple and Android devices.
Copyright 2017 Tucson News Now. All rights reserved. ||||| TONIGHT, ANDY CEROTA, KPRC CHANNEL 2 NEWS. Reporter: THANK YOU, ANDY. ONLY ON 2 WE ARE GETTING DETAILS ABOUT A SAD STORY IN SOUTHWEST HOUSTON. A PREGNANT WOMAN RUN OVER AND KILLED POLICE SAY BY HER HUSBAND. SHE DIED BUT DOCTORS WERE ABLE TO SAVE HER BABY. ANOUSHAH RASTA JOINING US LIVE WHERE THE ACCIDENT HAPPENED ON SOUTH CAN HE RECOLLECTWOOD AND BUSINESS NET. I KNOW YOU JUST GOT AN UPDATE ON THE BABY'S CONDITION, RIGHT? Reporter: PHIL, THAT IS RIGHT. DOCTORS DELIVERED THE WOMAN'S BABY BY EMERGENCY C-SECTION. NOW IN JUST THE LAST HOUR WE HAVE LEARNED THE BABY IS 36 WEEKS OLD AND IN STABLE CONDITION AT MEMORIAL HERMANN HOSPITAL DOWNTOWN. THIS IS THE MAN HOUSTON POLICE SAY RAN OVER HIS PREGNANT WIFE. THE WOMAN LATER DIED. ACCORDING TO INVESTIGATORS HE WAS BEHIND THE WHEEL AND SHE WAS AT THE DRIVER'S WINDOW OUTSIDE. Reporter: AS HE WAS LEAVE SHING CAME TO THE DRIVER'S DOOR, HELD ON. THE HUSBAND WAS DRIVING AWAY, WHERE SHE SLIPS AND FALLS AND THE TRUCK RUNS OVER HERE. Reporter: INVESTIGATORS TELL ME THE COUPLE WAS ARGUING ABOUT GETTING THE WOMAN'S CAR REPAIRED. IT IS A BLUE CIVIC POLICE SURROUNDED WITH YELLOW CRIME TAPE. HE WAS GOING TO GET IT FIXED LATER ON BUT SHE WANTED IT FIXED NOW SO SHE SAID I NEED MORE MONEY. Reporter: THE HUSBAND WALKED POLICE THROUGH WHAT HAPPENED. H.P.D. SAYS THE HUSBAND TRIED HELPING HIS WIFE AFTER HE RAN HER OVER AND IMMEDIATELY CALLED 9-1-1. Reporter: THIS IS AT THE SCENE. WITNESSES SAY HE WAS CRYING AND CALLED FOR 9-1-1 FOR HELP. Reporter: PARAMEDICS RUSHED THE WOMAN TO MEMORIAL HERMANN SOUTHWEST HOSPITAL, WHERE SHE DIED. DOCTORS SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERED HER BABY BY C-SECTION. JUSTIN MARTINEZ SAYS HE IS GOOD FRIENDS WITH THE WOMAN'S 17-YEAR-OLD SON AND FOUND OUT SHE DIED WHEN HE GOT A PHONE CALL AT SCHOOL. Reporter: SHE WAS A NICE PERSON TO ME AND EVERYBODY. SHE LOVED THESE CHILDREN. Reporter: POLICE ARE STILL INVESTIGATING THE INCIDENT. MEANWHILE THE WOMAN'S HUSBAND IS NOT FACING ANY CHARGES AT THIS TIME.
HOUSTON -
A pregnant woman was run over and killed unintentionally by her husband Monday in southwest Houston. Doctors were able to successfully deliver her baby.
The baby is 36 weeks old and in stable condition at Memorial Hermann Hospital downtown.
Police told KPRC 2 News the woman's husband is not a suspect. He was never handcuffed and arrested. They said it appears as though he did not run her over on purpose.
Houston police spent several hours questioning the man on Monday after they said he ran over his pregnant wife in their truck and killed her near an apartment complex 10800 South Glen near South Kirkwood Road in southwest Houston.
Police said it started as an argument over car repairs. The woman needed money from her husband to get her car, a blue Honda Civic, fixed.
"He was going to go get it fixed later on once he got more money, but she wanted it fixed now so she was demanding more money," said HPD Investigator Rolando Saenz.
Investigators said the husband, who was behind the wheel of a green truck, tried to drive away from his wife, who was standing outside.
"As he was leaving, she came to driver's door, held onto the door, the husband drives away, where she slips and falls, and the husband runs over her," said Saenz.
Paramedics rushed the woman to Memorial Hermann Hospital Southwest where she died. Doctors successfully delivered her baby by C-section. The baby was then transported via Life Flight Helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital for observation. There is no word on the baby's condition at this time.
Justin Martinez said he is good friends with the woman's 17-year-old son and found out she died when he got a phone call at school.
"She was a really nice person to me and everybody, and she loved her children," said Martinez.
Police officers told KPRC 2 News her husband seemed remorseful about her death.
"The witnesses at the scene did say he was crying, and he was calling for 911 for help," said Saenz.
No charged have been filed.
Police haven't released the woman's name. | – Police say a pregnant teenager was shot dead while asleep in a southern Arizona home early Saturday, but that doctors were able to deliver her unborn child. 19-year-old Jasmine Vega was found unconscious by officers responding to a 911 call from inside the residence, Fox News reports. Vega was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead, but doctors managed to save her son. "Hospital staff [was] able to successfully deliver her unborn child, who is currently being treated at the hospital," Tucson Police Department wrote on Facebook. Per Tucson News Now, the child’s father, Anthony Rivera, says the baby boy is in critical condition and on life support. Vega was six months pregnant, and loved ones described her to Tucson News Now as “kind, compassionate, and so excited to be a mom.” No other other occupants were injured during the shooting. Authorities say multiple gunshots were fired toward the home from outside, and that there were several bullet holes found in the walls, but it is still unknown whether the gunfire was targeted specifically at anyone in the household. Tucson police are asking for anyone with information to come forward. “You can remain anonymous,” they said on Facebook. (Three St. Louis women were killed as they tried to escape a home invasion.) |
Documenting Hate Tracking Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents
Late last month, ProPublica reported that the California man accused of killing a gay and Jewish University of Pennsylvania student was an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of Atomwaffen Division, one of the country’s most notorious extremist groups.
The news about the murder suspect, Samuel Woodward, spread quickly throughout the U.S., and abroad. Woodward was accused of fatally stabbing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein and burying his body in an Orange County park.
The report, it turns out, was also taken up in the secretive online chats conducted by members of Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group that celebrates both Hitler and Charles Manson.
“I love this,” one member wrote of the killing, according to copies of the online chats obtained by ProPublica. Another called Woodward a “one man gay Jew wrecking crew.”
More soon joined in.
“What I really want to know is who leaked that shit about Sam to the media,” a third member wrote.
At least one member wanted to punish the person who had revealed Woodward’s affiliation with Atomwaffen.
“Rats and traitors get the rope first.”
Encrypted chat logs obtained by ProPublica — some 250,000 messages spanning more than six months — offer a rare window into Atomwaffen Division that goes well beyond what has surfaced elsewhere about a group whose members have been implicated in a string of violent crimes. Like many white supremacist organizations, Atomwaffen Division uses Discord, an online chat service designed for video gamers, to engage in its confidential online discussions.
In a matter of months, people associated with the group, including Woodward, have been charged in five murders; another group member pleaded guilty to possession of explosives after authorities uncovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear facility near Miami. Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
The group’s propaganda makes clear that Atomwaffen — the word means “nuclear weapons” in German — embraces Third Reich ideology and preaches hatred of minorities, gays and Jews. Atomwaffen produces YouTube videos showing members firing weapons and has filmed members burning the U.S. Constitution and setting fire to the American flag. But the organization, by and large, cloaks its operations in secrecy and bars members from speaking to the media.
The chat logs and other material obtained by ProPublica provide unusually extensive information about the group’s leaders, wider makeup, and potential targets, indicating:
The group may have as many as 20 cells around the country, small groups of indeterminate size in Texas, Virginia, Washington, Nevada and elsewhere. Members armed with assault rifles and other guns have taken part in weapons training in various locations over the last two years, including last month in the Nevada desert near Death Valley.
Members have discussed using explosives to cripple public water systems and destroy parts of the electrical power grid. One member even claimed to have obtained classified maps of the power grid in California. Throughout the chats, Atomwaffen members laud Timothy McVeigh, the former soldier who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168, including numerous children. Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who massacred 77 people, also come in for praise.
Woodward posted several messages in the days after Bernstein’s murder, but before he was arrested and charged. In one thread, he told his fellow Atomwaffen members that he was thinking about the “passing of life” and was “truly grateful for our time together.” An Atomwaffen propaganda flier
Woodward, 20, has pleaded not guilty in the Bernstein case. Prosecutors have said they are exploring whether the murder constituted a hate crime and detectives are now investigating what role, if any, Atomwaffen might have played in the homicide. Woodward and Bernstein had known each other in high school in California, and appear to have reconnected somehow shortly before the killing.
Law enforcement, both federal and state, have said little about what they make of Atomwaffen. But organizations dedicated to tracking and studying hate groups have been calling attention to what they regard as the group’s considerable threat.
“We haven’t seen anything like Atomwaffen in quite a while,” said Keegan Hankes, a researcher who tracks the group for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They should be taken seriously because they’re so extreme.”
Jeffrey Kaplan, a historian, has studied racial extremists for decades and edited the Encyclopedia of White Power. In an interview, he suggested that Atomwaffen is dangerous, but that talk in their propaganda and private conversations of aims such as toppling the U.S. government amounted to what he called a kind of “magical thinking.” Kaplan said such groups often contain a handful of diehards who are willing to commit crimes and many more wannabes who are unwilling to do much more than read fascist literature.
“It’s very hard to go from talking about violence to looking a guy in the eyes and killing him,” said Kaplan, a professor of national security studies at King Fahd Defense College in Saudi Arabia.
Where We’ve Identified Atomwaffen Division Members Through interviews and internal records, ProPublica was able to identify Atomwaffen members in at least 23 states. Lucas Waldron and Rob Weychert/ProPublica
“Politics are useless. Revolution is necessary.”
ProPublica has identified five key Atomwaffen members through information provided by law enforcement investigators, internal Atomwaffen records, outside experts and a former group member.
Those records and interviews make clear that John Cameron Denton is the leader of Atomwaffen. Denton, 24, grew up in Montgomery, Texas, a small town about 30 miles north of Houston. Public records show Denton currently lives in the nearby town of Conroe, a few miles to the south of Montgomery.
ProPublica has obtained several photos of Denton. In one, Denton, who is short and wiry, has a bulky combat shotgun slung over his shoulder. He seems to favor camouflage pants and black T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of National Socialist Black Metal bands, a fringe subgenre of heavy metal music that mixes Satanic and Nazi themes.
“Politics are useless. Revolution is necessary,” Denton said in a chat post expressing the Atomwaffen worldview.
Records and interviews show Denton goes by the name Rape in the online conversations, and he appears to be involved in nearly every aspect of the organization. He shapes Atomwaffen’s ideology, chooses designs for its distinctive black-and-white posters and online propaganda, and selects the books that new recruits must study as part of their initiation, said a former Atomwaffen member interviewed by ProPublica. Denton’s younger brother, Grayson Patrick Denton, 19, is also a member, according to the chat logs and interviews; within the group, he goes by Leon, an homage to a Belgian fascist who fought with the SS. John Cameron Denton Alias: Rape John Cameron Denton is the leader of Atomwaffen Division. The 24-year-old grew up in Montgomery, Texas, and lives outside Houston.
The leader’s identity was first revealed last month in a report by the Anti-Defamation League. Afterward, Denton was seething. “They think they can stop RAPE!? THEY THINK THEY CAN STOP ME!?!,” Denton wrote in one chat message.
Neither Denton brother responded to messages seeking comment.
Just how many people belong to Atomwaffen is unknown. The ex-member told ProPublica that the group has enlisted about 80 members across the country, many of whom joined after the deadly events in Charlottesville last summer.
An internal Atomwaffen document obtained by ProPublica shows members scattered across 23 states and Canada. The group’s largest chapters are based in Virginia, Texas and Washington, according to a message posted in the chats by an Atomwaffen recruiter last summer.
“Each chapter operates independently,” wrote the recruiter. “We want men who are willing to be the boots on the ground. Joining us means serious dedication not only to the Atomwaffen Division and its members, but to the goal of Total Aryan Victory.”
A review of the chat logs shows messages posted by people using more than 100 different user names. Access to the discussions is tightly controlled, and it is unclear if some members post under multiple usernames.
Denton has helped build the organization around the ideas expressed in an obscure, hyper-violent book: “Siege.” The 563-page book collects and organizes the monthly newsletters produced during the 1980s by an old-line neo-Nazi activist named James Mason. It is required reading for all Atomwaffen members and serves as the backbone for the organization’s ideology, worldview and training program.
When Mason began publishing his newsletter in 1980, he was bitter and deeply dismayed. He had devoted his life to the fascist cause, joining the American Nazi Party in the mid-1960s, at the age of 14. But the movement had completely failed.
For Mason, the way forward was obvious: He no longer wanted to convince the masses of the rightness of Nazism. They would never get it. Now was the time for true believers to go underground and launch a clandestine guerrilla war aimed at bringing down “The System.”
“Siege” is essentially a long string of essays celebrating murder and chaos in the name of white supremacy. In Mason’s view, Dan White, the local politician who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk, was a hero.
Mason proposed the creation of a White Liberation Front composed of small armed squads that would “hide in wilderness areas,” moving frequently from location to location while striking out in a string of “hit-and-run engagements.” Mason based this proposed organization on the short-lived National Socialist Liberation Front, a small splinter group of the American Nazi Party that formed in 1969 and espoused the strategic use of political terrorism. Grayson Patrick Denton Aliases: Nazgul, Leon Grayson Patrick Denton is the 19-year-old brother of Atomwaffen leader John Cameron Denton. He is a member of the Texas cell.
The chat logs show that Denton and other Atomwaffen figures are in contact with Mason, who is 65 and is said to be living in Denver, Colorado; in one online conversation, Samuel Woodward wrote about meeting with Mason face to face along with other Atomwaffen members. In chats, members frequently post pictures of Mason and revere him as a brilliant, under-appreciated thinker.
ProPublica was unable to contact Mason.
Jeffrey Kaplan, the academic at King Fahd Defense College in Riyadh, interviewed Mason in the 1990s and spoke to ProPublica about Mason’s outlook and the groups he inspires, such as Atomwaffen.
He describes Mason as “a true believer.”
“Now he’s got a following, which he didn’t have for the last 30 years,” Kaplan said. “He’s got some kids who’ve rediscovered him. He must be in heaven.”
As Kaplan sees it, groups such as Atomwaffen — would-be Nazi guerrillas devoted to white revolution in the U.S. — are “akin to cults,” and are propelled by a quasi-religious faith that they will ultimately prevail. He continued, “What else would sustain you when everyone hates you?”
John Cameron Denton, based on interviews and the material obtained by ProPublica, comes across as something of a cult leader. Lately he has been pushing for Atomwaffen members to pool money and purchase land in rural areas so they can “get the fuck off the grid,” and begin implementing their revolutionary agenda. The former member said Denton envisions using this network of Atomwaffen compounds to launch attacks against targets in the U.S.
The leader is already girding for a confrontation with law enforcement. “I do expect that one day I'll get raided,” wrote Denton in one chat message. “I'm not gonna have a shoot out or anything stupid like that, but I just dont rule out possibilities because I know the govt doesnt play by the rules."
“You would want to target things like substations, water filtration plants, etc.”
Late last month, Atomwaffen held a three-day training session — or “Hate Camp” in the group’s parlance — deep in the Nevada desert. The event was organized by an Atomwaffen leader, Michael Lloyd Hubsky, who calls himself Komissar, according to the chat logs. Michael Lloyd Hubsky Alias: Komissar Hubsky, 29, lives in Las Vegas and leads Atomwaffen’s Nevada cell. In online chats he discussed blowing up the U.S. power grid and natural gas lines.
A 29-year-old resident of Las Vegas, Hubsky holds both a concealed weapons permit and a security guard license, and is a big fan of high-powered military-style firearms. In one post he discussed a favorite weapon: a Czech-made rifle called a CZ Scorpion that, Hubsky said, he’d converted to fully automatic and equipped with a flash suppressor.
In another message, Hubsky wrote that he was planning on getting an “FFL” — federal firearms license — so he could “manufacture” guns.
“I can literally become our armory in the event we need it,” Hubsky bragged.
The former member said Atomwaffen has a rule: Don’t talk about the group’s terrorist ambitions in online chats or on social media. Those sorts of conversations are only supposed to happen in person. But Hubsky, at times, has been less than discreet outside the group’s confidential chats.
“So in any war, you need to cut off your enemy’s ability to shoot, move and communicate,” Hubsky wrote in a September 2017 message posted in a discussion on white nationalism that occurred in a non-Atomwaffen chat room. “You would want to target things like: Substations, water filtration plants, etc.” ProPublica has obtained Hubsky’s statements from that online conversation.
Hubsky wrote that he had “a map of the US power grid.”
“West-coast only,” he added in the message. “Classified map. Had someone with special permissions get it.” John Cameron Denton, left, in an undated photograph with other white supremacists
Hubsky also discussed blowing up natural gas lines.
“You put a home-made thermite grenade on those,” he wrote. While other types of infrastructure — like water lines – figured in Hubsky’s discussions, hitting the power grid was, in his view, the most devastating and effective attack possible. Destroying electricity infrastructure, Hubsky wrote, “would by default take out the internet because it relies on power to operate.”
In a telephone conversation and subsequent series of text messages with ProPublica, Hubsky at first denied being a member of Atomwaffen. But he later offered to discuss the group at length if his name was not made public, an arrangement ProPublica declined. Hubsky acknowledged that he owns a CZ Scorpion assault rifle — even sharing a picture of the weapon — but said it was not fully automatic. He concluded the exchange by saying he had retained a lawyer.
Hubsky’s organization of the three-day Hate Camp in Nevada began with a proposal to the group late last year. He offered to arrange it so the group could hone its combat skills. There would be shooting and hand-to-hand sparring at a secret location on the edge of Death Valley.
Atomwaffen had already held a Hate Camp in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois during the fall of 2017. At least 10 members from different states attended, with some driving in from as far away as Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Jersey. In the Pacific Northwest, cell members had converged on an abandoned cement factory, known as “Devil's Tower” near the small town of Concrete, Washington, where they had screamed “gas the kikes, race war now!” while firing off round after round from any array of weapons, including an AR-15 assault rifle with a high capacity drum magazine.
The training sessions were documented in Atomwaffen propaganda videos. Kaleb J. Cole Alias: Khimaere Atomwaffen’s Washington chapter leader is Kaleb J. Cole. Cole, who owns an AK-47 assault rifle with a large-capacity magazine, helped organize arms training sessions in Washington and Nevada. He also works on the group’s visual propaganda.
Members had also organized smaller training sessions, such as the one last year in Texas that had drawn Blaze Bernstein’s alleged murderer, Samuel Woodward. The Texas training attended by Woodward took place in the countryside outside San Antonio and involved 10 members of the Texas cell who took part in firearms, survival and weapons instruction.
Hubsky scheduled his training camp during the last weekend in January. Atomwaffen’s Washington chapter leader Kaleb J. Cole, who uses the alias Khimaere, agreed to help organize the desert training session in Nevada, which the group started calling the Death Valley Hate Camp.
“Bring your uniform, rifle/sidearm, and whatever camping gear you need,” he wrote. Cole, who is 22 and lives close to the Canadian border in the town of Blaine, is a National Socialist Black Metal enthusiast who holds a concealed firearms permit and owns an AK-47. In 2015, while Cole was living in Bellingham, police responded to a report that he had “Nazi memorabilia” in his residence, according to Lt. Danette Beckley of the Bellingham Police Department; he was also reported to police in the island town of Anacortes for allegedly harassing a Jewish grocery store owner by a waving a Nazi flag in front of the business, according to two law enforcement sources.
The former Atomwaffen member told ProPublica that Cole wields a significant degree of influence over the organization’s propaganda, recruitment and organization. ProPublica could not reach Cole for comment.
When the group got out to the desert, Hubsky made sure they shot photos and videos to be used in Atomwaffen recruiting clips. In one picture obtained by ProPublica, an Atomwaffen member is standing at the base of a sand dune showing off a military-grade weapon — an MCX Virtus rifle made by Sig Sauer — while holding a flag bearing the Atomwaffen insignia, a black shield bearing the symbol for radioactivity. Another member, clutching an assault rifle, is also in the photo.
Hubsky returned from Death Valley enthused and eager to do more training. He uploaded a memo to the Atomwaffen chat. Members would now be required to join Front Sight, a “private combat training facility” outside of Las Vegas in the small desert town of Pahrump. Front Sight, the memo said, could provide classes in “Uzi and full auto M16 combat, as well as knife fighting, hand to hand combat,” and instruction in climbing and rappelling.
“I don't know anything about this group,” Bill Cookston, Front Sight’s director of operations, said this week. “If anyone were to be doing something against the law or in a radical manner, we would look into that.”
Shortly afterward, Michael Meacher, Front Sight’s CEO, said the training center had sent Hubsky a letter refunding his membership fees and informing the Las Vegas resident that he was banned from the facility for life.
“Not that the faggot kike didn’t deserve to die.”
Before Samuel Woodward was jailed on charges of murdering Blaze Bernstein, he frequently participated in the Atomwaffen chats. First he used the handle Saboteur. Later he posted under the name Arn.
Often, Woodward sounded like a typical 20-year-old. He enthused about video games (BioShock, Skyrim) and TV shows (he liked the early seasons of “Trailer Park Boys,” a Canadian comedy series). He complained about not having a girlfriend. Read More About Woodward California Murder Suspect Said to Have Trained With Extremist Hate Group The 20-year-old man charged in Orange County with killing a gay Jewish college student earlier this month is said to have belonged to Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group.
But Woodward also railed at “mongrels and jews” and gays.
He praised Mein Kampf and seemed to regard “Siege” as something akin to divine revelation; from his perspective, violence and society-shaking mayhem were the only options for a true Nazi.
That orientation attracted him to outlaw groups like the National Socialist Underground, a German organization that carried out a massive terror spree between 2001 and 2011, robbing 14 banks, planting bombs and murdering 10 people, most of them immigrants. “The NSU was pretty cool,” Woodward wrote.
In one conversation, Woodward discussed the Bosnian Civil War of the 1990s, during which Serbian soldiers and paramilitary fighters raped thousands of Bosnian Muslim women as part of an infamous campaign of ethnic cleansing. “The only acceptable case of miscegenation is what the serbs did to captured bosniak women,” he wrote in November 2017.
Woodward liked the idea of using rape to terrorize women of color, whom he saw as his foes. “Force them to carry around the spawn of their master and enemy,” he wrote.
ProPublica sought comment on the chats from Woodward’s lawyer, Edward Munoz, but did not get a response.
On Jan. 26, ProPublica published a story revealing Woodward’s belief in Nazism and exposing his involvement with Atomwaffen.
While the article attracted the attention of Atomwaffen members, who promptly posted it to their online chats, no one in the group expressed any sympathy for Bernstein, the young man Woodward allegedly murdered. They made jokes about his slaying and used slurs to describe him. If there was worry, it was about Woodward possibly having to do time behind bars for the murder.
“Sam did something stupid,” wrote one member. “Not that the faggot kike didn’t deserve to die. Just simply not worth a life in prison for.”
Sean Michael Fernandez, an Atomwaffen leader in Texas, even saw an upside for the group. Fernandez, who used the alias Wehrwolf, believed that Atomwaffen actually stood to benefit from the increased notoriety stemming from Woodward’s affiliation with the neo-Nazi group and the Bernstein murder.
“We’re only going to inspire more ‘copycat crimes’ in the name of AWD. All we have to do is spread our image and our propaganda,” Fernandez wrote on Jan. 30. Sean Michael Fernandez Alias: Wehrwolf Sean Michael Fernandez is a leader of the Texas cell.
He continued: “The growing fear is what we set out to do and it’s working EXACTLY how I wanted it to since we took over ‘leadership.’ I couldn't have planned this better, seriously.”
For his part, Denton, the national Atomwaffen leader, felt betrayed. ProPublica had interviewed a former member for the story; still, Denton believed that someone currently within the ranks was sharing information with the media. “Looks like AWD needs another purging,” he wrote.
Members began speculating about who was talking to outsiders. Was it a current member? Was it someone they’d kicked out recently?
Members also directed their rage toward the media. As they saw it, Woodward was the one being victimized. Now that his involvement with Atomwaffen had spilled out into the public sphere, Orange County prosecutors might hit him with hate crimes charges — charges that could potentially add years to a prison sentence.
“We really owe those jews at ProPublica,” wrote one member.
Woodward posted many hundreds of messages to the Atomwaffen chats. But on Jan. 5, he typed out a few lines that are quite distinct from all the rest. In them, the raging young man suddenly became highly sentimental. Two days earlier, according to prosecutors, he had buried Bernstein’s lifeless body in a park in Lake Forest, California.
Now Woodward explained that he was reflecting on mortality.
“hey everyone,” he wrote. “i just wanted to let you all know i love you so much.” ||||| Documenting Hate Tracking Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents
The California man accused of killing a 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania student earlier this month is an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of one of the most notorious extremist groups in the country, according to three people with knowledge of the man’s recent activities.
The man, Samuel Woodward, has been charged in Orange County, California, with murdering Blaze Bernstein, who went missing in early January while visiting his family over winter break. Prosecutors allege that Woodward stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times before burying his body in an Orange County park where it was eventually discovered. The two men had attended high school together.
Woodward, 20, is set to be arraigned on Feb. 2 and has not yet entered a plea. Orange County prosecutors say they are examining the possibility that the killing was a hate crime — Bernstein was Jewish and openly gay — and some recent news reports have suggested that the alleged killer might hold far-right or even white supremacist political beliefs.
Now, three people with detailed knowledge of Woodward’s recent past have been able to shed more light on the young man’s extremist activities. They said Woodward was a member of the Atomwaffen Division, an armed Fascist group with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the U.S. government through the use of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. Stay Informed Get ProPublica’s Daily Digest.
The organization, which celebrates Hitler and Charles Manson, has been tied to four other murders and an elaborate bomb plot over the past eight months. Experts who study right-wing extremist movements believe Atomwaffen’s commitment to violence has made it one of the more dangerous groups to emerge from the new wave of white supremacists.
Two of the three people who described Woodward’s affiliations are friends of his; the other is a former member of Atomwaffen Division.
ProPublica’s revelations about Woodward’s background add a new element to a murder case that has attracted considerable local and national news coverage. But they also raise fresh concerns about groups like Atomwaffen Division, shadowy outfits of uncertain size that appear capable of genuine harm.
Woodward joined the organization in early 2016 and later traveled to Texas to attend Atomwaffen meetings and a three-day training camp, which involved instruction in firearms, hand-to-hand combat, camping and survival skills, the former member said. ProPublica has obtained photographs of Woodward at an outdoor Atomwaffen meeting in the scrubby Texas countryside. One of the photos depicts Woodward and other members making straight-armed Nazi salutes while wearing skull masks. In other pictures, Woodward is unmasked and easily identifiable.
The young man is proficient with both handguns and assault rifles, according to one person who participated in the Texas training and watched him shoot. That person also said that Woodward helped organize a number of Atomwaffen members in California.
Social media posts and chat logs shared by Woodward’s friends show that he openly described himself as a “National Socialist” or Nazi. He “was as anti-Semitic as you can get,” according to one acquaintance.
ProPublica contacted Orange County prosecutors regarding Woodward’s alleged neo-Nazi activities. Michelle Van Der Linden, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office, said she couldn’t comment directly on the case, but said the investigation is ongoing, with detectives exploring all possible leads.
Woodward told police Bernstein had tried to kiss him while they were in the park, according to a sealed affidavit obtained by the Orange County Register.
Woodward’s defense lawyer, Edward Munoz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Bernstein’s parents spoke to reporters about the loss of their son, but said they were not interested in talking about any information they had on the investigation of his death. Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson was on the scene and reports that the authorities turned the streets of the city over to groups of militiamen armed with assault rifles.
The Los Angeles Times quoted his mother, Jeanne Pepper Bernstein, as saying she had worried during her son’s life that he might be a target — because he was small, and Jewish, and gay.
“I was concerned sending him out into the big world,” she said. “But at some point you have to let go and they leave the nest and fly. I couldn’t protect him from everything.”
Atomwaffen started in 2015 and is estimated to have about 80 members scattered around the country in small cells; the former member said the group’s ranks have grown since the lethal and chaotic “Unite the Right” rally last summer in Charlottesville, Virginia.
While many of the new white extremist groups have consciously avoided using Nazi imagery, Atomwaffen has done the opposite. The name can mean “Atomic Weapons” in German, and the organization embraces Third Reich iconography, including swastikas, the Totenkopf, or death’s head insignia, and SS lightning bolts. The group frequently produces YouTube videos featuring masked Atomwaffen members hiking through the backcountry and firing weapons. They’ve also filmed themselves burning the U.S. Constitution and setting fire to the American flag at an Atomwaffen “Doomsday Hatecamp.”
Atomwaffen’s biggest inspiration seems to be James Mason, a long-time fascist who belonged to the American Nazi Party and later, during the 1970s, joined a more militant offshoot. During the 1980s, Mason published a newsletter called SIEGE, in which he eschewed political activism in favor of creating a new fascist regime through murder, small “lone wolf” terror attacks, and all-out war against the government. Mason also struck up a friendship with the late Charles Manson, who has become another hero for Atomwaffen.
The organization first gained a measure of national attention in May of last year, when 18-year-old Devon Arthurs, one of Atomwaffen’s founding members, was charged in state court in Tampa, Florida, with murdering two of his roommates, Andrew Oneschuk, 18, and Jeremy Himmelman, 22. Both victims were Atomwaffen loyalists.
The murders allegedly occurred after Arthurs traded Nazism for radical Islam. When police took Arthurs into custody, according to news accounts based on police reports, he claimed he had shot his former comrades because they had taunted him about his Muslim faith and plotted violent attacks to further their fascist agenda. Arthurs told investigators he killed Onsechuk and Himmelman “because they want to build a Fourth Reich.”
While Arthurs initially confessed to the killings, he has pleaded not guilty and the case is ongoing. In early January, a judge ordered a psychiatrist to determine whether Arthurs is mentally competent to stand trial.
When law enforcement searched the apartment in Tampa, Florida, where Arthurs and the others lived, they found firearms, a framed photograph of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, rifles, ammunition, and a cooler full of a highly volatile explosive called HMTD. Investigators also discovered radioactive material in the home.
The bomb-making material belonged to a fourth roommate, Atomwaffen leader Brandon Russell, a Florida National Guardsman. Arthurs told authorities that Russell had been planning to blow up a nuclear power plant near Miami. Earlier this month Russell pleaded guilty in federal district court in Tampa to illegal possession of explosives and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
Atomwaffen surfaced again in connection with a double homicide in Reston, Virginia, in December 2017. A 17-year-old neo-Nazi allegedly shot to death his girlfriend’s parents, Buckley Kuhn-Fricker and Scott Fricker, who had urged their daughter to break up with him. The accused, who shot himself as well but survived and remains hospitalized, was charged as a juvenile in state court in Virginia with two counts of homicide.
The 17-year-old was a big fan of Atomwaffen and James Mason, according to reporting by the Huffington Post, which examined his social media trail.
The former Atomwaffen member in contact with ProPublica said that the teen was more than a fan: He was in direct communication with the group.
“Their rhetoric is some of the most extreme we have seen,” said Joanna Mendelson, a senior researcher at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. The group, she said, views itself as the radical vanguard of the white supremacist movement, the frontline soldiers of an imminent race war. ||||| It’s fact, not fantasy. In the last four years, at least 13 young men have inflicted tragedies after steeping their psyches in hate forums, websites and across social networking apps.
Some have scythed into cultural consciousness. Millions know the name Dylann Storm Roof. But many millions more have never heard of neo-Nazi hate group Atomwaffen Division (AWD) and the Iron March forum — the online race-hate incubator where AWD met, recruited and congregated.
Nevertheless, that forum and this group exemplify recent trends in the more youthful strains of online extremism and radicalization. Many eventual recruits appear to be joining online social networks before becoming members of an established hate group.
And as organized hate groups recruit and centralize in relative obscurity online before ever manifesting “irl” (“in real life”), the void of domestic efforts to counter radicalization grows as fast as young potential recruits move across the web and transition between apps.
In less than a year, AWD has proven how young men, some in their teens and early 20s, can steepen the arc of their own radicalization when they gather together. The group has also attracted peers via slick, sophisticated digital propaganda, much of which directed traffic to Iron March (IM) before that forum was taken offline in the fall of 2017.
Though it has been in existence since at least October 2015, AWD is only now grabbing headlines, as five murders have been linked to either members, like Devon Arthurs, 18; alleged members, like Samuel Woodward, 20; or individuals, like Nicholas Giampa, 17, who associated closely with the group online.
Giampa stands accused of executing his girlfriend’s parents, Buckley Kuhn-Fricker, 43, and Scott Fricker, 48. The pair intervened to remove Giampa from their daughter’s life when the depths of his support of violent race-hate became apparent. According to Huffington Post, his Twitter feed shows, “a 17-year-old who’d drifted beyond the trolling of his teenage peers on the internet far-right and was fully in thrall to the racist, apocalyptic fantasia of white nationalism ... [who] tweeted about his hatred of transgender people and his admiration for Adolf Hitler. He tweeted about using Jews as target practice.”
But what nurtured these young men’s propensity for violence? In the case of AWD, much has been made of the group’s fetishizing of Charles Manson and their cherishing of an obscure neo-Nazi polemic called SIEGE, a work that stridently promotes terrorism.
Behind such references stands James Mason, who produced SIEGE as a newsletter from 1980 until the summer of 1986. Mason’s presence in the organized neo-Nazi movement in this country stretches back to the mid-1960s, when he was just 14 years old.
For AWD members, it’s not about “Helter Skelter” or the gory details of the Manson Family murders alone. It’s about racial terrorism, The Family and its murders – and their broader cultural impact. Here Mason serves as a philosophical totem and provides a template for action.
To miss the significance of Mason’s influence in the dark, sensational luster of Manson is to lose a vital recognition; SIEGE and AWD are obsessed with a racial revolution, not a cultural one like Manson’s.
AWD has only recently begun associating itself so synonymously with Mason and SIEGE, and that’s a dangerous development. Mason and his writings preach the praxis of leaderless, cell-structured terrorism and white revolution. Furthermore, there is a plethora of terrorists and fringe texts beyond Mason’s that motivate and inspire the group. Many of these texts are valued in other sectors of the far-right. Importantly, Mason “achieved” much within neo-Nazism before he was out of his 20s: This is important for young men who, sometimes literally, are gathering around Mason and steeping themselves in his revolutionary philosophy and polemics.
They, too, hope to “achieve,” but understanding what that means is equally challenging and vital.
“GTK! RWN!”: Iron March begins
T he Daily Stormer’s creator, Andrew Anglin, recently claimed that his target demographic includes children as young as 11.
Certainly, without the aesthetic, slang and meme-laden milieu of the Daily Stormer, the IM forum would not have developed the way it did. The forum is an extension of, and reaction to, how neo-Nazi influencers built a contemporary movement online over the last several years. Launched in September 2011 and July 2013 respectively, IM and Daily Stormer did not develop as counterpoints, but as complements to one another.
IM’s slogan, “Gas the Kikes! Race War Now! 1488! Boots on the Ground!” was designed to inflame.
The Iron March crest.
IM became home base for those who were personally invested in neo-Nazism, fascism and organized white extremism on a global scale. There, they debated, debased and denigrated, sometimes even each other, and plotted securing a future for whites and their children –—violently if necessary. There, the canonical works of global fascism evolved into active discussion threads: “For My Legionaries/ Corneliu Z. Codreanu,” “The Doctrine Of Fascism/ Benito Mussolini,” “Excerpts From Speeches/ José Antonio Primo De Rivera.” One early thread was titled, “Fascist Bookstores, Blogs, Resources.”
The creator of the thread “What is this Forum for?,” put forth the following:
This forum exists for discussing human psychology and two specific issues that are very relevant to our political interests:
1. Propaganda, manipulation and influence. Giving speeches, making allies and turning enemy against enemy. The art of psychological warfare. 2. Miscommunication, Confirmation Bias and other afflictions that stand in the way of progressing our interests and how to overcome them. Knowing your enemy in order to destroy him and knowing your ally in order not to offend him because you understand the same word as different things. Other topics that still relate to both psychology and politics will also be welcome.
Another thread, “American Futurism Workshop,” was dedicated to the exploration of how best to inject the tenets of Italian Futurism — an important social and artistic movement that helped inspire the rise of fascism in Italy — into contemporary American society. The fact that much of the “Futurism” thread has been reproduced on the SIEGE-Culture web site, one of AWDs new online hubs, evidences how the forum’s influence endures.
IM was the incubator for U.S.-based hate groups like American Vanguard, formed in 2015, which eventually birthed Vanguard America in 2017. James Fields, before he allegedly killed Heather Heyer and injured many others, held one of Vanguard America’s shields in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The United Kingdom-based neo-Nazi National Action (NA), whose youth-oriented aspirations and aesthetic helped inspire the founding of other groups internationally, including AWD and arguably Vanguard America, was also connected to IM. In December 2016, around three years after NA’s formation, it became the first-ever neo-Nazi group outlawed as a terrorist organization by the U.K. government. That was five months before the first Atomwaffen-linked murders occurred.
Beyond Anglin and Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer — the hacker and dedicated neo-Nazi involved with Daily Stormer who encourages the mass-downloading of White Supremacy 2.0 into the minds of the young recruits — there are individuals like “Charles Zeiger.”
“Zeiger” is the alias of a prolific writer at Daily Stormer and head editor of IM’s webzine, NOOSE, formerly hosted at ropeculture.org. Zeiger’s work was also featured on NA’s Wordpress blog.
Amongst the aforementioned influencers and dozens of texts presented on IM, James Mason and his SIEGE found a new, young, niche audience, particularly among AWD members and sympathizers.
After languishing in obscurity for decades, Mason has been rediscovered.
By the time it was taken offline on September 24, 2017, 1,653 unique usernames had been registered on IM. The forum’s legacy demonstrates that for those who have moved on from the forum and are putting boots on the ground, memes are no longer their preferred ammunition — now, it’s bullets.
“Powered by Hate”: Building the SIEGE-Pill Mill
On May 19, 2017, Devon Arthurs allegedly murdered two other members of Atomwaffen Division, Andrew Oneschuk, 18, and Jeremy Himmelman, 22, in the suburban Tampa, Florida, apartment they shared with the group’s leader, Brandon Russell, 21. Russell was recently convicted of charges related to explosive materials found on the premises, and Arthurs awaits trial.
Since Russell’s imprisonment, AWD and James Mason have become nearly synonymous. The result is an even more terrorist-minded version of the group than what existed under Russell, a cadre that fetishizes violence as its core doctrine.
In late June, barely a month after the Tampa murders, AWD launched a new website and YouTube page. In December much of the same content was uploaded to a Bitchute account — a peer-to-peer video service favored by individuals and organizations banned from conventional video hosting services.
Under Russell, AWD had announced itself primarily via fliering and stickering college and university campuses at night, mostly between December 2015 and April 2017.
However, a new phase of AWD is now underway. Only one fliering incident has occurred since May 19. That’s when their YouTube page shifted away from campus exploits to footage of tactical training with assault rifles and other weapons, urging viewers to step out from behind their computer screens and take action.
On October 24, 2017, another new website was registered and hosted via Cloudflare: SIEGE-Culture (S-C).
With Russell in prison, AWD’s most influential member goes by the handle “Rape” in online forums, and calls himself “Vincent Snyder on the S-C site, Rape publishes under the pen name “Vincent Snyder.” On its “Staff” page, five of the eight individuals pictured evidence allegiance to, or membership in, AWD. Snyder’s photo appears next to Mason’s.
Mason’s influence is evident on that site’s “Worldview” page:
“What we are creating here is something that James Mason attempted to put into form but because of circumstance it never was implimented [sic] until the year of 2017 when Atomwaffen Division discovered and met James Mason. Ryan and Vincent Snyder both agreed to help him publish his works, but through the development of the website we have decided to take the proper course of action with SIEGE. Too long has the movement trapped people into a mindset of chasing their own tail. Those of you who are in here, perhaps, will create history. That is our intention.”
The page’s banner features Mason and Charles Manson’s faces flanking either side of the Universal Order’s (UO) logo. UO is the terroristic neo-Nazi philosophy Mason launched in 1982 under the tutelage of Manson. As Mason describes in SIEGE and elsewhere, the ideas behind the Universal Order would not have been possible without his years of correspondence with Manson, who suggested the UO name and logo.
James Mason, seated, with "Vincent Snyder."
Mason’s association with Manson, and his interpretation of Manson’s ideas, developed after Mason spent years in the organized neo-Nazi movement. During that time, he gravitated toward increasingly radical, terroristic-minded figureheads and efforts.
Mason wrote in SIEGE that his correspondence with the imprisoned Manson could be construed as cheap, mere shock value. But as the 560-pages of Mason’s text suggest, Manson is not the skeleton key for understanding AtomWaffen. Mason’s own neo-Nazi influences and beliefs in chorus with the Universal Order philosophy offer a more accurate portrait.
Mason began reconfiguring his own sustained belief in the need for neo-Nazi terror cells willing to strike at American culture under the control of Jewish influences, which he dubs “the System.” Mason had already been moving toward that conclusion on his own for the better part of 15 years.
During that time, Mason began networking. As an adolescent he idolized George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party (ANP), which he first tried to join at just 14. Through Rockwell, Mason also met William Pierce — the eventual founder of the National Alliance, author of The Turner Diaries and this country’s most influential neo-Nazi to date. Pierce also helped shepherd young Mason into the ANP. After Rockwell was murdered by a former Nazi Party member in August 1967, Pierce and Mason joined its successor, the National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP). There, Mason came into contact with another Pierce protégé, Joseph Tommasi.
Tommasi was still in his teens when Pierce convinced him to pilot a youth effort within the NSWPP, one that would flier college campuses, fight with leftists and liberals and mount a foreboding challenge to the radical left on campus. Although Pierce soon left the NSWPP, disgusted by leader Matt Koehl’s propensity for costume-oriented activism and pageantry, Tommasi and Mason stayed on. Despite Tommasi’s youth, his profile and influence grew and Koehl began to view him as a potential rival for party leadership.
Tommasi’s speeches and writing, ideas about propaganda and desire for street-level confrontation further influenced Mason. In SIEGE, he calls Tommasi’s 1974 leaflet, “POLITICAL TERROR,” a “work of the most incredible genius.”
In 1973, Tommasi was ejected from the NSWPP. Convinced that mass movement-oriented neo-Nazism was useless, he founded the National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) in March 1974. The Front modeled its name (taken from the Vietnamese Liberation Front), aesthetics, personality and doctrine on radical leftist groups, like the terrorist Weather Underground.
The NSLF sought to announce itself above ground through its actions only, while existing otherwise as an underground, revolutionary terrorist cell, the first of its kind in American neo-Nazism. Mason eventually followed Tommasi out of the NSWPP, but Tommasi was murdered in August 1975 by an NSWPP party member standing guard at its headquarters in El Monte, California.
After Mason started the SIEGE newsletter in 1980, he was increasingly adopting Manson’s ideas and perfecting the ideas Tommasi first catalyzed. “In the manner prescribed by Tommasi,” he writes, “‘Our most eloquent statements will not be made in courtrooms, but in the streets of Jew-Capitalist America.’” He continues elsewhere in the text, underscoring that “Tommasi's secret was that he essentially stopped talking and started doing. He said that all talk, all discussion, was counter-revolutionary. The situation has been talked to death and still they go on talking! Tommasi also knew the real difference between useless effort and effective action practically applied.”
Political propaganda.
After making his first Manson-centered propaganda poster while piloting a one-man effort, the National Socialist Movement, Mason decided to reach out to the Manson Family. He first wrote to Family members Sandra Good and Lynette, after learning they were imprisoned in Alderson, West Virginia. With their endorsement, Mason eventually made contact with Manson himself. Through this correspondence, Mason was convinced he had discovered a supreme template for a white supremacist revolution. He described the Manson Family and their captivating exploits as a model for the white race’s survival.
By 1982, Mason fully embraces such ideas, introducing the Universal Order philosophy via the pages of SIEGE.
Mason believed the Universal Order could encourage others to enact a Tommasi-esque program of terror with the level of notoriety that the Manson family achieved and enjoyed for decades. Only through such infamy could neo-Nazi terror cells accelerate the collapse of “the System.” After that, Mason and his acolytes could institute a balance and order by instituting a version of National Socialism that eschews left/right political binaries. This would solidify the existence of the white race over its enemies.
“We don’t want to ‘hurt’ the System, we want to KILL IT [sic]!,” he writes.
Thus, Mason installed Manson and the Manson Family into his canon of idols, alongside Rockwell, Tommasi and, to a lesser-but-important extent, William Pierce. Following after those “Crazy Men of Destiny,” Mason regarded Manson as “the more current and up-to-date” version of Tommasi’s terrorist doctrine.
“Manson represents the great divide between those persons who imagine there are still are choices to be made casually on the basis of Establishment mores and those who have a profound, individual sense of ‘no going back.’ I believe it is this - and not the abstract idea of ‘realism’ - that is the great sustainer and inner-flame of all true revolutionaries.”
Like Mason’s other idols, Manson represents equal parts philosopher and revolutionary, with an irrepressible desire for violent action.
Mason recognized the Manson Family as a “racial-socialist colony” — a collective of like-minded individuals from the same race who coalesced for survival within and against a nation riddled with disorder. In Manson, Mason cultivates a totem for the revolutionary potential of the individual and the collective, where both disappear into one another.
Throughout SIEGE, Mason is driven by an urgency rooted in one hope — if only National Socialists could come together like The Family and captivate the nation through action, which in practice means lone wolf racial terrorism.
This is the danger that Atomwaffen Division poses, whether members act as individuals or as cells; forget the shock value of Manson. Behind Mason is an entire canon of terrorist doctrine.
“Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City fame”: Distributing the SIEGE-Pill
The SIEGE-Culture website presents a future for neo-Nazism through the lens of James Mason, in the hope that others will see the future the way he does.
As Ryan Schuster, publisher of SIEGE’s second edition, writes in his introduction:
SIEGE is to be used as a cookbook and guide. It is sincerely hoped this edition will prevail the vigilant(e) [sic] intelligence to heed a clarion call, wage battles of attrition, and act in a manner commensurate to Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City fame.
With its “Library” page, S-C extends that guide through a trove of texts on racial terror. Many present ludicrous visions of the white race fighting epic battles against immense opposition. Texts from Völkisch and Nazi esotericists, like Guido von List and Savitri Devi, sit alongside the Bhagavad Gita, valued for its predictions of the Kali Yuga, or the “Age of Vice.”
In online neo-Nazi circles, satanic texts are providing the most fodder for debate. Many are unsure and others angry about what Atomwaffen now represents.
Two of the three texts in question are The Devil’s Notebook by Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, and Hostia: Secret Teachings of the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a three-volume collection of manuscripts penned by O9A members. They comprise codices of O9A’s beliefs and practices.
Decades ago, the O9A allegedly came under the control of infamous British neo-Nazi David Myatt, who converted to radical Islam, but renounced his conversion eight years later and returned to esoteric spirituality. The group holds an important position in the niche, international nexus of occult, esoteric, and/or satanic neo-Nazi groups.
The third book is Iron Gates, written by a member of the U.S.-based Tempel ov Blood, a sub-sect of O9A describing itself as “a hybrid between a traditional satanic coven and a (religious) militant order.” The novel’s description on Amazon reads as follows:
“IRON GATES is a sci-fi horror / post-apocalyptic novel, detailing a bleak view of the spiritual horrors of the world-to-come. Set seventy years after a worldwide nuclear conflagration, IRON GATES allows the reader a sight into a nightmarish landscape populated by even more nightmarish characters in a hideous future which leaves little to the imagination. Brutal and unsparing, it is not suitable for readers under 18. Readers should be advised of extreme graphic content.”
Atomwaffen member with Iron Gates graffiti.
One Amazon reviewer writes, “This is a great book. I'm glad my good comrade Ryan wrote this book. Give it a read if you're into Rape [sic] stories and post-apocalyptic child stabing [sic].”
AWD’s turn to the occult and promotion of the hyper-sadistic is disturbing. Why would AWD push its members toward brutal, dehumanizing violence?
Though many in organized neo-Nazism are not convinced their turn toward the occult is sincere, others are reaching for their long knives. Some are accused of being “Noctulains,” O9A-devotees who claim to infiltrate fringe political groups, neo-Nazis among them, to reorient them toward satanism.
Whether AWD is morphing or being infiltrated is unclear. AWD’s turn, though, resembles occult neo-Nazi groups before them, like the O9A, that meld religious and political extremism — two powerful conduits for violence. With such a turn, AWD is moving beyond the quotient of the culturally forbidden, of fliers broadcasting hate and offensive memes, and down a path toward tragedy.
“The future awaits…”: The Torch is Passed
Charles Manson holds a certain appeal to those who are attracted to such forbidden ideas. That’s particularly true for young people who revel in transgressing against society’s restrictions. It’s not surprising that Atomwaffen Division — under the stewardship of Mason — courts those who embrace cultural taboos beyond neo-Nazism to pinpoint new recruits.
In a 1987 videotaped interview with AMOK Press, Mason characterized his fascination with “the forbidden” as crucial to his own recruitment into neo-Nazism and acceptance of Manson’s influence:
“I won’t try to deny, especially in connection with the current Manson connection, that there was the element of the forbidden, or the rebellious, involved there, and to me at that time [during his teen years] Commander Rockwell and certainly the image of Adolf Hitler embodied the furthest extreme of that. And so that just pulled me in like a magnet.”
In SIEGE, Mason makes clear his intention to recruit youth, and acknowledges Manson’s magnetic power in such a capacity:
“And YOUTH is the name to be applied to the group of people among whom you will find a majority of those who DEMAND RESULTS, not Right Wing bullshit. Manson explains that the older a person becomes, the more frozen they are in the programmed ways the System has inculcated them with. [....] The most adept social and political movers of all times have known that, in order to have a successful movement, you must get 'em [sic] while they are YOUNG! [....] It is Youth that has the most to lose, that has traditionally been the most idealistic and action-minded. Charles Manson exerts a fascination over Youth today, in the en- tire West, more so by far than anyone else even remotely attuned to what we're trying to do.”
He also noted that “Young, wild, American, anti-Establishment” individuals might be more easily attracted to Manson than Hitler. “Manson scares people,” he writes, “but he does so in the way they LIKE [sic] to be scared. There is no huge, vague, ugly ‘thing’ attached to Manson as there is to Hitler.” He writes similarly about Tommasi as an emblem, whose revolutionary praxis he describes as “the very same thing as Adolf Hitler.”
“In Joseph Tommasi I see represented a number of things. All of the martyred comrades I can see in Tommasi. The young, especially, from the rank-and-file. In him I can still see the hope for the future arising out of the ashes and the dust of the former Movement for which he served as a soldier. He represents the clearness of mind and hardness of spirit to not only abandon the past for lost but to attack the present as the only means for achieving a future. And that future is entirely in the hands of those National Socialists serious enough to be called revolution.”
AWD members are getting SIEGE-pilled through total immersion in Mason’s teleology. Now, they are challenging the established far-right and far-left with their eagerness to perpetrate violence.
Accused killer Nicholas Giampa submerged himself in this dark pool. Whatever his other troubles, his exposure to AWD’s fetishizing of mass murder and promotion of racial terrorism should provoke grave concern.
Since his journey in organized white supremacy began, Mason is, perhaps more than ever, seeing his ideas realized “irl.” He has witnessed SIEGE-pilled young men push themselves to action through his designs. This new generation of men might remind Mason of his younger self. And they, in turn, are idolizing him, his writings and his actions with uncanny devotion — just as Mason himself idolizes Charles Manson.
The logo for the Universal Order philosophy.
Late in SIEGE, Mason expressed that, perhaps, he could push his philosophy of terroristic neo-Nazism no further:
“I have done what I could to inject - subtlely [sic] and overtly - as many of Manson's ideas into Movement thought as possible. I have had limited success. But having accomplished this much, I can only hope that the seeds have been planted and the torch passed….”
Among those who seeded Mason’s extremism, Rockwell and Tommasi were both killed by fellow white supremacists, years before Mason assumed lone control of the SIEGE newsletter. In the years since he ceased its publication and its first book edition was published, both William Pierce and Charles Manson have died.
But Mason is alive. And with the inception of SIEGE-Culture and his collaboration with the young cell members that comprise Atomwaffen Division, his hands are on the torch along with theirs.
An ouroboros wreaths the Universal Order’s logo (above), which Manson helped Mason conceive and design. With AWD and Mason’s discovery of one another, the snake is no longer eating its tail. Its tail and head have virtually disappeared into one another. | – The body of a 19-year-old U of Penn student was found last month in a California park, and as details of Blaze Bernstein's murder continue to emerge, so, too, does a disturbing picture of suspected killer Sam Woodward, 20, and the white supremacist group he's said to belong to. ProPublica dives deep into Atomwaffen Division ("Atomwaffen" means "nuclear weapons" in German), whose internal message boards lit up after Bernstein's killing. Members both celebrated Woodward as a "one man gay Jew wrecking crew" and raged that one of their own may have leaked Woodward's AWD affiliation. Although the group is open about their hatred of minorities, Jews, and gays—and their love of Hitler and Charles Manson—it's a notoriously secretive bunch that doesn't take kindly to "rats and traitors." ProPublica got its hands on about 250,000 AWD messages from encrypted logs on Discord, a chat platform meant for gamers but popular with white supremacist groups, with startling revelations. The messages offer a frightening glimpse into the group's leaders, where members are located (as many as 20 cells may exist in several US states), and what "potential targets" may be, including water and electric utilities. "We haven't seen anything like Atomwaffen in quite a while," a Southern Poverty Law Center researcher says. "They should be taken seriously because they're so extreme." Others, though, think while some members may be dangerous, most just indulge in "magical thinking" about government overthrows and spend their time reading fascist lit. "It's very hard to go from talking about violence to looking a guy in the eyes and killing him," one expert says. ProPublica's in-depth take also includes details on AWD's supposed leader, who goes by the nickname "Rape," and the ire ProPublica itself received after it tied Woodward to AWD in a Jan. 26 article. "We really owe those jews at ProPublica," one member wrote in a chat message. More on AWD here. |
Its offices have been firebombed, its website hacked, its Facebook page suspended for 24 hours and its staff targeted with death threats, so you might have thought the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo would have tried – just for a while – to avoid upsetting anyone.
Mais non! After provoking all the above with last week's special edition "guest edited" by the prophet Muhammad, entitled Charia Hebdo, which took pot-shots at radical Islam, the publication is set to raise a few more hackles with this week's edition, published on Wednesday.
On the front page of the latest edition is a drawing of a male Charlie Hebdo cartoonist passionately kissing a bearded Muslim man, under the headline: L'Amour plus fort que la haine (love is stronger than hate).
In the background of the cartoon, signed Luz, are the ashes of the magazine's offices, completely destroyed in the Molotov cocktail attack last week.
Unlike the previous edition, which featured a front page carton of the prophet and a speech bubble reading "100 lashes if you don't die of laughter", there is no suggestion that the character on the magazine cover is Muhammad.
After the firebombing, French Muslim groups who had been highly critical of Charlie Hebdo, condemned the destruction of its offices. Dalil Boubakeur head of the Paris Mosque, told journalists: "I am extremely attached to the freedom of the press, even if the press is not always tender with Muslims, Islam or the Paris Mosque".
The editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, said at the time: "We thought the lines had moved and maybe there would be more respect for our satirical work, our right to mock. Freedom to have a good laugh is as important as freedom of speech."
Since then, the magazine's staff have been given a temporary home in the offices of France's leading leftwing daily newspaper Libération, which has also been subject to threats from the Turkish hackers who are said to have pirated Charlie Hebdo's site.
Luz, the cartoonist, refused to condemn extremists for the attack.
"Let's be cautious. There's every reason to believe it's the work of fundamentalists, but it could just as well be the work of two drunks," he wrote afterwards. ||||| A FRENCH satirical magazine has published nude cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, a move that could further inflame tensions after violent protests in the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film.
The cover of Charlie Hebdo today shows a Muslim in a wheelchair being pushed by an Orthodox Jew under the title Intouchables 2, referring to an award-winning French film about a poor black man who helps an aristocratic quadriplegic.
Another cartoon on the back page of the weekly magazine shows a naked turbaned Mohammed exposing his posterior to a film director, a scene inspired by a 1963 film starring French film star Brigitte Bardot.
Charlie Hebdo's website crashed today after being bombarded with comments that ranged from hate mail to approbation.
The magazine is no stranger to controversy over issues relating to Islam.
Last year it published an edition ''guest-edited'' by Prophet Mohammed that it called Sharia Hebdo.
The magazine's offices in Paris were subsequently fire-bombed.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said anyone offended by cartoons could take the matter to the courts after expressing his 'disapproval of all excesses''.
But he emphasised France's tradition of free speech.
''We are in a country where freedom of expression is guaranteed, including the freedom to caricature,'' he said on RTL radio.
''If people really feel offended in their beliefs and think there has been an infringement of the law - and we are in a state where laws must be totally respected - they can go to court,'' Ayrault said.
He also said a request to hold a demonstration in Paris against the controversial US-made anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims, which has sparked furious protests across the Muslim world, would be refused.
Charlie Hebdo's latest move was greeted with immediate calls from political and religious leaders for the media to act responsibly and avoid inflaming the current situation.
The magazine's editor, originally a cartoonist who uses the name Charb, denied he was being deliberately provocative at a delicate time.
''The freedom of the press, is that a provocation?'' he said.
''I'm not asking strict Muslims to read Charlie Hebdo, just like I wouldn't go to a mosque to listen to speeches that go against everything I believe.''
Dalil Boubakeur, the senior cleric at Paris's biggest mosque, appealed for France's four million Muslims to remain calm.
''It is with astonishment, sadness and concern that I have learned that this publication is risking increasing the current outrage across the Muslim world,'' he said.
''I would appeal to them not to pour oil on the fire.''
France's Muslim Council, the community's main representative body, also appealed for calm in the face of ''this new act of Islamaphobia''. | – Remember the boundary-busting French satirical newspaper that was firebombed for making the Prophet Mohammed a "guest editor"? Journalists toned down the controversy this time around—not. In fact, right on the cover, a Muslim is planting a big, slobbery kiss on a figure representing the publication, Charlie Hebdo. Above the embrace are the words: "Love is stronger than hate." The Guardian says the paper "isn't holding back," while Gawker—convinced the Muslim is a "gay Mohammad" (though he's not in the garb of the prophet)—calls it the "ballsiest paper in the world." Charlie Hebdo's editor said after the firebombing that "freedom to have a good laugh is as important as freedom of speech." The French, including some Muslim leaders, have strongly supported the publication, which is now operating out of the offices of the left-wing Paris newspaper Liberation. "I am extremely attached to the freedom of the press, even if the press is not always tender with Muslims, Islam, or the Paris Mosque," said the head of the Paris Mosque. |
Gaza residents buried their dead Tuesday as the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces at the Gaza boundary fence climbed to at least 60 after several succumbed to injuries overnight, according to local health officials.
Monday’s demonstrations, which coincided with the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, were marked by a level of bloodshed not seen in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel. Israel’s use of live ammunition has drawn widespread condemnation, notably from Turkey, which expelled the Israeli ambassador Tuesday after recalling its envoys to Israel and the United States.
Gunfire rang out over Gaza City on Tuesday as rounds were fired during funeral processions.
Further protests were planned as residents attended funerals and prepared to mark the anniversary of Israel’s founding, known to Palestinians as the “Nakba,” or “Catastrophe.” More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population is descended from refugees who fled or were expelled at the time of Israel’s creation 70 years ago.
However, crowds at the border were thin after the organizing committee for the demonstrations called for a day of mourning to bury the dead. Demonstrators were asked to go home early as the death toll climbed.
Monday’s killings more than doubled the number of Palestinians slain in Gaza during six weeks of demonstrations, dubbed the “March of Return.” More than 2,700 people were injured, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said, about half of them from live ammunition. At least six of the dead were under age 18, the ministry said, including a girl whose family said she was 14.
[Israeli gunfire taking severe toll on the limbs of Palestinian protesters]
The Health Ministry also reported that a baby died after inhaling tear gas at the main protest area in Gaza. An unidentified doctor told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the baby, Layla Ghaben, had a preexisting medical condition and that he did not think her death was caused by tear gas.
One more person was killed in demonstrations Tuesday, the Health Ministry said.
Speculation was rife that crowds were thinner because Egypt had pressured Hamas to order people home. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was summoned to Cairo on a last-minute trip Sunday night, and senior leaders were noticeably absent from Monday’s demonstrations.
Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border, which opens only sporadically, while Israel has blockaded its boundary with the territory for the past 10 years. Ahmed Yousef, a former senior adviser to Haniyeh, said it was likely that Egypt had warned Hamas to prevent an escalation.
He said Hamas may have secured some short-term concessions from Egypt in return, such as a sustained opening of the Rafah crossing point with Egypt, which has been open in recent days.
“This is the minimum they can ask,” Yousef said of Hamas.
Israeli officials justified the military’s tactics as necessary to stop Palestinians from breaking through the border into Israel, which blockaded Gaza after Hamas took control of the enclave in 2007.
Rupert Colville, spokesman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Tuesday that while Israel has a right to defend itself, lethal force should be a last resort and was not justified against people who were simply approaching the fence. He condemned Monday’s “appalling deadly violence.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned a continuing “massacre” of the Palestinian people.
South Africa joined Turkey in announcing that it was recalling its ambassador from Israel.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called on Muslim countries to review their ties with Israel in the wake of the violence.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later attacked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter, saying that he “is one of the great supporters of Hamas, and there is no doubt that he understands terror and the massacres well, and I suggest that he not preach morality to us.”
[Israel welcomes new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on ‘glorious’ day]
Israeli newspapers Tuesday contrasted the upbeat inauguration ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem with pictures of the violence on the border but characterized the Israeli response to the demonstrations in terms of self-defense.
“Every country must protect its borders,” Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. “Hamas is a terrorist organization that states its intention to destroy Israel and it sends thousands of people to breach the border fence to realize this goal. We will continue to act firmly to protect our sovereignty and our citizens.”
He was backed by the Trump administration, which blamed Hamas for the loss of life.
Yaakov Amidror, Israel’s former national security adviser and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, said people around the world condemning the violence need to understand that the Gaza demonstrations are not like protests in Europe.
“They do not take into consideration that this is a cover for a terrorist organization that is attempting to stop Israel from building a system that would stop their underground terror tunnels,” he said.
Asked if Israel could have used less-lethal methods to contain the protesters, most of whom were unarmed, Amidror said that such a question was a good example of those who “can sit in an air-conditioned office, drinking coffee, and give advice to the Israeli army that is facing off against many thousands of Palestinians.”
Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on the edges of the enclave from mid-morning Monday. Many came to demonstrate peacefully, but some protesters appeared to be more aggressive than in previous weeks.
1 of 30 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Gaza protests turn deadly as U.S. Embassy opens in Jerusalem View Photos Israeli soldiers killed dozens of Palestinians demonstrating along the border fence and wounded more than 1,600 in the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel. Caption Israeli soldiers killed dozens of Palestinians demonstrating along the border fence and wounded more than 1,600 in the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Israeli snipers opened fire, ostensibly to prevent any breach of the border fence, and protesters began to fall. No Israeli soldiers were injured.
In Gaza, Hamas backed the demonstrations, called to protest the loss of Palestinian homes and villages when Israel was formed in 1948.
Commenting in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, however, journalist Ben-Dror Yemini said the situation was “self-inflicted” and called on Palestinians to get over the events of 70 years ago.
“There was a Nakba. The Arabs of Palestine underwent expulsion. Tens of millions of people throughout the entire world, including Jews, underwent similar expulsion. But only the Palestinians adopted an ethos of rejectionism, victimhood, suffering and death,” he wrote. “They aren’t looking to improve things for themselves.”
Eglash reported from Jerusalem.
Read more
Trump’s embassy move has triggered deadly protests. These maps explain why.
New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem: A stone plaque and $400,000 in renovations
Analysis: Trump’s ‘buy now, pay later’ foreign policy
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news ||||| Israeli forces killed 58 Palestinians at the boundary fence with Gaza on Monday, local health officials said, a level of bloodshed not seen since the most violent days of Israel’s 2014 war in the territory.
The death toll more than doubled the number of Palestinians killed during six weeks of demonstrations, dubbed the “March of Return,” and came on the same day that a new U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on the edges of the fenced-off and blockaded territory from midmorning. Many came to peacefully demonstrate, bringing their children and carrying flags. Food stalls sold snacks and music blared.
But the protests appeared to have a more violent edge than in previous weeks. Some young men brought knives and fence cutters. At a gathering point east of Gaza City, organizers urged protesters over loudspeakers to burst through the fence, telling them Israeli soldiers were fleeing their positions, even as they were reinforcing them.
Israeli snipers were determined not to allow a breach, and ambulances soon began screaming back and forth from the fence as gunshots rang out. No Israeli soldiers were injured, though, and Israel drew widespread condemnation for an excessive use of force.
More than 2,700 people were injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, including 1,359 from live ammunition. The dead included six children under the age of 18, among them a 15-year-old girl, and a medic, the ministry said.
1 of 30 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Gaza protests turn deadly as U.S. Embassy opens in Jerusalem View Photos Israeli soldiers killed dozens of Palestinians demonstrating along the border fence and wounded more than 1,600 in the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel. Caption Israeli soldiers killed dozens of Palestinians demonstrating along the border fence and wounded more than 1,600 in the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 war with Israel. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
The United Nations said that “those responsible for outrageous human rights violations must be held to account,” and Human Rights Watch described the killings as a “bloodbath.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned a continuing “massacre” of the Palestinian people. Turkey and South Africa announced they were recalling their ambassadors from Israel.
The Trump administration, however, blamed Hamas for the loss of life. “The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas,” deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah told reporters at a briefing. “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
The violence was a jarring contrast with the opening ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, which drew first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Trump adviser Jared Kushner.
In Gaza, Hamas has given its backing to the demonstrations, which have galvanized people around a call to protest the loss of Palestinian homes and villages when Israel was formed in 1948.
Palestinians will mark the anniversary of that day — known as the “Nakba,” or “Catastrophe” — on Tuesday, when more demonstrations are planned. More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population is descended from refugees who were displaced at the time of Israel’s creation.
At Gaza City’s main al-Shifaa hospital, medics said they were overwhelmed.
“I don't know how we will manage,” Ayman al-Sahbani, the head of the emergency department, said as families jostled to get in to see injured relatives. “How long can this go on? How long?”
The hospital had set up an additional 30-bed triage area outside, and earlier in the day said it had the capacity to treat 200 or 300 serious gunshot wounds. It had received around 400 injured by about 6 p.m., most of whom had been shot, he said.
“We’ve reached the critical point now,” he said. “A lot of people need operations soon, but the operation room is full.”
Palestinian women suffering from tear-gas inhalation sit in a medical aid tent during a protest near Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. (Dusan Vranic/AP)
Increasing economic hardship has fueled frustrations in Gaza, along with wider despair across Palestinian territories amid moves by a U.S. administration seen as wholeheartedly on Israel’s side in the decades-old conflict.
At least 110 Gazans have been killed over the past six weeks, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures.
At the demonstrations east of Gaza City, some said the force used by Israel would only bring further unrest.
Standing a few hundred meters from the fence, Nirma Attalah, 29, said her 22-year-old brother had been killed two weeks ago. “My brother was shot in the head in this place,” she said. She had come on Monday with her whole extended family. “We are here for Jerusalem, for Palestinian land,” she said.
A truck rolled past carrying young men chanting: “To Jerusalem we go with millions of martyrs” and “Death rather than humiliation.”
Drones dropped canisters of tear gas, sending crowds fleeing. Other drones dropped leaflets that urged demonstrators to say back from the fence.
“People have come out of the rubble to say we will not forget our rights,” said Yousef Abu Saleh, 25. “The American administration is adopting the Israeli story and stealing our right of return.”
While some said they would abide by official calls to keep the demonstrations peaceful, others talked about their enthusiasm to break into Israel and wreak havoc.
“We are excited to storm and get inside,” said 23-year-old Mohammed Mansoura. When asked what he would do inside Israel, he said, “Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.”
Two other young men carried large knives and said they wanted to kill Jews on the other side of the fence.
The Israeli military brought two extra brigades to the Gaza border in preparation for the demonstrations and added additional “defense lines” in an effort to prevent any mass invasion into Israeli communities near the border.
The military said at least 40,000 people protested in 13 places along the fence — more than twice as many locations as in past weeks of protest.
“Especially violent riots” took place near the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where three people were killed after trying to plant an explosive, the military added. The military also said it would “act forcefully against any terrorist activity,” and it carried out an airstrike on Hamas military posts in northern Gaza after Israeli troops came under fire.
At demonstrations near the Bureij Camp in central Gaza, Ahmed Loulou, 22, released a cluster of balloons carrying a Palestinian flag. He had written in marker: “We are returning. This is our land.”
The load was briefly caught in a power line before bobbing unsteadily toward the border.
Loulou said that it was his first time at the demonstrations and that he had been persuaded to come by friends.
Meanwhile, young men fired stones from slingshots as they sheltered behind earthen berms. Shortly afterward, the sound of live ammunition zinged through the air over the sound of the afternoon call to prayer.
“Sniper! Sniper!” shouted a young boy.
A Palestinian man throws leaflets dropped Monday by the Israeli military during Monday’s protests along the Israel-Gaza border. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
The vast majority of demonstrators were unarmed, but near a parking area, a man pulled out an AK-47 and took aim at an Israeli drone dropping leaflets. He let off a stream of bullets into the air and brought it down. Later, more gunfire was heard as Palestinian factions argued over who would keep the downed drown, onlookers said.
As the death toll neared 50, loudspeakers called for protesters to leave the border area. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya was called to Cairo on Sunday night in an apparent attempt to persuade the militant group to quell the demonstrations. No agreement was made, Hamas spokesman Taher al-Nounou said as he attended the protests. “They understood our points. Our people are showing their solidarity with Jerusalem today, and showing their anger with the U.S. administration.”
Hamas’s Interior Ministry said seven of its members were killed, including a medic from the civil defense, two internal security staff and a military intelligence official. At least 12 journalists were injured, according to the Health Ministry.
The demonstrations have proved to be a welcome distraction for Hamas, refocusing anger against Israel as frustration built against the group in Gaza.
At a news conference as evening fell, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayaa said the protests would continue.
“This blood will keep boiling until the occupation leaves forever,” he said.
At a morgue, the blood was washed off the bodies of those killed before they were taken away by waiting relatives. Dressed in a blue Chelsea soccer shirt, Ahmed Jundiya, 20, was waiting for the body of his 20-year-old cousin.
Jundiya himself hadn’t been at the demonstrations.
“I wanted to go, but my parents said no,” he said. “You can see the result of participating,” he added, motioning toward the room where his relative lay.
Anne Gearan in Washington and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Read more
Trump’s embassy move has triggered deadly protests. These maps explain why.
New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem: A stone plaque and $400,000 in renovations
Trump’s ‘buy now, pay later’ foreign policy | – The death toll from what Israel's critics are calling a massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza hit 59 overnight with the death of a baby from tear gas inhalation, according to Palestinian authorities. The Palestinian Health Authority in Gaza says seven children under 18 were among the dozens of people killed when Israeli troops opened fire on protesters at the border fence Monday, the Washington Post reports. More than 2,700 others were wounded, the authority says, including 1,359 injured by live ammunition. Israel also dropped tear gas from drones in what was Gaza's deadliest day of violence since the 2014 war. The latest developments: South Africa, Turkey withdraw ambassadors. Israeli authorities say South Africa has recalled its ambassador to protest the shootings, the AP reports. Turkey is withdrawing its ambassadors from both the US and Israel. Kuwait drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution expressing outrage and calling for an independent investigation, but it was blocked by the US. |
Treatments
Boston Doctors Compare Marathon Bomb Injuries To War Wounds
i i itoggle caption Elise Amendola/AP Elise Amendola/AP
Boston hospitals always staff up their emergency rooms on Marathon Day to care for runners with cramps, dehydration and the occasional heart attack.
But Monday, those hospitals suddenly found themselves with more than 100 traumatized patients — many of them with the kinds of injuries seen more often on a battlefield than a marathon.
Like most big-city hospitals these days, Tufts Medical Center runs regular disaster drills, featuring simulated patients smeared with fake blood.
So when word came Monday afternoon that there had been an explosion at the Boston Marathon finish line, staffers weren't sure what was happening.
Robert Osgood, the hospital's emergency management chief, recalls those first moments.
'Is This Another One Of Your Crazy Drills?'
"There was sort of this beat where everybody in the emergency department sort of stopped for a second. And it was almost like you could hear each other breathing. And everybody looked at me and said, 'Is this another one of your crazy drills?' and the first thing I said was, 'No, this is not a drill. This is for real. We need to huddle up.' "
At first they thought it was something accidental, like a manhole cover explosion.
"But once we actually found out that this was a man-made event, there's a certain mental toll that sort of hits a switch in some of the staff. And they say, 'Why would somebody do this?' " Osgood said.
But soon there was no time for such thoughts. Terribly injured patients began coming through the emergency room doors of every big hospital in the city.
'A Lot Of Very Horrific Injuries'
Across town at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, emergency room specialist Dr. Stephen Epstein described the carnage:
"Limbs that were severed, limbs that, you know, we hope we can save, and some that we might not be able to save. A lot of very horrific injuries that we saw here today."
He said some patients near the blasts had soot around their mouths and noses. That's a sign they'd breathed in scorching air. They needed to be put on ventilators right away, because that kind of burn causes rapid swelling that can shut down people's airways and suffocate them.
Many had pieces of glass and metal embedded in their chests and necks. Ruptured eardrums from the blast were common.
"The device that went off today, for lack of a better term, was an improvised explosive device. And that's exactly what a number of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have had to deal with," Epstein said.
Just The Beginning For Many Victims
And like those wounded troops, doctors say, many of those injured in the blasts Monday will require a lot of rehabilitation — both physical and mental.
"These were very disabling injuries in that the blast caused a lot of soft tissue injury. But also the shrapnel just rips through the tissues," said Dr. William Mackey, chief of surgery at Tufts Medical Center.
Mackey said his hospital quickly canceled all elective surgery as his colleagues tried to repair the damage as well as they could.
Patients needed hours of surgery, but Mackey said it was just the beginning for many victims.
"They will definitely need repeated operations," he said.
It wasn't until 9 p.m. that Mackey could sit down in his office and try to absorb the events. He said it had been a very discouraging day.
"Because you don't associate the Boston Marathon with anything but a great sense of pride in the city, pride in the athletes that trained so hard to run the marathon. And to have this happen ... yeah, it's very disorienting. It's been a very upsetting day in many, many ways," Mackey said.
But jittery as this city is today, Mackey doesn't think the marathon bombings are going to intimidate Boston in the long haul.
"I don't think Bostonians are going to be terrorized by this. I think they're gonna be motivated by this. I sure hope more people than ever turn out for next year's marathon," Mackey said.
If they do, it's a safe bet all of them will be thinking about what happened at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. ||||| (CNN) -- The full horror of Monday's bomb attacks in Boston was reflected in emergency rooms across the city as doctors were forced to perform amputations and treat injuries normally expected on a battlefield.
Around 11 p.m. ET, at least 144 people were reported to have been taken to hospital with wounds sustained from the blasts that brought terror and chaos to the city's annual marathon race.
Get up-to-the-minute updates on CNN.com's live blog
Three people, including an eight-year-old boy, were killed, while at least 17 people are reported to be in a critical condition.
Designed to propel shrapnel
Images in the immediate aftermath showed people being carried away on stretchers -- one man in a wheelchair had blood all over his face and legs.
While many patients were treated for cuts and scrapes, doctors have also been "pulling ball bearings out of people in the emergency room," suggesting the bombs were designed to propel shrapnel, according to one terrorism expert briefed on the Boston blasts, though CNN is yet to confirm this.
Medical teams have also carried out at least 10 amputations and treated many leg injuries, suggesting the device was low to the ground, according to CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
Among the 28 people taken to the city's Brigham and Women's Hospital, the most common types of injuries are to the bone and tissue, hospital spokesman Tom Langford told CNN.
He said nine of those patients have potentially limb-threatening wounds. A 3-year-old victim was transferred to Boston Children's Hospital for treatment.
Amputated limbs
Dr. Peter Fagenholz, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, told reporters he treated many of the 29 patients who arrived at the hospital for shrapnel wounds.
"Many of the victims were hit with "a lot of small, metal debris," he said.
"Some people have asked already whether they were BBs or parts of bombs," he said, referring to earlier reports that ball bearings have been pulled from victims. "We can't say whether they were placed their intentionally or whether they were just part of the environment."
He said the most serious wounds "have been combined, complex lower injuries that involve blood vessels, bone and tissue." Some of the patients had to have limbs amputated, Fagenholz added.
"A number of patients will require repeat operations and serial operations over the next couple of days," he said, adding that he had been in surgery for almost 14 hours.
Describing the horror
Theresa Panter, who had been running in the marathon, described the scene as she approached the finishing line.
"When I heard the bomb and saw the reaction of the spectators, I was just alarmed. Then I was pushed back by a spectator and then a Boston Athletic official -- he grabbed a bunch of us and pushed us back. It was pretty upsetting."
Her husband, Dr. Allan Panter, was in the crowd and described how he ended up tending to people on the streets.
"I saw at least six to seven people down next to me -- they protected me from the blast. One lady expired, one gentleman lost both his limbs, his lower extremities. Most of the injuries were mainly lower extremity injuries.
"I could not figure out why the young lady had expired, I could not find any injury on her thorax."
Read the full wrap-up of the terror attack in Boston
Witness: 'I saw blood everywhere'
LZ Granderson: April 15, 2013, will serve as terrible reminder ||||| [Update, 11:05 a.m. ET Tuesday] This post is no longer being updated. For Tuesday's coverage, please read this story.
[Update, 11:41 p.m. ET] Stephen Segatore, a nurse who was at the medical tent near the finish line for the Boston Marathon, said emergency responders immediately went into mass-casualty mode.
"We had full trauma response at the scene," he told CNN. "We had physicians, nurses who are experienced in trauma care. We had EMTs and it was a full Level 1 trauma experience."
Segatore said he treated at least 25 people as those experienced in trauma care stepped forward while others treated people with minor injuries.
[Update, 11:35 p.m. ET] Saudi ambassador to the United States Adel Al-Jubeir condemned the bombings in Boston and offered his condolences to victims' families.
“What occurred today in Boston is a heinous crime which contradicts the values of humanity.” he said.
[Update, 10:52 p.m. ET] The total of injured has risen to 144 people, officials at Boston area hospitals said. That includes three additional patients at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
[Update, 10:41 p.m. ET] A law enforcement source in Boston tells CNN that investigators have a "number of active leads, and some good early progress in the forensics analysis."
[Update, 10:07 p.m. ET] Dr. Peter Fagenholz told reporters that there were 29 wounded people at Massachusetts General Hospital, eight of whom were in critical condition. Many of the people had shrapnel injuries to their lower extremites, he said.
"We have performed several amputations," he said.
There were no pediatric patients among the wounded, he said.
[Update, 9:38 p.m. ET] Dr. Allan Panter, who was near the finish line waiting for his wife who was running the race, told CNN he was standing about 20 to 25 feet from the first blast. He said he treated victims on the street after the explosion.
"I saw at least six to seven people down next to me," he said. "They protected me from the blast. One lady expired. One gentleman lost both his (lower) limbs. Most of the injuries were lower extremities. I could not figure out why the young lady had expired. I could not find any injury on her thorax."
[Update, 9:28 p.m. ET] Bill Iffrig, seen in video wearing an orange tank top and being blown over as he approached the finish line, told CNN's Piers Morgan that he was feeling OK after the blast.
"I got down to within about 15 feet of the finishing apron and heard just tremendous explosion, sounded like a bomb went off right next to me, and the shock waves just hit my whole body and my legs just started jittering around," he said. "I knew i was going down and so i ended up down on the blacktop."
Iffrig, 78, said he was assisted by one of the event volunteers, who helped him up so he could finish the race. After that, the worker looked for aid for Iffrig, who had just a scratch from his fall.
"He insisted on getting a wheelchair over there so we started to do that, but then before that was rounded up, i said my hotel's about six blocks away so I think I can make it okay. So they let me get out of there and I went on home to my wife."
[Update, 8:55 p.m. ET] A Saudi national with a leg wound was under guard at a Boston hospital in connection with the bombings at the Boston Marathon, but investigators cannot say he is involved at this time and he is not in custody, a law enforcement official said Monday evening.
[Update, 8:54 p.m. ET] Three people were killed in the bombings, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told reporters Monday night, raising the toll by one.
[Update, 8:52 p.m. ET] The FBI is taking the lead in the investigation, Rick DesLauriers, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Boston field office, told reporters.
[Update, 8:44 p.m.ET ] The Boston Celtics home game against the Indiana Pacers, originally scheduled for Tuesday, was canceled, the NBA announced. With the regular season almost at its end, the contest will not be made up.
[Update, 8:36 p.m. ET] Investigators have warned law enforcement officers to be on the lookout for a "darker-skinned or black male" with a possible foreign accent in connection with Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon, according to a law enforcement advisory obtained by CNN.
The man was seen with a black backpack and sweatshirt and was trying to get into a restricted area about five minutes before the first explosion, the lookout notice states.
[Update, 8:35 p.m.] Hospital workers have treated 141 people after the Boston Marathon bombings, officials at those facilities said Monday night. Two people died in the terror attack, including an 8-year-old boy, a state law enforcement source said.
[Update, 8:32 p.m.] A statement has been issued by the race organizers: "The Boston Athletic Association extends its deepest sympathies to all those who were affected in any way by todays events.
"Today is a sad day for the City of Boston, for the running community, and for all those who were here to enjoy the 117th running of the Boston Marathon. What was intended to be a day of joy ...and celebration quickly became a day in which running a marathon was of little importance.
"We can confirm that all of the remaining runners who were out on the course when the tragic events unfolded have been returned to a community meeting area.
"At this time, runners bags in Boston which remain unclaimed may be picked up by runners presenting their bib number or proof of race participation at the Castle, at 101 Arlington Street, in Boston.
"At this time, we are cooperating with the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all federal law enforcement officials.
"We would like to thank the countless people from around the world who have reached out to support us today."
[Update, 7:57 p.m. ET] Doctors are "pulling ball bearings out of people in the emergency room," a terrorism expert briefed on the investigation told CNN's Deborah Feyerick.
The same source said the blasts resulted in at least 10 lost limbs.
[Update, 7:43 p.m. ET] An 8-year-old boy was among those killed, a state law enforcement source said, according to CNN's John King.
[Update, 7:38 p.m. ET] At least 132 people - including eight children - have been injured in the bombings, according to Boston-area hospitals. Boston police earlier said that two people were killed.
At least 17 of the injured are in critical condition, and at least 25 are in serious condition, area hospitals said.
[Update, 7:08 p.m. ET] A witness, Marilyn Miller, told CNN that she was about 30 feet away from the first bomb when it went off. The second bomb came about 12 seconds after and about 50 to 100 yards away from the first, according to authorities and an analysis of video from the site.
Miller was waiting for a runner who, it turns out, was probably about 10 minutes away from the finish line.
"We saw injuries all around us," Miller said. Someone was putting pressure on a woman's neck. "A little boy, his leg was torn up. A woman, (people) were (shouting), 'Critical, critical, get out of out way!'"
[Update, 6:51 p.m. ET] At least 110 people have been injured in the bombings, according to Boston-area hospitals.
[Update, 6:49 p.m. ET] Boston cell phone services were overloaded in the wake of the blast, slowing the city's network dramatically and hampering the investigation in the early going, federal law enforcement officials told CNN.
Unconfirmed rumors began circulating on social media and elsewhere that law enforcement had shut down cell service to prevent more explosives from being detonated remotely. But mobile companies were saying that was never the case, CNN's Doug Gross reports.
"Verizon Wireless has not been asked by any government agency to turn down its wireless service," a spokesman for that company told CNN. "Any reports to that effect are inaccurate."
In other media reports, Sprint similarly denied being asked to shut down service.
Online, Bostonians were being encouraged to stay off of their mobile phones except for emergencies and even open up their wireless connections to help take the load off of the cellular data network.
"If you live or run a business in #Boston near bombsite (please) open your wifi for people to use," tweeted Disaster Tech Lab, an Irish nonprofit dedicated to providing technology to assist in emergency situations.
[Update, 6:47 p.m. ET] Initial tests indicate that the two bombs were small and possibly crude, with the tests not indicating any high-grade explosive material was used, a federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN national security contributor and former homeland security adviser Fran Townsend.
The source said the FBI considers the incident a terrorist attack, "but they've made clear to me they do not know at this time whether those responsible for the attack were a foreign or domestic group," Townsend said.
[Update, 6:35 p.m. ET] U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, D-Massachusetts, said an unexploded device was found at a hotel on Boylston Street, and another unexploded device was found at an undisclosed location.
Keating, who is a member of the House Homeland Security committee and has spoken to law enforcement sources, tells CNN's Dierdre Walsh that the incidents were a "sophisticated, coordinated, planned attack."
[Update, 6:14 p.m. ET] More from President Obama, who just wrapped up his brief statement at the White House: "We still do not know who did this or why ... but make no mistake: We will get to the bottom of (this). We will find out who did this. We will find out why they did this. ... Any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice."
[Update, 6:11 p.m. ET] President Barack Obama is speaking about the bombings now: “The American people will say a prayer for Boston tonight, and Michelle and I send out deepest thoughts and prayers to the victims," Obama said at the White House.
[Update, 5:59 p.m. ET] John Manis, an eyewitness in his 50s, was about 200 feet away from the finish line near the Prudential building when the bombings occurred. He felt the blast to the point that it made him and others around him jump in the air, and some others around him fell down on the ground, he said, according to CNN's Eden Pontz.
Manis said he heard two blasts about five seconds apart. He said there was confusion all around him, and he was hustled into the nearby Mandarin Hotel. Officials wouldn’t let them leave the hotel for a bit, and he says all who were there were all frisked by police. He said that when he left, he saw broken storefronts and lots of blood.
[Update, 5:51 p.m. ET] President Barack Obama is expected to deliver a statement at about 6:10 p.m. ET from the White House.
[Update, 5:35 p.m. ET] Google has established a person-finder related to the Boston bombings. People who are looking for someone or have information about someone can make reports there.
[Update, 5:31 p.m. ET] Boston police now appear to be backing away from their commissioner's earlier statement that a third incident - at the JFK Library 5 miles from the finish line - might have been related to the Boston Marathon blasts.
On Twitter, Boston police say: "Update JFK incident appears to be fire related."
Update JFK incident appears to be fire related #tweetfromthebeat via @CherylFiandaca — Boston Police Dept. (@bostonpolice) April 15, 2013
[Update, 5:21 p.m. ET] Precautions are being taken at the White House because of the Boston explosions, CNN’s Jessica Yellin reports. See that in the video below, as well as Vice President Joe Biden's reaction to the incident:
[Update, 5:17 p.m. ET] In the video below, a man describes the initial blast, saying the impact was so strong it “almost blew my head off.” He was not injured, but saw many people sustain horrific injuries.
[Update, 5:15 p.m. ET] The Boston Globe is reporting a much higher injury count. They report that more than 100 people are being treated for injuries, citing local hospitals.
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe
[Update, 5:10 p.m. ET] Hospitals now say they are treating as many as 51 wounded after the bombings. Two people have been killed, according to Boston police.
[Update, 5:09 p.m. ET] It will take a long time to clear the area, because lots of people dropped bags and whatever else they had when the finish-line blasts happened. Authorities have to check all of those bags, and bomb squads "may be blowing things up over the next few hours" out of precaution, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said.
In the words of Boston Globe political reporter Cynthia Needham, on Twitter:
Side problem, according to commissioner: People running from scene dropped bags, and personal belongings in the street. All must be checked. — Cynthia Needham (@CynthiaNeedham) April 15, 2013
Thousands of runners still had yet to finish the race when the bombs exploded in a spectator area along Boylston Street near the finish line, CNN executive producer Matt Frucci at the scene.
[Update, 4:58 p.m. ET] New details from Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis:
- A third explosion happened at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library "about a half-hour ago." The library is about 5 miles southeast of the Boston Marathon finish line.
- Police don't immediately know whether that explosion is related to the two near the Boston Marathon finish line.
- The two blasts near the finish line - along Boylston Street near Copley Square - "happened 50 to 100 yards apart."
- "We're recommending to people that they stay home ... and that they don't go anyplace and congregate in large crowds."
- Relatives of people who may be missing in the area can call the mayor's hotline at 617-635-4500.
- Anyone who has information about the bombings or saw anything suspicious can call 1-800-494-TIPS.
BPD asking people not to congregate in large crowds #tweetfromthebeat via @CherylFiandaca — Boston Police Dept. (@bostonpolice) April 15, 2013
[Update, 4:46 p.m. ET] Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick says “this is a horrific day in Boston."
"My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured," Patrick said in a statement released this afternoon. "I have been in touch with the president, Mayor Menino and our public safety leaders. Our focus is on making sure that the area around Copley Square is safe and secured. I am asking everyone to stay away from Copley Square and let the first responders do their jobs.”
[Update, 4:45 p.m. ET] It appears that so many people are using cell phones in the center of Boston, consistent service is hard to get - and the overload is hampering the investigation, two federal law enforcement sources tell CNN.
[Update, 4:40 p.m. ET] Another journalist says she saw victims who lost limbs. This account is from Boston Globe political reporter Cynthia Needham:
Outside MGH: Head of emergency medicine says 19 have been brought to MGH, six critically injured, some with amputations. — Cynthia Needham (@CynthiaNeedham) April 15, 2013
"Outside MGH: Head of emergency medicine says 19 have been brought to MGH, six critically injured, some with amputations," she posted to Twitter.
Earlier, we noted that Boston.com sports producer Steve Silva reported that he "saw dismemberment" and "blood everywhere."
[Update, 4:37 p.m. ET] Organizers with the London Marathon, scheduled for this coming Sunday, have taken notice.
"We are deeply saddened and shocked by the news from Boston," London Marathon officials said Monday. "Our immediate thoughts are with the people there and their families. It is a very sad day for athletics and for our friends and colleagues in marathon running. Our security plan is developed jointly with the Metropolitan Police and we were in contact with them as soon as we heard the news."
[Update, 4:30 p.m. ET] Boston firefighters have found what they believe is an unexploded device after the blasts, a government official said, according to CNN's Joe Johns.
[Update, 4:27 p.m. ET] "I saw blood everywhere," Boston.com sports producer Steve Silva told Boston.com.
Silva told the news outlet that he was near the finish line when the explosions happened. He said he saw a number of injuries in the area where spectators were. He saw "someone lost their leg," and he said "people are crying, people are confused."
"It was just an explosion, it came out of nowhere," he said. "There are multiple injuries. I saw dismemberment, I saw blood everywhere. People are badly injured."
[Update, 4:19 p.m. ET] We have a new injury count: According to hospital officials, at least 28 people are being treated for injuries connected to this afternoon's blasts near the Boston Marathon finish line.
Nineteen were being treated at Massachusetts General and nine at Tufts Medical Center, officials at those facilities said. Boston police earlier put the number of victims at two dead and 22 hurt.
[Update, 4:16 p.m. ET] "People started scrambling, pushing, shoving" when the explosions happened in a sidewalk area along Boylston Street, near the finish line in the Copley Square area, says CNN executive producer Matt Frucci at the scene.
Frucci said he heard the blasts.
"After the dust settled, (I saw) six or seven people strewn about the area where the second (explosion) was.
[Update, 4:11 p.m. ET] A Red Cross website has been established to help people find loved ones in the area.
"Individuals can register themselves as safe or search for loved ones," Massachusetts' emergency management agency says.
[Update, 4:08 p.m. ET] At least two people have been killed and 22 are injured in the apparent bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Boston police say.
[Update, 4:02 p.m. ET] A Massachusetts General Hospital spokeswoman tells CNN 19 victims have been brought in.
[Update,3:57 p.m. ET] On their Twitter page, Boston marathon officials made this announcement: "There were two bombs that exploded near the finish line in today's Boston Marathon. We are working with law enforcement to understand what exactly has happened."
[Update, 3:53 p.m. ET] New York is taking precautions as a result of the explosions at the Boston Marathon.
In a written statement, New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said: "We're stepping up security at hotels and other prominent locations in the city through deployment of the NYPD's critical response vehicles until more about the explosion is learned.
[Update, 3:45 p.m. ET] Paramedics were treating several victims at the scene, and police ordered onlookers to back away from the area. Troops from the Massachusetts National Guard were assisting police as well.
Onlooker Josh Matthews said he heard the blast, then saw police running toward the scene.
"We just heard a lot of sirens, and people were kind of frantic, and it was a bad situation, so we got out of there," he said.
[Update, 3:37 p.m.] Four victims of explosions near the Boston Marathon finish line are at the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman told CNN. She had no information about the victims' conditions.
[Posted at 3:25 p.m. ET] A pair of explosions rocked the finish line at the Boston Marathon on Monday afternoon, injuring at least a half-dozen people, a CNN producer at the scene said.
The blasts occurred a few seconds apart, shrouding downtown Boston's Copley Square in smoke. Paramedics were treating several victims at the scene, and police ordered onlookers to back away from the area, CNN Producer Matt Frucci reported.
The explosions occurred about 2:45 p.m., about an hour after the first runners had crossed the finish line, Frucci said. ||||| In the hours after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, New York City’s hospitals braced for an onslaught that never came. On the morning of September 12, a sea of empty white gurneys sparkled in front of Manhattan’s St. Vincent’s Hospital. The building was already papered with pictures of people who had vanished forever. In Boston this week, the aftermath of violence looked different. Only three people died within 24 hours of the blast on Boylston Street. But like the improvised bombings that plague Iraq and Afghanistan, the attack left scores of civilians mortally injured, many with lower limbs hanging by threads. The incident may be remembered less for the deaths it caused than for the flesh and bone it ravaged.
But the Patriots’ Day bombing reveals the tremendous strides that emergency physicians have made in the past decade. The assault occurred within blocks of what President Obama called “some of the best hospitals in the world.” A medical team was already working the finish line when the shrapnel started flying. And thanks to this country’s recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, physicians and emergency workers almost surely saved patients who would have died from the same injuries a decade ago.
For all their failings, America’s recent foreign wars have driven medical breakthroughs that are now saving civilians at home.
It’s hardly the first time this has happened. The need to keep wounded fighters alive has long been an engine of medical progress. Roughly one soldier died for every 1.7 injured in World War II. In Iraq and Afghanistan, one died for every seven wounded—a decline of more than 75%. The advances fueling that progress span fields as diverse as orthopedics, pharmacology and bandage design, and most are now common in civilian medicine.
Some of the breakthroughs have been astonishingly low-tech. Take the tourniquet, for instance, a device that dates back at least to the second century BC. Blood loss is the leading cause of death among trauma victims. A tourniquet can stop bleeding cold when applied to an injured arm or a leg. But 20th century medical dogma said it should be used only as a desperate last resort, lest it starve the limb of sustenance. “We learned early in the Iraq War that we needed to test these assumptions,” says Dr. Andrew Pollak, a senior trauma surgeon at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. “So Congress has started funding research to compare and evaluate treatment protocols.”
Researchers at the Army Institute of Surgical Research did just that, and their findings have transformed trauma care. In studies involving more than 2,800 trauma patients at a combat support hospital in Baghdad, they found that tourniquets dramatically improved survival following major limb injuries, especially when medics applied them quickly in the field. Patients died at more than twice the rate (24% versus 11%) when tourniquets were restricted to hospital use. Some 87% of patients bled to death if they didn’t receive tourniquets at all.
Contrary to past fears, the tourniquets themselves didn’t cause any limb loss, even in the rare cases when patients had to keep them on for two to three hours. “We’ve rewritten all the text books to reflect this,” says Pollak. “Every paramedic is now trained to apply a tourniquet at the scene of a motor vehicle crash. The message is very clear and well accepted, even in the civilian environment.”
Tourniquets figured prominently in the grim tableaus that followed Monday’s blast, and they no doubt kept some survivors alive. They’re no good for head or abdominal wounds (“If your scalp is bleeding, a tourniquet to the neck is not helpful,” says Pollak), but combat physicians have devised other ways to stem blood loss. Newly developed dressings can accelerate clotting when applied to an open wound or infused into a bandage. And military research has shown that synthetic clotting factors—the mainstay of hemophilia treatment—can quickly stem blood loss when administered to trauma victims.
“We used to slowly transfuse platelets to help them,” says Dr. Don VanBoerum, director of Trauma Care at Salt Lake City’s Intermountain Medical Center. “Newer treatments like activated factor 7 work almost instantaneously. They carry some risk, but they definitely make a difference.”
Blood loss isn’t the only threat bombing victims face. Improvised bombs drive debris and shrapnel deep into the body, shredding the soft tissues that support and nourish bones and seeding potentially deadly infections. Once they stabilize a trauma victim, emergency physicians aggressively excise damaged tissues. Debridement helps ward off gangrene, but it can also leave shattered bones fully exposed. “It’s hard to repair pulverized bone under the best of conditions,” says VanBoerum. “It’s impossible if the bone isn’t sheathed in soft tissue.”
But even that challenge is sometimes surmountable. Borrowing from combat surgeons, trauma docs have learned to secure bone fragments with rods that are bolted to a frame surrounding the injured limb. And if a shattered bone lacks soft-tissue cover, a plastic surgeon can sometimes transfer live muscle tissue—blood vessels intact—from the back or the forearm to the site of the injury. “If it works,” says VanBoerum, “you end up with a blood supply that can keep the tissue alive and carry antibiotics into it while the bone starts to heal.”
There are limits, though. Even when surgeons can reconstruct a leg this way, they can’t always salvage the nerves needed to preserve sensation in the foot. And as VanBoerum puts it, “an insensate limb isn’t a good outcome.” A foot that lacks feeling is prone to sores and injuries that can lead to infection and, ultimately, amputation. So trauma patients sometimes face a stark choice: give up the shattered limb at the outset, and learn to use a prosthesis, or embark on a long surgical odyssey that may ultimately fail. A wise surgeon may advise the patient to give it up and move on.
That may sound harsh, but military research has greatly revolutionized prosthetic limbs in recent years, and studies suggest that wounded veterans often prefer them to salvaged but damaged limbs. Civilian research suggests that patients fare about equally well with amputation or limb-salvaging surgery. But in a study called METALS (for Military Extremity Trauma Amputation/Limb Salvage), researchers assessed outcomes among 317 U.S. service members whose legs were damaged by bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. Though all of them were significantly disabled three years after their injuries, the amputees reported greater mobility and less emotional distress than those who had kept their limbs.
These warriors’ experiences may tell us little about the folks now fighting for their lives in Boston hospitals. But they suggest that life and hope can survive even the most harrowing trauma. Improvised explosives don’t discriminate between soldiers and civilians. People who encounter them come home broken. But as trauma surgery improves, more and more of them will come home. | – As of this morning, 100 of the 183 people hospitalized in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing have been released, CNN reports, in a testament to how well area doctors have handled the crisis. Boston boasts nearly 80 hospitals, and they're regarded as some of the world's best, the Week points out, while MSNBC observes that trauma treatment has improved drastically since 9/11—in part because of America's war experience. The Marathon bombs were IEDs, "and that's exactly what a number of our troops in Iraq in Afghanistan have had to deal with," one emergency room specialist tells NPR. Techniques learned in those conflicts have now proliferated into civilian medicine. Tourniquets, for instance, have gone from being considered a dangerous last resort to a routine life-saver. Shrapnel extraction techniques have improved as well. It also helped that there was a medical tent at the finish line already, which quickly became a well-oiled triage center. "I've seen a lot worse," one emergency room physician tells the New York Times. "They were without question ready—not for those types of injuries, but they were prepared." |
The parents of 15-year-old Carmen Johnson, who tragically died from electric shock drowning while swimming near her family’s Alabama lake house last April, are speaking out about the rarely reported phenomenon after it took the lives of two more local women this past weekend.
The two women, 34-year-old Shelly Darling and 41-year-old Elizabeth Whipple, went missing after sunbathing on Lake Tuscaloosa Friday afternoon. Their bodies were retrieved from the lake early Saturday morning. Preliminary autopsies for the two victims show the cause of death as electrocution, the Tuscaloosa County Homicide Unit told CBS affiliate WIAT on Wednesday.
“I’ve been around water all my life and I never thought that electricity in a huge body of water like that could do what it did,” Carmen’s father, Jimmy Johnson, 49, told CBS News. “It is something that even people like me now after all these years never had any idea that this even happened.”
Jimmy Johnson
Every day, about 10 people in the U.S. die from accidental drowning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But electric shock drownings are difficult to track. It’s known as a “silent killer.”
Even a low level of electric current in the water can be extremely hazardous or fatal to a swimmer -- especially in freshwater, where experts say the voltage will “take a shortcut” through the human body.
“There is no visible warning or way to tell if water surrounding a boat, marina or dock is energized or within seconds will become energized with fatal levels of electricity,” the non-profit Electric Shock Drowning Prevention Association reports.
In fact, Johnson says, he never would have known what happened to his daughter if he hadn’t felt the electric current himself while trying to jump in to save her.
Carmen playfully jumped off the top level of the family’s boat dock into Smith Lake with her friend Reagan Gargis on April 16, 2016. Jimmy Johnson lowered a metal ladder into the water so the girls could climb out. Minutes later, he heard Reagan scream, “Help!”
“My wife thought [Carmen] had done something to her neck, which paralyzed her,” Johnson said. “She started going underwater.”
That’s when Johnson and his son, Zach, jumped in the water after the girls and immediately felt piercing electric shocks.
“Cut the power off,” Johnson yelled to his wife as he started to go in and out of consciousness.
Johnson, Reagan and Zach survived, but Carmen didn’t make it.
“Carmen was grabbing [Reagan’s] leg and was getting the majority of the shock when I came over,” Johnson said.
Jimmy Johnson
Johnson later found a light switch at the dock that was half full of water. When he put the metal ladder into the water, the electrical current from the light switch traveled through the dock to the ladder and into the surrounding water, where the girls were swimming.
“As they were swimming toward the dock, within somewhere between the 5-to-10-foot range, is when they started feeling like they couldn’t swim,” Johnson recalled.
Johnson believes that if his family had been educated about electric shock drownings this might never have happened. Now he’s sharing Carmen’s story as a warning to others, along with tips to help prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
His safety tips include:
Use a plastic ladder, rather than a metal one, so it won’t help transfer electricity into the water.
If you start to feel a tingle in the water, swim away from the dock, which is where most electrical issues occur.
Check all of the wiring around your dock, including your ground fault circuit breaker.
Purchase a Dock Lifeguard, a device that detects electricity on your dock and in the water around your dock. (Johnson works with the company to promote the product.)
“It’s every homeowner’s responsibility to make sure water is safe around their dock before they start swimming,” Johnson said. “People think ‘Oh, this is a freak accident. It’s not going to happen to me.’ And here we are now — 3 dead in a year.” ||||| Nearly a year after a 15-year-old Alabama girl was killed by electric shock drowning, two women died in Lake Tuscaloosa this past weekend.
Shelly Darling, 34, and Elizabeth Whipple, 41 were found dead in the lake early Saturday morning after they were reported missing by family members. While authorities suspect electric shock may have caused Darling and Whipple to drown, an official cause of death won't be named until the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit receives an initial autopsy report from a state forensic lab. Capt. Kip Hart said he hopes to release an official cause of death later today.
About a year before Darling and Whipple died, Carmen Johnson, a 15-year-old Priceville High School cheerleader drowned after being electrocuted at her family's boat dock on Smith Lake in Winston County on April 16, 2016. Since then, Carmen's parents, Casey and Jimmy Johnson, have made it their mission to educate the public about electric shock drowning. The family lives in Morgan County but enjoys spending free time at the lake house.
"We don't want anyone else to go through what we've experienced," Casey Johnson told AL.com. "We could just not talk about it. But, we know Carmen would want us to talk about this and save another life."
The Johnsons and friends were at the family's lake home in Winston County when Carmen and her friend Reagan Gargis dove into the water on April 16, 2016. Seeing the ladder wasn't down for the girls to climb out of the water, Jimmy Johnson placed it in the lake.
Soon the father heard the girls cry for help and jumped in the lake hoping to save them. His son Zach also jumped in to help but they, too, were being shocked by an electric current that was transferring into the water through the metal ladder.
Jimmy Johnson, who works in electronic repairs, realized they were being shocked and managed to shout for his wife to cut the power to the dock. But, Carmen Johnson didn't survive.
"If my husband hadn't went into the water, we wouldn't have known what was going on," Casey Johnson said. Because electric shock drowning typically doesn't leave visible proof on victims' bodies, it's unlikely anyone would have known about the electrocution if others hadn't been in the water and felt the shock. The electrocution can paralyze swimmers, making it difficult for them to get out of the water.
The current that shocked Carmen Johnson was caused by water seeping into a light switch box at the family's dock, according to her mother. When the metal ladder was put in the water, the electrical current from the switch traveled through the dock, down the ladder and into the water.
"I think when Reagan touched the ladder and Carmen grabbed Reagan's legs trying to pull herself up, she got the full force of the current," Casey Johnson said.
The story of Carmen's death made national news, including a segment on the TODAY Show. Her parents suggest these tips for ensuring safety while swimming near boat docks:
Check wiring often -- even a couple of times each year. Something as simple as a round of bad weather can cause damage.
Make sure there's a ground fault breaker at the dock
Anyone who feels tingles or shocks while swimming, should move away from the dock, not toward it.
Know where the power cutoff is and make sure others outside the water know, too
Plastic or wooden ladders are preferable, rather than metal or aluminum ones
"It can be any moment, anywhere that something happens," Casey Johnson said. "We have heard from several people about how they lost family members to electric shock drowning."
Jimmy and Zach Johnson and Gargis survived the incident and haven't experienced any problems since, Casey Johnson said.
The number of people who drown as a result of electrocution is difficult to track because death reports seldom name electrocution as a factor in drowning fatalities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 3,000 people typically drown each year in the United States, the CDC reports. It is unclear how many of those drownings are caused by electric shock.
Authorities suspect electric shock played a role in the deaths of Darling and Whipple because an investigator was shocked during the search Saturday. Hart said other members of the search crew reported seeing a spark from the shock. The investigator was not injured.
Family members found the Darling and Whipple's belongings on the dock and called police to report them missing.
Whipple was the interim director of the domestic violence clinic at the University of Alabama School of Law.
Darling, a native of Vestavia Hills, was a clinic staff attorney at the University of Alabama School of Law. ||||| Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
The sudden death of a teenage girl has inspired her family to speak out about the dangers of electric shock drowning, in the hopes of preventing future tragedies.
“If I would have known this could happen, or heard about it before — I am not sure if this would have happened to my daughter,” Jimmy Johnson told TODAY.
Carmen, Jimmy, and Casey Johnson pose for a family picture. A month ago, Carmen died of electric shock drowning; her family wants to raise awareness about the risk of electricity and water. Courtesy of Jimmy Johnson
Electric shock drowning occurs when electricity from a dock, pool, boat, or marina leaks into the water, and people enter the water. The electricity shocks them, paralyzing their muscles making it impossible to swim, leading to the drowning. What's more, the electricity makes it difficult for people to rescue someone without suffering a shock, too.
Always a daredevil
The weekend of April 15 started like any weekend the Johnson family spent at their vacation home in Smith Lake in Winston County Alabama. Carmen, 15, invited some friends and they were having fun. That Saturday, they jet-skied, soaked in the hot tub, and sunbathed on the top of the dock.
While they sunbathed, Johnson fixed a pathway nearby when he heard a splash. Carmen dove from the top of the two-story dock into the water.
Johnson wasn’t surprised that Carmen dove off the dock — she was always a daredevil. As a flyer on the varsity cheerleading team at Priceville High School she wanted her teammates to toss her higher into the air.
The lake was 68 degrees, but chilly water wasn’t going to stop her.
Carmen Johnson stands on the top of the pyramid as a varsity cheerleader at Priceville High School in Alabama. Courtesy of Jimmy Johnson
Johnson realized Carmen didn’t put the ladder in the water, so he lowered it. He had no idea it carried an electric charge from a faulty light switch.
One of Carmen’s friends, Reagan, also jumped into the water. Reagan shrieked about the cold water, but soon uttered a cry for help that didn’t sound like a joke.
RELATED: What to know about dry drowning and how to prevent it
“I took off running between the two boat slips. I looked over to the right where the ladder was and [Reagan] was looking at me like ‘please help me.’ My daughter was three foot under like down to her knees,” Johnson said.
Jimmy and Casey Johnson, son-in-law Evan Cleghorn, daughter Chelsey Cleghorn, and daughter Carmen Johnson pose for a family photo. The Johnson family wants to raise awareness about electric shock drowning after Carmen's tragic death from it. Courtesy of Jimmy Johnson
He thought something was pulling Carmen under and he jumped in; that’s when he knew something else was wrong.
“I could feel the electrical current and it was so strong I couldn’t swim in it,” he said.
He started blacking out but when his son, Zach, jumped in, Johnson was able to scream: “Cut the power to the boat dock!"
RELATED: 30 easy steps to take your kids swimming
His wife, Casey, turned off the electricity, saving Johnson, Reagan, and Zach. By that time, Carmen slipped so far under Johnson couldn't see her.
“You just never know when something unpredictable like that could happen,” he says. “I would never have thought electricity in that big of a body of water would be so strong — strong enough that I couldn’t swim in it.”
The Johnsons practiced water safety, but they didn't know a dock could carry an electric current and cause a drowning. Since Carmen's death, they have been trying increase awareness of electric shock drowning.
“We just need to get the word out there that this is a real danger that most people don’t know about,” Johnson said.
Protecting swimmers
Kevin Ritz, founder of the Electric Shock Drowning Association, understands the Johnsons' pain: In 1999, Ritz’s 8-year-old son died after grabbing the metal ladder to the boat, which had been leaking electricity into river.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think electricity was a concern until our son Lucas was killed,” Ritz told TODAY.
It’s difficult to estimate the number of electric shock drownings, because it typically looks the same as other cases of drowning and the victims display no telltale signs. The only way to know is if someone feels the jolt. But, the association has compiled a list of 77 fatal cases of electric shock drowning, some of which involved the deaths of multiple people.
“We believe that we just captured the tip of the iceberg,” Ritz said. “These type of things can happen anywhere there is a deadly combination of electricity and water.”
Carmen Johnson was on the varsity cheerleading team at her high school and was often on the top of the pyramid. Last month, she died of electric shock drowning in a tragic accident. Courtesy of Jimmy Johnson
How can it be avoided?
Ground fault protection devices on the power sources that switch the power off if there’s a problem with the electrical flow. Or simply shutting the electricity off when people are swimming.
“A ground fault protection device is as least as important as a seat belt,” said Ritz.
As for the Johnsons, they hope to always remember Carmen as the vibrant young woman she was.
"I am always living life to the fullest and she did the same thing," Johnson said. "She was an awesome person."
This was originally published on May 20 ||||| CLOSE President Trump rolls back Obama's Cuban policy in favor of negotiating new terms; Yearbooks to be reiussed after MAGA shirt was censored
. (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The boat lift involved in the fatal electrocution of an 11-year-old girl had corroded and fallen into disrepair, Mayor Thomas Kelaher said.
The girl, a Newark resident who was visiting friends in the township, died after she was electrocuted while swimming in a Toms River lagoon, police said. The girl and a friend were on a raft when they touched the metal boat lift, and an "electric current appears to have energized the equipment causing the injury," police said.
Kelaher said authorities were at the Tobago Avenue home Monday to inspect the boat lift.
The equipment was initially installed in 2001 and up to code, Kelaher said. Then the property, including the lift, was sold to its current homeowners, who do not own a boat and did not frequently check on the lift.
Over the years, the electrical junction box under the dock corroded, Kelaher said, and the victim fatally placed her hand on the metal frame.
"You can't really blame anybody; it's a tragic accident," Kelaher said.
The incident happened when the girl and two of her friends were using an inflatable raft and swimming in the lagoon behind the home on Saturday.
The girls were all wearing life jackets and in the presence of adults, police said. The two other girls were not injured.
MORE: Stay out of ocean because of rip tides, weather service warns
Though docks and boats are sources of electricity, few people are aware of the risk of electrocution when swimming nearby.
Swimmers should never be in the water near a marina or a running boat, according to the nonprofit organization Electrical Safety Foundation International. Electric Shock Drowning can happen when an electrical current, even a low-level current, passes through the body, according to the Electric Shock Drowning Prevention Association. The current causes muscular paralysis, and majority of these deaths happen near docks or marinas, according to the association.
MORE: Belmar drowning: Community raises $55,000 for families
Only 1/50th of the energy needed to power a 60-watt light bulb can cause paralysis and drowning, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation.
More than 70 deaths between 1986 and 2013 were caused by electrocutions near water, according to a 2014 report prepared by Quality Marine Services of Jacksonville, Florida, for the National Fire Protection Association. The company attributed an additional 38 "near misses" over that same time period to electric shocks by water.
Boat lifts were responsible for some of those deaths and near misses. In 2012, a man in Minnesota died after three people were shocked in a lake by what was presumed to be a boat lift, according to the report. In 2012, a 13-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother were killed in Missouri while swimming near a private dock with a boat lift and water slide that had power supplies that were not properly grounded, the company found.
TAXES: Democrats' school funding plan 'catastrophic' for Toms River
Yet in New Jersey, these types are deaths are rare, said Dr. Robert Sweeney, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune.
Overall, deaths by electrocutions are relatively rare, he said. Sweeney added that in 25 years of living by the Jersey Shore, he has never before heard of such an incident.
"This sounds like a sad tragic accident," he said.
The Boat Owners Association of The United States describes the risk of electric shock drowning in the below video.
If someone suspects that a person in the water is being electrocuted, they should never jump in to help. They should throw in a life ring, turn off the power supply, and call 911, according to Electrical Safety Foundation International.
Tobago Avenue was quiet Sunday afternoon. A woman at the home where the electrocution happened declined to comment. A neighbor said no one on the street knew the girl.
The call to police came in at 8:12 p.m. Saturday. First responders took over CPR that had been begun by adults who were at the home, and then used an Automated External Defibrilator on the girl. The child was taken to Community Medical Center in Toms River, where she later died.
The Toms River incident is under investigation by Toms River Police Detectives Louis Santora and James Carey, along with Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Detective Lindsay Woodfield and Ocean County Sheriff’s Department C.S.I. Sgt. David Deleeuw and Officer Jillian Menke.
Amanda Oglesby: 732-557-5701; [email protected]
After the tragedy: The scene of the Belmar rescue effort after apparent drowning.
More: Toms River man dies in Parkway crash in Tinton Falls
More: Belmar drowning: Community raises $55,000 for families
Read or Share this story: http://on.app.com/2th3kuA ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video
TOMS RIVER, N.J. –– An 11-year-old girl was electrocuted inside a lagoon behind a New Jersey home Saturday evening, police said Sunday.
The Toms River Police Department says a 911 call was placed from 45 Tobago Ave. around 8 p.m. for a possible electrocution. Arriving officers performed CPR on the young girl before she was taken to a hospital, where she died.
A preliminary investigation found that the child and her two friends were using an inflatable raft and swimming in the lagoon behind the home, police said. The girls were wearing lifejackets and in the presence of adults.
Two of the girls touched the rail to a metal boat lift and the electrical current appears to have energized the equipment causing the injury, police said.
The girl is a resident of Newark, New Jersey who was visiting friends at the Tobago Avenue address.
The two other juvenile girls that accompanied her were evaluated at the scene and determined not to be injured. ||||| Colorado girl, 12, killed on Newfound Lake after wind-blown hat distracts father
By BEA LEWIS
Union Leader Correspondent
State Marine Patrol Sgt. Joshua Dirth talks on his cell phone as he looks at a bowrider-style Colbalt boat at the scene where a 12-year-old Colorado girl died in a boating accident Monday. (Bea Lewis/Union Leader Correspondent) State Marine Patrol Sgt. Joshua Dirth talks on his cell phone as he looks at a bowrider-style Colbalt boat at the scene where a 12-year-old Colorado girl died in a boating accident Monday.
HEBRON — A Colorado man driving a powerboat was momentarily distracted by the wind blowing off his hat when he accidentally struck and killed his 12-year-old daughter Monday morning, according to police.Sherwood Anderson had circled to give his daughter, Zoe Anderson, another attempt at water skiing when the accident happened at 8:26 a.m. off Cilley's Point, near Sanborn Bay on Newfound Lake.When a breeze took off his hat, Anderson put the boat into neutral — just as it traveled over his daughter, causing serious injuries to her torso, Marine Patrol said in a news release.The victim's father, mother, Tonya, and her 14-year-old sister were able to get her out of the water and back onto the boat and call 911. They rushed to a dock at 1775 Mayhew Turnpike, a lakeside condominium development, with the tow rope still dragging behind the 20-foot 1997 Colbalt.Despite efforts to resuscitate the girl, she died at the scene."It makes you want to go home and hug your kids," said Marine Patrol Sgt. Joshua Dirth.The family lives in Highland Ranch, Colo., and had come to New Hampshire to visit relatives in Bridgewater.As is protocol in any fatal accident, the state Medical Examiner's Office will conduct an autopsy.Neither drugs nor alcohol played a role in the incident and after conferring with Grafton County Attorney Lara Saffo, no criminal charges are expected, authorities report.New Hampshire State Police responded to the accident, along with Marine Patrol Sgt. Dirth. Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid Dispatch sent Bridgewater and Bristol Fire/EMS to the Mayhew Turnpike address near the Hebron town line at 8:31 a.m. reporting that a child had been run over by a boat and was being taken to shore.A pickup left parked at the Bridgewater Fire Station with the driver's door open showed the speed at which volunteers rushed to help.The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Air Rescue Transport helicopter was immediately dispatched.Anyone who may have information related to the accident or who may have witnessed it is asked to contact Sgt. Dirth at 603-293-2037 or by email at [email protected] Lake is the third-largest lake in the state, about 2.5 miles wide and six miles long. It has 22 miles of shoreline and its deepest point is 183 feet.
Outdoors Accidents Hebron | – Life vest, check. Adult supervision, check. She should have been safe, but a freak accident in a New Jersey lagoon took the life of an 11-year-old girl over the weekend. Police say the girl was electrocuted while swimming and playing on an inflatable raft behind a friend’s home in Toms River, reports the Asbury Park Press. The girl was with two friends when the incident occurred, and they were all wearing life vests as they swam and rafted in the lagoon under adult supervision, reports PIX11. A police statement says that after the girls touched the rail to a metal boat lift, an "electric current appears to have energized the equipment causing the injury." The girl was administered CPR on the scene, but died later at the hospital. It's not the first time such an accident has been in the news this year. Following the April death of Alabama teen Carmen Johnson, who was shocked while swimming near her family's boathouse, CBS News explained that small levels of electric current in water can serve as a “silent killer,” especially in fresh water, where voltage can “take a shortcut” through bodies. And two more Alabama women are also believed to have been shocked to death in lake water, reports AL.com. The Electric Shock Drowning Prevention Association advises against swimming in or near docks, marinas, and boatyards, while the parents of Johnson offered more tips on TODAY, like using plastic over metal ladders and making sure there is a ground fault breaker at docks. |
Are you there? Send us your images or video.
(CNN) -- As the death toll from Syria's almost year-long uprising continues to climb, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem vowed to defend his country's "independence."
"We are not happy to see brothers killing each other. But this is our country. But we will defend our sovereignty and independence," he told reporters.
The minister said no one is dying in Syria because of hunger or sickness and that despite the "economic international boycott," his government is providing all necessary services.
"Do you think there is a government in this world ... (that cares) about Syrian people welfare more than the Syrian government? I don't see this logic," Moallem said.
As day broke on Tuesday, four people were killed across Syria, opposition activists said. At least 144 people were reported killed Monday, including 64 who died in a "horrifying massacre" at a checkpoint in Homs province.
Those killed at a checkpoint in the Abel area were attempting to flee shelling in the Baba Amr neighborhood in the city of Homs, said the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists.
"Reports said security members and thugs kidnapped the women among them," the network said in a statement. Residents found 47 corpses in one area and 17 in a second one, it said.
A total of 68 corpses were found in the area, in farmland in western Homs province, said the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, apparently referencing the same incident. The bodies were found after an injured survivor reported the attack, the group said. All the bodies had been either shot or stabbed.
In all, 104 people were killed Monday in Homs, an opposition stronghold, according to the LCC. They included four defected soldiers, three woman and three children.
The deaths came on a day when Syrian officials announced that the nation's new draft constitution received approval and the European Union imposed new sanctions on the country amid ongoing clashes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier explosions rocked Homs and shelling was occurring in Baba Amr. Twenty people were wounded when a large shell struck an anti-government gathering in Homs, the group said.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar announced that 89.4% of voters approved the draft constitution, and 57.4% of eligible voters cast ballots. President Bashar al-Assad's regime has touted the constitutional referendum as a move toward reform.
Syria announced the referendum amid intense international cries to stop the bloodshed and open its regime to change. But analysts and protesters widely describe the effort as a farce, a superficial attempt to pacify al-Assad's critics.
"We dismiss it as absolutely cynical. ... Essentially, what he's done here is put a piece of paper that he controls to a vote that he controls so that he can try and maintain control," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said of the referendum and al-Assad.
She cited the ongoing violence in such cities as Homs and Hama and asked: "How could you possibly have any kind of a democratic process in conditions like that?"
Aid efforts were under way in the midst of the violence.
The Syrian Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross entered the province of Hama on Monday to provide aid to civilians, said Simon Schorno, spokesman for the Red Cross. A one-month supply of food, along with blankets and hygiene kits, were distributed to 12,000 people, he said.
Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the Red Cross' head of operations for the Middle East, said a handful of aid workers were also able to go into Baba Amr.
"There were four ambulances that entered Baba Amr, belonging to the Syrian Red Crescent. They were loaded with medical goods. They indeed were not able to evacuate the two foreign journalists. I don't have the reasons why. They could evacuate an elderly woman, a pregnant woman with her husband," she said.
The two journalists Megevand-Roggo was referencing were British photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier. Both were wounded in shelling.
Red Cross spokesman Hicham Hassan said aid workers were also not able Monday to recover and evacuate the bodies of two journalists killed in Baba Amr last week.
Marie Colvin, an American journalist who worked for London's Sunday Times, was killed in a shelling attack, along with French journalist Remi Ochlik. Colvin's mother, Rosemarie, said Sunday that aid workers have been trying for days to remove her daughter's body.
CNN and other media outlets cannot independently verify opposition or government reports because Syria has severely limited access to the country by foreign journalists. But the vast majority of reports from the ground indicate that government forces are massacring citizens in an attempt to wipe out civilians seeking al-Assad's ouster.
No attempts at getting al-Assad to stop his regime's crackdown on dissidents have stopped the onslaught.
The Council of the European Union agreed Monday on new sanctions regarding Syria after foreign ministers met in Brussels, Belgium, said spokeswoman Susanne Kiefer.
Seven ministers of the al-Assad regime will have their EU assets frozen and will be denied entry into the EU, Kiefer said. In addition, assets of the Syrian Central Bank in the EU will be frozen. Legitimate trade will be allowed to continue, she said, but must be authorized first.
"Today's decisions will put further pressure on those who are responsible for the ruthless campaign of repression in Syria," Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, said in a statement. "The measures target the regime and its ability to conduct the appalling violence against civilians. As long as the repression continues, the EU will keep imposing sanctions."
Elsewhere in Syria on Monday, two people were killed and eight wounded by government shelling on the village of Sarmeen in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The shelling began Sunday night, and Syrian troops have entered Sarmeen, said Abu Mustafa al-Sayed, a Syrian opposition and community leader in the town of Binnish, also in Idlib province. The Syrian army has Sarmeen surrounded, and communications with the residents have been cut off, he said.
And in Damascus, security forces fired on mourners at a funeral, according to the Local Coordination Committees. Clashes were also occurring in Deir Ezzor, the group said, and 14 students were arrested during a protest at Aleppo University.
The opposition network estimates that 9,000 people have been killed since the government launched its crackdown in March. The Syrian government says that more than 2,000 members of its security forces have been killed by "terrorists" during that same period.
Asked Monday whether Syria would be referred to the International Criminal Court, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said, "I hope the international community reflects on the conditions of referral. ... It's a difficult issue. Syria is not a participating state, so it's up to the Security Council to address this question. They must therefore continue to gather the elements that would permit an eventual referral."
CNN's Jo Shelley, Per Nyberg, Salma Abdelaziz, Jack Maddox, Hamdi Alkshali and Kareem Khadder and journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy contributed to this report. ||||| BEIRUT, Lebanon — Determined to tightly control political change in Syria in the face of an insurrection, the government announced Monday that nearly 90 percent of voters had approved a new Constitution.
Western leaders and opponents of the government called the referendum a farce and its result a hoax, while Russia and China, two of Syria’s few remaining international friends, called it a step toward reform.
The news came as activists said that scores of people had been killed across the country in the government’s violent crackdown on the opposition and in clashes between rebels and security forces.
In a news conference broadcast on Syrian state television, Maj. Gen. Muhammad Ibrahim al-Shaar, the interior minister, said that 89.4 percent of voters, or nearly 7.5 million people, backed the new Constitution in the referendum on Sunday, while 735,000, or about 9 percent, voted against it. About 132,000 ballots, or 1.6 percent, were invalid, he said.
General Shaar called the 57.4 percent turnout of eligible voters a good showing, “despite the threats and intimidation by armed terrorist groups,” as the government refers to its opponents.
In Syria, referendums traditionally produce the results sought by the government, so the huge plurality reported in favor of the Constitution was not surprising.
“For its entire existence, this regime has forged elections,” said Haithem el-Maleh, a Syrian lawyer and human rights activist, speaking by telephone from Cairo. “How can they hold a referendum in the shadow of war and tanks?” he said. “Aren’t they embarrassed?” Mr. Maleh said the people, and not President Bashar al-Assad, should have chosen the committee that rewrote the Constitution.
With opponents of the government boycotting the voting, it was possible, some Syrians said, that the government did not need to manipulate the vote totals very much; most of the people who cast ballots may well have been genuine supporters of the government.
“From the people around me, most of those who didn’t like the Constitution didn’t bother going to the polling stations,” said Amir Bitar, 29, a Christian resident of Damascus who said he voted for the change. “So it is understandable that the vast majority of those who did vote turned out to be in favor of the Constitution.”
The biggest changes brought by the new Constitution include ending the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party’s political monopoly and setting a limit of two seven-year terms for future presidents.
Elsewhere in Syria, clashes continued Monday between the government and its opponents. Shells and rockets crashed onto the city of Homs, and activist groups said that more than 60 people were killed as they tried to flee besieged neighborhoods.
It was impossible to verify the activists’ reports, which differed on some specifics, because Western journalists are unable to operate freely in Syria.
One activist group based in Britain, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that 68 bodies were brought to the hospital in Homs on Monday, The Associated Press reported. Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, put the death toll in Homs at 64 and said that 135 people had recently been killed across the country, though The A.P. said the period in which the people were killed was not clear.
The referendum widened the global diplomatic divide over how to deal with Syria. Russia and China castigated Syria’s critics for suggesting that Mr. Assad must go, and rejected American criticism of their own actions, while Western leaders sharpened their language against the Syrian government.
“The referendum vote has fooled nobody,” the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said in Brussels. European foreign ministers meeting there on Monday tightened economic sanctions against Syria, adding limits on transactions by Syria’s central bank, banning Syrian cargo flights to Europe and imposing travel restrictions on several senior officials.
“To open polling stations but continue to open fire on the civilians of the country has no credibility in the eyes of the world,” Mr. Hague said. | – Syria's new constitution was backed by more than 89% of voters, the nation's Interior Ministry announced today, even as violence continues to rage across the country and the West decries the referendum as a sham. The Interior Ministry claims that more than 57% of Syria's 14 million eligible voters turned out, with about 9% voting no and 1.6% of the ballots being rejected as spoiled. The New York Times notes that the Syrian government controlled the voting, but may not have needed to manipulate the results, considering that much of the opposition boycotted the referendum. Across the nation, 33 people were killed today, many of them in continued government shelling in Homs, and 55 people died yesterday. The European Union has imposed new sanctions in the face of the continuing violence, CNN reports. Seven ministers of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, as well as the Syrian Central Bank, will have their EU assets frozen. The ministers will also be denied entry into the EU and Syrian cargo flights will not be allowed to use EU airports. Says the EU foreign policy chief in a statement, "As long as the repression continues, the EU will keep imposing sanctions." |
Riviera Beach police are not investigating a March dare that started with a YouTube video and ended with the death of an 8-year-old girl, authorities said Friday.
In fact, police were not called to the Riviera home where Ki’ari Pope reportedly drank boiling water from a straw on a dare, authorities said.
The dare happened in March, but Ki’ari died early Monday after saying she couldn’t breathe. Her exact cause of death has not been released.
On Thursday evening, a relative of the girl told reporters what happened that March day.
Ki’ari was with cousins, all of whom were her age, watching YouTube videos when the little girl saw a “boiling water challenge,” Diane Johnson, Ki’ari’s mother’s cousin, said from the girl’s Boynton Beach home. According to state records obtained by The Palm Beach Post, Ki’ari burned her mouth and throat after her cousin dared her to drink the water.
Johnson said Ki’ari was the kind of kid who, if you dared her, she wouldn’t back down.
MORE: Boynton girl, 8, dead after dare to drink boiling water
Ki’ari Pope died Monday, months after drinking boiling water out of a staw on a dare. The Florida Department of Children and Families is investigating the 8-year-old Boynton Beach resident’s death. (Family photo) (Palm Beach Post Staff Writer)
Riviera police learned about the dare after the girl was taken to a hospital for her injuries. But authorities who contacted Riviera police referred not to the dare but of suspicions “of another matter,” according to authorities. Police would not specify the nature of that matter, beyond saying the allegations were unfounded.
According to a GoFundMe page set up for Ki’ari’s funeral expenses, she received a tracheotomy (an incision in the windpipe) that reportedly left her unable to talk and with chronic respiratory problems. Doctors had told the family they expected the girl to recover from surgery.
Ki’ari’s mother, Marquisia Bonner, chronicled her little girl’s time in and out of hospitals on her public Facebook page. A picture posted in March at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami shows someone holding Ki’ari’s hand, which is hooked up to monitors in a hospital bed.
“Lords know I haven’t felt this kinda pain since my daddy died,” the post reads. “It hurts so much. Y’all pray from my baby Ki’ari and plz don’t ask what happened!”
In May the mother posted a picture of a smiling Ki’ari captioned: “This last month my baby been thru so much. I didn’t realize how strong she was until that was her only option.”
Johnson said Ki’ari did have trouble breathing some days, but she was still a happy and fun soon-to-be third-grader who loved basketball.
“She was very spontaneous and liked to run and jump and say, ‘No, I’m not playing with a baby doll or painting my nails. No. Give me a basketball and let me go,’ ” Johnson said, giggling at the thought of the little girl.
Late Sunday, Ki’ari told her mother’s boyfriend she was having breathing problems. Minutes later she was unresponsive. The boyfriend called 911, and rescue crews rushed her from her Boynton Beach home to a hospital, where she died at 12:15 Monday morning, according to records from the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Johnson said they were shocked by her death. Ki’ari’s mother declined to speak with the media Thursday evening.
“Our family is very close-knit, we’ve never experienced anything at this magnitude in my family,” Johnson said. “We’ve never buried a child.”
The Department of Children and Families is investigating Ki’ari’s death, which is at least the 11th investigation into Ki’ari and her family since 2008, according to DCF records.
MORE: Florida’s first responders to child abuse overwhelmed by workload
Four of those investigations were within the past seven months, records show, the most recent of which stemmed from a June incident in which a relative was watching the girl.
Five other reports looked into alleged violence between the mother and her “paramour,” a term used by DCF to classify the boyfriends or girlfriends of custodial parents. It is unclear whether that paramour is the same as the one who called 911 before Ki’ari died.
At least one of those investigations — it is unclear which — yielded verified proof either of abuse or neglect.
Family said Ki’ari and her siblings were never removed from the home, even after the boiling water incident.
However, after Ki’ari’s death, the three other young children in the home were placed in relatives’ care, DCF authorities said.
“The loss of this child is truly devastating and our condolences go out to all those who loved her,” department Secretary Mike Carroll said in a statement Wednesday. “We have opened a child death investigation to examine the circumstances surrounding her death and will deploy a Critical Incident Rapid Response Team to review all interactions this family has had with Florida’s child welfare system.
“We will also continue to work closely with law enforcement to support their continued efforts.”
Records indicate Boynton Beach police were notified about the girl’s death. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office is conducting an investigation into Ki’ari’s death. ||||| A crying baby woke up a napping nanny who then force-fed the child until the child became unresponsive and died, police said.
Oluremi Oyindasola, 66, of Glenarden, Md., was arrested Tuesday and is charged with second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in death and other related charges after 8-month-old Enita Salubi died in her care, Prince George’s County police announced Wednesday.
A home surveillance system recorded Oyindasola, a live-in nanny, napping on the couch of a Glenarden home when she was disturbed by the crying child, who came up to her in a toddler walker, according to police charging documents.
Oyindasola tried to feed the child while she was still in the walker but was unsuccessful, police said.
[Do you know who’s watching your children?]
Oluremi Oyindasola is charged with second-degree murder, first-degree child abuse resulting in death and other related charges after 8-month-old Enita Salubi died in her care. ( Prince George's County Police Department)
Oyindasola then pulled the child from the walker, held the baby around the child’s chest, removed the nipple from the baby’s bottle and “proceeded to pour a large amount of white liquid directly inside the victim’s mouth,” police charging documents state.
For 25 seconds, the child “appeared to squirm and aggressively resist as the defendant continued to force a large amount of liquid inside her mouth,” records state.
After the first bottled was drained, Oyindasola then forced the child to consume the contents of a second bottle.
During the feedings the baby “displayed difficulty breathing and signs of medical distress,” records state.
After the second bottle, the child became unresponsive and at about 4:10 p.m. was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead.
An autopsy revealed white liquid inside the child’s lungs, police said. A medical examiner determined the baby died of asphyxiation and the child’s death was a homicide, police said.
Oyindasola was the only person watching the child when the baby suffered her fatal injuries, police said.
1 of 17 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × 14 shocking crime stories from 2016 View Photos A beloved mayor in Fairfax faced allegations of a meth-for-sex scheme, and a man (successfully) used a “the-stop-smoking-pill-made-me-do-it” defense after shooting his wife. Caption A beloved mayor in Fairfax faced allegations of a meth-for-sex scheme, and a man (successfully) used a “the-stop-smoking-pill-made-me-do-it” defense after shooting his wife. A pastor’s disturbing message to his wife before killing his daughter and himself Police in Maine said former Air Force chaplain Daniel Randall bought a shotgun after completing treatment for substance abuse and drove to the home of his estranged family, where he killed his adult daughter, Claire Randall, pictured here in a 2008 photo, and then himself. A neighbor discovered their bodies at the house in Hebron, Maine. Read the story Gretchen Ertl/Providence Journal via AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
[Day-care worker slammed baby’s head on a table, police say]
Relatives of the baby declined to comment when a reporter knocked on the door of an address listed for both the nanny and the child.
It is unclear whether Oyindasola has an attorney, and her family could not be reached for comment.
Oyindasola is in custody of the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections.
“Babies are defenseless, and what happened to this child is absolutely tragic and heartbreaking,” said Christina Cotterman, a spokeswoman for Prince George’s County Police.
The death of Salubi comes days after authorities in Prince George’s County arrested the parents of an infant who was buried in the woods behind Parkdale High School in Riverdale for a month before police unearthed the child’s remains. Police say the child’s father punched his son and left him in a car for more than 24 hours before digging a shallow grave for him with his mother to hide the crime.
The arrest of Oyindasola also comes less than a week after police charged a day-care center employee in Upper Marlboro with assault and child abuse. The woman slammed a 3-year-old boy’s head on a table, causing a contusion to the right side of his head, police said. | – In March, Ki’ari Pope drank boiling water through a straw after she and her cousin watched a video of someone appearing to do it on YouTube and her cousin dared her to try. Early Monday, the Florida 8-year-old was pronounced dead after months of medical issues related to the tragic stunt. Ki'ari underwent emergency surgery to clear scar tissue on her windpipe so she could breathe; after the tracheotomy, she continued to have difficulty breathing (requiring two trips to the ER) and also talking. She had a doctor's appointment set for Friday to be checked. But on Sunday night, she told her mother's boyfriend she was struggling to breathe; she lost consciousness within minutes and was pronounced dead about an hour later, at 12:15am Monday, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports. The Medical Examiner's Office is still determining Ki'ari's cause of death, and Florida's Department of Children and Families is investigating the incident. There have been at least 10 other DCF cases related to the family since 2008, the Palm Beach Post reports, five of them involving alleged domestic violence between Ki'ari's mother and her boyfriend; it's not clear whether the boyfriend who called 911 after Ki'ari lost consciousness is the same one from those reports. At least one of the DCF cases resulted in verified proof of abuse or neglect, but details aren't available. DCF isn't saying whether the girl's mother or other family members are under investigation, but a woman identifying herself as the mother's cousin says DCF officials took Ki'ari's three siblings away Thursday. Ki'ari's family is raising money to go toward funeral costs on GoFundMe. |
Print Share + Aunt Zeituni: 'The System Took Advantage Of Me' President Obama's Aunt Speaks Exclusively With WBZ-TV
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." Those are the words from 58-year-old Zeituni Onyango of Kenya in a recent exclusive interview with WBZ-TV.Onyango is the aunt of President Barack Obama. She lived in the United States illegally for years, receiving public assistance in Boston.Aunt Zeituni, as she has come to be known, first surfaced in the public light in 2008, in the final days of the Presidential election. Then-candidate Obama said that he was not against the possible deportation of his aunt. "If she has violated laws, then those laws have to be obeyed," he told CBS's Katie Couric. "We are a nation of laws."Onyango had violated the law, and she knew it."I knew I had overstayed" she told WBZ-TV's Jonathan Elias when the two sat down one-on-one.Zeituni Onyango said she came to the United States in 2000 and had every intention of leaving. Then, however, she says she got deathly ill and was hospitalized. When she recovered, she said she was broke and couldn't afford to leave.For two years Onyango said she lived in a homeless shelter, before she was assigned public housing despite thousands of legal residents also awaiting assistance. "I didn't take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me.""I didn't ask for it; they gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn't create it or vote for it. Go and ask your system," she said unapologetically.And she's right. The system provided her assistance despite her status as an illegal immigrant.In 2004 a judge ordered Zeituni Onyango out of the country, but she never left. She stayed, hiding in plain sight. In 2005 she attended her nephew's swearing in as the junior Senator of Illinois. In 2008 she was invited to, and traveled to D.C. for President Obama's inauguration.However her nephew, she says, never pulled any strings for her."Listen. Obama did not know my whereabouts."Onyango hired a top immigration lawyer from Cleveland to help fight her case. We asked how she afforded that lawyer, when she claimed poverty."When you believe in Jesus Christ and almighty God, my help comes from heaven," she responded.When asked about cutting in line ahead of those who have paid into the system she answered plainly, "I don't mind. You can take that house. I will be on the street with the homeless.""To me America's dream became America's worst nightmare," she said adamantly. "I have been treated like public enemy number one."She is still living in South Boston public housing, unemployed, and collecting about $700 a month in disability, she says. And now, Zeituni Onlyango is in this country legally.In May 2010, Onyango's case went back before the same judge who ordered her out of the country in 2004. This time she was granted asylum in the United States. The ruling said a return to Kenya might put Onyango in danger.Did her nephew, the President of the United States influence that immigration judge? "No influence at all, from nobody, from nowhere," Onyango said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) ||||| Print Share + Aunt Zeituni: 'Country Is Owned By Almighty God' President Obama's Aunt Speaks Exclusively With WBZ-TV
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
"President Obama, I'm his aunt, I'm the only person on earth allowed to pinch his ears and smack him. Not his father; not his mother; not his wife or brother - he'll fight with him. But Auntie is a much honored person in African culture."
This may be the case in Africa, but in the United States the President's Aunt Zeituni Onyango hasn't been revered, but reviled by many.
For years she lived illegally in Boston public housing. She's unemployed, receiving nearly $700 a month in disability, and for nearly ten years was in this country illegally.
CARRYING HER OWN CROSS?
Onyango sat down recently with WBZ-TV's Jonathan Elias, to set her side of the record straight.
"I'm not the President's obligation. I carry my own cross."
That's the problem; she hasn't been carrying her own cross. The taxpayers have, and many are angry that she has been able to live on public assistance for so long, while others who paid into the system are denied those same benefits.
"It's a great country," she said. "It's nice to live here. You can do whatever you want when you live here."
Despite what's she's been given, Zeituni Onyango said flatly that she owes this country nothing in return. "But, it's given you so much?" Elias asked. "So? It's a free country under God," was her terse response.
ILLEGAL TO LEGAL
The President's aunt arrived in Boston in 2000. When her visa expired she said she was too sick to leave. She stayed in a homeless shelter for two years, and was then assigned public housing, all along, violating the law.
"I knew I had overstayed," she admitted.
In 2004, Zeituni Onyango was ordered out of the country, but never left. After her nephew became President, the same judge that once ordered her deported changed his mind. In May 2010 she was granted asylum.
One of the reasons the judge cited for the change is Onyango's relationship to Obama. He ruled that connection would make her a target in Kenya, writing, "she faces at least a 10 percent chance of future persecution in Kenya."
TAXPAYERS' BURDEN
When asked why the taxpayers should be burdened with her needs, the feisty Zeituni said, "This country is owned by almighty God. You people who preach Jesus Christ almighty God and the rest of it, you are here to help people, help the poor, help other countries and help women. That's what the United States is supposed to do? And you have to give me my right light, every person's right."
"Do you want to become an American citizen?" Elias asked.
"If I didn't why the hell would I have been here all this time?" she responded.
RELATIONSHIP WITH OBAMA
Onyango said her relationship with her nephew is close, but that she has not been invited to D.C.
"I don't have any business in Washington D.C., in White House. Jesus, don't I have other things to do?"
She said President Obama has not helped in her fight to gain asylum, nor has he helped financially, to get her off public assistance.
The fact is, Zeituni Onyango now has the legal right to stay and she continues living in Boston public housing, and getting her monthly disability checks.
'GOD'S MIRACLES'
Many in Boston have expressed anger that the President's aunt has been living off a system that she never paid for, and was never entitled to. To this day, she does not understand that anger, nor does she think anything she has received is unfair.
"That's God's miracles," she said. "Don't you believe in miracles?"
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.) | – President Obama's aunt Zeituni Onyango, an illegal immigrant living in public housing, is unapologetic about her situation and says her nephew hasn't been helping her fight to stay in the US. An immigration judge granted her asylum this year. "Obama did not know my whereabouts," the Kenyan native tells WBZ, the CBS affiliate in Boston, where she lives. "If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." In a rambling, sometimes combative interview, Onyango says, "I didn't take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me." She says she arrived in the US in 2000, fell ill, and couldn't afford to return home when she left the hospital. "I knew I had overstayed. " Asked whether she wants to become a citizen, she responds, " If I didn't why the hell would I have been here all this time? " |
Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.Please install Adobe Flash ™ and try again. Alternatively upgrade to a modern browser.
Perth man Reg Foggerdy has been found alive after six days lost in the desert in central Western Australia.
The 62-year-old was found by police about 6am on Tuesday and has been flown to Kalgoorlie hospital for treatment. The ABC reported police search teams found Foggerdy after following a fresh trail of footprints, which were discovered on Monday, for 15km.
Kalgoorlie police Superintendent Andy Greatwood told ABC radio that Foggerdy had “no water whatsoever for six days” and was “extremely dehydrated [and a] bit delusional” when he was first found, but was able to talk after receiving first aid.
“The amazing news is his last couple of days of survival were achieved by lying down under a tree and eating black ants, so that’s the level of survival that Mr Foggerdy has gone to,” Greatwood said.
Foggerdy had been missing since Wednesday when he left Shooter’s Shack campsite on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert, 1,120km east of Perth. He was armed with a rifle and planned to hunt the feral camels that roam the Australian interior. He left wearing shorts, a T-shirt, thongs and a baseball cap. Police believe he was not carrying food or water.
When he had not returned by Thursday morning, his brother Ray drove 170km to Laverton, the nearest town, to get enough mobile reception to report him missing to police.
Foggerdy, who has been described by his family as an experienced bushman, appears to have shot and killed a camel a short distance from the camp. The carcass was the central point of the police-coordinated land and aerial search.
Bob Cooper, an outback survival expert who has written a book on the topic, told Guardian Australia that the combination of dehydration, which impairs brain function, and the panic of being lost was “probably the worst thing you can put people through”.
“Fear turns a mishap into a tragedy,” Cooper said. “Just because your car won’t start, that isn’t a tragedy, particularly when it has probably got most of what you need in it. But people panic and start walking.”
That is what appears to have happened to two men who died in January after abandoning their vehicles and trying to walk for help.
On 4 January, a car driven by a 60-year-old man broke down between Wonganoo and Windidda stations, near Lake Carnegie on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, about 1,000km north-east of Perth.
According to an ABC report, the man camped next to the car with the woman he was travelling with for one night before setting off the next morning to walk the 48km to Windidda Station in 40C heat. His body was found on the roadside 2km from the station on 7 January. The woman, who remained with the car for an extra night before walking, was found alive by station workers the same day.
Nine days later and about 400km away, Clayton Miller, a 39-year-old truck driver, became bogged on his way to Moorarie Station, 140km north-west of Meekatharra and 15km past the Mileura Station homestead. He started walking back to Mileura after trying and failing to dig the truck out, and made it 13km before doubling back. His body was found 1.1km from his truck, which was reported to be carrying ample water.
Neither man had a satellite phone or an emergency beacon to call for help.
Cooper said dehydration impeded rational thought, which was why so many people ignored survival rule No 1: stay with your vehicle if you have one, and stay with water.
“The organ most affected by dehydration is the brain,” he said. “Your ability to think rationally is diminished by up to 30% and that can happen within an hour.
“The combination of dehydration and fear is probably the worst thing you can put people through. People don’t know where they are going but they are running to it.”
Cooper said reliance on technology should take second place to basic survival skills, like knowing how to use a compass. He said people travelling in remote country, even on routine journeys, should give an explicit itinerary to a trusted person and make sure that person raises the alarm the minute a check-in is missed – not hours later.
People stranded with their car should stay with the vehicle, which in outback areas should contain at least 20 litres, or one week’s worth, of water. More could be collected as it condensed from the vehicle’s air conditioning unit.
He also recommended people stranded start a large smoky fire – the black smoke sent up by a deflated spare tyre is a favoured option – and use mirrors and a foil survival blanket to attract attention from aerial patrols. ABC local radio broadcasts news of every search.
“I have had people in our courses that have … heard their name come on the radio and said, ‘Oh, thank god – they are looking for me.’”
If you are lost or stranded without a car, Cooper said, you should be carrying water, something to light a fire, snake-bite bandages and a foil blanket.
“The police helicopters now have heat-vision cameras and night-vision cameras that can pick up the luminous numbers on a watch from 2km away,” he said. “Make things easier for the people who want to help you.” ||||| Image copyright WA Police Image caption Reg Foggerdy was reportedly severely dehydrated when he was found but is recovering
A 62-year-old Australian man lost for six days in the Outback has been found alive after surviving without water and by eating ants, say police.
Reg Foggerdy disappeared last week while pursuing a feral camel in a remote area of Western Australia state.
Police trackers found him sitting under a tree on Tuesday morning around 15km (9 miles) from where he became lost.
Media caption Christine Ogden said she was "relieved" her brother had been found after six days missing in the Outback
His family described him as an experienced bushman but have now told him to buy a satellite phone.
Mr Foggerdy's wife Arlyn told AP she had cried when she heard he had been found alive.
"How you can survive without water and food is a miracle,'' she said.
Wearing only a T-shirt, shorts, a cap and flip-flops when he went missing, Mr Foggerdy - a retired miner - apparently became disorientated in the fierce heat of the desert.
Image copyright WA POLICE Image caption Police used a remote shack as a command base during their search
He was discovered "extremely dehydrated, a bit delusional, but he's received treatment, first aid on the ground, and it's fair to say he's now sitting up and talking," Police Supt Andy Greatwood told ABC radio.
Supt Greatwood also praised Mr Foggerdy's "fantastic" skills, saying that while more details of how he coped were likely to emerge, "most people would not have survived".
"The amazing news is his last couple of days of survival were achieved by lying down under a tree and eating black ants, so that's the level of survival that Mr Foggerdy has gone to," he said.
Mr Foggerdy's sister Christine Ogden told the West Australian she had not given up hope.
"When I went to bed last night, I said: 'Tomorrow's the day, they're going to find him.' I didn't know which way it was going to go, but I just had this feeling." ||||| Lost hunter Reginald Foggerdy survived six days in remote bush by eating ants and lying under tree
Updated
A hunter who was lost in the remote West Australian Goldfields for almost a week without water survived by lying under a tree for days and eating ants.
Reginald Foggerdy, 62, was found on Tuesday morning by Tactical Response Group (TRG) trackers who had been looking for him for the past six days.
Mr Foggerdy had been on a hunting trip 170 kilometres east of Laverton on Rason Lake Road, when he left the campsite he was sharing with his brother last Wednesday.
The alarm was raised by family members the next morning, sparking a land and air search.
Superintendent Andy Greatwood said Mr Foggerdy was found 15 kilometres from his camp site and was not well.
"[He was] extremely dehydrated, a bit delusional, but he's received treatment, first aid, on the ground and it's fair to say he's now sitting up and talking, so it's looking very positive," he told 720 ABC Perth.
"His last couple of days of survival were achieved by lying down under a tree and eating black ants, so that's the level of survival that Mr Foggerdy has gone to.
"[He had] no water whatsoever for six days."
Superintendent Greatwood said Mr Foggerdy had been hunting a camel when he became lost.
"He only had shorts and a T-shirt, a cap and thongs with him," he said.
"He didn't have any equipment. It was just the circumstances of how he had gone out taking off after a camel and then became disorientated and lost.
"[He had] fantastic survival skills.
"Obviously it will emerge how it did that and how he achieved that, but it's fair to say it's been extremely hot, extremely remote and most people would not have survived so he's done a fantastic job."
Last week local Indigenous trackers found a footprint of Mr Foggerdy's near the campsite which was the starting point for the initial search.
Police trackers had a breakthrough when Mr Foggerdy lost one of his thongs on Monday afternoon and began leaving more distinct footprints for them to follow.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service took Mr Foggerdy to a Kalgoorlie hospital this morning where he is being treated for dehydration and is in a stable condition.
Wife cried after 'miracle' survival without food and water
Mr Foggerdy's wife Arlyn said she cried when she heard he had been found alive.
"How you can survive without water and food is a miracle," she said.
His sister, Christine Ogden, said she was "over the moon" to hear her brother had been found.
"He's not very well obviously, he needs a lot of medical intervention, but it's the best outcome we've had," she said.
"My concern was up and down; I'd feel like they'd find him one day and then they wouldn't find him the next.
"But I went to bed last night and said to myself they're going to find him today, and they did.
"His son is overwhelmed, he doesn't know how to respond. It's amazing."
Search crews looking for Mr Foggerdy found footprints in the area on the weekend and fresh tracks were discovered by the TRG trackers on Monday.
Mr Foggerdy had taken a rifle on the hunting trip, but was not believed to have been carrying food or water supplies.
However Mr Foggerdy's family described him as an experienced bushman.
"He loves to camp and hunt, that was his recreational time," Ms Ogden said.
"He retired from mining and his youngest son's 12, so he spends a lot of time with him, to and from school with his son, and just to get away on a holiday with his brother was the thing he loved mostly.
"I'm going to get him to get a satellite phone."
Topics: missing-person, police, emergency-incidents, laverton-6440
First posted ||||| MISSING hunter Reg Foggerdy survived in WA’s Outback by eating black ants — and didn’t drink water for six days — before he was found alive in remote bush in the northern Goldfields early Tuesday.
In a remarkable tale of survival, police confirmed the 62-year-old battler was found alive, six days after he vanished.
Police revealed he had “taken off’’ into the bush after a feral camel he was trying to shoot and became disorientated.
media_camera Missing hunter Reg Foggerdy as he was found by WA police and rescue crews.
Mr Foggerdy was camping at “Shooter’s Shack”, 170km east of Laverton on Lake Ransom Road, on a hunting trip with a family member, when he went to hunt alone on Wednesday night, but failed to return.
Specialist Tactical Response Group police trackers, who had been searching for Mr Foggerdy, followed his footprints and located him at about 6am.
He was extremely dehydrated and in need of medical attention.
media_camera Mr Foggerdy survived by eating black ants but didn’t drink water for six days.
“Early indications suggest that Mr Foggerdy survived by sheltering under a tree and eating black ants,’’ a police spokesman said.
He was treated at the scene by TRG medical officers and flown by helicopter to neaby Tropicana Mine Site for further medical treatment.
A Royal Flying Doctor aircraft then met the group at Tropicana before he was flown out to hospital.
media_camera Mr Foggerdy was flown to hospital, suffering dehydration.
His wife Erlyn Foggerdy, 41, told PerthNow her husband’s survival was a “big miracle” due in part to a jungle survivor show he watched every day on Foxtel.
Ms Foggerdy said she found out the good news after receiving a call early this morning from her sister-in-law, Christine
media_camera Alive: Reg Foggerdy, 62, survived six days lost in remote bush in the northern Goldfields by eating black ants. Picture: Christine Ogden
.
media_camera Lifesaver: A black ant, which Reg Foggerdy ate to keep him alive during his six-day ordeal.
“It was a big surprise for me. It’s been six long days so it’s a big miracle,” she said.
“He has been on other trips but this is the first time he has been missing.”
Phil Foggerdy, 11, said he “thought it was just a small thing” when his father first went missing.
“When he was lost for a few more days I started getting worried. I’m so happy they found him,” he said.
District Emergency Coordinator, Superintendent Andy Gratewood from Kalgoorlie Police told ABC News that Mr Foggerdy had spent his last days of survival eating black ants and resting under a tree.
media_camera Footprints that helped WA Police find Mr Foggerty.
Supt. Gratewood said Mr Foggerdy had been “chasing off after a camel” when he lost his bearings.
“He only had shorts and a T-shirt, a cap and thongs with him. He didn’t have any equipment,” he said.
“He had no water whatsoever for six days. He’s dehydrated and a bit delusional but he’s received first-aid treatment on the ground and he’s now sitting up and talking, so we’re looking very positive,” Supt. Gratewood said.
He is now receiving medical treatment and will be flown by Royal Flying Doctor to the nearest hospital, most likely Kalgoorlie.
media_camera Bush near remote Shooters Shack, where Reg Foggerdy spent six days lost in the Outback. Picture: WA Police
Searchers and Mr Foggerdy’s family were given fresh hope when a search team found new tracks late on Monday afternoon, after nearly a week of land and air search for the 62-year-old.
Supt. Gratewood said specialist operators from the tactical response group were brought in to track Mr Foggerty’s footprints.
“They have the equipment and capability and they’re extremely fit. They tracked Mr Foggerdy for many days through the desert and at the end of the day they’d lose the footprints and find them again,” he said.
“They’re very talented people and they’ve managed to continue that search and found him this morning.”
There were grave concerns for Mr Foggerdy’s welfare, as police believed he was lost without access to food or water.
This shooters shack was used as a command post for the search for Mr Foggerdy #polair #swaggingit pic.twitter.com/NwlFi24WIO — WA Police (@WA_Police) October 13, 2015
In an interview with 6PR News, Mr Foggerdy’s sister Christine Ogden said the family “never lost faith” he would be found despite what had been a “horrible” week.
“It’s been absolutely horrible. It’s been full of emotions, up and down ... it’s just been awful,” Ms Ogden said.
“He didn’t hear the helicopters or his name being called. The bush is so dense. Being lost in that would have been horrific.”
Ms Ogden said she received a call from Laverton police at 6.15am on Tuesday saying they had found Mr Foggerdy, who had “stopped walking”.
She said the tactical response team started at 5am and located Mr Foggerdy shortly after.
“I’m so impressed with the service. They are just amazing people out there and the friends that I’ve got I love dearly. They are so special for what they’ve done,” she said.
Ms Ogden said she hadn’t had the chance to speak to her brother yet, who was undergoing medical treatment for dehydration.
“He’s been out there for quite some time — this is his sixth day. He would be so dehydrated he wouldn’t even be able to communicate with us,” she said.
“They’ve got to pump him up with everything they possibly can. It’s up the medical team now.”
media_camera Bush near remote Shooters Shack, where Mr Foggerdy had started out from.
Ms Ogden said it was fortunate her brother was an “experienced bushman” who had lived in Kalgoorlie and surrounding areas for the past 20 years and worked as a miner.
“Reg is an amazing man. He’s a father-of-four, a grandfather-of-two — he’s just your every day person,” she said.
“He’s retired and he worked hard in the mining industry. He just wants to enjoy life as he could and hunting was one of those things.”
media_camera The unforgiving terrain near WA’s Goldfields where the hunter became lost
Nephew Brodie Hunter said he was ecstatic when his mother, Christine, called to tell him the good news early this morning.
“The family were optimistic some days and some days it was a little bit less, but with new hopes of fresh tracks that really kept us going,” Mr Hunter said.
“I’ve spoken to Reg’s other children and they’re very very pleased with the effort and so overwhelmed.”
“I don’t know how he did it. I know he’s very fit and he can walk but I just don’t know how he was able to stay alive for so long.”
WA Police acknowledged and the assistance provided by Anglo Gold Ashanti (Tropicana Mine Site), DFES, SES, Leonora Shire, Laverton Shire, media and the general public.
“Police would like to stress the importance of remaining at your camp and not leaving unless you are fully equipped and prepared,’’ a spokesman said.
“Personal locating beacons are readily available and should be carried by any person planning on travelling to remote locations.’’ | – Police searching for a 62-year-old man who disappeared in Australia's Outback on Wednesday say the grandfather has miraculously been found alive. Reg Foggerdy had been last seen near a campsite on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert in Western Australia while on a hunting trip with his brother, reports the Guardian. He had left to shoot a feral camel but never returned, adds the BBC. Though an experienced bushman, he was wearing only a T-shirt, shorts, hat, and flip-flops and had no food or water, police say. Police began a land and air search after discovering a camel carcass and finally discovered fresh tracks on Monday, reports the West Australian. Foggerdy was found "extremely dehydrated, a bit delusional," under a tree Tuesday morning about 9 miles from his last known location. "He's received treatment, first aid on the ground, and it's fair to say he's now sitting up and talking," officer Andy Greatwood tells ABC Radio, adding Foggerdy's "fantastic survival skills" kept him alive when "most people would not have survived." After walking for miles, Foggerdy had spent his last two days in the Outback "lying down under a tree and eating black ants," Greatwood says. Foggerdy's wife, Erlyn, says he may have picked up that tip from a jungle survival show he liked to watch every day, reports PerthNow. Foggerdy's 11-year-old son says he initially wasn't too concerned when his father didn't return to camp, but "when he was lost for a few more days I started getting worried. I'm so happy they found him." Family members add they'll now force Foggerdy, who's recovering in a hospital, to carry a satellite phone. (A dad's survival tip kept this lost boy alive.) |
Treatments
Experimental Malaria Vaccine Blocks The Bad Guy's Exit
itoggle caption Gary D. Gaugler/Science Source
For the first time in decades, researchers trying to develop a vaccine for malaria have discovered a new target they can use to attack this deadly and common parasite.
Finding a target for attack is a far cry from having a vaccine. And the history of malaria vaccines is littered with hopeful ideas that didn't pan out. Still, researchers in the field welcome this fresh approach.
Over the past four decades, researchers have developed about 100 potential vaccines for malaria. The best of the bunch is still only modestly successful in children, who are at greatest risk for the disease. The mosquito-borne parasite kills more than 600,000 children a year, mostly in Africa.
So Dr. Jonathan Kurtis, at the Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, decided it was time for a fresh start. He had developed a severe case of malaria while he was an undergraduate studying abroad in Kenya. And he learned just how devastating this disease can be, not only killing young children but causing hundreds of millions of cases of debilitating illness every year.
Kurtis and his colleagues started with samples of blood that had been methodically collected from children in Tanzania by Drs. Michal Fried and Patrick Duffy at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Kurtis' team carefully examined those samples to find small but crucial differences between children who got infected but didn't fall seriously ill and children who developed a severe case of the disease.
"We're finding the rare needle in a haystack," Kurtis says. "We're finding the rare parasite protein that generates a protective immune response."
Earlier vaccine efforts have produced antibodies that target proteins on the malaria parasite that it uses to break into red blood cells — the parasite reproduces inside those cells. But the particular parasite protein that Kurtis isolated from the blood of these children wasn't part of that invasion pathway.
Our parasite protein is critical for the parasite's escape from the red cell. And it needs to escape from the red cell if it's going to go on and infect other red cells and multiply.
"Our parasite protein is critical for the parasite's escape from the red cell," he says. "And it needs to escape from the red cell if it's going to go on and infect other red cells and multiply."
When Kurtis looked at children who had been infected with the malaria parasite but didn't get seriously ill, he discovered that their young immune systems had produced antibodies that attack this escape protein. In this group of children, not one of them developed serious illness from malaria, "which is sort of astonishing, actually," Kurtis says.
He and his colleagues report this result in the latest Science magazine. But this is just the beginning of the story.
This is a long way from a vaccine that can be used in humans. But I do think this addresses ... one of the problems with the current malaria vaccine approach.
"This is a long way from a vaccine that can be used in humans," says Dr. Dyann Wirth, at the Harvard School of Public Health.
"But I do think this addresses what I feel is one of the problems with the current malaria vaccine approach," Wirth says. "And that is the field seems to be focused on molecules that were discovered decades ago."
This really is a fresh idea, she says, championed by a scientist who is not personally invested in the molecules discovered long ago.
Since even the best of those earlier molecules is only partially effective, the field could really use some new ideas.
For his part, Kurtis isn't promising that his discovery will be the be-all and end-all for malaria prevention.
"It would ludicrously fortuitous to think that this would be a stand-alone vaccine," he says.
But if it works even partially, it could eventually be used in combination with other malaria vaccines to deliver a one-two punch against the parasite.
There's a lot more testing to do. The potential vaccine will be tried in monkeys, and if it looks promising there, Kurtis can start the long and challenging process of testing it in people. ||||| Malaria, transmitted through mosquitoes, sickened more than 200 million people worldwide in 2010. JIM GATHANY / CENTERS FOR DISEAS
After decades of frustrating research to find a highly effective malaria vaccine, a novel approach is showing promise against the mosquito-transmitted disease, a team of government, academic, and private researchers reported in a study published Thursday in the journal Science. Malaria infected an estimated 200 million people worldwide in 2010 and caused as many as 1.24 million deaths, mostly in children.
In an early-stage clinical trial, the so-named PfSPZ vaccine protected from malaria infection all six volunteers who received five doses, the most, and protected six of the nine volunteers who received four doses. In contrast, five out of the six unvaccinated participants became infected with the disease.
"Clearly the results that these authors obtained are really very impressive. For those individuals receiving five doses, they are recording 100 percent protection,” says Nirbhay Kumar, chair of the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, who is working on a different kind of vaccine that would prevent mosquitoes from transmitting the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. That level of protection is the highest seen so far in any malaria vaccine trial.
But today’s published study involved a Phase I clinical trial, the first step in human testing, and the number of subjects is very small. “Clearly this is just the beginning” of research needed to determine if the vaccine could ever be of practical use, says Kumar.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where the clinical trial took place, agrees. "There is a lot more work to be done,” he says. Fauci calls the results “an important proof of concept that a very high degree of efficacy can be attained by this product.”
The vaccine product consists of Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites, an immature stage of the parasite, that have been weakened by irradiation. In comparison, the leading malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S, currently in Phase III human trials, contains a single surface protein from the sporozoite. But RTS,S results “have been disappointing,” says Kumar. Studies have shown that RTS,S protects approximately half of volunteers against malaria infection two to three weeks after the last vaccine dose and 22 percent at five months out.
The PfSPZ vaccine researchers chose to use the whole parasite rather than just a protein because, for 40 years, scientists have known that strong, sustained immunity could be achieved by exposing human volunteers to the bites of irradiated, infected mosquitos. But “it took up to 1,000 mosquito bites to confer high-level protection,” said lead author Dr. Robert Seder, Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section at the Vaccine Research Center within NIAID, in a Science podcast.
Unlike most other vaccines against various diseases, which are injected into the skin, this vaccine is delivered intravenously. Earlier tests of the PfSPZ vaccine using standard injection did not produce high levels of protection against malaria. But intravenous delivery presents a serious challenge.
“You can certainly use an intravenously administered vaccine in special populations such as tourists and perhaps the military,” says Fauci. “But if you want to do a mass vaccination program such as in Southern Africa where Plasmodium falciparum malaria is a very important problem, the logistics of that are somewhat complicated.”
Researchers are planning studies in Africa, Europe and the United States to explore whether higher doses using standard injection might achieve the same results. In addition, other important questions will need to be answered before the PfSPZ vaccine could be put to use in the field.
“The critical question is how long does this immunity last,” says Fauci. Volunteers were exposed to malaria infection through the bites of five infected mosquitoes approximately three weeks after receiving the last dose of vaccine. (Those who came down with the disease were promptly treated with antimalarial drugs.) “We don’t know yet whether this is going to be durable protection,” says Fauci.
Future studies will also address whether the vaccine will work against multiple strains of the parasite that exist in the wild. The infected mosquitoes that bit the volunteers carried the same strain that was used to manufacture the vaccine.
While significant progress against malaria has been made using insecticide-impregnated bed nets, insect control, and indoor insecticide spraying, those efforts often slip in a region once malaria infection rates decline, says Fauci, calling it human nature, and then infection rates rebound.
"Historically, if you really get a vaccine that works, and you can really get it administered widely, that’s the way you control, eliminate and even eradicate certain diseases,” says Fauci. | – Researchers think they've found a promising new potential weapon in the fight against malaria in a fairly unlikely place: the blood of toddlers. In a paper published in Science today, researchers detail how they examined the blood of more than 750 children in Tanzania. They found that about 6% of those children had an antibody against one of the disease's key proteins, and that those children didn't suffer from severe malaria. Researchers think they can make a vaccine patterned on their blood, Paul Rodgers at Forbes explains. Until now, most malaria vaccines have focused on keeping the disease out of the red blood cells it reproduces in. But this antibody is unique in that it instead attacks the protein that allows the parasite to escape the cells. "We're sort of trapping the parasite in the burning house," says co-lead author Jonathan Kurtis—who suffered his own bout of malaria while studying in Kenya while in college, NPR reports. The team believes this approach could work in concert with existing vaccines. It's a refreshing, promising idea, one Harvard doctor says, though she cautions that "this is a long way from a vaccine that can be used in humans." It's been trialed in mice and will soon be tested on monkeys. |
Amid a presidential campaign marked by fears about the country’s economic future, the American jobs machine keeps chugging.
Employers added 156,000 positions in September, the Labor Department said on Friday, enough to accommodate new entrants to the labor force and entice back workers who dropped out after the Great Recession. The unemployment rate, which had been stuck at 4.9 percent since spring, ticked up slightly to 5 percent, but that was mostly because more people were drawn into the labor force by evidence that hiring is still going strong.
For all the anxiety at home and turmoil abroad, like the vote in Britain to withdraw from the European Union, the current expansion shows little prospect of ending abruptly.
Average hourly earnings rose by 0.2 percentage point last month, bringing the wage gain over the last 12 months to 2.6 percent, well above the pace of inflation. The typical workweek also grew slightly in September, after a pullback in August. ||||| U.S. employers added 171,000 jobs in October, and hiring was stronger over the previous two months than first thought. The unemployment rate inched up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent in September because the work force grew.
The Labor Department's last look at hiring before Tuesday's presidential election sketched a picture of a job market that's gradually gaining momentum after nearly stalling in the spring.
Since July, the economy has created an average of 173,000 jobs a month, up from 67,000 a month from April through June.
Still, President Barack Obama will face voters with the highest unemployment rate of any incumbent since Franklin Roosevelt.
The rate ticked up because more people without jobs started looking for work. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively searching. | – The last unemployment report before the midterms is a strong one. Employers added 250,000 jobs in October, above the forecast of 188,000, reports the Wall Street Journal. The unemployment rate itself remained at a five-decade low of 3.7%, per the AP. The influx of new job-seekers in October increased the proportion of Americans with jobs to its highest level since January 2009. What's more, wages rose 3.1% when compared to last October, the best such gain since 2009. It's the first time since the recession ended that wages rose more than 3% over a year. Average hourly earnings in the private sector increased 5 cents to $27.30. |
Two weeks after undergoing a kidney procedure — and almost three weeks after her last public appearance — First Lady Melania Trump is back to work at the White House and “doing really well,” her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, tells PEOPLE.
“She’s been involved in several internal meetings with staff all last week, and that continues this week,” Grisham says. “We’ve been going over initiatives and other long term planning for events such as the Congressional Picnic and 4th of July.”
The first lady, 48, has not been seen in public in 19 days. She was last spotted on Thursday, May 10, when she stood next to her husband, President Donald Trump, to welcome home three Americans at Joint Base Andrews, according to The Washington Post.
Melania Trump SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty
Four days later, on May 14, the first lady’s office made the surprise announcement that she had undergone a “successful” kidney procedure, but would remain hospitalized for the remainder of the week.
Since returning home on May 19, the first lady has been completely out of the spotlight, which the Post notes is an “unusually long absence” for even the most private of presidential spouses.
Asked about the first lady’s health on Friday morning, the president told reporters gathered at the White House that his wife was inside.
“She’s doing great. Right there,” Trump said, pointing up toward the second floor of the White House from the south entrance. “She’s doing great. She’s looking at us, right there.”
But as reporters turned to follow his outstretched finger, they saw no sign of his wife, reports the Post.
Grisham did not specifically say when Mrs. Trump would be seen again, so her return to public life remains a mystery. It’s unclear whether she’ll attend a White House Sports and Fitness Day event that the president is expected to participate in on Wednesday.
First daughter and advisor to the president Ivanka Trump is set to help her father host the event. Asked if such an event would normally be hosted by the first lady, Ivanka said in a press conference call Tuesday that since the event is for the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, which was formed by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955, “it’s appropriate that it continues” to to be hosted by the president. ||||| First lady Melania Trump Melania TrumpMichelle Obama's stylist downplays controversy over Melania Trump jacket Trump offered Ricardel ambassadorship to Estonia after Melania forced her out of White House: report Michelle Obama: I never had a presidential staffer fired MORE will not travel with President Trump Donald John TrumpMichelle Obama says not always easy to live up to "we go high" Georgia certifies elections results in bitterly fought governor's race Trump defends border deployment amid fresh scrutiny MORE to the Group of Seven (G7) summit later this week or the meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12.
Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications director, confirmed to The Hill that Melania Trump would not join the president for either event. She attended last year’s G7 summit in Italy.
ADVERTISEMENT
ABC News first reported that Trump wouldn't be attending.
The first lady has been absent from the public eye since May 19, when she returned to the White House five days after undergoing a procedure for a benign kidney condition.
The first lady and President Trump have at various times called the procedure a success and indicated she is feeling well. However, she has not been seen in public since a few days before the procedure and did not join the president on his weekend trip to Camp David.
The White House and first lady’s office have not offered an explanation for her absence, but Melania Trump criticized the media last week for speculating on her whereabouts.
“I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing,” she tweeted. “Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people!”
I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing. Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people! — Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) May 30, 2018
Leaders from the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and the European Union will convene in Quebec on Friday and Saturday for the G7 Summit.
President Trump will then travel to Singapore for a June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The anticipated summit — which Trump initially canceled before reversing course — comes as the U.S. pushes for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Updated at 8:40 p.m. | – Melania watchers can relax. After endless speculation and wacky rumors about the first lady's whereabouts, she addressed the situation herself, posting to Twitter, "I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I'm doing. Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people!" The first lady’s spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, also sought to swat down rumors. "She is doing great," Grisham told the New York Daily News. "She has meetings throughout the day so will not be attending fitness day." Melania Trump had not appeared in public for 20 days. |
Play Facebook
Twitter
Embed Police: Evidence Suggests Escaped N.Y. Prisoners Heading for Canada 1:01 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog
The two killers who broke out of a New York prison three weeks ago may be headed for Canada, authorities said Friday.
Maj. Charles Guess of the New York State Police said he could not go into specifics, but "based on what we know at this point, we have a high degree of confidence in our conclusion."
David Sweat and Richard Matt were reported missing from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, on June 6.
Investigators believe the men are moving in the dark of night, and items that appear to belong to the men have been found in the northern towns of Belmont and Malone, according to Guess.
Multiple law enforcement sources tell NBC news that DNA belonging to at least one of the escaped prisoners was found at a cabin in Malone, a town located about 35 miles northwest of Clinton Correctional and around 10 miles south of the Canadian border.
Authorities believe Matt and Sweat have not yet crossed the Canadian border.
The break-in at the cabin in Malone was reported to police sometime between Wednesday and 3 p.m. Thursday, sources said. Evidence was recovered and sent for processing, and DNA tests indicate one of the men was at the cabin.
There were two reports of break-ins in Malone between Wednesday and 3 p.m. Thursday. State police records indicate those are "pending investigations."
Two prison workers — Gene Palmer, a guard, and Joyce Mitchell, a seamstress — have been arrested in connection with the breakout. They are suspected of helping Sweat and Matt. ||||| Image caption Police search a Vermont truck near the New York border
Police bloodhounds have found where David Sweat and Richard Matt may have spent the night after they escaped from prison six days ago.
Food wrappers and other evidence were discovered in the woods nearby the prison according to US media reports.
Police have been receiving hundreds of tips from the public, and a sighting has been reported in Philadelphia.
"Follow every lead you have" Governor Andrew Cuomo told police as the search extended into Vermont.
"Follow them as if it's the lead that's going to break the case. I am confident we are going to find them, the only question is when."
The manhunt in northern New York and surrounding areas has also reached into campsites and boat slips in neighbouring Vermont.
Image caption Police are searching hundreds of vacation homes in New York and Vermont
Uninhabited vacation homes are being searched in the popular tourist region.
Homeowners are being asked to leave their outdoor lights on overnight to aid police in the search.
Mr Shumlin and Mr Cuomo held a joint press conference outside the maximum security prison from where the men escaped, Clinton Correctional Facility.
"New York was going to be hot. Vermont would be cooler, in terms of law enforcement," Mr Shumlin said, referring to the unspecified information about the men's whereabouts.
Rainstorms have complicated efforts by masking scents detectable by search dogs and forcing officers to wade through swamps.
Image caption Officials believe the escaped inmates may be in nearby Vermont
Image caption "Follow every lead you have" Governor Cuomo told police
Officials at the Saranac Central School District, less than a mile from the prison, closed schools on Thursday "in order to assist law enforcement personnel with their search efforts, and due to the closure of a number of roads".
Police have interviewed a cab driver in Philadelphia, who told authorities to say he may have given a ride to the men early on Thursday morning. But police later ruled that out as a lead.
Image caption The escapees bunched up clothes in their beds to fool guards
5 June: David Sweat and Richard Matt escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora
David Sweat and Richard Matt escape from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora 6-7 June: Possible sighting of pair in Dannemora
Possible sighting of pair in Dannemora 9 June: Search focuses on Willsboro area after another possible sighting
Search focuses on Willsboro area after another possible sighting 10 June: Police close off Route 374 between Dannemora and Cadyville and search expands to neighbouring Vermont
Police close off Route 374 between Dannemora and Cadyville and search expands to neighbouring Vermont 11 June: Police dogs find food wrapper and footprint at suspected camp site near Dannemora
Police confirmed on Wednesday that they had interviewed "one woman in particular" who may have befriended the inmates and had a role in their escape, but would not go into detail.
That woman "may had had some role in assisting them", said New York state police superintendent Joseph D'Amico.
Matt was given a jail term of 25 years to life for beating a man to death in 1997.
Sweat was serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of Broome County Sheriff's Deputy, Kevin Tarsia. ||||| Play Facebook
Twitter
Embed Police Swarm Small New York Town in Search of Escaped Killers 3:06 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog
Only about 20 law enforcement officers continued to scour the small upstate New York town of Willsboro on Tuesday night after a massive search failed to turn up Richard Matt and David Sweat, the convicted murderers who busted out of a maximum-security prison over the weekend with power tools.
At the height of the search, scores of FBI agents, state troopers, forest rangers, sheriff's deputies, K-9 units and state Corrections Department agents, supported by a helicopter, responded along Middle Road in Willsboro.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News the swarm descended on the town after they got a specific tip from the Willsboro area, which is across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Vermont, and about 40 miles southeast of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, from which the men escaped overnight Friday.
By late Tuesday, most of them had left empty-handed. NBC station WPTZ of Plattsburgh, New York, reported Tuesday night that the focus of the search had returned to Dannemora.
Please lock house and car doors tonight. Avoid walking around town if possible. There will be increased police patrols tonight. — Town of Willsboro (@TownofWillsboro) June 9, 2015
More than 250 local, state and federal officials have pursued hundreds of leads in the search for Matt and Sweat. They busted out by cutting holes in the steel backs of their cells, seemingly with power tools, and climbing through pipes and tunnels until they reached and broke open a manhole cover a block away.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said all of the prison's tools were accounted for after the escape, presenting the question of where the men got the equipment they needed to cut through steel.
"They definitely had help," Cuomo said Monday. "Otherwise, they couldn't have done this on their own, even from the equipment point of view."
RELATED: Richard Matt and David Sweat, Convicted Murderers Who Escaped Prison, Have Grisly Past
Tobey Mitchell, the son of Joyce Mitchell, a Clinton Correctional Facility employee, confirmed that state police were questioning his mother in connection with the brazen escape. But he said Joyce Mitchell — who authorities said checked herself into a hospital Saturday — would have never played a part in helping the prisoners break free.
"She's not going to risk her life or other people's lives to help these guys escape," he said. | – If New York investigators are right, Richard Matt and David Sweat are probably sleeping right now—but they'll wake soon and continue picking their way through the woods and back roads toward Canada when darkness falls. At an update today on the hunt for the prison escapees, authorities say they're now pretty sure the men are trying to make the border, reports NBC News. "Based on what we know at this point, we have a high degree of confidence in our conclusion," says Maj. Charles Guess of the state police. Guess didn't provide specifics, but he said investigators found "significant" items from the men in a cabin and in a field in the town of Malone yesterday and this morning, reports AP. They've shifted their search accordingly in a bid to head the men off. Matt and Sweat have eluded capture for three weeks now, which is impressive, but it doesn't protect them from this damning stat cited by the Atlantic: More than 92% of escapees from medium- and high-security prisons are caught within a year. Their odds improve somewhat if they make it past a month, however. The search update comes after a second prison worker was charged in the escape. (He once likened the inmates at his prison in Dannemora to caged "puppies.") |
Story highlights Rep. Darrell Issa proposes halt to federal Web regulations
Issa, a Web-freedom advocate, posted draft of a bill online
He was an outspoken critic of the Stop Online Piracy Act
In an unusual step, a U.S. congressman is proposing a two-year ban on all new federal legislation regulating the Internet.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who has been an advocate for Internet freedoms, has posted online a draft of his legislation, the Internet American Moratorium Act of 2012. The bill would "create a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet."
"Together, we can make Washington take a break from messing w/ the Internet," Issa said on Reddit, where he also invited users to suggest changes to the proposed bill. He said he will begin taking questions about it from Reddit users Wednesday morning.
JUST WATCHED Internet takes 'round 1' in piracy fight Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Internet takes 'round 1' in piracy fight 01:21
JUST WATCHED Hollywood 'got rolled' by the internet Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Hollywood 'got rolled' by the internet 02:05
It was not immediately clear whether Issa's moratorium would apply to his own Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, which would seek to protect U.S. copyrights and trademarks from infringement by foreign websites.
Initial reaction on Reddit to his proposed moratorium was mixed. Some users were confused about what point Issa was trying to make, while others saw the move as a stunt.
"I have a problem with legislation that preemptively ties your hands for years at a time. You can't know what the internet or society will look like in six months, let alone two years, and making it harder to respond to emerging threats or opportunities is an abdication of your responsibilities as a member of Congress," wrote one Reddit user. "This just seems to me to be more cheap political theater, along the lines of Grover Norquist's 'We will never ever ever raise taxes for any reason' pledge."
"The answer is NOT to ban new regulation. We need regulation," another said. "But, I don't believe ANYBODY in Congress has the vocabulary, is intelligent in knowing how the internet or computers work, or has the foresight to put current trends and future technologies together in a context to create those new regulation that protect the internet and it's users/consumers."
Issa's Reddit post had drawn more than 2,000 comments by early Wednesday.
"Open internet? That's a good thing. But a law that keeps congress from governing? That's not a good thing -- the internet is a big place, and the language of this law is very broad," she wrote. "As it stands now, IAMA is just a discussion draft, meaning it will be a very long time before it's even close to a vote. And while we're for an open internet, a blanket ban is a bad idea. Let's think about this one a little more, Rep. Issa."
When asked why the congressman introduced the bill, a spokesman for Issa told CNN, "After SOPA and PIPA (the Senate's similar Protect Intellectual Property Act), it became very clear that we needed a cooling-off period to figure out a better way to create policy that impacts Internet users, job creators and all Americans."
The spokesman, who asked not to be named, declined further comment Tuesday. ||||| Issa looks to ban Internet regulations
By Brendan Sasso -
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is seeking input on a bill that would impose a two-year ban on new laws or regulations that affect the Internet.
Issa released a draft of his Internet American Moratorium Act on Monday night and said that he would answer questions about the legislation on Reddit, a social news and discussion site, on Wednesday morning.
The one-page draft bill would prohibit Congress and all regulatory agencies from enacting rules that affect the Internet for two years, with an exception for national security emergencies.
Many Reddit users are fierce defenders of Internet freedom, and the site helped organize opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) earlier this year. Issa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was one of the leading opponents of the controversial anti-piracy legislation.
But Gigi Sohn, president of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, explained that Issa's bill would not actually prevent Congress from passing laws like SOPA.
"Even if they pass this bill, Congress could pass another Internet regulation bill that would supersede the previous bill," Sohn said.
Issa's bill would, however, prevent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from adopting new rules that affect the Internet.
Sohn warned that prohibiting all government regulation of the Internet would "throw the Internet into corporate hands."
Most Democrats support the FCC's net neutrality rules, which prohibit Internet service providers from slowing down or blocking legitimate websites. Supporters say the rules are critical for ensuring an open and free Internet.
But Issa and other Republicans argue that net neutrality is an unnecessary burden on businesses.
Sohn noted that Issa's bill wouldn't stop the net neutrality rules since the FCC already enacted them, but the bill could block other potential regulations, such as rules on broadband caps.
The FCC isn't drafting any rules on broadband caps, but Sohn and other consumer advocates argue the agency should investigate whether providers should be allowed to limit their customers' Internet usage.
Sohn said Issa's bill could also block future regulations on Internet privacy. The Federal Trade Commission is currently working on an update to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which restricts the ability of websites to collect information from children younger than 13.
Sohn said that depending on how broadly the courts interpret the definition of the "Internet," the bill could also derail efforts to provide more radio frequencies for cellphone service providers, which are struggling to keep pace with the booming demands placed on their networks by smartphones and tablet computers.
"This bill could have unintended consequences that even its proponents would not be happy with," Sohn said.
The bill might also prevent the president from issuing an executive order on cybersecurity. President Obama is considering an executive order to pressure owners of "critical infrastructure" to meet cybersecurity standards after the Senate failed to pass legislation on the issue.
A spokesman for Issa said the draft bill is not about trying to block any particular regulation, like net neutrality. Instead, the measure is intended to start a discussion about the appropriate role of the government in overseeing the Internet, the spokesman explained.
He added that Issa hopes to formally introduce a more detailed version of the bill next year after reviewing responses on Reddit and on his own site for discussing legislation, Project Madison.
Sohn said that while she has serious concerns with the measure, she agrees that it could be a "good conversation starter." ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — After his press secretary blasted it as an example of rampant government overreach, President Donald Trump signed a bill into law Monday that could eventually allow internet providers to sell information about their customers' browsing habits.
The bill scraps a Federal Communications Commission online privacy regulation issued in October to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon share that information. Critics have argued that the rule would stifle innovation and pick winners and losers among internet companies.
The regulation was scheduled to take effect later this year, but Congress used its authority under the obscure Congressional Review Act to wipe it from the books.
With a Republican president in the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress has turned to the 20-year-old law to scrap numerous regulations that Republicans say are costly, burdensome or excessive, many of which were finalized in the closing months of Democrat Barack Obama's presidency.
Internet companies like Google don't have to ask their users for permission before tracking what sites they visit, a discrepancy that Republicans and industry group have blasted as both unfair to companies and confusing to consumers.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last week that the president's support for the bill was part of a larger effort "to fight Washington red tape that stifles American innovation, job creation and economic growth."
"The president pledged to reverse this type of federal overreach in which bureaucrats in Washington take the interest of one group of companies over the interest of others," picking the winners and losers, he said.
Supporters of the privacy measure argued that the company that sells an internet connection can see even more about consumers, such as every website they visit and whom they exchange emails with, information that would be particularly useful for advertisers and marketers.
Undoing the regulation leaves people's online information in a murky area. Experts say federal law still requires broadband providers to protect customer information — but it doesn't spell out how or what companies must do, which is what the online privacy rule aimed to do.
The absence of clear privacy rules means companies that supply internet service, and who can monitor how consumers use it, can continue to mine that information for use in their own advertising businesses. Consumer advocates also worry that the companies will be a rich target for hackers.
Ajit Pai, the agency chairman appointed by Trump, has said he wanted to roll back the broadband privacy rules. Pai and other Republicans want a different federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission, to police privacy for both broadband companies like AT&T and internet companies like Google.
Broadband providers don't fall under the trade commission's jurisdiction, and advocates say that agency historically has been weaker than the communications commission.
Trump signed three other bills Monday, including one that eliminates a rule that prohibited the use of tactics like baiting and shooting bears from the air on the National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska.
___
The bills are S.J. Res 34 and H.J. Res 69
___
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking in Washington and Tali Arbel in New York contributed to this report.
___
Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap | – Rep. Darrell Issa is proposing a bill that would "create a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules, or regulations governing the Internet," reports CNN. It's been met with some controversy from fellow politicians and the public alike. The bill could block regulations that protect consumer privacy, says one lawmaker, and may stymie President Obama's efforts to bolster cybersecurity, reports The Hill. Issa is hosting a Q&A on Reddit today to discuss his bill, and plans to adjust it after receiving feedback. A separate battle is happening in Washington over the 'Do Not Track' initiative, which aims to give Internet users the ability to stop the collection of personal information for advertising purposes. It's a tough topic, since online ads are what pay for many free services, reports the Washington Post. The initiatives looked set to move forward after a successful White House event in February, but since then talks have grown bitter, in part due to opposition from advertising groups. The co-chair of the committee working on the initiative announced she'd be stepping down today, which could help revive talks. |
Laquanda Moultrie, holding a stuffed bear she hopes to leave at Emanuel AME Church, stands with Surreace Cox near the police barrier. (Matthew Fortner/Staff)
After a night of fear and grief in downtown Charleston, authorities in North Carolina arrested a young white man on charges that he gunned down nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, ending a vast search but leaving the city and the nation reeling.
Video To see a video of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s opening prayer at the Charleston YWCA’s April 24 “Requiem on Racism 2015,” go to https://vimeo.com/126710749
The Holy City struggled to comprehend why the gunman police identified as 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof would sit down for an hour at a Bible study in the historic black church on Calhoun Street and then open fire, wiping out most of the clergy. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the killings as a hate crime.
The victims The nine people fatally shot at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: Clementa Pinckney, 41, the primary pastor who also served as a state senator. Cynthia Hurd, 54, St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, a church pastor, speech therapist and coach of the girls’ track and field team at Goose Creek High School. Tywanza Sanders, 26, who had a degree in business administration from Allen University, where Pinckney also attended. Ethel Lance, 70, a retired Gailliard Center employee who has worked recently as a church janitor. Susie Jackson, 87, Lance’s cousin who was a longtime church member. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, a retired director of the local Community Development Block Grant Program who joined the church in March as a pastor. Myra Thompson, 59, a pastor at the church. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a pastor, who died in a hospital operating room.
To President Barack Obama, the shooting stirred up “a dark part” of American history when racially motivated violence was more prevalent. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch declared that such acts have “no place in a civilized society.”
The emotional weight of the ordeal also brought local activists, Charleston’s police chief and South Carolina’s governor to tears as they fought to find words to ease community members who fear further violence in a city with a long and complicated history involving race.
“We woke up today, and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken,” Gov. Nikki Haley said, her voice trembling. “We have some grieving to do. ... Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe. That’s not something we ever thought we’d deal with.”
After a massive manhunt, Roof, who has shown interest in racial segregation and the Confederacy, was caught during a traffic stop Thursday morning in Shelby, N.C., 250 miles north of Charleston. A motorist there recognized Roof’s 15-year-old Hyundai from wanted posters distributed by police.
A resident of Eastover, a rural town near Columbia, Roof smiled at television cameras Thursday afternoon as Shelby officers led him to a waiting cruiser, his mop of blond hair hanging in his eyes and a ballistic vest covering his torso. He waived extradition, and South Carolina flew him back to Charleston County to face charges in what has been called one of worst hate crimes the United States has seen in decades.
Meanwhile, the community mourned and searched for answers, with hundreds packing prayer vigils in a show of solidarity and support for the fallen and the families they left behind.
In all, six women and three men died after gunfire sprayed through Emanuel’s basement. Among the dead were a state senator who served as the church’s primary pastor, a beloved county librarian, a dedicated girl’s track and field coach and a young college graduate. The victims ranged in age from 26 to 87.
Their deaths marked the second fatal shooting in the past three months that has drawn the nation’s eyes to the Charleston area, roiling racial tensions and prompting federal investigations. The FBI has been examining potential civil rights violations in the April 4 killing of Walter Scott, a black man shot in the back by a white North Charleston police officer. FBI agents also are looking into what motivated Wednesday’s bloody attack in Emanuel AME Church, Columbia-based spokeswoman Denise Taiste confirmed.
The tragedy also renewed politicians’ focus on reform of the nation’s gun laws. Obama said Thursday during a press briefing in Washington that the Charleston shooting should spark national introspection about the availability of guns.
“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” Obama said. “Communities like this have had to endure tragedies like this too many times. Once again, innocent people were killed because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”
The shooting
The tragedy unfolded on a hot, steamy night after about a dozen clergy and church members gathered for a regular Bible study and prayer service. They met in the basement, a ground-level floor beneath the sanctuary that housed the pastor’s office and other rooms.
They studied Mark 4 16:20. “Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy ...”
A young white man, not part of the congregation, came in around 8:15 p.m. and sat down quietly. He stayed for 40 to 50 minutes as the session continued.
“But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away ...”
Suddenly, the young man rose, uttered remarks that betrayed his contempt for blacks and opened fire with a gun.
A female trustee, who hid under a table, was among the survivors. The gunman told her he would let her live so that she could tell the story of what happened. Two other survivors, including a young girl, played dead, church members said.
The search
The gunman slipped out of the church as dozens of police officers descended on the area armed with military-style rifles, teams of police dogs and helicopters that circled overhead.
Area residents locked the doors and bolted their gates, fearful after news spread that a gunman was on the loose. Activists from local black communities expressed fear of being targeted next.
James Johnson, South Carolina president of the National Action Network, stood in the middle of Calhoun Street, where city leaders had announced the death toll moments earlier Thursday morning, and cried.
Johnson has spoken out for years about civil rights concerns in Charleston-area policing. He had recently joined Clementa Pinckney, the slain AME church pastor, for a summit about the Scott shooting in North Charleston.
But Johnson had never coped with anything like this, he said, and he worried that it would discourage people from talking about racially charged problems.
“We feel that we’re not safe,” he said. “They could do the same thing when we speak out against this injustice. We must be mindful.”
As Johnson and others grappled with such thoughts, the gunman, who had slipped out of Charleston, put distance between himself and the carnage he’d left behind.
Investigators soon broadened their hunt, deploying local and statewide police agencies and top agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They also circulated surveillance camera images of a young man with a bowl haircut who appeared to be the gunman they were looking for. A bulletin included pictures of the gunman’s 2000 Hyundai Elantra and a telephone tip line for people to call if they saw the car or its driver.
Tips started rolling in soon after the bulletin went out. By mid-morning, investigators named Roof as the suspected gunman and a call went out for his arrest. Shortly after 11 a.m., authorities announced he had been nabbed in North Carolina.
“We had a number of tips that were coming in,” Mullen, the police chief, later said. “It was amazing. Whenever we got a lead ... we sent out teams. It was a tremendous effort. ... I am so pleased that we were able to resolve this case quickly ... so that nobody else is harmed by this individual.”
A picture soon emerged of a troubled young high school dropout who had talked about blacks in racially inflammatory terms and had been arrested in recent months on drug and trespassing charges.
He had been banned from a Columbia mall in February after employees of two stores alerted police that Roof, dressed in all black clothing, was asking odd questions about their operations and when workers left for the night, an incident report stated. He was arrested on a trespassing charge in April after returning to the mall, records show.
Friends said something seemed to be bothering him, but he stayed out of trouble until he walked into Emanuel AME Church Wednesday night.
The aftermath
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden called Charleston Mayor Joe Riley on Thursday to relay their condolences. They praised the efforts to track down the suspect, Riley said.
“It’s a wonderful sign that we don’t let these people get away with these dastardly deeds,” he said.
But further rattling people as they mourned the losses, someone called in bomb threats to another downtown AME church where residents and leaders had gathered for a vigil and to the office building where Charleston County’s coroner announced the names of those who were slain.
Emotions already were raw this week from the anniversary of another tragedy that also claimed nine lives. The shooting occurred on the eve of the eighth remembrance of the June 18, 2007, Sofa Super Store blaze in West Ashley that killed Charleston firefighters.
County Coroner Rae Wooten said the anniversary made her team’s response to the shooting more difficult.
“It all came back,” she said. “It was somewhat disbelief that we could ever face something that horrific again.”
But people from local leaders to the president expressed resolve to overcome the latest carnage.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., called it “absolutely despicable” for such violence to occur in a place where people come together to “laugh, love and rejoice in God’s name.”
Obama said Emanuel AME and its congregation have risen before from flames, an earthquake and other dark times to give hope to Charleston, “and with our prayers and love and buoyancy, it will rise now as a place of peace.”
“Acts like this have no place in our country and no place in a civilized society,” Lynch, the attorney general, added during a Thursday morning news conference in Washington. “I want everyone in Charleston and everyone who has been affected by this tragedy to know that we will do everything in our power to help heal this community and make it whole again.”
Christina Elmore, Glenn Smith, Robert Behre, Melissa Boughton, Tony Bartelme, Schuyler Kropf and Jennifer Berry Hawes contributed to this report. ||||| FILE - In this June18, 2016 file photo, Dylann Storm Roof is escorted from the Sheby Police Department in Shelby, N.C. The trial for Roof, a white man accused of killing nine black people at the church,... (Associated Press)
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A survivor of last year's massacre at a black South Carolina church testified Wednesday that her Bible study group had just closed their eyes and started praying when a loud sound shattered the stillness. The basement room went dark.
When Felicia Sanders opened her eyes, she saw a young white man the parishioners had welcomed to the study only a half-hour earlier. Dylann Roof was mowing down the pastor and eight others with gunfire and hurling racial insults.
Sanders, the first witness in Roof's death penalty trial, fought back tears as she recalled sheltering her granddaughter under a table and telling her to play dead. She watched in horror as her son Tywanza and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, were killed in the fusillade.
At one point, she looked across the courtroom toward Roof and called him "evil, evil, evil."
The gunman had planned the attack for months and traveled about 100 miles to Charleston on June 17, 2015, to attack Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the South, because of what it represented, prosecutors said. He told the parishioners he was killing them because blacks were raping white women and taking over the country. In a manifesto found later, he said he hoped to start a race war.
The attorney for the 22-year-old all but conceded during opening statements that Roof committed the slayings but suggested that he should be spared the death penalty.
One of three survivors, Sanders said Roof came by the Wednesday night gathering and was given a study sheet and a Bible by the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a state senator.
When she heard the loud noise, she assumed something was wrong with the electricity. Then she saw the real reason.
"I screamed he had a gun," she said. But by that time, Pinckney had already been shot. Soon her son was hit.
"I watched my son come into this world and I watched my son leave this world," she said before becoming so distraught that U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel called a recess. Several people sitting among the survivors' family members and several jurors dabbed away tears.
Roof, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit, just stared down at the defense table, as he did throughout the day.
"He just sits there the whole time. Evil, evil, evil as can be," Sanders testified.
In the prosecution's opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson said Roof had a "cold and hateful heart."
"He pulled the trigger on that Glock .45 more than 70 times that night. More than 60 times he hit parishioners," the prosecutor said.
Before the slayings, Roof had posed in photos with the Confederate flag. The attack prompted South Carolina to completely remove the emblem from its Capitol grounds. Other state and local governments voted to take down Confederate monuments, remove the flag from parks or rename government buildings honoring Confederate soldiers.
If Roof is convicted, the case will move to the penalty phase, where he plans to act as his own lawyer to apparently fight for his life.
A panel of 12 white jurors, five black jurors and one person of another race were selected, according to court officials who said the alternates will not be picked until the end of the trial.
Defense attorney David Bruck said the facts of the case are largely undisputed and that he would likely ask few questions of the government witnesses. He may not call any witnesses of his own.
The defense has said repeatedly in both federal and state court that Roof is willing to plead guilty if capital punishment is taken off the table. Prosecutors have refused. Roof faces another death penalty trial next year in state court.
Bruck urged jurors to pay attention to the little things and use their common sense to determine what made Roof hate black people so much. He tried to hint at reasons why Roof should not be put to death, but prosecutors objected, saying that was for the penalty phase. The judge agreed.
Roof's trial began only days after another one with racial overtones ended in a mistrial. Jurors could not agree on a verdict for former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who shot a black man in the back as he was running away from a traffic stop. A bystander recorded the shooting, and it was seen widely on TV and online.
The church slayings took place a little more than two months after the Slager shooting, and Charleston has stayed mostly calm, unlike other cities where police shootings and perceived racial injustice has rocked communities.
State prosecutors plan to retry Slager. | – The nine people shot to death in a South Carolina church last night ranged in age from 26 to 87, reports NBC News. Some details about them: The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41. The married father of two was a pastor at Emanuel AME and a state senator. "He was the moral compass of the state Senate," a colleague said on CNN, per Mother Jones Tywanza Sanders, 26. He had graduated from Allen University with a degree in business administration just last year. The school called him a "quiet, well-known student who was committed to his education." Cynthia Hurd, 54. She was a longtime employee of the Charleston County Public Library. All branches were closed today in her honor. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 49, worked at Goose Creek High School as a speech therapist and girls' track coach. She was also a pastor at the church. The Rev. Depayne Middelton Doctor, 49, a church singer who had worked for Charleston County providing services for the poor. She was a mother of four. Susie Jackson, 87, a longtime member of the historic church. Ethel Lance, 70, a church sexton who had worked at Emanuel AME for three decades. The Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74, was on the church's ministerial staff, attending Sunday services and a weekly Bible study. Myra Thompson, 59, was the wife of the vicar of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church in Charleston. Suspect Dylann Roof was arrested after a woman spotted him driving.) |
Image copyright Reuters
Toymaker Lego is cutting 1,400 jobs worldwide in the face of falling sales and profits.
The figure is 8% of the Danish company's 18,200-strong workforce, but it is not clear where the jobs will go.
Lego said in its half-year results that revenue fell 5% to 14.9bn Danish krone (£1.8bn, $1.3bn), with profits down 3% to 4.4bn krone.
The company said it needed to make the job cuts as its business had become too complex and needed a "reset".
Lego chairman Jorgen Vig Knudstorp said the group had become an "increasingly complex organisation" following double-digit global growth in the past five years.
However, that meant it had "added complexity into the organisation which now in turn makes it harder for us to grow further".
Brick heart
The company has been increasing sales in new markets, particularly in Asia.
Lego told the BBC: "In the US and Europe, our sales have declined although we are working hard with our partners to regain momentum."
Lego said there was double-digit growth in China where there was still "massive upside potential".
Mr Vig Knudstorp said: "We are disappointed by the decline in revenue in our established markets, and we have taken steps to address this."
It has also been diversifying in recent years, most strikingly into a series of Lego movies, the latest being Batman movies depicted by Lego figures.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Lego chairman Jorgen Vig Knudstorp said the firm had become 'increasingly complex'
Mr Knudstorp hinted the company would be concentrating harder on the brick kits, but without going entirely back to basics: "The brick is the heart of our business and children of all ages love it.
"We will find more opportunities to engage with kids and parents including innovative ways to blend physical building and digital experiences, such as our successful Lego Life social platform."
Last month Lego said Niels Christiansen, a Dane, would replace Briton Bali Padda as chief executive. He had been in the post for just eight months.
Lego has become the world's biggest toymaker by sales, beating Play-Doh maker Hasbro and Barbie giant Mattel, whose sales are around £1.4bn.
The company said the jobs would go by the end of this year but there would be redundancy packages and other support.
Mr Knudstorp said: "We are very sorry to make changes which may interfere with the lives of many of our colleagues. Unfortunately, it is essential for us to make these tough decisions." ||||| FILE- In this Tuesday, April 5, 2016 file photo, an employee sorts Legos in the the new LEGO flagship store unveiled as part of the new Les Halles shopping mall during the press visit in Paris. Danish... (Associated Press)
FILE- In this Tuesday, April 5, 2016 file photo, an employee sorts Legos in the the new LEGO flagship store unveiled as part of the new Les Halles shopping mall during the press visit in Paris. Danish toy maker Lego said Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017, it will cut 1,400 jobs, or about eight percent of its global... (Associated Press)
FILE- In this Tuesday, April 5, 2016 file photo, an employee sorts Legos in the the new LEGO flagship store unveiled as part of the new Les Halles shopping mall during the press visit in Paris. Danish toy maker Lego said Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017, it will cut 1,400 jobs, or about eight percent of its global... (Associated Press) FILE- In this Tuesday, April 5, 2016 file photo, an employee sorts Legos in the the new LEGO flagship store unveiled as part of the new Les Halles shopping mall during the press visit in Paris. Danish... (Associated Press)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Danish toy maker Lego will cut 1,400 jobs, or about eight percent of its global workforce, after reporting a decline in sales and profits in the first half of 2017.
The privately held company said Tuesday that its revenue dropped 5 percent to 14.9 billion kroner ($2.4 billion) in the first six months of the year, mainly as a result of weakness in established markets like the U.S. and Europe. Profits slipped 3 percent to 3.4 billion kroner ($544,000).
It said it "now prepares to reset the company."
"We are disappointed by the decline in revenue in our established markets, and we have taken steps to address this," said Chairman Joergen Vig Knudstorp.
He said the long-term aim is to reach "more children in our well-established markets in Europe and the United States," and added there were "strong growth opportunities in growing markets such as China."
The company, he said, needs to simplify its business model to reduce its costs. Since 2012, the group has built an increasingly complex organization to support global double-digit growth. However, "in the process, we have added complexity into the organization which now in turn makes it harder for us to grow further," Vig Knudstorp said.
He told Denmark's TV2 that staff cuts would mainly affect administration and sales, not production.
Last month, the maker of the famous colored building blocks appointed Niels B. Christiansen, who headed thermostat-maker Danfoss for nine years, as its chief executive to replace interim British CEO Bali Padda. Christiansen will start Oct. 1.
Based in western Denmark, Lego does not release quarterly figures. The group currently has more than 19,000 employees around the world. | – Danish toy maker Lego will cut 1,400 jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce, after reporting a decline in sales and profits in the first half of 2017. The privately held company said Tuesday that its revenue dropped 5% to $2.4 billion in the first six months of the year, mainly as a result of weakness in established markets like the US and Europe. Profits slipped 3% to $544 million. "We are disappointed by the decline in revenue in our established markets, and we have taken steps to address this," said Chairman Joergen Vig Knudstorp, per the AP. He said the long-term aim is to reach "more children in our well-established markets in Europe and the United States," and added there were "strong growth opportunities in growing markets such as China." The company, he said, needs to simplify its business model to reduce costs, though details weren't immediately available on what that might mean. Since 2012, the group has built an increasingly complex organization to support global double-digit growth. However, "in the process, we have added complexity into the organization which now in turn makes it harder for us to grow further," Vig Knudstorp said. The company has been lauded for embracing the digital era through smartphone apps and tie-ins with movies and video games, notes Reuters. The maker of the famous colored building blocks has more than 19,000 employees around the world. |
Canada’s largest school board will not approve any new student trips to the United States in the wake of controversial travel restrictions proposed by President Donald Trump. However, 25 trips involving about 900 Toronto District School Board students that are already scheduled for this spring will go ahead as planned unless circumstances change, TDSB education director John Malloy wrote in a letter to principals Thursday.
The Toronto District School Board has decided that director of education John Malloy will be able to cancel school trips to the U.S. if travel restrictions prevent students or staff from crossing the border. ( Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star file photo )
Given the uncertainty over the proposed travel restrictions, “we strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border,” Malloy said. The board’s plan — approved unanimously by trustees at a board meeting late Wednesday night — was to strike a balance between ensuring safety and inclusion for students, without causing financial loss and disappointment by cancelling the spring trips kids had planned and fundraised for over many months. Ikran Jama, 17, says the decision is good news for her and fellow students at York Memorial Collegiate who have been planning a four-day trip to New York City since last September.
Article Continued Below
“Students have worked so hard for this,” says the Grade 12 student, adding they have been selling cookies and popcorn, and holding concerts to raise money for the May visit, which will include giving a musical performance at a retirement home. Jama’s parents are from Somalia — one of the six Muslim-majority countries whose citizens could be refused entry to the U.S. if Trump’s proposed travel restrictions are put in place. She and many of her friends whose families immigrated from the six countries affected are nervous about what will happen when the bus stops at the border, even though they have Canadian passports, she says. But hearing that the school board has a plan in place helps, she added. The plan means there will be no trips to the U.S. approved for the 2017-2018 school year. But still on track are 24 separate trips involving about 800 students, and plans for about 100 youth from different schools to attend an international business competition in California.
In the event that any student or staff member on a trip this spring is refused entry at the border as a result of U.S. travel policy, everyone on the trip would return home and Malloy would be permitted to cancel remaining trips for this year, according to the motion approved by trustees. He could also cancel trips if travel restrictions are put in place in the next couple of months, with the board reimbursing students for costs that aren’t covered by insurance.
Article Continued Below
The TDSB is the latest to join the growing ranks of organizations altering travel policies amid concerns that members of their groups could be denied entry at the border. Earlier this month, Girl Guides of Canada cancelled trips to the U.S., citing safety concerns and uncertainty at the border, and to ensure all guides can participate in group travel. This week, Ryerson University and the Greater Essex County School Board followed suit and suspended trips. Other GTA boards have not announced cancellations. “Schools continue to be allowed to plan, but as always, know that these trips can be cancelled at any time if travel advisories change,” said Carla Pereira, spokesperson for the Peel District School Board. The Toronto Catholic District School Board has not suspended trips to the U.S. or abroad, however “we continue to monitor the situation,” said spokesperson John Yan. Malloy had originally been scheduled to provide TDSB trustees with an update Wednesday on a situation that board staff are watching closely. But Trustee Shelley Laskin, who has heard from concerned parents, moved a motion that his plan be approved on the spot to address uncertainty for students, their families and school staff. “It’s pretty clear there’s consensus that we’re not going to put our students at risk,” she said. The move was supported by student trustee Shams Mehdi, a Grade 11 student at Leaside High School, who noted that a substantial amount of time, money and planning resources have gone into trips already booked for this spring. The plan is “the appropriate decision to be made at this time,” he said.
Read more about: ||||| Rachael D'Amore, CTV Toronto
The Toronto District School Board will join other schools in southwestern Ontario who have decided to cancel trips to the U.S., citing concerns over muddled U.S. border restrictions.
John Malloy, the TDSB Director of Education, said that 24 trips to the U.S. already approved by the board will proceed for now, but that no new trips will be arranged.
The pre-approved trips involve approximately 800 students, as well as 100 students headed to the DECA competition.
“While already-approved trips are proceeding at this time, it’s important to note that should the Executive Order be fully implemented, resulting in any of our students being excluded from trips across the U.S. border, then the Board has asked me to cancel already-approved trips to the U.S. for the remainder of the school year,” he said in a statement published to the TDSB website Thursday.
Malloy said the board is prepared to reimburse students, parents and staff of the trip costs should this occur.
“We do not make this decision lightly,” he said, “but given the uncertainty of these new travel restrictions and when they may come into effect, if at all, we strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border.”
Though an executive order was handed down by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this month, banning travel from citizens of six Muslim-majority countries, it is currently not in effect.
Federal court judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked the order ahead of it being put in place, calling it a violation of the U.S. constitution.
While the order does not affect permanent residents or citizens of Canada, Malloy said the board does not want to risk having any one of their students turned away at the border.
TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird said Thursday that the board decided to allow the prearranged trips to go forward because they haven’t encountered an issue at the border with their students in the past.
“Right now we’re staying no new U.S. trips. Having said that, if we get clarification or if we get more information that maybe changes that, obviously we’ll revisit these decisions,” he told CP24.
Bird said that if a student does encounter an issue at the border on a pre-approved trip, the whole group will turn around.
“It’s not about politics, it’s about our principles as a school board to be inclusive and equitable. It’s not who’s in change, it’s not where they’re going,” Bird said.
“If our students can’t go somewhere for no legitimate reason, they’re being excluded from these trips. We don’t want them in those situations so that’s why we’re taking these additional steps.”
The Greater Essex County District School Board made a similar decision in February, though it was only in effect for that month.
Ryerson University also suspended trips to the U.S. earlier this month, citing similar concerns about border restrictions.
More recently, the Girl Guides of Canada announced last week that it is cancelling any trips to the U.S. over similar uncertainties. ||||| (CNN) Canada's largest school system announced it will no longer allow student or staff trips to the US, citing uncertainty over the travel ban .
Toronto District School Board expressed concern over how the US immigration policy could affect students on school trips.
"We strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border," the board's director of education, John Malloy, said in a statement.
Under the travel ban, citizens from six different Muslim-majority countries may not be allowed in the US under certain circumstances. The ban affects people outside of those six countries as well, since citizens from those countries could be living elsewhere, like Canada.
Trump's new travel ban: One thing to know
Trump's new travel ban: One thing to know 01:25
Trump's new travel ban: One thing to know
The US travel ban has not taken effect after rulings by two federal judges that temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's executive order. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said the Trump administration plans to appeal
The ongoing predicament left the Toronto District School Board with what it called a "difficult choice."
The board decided that the 24 pre-approved trips to the US would continue, but it will not permit new ones.
"We feel it strikes a balance between our equity and inclusion commitments as a school board, while not canceling already approved trips for which a financial loss would be incurred," Malloy's statement said.
The board serves 246,000 students in 584 schools throughout Toronto.
Its decision is similar to one made earlier this month by the Girl Guides of Canada, which is a Canadian version of the Girl Scouts.
The Girl Guides had announced it would no longer authorize trips to the United States and that it would avoid connecting flights through the country.
The group had called it a "very difficult decision to make," in a notice that didn't specifically mention Trump's travel ban, but the message directly referred to the current immigration situation.
"While the United States is a frequent destination for Guiding trips, the ability of all our members to equally enter this country is currently uncertain," its statement read. | – There will be no new trips to the Washington Monument for students within Canada's largest school system. The Toronto District School Board, which includes 245,000 students in 584 schools, will no longer green-light trips south of the border, citing uncertainty over border restrictions. "We strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border" in light of President Trump's proposed travel restrictions, TDSB Director of Education John Malloy says, per the Toronto Star. Some 25 trips involving 900 students already scheduled for the spring will go on as planned to prevent financial loss, but the board says all students will turn back if any one student is refused entry into the US. Should Trump's executive order banning travelers from six countries "be fully implemented, resulting in any of our students being excluded from trips across the US border," those trips will be cancelled outright, Malloy says, per CTV News. "It's not about politics, it's about our principles as a school board to be inclusive and equitable," adds a TDSB rep. The Greater Essex County School Board in southwestern Ontario cited similar reasons when banning trips to the US for the month of February. Toronto’s Ryerson University has halted trips until further notice, as have the Girl Guides of Canada, the Canadian version of the Girl Scouts, per CNN. Other school boards say they could follow in the TDSB's footsteps "if travel advisories change." |
The killing of Luke Somers, a British-born American photojournalist, and South African teacher Pierre Korkie during a failed attempt to rescue them in southern Yemen should not come as a surprise. Such operations are notoriously difficult, with the kidnappers, especially when they are well-organised terrorist groups, usually having all the advantages.
Questions, however, have arisen over key aspects of this particular raid. Mr Korkie was about to be freed by his kidnappers, the aid group he worked with, Gift of the Givers, has disclosed. His wife, Yolande, who was freed earlier this year, said in Cape Town that she was preparing to fly out to meet her husband and has been left devastated by the death.
His body is expected to return to South Africa on Monday, and on Sunday the government said it was “no time for finger-pointing” over the killing, adding that it undertook “numerous initiatives” to secure his release.
A statement initially released on the website of Yemen's defence ministry said the rescue attempt of Luke Somers had been successful (Getty)
However, the BBC reported that a senior member of the US administration had admitted that the special forces unit which carried out the operation was not even aware that Mr Korkie was being held with Mr Somers. What makes this puzzling is that the reason given for carrying out the rescue attempt at this time was because detailed intelligence had become available.
This pinpointed where Mr Somers was being held and that he faced imminent death. A previous American attempt to free Mr Somers on 25 November failed, his abductors, from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), having moved their captive. On this occasion, according to local people, numerous fighters were killed, but also civilians, reportedly including a 10-year-old boy.
About 40 American troops were said to have been involved in the rescue attempt. The special forces reportedly landed by helicopter around six miles from the compound where the hostages were held in Shabwa province. American officials were also unaware of Mr Korkie’s impending release, for which a ransom may have been paid. It is not clear whether that knowledge, and that of his presence with Mr Somers, would have changed the decision to carry out the operation. But this is not the first time that rescue attempts have resulted in fatal consequences when a prisoner was close to being freed through negotiations. Five years ago Stephen Farrell, of the New York Times, and an Afghan colleague, Sultan Munadi, were investigating the deaths of civilians in a Nato air strike near Kunduz when they were kidnapped by the Taliban.
Talks to free them were progressing when American and British forces launched a rescue attempt in which Mr Munadi and a British soldier were killed. Sultan’s father, Kurban Mohammed, told me in Kabul that his son had called him 90 minutes before he was shot to say he would be home soon.
When details of the deaths emerged, Downing Street insisted that Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, had ordered the raid – which both men deny.
The West has not been very successful in rescuing Islamist-held hostages recently. In July a raid by US special forces to free those being held by Isis failed. The group went on to behead five American and British prisoners. At the same time, however, it freed four French, three Spanish and a German national. The difference was governments had agreed to pay ransoms.
The widow of David Haines, one of those murdered, said on Sunday of her husband’s killers: “They consider themselves brave, but that’s not bravery.”
Barack Obama has ordered a review of policy on Americans abducted abroad. He deplored the “barbaric murders” of Mr Somers and Mr Korkie. ||||| U.S. Navy SEALs had walked nearly seven miles from their landing zone in southern Yemen and were within about 300 feet of the al-Qaeda compound where American journalist Luke Somers was being held when they suddenly came under fire, U.S. officials said Saturday.
As the commandos battled in the darkness, night-vision cameras in aircraft hovering overhead watched one militant hurry to the building housing Somers. By the time the Americans fought their way there, the militant was gone and Somers and another hostage, South African teacher Pierre Korkie, lay mortally wounded.
Korkie died aboard a rescue aircraft, according to officials who provided details of the operation. Somers survived to reach a nearby Navy ship, the USS Makin Island, where he died while undergoing surgery.
No casualties were reported among the 40-person U.S. rescue team.
In the wake of the rescue attempt, which took place at 1 a.m. Saturday, Yemen time (5 p.m. Friday in Washington), officials said that the decision to undertake it was made after U.S. intelligence determined his al-Qaeda captors were about to execute Somers.
Luke Somers and Pierre Korkie (European Pressphoto Agency)
But the failure to bring the hostages out alive, following two earlier attempts to rescue U.S. captives in recent months, was likely to raise questions about the operations and the intelligence that preceded them.
Last summer’s raid to rescue Americans being held in Syria by the Islamic State, and an attempt to rescue Somers two weeks ago, did not succeed because in both cases the hostages had been moved before the commandos arrived. Two of the Islamic State hostages, journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were later executed.
In a video released Wednesday following the initial attempt to rescue Somers, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) warned “Obama and the American government of the consequences of proceeding ahead in any other foolish action.�?
The threat to execute Somers within 72 hours, if unspecified demands were not met, led to operational planning for a second rescue attempt, which President Obama approved early Friday. Officials said U.S. intelligence gleaned from the first attempt contributed to their certainty of where Somers was being held, in a group of compounds that make up a small village in Shabwah governate, a remote region along the Gulf of Aden. Defense, intelligence and administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the secret operation.
The commandos did not know of Korkie’s presence in the compound. They had unconfirmed reports that another hostage might be with Somers but thought it would be someone else, a British citizen also being held by AQAP.
The tragedy of the South African’s death appeared to worsen when the South African relief organization that employed him, Gift of the Givers Foundation, said that his negotiated release had been expected Sunday.
Korkie, who had been working as a teacher in Yemen, and his wife, Yolande, were abducted in May 2013. Yolande Korkie was released from captivity in January, according to a post on the foundation’s Web site.
Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula threatened to kill Luke Somers, an American photojournalist, after U.S. commandos attempted to free him. (Reuters)
Somers, 33, a British-born U.S. citizen, was abducted in September 2013 from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, on a busy street near a supermarket. He had been working in the country as a freelance photojournalist.
Hostage executions, video-recorded by militants and disseminated online and via social media, have placed increasing pressure on the Obama administration to launch rescue attempts. While a number of militant-held European hostages have been released in exchange for million-dollar ransoms, the administration has said that payment will only increase the number of hostages taken. It has refused to pay and has pressured other governments not to participate in ransom negotiations.
Although the administration last spring traded five Taliban detainees from the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for a U.S. serviceman captured in Afghanistan and being held in Pakistan, it described that negotiation as an exchange of war prisoners rather than a hostage ransom.
The three failed attempts to rescue hostages alive through military means come as U.S. Special Forces have conducted a series of successful raids to capture wanted militants. In June, Ahmed Abu Khattala, indicted for alleged participation in the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four American officials dead, was snatched in a raid in Libya. He is awaiting trial in this country.
But taking a suspect off the street at a time of U.S. choosing and rescuing hostages held by well-armed militants anticipating a raid are different matters.
As described by U.S. officials, about 40 Navy SEALs were transported from the USS Makin Island, said to be located “in close proximity to Yemen,�? aboard V-22 Osprey aircraft that fly like airplanes but can land like helicopters. Using night-vision equipment, they began walking over terrain described as “hilly, scrubby�? and “rough.�?
As the team members approached the compound and were about 300 feet away, “they lost the element of surprise,�? an official said, and a firefight with the militants began. Officials said they were not certain how the team had been spotted.
Because of the direction of fire, a defense official said, they were nearly 100 percent certain that Somers and the other hostage were killed by the AQAP militants and not in crossfire.
Via overhead surveillance that was maintained throughout the rescue attempt, one militant was seen going into the building where Somers was known to be held, a senior administration official said. The militant stayed “for about a five to seven count . . . long enough, of course, to shoot people or take any other action. We didn’t have visibility inside.�?
By the time the commandos reached the building, the administration official said, “the terrorist had already fled.�?
The defense official said five AQAP militants were killed in the firefight. None were captured.
The wounded hostages, found inside the building, were immediately evacuated aboard an Osprey, but “one perished on the way�? to the USS Makin Island and “the other on the operating table�? aboard the ship, an amphibious assault vessel.
The U.S. forces were not on the ground more than 30 minutes, said the defense official, who described it as “a quick fight.�?
A flurry of Twitter postings from jihadists in Yemen claimed that three U.S. “Marines�? and eight Yemeni special forces were killed during the operation.
Reached Saturday by the Associated Press, Somers’s sister, Lucy Somers, said the family had been notified of his death by the FBI but asked that the family be “allowed to mourn in peace.�?
Since Somers’s kidnapping last year, his family had appealed for news of the abduction not to be made public. But after the AQAP video was released Wednesday, the family released their own video.
“He is a good person, and he has only been trying to do good things for the Yemeni population. He goes out of his way to care for and respect the common person, and he has made many lasting friends in Yemen,�? Somers’s brother said in the video. “Luke is only a photojournalist, and he is not responsible for any action the U.S. government has taken. Please understand that we had no prior knowledge of the rescue attempt for Luke and we mean no harm to anyone.�?
His mother also spoke, pleading for mercy.
“Give us an opportunity to see our Luke again. He is all that we have.�?
Missy Ryan in Kabul contributed to this report. | – The US commandos who tried to rescue American Luke Somers in Yemen came agonizingly close to doing so, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal. It says that about 40 special-ops troops got to within 100 yards of the walled compound in silence about 1am local time. Then, "a noise, maybe a dog bark, alerted the militants to the raiders," writes Adam Entous, who spoke to US officials familiar with the rescue attempt. A 30-minute firefight ensued, during which officials think a militant from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula slipped into the building where Somers was being held and shot him and South African hostage Pierre Korkie. The US troops killed about 10 militants and managed to escape with the two wounded hostages, but one died in the military aircraft carrying him away and the other died on an operating table. "The callous disregard for Luke's life is more proof of the depths of AQAP's depravity, and further reason why the world must never cease in seeking to defeat their evil ideology," said President Obama, as per Reuters. Obama approved the raid, the second in two weeks to try to free Somers, after AQAP promised to kill the photojournalist later today. |
Lea Michele's New Boyfriend Former GIGOLO
Lea Michele's New Boyfriend Is A Former GIGOLO -- Slangin' Wang
EXCLUSIVE
is getting for free what other women pay good money for -- her new beau has been moonlighting as a gigolo.Lea has been quietly dating Matthew Paetz for the last few months ... she has very consciously kept the relationship on the down low.Sources close to the couple tell us ... Matthew has been a hired gun forunder the alias, Christian.Cowboys4Angels -- which offers male "companionship" to lonely women -- is featured on Showtime's, "."According to the website ... Matthew is a certified life coach, dating expert and massage therapist ... charging $350 for one hour and up to $6,000 for a weekend. For $17,500 you can get a whole week.Matthew's profile is now hidden on the site.We're told Lea and Matthew met on the set of her music video, "On My Way."Sources tell us ... Matthew most recently took on a client for a weekend during the Stagecoach music festival in April. He's gone on hiatus since he started dating Lea.Reps for both Lea and Cowboys4Angels had no comment. ||||| Who Is Lea Michele's New Man, Matthew Paetz?
Lea Michele Talks About Peeing Her Pants
It's been nearly a year since her longtime boyfriend Cory Monteith passed away , and Lea Michele is slowly dipping her toe back into the dating waters.The Glee star, 27, has been seeing aspiring actor and model Matthew Paetz, PEOPLE has confirmed. The pair reportedly met in April on the set of her music video for "On My Way.""For a long time, Lea wasn't close to even thinking about getting into a relationship," says a Michele insider. "Cory's death was and will continue to be a struggle for her."For now, it appears that Paetz is helping Michele gradually move on. The question remains how much the actress knows about his questionable past. TMZ reports that Paetz is a former gigolo, who once operated under the alias "Christian" on the escort website Cowboys4Angels. The profile has since been removed from the site.It remains to be seen how this relationship will develop, but for her part, Michele is taking it day by day. "You can literally lose yourself if you don't actually die from it," Michele told Ellen DeGeneres last year of the grieving process. "[Cory] would want me to live my life." ||||| Lea Michele is downright smitten with the new man in her life, Matthew Paetz.
E! News has learned that the Glee star "has very strong feelings" for the aspiring actor and model and "thinks he's amazing."
While the two have only been dating for the last couple of months, we're told that Michele "feels he's a great guy."
Our insider adds, "He treats her really well, he's smart and fun. She's really happy."
Another source tells us, "This is her first real relationship since Cory. She waited a long time before getting serious again and she likes him a lot."
It appears that Paetz is the first real love interest Michele has taken to since Cory Monteith's tragic passing last summer.
The good-looking duo met on the set of the 27-year-old's music video for "On My Way." ||||| Lea Michele My New BF Is NOT A Gigolo He's A Dating Coach
Is Lea Michele's Boyfriend A Gigolo... Or A Dating Coach?
EXCLUSIVE
is standing by her man ... TMZ has learned the "" actress has decided to keep dating new BFbecause she's convinced he's no gigolo -- he just coaches 'em.Sources close to the couple tell us ... Lea was PISSED after we broke the story about-- a website that offers male "companionship" -- and confronted him about it.We're told Matthew copped to going on a few dates with female clients ... but told Lea he only did it as research -- so he could understand what the gigolos go through and coach them through it.This guy is good ... 'cause we're told Lea actually bought it, and Matt promised he'd never do it again.Our sources tell us Lea's not getting the full story ... because Paetz has had more than just "a few" dates while working as a gigolo for almost a year. ||||| Cory Monteith Autopsy Report Delayed, Fans Leave Flowers Outside Hotel Where He Died
Cory Monteith's fans will have to wait a bit longer to get some closure. Despite recent reports to the contrary, the British Columbia Coroner's office tells Us Weekly that they "definitely" will not have toxicology and autopsy reports for Monteith on Monday, July 15.
The 31-year-old Glee star was found dead in a hotel room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver, Canada on July 13. As for when the reports will be released, the Coroner's office tells Us, "We might well have an update tomorrow, but final cause of death might be several days or even a couple of weeks after that."
PHOTOS: Stars gone too soon
According to Chief Constable Doug LePard via CNN, the actor checked into the hotel on July 6 and had several people in his room Friday night. He was seen on a surveillance camera returning early in the morning to his room alone. Monteith's body was discovered on Saturday after staff members went to check on the actor after he missed his checkout time. His cause of death was not immediately known, but no foul play was expected.
PHOTOS: Celebs we lost in 2013
According to the Vancouver Sun, Monteith's fans have created a memorial in his honor by placing flowers and heartfelt notes outside the hotel. Helen Slater, 16, told the newspaper she left a note and a stuffed moose as a tribute to the Canadian, who had been seen wearing moose antlers before his death. "The note says how he was a part of Glee, and how that's kind of changed my life," Slater said. "Nothing's going to be the same anymore. It just put me (through) some really tough times, and helped me through depression a lot."
Monteith's cousin, Richard Monteith, was also seen placing flowers and a card outside the memorial while wiping away tears. Richard told the Vancouver Sun that they were "decently close."
PHOTOS: Cory and Lea's romance
The Monte Carlo actor completed a month-long stay in rehab for substance addiction in April. He had been dating Glee costar Lea Michele for more than a year at the time of his death. A source told Us that the couple was "100 percent happy and together and in love" and were "planning on moving in together after he got back from Vancouver." Michele, 26, has yet to release a public statement on the tragedy. Her rep told Us, "We ask that everyone kindly respect Lea's privacy during this devastating time. Thank you." | – It appears Lea Michele is beginning to move on, almost a year after the death of her boyfriend Cory Monteith. The Glee actress met Matthew Paetz on the set of one of her music videos in April, and she's reportedly been seeing him, quietly, for a couple months. "For a long time, Lea wasn't close to even thinking about getting into a relationship," a source tells People. "Cory's death was and will continue to be a struggle for her." Paetz is an aspiring actor and model, People notes, and on his Twitter account he describes himself as a dating and lifestyle coach—but TMZ says he is, or was, also a gigolo who went by the name "Christian" on Cowboys4Angels, a site offering male "companionship" that's featured on Showtime's Gigolos. TMZ has a screenshot of "Christian's" profile, which described him as a life coach, dating expert, and massage therapist who charged $350 per hour or $6,000 per weekend, but the gossip site says the profile is now hidden or removed. Sources say Paetz last took a client in April, but has taken a break since he and Michele got together. She was apparently unhappy after TMZ's gigolo story, the site notes in a follow-up, but sources say Paetz told her he really just coaches gigolos, and had only gone out with a few clients, for research purposes. But a TMZ source says Paetz had been working as an escort for nearly a year, and had gone on more than a few outings. But Michele "feels he's a great guy," another source tells E!. "He treats her really well, he's smart and fun. She's really happy." |
Publicity-mad glamour model Josie Cunningham has cancelled plans to sell tickets to her baby’s birth after discovering she’s expecting a girl.
She has also vowed to quit drinking and smoking, and says she has huge regrets over her unhealthy lifestyle, which she blames on the disappointment of believing her third child would be a third son.
“I want to enjoy my precious first few moments alone with my daughter and my mum – not share them with the world,” she said today. “It will be special.”
Josie – who revels in being known as Britain’s most hated woman – last week found out medics were wrong about the sex of the baby she is expecting in October.
She went back for a second opinion after using a DIY home scan kit, which indicated her new baby would be a girl. Doctors have now confirmed that this is the case.
Noble Draper Demi Moore wannabe: Josie's baby isn't far off
Josie, 24, shocked the nation by turning to booze and fags when she thought her baby would be a boy. But yesterday she said: “I have been such a silly girl and have lots of regrets. I can see that now I know I am going to have a daughter.”
The former escort, who first gained notoriety last year for her boob job on the NHS, later threatened to abort her baby for a chance to appear on Big Brother.
She then decided to go ahead with the pregnancy but revealed she would be selling tickets for £40,000 to be at the birth. She even planned to broadcast it on Skype, charging viewers £200 each to log on.
Expecting: Josie is also known as Britain's most hated woman
After changing her mind, Josie, of Leeds, also revealed: “I’ve really started looking after myself. I have never purposely put my child at any risk, but when I was originally told I was having a boy I just lost all willpower to avoid the cravings. Now all that’s changed. I’m ashamed of the way I have portrayed myself.
“I’ve now cut down to just one or two fags a day. I’m about to get hypnotherapy to stop completely.”
Josie – who has narrowed the possible fathers of her baby down to two men, a friend and a client she saw as an escort – caused outrage in July when she compared having another boy to getting a new ford and a girl to having a high-spec Range Rover.
She explained her delight over expecting a girl, saying: “My two little boys will grow up, get married and start their own little family – but a daughter usually stays close to their mum for life.” ||||| Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/REX USA/Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/REX USA Josie Cunningham offered four tickets to strangers to watch her give birth.
A woman who was offering tickets for strangers to watch the birth of her child has canceled the plan because she has found out she is having a girl.
Four people had already paid around $15,000 each to watch Josie Cunningham give birth.
But the British woman has had a change of heart after finding out she is having a daughter.
"I want to enjoy my precious first moments alone with my daughter and my mum — not share them with the world," she told the Mirror.
"I have been such a silly girl and have lots of regrets. I can see that now I know I am going to have a daughter."
Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/REX USA/Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/REX USA Josie Cunningham changed her mind about seling tickets to her birth after she found out she was having a girl.
Cunningham, 24, has two other children.
She rose to notoriety in the UK when it was revealed she had a boob job paid for by the state.
Cunningham said doctors had originally told her she was having a boy. ||||| Get daily news updates directly to your inbox Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
Wannabe celebrity Josie Cunningham last night confessed the chance of appearing on TV’s Big Brother was worth more than her unborn child’s life.
Puffing on a cigarette and rubbing her baby bump, the controversial model and call girl – who will have her abortion at a clinic this week – said: “I’m finally on the verge of becoming famous and I’m not going to ruin it now.
“An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won’t have a baby. Instead, I’ll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.”
Josie, 23, is already 18 weeks pregnant by either an escort agency client or a Premier League footballer. But she claims her late life-or-death decision has nothing to do with who the father is.
She says it is based on the breakdown of negotiations with Channel 5 to appear on the reality show.
Josie – who caused outrage in 2013 when she demanded a £4,800 boob job on the NHS to become a glamour model – said: “Channel 5 were keen to shortlist me then they found out I was pregnant.
“Then they suddenly turned cold. That was when I started considering an abortion. After the operation I will be going back to them and asking if they will still consider me.
“I’ve also had loads of other offers to further my career – and I’m not willing to give them up because I’m pregnant.”
Get the latest news and reaction on this shocking story here - or read on for the rest of Josie's interview.
(Image: @JosieCOnline / Twitter)
Yet only nine days ago Josie was excitedly tweeting a scan picture of her unborn child.
She said: “At first I thought thank God it’s a footballer or a doctor and not a Big Issue seller and they have money.
“Suddenly I was pregnant and I could get free dental work on the NHS, so I got a tooth straightened for cosmetic reasons, and it all seemed great.
poll loading Would you boycott Big Brother if Josie Cunningham appeared on the show after an abortion? 14000+ VOTES SO FAR YES NO
“But then I started to think. I didn’t want to be famous for having a footballer’s baby or for being the girl who had a kid by someone who paid for sex.
“I want to be famous for being me – Josie Cunningham, a glamour model and celebrity in my own right. If I want to do that I need to put my career first.
“I want the attention to be on me, not on who fathered my child.”
(Image: Nicholas Bowman / Sunday Mirror)
Josie’s reasons for going ahead with the abortion fall outside NHS guidelines and the 1967 Abortion Act.
The law states terminations may be carried out if continuing the pregnancy would damage a woman’s physical or mental health.
Career plans and fame-seeking are not valid reasons – but celebrity-obsessed Josie is determined.
“I was excited at first but as soon as I noticed I was getting bigger, that was it,” she said. “I realised it would be at least a year before I could do any glamour modelling if I went through with it and, in my opinion, nobody wants to see a naked pregnant lady.
“People will disagree with my actions. They always do, but I don’t care.
“It’s not ideal situation and I wish I had never fallen pregnant. I’m not on the Pill and in December the condom split when I was sleeping with a client.
“Then I had sex with a footballer and didn’t use contraception at all. I’d known him for years and we’d had sex before. I didn’t even think about the morning after pill.”
(Image: Facebook)
The footballer and the client – who is a high-flying surgeon – both offered to support Josie financially if she had the baby. But she said no.
So the footballer agreed to pay for the abortion at a London private clinic.
The Sunday Mirror has seen the documents but has decided not to name the clinic.
Josie – already mum to boys Harley, six, and Frankie, three – said: “I’ve had five miscarriages so the one good thing about the pregnancy is that it has shown me I can still carry beyond 12 weeks.
“I’m a good mum but this is something I have wanted for so long. I can’t give up my big break for anything.”
The termination will cost £1,695. Josie did not to try to have this particular medical procedure to boost her career carried out on the NHS.
But that didn’t stop her before.
She begged NHS doctors for a breast enlargement in January 2013 to take her from a 32A to 32DD, claiming years of bullying over her flat chest had ruined her life.
But she later revealed her ambition to become a glamour model was the real reason to go under the knife. Her idol is Katie Price and she revealed she longs to be the star of her own reality TV series.
Now Josie – still smoking up to 10 cigarettes a day and drinking despite her bump – fears pro-life activists and online trolls will target her over her abortion decision.
(Image: Nicholas Bowman / Sunday Mirror)
So she is keen to point out what she is doing is for her two sons as much as for her.
“I want it for myself but I want it for my boys,” she said. “I love them and I want to be able to buy them the most expensive toys and to give them nice holidays. People will criticise me but I’m a good mother.”
She said doesn’t think she will be “particularly distraught” after the termination and is relieved she has made her decision.
“To begin with I stopped drinking and started a super healthy diet but I’ve totally relaxed now,” she said.
“The other night I treated myself to a couple of frozen Smirnoff cocktails and I can’t stop smoking.
“People ask me what I’m craving and the answer is Smirnoff Ice! Once this is all out of the way I hope I can go back to my life and the opportunities will still be there.”
Josie now hopes Channel 5 bosses will reconsider her for Big Brother – but she claims there is more in the pipeline.
“If not, I have a documentary which will hopefully be done towards the end of the year and another reality TV show is interested,” she said.
“It’s all happening and finally all the hate I’ve have from the public over the NHS boob job is worth it.
“All those people who have trolled me and hated me for being me are going to be put in their place when I make it. Why should I give that up to have a baby?”
The law
An abortion can be carried out in the first 24 weeks under certain criteria.
It must take place in a hospital or licensed clinic. Two doctors must agree it would cause less damage to the mother's health than going on with pregnancy.
NHS guidelines say women severely impoverished or unable to provide care to the child, can have the procedure.
An abortion should ideally be carried out before 12 weeks.
There are rare situations when abortion may be carried out after 24 weeks: "to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman" or if there is "substantial risk the child would be born with physical or mental abnormalities". ||||| closeronline.co.uk Shameless: Josie Cunningham now wants her boobs made smaller on the NHS
A wannabe glamour model who was given a £4,800 boob job on the NHS now admits she regrets her decision and wants them out – for free.
Josie Cunningham, 23, sparked outrage when she had her 32A bust boosted to a 36DD in March.
But just six months later, the mum-of-two claims the implants are too big and wants them made smaller – at the cost of the taxpayer.
Josie, from Leeds, begged the NHS for the operation because she was being bullied for being flat-chested.
But she now claims her new boobs are making her feel self-conscious and are stopping her finding modelling work.
Josie told Closer magazine: “They're making my working life difficult.
“They're so big I find them embarrassing and I don't feel I can do any modelling because they've attracted so much negative attention."
Shameless Josie now believes the NHS should cover the cost of going under the knife again after making her top-heavy to begin with.
She added: “I'm thinking about having a reduction on the NHS.
"I don't want to spend my life being known as the girl with massive NHS boobs, so having smaller implants is the only option.
“I'm looking in to charities that could help, but I think it's down to the NHS because they made them so big."
Josie boasted about her boob job in March in an attempt to launch a career as a glamour model but soon faced a huge public backlash.
She told Closer: “People followed me in the street shouting 'We want our money back s***, it was so upsetting.”
“It’s ridiculous that the taxpayer paid for this surgery in the first place, especially when the NHS denies others cancer drugs and delays hip operations.
“Ultimately, the health budget should be spent on treating the sick, not wasted funding boob jobs purely for cosmetic reasons.”
Read Josie’s story in full in this week’s issue of Closer, out today, or visit www.closeronline.co.uk. | – An aspiring model and former escort in Britain says she won't be selling tickets to her baby's birth after all, and has decided to quit smoking and drinking—all because she found out she was having a girl, not a boy. Josie Cunningham, dubbed "Britain's most hated woman," now says she's "ashamed" of her plans to offer tickets to the birth at around $66,000 a pop and charge Skype viewers $330 to watch via livestream, reports the Daily Mirror. At least four people had paid an apparently reduced price of $15,000 each per ticket, according to the Daily News. Why else don't the Brits like her? She had a breast augmentation paid for by the public health system, and told the Mirror earlier this year that she was being considered for Big Brother and would abort her baby if it would help her chances. Then she apparently got upset upon learning that her baby would be another boy (she already has two sons). So she coped by drinking and smoking, until doctors said last week that the baby will actually be a girl. "I have been such a silly girl and have lots of regrets," Cunningham says. "I can see that now I know I am going to have a daughter." |
On Saturday, William Shatner took to Twitter to mourn the death of longtime Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy, ruefully confessing he couldn't "make it back in time" to attend the late actor's funeral on Sunday.
"I am currently in FL as I agreed to appear at the Red Cross Ball tonight," wrote Shatner. "I feel really awful."
"I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love." -William Shatner http://t.co/U8ZN98tVYp — William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 27, 2015
I am currently in FL as I agreed to appear at the Red Cross Ball tonight. Leonard's funeral is tomorrow. I can't make it back in time. — William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 28, 2015
I feel really awful. Here I am doing charity work and one of my dearest friends is being buried. — William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 28, 2015
Instead, Shatner suggested, fans could join him online tomorrow to remember Nimoy.
So maybe tomorrow we come together here and celebrate his life. — William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 28, 2015
So let's spend some time tomorrow celebrating Leonard's life and remembering the man. — William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 28, 2015
Naturally, Shatner missing Nimoy's funeral over a seemingly minor scheduling conflict struck more than a few commenters as rather odd. Isn't there some Trek-loving billionaire out there who can charter Bill a flight?
[Image via AP Images] | – One familiar face who apparently won't be appearing at Spock's funeral: Kirk. William Shatner tweeted today that he "can't make it" to Leonard Nimoy's memorial service tomorrow because he's currently in Florida doing charity work, Gawker reports. Noting that he had "agreed to appear at the Red Cross Ball tonight," Shatner added: "I feel really awful. Here I am doing charity work and one of my dearest friends is being buried." He suggested an online event tomorrow instead. "Maybe tomorrow we come together here and celebrate his life," he wrote. |
Looking for a quick recovery from a disappointing debate, President Barack Obama questioned the identity of the "real" Mitt Romney on Thursday, suggesting his Republican rival had not been candid about his policy positions while on stage.
"Gov. Romney may dance around his positions but if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth," Obama said at a post-debate rally.
Romney's campaign dismissed the criticism as "damage control."
Obama's aggressive stand came as his campaign conceded he will have to adjust his debate style. Wednesday's night event was widely viewed as a win for Romney and a lost opportunity for Obama to connect with the American people as national polls had showed him with a slight advantage heading into their first debate.
Obama said that when he reached the debate stage "I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney," Obama said, adding that the "real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that."
The president also accused Romney of misrepresenting past statements on education and outsourcing. In tough comments, the president said Romney "does not want to be held accountable ... because he knows full well that we don't want what he's selling."
Obama panned Romney's suggestion during the debate that one way to pare back federal spending is to cut the subsidy for PBS, which airs "Sesame Street." Romney said he likes PBS and "I love Big Bird," but said the country couldn't afford to keep borrowing money from China to pay for things like that.
"When he was asked what he'd actually do to cut the deficit and reduce spending, he said he'd eliminate funding for public television. That was his answer. I mean thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It's about time," Obama joked. "We didn't know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. But that's what we heard last night. How about that? Elmo, too?"
Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams responded to the accusations of dishonesty by saying Romney demonstrated in the debate why he should be president.
"In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future," Williams said. "Rather than a plan to fix our economy, President Obama simply offered more false attacks and renewed his call for job-killing tax hikes."
In a conference call with reporters, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said the president would make "adjustments" and would need to determine by the next presidential debate on Oct. 16 in Hempstead, N.Y., how best to counter what the campaign considers Romney's evasions on a series of issues.
Comparing it to a playoff game in sports, Axelrod said: "You evaluate after every contest and you make adjustments and I'm sure that we will make adjustments. I don't see us adding huge amounts of additional prep times. There are some strategic judgments that have to be made and we'll make them."
Axelrod sought to turn the questions about the debate into a matter of character, repeatedly accusing Romney of "hiding the truth and the facts" from the American people.
"It was a very vigorous performance, but one that was devoid of honesty," Axelrod said of Romney. He said the Republican presidential nominee offered well-delivered but "fraudulent" lines that will be hard to hold up over the remainder of the campaign.
Building on that narrative, Obama's campaign quickly released an ad questioning Romney's truthfulness, arguing that he didn't level with middle-class families on how his tax plan would affect them. "If we can't trust him here, how could we ever trust him here?" the ad says. It was airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia. ||||| Obama, the day after, slams Romney's claims By Jonathan Easley - Tweet President Obama didn’t repeat the mistake of his lackluster debate performance in his first post-debate appearance on Thursday, coming out swinging at Mitt Romney.
“We had our first debate last night,” Obama said at an outdoor event at Sloan’s Lake Park in Denver on Thursday. “When I got onto the stage I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy. The fellow onstage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”
Romney defended his tax plan after facing repeated claims from Obama that it would hurt the middle class and explode the deficit. The former Massachusetts governor said his plan to cut tax rates across-the-board would be paid for by ending tax preferences for the highest earners, and said that under no circumstances would he increase the tax burden on the middle class.
One of the few moments of levity came when Romney said part of his plan to reduce federal spending would be to cut funding to public television.
“I like PBS; I love Big Bird. Actually I like you, too,” Romney said to debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the host of PBS's "NewsHour." “But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."
Obama had a ready-made quip to play off the remark, and used it to hammer Romney over his tax plan.
“When asked what he would do to reduce the deficit, he said he would cut funding to public television,” Obama said Thursday. “That was his answer. Thanks goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It’s about time. We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. His math doesn’t add up, and I had to spend a lot of time last night trying to pin him down.”
Obama also hit Romney over other instances from the debate in which he said the GOP challenger had flip-flopped.
“The real Mitt Romney said we didn’t need more teachers in our classrooms,” Obama continued. “But the fellow onstage last night, he loves teachers, can’t get enough of them. The Mitt Romney we all know invested in companies that were pioneers in outsourcing. But the guy onstage last night said he doesn’t even know about laws that encourage offshoring.
“He said that if it’s true he must need a new accountant. Now, we know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney because he seems to be doing just fine with his current accountant. So you see, the man onstage last night — he doesn’t want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney and what he’s been saying for the last year, and that’s because he knows full well we don’t want what the real Mitt Romney has been selling for the last year.” Obama seemed to be knocked off message in the early stages of Wednesday’s debate, as taxes, and an aggressive Romney, dominated the opening segments.Romney defended his tax plan after facing repeated claims from Obama that it would hurt the middle class and explode the deficit. The former Massachusetts governor said his plan to cut tax rates across-the-board would be paid for by ending tax preferences for the highest earners, and said that under no circumstances would he increase the tax burden on the middle class.One of the few moments of levity came when Romney said part of his plan to reduce federal spending would be to cut funding to public television.“I like PBS; I love Big Bird. Actually I like you, too,” Romney said to debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the host of PBS's "NewsHour." “But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."Obama had a ready-made quip to play off the remark, and used it to hammer Romney over his tax plan.“When asked what he would do to reduce the deficit, he said he would cut funding to public television,” Obama said Thursday. “That was his answer. Thanks goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It’s about time. We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. His math doesn’t add up, and I had to spend a lot of time last night trying to pin him down.”Obama also hit Romney over other instances from the debate in which he said the GOP challenger had flip-flopped.“The real Mitt Romney said we didn’t need more teachers in our classrooms,” Obama continued. “But the fellow onstage last night, he loves teachers, can’t get enough of them. The Mitt Romney we all know invested in companies that were pioneers in outsourcing. But the guy onstage last night said he doesn’t even know about laws that encourage offshoring.“He said that if it’s true he must need a new accountant. Now, we know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney because he seems to be doing just fine with his current accountant. So you see, the man onstage last night — he doesn’t want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney and what he’s been saying for the last year, and that’s because he knows full well we don’t want what the real Mitt Romney has been selling for the last year.” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams shot back in an email to The Hill, saying the president was in "full damage-control mode" from the debate.
“In full damage-control mode, President Obama today offered no defense of his record and no vision for the future," Williams said. "Rather than a plan to fix our economy, President Obama simply offered more false attacks and renewed his call for job-killing tax hikes. Last night, Mitt Romney demonstrated why he should be President, laying out the clear choice in this election. We can’t afford four more years of the last four years. We need a real recovery – and Mitt Romney has a real plan to deliver it.”
Tweet View Comments Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/260311-obama-on-debate-i-met-this-very-spirited-fellow-who-claimed-to-be-mitt-romney The Hill Archives: Senate | House | Administration | Campaign | Business & Lobbying | Capital Living | Opinion View News by Subject:
Defense & Homeland Security | Energy & Environment | Healthcare | Finance & Economy | Technology | Foreign Policy | Labor | Transportation & Infrastructure ||||| Image credit: Mark Lennihan/AP Photo
While President Obama and Mitt Romney were trying to tout their economic plans, the social media sphere was massively distracted by a big yellow bird - Big Bird that is.
After Romney said, "I love Big Bird," but that he plans to cut funding for PBS anyhow, social media exploded with tweets about the "Sesame Street" character.
According to Twitter data, the words "Big Bird" were tweeted 17,000 times per minute and "PBS," the channel that airs "Sesame Street," peaked at 10,000 tweets per minute."Big Bird" was also the fourth highest-rising search term on Google.
Romney's comment sparked the hashtag #SaveBigBird, which was trending worldwide, and spawned at least three pro-Big Bird Twitter handles, @BigBird, @BigBirdRomney and @FiredBigBird.
The @BigBird handle, which sent out comments such as, "I guess I'm the 47%…" and, "Even Ernie is mad! :(", had nearly 14,000 followers one hour after the debate ended.
The @FiredBigBird went virtually viral, garnering 2,000 followers in two minutes. One hour after the debate, 16,000 people were following the account.
The @BigBirdRomney account, which had about 7,000 followers an hour after the debate, fired off nearly 50 tweets during the debate.
"Under Mitt #Romney, Sesame Street will become an extension of Wall Street," read one tweet.
"Under Mitt #Romney, Cookie Monster won't receive the care he needs to overcome his addiction," read another.
"Sesame Street" declined to comment on Big Bird's newfound political fame, saying that the show is careful to remain apolitical and noting that Big Bird is only six years old and, thus, does not understand politics.
The deluge of tweets were soon followed by an onslaught of .gifs, Tumblr images and blog posts. But despite the online explosion, Romney's intentions to cut funding to PBS are not new. He often mentions it as an example of how he will cut spending to shore up deficits and bring down the debt.
"I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS," Romney said at Wednesday's debate. "I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually, [I] like you [moderator Jim Lehrer], too. But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."
Lehrer, who rarely spoke throughout the debate, was also mocked by the Twitterverse, inspiring the Twitter account @SilentJimLeher and propelling the moderator's name into the top trends nationwide.
And while Big Bird and PBS were the big winners - or losers depending on how you look at it - on Twitter, the first presidential debate of was the most tweeted political event in U.S. history.
Shortly after President Obama and Romney left the stage, Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz tweeted, "Tonight's debate was the most tweeted about event in US political history, topping the numbers from the RNC and DNC. #debates."
The debate generated more than 10.3 million tweets to move ahead of the 9.5 million tweets measured across the several days of the Democratic Convention last month and the 4 million tweets of the Republican Convention, according to Twitter Government ( @gov), who track political tweets. ||||| Photograph by Eric Kayne/Getty Images.
Mitt Romney was booed. It was a good day for Mitt Romney.
John Dickerson John Dickerson is a Slate political columnist, the moderator of CBS’s Face the Nation, and author of Whistlestop and On Her Trail.
When the Republican nominee told the NAACP that he was committed to eliminating Obamacare, audience members shouted out. The negative reception might have been momentarily jarring to the candidate, but the moment had a political upside. It offered a chance for a candidate criticized for his malleability to look principled in the face of opposition. That might not have mattered to the audience in the auditorium, but as Romney advisers explain, this speech was not just aimed at the people sitting in their seats or African American voters in general. Like Romney's contentious visit to the largely African-American school in West Philadelphia weeks ago, this speech was aimed at rounding out Romney's image. “I believe that if you understood who I truly am in my heart, and if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president,” he said.
Hearing this, swing voters might think Gov. Romney has a bigger heart than those mean Democratic ads claiming he sent jobs overseas. At the very least the speech, and the negative reaction it provoked, replaced the outsourcing of American jobs as the political topic of the day. That may be the biggest political benefit of all of Mitt Romney's NAACP speech: He changed the conversation. In an election that is so close, both campaigns seem less concerned about the substance of their argument than that the argument take place on favorable turf. On issues from health care to charges and counter-charges about outsourcing, both Romney and Obama are willing to endure boos, howls from fact-checkers, and even some cries of hypocrisy if it will keep the argument on the topics that do them the most political good.
Advertisement
Romney was also applauded by the NAACP audience, as his supporters were quick to point out. True, but it's in their candidate's interest to get booed and to have that booing reported. Quiet golf clapping and even sustained applause would rob Romney of explaining how steadfast he is going to be in the interviews that followed. It would weaken the Daniel in the Lion’s Den story. Big deal Daniel, the lion's just purred at you. This is why, when candidate Obama in 2008 told of being grumbled at by auto executives for his position on auto emissions, he left out the part about how they gave him a standing ovation at the end of the speech.
Get Slate in your inbox.
The boos are particularly helpful in building ties with conservatives who prize constancy in the face of opposition among all political attributes and who have specific concerns about Romney's commitment to repealing the president's health care plan.
It should be noted that the appearance of bravery is distinct from actual bravery. This was not a Sister Soulja moment, named for Bill Clinton's comments at a conference sponsored by the Rainbow Coalition criticizing a popular rap artist for contributing to the coarsening of the culture. Jeb Bush talking about his party's strict views on immigration is the closest thing to a popular GOP official challenging his base.
In this case, Romney was telling leaders of a community disproportionately lacking quality health care that legislation expanding the system is a bad thing. Romney asked the audience to see his heart, but after so quickly dismissing this policy that has deep consequences for the African-American community he offered no alternative health care vision or hint that he understood the depth of the need that Obamacare—as flawed as it may be—was trying to meet. (When Romney later suggested those who had booed simply wanted more "free stuff," that probably made it harder to see his heart.)
Advertisement
Gov. Romney was also willing to endure a few uncomfortable moments when he recently declared that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act was a tax. That statement contradicted a senior aide who had labeled it a penalty and contradicted Romney's position as governor of Massachusetts. But it put him in sync with GOP Congressional leaders accusing President Obama of advocating a new tax. As one Republican official argued, the Romney campaign was happy to have an extended debate about the tax issue, even if it momentarily touched on Romney's possible lack of conviction, because all voters would hear was a debate about taxes. Any time the debate is about taxes, argue strategists for both parties, it's a good argument for the Republican candidate. Voters just tend to trust Republicans to give them lower taxes, which they'd prefer. Also, for Romney his pitch to independent voters who don’t like the law is that if he’s elected the tax will disappear. If Obama stays, it won’t.
President Obama is also willing to take his own hits to keep the argument on his turf. His campaign is running a variety of ads charging Romney with outsourcing jobs while the head of Bain Capital. A variety of fact-checking organizations have called the president on it, giving him the most negative ratings possible, challenging his assertions, and saying his campaign can’t back up its claims. Yet, the ads are still running. The Obama campaign is convinced the TV attacks are working because any conversation about outsourcing is one Democrats think they are going to win. The idea is unpopular and voters are likely to believe that the candidate who sells himself as a business guy and whose firm sometimes shuttered factories was the one involved in outsourcing. When Mitt Romney retaliates that Obama is the "outsourcer-in-chief," it's not likely to be that effective because voters are not predisposed to believe that of President Obama. (In addition to the fact that the charge is pretty weak.)
The Obama campaign is also running an ad making a claim about Romney’s position on abortion that is wafer-thin, as Time's Michael Scherer demonstrates. But a fight about women's reproductive issues is a fight Democrats are happy to have; it is more than worth enduring a few boos from the crowd. Though the president makes it sound like he is the overwhelming victim of negative ads, that's not so. President Obama is a long way from the 2008 candidate who used to inveigh against political game playing. Though, even at the time, Obama was willing to say one thing and do another, and his campaign ran more negative ads than any in history. | – Obama fans might take heart. The man they wanted to show up at last night's debate finally surfaced at a rally in Denver today. Stories are using words like "feistier" (Washington Post), "aggressive" (the AP), "coming out swinging" (the Hill), and "fired up" (Politico) to describe the president's speech. Some examples: That "very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney" last night must have been an imposter, said Obama, because "the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country all year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy, but the fellow onstage last night did not know anything about that." "The Mitt Romney we all know invested in companies that were pioneers in outsourcing. But the guy onstage last night said he doesn’t even know about laws that encourage offshoring." “I mean thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird. It’s about time. We didn’t know that Big Bird was driving the federal deficit. But that’s what we heard last night. Elmo, too?" “Gov. Romney may dance around his positions, but if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth." The Romney camp dismissed it all as "damage control." The president adjusted to the altitude, apparently? |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Both sides have complained of harassment and intimidation
Chinese officials have accused vessels from Vietnam of launching more than 1,400 ramming raids on its ships near a drilling rig in the South China Sea.
The foreign ministry said in a statement the actions were illegal and called on Hanoi to stop "provocations".
China moved the drilling rig on 2 May, helping to spark anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in which four people died.
Hanoi says the rig is within its waters and has called on China to stop its exploration in the area.
The South China Sea is host to overlapping territorial claims by a number of countries.
Beijing claims almost the entire sea, based on a mid-20th Century map with a line apparently delineating Chinese territory, and vague historical claims going back more than 1,000 years.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The seas are heavily patrolled by both Vietnamese and Chinese ships
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Nationalist sentiment is running very high in Vietnam over the South China Sea dispute
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Vietnam has shown images of its vessels being sunk by Chinese ships
The drilling rig is near the Paracel Islands, a grouping claimed by both China and Vietnam.
Hanoi argued that the rig was inside its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), usually defined as within 200 nautical miles of a country's coast.
However, in its most detailed defence of the rig manoeuvre so far, China's foreign ministry said the drilling operation fell "well within China's sovereignty and jurisdiction".
"The two locations of operation are 17 nautical miles from both the Zhongjian Island of China's Xisha Islands [Paracels] ... yet approximately 133 to 156 nautical miles away from the coast of the Vietnamese mainland," the statement said.
Vietnam-China tensions
Image copyright Reuters
China backs North Vietnam during the Vietnam war
1974 : China and South Vietnam fight a war over the Paracel Islands; China seizes Vietnam-controlled islands.
: China and South Vietnam fight a war over the Paracel Islands; China seizes Vietnam-controlled islands. After war, Hanoi moves closer to Russia, angered by Beijing's support for Khmer Rouge
1979: China and Vietnam fight a border war; thousands of troops die
China and Vietnam fight a border war; thousands of troops die 1988: Two sides fight over the Spratly Islands; about 60 Vietnamese sailors killed
The statement complained of "serious infringements upon China's sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction".
"As of 5pm on 7 June, there were as many as 63 Vietnamese vessels in the area at the peak, attempting to break through China's cordon and ramming the Chinese government ships for a total of 1,416 times," it said.
The statement goes on to give a lengthy justification of China's territorial claims.
Among the authorities it cites are the fact that a Chinese flag was hoisted on the islands in 1911, and that a Vietnamese school textbook from 1974 allegedly referred to the Paracels as Chinese. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Chinese and Vietnamese coast guard ships are patrolling near the Haiyang Shiyou oil rig, seen to the rear
A Vietnamese fishing boat has sunk after it collided with a Chinese vessel near a controversial oil rig in the South China Sea, amid tensions between the two nations.
Both countries are blaming the other for the incident.
Vietnam's coast guard said the boat was encircled by 40 Chinese vessels before it was rammed, reports said.
But Chinese state media outlet Xinhua said Vietnam's boat collided with its vessel after "engaging in harassment".
The BBC's Martin Patience says that whatever the truth, the sinking is likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries, given that for the past few weeks they have engaged in skirmishes at sea.
The two are locked in an intensifying dispute over South China Sea territory.
Vietnam has protested against China moving its Haiyang Shiyou 981 rig to waters also claimed by Hanoi, at a spot near the disputed Paracel Islands.
Monday's incident happened just 17 nautical miles from the rig, Vietnamese reports said.
Xinhua on Tuesday claimed that Vietnam had "on many occasions dispatched various boats with the sole intention of harassing Chinese-linked companies drilling in that part of the ocean".
It said China had made serious representations to Vietnam to request that it "halt its harassing and destructive activities".
Vietnamese media meanwhile reported that China deployed "a fast attack missile boat and a minesweeper" around the rig on Monday.
'Sovereign right'
China's refusal to move the rig sparked anti-China protests in Vietnam earlier in May, which left at least two people dead and several factories burnt.
Vietnamese legislators are preparing to sue China in an international court over the rig and other attacks on Vietnamese ships, according to local media.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A placard (R) at a 18 May protest in Ho Chin Minh City urged Vietnam to take China to an international court
Image copyright AFP Image caption The protests in May saw at least 15 factories burnt, including this Taiwanese furniture factory
China in recent days has upped its rhetoric on the South China Sea.
On Monday, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry addressed a recent attempt by Vietnam to list its historical claims to the Paracel Islands, saying it was "absurd and laughable".
On the same day, Xinhua published a commentary in English which accused Vietnam of wanting to "disturb and play up the normal drilling of Haiyang Shiyou 981".
Written by Chinese law professor Yang Zewei, the commentary states: "Hanoi should know that such drilling in the said area is China's sovereign right endowed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea."
"Vietnam should immediately stop any interruptive activities and undertake corresponding consequences and international responsibilities for its provocations.".
Japan has urged calm. Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said it was important that "relevant countries abstain from unilateral actions that raise tensions".
Meanwhile, Vietnam is preparing to prosecute "hundreds of suspects" involved in the anti-China protests earlier in May, and has already jailed two participants, according to local media.
China has for decades claimed a U-shaped swathe of the South China Sea.
But tensions have flared up in the region recently as China seeks to assert its claims in a more muscular fashion with a beefed-up maritime presence.
Its actions have upset several neighbouring countries, including the Philippines - which is taking China to a United Nations tribunal. | – The dispute between China and Vietnam, fueled by the contentious location of a Chinese oil rig, is heating up: Now China is accusing Vietnamese ships of ramming its vessels well over a thousand times during the last month, the BBC reports. "As of 5pm on 7 June, there were as many as 63 Vietnamese vessels in the area at the peak ... ramming the Chinese government ships for a total of 1,416 times," China says in a statement, which notes the ramming began shortly after it moved the rig on May 2. And the country is defending that movement to a spot that it says "falls well within China's sovereignty and jurisdiction." China's drilling is occurring far closer to its own islands, the Paracels, than to Vietnam's mainland, China claims. Trouble is, Vietnam also claims the Paracel Islands. Among China's justifications for its claim: It raised a flag on the islands in 1911, and a 1974 Vietnamese 9th-grade textbook allegedly says they're Chinese, the BBC notes. For its part, Vietnam last week called on the US to "make further practical acts" to settle the disagreements "in accordance with international law." |
Thorsten Heins, CEO of Research in Motion, introduces the BlackBerry 10. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP)
Research in Motion -- now taking on the name BlackBerry -- has unveiled its latest line of BlackBerry smartphones.
The BlackBerry Z10 features a full touchscreen and textured back, while the Q10 features the traditional design with physical keyboard.
So far, Wall Street does not seem too impressed. The company's stock is down 6%.
Miss the event? Scroll down for a look at the action as it happened.
11:26 a.m.: Heins wrap up. The Z10 dominated the presentation, but BlackBerry has more details on the traditional Q10 smartphone on its official blog.
Beyond a physical QWERTY keyboard, the device features a 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen display.
11:19 a.m.: Based on a video, it looks like the Z10 will be available in either black or white.
The video shows Keys, director Robert Rodriguez and writer Neil Gaiman handling various projects on the new BlackBerrys. Keys says she plans on taking the phone on tour and create videos from every city.
11:17 a.m.: Keys says she's particularly focused on maintaining the phone's vision for balance between personal and work tasks. "I really want to bridge the gap between the work phone and play phone," says Keys.
11:15 a.m.: Keys talks to Heins about why she split briefly from BlackBerry to choose other phones, comparing it to a long-term relationship. She cites "sexier" phones on the market, but appeared impressed with BlackBerry's new changes. "We're exclusively dating again and I'm very happy," she says.
11:13 a.m.: Heins creating a global creative director position at BlackBerry. The company's CEO announces Grammy winner Alicia Keys will fill the role.
11:10 a.m.: Heins says all four major U.S. wireless carriers -- AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile -- will carry the Z10. Price points will vary based on carrier. Device will start hitting stores worldwide next month.
(Correction: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile will carry the Z10. Sprint has committed to carrying the Q10 when it comes out.)
11:08 a.m.: Seeing a variety of music and film options, from Alicia Keys to Pixar movies. This looks like a real serious push to battle Apple and Google.
11:07 a.m.: Checking out montage of the apps and other media in BlackBerry World. Again, most of the heavy hitters are available, such as Evernote and Dropbox.
11:04 a.m.: One area where BlackBerry will need work is apps. Currently, BlackBerry World hosts 70,000 applications, much lower than competitors. However, the selection is pretty strong, including Skype, MLB and Amazon Kindle. It appears most of the major apps are available. Lots of games featured too, including Angry Birds and Where's My Water?
11:00 a.m.: Heins says all eight major studios and all major music labels have signed on to add music and video to BlackBerry World, the equivalent to the App Store and Google Play.
10:58 a.m.: Next up is BlackBerry Story Maker, software that lets users combine photos and video to create their own films. Users can also apply filters similar to Instagram.
10:55 a.m.: Picture Editor includes free transform, other editing options available in most smartphones.
So far, investors do not seem impressed with the unveiling. Stock in the company formerly known as RIM is down 5%, and falling.
10:54 a.m.: Checking out the Z10's camera. Users tap anywhere to take a picture, or move reticle to change focus. Also includes feature to help users snap best image.
10:52 a.m.: BlackBerry Remember is the next feature, consisting of a series of folders users access to manage content such as messages, photos, browser bookmarks and other info.
10:50 a.m.: The video chat also includes Screen Share, which allows one user to share their BlackBerry screen with another.
10:48 a.m.: Heins shifting to BlackBerry Messenger, which has 60 million users. The service is now adding video calls. They're testing it out with a BBM call to reps at the London event. The user can flip between chat and video call easily.
10:46 a.m.: Now looking at BlackBerry Balance, which allows users to create custom home screens, such as Home or Work. Users can have multiple profile sets with different apps. It appears you get two.
Also, if you like games, this demo just confirmed BlackBerry is getting Angry Birds: Star Wars. Looks like BlackBerry is beefing up their gaming options.
10:42 a.m.: The keyboard is really fascinating. It features a variation on predictive text where users can flick words from the keyboard. It recognizes the sentence structure and suggests words.
10:40 a.m.: The integration of social networks looks promising. Searching appears seamless. "The device adapts to you and what you need to know," says Heins.
10:38 a.m.: When managing messages, the user can hold down on an email or text and see a menu pop to the right side. Users then slide their thumb over to flag a messages, delete or perform other tasks.
10:36 a.m.: Also interesting: BlackBerry Peek. For example, while watching a video, the user can swipe from the left to quickly check email or their social network. It appears effortless.
10:35 a.m.: BlackBerry about to showcase the BlackBerry Hub, the interface for working with the Z10 smartphone. It features a series of rectangular tiles, slightly similar to Windows Phone. It appears zippy. The user taps on the window and quickly pops up their app or browser.
10:33 a.m.: The Q10 features a physical keyboard, added by user request. "We heard you loud and clear," says Heins. "We built this for all those people that said we just have to have a physical keyboarding experience." Time for a demo.
10:31 a.m.: The Z10 features a 4.2-inch touchscreen and textured back to make it easy to hold. Heins says the phone will boast super-fast browsing and integration with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
10:30 a.m.: Heins unveils the first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones: The BlackBerry Z10 and Q10. The Z10 looks like a full touchscreen phone, while the Q10 looks like a traditional model with signature keyboard.
10:28 a.m.: Heins just revealed Research in Motion is now going by name BlackBerry. "We are a company that is united in our vision of a mobile company," Heins says of the name change.
10:26 a.m.: Heins introduces RIM founder and former CEO Mike Lazaridis, who receives a huge ovation from the crowd.
10:24 a.m.: "To say we have reinvented this company is simply not enough," Heins says of RIM's evolution. He says new operating system built from the ground up, with stronger emphasis on content and apps.
10:21 a.m.: Heins says focus for BlackBerry 10 is to help users stay hyper-connected socially as well as maintaining a balance between their personal and professional lives. "BlackBerry 10 will keep them moving," Heins says, adding devices make jump to "true mobile computing."
10:18 a.m.: "We have definitely been on a journey of transformation," says Heins, who took over as CEO nearly a year ago. "I know innovation is at the heart of RIM," he says of the opportunity to lead RIM.
10:17 a.m.: The "#1 BlackBerry Fanboy" just cut some of his hair off due to his enthusiasm for the device. I think we get it, RIM. Everyone is thrilled.
Finally, Thorsten Heins, RIM President and CEO, takes the stage.
10:15 a.m.: Yet another video montage about the greatness of BlackBerry. If you're keeping score online, that's 3 video montages to zero phones unveiled.
Rapper Lil E is apparently so excited for the launch that he created a song called "No Sleep 'Til BlackBerry 10." RIM might be a wee bit excited about this launch.
10:12 a.m.: Alec Saunders, RIM's vice president of developer relations, talks about the behind-the-scenes action on BlackBerry 10. He says company has seen "huge groundswell of support" for the operating system.
10:09 a.m.: We've got another montage, CEOs, entrepreneurs and others from around the world talk about BlackBerry 10's perks. Interface definitely looks sleeker compared to earlier models. It seems more in line with contemporary smartphones.
10:07 a.m.: A RIM host conducts a quick global roll call, checking in on launch events in London, Paris and Dubai. Let's see some phones!
10:05 a.m.: The video montage begins. "One device for work and play" is the theme. Re-designed and re-invented used often.
Update at 10:03 a.m. ET: Naturally, RIM is running late. Hope to have updates soon.
Our original story
Research in Motion is getting ready to reveal arguably its most important lineup of smartphones: the BlackBerry 10 line.
As competition heats up from companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, the maker of the former #1 smartphone seeks a rebound with its latest BlackBerry.
What will RIM reveal? Stay here for the latest updates from the event starting at 10 a.m. ET. If you can access video, RIM is also hosting a webcast of their event. ||||| Summary: At events in major cities around the world, the BlackBerry maker rests its final chance of survival on the latest BlackBerry 10 platform, which the Canadian smartphone maker launched today.
New York: Research In Motion (RIM) today launched two new devices running the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 platform at events around the world, including in London, Paris, and Dubai. And to illustrate how BlackBerry 10 is an all-or-nothing bet on the future, RIM has rebranded itself BlackBerry as a company.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
The BlackBerry maker also announced two new devices: The touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 and the hardware keyboard-enabled BlackBerry Q10.
(Credit: BlackBerry)
The Z10 comes with a 4.2-inch display with 356 pixels per inch (ppi), along with a textured backing that makes it comfortable to hold. The Q10 comes with a fully fledged mobile QWERTY keyboard from a slightly smaller portrait display. It comes with a glass-weave cover, making it thinner and lighter, but also stronger than plastic.
Both devices come with a 1.5Ghz dual-core processors with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and an expandable memory card slot. Also included is a micro-HDMI output port on each device and near-field communication (NFC).
And, as expected, both devices will connect to compatible 4G LTE and HSPA+ networks.
(Credit: BlackBerry)
The Z10 will be available from March in the US on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, but price will vary by carrier. Heins attributed the network testing phase as being the main reasons for the delay. It will be available in the UK tomorrow on all carriers--including EE, O2, Vodafone, BT, and Three--with pricing set by carrier. The Z10 will be available in Canada on February 5.
The smartphone maker said the Z10 will retail for "around $149.99 on a three-year contract."
The Q10 will be made available to worldwide carriers in April, and pricing will range between £36 and £45 per month for a two-year contract on most networks. In most cases, upfront fees should be expected.
Today, BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins said, "Finally, here we are." He noted that today was not the end point of more than two years' work; it was the "starting line" for a new wave of BlackBerry products.
And then Heins dropped a surprise bomb on the audience by announcing that "Research In Motion" would become "one consistent brand that is recognized around the world." RIM will therefore become "BlackBerry," combining the name of the company and the platform together.
"One brand, one promise," Heins said.
RIM--sorry, I mean BlackBerry--has already garnered support from the three major carriers: Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. In total, BlackBerry has more than 650 carriers around the world.
BlackBerry global creative director Alicia Keys--yes, the singer--also shows that the company formerly known as RIM is also targeting not just soccer moms, but also moms in the workplace, according to Heins' introduction.
She said, almost too honestly, that she left the BlackBerry platform but came back after balancing two phones between work and home. Interestingly, BlackBerry has a solution to such a problem: BlackBerry Balance, which targets bring-your-own-device (BYOD) users. The software allows users to separate work and home lives with BlackBerry Balance, by splitting secure enterprise email and work apps with personal email accounts.
Read this BlackBerry 10 launch: By the numbers BlackBerry, previously known as Research In Motion (RIM), launched the new BlackBerry 10 platform this morning. Here are the numbers you need to know. Read more
Last week, BlackBerry released the back-end mobile device management service BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) 10, which powers the new BlackBerry's secure message service, along with policy management of the devices, along with both iOS and Android phones.
The launch of the new platform and devices comes at a crucial time for the Ontario, Canada-based smartphone maker.
BlackBerry has been under pressure to release the next wave of BlackBerry smartphones--its primary business focus--in a bid to reclaim a considerable quarter-on-quarter loss in mobile market share.
BlackBerry 10 was also delayed by a whole fiscal quarter following poor first-quarter sales put the company's cash-flow situation in the spotlight. The company also cut 5,000 jobs as part of a major restructuring effort to refocus the company's efforts on the BlackBerry 10 platform.
BlackBerry--which remains $RIMM on the Nasdaq--climbed by more than 4.6 percent in early morning trading, but dropped dramatically to more than 5 percent by the end of the launch event. ||||| The moment has arrived. Executives from Research in Motion have gathered for a six-city, simultaneous launch of BlackBerry 10, a mobile operating system that will power a new series of phones (and who knows what else). In one hour we’ll hear about the all-new BlackBerry 10 platfor, and two new phones, rumored to be called the Z10 and X10. Here in New York, hundreds of analysts, journalists and industry observers are bustling around the blue-tinted environs of Pier 36 in the Lower East Side for the launch which starts at 10am EST (7am Pacific).
Some are skeptical about today’s launch. RIM’s global market share is down to roughly 6% from a peak of 20% just three years ago; its shares are down 80% in the same period. This is a story of how quickly even dominant players in the new world of telecoms can fall behind if they stall in development: take a breath and you’re king of the industry; let it out and someone’s just overtaken you. In RIM’s case, iPhones and Android phones became the devices everyone wanted for both work and play, crimping RIM’s marketshare after a peak in 2009. A trickier-than-expected transition from RIM’s purchase of QNX in 2010 didn’t help matters. QNX technology will now power BB10.
Today is widely seen as the company’s last shot at relevance, a cliched Hail Mary Pass. It has laid off thousands of employees to save $1 billion in costs, but today RIM is pulling out the stops with a big launch venue. Stay tuned…
9.37 am EST: The main hall has opened for press, with Hot Chip thumping through the speakers. And some nice news for RIM’s shares: they’re currently up 4.2% after a two-day decline.
9.46am EST: The rest of the launch attendees are filling up the main hall – it’s getting loud and busy. Not long now.
10:06 am EST: Our MC has taken to the stage and we’re starting with video link-ups with the five other launch events around the world: London, Dubai, Toronto Paris and Johannesburg. The crowd in Toronto looks especially excited.
10:13 am EST: We’re seeing a couple of videos from industry and die-hard consumer fans of the BlackBerry. If you’re interested, you can watch them here. And here is a guy who has been growing his hair until the launch of BlackBerry 10 – a stage hand has just snipped off his pony tail in front of the cheering audience. That was cute.
10:14 am EST: And now, RIM’s chief executive, Thorsten Heins has taken to the stage. Looking relaxed in a grey suit with no tie. It’s been almost one year exactly since I was handed the reins of Research in Motion and it has easily bee the most challenging year of my career to date… but also the most exhilarating and rewarding.”
10:20 am EST: Heins: “We will soon give you more ways to connect your mobile experience to the world around you… We will be a leader in connecting you to your Internet of Things.” This is what RIM means when they talk about BlackBerry 10 being for hyper-connected consumers.
10:23 am EST: Heins says RIM had to make the tough decision to “go it alone” with its own software platform. He is publicly thanking RIM’s engineers and carrier partners.
10.27 am EST: Transitioning to RIM’s new phase it took heartfelt and brutal honesty with ourselves. We have transformed ourselves inside and out. Some big news: Research in Motion has rebranded itself as just BlackBerry. Now “Apple” isn’t the only fruit-theme tech moniker on the block. “ It all starts today with our renaming and our global launch of BlackBerry 10,” says Heins.
10.28 am EST: And here are the two new phones: the touchscreen Z10 and the Q10, a phone with a physical keyboard. The phones boast 1080p video recording. “Aren’t they beautiful?” asks Heins. (The rumors were almost right. Reports initially called them the Z10 and “X10″)
10:31 am EST: The devices have a “glass-weave” cover. Now Vivek Bhardwaj, head of BlackBerry’s software portfolio takes to the stage to demonstrate BlackBerry 10. The backdrop already refers to Bhardwaj’s employer as “BlackBerry.” He’s demonstrating BlackBerry Flow, and seamless transitions between apps like YouTube and the phone’s Hub.
10:33 am EST: Bhardwaj demonstrates watching a movie on the phone – the famous red LED on all BlackBerry phone flashes to indicate an email. He swipes the film slightly to the right to “peek” into the Hub and see what the email is. “We’ve move from content, straight into BlackBerry Hub.” RIM’s big idea is that checking notifications should not be disruptive, but seamless. Swipe down slightly and you can peek into your calendar to see what appointments you have coming up.
10:41 am EST: Bhardwaj shows off the predictive keyboard on the Z10, uses language algorithms to learn what sort of words its users tend to use over time. Unusually, predicted words appear *within* the keyboard – they’re small, but readable. Once you see a word you want to use, flick up to select it. There’s also “multi-language support,” meaning if you type “je” or “I” in French, the predictions suddenly go en Frances.
10:43 am EST: Now we’re looking at BlackBerry Balance, which separates work and personal apps on the phone as two different profiles. “Both applications co-exist, work and personal” says Bhardwaj. Heins adds that it’s a great solution for the CIO, because he can control the work aspect of the device, and the user, who can control the personal.
10:45 am EST: Heins says he has some exciting news about BlackBerry Messenger: it now has video calling capabilities. Bjardwaj does a video calling demo to Andrew in London, whose face we see pop up on the screen. In the middle of the call, they can sync screens in a feature called “screen share” to show images and screenshots.
10:50 am EST: We’re seeing some nifty tools for remembering appointments and tasks, part of a feature called BlackBerry Remember.
10:52 am EST: Now fror a demonstration of the Z10 camera. Bhardwaj takes a photo of Heins on stage. “What stands out is creating that perfect shot,” he says, focusing on Heins’ face. BlackBerry Timeshift, allowing you to take several photos in a row and zooming in to choose the best facial expression. There are Instagram-like filters for photo editing.
10:55 am EST: We’re talking about vacations – I’m sure both these guys could use one – and a feature called BlackBerry Story Maker. This appears to be an app that creates slide shows with transitions, effects, title and credit screens, from photos and videos in an album. Heins thanks Bhardwaj, who leaves the stage.
10:58 am EST: BlackBerry’s (formerly RIM’s) shares are down 4.6% despite showing off some nifty features.
- And now Martyn Mallick, vice president of global alliances and business development, takes to the stage. “We are launching BlackBerry 10 with more apps than any first-generation operating system,” says Mallick. BB10 has more than 70,000 applications available. Among the committed developers: Skype, WhatsApp, Amazon Kindle, SAP, Rovio (Angry Birds). We have over 1,000 top applications from around the world committed to BlackBerry 10.
11.00am EST – Among the gaming partners: Electronic Arts and GameLoft. For Music: “all the major record labels and the independents.” No mention yet of Spotify, Netflix or Hulu.
11.07am EST - Now for timing: ”By end of February we’ll be completing testing with 110 carriers globally.” (That’s lower than then 150 carriers we’d heard about before. In the U.S., carrier partners AT&T, Verizon and Sprint and T-Mobile will announce pricing and availability today. We expect availablity for Z10 to be in March. In Canada it will be available on Feb 10. It will retail for $199 on a three-year contract. in the UK z10 will be available tomorrow from Everything Everywhere, O2, Vodafone, BT and Carphone Warehouse.
11.10am EST – BlackBerry is announcing a “global creative director” position – sounds like it will be a celebrity. Yep, it’s Alicia Keys. Wearing a black velvet blazer, she has taken to the stage to describe what she likes about the new platform, and describes BlackBerry as an ex-boyfriend. Not a bad analogy – a lot of smartphone started with a BlackBerry before switching to an iPhone or Android phone. She had once been an avid user, then “we broke up” and she went for more bling. “I was playing the field.” Now we’re “back together.”
11.15 am EST: So what is Keys going to do? “I’m going to work closely with the app designers, the carriers, to explore this BB10 platform,” she says. “I’m definitely going to start with other super women who also love BlackBerry, and work with people in the entertainment and music business to inspire creative projects. And I want to enhance this concept, or bridging the gap between the work phone and the play phone. I’m extremely excited to work with you and your team.” ||||| On January 30, 2013, RIM (Research in Motion) announced that the company will officially be known as BlackBerry.
Members of the BlackBerry Faithful, meet your new phone. The BlackBerry Z10 has everything you've been waiting for: a sleek, modern, and professional touch-screen body with an up-to-date OS to match and 4G LTE support. You'll revel in the virtual keyboard's ease and in BlackBerry Messenger's seamless voice chats. You'll crow about the Z10's Micro-HDMI port, and enjoy the 8-megapixel camera with its built-in editing tools.
In the most important ways, everything comes together: a lovely HD screen, a fast processor, a camera (with tricks!) that's good enough to stand alongside those of the big boys.
Slip off the RIM-colored glasses, though, and you won't be able to ignore the minor hardware and OS irritations that nevertheless pile up as you use the Z10 over time -- like having to use an antiquated and unintuitive file system to create a new photo album, and a basic mapping app that can't possibly stand up to Google's best-in-show. For their part, BlackBerry detractors will plainly see a poor iPhone clone that offers little more than the usual features found in any present-day OS worth its salt.
If you're game to learn a few navigational gestures and your bigger-picture mentality lets you see beyond annoyances, you should feel justified buying the BlackBerry Z10. However, if you're happy with your current platform, there's no need to budge unless or until RIM patches up some OS holes.
The BlackBerry Z10 goes on sale January 31 in the U.K., February 5 in Canada ($149.99 on contract), and February 10 in the UAE. AT&T; sells the smartphone, beginning March 22 for $199 on contract (about $599 unlocked). Verizon will carry the Z10 for $199 in both black and also white, an exclusive for them. T-Mobile will also sell the Z10, but Sprint will skip it in favor of the keyboarded BlackBerry Q10.
Editors' note: You may also be interested in our full review of the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
Verizon is home to the exclusive white version of the BlackBerry Z10. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Design and build
At first glance, the handsome BlackBerry Z10 looks suspiciously like Apple's black iPhone 5: tall and narrow, with straight edges that meet at rounded corners, and a roughly 4-inch screen. Like the iPhone 5, the Z10 is adept at one-handed operation. That's where the similarities end.
You see, the Z10 has no navigation buttons, either physical or capacitive. Instead, you'll operate the Z10 through gestures (more on those later). The phone stands 5.1 inches tall, 2.6 inches wide, and 0.35 inch thick -- only slightly deeper than the iPhone 5. Its 4.8-ounce weight feels right with the phone's proportions, and the device has a much more comfortable grip than the iPhone, thanks to the slightly rounded edges on the back and a lightly textured, soft-touch finish.
The BlackBerry Z10 (left), resembles the iPhone 5, at least in shape. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
Of the two phones, the iPhone undeniably has the more solid, premium, and precise build quality. Its seams are as narrow as possible, and its details are finely machined. For those who care about such things, the iPhone 5's material quality trumps the Z10's treated plastics and loose back panel that too easily pops out when I slide a nail anywhere along its perimeter.
Larger than the iPhone 5 overall, the Z10's shape still fits neatly into pockets (I use my back pockets for trips around the office and the neighborhood). However, it feels uncomfortably flat when I wedge it between my shoulder and my ear. And yes, this is precisely why many people use a wireless headset.
In between the BlackBerry Z10's volume buttons is the voice control key. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
On its face, the Z10's 4.2-inch LCD display has a 1,280x768-pixel WXGA HD resolution (that's 355 pixels per inch; the iPhone 5 has a 326ppi density.) You'll see fine lettering, crisp edges, and deep colors. I did notice, though, that with both handsets set to maximum brightness, the iPhone 5 outshone the Z10, and an HD picture of a flower looked brighter, more detailed, and had more color variation on Apple's device. On the whole, the differences between the two are minimal. The bezel surrounding the screen is frankly wider than today's edge-to-edge fashion, but this doesn't personally bother me.
Above the display are the array of sensors, the notification LED, and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The right spine houses Up and Down volume controls, with a button in the center that serves as a voice command trigger you can also use to pause music. If you simultaneously press both volume buttons, you'll take a screenshot. If you're in camera mode, pressing either one snaps a picture.
Few smartphones can claim an HDMI port, but the Z10 is one of them. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)
On the Z10's left edge are the Micro-HDMI port and Micro-USB port. The placement of the latter pretty much guarantees that the charging cord gets in my way. Up top, you'll find the power/lock button and the 3.5 millimeter headset jack -- you'll hold down the start button for a 3-second countdown to turn off the phone. On the back are the camera lens with LED flash, and a BlackBerry icon that matches up with the NFC antenna on the opposite side of the back panel.
Also underneath that panel are the tall, narrow battery (I wonder if there was room for larger?) and a microSD card slot. The Z10 comes preloaded with a 8GB class 2 microSD card. That's good, right? It would be if the card supported the camera's option to capture 1080p HD video. As a result, you'll shoot video in 720p HD if you don't switch out the card to class 4 or higher.
BlackBerry 10 OS
Here's what you need to know about the new BlackBerry 10 OS: it looks cool, it's gesture-driven, and it'll take you at least a few minutes to pick up. In some ways it's quite advanced -- I'm a fan of BlackBerry Balance and the virtual keyboard -- and in other ways, you wonder what RIM's been doing all these years.
RIM's new smartphone OS throws out buttons in favor of navigational gestures. (Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
My full review of the BlackBerry 10 OS goes deep: into the layout, gestures, the Hub, maps, music, the keyboard, the browser...and that's the beginning. For more on the OS, I highly recommend skipping on over to the BlackBerry 10 OS review. But don't worry, I'll still give you a flavor of what to expect right here on these pages.
Features and apps
When it comes to multiple accounts and a unified inbox, BlackBerry 10 delivers. You can sign into multiple e-mail accounts and social networks, and populate your address book and calendar from these cross-pollinated networks. I didn't see contact duplicates, and my buddies' addresses also appeared neatly sorted in the maps app, basically the only really nice surprise there.
You'll find Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and all the good stuff when it comes to texting, chatting with other BlackBerry users, and sharing stuff to social networks. There's a good music app, a basic maps app, and the mostly-good Documents To Go, which opens the door to reading, creating, and editing Word and Excel documents, and viewing PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files.
Twitter and Facebook for BlackBerry 10 OS. (Credit: Screenshot by Jaymar Cabebe/CNET)
For your social networking apps, the BlackBerry serves up a healthy spoonful of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn. And yes, these are real apps, not just links to mobile Web sites masquerading as apps. You know what is, though? YouTube. I'm looking forward to a full-fledged app from them.
In addition to the social apps, you'll find a notes program, an alarm clock with special bedtime mode (it shuts off alerts, but don't hold your breath for lullabies). There's Flixster, Box, and Dropbox, the awesome Angry Birds Star Wars, Slacker Radio, and in my review unit, quite a lot of Canadian news, sports, and transportation apps.
You'll find downloadable programs, games, music, and shows in BlackBerry App World, and if you happen to listen to music while you browse, you can control it through a widget that pops up as a widget where you browse (left). (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
More content is close at hand in BlackBerry World, where you can browse by apps, games, music, videos, and TV shows. Rovio powers the shows, while longtime partner 7 Digital handles the music. Strangely, you can search for top paid apps, but there aren't any filtering options specifically for free programs.
BlackBerry Balance and business use
Business and security-conscious users have long been RIM's bread and butter. The BlackBerry Z10 serves this demographic well with BlackBerry Balance, which helps separate sensitive business apps from your personal ones, with the help of your corporate IT manager. There are privacy settings and RIM's signature encrypted servers, plus parental controls -- not to mention remote wiping with BlackBerry Protect.
With the Z10, RIM takes aim at both individual consumers looking for a smart new device and business professionals who could easily pass this phone to an IT administrator to get work-approved apps. The thing is, in today's climate of bring-your-own-phone, many businesses can get by with little extra security and have abandoned fleets of devices. Having been out of the game for so long, it could be a hard sell.
Cameras and video
For a long time now, the BlackBerry camera has been a weak spot. No longer. The Z10 packs a respectable 8-megapixel shooter in the back and a 2-megapixel lens up front. Both record 720p HD video, and the larger of the two can also shoot 1080p HD video.
The Z10's camera took some bright, zingy outdoor shots. (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Here's the flower in full resolution, cropped but otherwise untouched. (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
The main camera comes with autofocus, 5x digital zoom, and options for burst mode and stabilization. Pressing either volume button can snap a shot. TimeShift mode takes an array of photos, and lets you revisit them along a timeline to pick the one you like best. There are scene modes (like action and night) and you can choose to take pictures in a 3:4 or 9:16 ratio. (For more on TimeShift, see the full BlackBerry 10 OS review.)
Whatever he's doing, CNET editor Jaymar Cabebe is most definitely not posing for the camera. (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Although there's autofocus, focusing elsewhere isn't intuitive. Touching the screen anywhere triggers the shutter, so you'll just have to know to drag the focal bracket around the screen.
Jaymar at full resolution. You can easily see a ton of noise. (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Budding photographers will also notice scant options and controls. There's no HDR, no ISO settings, no grid, no geotagging, no option to drop resolution, and -- one of its worst offenses in my opinion -- no way to silence the shutter's loud clacking.
I've heard phone makers argue that most casual users don't need features overkill, but I submit that it's nice to have, especially if you'd like phone owners to leave the dSLR at home and use your phone as their camera instead.
You can make out the individual furs in this cute plushy, shot indoors. (Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)
Despite the thin toolset, image quality was pretty decent. Naturally, photos looked better outside than inside, where there was plenty of ambient light and where I could hold the image steady. Some pictures looked very noisy in full resolution, but other times, the Z10's camera picked up more detail than some others; for instance, in one comparison photo I took with an HTC Droid DNA. | – The six-city launch of the new BlackBerry 10 phones and operating system is now complete. One of the biggest shockers from the event: Research in Motion is scrapping its name, and will now be known simply as BlackBerry. Other developments: CEO Thorsten Heins underscored the "heartfelt and brutal honesty" BlackBerry had to go through to get to this day, reports Forbes. It's been a long haul for the phone, which is debuting nearly a year late. Heins showcased two phones: the Z10, which has a full 4.2-inch touchscreen, and the Q10, which has a traditional keyboard set below a smaller touchscreen. Heins said the Q10 was created for customers "that said we just have to have a physical keyboarding experience," reports USA Today. The company also added some star power, announcing that Alicia Keys would be its new Global Creative director, a position created for her, the Verge reports. The company also boasted that Neil Gaiman and Robert Rodriguez will be using the phone for a film and art/storytelling project. On to the features. First up was BlackBerry Hub, the central interface for the Z10. It has a tiled layout not unlike Microsoft's latest Windows iteration. BlackBerry software honcho Vivek Bhardwaj also showed off BlackBerry Peek, the phone's notification system, which allows users to check emails and calendars without leaving the app they're using. Bhardwaj also discussed the hotly anticipated BlackBerry Balance feature, which aims to reinstate BlackBerry's dominance among business users. It allows users to maintain a personal profile on the phone, while a company can access the phone's professional profile. As for hardware, BlackBerry's camera now allows for face-to-face messaging. The Z10 will be available in black and white, and ZDNet notes prices will hover around $149 for a three-month contract, depending on the carrier. The phones will be available tomorrow in the UK, but the US will have to cool its heel until March. |
Okay, it’s been four months, no excuses — you should have finished “House of Cards” by now. If not, the clock’s ticking, because another online-only TV show set in Washington is officially on the way.
“Alpha House,” a political satire about four Republican senators who live together in a rowhouse on Capitol Hill, has been ordered to series by Amazon Studios, the company announced Wednesday morning; 13 episodes will air this year and early next year. The studio, a production arm of Amazon.com, performed a nifty experiment about a month ago, posting more than a dozen television pilots — eight comedies and six children’s shows — to its consumer site. It called on customers to give feedback about which pilots they would like to see turned into full-fledged shows that would stream online.
Apparently, viewers are fans of middle-aged men living like frat brothers and running the country in their spare time. “Alpha House,” created and written by “Doonesbury” cartoonist Garry Trudeau, was one of just two comedy pilots picked up for a full season.
But does the popularity of Netflix’s “House of Cards” — which attempted to defy TV conventions in releasing all its episodes to its streaming site on the same day — hurt another Washington series on the Internet? Not at all, says executive producer Jonathan Alter. In fact, the Kevin Spacey drama was a huge benefit to the fledgling “Alpha House.”
“It helped introduce people to the idea of watching online television, and especially online television about politics,” said Alter, a Washington-based writer for Bloomberg News who spent nearly three decades at Newsweek.
The show, based on a real property in the District that has housed a rotation of various Democratic senators for years, has been the brainchild of Trudeau since about 2008. Inspired by a New York Times story about the house, Trudeau originally wrote the pilot for network television, but things didn’t pan out.
Last January, Alter, a close friend of Trudeau’s, brought up the idea of resurrecting the abandoned pilot. Trudeau’s response, Alter said, was something along the lines of, “Well, be my guest.” Although Trudeau was unsure about pitching the script to Amazon Studios, Alter said, Alter convinced him that an online series was the way to go.
Having Trudeau’s name attached to the project certainly helped it stand out, Alter said, especially above the thousands of scripts Amazon received when it announced an open call for ideas. But Roy Price, Amazon Studios director, insists that “once you’re on the development slate, it’s all about the material.” Even though certain projects come into the studio in different ways, he said, “I think we apply the same criteria to all the ideas that we look at.”
Either way, Price added, studio execs were thrilled when they heard Trudeau, a known political satirist, wanted to do a show about the District. “When it comes to Washington and its foibles and what makes it unique, few people have been more insightful and more knowledgeable than Garry Trudeau,” Price said.
Alter agrees that Trudeau’s voice was key to the show’s success, along with connections that helped land Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert in small roles in the pilot.
“I do think it helped we got those cameos,” Alter said, then paused. “And then it really helped when we got John Goodman.”
Goodman plays Gil John Biggs, a brash, unfiltered senator from North Carolina who seems to be the leader of the alpha house. When he’s not making fun of his roommate-colleagues, he’s on the phone with his wife, back in his home district, who’s telling him to step up his game, because the beloved Duke basketball coach is planning to run against him in the next election. Goodman is joined by Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy and Mark Consuelos, who also play Republican senators.
(Trudeau went against the political affiliations of the actual house because, he said in a Washington Post interview, Democrats are currently pretty boring, while Republicans “are tearing themselves apart and will be for the foreseeable future.”)
The pilot skewers various aspects of Washington, cracking jokes at the expense of both conservatives and liberals. In one exciting coincidence, Trudeau penned a scene about an epic filibuster years before the 13-hour speech in March by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). At first, the writers of the show were worried that an all-night filibuster might seem unrealistic; after Paul’s performance, truth proved stranger than fiction, and the scene stayed.
Once the crew learned that filming on the Capitol grounds would be next to impossible, they wound up shooting most of the pilot in New York, with exterior shots of the District, including a rowhouse on Maryland Avenue that will stand in for the alpha house. While taking creative license for the comedy, Alter said, they try to keep everything as realistic as possible for eagle-eyed viewers. This means the little details: the bowl of tiny American flag pins the senators keep on hand, low-level staff members sitting against the walls — instead of at the table — in meetings. (It doesn’t stop there: Alter said they’ll be making adjustments in the future on set after he noticed on C-SPAN that the real Senate floor chairs differed slightly from theirs.)
In the original article that inspired “Alpha House,” housemate Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) was quoted, saying that, in theory, everyone wanted to do a TV show about the unusual living situation, but “then they realize that the story of four middle-aged men, with no sex and violence, is not going to last two weeks.”
Hearing that quote, Alter laughed. “We’ve addressed the question of sex,” he said, referring to a scene in the pilot in which the newest senator, played by Consuelos, is shown enthusiastically keeping busy during the all-night filibuster at the Capitol.
“And,” Alter added, in case any viewers need more enticement about another political show, “there may actually be some violence that’s coming, too.” ||||| WASHINGTON — They had packed up their comforters, antacids and Jimi Hendrix records.
Then Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, pointed to a dusty item he did not recognize. Was it a piece of Asian art, he wondered?
Not exactly. “In Christian families, that would be called a Christmas tree holder,” Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, wryly explained to his Jewish friend.
It was the end of the real “Alpha House,” the crumbling gray-blue rowhouse in the shadow of the Capitol where a group of powerful Democratic lawmakers — including Mr. Miller, Mr. Schumer, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and a rotating cast of supporting players — have lived for more than three decades.
Mr. Miller, the owner of the two-story, two-bedroom house, is retiring after 40 years in Congress and is selling the home that inspired the Amazon web series “Alpha House,” as well as countless punch lines about the crash pad’s fraternity-meets-policy seminar vibe. | – Amazon is ramping up its competition with Netflix: The latter has House of Cards, and now Amazon has its own original series set in DC ... with "House" in the title. Alpha House was created by Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who also writes the series about four Republican senators living together. The pilot (which features cameos by Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert) went online a month ago, along with 13 others, and Amazon looked at customer feedback to determine which to pick up for a full season. Alpha House was one of just two comedy pilots to make the cut. The Washington Post describes Alpha House as "political satire" in which the senators, played by John Goodman, Mark Consuelos, Clark Johnson, and Matt Malloy "live like frat brothers." It was inspired by a real Capitol Hill property in which Democratic senators have lived over the years, and it's been kicking around in Trudeau's brain since 2008. Notes the director of Amazon Studios, "When it comes to Washington and its foibles and what makes it unique, few people have been more insightful and more knowledgeable than Garry Trudeau." |
Princess Mako will lose royal status when she marries Kei Komuro, a paralegal, whose mother is reportedly in debt over his education
The parents of Japan’s Princess Mako have said that her marriage cannot go ahead until her fiance’s mother has resolved a reported financial scandal.
Mako, the eldest grandchild of Emperor Akihito, caused a stir last September when she announced her engagement to Kei Komuro, whom she had met while they were studying at a university in Tokyo. Komuro has done some work as an assistant at a law firm in Tokyo, Okuno & Partners, and is soon to attend Fordham Law School in New York on a scholarship.
The princess, who like all female members of the imperial family who marry a “commoner” would lose her royal status, was due to wed the 26-year-old paralegal in November this year, but in February their nuptials were abruptly postponed until 2020.
Japan's Princess Mako postpones wedding until 2020 Read more
The couple said they needed more time to prepare and to “think about marriage more deeply”. There were also concerns that preparations for the wedding, the first in the imperial family since Akihito’s only daughter married in a low-key ceremony in 2005, could overshadow his abdication on 30 April next year.
The 84-year-old will be replaced on the Chrysanthemum throne the following day by his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito.
“We have come to realise the lack of time to make sufficient preparations for various events leading up to our marriage this autumn and our life afterward,” Mako said in a statement at the time. “We believe that we have rushed various things.”
Japanese media have reported, however, that Mako’s parents, Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, were increasingly troubled by media reports that Komuro’s mother was experiencing financial problems stemming from a loan she received from her former partner to cover her son’s tuition.
Mako’s parents reportedly told the Komuros at several face-to-face meetings that the wedding could be marred by the mother’s reported debts and that the wedding could not go ahead until the matter had been resolved.
There are also concerns that the couple could invite public criticism, as they will receive a lump sum of about 100 million yen ($900,000) from the government to help ease Mako’s exit from the imperial family and into her new non-royal life.
Komuro left for New York earlier this month to begin three years of study for the state’s bar exam. No date has been set for the wedding or the series of rituals that precede it, but Kyodo News, citing a source close to the couple, said Mako and Komuro were in regular contact and still intended to marry.
• This article was amended on 9 August 2018 to correct a description of Kei Komuro as a lawyer, and to change a reference to Kako that should have been Mako. Kako is a sister. ||||| Princess Mako, the elder daughter of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, and her fiancee Kei Komuro, a university friend of Princess Mako, smile during a press conference to announce their engagement at Akasaka East Residence in Tokyo, Japan. Reuters
TOKYO - The parents of Princess Mako, the eldest granddaughter of Emperor Akihito, demanded her boyfriend Kei Komuro and his mother solve a financial problem before the imperial agency postponed in February ceremonies for their formal engagement and marriage, a source close to the matter said Wednesday.
Prince Akishino and his wife Princess Kiko told the Komuros from late last year to early this year that a ceremony for their official engagement, which had been scheduled in March, could not be held without resolving his family's financial trouble, reported by weekly magazines.
In September, the couple, both 26 years old, announced their engagement after receiving the emperor's blessing. But the Imperial Household Agency announced in February the postponement, citing a "lack of preparation."
The abrupt postponement followed weekly magazine reports of a financial dispute between Komuro's mother and her former fiance over her son's educational expenses, which were shouldered by the mother's former partner.
The princess' family was not notified beforehand of what was reported as a "debt problem," the source said.
The Komuro family has told the princess' parents that they did not regard the money as a "debt" and are seeking to hold talks with the mother's former fiance, according to the source.
Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko have also asked the Komuros to explain the matter publicly but so far no action has been taken, the source added.
A series of court rituals, including the betrothal ceremony of "Nosai no Gi" that precedes the official wedding -- which was originally planned for November -- were postponed until 2020.
Despite the postponement of their nuptial, Princess Mako and Komuro are staying in close contact with each other and their intention to marry is unchanged, according to the source.
Komuro, a former classmate of Princess Mako from university days, left Japan on Tuesday to study in New York for three years with the aim of passing the U.S. state's bar examination.
==Kyodo | – Japan may be a losing a princess, but the imperial family sure isn't making the process an easy one: A proposed wedding between Princess Mako and her non-royal college sweetheart has hit yet another bump. As Kyodo News reports, the princess' family is worried about a money issue swirling around the family of her potential future husband, Kei Komuro. It seems that Komuro's mother used money from a former romantic partner to pay for her son's educational expenses. Now there's apparently a rift between the two former lovers about repayment, and Mako's parents, Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, want it publicly cleared up before any nuptials take place, according to Japanese media reports. This isn't the first sign of trouble for the impending nuptials. The couple initially announced plans to marry in November 2017, but abruptly postponed the wedding until 2020 and explained that they were rushing things. And when New York's Fordham University announced that the princess' "fiance" would be attending law school there, the Japanese royal family chafed at the term "fiance" as the couple's engagement ceremony has not taken place, prompting the school to issue a new release without it. Assuming Princess Mako goes through with the wedding, she will have to renounce her royal status, though the Guardian notes that the couple would get nearly $1 million from the government to help with that transition. (All this is unfolding as the princess' grandfather, Emperor Akhito, prepares to abdicate next year.) |
Several prisoners shattered the teeth and broke the leg of Rob Ford's estranged brother-in-law in a jailhouse beating that was intended to keep him quiet about the Toronto mayor's abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs, it has been alleged in a lawsuit.
The 2012 jailhouse assault of Scott MacIntyre was orchestrated by Aedan Petros, Mr. MacIntyre has alleged in a statement of claim. Mr. Petros is a 300-pound, violent criminal who played defensive tackle for Mr. Ford when he was the coach of the football team at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School.
When Mr. MacIntyre was attacked in the shower on March 22, 2012, at the Toronto West Detention Centre, it came after several weeks of threats from inmates who urged the 46-year-old repeat offender to "do the right thing," Mr. MacIntyre said separately in an hour-long interview with The Globe and Mail.
Story continues below advertisement
"They wanted to know if I was going to do the right thing –– was I going to keep my mouth shut," Mr. MacIntyre told The Globe. The inmates and Mr. Petros – a 22-year-old who was jailed in connection with an armed robbery and home invasion and has since been sentenced to five years in a federal penitentiary – repeatedly approached Mr. MacIntyre with warnings, such as "there is no use in bringing Rob into this; what's done behind closed doors stays behind closed doors. … Stuff of that nature," Mr. MacIntyre said. The statement of claim, filed in Toronto on Wednesday, makes similar allegations about the threats.
An official with the Ministry of Correctional Services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed to The Globe that Mr. Petros was housed in the same unit of the jail, known as 1B, as Mr. MacIntyre at the time of the assault.
Brent Ross, a ministry spokesman, said an investigation into the beating had been launched, but he declined to release its findings, citing concerns about jail security. Mayor Ford did not respond to a list of questions that was sent to him by e-mail and in a letter. He did, however, speak about The Globe's inquiries with the Toronto Sun, telling the newspaper that any suggestion that he played a role in the beating is "far fetched" and "way out there." Mr. Ford's lawyer and close adviser, Dennis Morris, said the notion that the mayor had advance knowledge of the attack on Mr. MacIntyre was "insanity."
Mr. Morris said the allegations in the lawsuit are "without fact or foundation." Mr. Ford has retained Gavin Tighe, a Bay Street litigator, to represent him in the civil suit. Mr. MacIntyre is being represented by Sean Dewart and Tim Gleason, who declined comment.
None of the claims in Mr. MacIntyre's lawsuit, which lists Mr. Ford, Mr. Petros, another former football coach named Payman Aboodowleh, as well as the Minister of Correctional Services as defendants, have been proven in court.
The lawsuit touches on one of the more enduring mysteries of the scandal that has engulfed Mayor Ford since he became the focus of a sweeping police investigation and admitted to smoking crack cocaine: what was an Ontario provincial court judge referring to in 2012 when he said he inferred that Mr. MacIntyre was beaten in jail because he was "a bother to Mr. Ford?"
Mr. MacIntyre wound up in jail in January, 2012, after police were called to Mayor Ford's house because of a confrontation between the mayor and Mr. MacIntyre, which culminated with Mr. MacIntyre threatening to kill Mr. Ford. (In his statement of claim, Mr. MacIntyre alleges that the argument stemmed from a debt that was owed to him by his then common-law spouse, Kathy Ford, the mayor's older sister.) Mr. MacIntyre eventually pleaded guilty to threatening the mayor with death, as well as possession of cocaine and heroin. But when he was sentenced in June, 2012 – several months after the jailhouse attack – the judge presiding over the case, Mr. Justice Paul French, called the attack a case of "so-called jailhouse justice."
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
"I infer that it was visited upon Mr. MacIntyre because of his being a bother to Mr. Ford," Judge French said.
Judge French's comments were widely reported in the media, though he never elaborated on what led him to this conclusion.
Mr. MacIntyre's lawsuit and his interview with The Globe are his first public description of the beating that his statement of claim says left him with a severely fractured tibia and fibula, and at least four teeth that were "sheared at the gum line."
Mr. MacIntyre is familiar with the confines of the Toronto West Detention Centre. He is a convicted drug trafficker who has served prison stints in both Canada and the United Kingdom. He has suffered from a drug addiction that he says he has kicked over the past two years.
So, when he was jailed again in January, 2012, he says he repeatedly asked to be placed in a range of the jail, unit 3A, that typically houses older and calmer inmates. But his requests were denied, his statement of claim alleges, and he continued to be kept in the general population.
"I have been incarcerated many times and I could feel the tension," Mr. MacIntyre said in the interview. "Plus [the story of the arrest] was all over the news and everybody from the Rexdale area and I was getting bombarded with questions. I just had a bad feeling," he said.
Story continues below advertisement
About two weeks after he was admitted to jail, on Jan. 27, Mr. MacIntyre sent a letter to Kathy Ford, which the court later called a violation of his no-contact order with the mayor. He threatened to cause "a shitstorm."
"You and your family have one chance to leave me the fuck alone and stop this shit!," he wrote in the letter. "You and your family think I should play nice! Fuck you."
But the letter was intercepted by jail officials. As punishment, Mr. MacIntyre was placed in segregation. After his stint was over, jail officials returned him to the general population, the claim alleges.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Petros, said there would be "dire consequences" if he did not remain quiet about the mayor. Mr. Petros was constantly "in my ear," Mr. MacIntyre said in the interview.
"He was boisterous, overbearing. He was always on me. No matter where I turned, he seemed to be there, like a shadow, constantly," Mr. MacIntyre told The Globe.
"I would just cut him off and say get lost, leave me alone. And then I would sit down to play cards and if I'd stand up, he'd be right on me, in my ear… He was trying to push himself on me, to intimidate me."
In his interview with The Globe, Mr. MacIntyre said he had no recollection of Mr. Petros before his incarceration, except for a phone call that he says the mayor made to Kathy Ford in the summer of 2011, shortly after Mr. Petros was arrested coming out of the home that they had invaded in a search for money and drugs. The mayor was concerned for his former player and he wanted to know whether Mr. MacIntyre had any insight into the implications of Mr. Petros "ripping somebody off that was supposedly to do with the underworld," Mr. MacIntyre said. "I said I didn't know the guy and didn't want to get involved."
Mr. Petros invoked the name of Mr. Aboodowleh, a former assistant coach on Don Bosco who is a friend of Mr. Ford, Mr. MacIntyre said in the interview. Mr. MacIntyre said he has never met Mr. Aboodowleh, who has an extensive record for crimes of violence. The claim also alleges that a video of the mayor ranting about wanting to kill someone, released in November, was filmed at Mr. Aboodowleh's house and was referring to Mr. MacIntyre.
Mr. Morris, the mayor's lawyer, said on behalf of Mr. Ford: "He denies he was going to kill anybody."
Mr. MacIntyre said jailhouse culture prevented him from asking for Mr. Petros to be moved – "No, you don't do stuff like that" – and that his only choice was to try to get himself removed from the unit.
But before he could, he says he was attacked. On March 22, as Mr. MacIntyre was drying his head with a towel outside the unit's showers, he was assaulted, his lawsuit alleges. He said he could not identify his attackers because of the towel, but he told The Globe he was struck and then brought to the ground with either a tackle or a kick to the leg. "I heard the snap and I fell on my back," he said.
"It felt like forever, but a good minute and a half in real time. It felt like 10 minutes, but probably a minute, minute and a half."
His statement of claim alleges that the attack was executed by "Petros and another unknown inmate or inmates, or some combination of the foregoing." In his interview, he said he could not definitively identify Mr. Petros as the attacker because of the towel but that he is certain Mr. Petros was the mastermind behind the beating.
"I'm not saying he was the one that assaulted me, because I'm not sure. But I am saying that he was part and parcel of what happened – because I don't have enemies," he said. "But to have this guy in my ear constantly? One plus one equals two."
The area outside the unit's showers where the attack unfolded is normally monitored by a video camera, but the "video surveillance had been inexplicably disabled" before the assault, the claim alleges. Immediately after the attack, a guard thrust papers into his face and asked him to explain what had happened, Mr. MacIntyre said. He indicated that he had "slipped" in the shower, an explanation that he acknowledges was not true. (Another source from the Toronto West Detention Centre said it was "implausible" that Mr. MacIntyre's injuries were the result of falling in the shower.)
He was kept at the jail for 36 hours after the assault, a delay that caused complications in treating his injuries, the claim alleges. At the hospital, where he resided for about two weeks, his leg fracture was repaired with several screws, he said. To this day, Mr. MacIntyre, who has no dental coverage, has been unable to replace his front teeth, he said.
A source with knowledge of the attack on Mr. MacIntyre said the alleged role of a former Don Bosco player, or players, was something that was discussed in at least one court proceeding in the lead-up to Mr. MacIntyre's sentencing.
Mr. MacIntyre alleges that Mr. Petros, Mr. Ford and Mr. Aboodowleh conspired to have him attacked. When Globe reporters asked what evidence existed that Mr. Ford played any role in the attack, Mr. MacIntyre declined to answer, saying he did not want to discuss such evidence in advance of examination for discovery proceedings.
In his interview with The Globe, Mr. MacIntyre said that he was never interviewed by anyone from Toronto police.
In an e-mailed statement, the Ministry of Correctional Services said police were not contacted because "the individual in question refused to co-operate in any investigation."
Mr. Petros did not reply to written requests for an interview, including a letter with detailed questions that was delivered to him through the Correctional Service of Canada.
More than a year before Mr. Petros was incarcerated, he appeared on stage in his Don Bosco jersey at Mr. Ford's 2010 mayoral campaign kickoff at the Toronto Congress Centre. In a video recording posted online by Mr. Ford's campaign team, he is shown standing in the background while Nicholas Swaby, another one of the mayor's former players, described Mr. Ford's contributions. Since that video was put online, Mr. Swaby was charged with aggravated assault in connection with the 2009 murder of Christopher Skinner. When Mr. Petros was sentenced to five years in prison in April 2012, the assistant Crown attorney who prosecuted him described how his victim was bound, stabbed and threatened with a sawed-off Winchester rifle. His victim, the owner of the home Mr. Petros invaded, "suffered injuries to virtually every part of his body, in addition to extensive swelling and bruising."
In his interview with The Globe, Mr. MacIntyre declined to answer many questions about Mr. Ford's use of illegal drugs and alcohol.
"I have kept my head down, per se, in regards to all this, you know. I'm not talking about personal stuff."
With reports from Jill Mahoney, Ann Hui and Elizabeth Church
Statement of claim in the lawsuit against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, Jan. 29, 2014 ||||| But in the past, he was much less low-key. Whether on his motorcycle or at the helm heel of the family sailboat – The Raymoni – he always went full throttle. When he fought, which was often, it was usually a one-sided affair.
“He was a terror,” said Leo, another former associate of Doug Ford.
Numerous sources identified Randy Ford as former drug dealer, including one who identified himself as former partner, but he and Doug maintained distinctly separate operations. “Doug, being savvy as he was and as business-minded as he was, knew his brother was just too volatile,” said “Justin,” the street-level dealer who said he was supplied by Doug Ford.
The eldest Ford sibling, Kathy, has been subjected to media scrutiny over the years, primarily because she has been linked to a number of bizarre, violent and sensational incidents.
Most recently, in January, 2012, her long-time boyfriend, a convicted cocaine and hash dealer named Scott MacIntyre, was charged with threatening to murder the mayor at his Etobicoke home. He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser offence and was given credit for time served.
(In a brief interview with CBC after the alleged death threat, Doug Ford said: “To be honest with you, I really don’t know Scott MacIntyre.” Photographs and video taken on the night of the 2010 election show that Mr. MacIntyre was part of the small group of family members celebrating with the new mayor, his wife, Renata, and Doug.)
Ms. Ford’s relationship with Mr. MacIntyre is even more perplexing because of an earlier incident: In 2005, he and another man were accused of shooting her in the face during an altercation in her parents’ basement. She survived the blast and was rushed to hospital, while Mr. MacIntyre fled in her mother’s Jaguar. Crown prosecutors later dropped numerous charges against him, while his co-accused, Michael Patania, pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a handgun.
But even before that, there was gunplay – and it was fatal. Seven years earlier, Ms. Ford’s lover was fatally shot by her ex-husband, a drug addict named Ennio Stirpe. At his trial, Mr. Stirpe testified that his victim, Michael Kiklas, was a martial artist, which forced him to bring along the shotgun as “an equalizer.”
Not mentioned in the press at the time was the fact that Mr. Kiklas was a white supremacist – a group with which Ms. Ford associated in the 1980s.
Her friends included Gary MacFarlane, a founding member of the short-lived Canadian chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the late Wolfgang Droege, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist in Canadian history, a former Klansman told The Globe in an interview. Two other former associates of Ms. Ford confirmed her association with known white supremacists.
Among Mr. Droege’s numerous criminal endeavours, he also sold cocaine and marijuana, which led to his death in 2005 when he was killed by a customer. Mr. Droege was incarcerated for much of the 1980s in U.S. prisons – both for drug trafficking and for his role in a bizarre plot to overthrow the government of Dominica in the Caribbean.
The former Klansman, who agreed to answer questions by e-mail on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Kathy Ford was close to the movement, but he said he couldn’t recall meeting any of the Ford brothers. He described hanging out in the Fords’ basement and being snubbed by Doug Sr. when Ms. Ford invited him to a party on the family boat. Her father, the former Klansman said, clearly did not approve of his beliefs, while she was engaging and fun but hardly a committed soldier in the race war.
“Some people are real ‘believers’ and know all the history, dates, facts etc… Others just join to piss off their parents, or carry out some other act of personal rebellion,” he wrote. “Clearly [Kathy] was the latter camp.”
It remains unclear how much Mayor Ford was exposed to his siblings’ escapades and their issues with illegal drugs. He is considerably younger – Doug, the closest, is five years older. But at least one of Doug’s closest and oldest friends has become an official adviser to the mayor’s office. Several sources have identified David Price as a former participant in Doug Ford’s hashish enterprise.
Report Typo/Error | – Just another day in the life of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: He's being sued by his sister's ex-boyfriend for allegedly conspiring to have the man beaten in jail. A lawsuit submitted by Scott MacIntyre alleges the mayor was behind an assault at a Toronto jail in March 2012 that was intended to keep MacIntrye quiet about Ford's abuse of alcohol and drugs. The lawsuit alleges MacIntrye knew about Ford's alcohol and drug use and claims he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he did not remain quiet. "They wanted to know if I was going to do the right thing—was I going to keep my mouth shut," MacIntyre tells the Globe and Mail. He got attacked in a jailhouse shower and ended up with a broken leg and shattered teeth. Ford's lawyer, Dennis Morris, said today that the allegations are "without fact or foundation." Ford offered no comment when reporters asked him about the lawsuit. "Remind me again, how the hell is Rob Ford still in office?" asks Jordan Yerman at the Vancouver Observer. |
Peter Butera veered off the preapproved speech at his graduation ceremony on June 16, to criticize Pennsylvania's Wyoming Area School District for its handling of the student government. (Wyoming Area School District)
Peter Butera, class president for the entirety of his life as a high school student — all four often-frustrating years of it — took the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremony after the recital of the class poem, which had offended no one.
When the principal of Wyoming Area Secondary Center in Exeter, Pa., had finished applauding the poem, Butera walked up and laid his speech on the podium: the lines he’d dutifully cleared with administrators, and those he had not.
Butera was 18, bound for Villanova University in a few months. He was his class valedictorian, and he was beginning to get nervous about his plan to go rogue at the last possible minute.
“Good evening, everyone,” Butera began, innocuously enough. “The past four years at Wyoming Area have been very interesting, to say the least.”
[The valedictorian who was kicked off stage for an unapproved speech got to finish it — on Kimmel]
Across the field, by the running track, Butera’s family watched with his girlfriend, who was taking video. In front of the stage sat nearly 200 classmates, nearly all of whom Butera said he knew well, for he had lived here his whole life.
On the chair to Butera’s left sat the principal, Jon Pollard, who barely looked up at him.
“To everyone here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us,” Butera said.
Pollard scratched his face. So far so good. Butera kept thanking people for a while: Teachers he was close to, “a couple great administrators as well.”
He did not name Pollard among them — an omission not lost on one of the few people there who knew exactly how his speech would end.
“It was always Dr. Pollard,” Albert Sciandra, Butera’s friend and vice president in the student government, told The Washington Post. “He was the one who kept shooting everything Peter wanted to do down.”
The day before the ceremony, Sciandra said, the school had put on a talent show. Butera wanted to do a comedy skit: poke fun at the only teacher who ate the cafeteria lunch, stuff like that.
But such jokes were deemed too extreme, Sciandra said. “Peter rewrote them so many times. Pollard said, ‘You’re not doing it because I said so.’ ”
[A teacher’s decision to be ‘visibly queer’ in his photo with President Trump]
All of high school had been like that, Sciandra told The Post. No matter that they’d both been in student government every single year, he said — any idea that went beyond decorations for some school-approved event got shot down.
So when, a week or so before the ceremony, Butera told his friend that he’d written a secret end to the approved speech — that he planned to expose a system he saw as a sham — Sciandra understood it had to be done.
Though as he sat on the field Friday, Sciandra still doubted his class president would go through with it.
Butera’s speech was now nearing its end. “I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me,” he told the crowd. He’d been repeatedly elected class president. An honor each time.
“I would like to thank you all for that one final time,” he said. “It really means a lot.”
But it hadn’t meant much to the school, he was thinking, Butera later told The Washington Post. He was remembering the past summer, when he and Sciandra organized protests of a proposed dress code.
“Me and Peter, we went to every council meeting and school-board meeting,” Sciandra said. They packed the seats with students and parents and made speeches, and filled a petition with signatures.
And none of it mattered, the students said: The dress code passed anyway.
“It really means a lot,” Butera continued from the stage.
“However …”
Pollard still was not looking at him, but Sciandra braced in his seat.
“At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner,” Butera said. “Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.”
At that moment, from his chair, Pollard made what may have been a grimace and finally turned to watch the valedictorian as he hit the climax of his speech.
“Despite some of the outstanding people in our school,” Butera went on, “a lack of a real student government combined with the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators and board members have …”
The principal mouthed something to someone offstage.
” … prevented students from truly developing as true leaders …”
A mechanical bang interrupted his words as the microphone shut down. When Butera spoke his next line, his voice was naked. He had not expected that.
“Hopefully this will change,” he said, speaking louder, trying to be heard.
“Hopefully, for the sake of future students, more people in this school — ”
[A radio host was warned not to criticize President Trump. So he quit.]
Butera would have said more. He would have said he hoped future classes would have more educators who valued empowering students as much as they valued educating them. That leadership is a hard thing to learn within the strictures of a public school system.
“It is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives,” he had written on the paper his principal had not seen, “but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni.”
Butera didn’t get to say the last lines. Now Pollard was on his feet, tapping the student’s elbow, mouthing something above a dead microphone.
“He said, ‘Alright Peter. You’re done,’ ” Butera told The Post.
But neither man could be heard now. The field was erupting with cheers, boos and screams: “Let him speak! Let him speak! Let him speak!”
In the back, by Butera’s mother, father, girlfriend, grandma, aunt and uncle, someone said: “I’m so proud.”
The rest of the ceremony would go more or less as officials had planned. The faculty would take turns making speeches. Pollard would give the Class of 2017 his advice: “Read good books and watch bad movies,” and “Clean your room and learn to do you own laundry.” And “watch what you put on social media.”
Irony. A few days after the ceremony, a grainy video of Butera’s speech spread wildly across the Internet — more than 75,000 endorsements on Reddit alone. Then came the news stories. While Pollard didn’t immediately respond to The Post, superintendent Janet Serino defended his silencing.
“The young man submitted his graduation speech to his principal and delivered a speech different from the speech that was submitted,” she wrote. But she had since reached out to Butera, requesting a meeting to discuss his concerns.
Wyoming Area Secondary Center’s valedictorian for 2017 had not called out his principal or superintendent or anyone else in his speech — not the approved version, or the rogue ending, or even the part he didn’t get to read.
And Butera declined to criticize any school authority by name when he spoke to The Post. He said that hadn’t been the point of his final act as class president.
“I’m supposed to represent the students,” he said.
And on his last day of high school, when the principal cut off his microphone and waved him off the stage and he walked back to his seat through a standing ovation, he felt that he finally had.
More reading:
The story behind a powerful photo of a Czech girl’s contempt for neo-Nazis
How one man’s pause became a haunting symbol of Aleppo’s destruction
Terrorists are building drones. France is destroying them with eagles. ||||| Article Tools Font size – + Share This
Peter Butera
Peter Butera -- the valedictorian and class president of Wyoming Area’s Class of 2017 -- did an interview with Jimmy Kimmel about having his microphone silenced mid-speech during Friday’s graduation ceremony.
The interview will air tonight at 11:35 p.m. on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Butera said.
He did the interview via Skype around 7:30 p.m., and it lasted one or two minutes, he said.
"I thought it went pretty well," Butera said.
He said he also did interviews with the Washington Post and CNN.
National and international media picked up the story after an article about his graduation speech appeared Monday in The Citizens' Voice.
Butera had just started to criticize his school's administration when he was approached by Wyoming Area Secondary School Principal Jon Pollard to leave the stage at Sobieski Stadium.
"Peter provided me a copy of his speech on Thursday via email, and we reviewed it in my office the morning of graduation after the final practice," Pollard said in a statement he released after Tuesday's school board meeting. "Protecting the students and staff are my number one concern. When he veered off of the speech he had practiced, I was obligated to act to ensure the remainder of Peter's speech was not demeaning or derogatory to his classmates, the underclassmen, faculty, staff or administration."
Pollard also said he, his wife and children "have been subjected to abusive social media posts, text messages, emails and phone calls from across the nation both at work and home."
He said he "would make the same decision again because it was the right one on Friday" and will be the right decision "the next time a student attempts to hijack the ceremony for their own agenda."
Right before the sound was cut during Butera’s speech, he noted that those involved in student government — from class president to student council — really have no influence in how the school operates and that will hold graduates back in the real world.
“Despite some of the outstanding people in this school, a lack of real student government — and the authoritative nature that a few administrators and school members have — prevents students from developing as true leaders. Hopefully, this will change ... ”
At that point, the audio was turned off. | – When Peter Butera got up to begin his valedictorian speech at his high school graduation ceremony in Exeter, Pa., on Friday, he probably never dreamed he'd be finishing it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! four days later. But on Tuesday night the 18-year-old class president appeared via Skype on the late-night talk show to recite the tail end of a speech that had been cut off by Wyoming Area Secondary Center administrators the week before. CBS Philly reports that administrators shut off Butera's microphone after he veered off his pre-approved script to condemn what he called the "authoritative attitude" of some of the school's faculty and staff, an attitude, he said, that "prevents students from developing as true leaders. Hopefully, this will change." At which point his mic went silent. The Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice quotes a statement from principal Jon Pollard in which he explains he felt obligated to stop Butera's speech in order to "ensure the remainder of [it] was not demeaning or derogatory to his classmates, the underclassmen, faculty, staff or administration." The Washington Post talks to a friend of Butera's who says Butera was frustrated by having numerous ideas turned down by Pollard during his four years as class president. (Other off-script lines from Butera: "At our school, the title of class president can more accurately be class party planner. Student council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week.") The Villanova-bound Butera doesn’t think his speech could have gone any better: "I got my point across and them cutting the microphone proved my point to be true." (Valedictorians have had issues before.) |
An unverified report claims Apple has begun placing orders for a 4.6-inch Retina Display bound for the next-generation iPhone that could launch as early as "around the second quarter."
Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone has a 4.65-inch screen
Reuters issued the report on Wednesday , citing South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper. An unnamed industry source reportedly told the Korean publication that Apple has chosen the larger display and has already begun ordering the part from suppliers.The rumor suggested that domestic Korean suppliers have received the orders, making Samsung and LG likely candidates as suppliers. Both companies have supplied displays for Apple's mobile products in the past.The original report also claimed that the new display would be a Retina Display, which Apple specifies as having a pixel density of 300 pixels per inch when used at a distance of 10-12 inches.If accurate, Wednesday's report signals a break by Apple from its past practice, as the company has elected not to change the 3.5-inch screen size of the iPhone since it launched in 2007. However, the likelihood that the rumor is indeed accurate appears to be relatively low. Rumors of a 4-inch iPhone screen have persisted for some time now, but claims of a 4.6-inch screen size are some of the largest yet.In addition, the rumored second quarter launch is highly questionable, as it would mean a new iPhone arriving between six to nine months after the iPhone 4S. A machine translation of the original report has the article claiming the new handset will come out "this summer" with no mention of the second quarter. The astronomical definition of summer most closely aligns with the third quarter of the calendar year. Multiple reports have pointed to a September or October launch for the next-generation iPhone.A number of Wall Street analysts expect the sixth-generation iPhone to incorporate 4G LTE. Investment firm Barclays said on Wednesday that Apple is reviewing components for the next iPhone and is likely to utilize the Qualcomm "MDM9615" chip that supports voice and data connections over LTE. Speculation has also arisen that Apple will revert to a simpler naming scheme for the iPhone as it has recently done with the iPad. ||||| As Apple prepares to unveil both a new high-end and low-end iPhone next week, leaked ads from a telecom provider suggest the phones may launch in China as soon as this month. The WSJ's Deborah Kan speaks with Paul Mozur about Apple's new strategy in the country.
As Apple Inc. prepares to unveil both a new high-end iPhone and a cheaper version for the first time next week, it is already working on something bigger.
The electronics giant has begun evaluating a plan to offer iPhones with screens ranging from 4.8 inches to as high as 6 inches, people familiar with the matter say. That would be a sizable leap from the 4-inch screen of the iPhone 5 released last year, and, at the upper end, would be one of the largest on the market.
Such plans signal further that the Cupertino, Calif., company is shifting its smartphone strategy as it searches for new engines of growth, and as competition with Samsung Electronics Co. intensifies .
The Korean rival has taken a commanding lead in smartphone market share in part by offering an array of devices at different prices and sizes. On Wednesday, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 3 with a screen measuring 5.7 inches, a size that places the device in a category of hybrid phone-tablets.
It is unclear whether Apple will ultimately choose to follow a multi-size, multi-device strategy beyond shipping a new lower-cost model for the first time later this month. The company often tests different devices and configurations before choosing a course.
But people familiar with the company's internal deliberations and plans indicate it appears more willing to move ahead than in years past. Component suppliers say Apple already began testing larger screens for iPhones in recent months. Apple has been particularly interested in recent tests for a 4.8-inch screen, these people say.
The screen sizes of the two iPhones that Apple is unveiling next Tuesday aren't expected to change, people familiar with the matter have said.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
A multi-size strategy would echo Apple's approach to the iPod, as that once-groundbreaking product line matured. Broadening iPhone offerings would also allow Apple to address a threat from Samsung: growth outside the U.S., where Samsung and rivals like Lenovo Group Ltd. are still expanding. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in April the company sees a "significant opportunity in China" with an unusually large number of potential first-time smartphone buyers there. Increasing sales in the country could also help Apple reverse stalled revenue growth and contracting profits, analysts say.
Samsung and other competitors have released numerous products in different sizes and prices in order to cater to a broad swath of customers, particularly in India and China. Apple will for the first time begin shipping two new smartphone products this month, people familiar with the matter say; Samsung alone has released more than half a dozen around the globe so far this year.
Apple has waged a public-relations campaign against Google Inc.'s Android software, which powers most Samsung smartphones. In March, just before Samsung's newest "Galaxy" device was unveiled in New York City, Phil Schiller, Apple's head of world-wide marketing, said the services and hardware on Android handsets "don't work seamlessly together." Apple has also filed patent lawsuits around the world against Samsung and other rivals.
Last year, Apple released its iPhone 5 with a larger screen, but analysts say changing the size hasn't been enough. Price, too, has caused the iPhone to lag competitors. Apple's newest iPhone starts at $650 without a subsidy; Samsung offers a range of smartphones priced at below $100 in places like China, India and Indonesia. As a result, despite rising unit sales for each of the top smartphone companies, Apple's share of world-wide sales fell to 14% in the second quarter from 19% the same time a year prior. Over the same period, Samsung's share rose to 32% from 30%, according to market research firm Gartner.
Samsung's strategy underscores a competitive advantage: The South Korean company is able to bring products to the market more quickly than Apple because it controls the entire manufacturing process for its smartphones. Samsung makes everything from chips to screens at its own factories, allowing it to change designs and pump out new products at a rapid pace. By comparison, Apple relies on many suppliers to make parts for its devices and companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and Pegatron Corp. in Taiwan to assemble them, requiring timely coordination between all the companies.
Apple has some precedent in offering a wider lineup. About three years after it unveiled the first iPod in 2001, Apple launched the iPod Mini, a physically smaller device capable of holding fewer songs. The device was a hit, despite a plethora of competing devices on the market at a lower price, and it attracted many new customers to Apple's offerings. The even smaller iPod Shuffle a year afterward also caught on. Today, Apple maintains four different product lines of iPods and a healthy command of the music device market.
The company also for the first time released a smaller version of its iPad, with a 7.9-inch screen, late last year. The standard version of the iPad made its debut at 9.7 inches in 2010. Apple has also been testing larger screen sizes for the iPad, people familiar with the matter have said.
Since the debut of the iPhone in 2007, however, Apple executives have debated and tabled plans to offer iPhones in either lower-cost models or in different sizes, according to a person familiar with those discussions. Among the challenges it saw for a lower-cost option was that the company's designers couldn't find a way to make a device that didn't look cheap or look like a close copy of the higher-end iPhone, according to that person.
Apple's business model has also been to produce fewer products, at what it argues is a higher quality. Steve Jobs, the company's co-founder who died in 2011, espoused this view often. "That's been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity," he once said in a BusinessWeek interview. Later, he said he says "no" to 1,000 things Apple could do "to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much."
Apple has until now chosen to release a single new iPhone model each year, and a new case design every two years, in part to keep control of production costs associated with developing, testing and creating tools to manufacture new designs with the exacting quality the company is known for, a person familiar with the matter said.
In recent months, Apple has said customers in emerging markets appear to like its cheapest smartphone, the iPhone 4, and has initiated trade-in programs in countries such as India to encourage buying. Mr. Cook said sales there grew more than 400% in the company's third quarter, ended in June. A person familiar with Apple's production also said the iPhone 4S is among the top products Apple continues to sell.
People familiar with the matter say Apple's low-cost iPhone will begin shipping alongside the new premium model smartphone and it will be offered in multiple colors. The higher-end device, meanwhile, will include a new feature, a fingerprint sensor, people familiar with the matter said.
A version of this article appeared September 6, 2013, on page B1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: 6-Inch iPhone Screen? Apple Tests Bigger Sizes. | – Apple has started placing orders for screens for its next iPhone, and this time it's going big, according to a South Korean newspaper report picked up by Reuters. The new displays will be 4.6-inch "retina" displays, and the updated phone will launch sometime around the second quarter this year, the paper said. While Apple started the trend of smartphones with large touchscreens, its 3.5-inch screen has started to look diminutive next to offerings like Samsung's Galaxy Nexus' 4.65 inches. But MacRumors is dubious about the report, noting that numerous previous whispers put the new screen at 4 inches, and that many companies making iPhone cases seem to be betting on that. One source with a good track record said the new iPhone would have a longer, 4-inch display and an aluminum casing, but was "still in the engineering phase, not early production." Apple Insider is also dubious of the second quarter launch date; previous reports have always put it in September or October. |
Two dead, seven in custody after drug sting in Greater...
Two men are dead and seven others were arrested after undercover Houston police officers conducted a drug sting in the Greater East End on Wednesday night.
A Houston police narcotics team, the Drug Enforcement Administration, federal agents and SWAT officers arrived at a warehouse on Harrisburg and 77th streets at 10:30 p.m. By the end of the night, one would be killed in a shootout with police, authorities said, and another would die in police custody.
The undercover officers had arranged for the meeting, and nine men showed up in two cars. Eight of the men moved to go inside the warehouse, most of them showing guns, Chief Art Acevedo said.
GANG WAR: How to recognize the signs, symbols and tattoos of Houston's gangs
But when SWAT officers identified themselves, one of the men pulled out a gun and fired at an officer who was in full uniform, the chief said.
One of the officers fired off defensive shots, hitting the gunman, Acevedo said. He died at the scene.
Another man took off in a car, which crashed during a short pursuit. He then hid in a rock quarry at the Houston Ship Channel.
A K-9 unit found the man, and he was taken into custody before he went into cardiac arrest, Acevedo said. Paramedics immediately started CPR, and he was taken to Ben Taub Hospital, where he died.
The remaining seven men, who are believed to be documented gang members, surrendered without incident and will face unknown federal charges, Acevedo said.
“They’re obviously known to be a pretty violent crew,” he said.
The officer who fired the shot will be placed on administrative leave.
“I can just say that based on everything we’ve seen so far, the officers acted appropriately and in a reasonable manner,” Acevedo said.
NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. ||||| Two people are dead after a major drug sting involving Houston police, SWAT and the DEA at a warehouse in east Houston.This happened just before 10 p.m. Wednesday at 77th Street and Harrisburg, where authorities said nine people, known to be violent and carry weapons, were expected to meet at the warehouse.Authorities said eight of the suspects, all carrying guns, went into the warehouse in what they thought would be a drug deal.After a couple of minutes, two of the suspects came out of the warehouse. One of them took off running and at that point, SWAT officers came out of a staging area and identified themselves. That's when police said one of the suspects opened fire."One of the SWAT officers immediately deployed defensive shots toward the suspect, striking the suspect. That suspect went down and the other suspect that fled before him jumped into a vehicle and took off," Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo said.Police said the suspect crashed the car, and ran into a rock quarry. He was eventually found by police dogs. When he was brought back to the scene, he started complaining about chest pains. Police said medics tried to revive the suspect but he died at the scene.The suspect who was shot to death has not been identified.There's no word yet on what charges the suspects will face. | – It was a scene that could have been taken from countless TV dramas: Nine armed gang members arrived for a drug deal at a warehouse Wednesday night, only to discover they had been set up by undercover officers in a sting operation. Police in Houston say two of the suspects managed to flee the warehouse. One of them was shot dead after opening fire on SWAT officers who emerged from a staging area and identified themselves, KTRK reports. The other man fled in a vehicle then hid in a quarry at the Houston Ship Channel when the vehicle crashed after a short chase, Houston Chronicle reports. Police say he died of a heart attack in custody after being found and bitten by a K-9. The other seven suspects, who were targeted by a months-long police and DEA operation, were arrested without incident and will be charged with federal crimes, police say. |
A Lion Air jet carrying 117 people hit a cow while landing and skidded off a runway in eastern Indonesia, an official said. No injuries were reported, but the incident forced the cancellation of flights, stranding hundreds of passengers travelling for the Eid holiday.
The incident occurred on Tuesday night as the Boeing 737-800 plane was landing at Jalaluddin airport in Gorontalo, on Sulawesi island, with 110 passengers and seven crew members on board, transportation ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said.
There were three cows on the runway, Ervan said, and the plane hit at least one of them and careened off the runway before coming to a stop. The condition of the cows was unclear.
Several flights were cancelled on Tuesday, but lanes resumed landing on Wednesday. The incident is under investigation.
This is not the first near-miss suffered by a Lion Air jet this year. In April, a plane belly-flopped into the ocean just short of the runway off the resort island of Bali. All 108 people aboard survived. ||||| Travel News
Travel Incidents
The Lion Air passenger jet at Gorontalo airport on northern Sulawesi island after it crashed into a cow and skidded off the runway as it came into land. Photo: AFP
An Indonesian passenger jet crashed into a cow and skidded off the runway as it came into land at an airport in the centre of the archipelago, officials said Wednesday.
No one was killed or seriously injured when the Lion Air plane carrying 110 passengers collided with one of three cows wandering on the runway as it arrived late Tuesday in Gorontalo, on Sulawesi island.
The cow, however, was crushed to death under one of the Boeing 737-900's middle wheels, head of Jalaluddin airport Agus Pramuka said.
The pilot, Iwan Permadi, told state-run Antara news agency he could smell "burning meat" as the jet ran over the animal.
Advertisement
He said he thought there were dogs in front of the plane as it came into land, "but it turned out there were three cows wandering in the middle of the runway".
Pictures showed the dead cow under the aircraft's wheel in a field. The plane, which suffered minor damage, had skidded into the field next to the runway, with its tail still on the runway.
All the passengers managed to disembark safely, transport ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan said.
The plane had started its journey in Jakarta and also had a stopover in Makassar, on Sulawesi, according to local media.
The airport was closed following the incident, disrupting travel plans for people heading home for the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Muslim-majority Indonesia.
One small jet managed to take off Wednesday, but the Lion Air plane was still at the edge of the runway, Pramuka said.
Indonesia, which relies heavily on air transport to connect its more than 17,000 islands, has one of Asia's worst aviation safety records.
In April, a Lion Air passenger jet carrying 108 people crashed into the sea after missing the runway as it came into land on the resort island of Bali. No one died but dozens were injured.
Lion Air, Indonesia's biggest private carrier, has placed orders for more than $US45 billion ($A50 billion) with Airbus and Boeing in the past two years and has the world's biggest order backlog for 559 narrow-body aircraft. It aims to have 1000 planes in 10 years.
AFP/Bloomberg | – No black box data needed for this plane accident: Blame the cow. An Indonesian passenger jet with more than 100 people aboard skidded off the runway after hitting a cow upon landing, reports the Guardian. Luckily, all the humans were fine. The cow didn't make it, however, reports the Age, which includes an unfortunate quote from the pilot about smelling "burning meat" as the plane touched down on the island of Sulawesi. Indonesia has a lousy aviation safety record, notes the Aussie paper. The last big mishap came in April when a jet from the same airline skidded into the sea. Dozens were injured. |
Hugo Correia / Reuters Justin Bieber performs in Lisbon on March 11, 2013
Thieves broke into a South African stadium early Monday, opened the safe and made off with a lot of loot — 3 million rand ($330,000) in cash. Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium was particularly well stocked with cash after both Justin Bieber and Jon Bon Jovi played shows there over the weekend, and police believe that’s why the crooks targeted it.
“The intruders broke through the roof of the bathroom nearby and there is evidence that they gained entry by abseiling down to gain access to the strong room,” Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale, a spokesman for Gauteng police, told CNN. The crime was not discovered until Monday morning. A Soweto-based police officer, who declined to be named, told Reuters, “We don’t know how many people were involved as we are still gathering evidence.” Police are studying the stadium’s closed-circuit TV footage for clues to the crime.
(MORE: New Study: Americans Dislike Justin Bieber, Would Vote Justin Timberlake For President)
Trouble seems to have followed Bieber on his Believe tour. The 19-year old Canadian pop mega star had his pet monkey quarantined by German customs officials, caused an uproar in Amsterdam when he stopped by Anne Frank’s house, and was tackled by a fan while performing on stage in Dubai.
Soccer City is the largest stadium in Africa with a seating capacity of almost 95,000. In addition to concerts, the stadium hosted the finals of the 2010 World Cup.
MORE: Justin Bieber Hopes Anne Frank Would Have Been A ‘Belieber’ – and the Internet Explodes
MORE: Watch: Justin Bieber Attacked By Fan On Stage In Dubai ||||| Justin Bieber's world tour has generated its share of unexpected headlines, but the strangest was saved for last. A massive Ocean's 11-type heist took place during Bieber's show in Johannesburg, South Africa, according to local news reports. TMZ estimates the alleged thieves made off with roughly $330,000 in cash.
According to South Africa's Eyewitness News, the suspects used ropes and chisels to break into a safe room. Stadium officials believe the break-in was an inside job, according to another local publication, the Independent Online. FNB Stadium, the concert venue, has a capacity of 94,000 people, and any thieves would've had to get past as many as 900 security guards.
TMZ reports that Bieber tweeted at the gossip site, "It wasn't me," though any such tweet is no longer online.
The Believe singer has taken an astonishing amount of flak, some of it deserved, on his recent overseas trek. In Dubai, his security guard deflected a teenager who rushed the stage. In Sweden, police said they found drugs on Bieber's tour bus. In Amsterdam, Bieber started a firestorm with his comments in the Anne Frank House guestbook. In Los Angeles, police have been investigating Bieber for allegedly spitting on a neighbor. In London, Bieber showed up late for a show and was later hospitalized after collapsing backstage, prompting him to deny ridiculous talk he might benefit from rehab.
In the coming months, he'll be performing back in the good ol' U.S. of A., where people of all political stripes can agree one one thing: He sucks. Aww. His next show is at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday in Las Vegas, and then his North American tour kicks off June 22 in San Diego, California, crisscrossing the continent through an August 10 gig in Atlanta.
We're gonna go out on a limb here: No way this guy organized an Ocean's 11-style heist. ||||| Police say 41-year-old Mark Staake (LEFT) and his 23-year-old nephew Tanner Ruane (RIGHT) were part of a murder-for-hire plot to mutilate and kill Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.
Accused Anonymous/AP Police say 41-year-old Mark Staake (LEFT) and his 23-year-old nephew Tanner Ruane (RIGHT) were part of a murder-for-hire plot to mutilate and kill Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.
In an email to the Star, Melissa Victor, vice president of media and artist relations at Island Def Jam Music Group, said: “We take every precaution to protect and insure the safety of Justin and his fans.”
Justin Bieber Sean Kilpatrick/THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo In an email to the Star, Melissa Victor, vice president of media and artist relations at Island Def Jam Music Group, said: “We take every precaution to protect and insure the safety of Justin and his fans.”
Jeff Green and Shawna Richer
Staff Reporters
WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAILS
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when teen pop star Justin Bieber played two sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden in New York on Nov. 28 and 29.
There were thousands of screaming girls, and Bieber seemed especially pumped to be performing at what is widely considered the world’s most prestigious entertainment venue. In the 10 concerts witnessed by a Star writer on Bieber’s Believe tour, a bra flying onto the stage during an encore at the second Garden show was the only thing unusual that night.
But behind the scenes, there was something both sinister and bizarre going on, though it is not known whether Bieber or his people knew of it.
A police affidavit alleges that two prison inmates and a nephew were hatching a plot to murder Bieber and his director of security while the singer was in New York for those shows.
Details of the grisly plan — which involved strangling two other victims with a paisley tie and then castrating them — were revealed Wednesday in an affidavit for arrest obtained by New Mexico State Police.
But the plot may have been thwarted by a missed highway exit and a pair of recorded phone calls between an inmate and one of the accused.
According to the affidavit, the plan was hatched behind bars after inmate Dana Martin was transferred from a Florida prison to the Southern New Mexico Corrections Facility in April.
Shawna Richer travelled North America for two months, watched the superstar perform 11 concerts, and met hundreds of fans, in search of what it means to be a Belieber. Available Friday Dec. 21 at stardispatches.com
Martin, 45, serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Vermont, was reportedly obsessed with Bieber. He had written him letters and even had a tattoo of the singer on his leg.
He allegedly recruited Mark Aaron Staake, 41, a fellow inmate at the time, after Staake noticed the tattoo on his leg. The plan was to kill four people in two states, with Bieber as the main target.
Oddly, the details were spilled on Nov. 20, when Martin asked to speak to police, telling them Staake (who had been released on probation on Oct. 22) and his nephew, Tanner Ruane, 23, had been planning to commit the first two murders, neither of them Bieber. New Mexico police declined to identify those intended victims.
In his interview with police, Martin described how the first two killings were to be carried out: strangulation with a paisley neck tie, followed by castration with Fiskars “Durasharp” brand garden clippers. The affidavit said there was a bounty of $2,500 on each testicle.
“Martin stated that a paisley tie needed to be used because that was what he (Mr. Martin) had used previously,” the affidavit reads.
Martin is serving consecutive life sentences for murders committed in 2000. The strangulation murder of the 15-year-old girl was a “case of jealousy,” police told The Associated Press.
In his police interview, Martin said that in addition to the two Vermont slayings, there would be two more targets. The main one was identified in the affidavit as J.B., who “has a measure of fame.”
Lt. Robert McDonald of the New Mexico State Police told the Star that “J.B.” was Bieber. However, investigators from New Mexico State Police have yet to make an official statement.
The affidavit describes Martin as “a very good manipulator,” who, “as part of his ruse,” convinced Staake he had access to large sums of money and a multimillion-dollar historic home where Staake and Ruane could hide out.
He also allegedly told Staake he had connections to Chinese gangs in New York, who had “sanctioned” the murders.
Martin told police he had been in contact with Staake since his release, and that Staake was to be in New York City in late November.
McDonald declined to speculate on why Martin revealed the plot to police when he did, but a pair of phone conversations on Nov. 19 hint at a plot unravelling.
The plan, according to the affidavit, called for two murders in Vermont, followed by two in New York. But the would-be assassins missed an exit in Vermont and were headed toward Canada on Nov. 19 in a 1983 BMW. When they spoke with a U.S. border agent at the Highgate Springs crossing, Staake was arrested on an outstanding New Mexico warrant.
That same day, Ruane phoned Martin in a call, recorded by the prison, telling him of Staake’s arrest. “Mr. Ruane did not want to ‘move it forward’ without Mr. Staake,” reads the affidavit, referring to the two Vermont killings.
Ruane then made his way south, phoning Martin again from a truck stop in Rotterdam, N.Y. The focus of that call was on Victims 3 (Bieber) and 4.
In the recorded conversation, Ruane tells Martin that Staake was going to “handle the whole putting down of the ‘dogs’ and I (Mr. Ruane) was going to go ‘snip, snip.’”
Martin went to police the next day and Ruane was arrested Nov. 26 by New York State Police, who had been on the lookout for the BMW.
New Mexico State Police are working to get Staake and Ruane back to that state. “Paperwork is in the process to get them extradited,” said McDonald.
The question now is could the alleged hit men have got close enough to Bieber to carry out the abduction and gruesome attack?
The pop star employs an imposing security detail. Chief among them are security director Moshe Benabou, a former Israeli soldier, and Dustin Folkes, a celebrity bodyguard based in Los Angeles. They are never far from him. Nor is tour manager Kenny Hamilton, who formerly served as Bieber’s bodyguard.
“We take every precaution to protect and ensure the safety of Justin and his fans,” Melissa Victor, vice-president of media and artist relations for Island Def Jam Music Group, told the Star in an email.
These bodyguards are obsessively protective of Bieber when it comes to paparazzi and sometimes even well-meaning fans.
Given the number of teenage girls who follow Bieber and stake out his hotels, his security detail is vigilant. He was the target last year of an allegation that he fathered a child with an obsessed fan after a brief encounter in a backstage bathroom. Bieber supplied DNA to prove he was not the father.
Related: Justin Bieber at The Rogers Centre
Grammy Awards: Justin Bieber shunned, Drake and Carly Rae Jepsen nominated
Justin Bieber tops Bing searches in Canada
Drop-crotch pants: Is this now a thing? | – The latest crazy headline to come out of Justin Bieber's world tour: Thieves broke into a South African stadium early Monday and stole $330,000 from the safe, which had quite a bit of cash in it thanks to a weekend Bieber concert, Time reports. Police think that's why the thieves went for it, and they also believe it was an inside job. Spin calls the crime "a massive Ocean's 11-type heist," because the suspects used ropes and chisels to get into the safe room and were likely chiseling for several days, South Africa's Eyewitness News reports. (This comes, of course, after headlines involving Bieber's monkey, Anne Frank, and marijuana, among other things.) |
Image copyright EPA Image caption Reeva Steenkamp's relationship was Pistorius was "coming to an end", her mother says
It was bad luck Reeva Steenkamp met Oscar Pistorius, her mother has said, as the "volatile" athlete "would have killed someone sooner or later".
Speaking to The Times, June Steenkamp calls Pistorius "pathetic", "moody", "gun-toting" and "possessive".
She rejects both his apology and his version of events, but admits: "He's the only one who knows the truth."
Pistorius is serving five years for the culpable homicide of girlfriend Reeva. He could be out in 10 months.
The South African athlete was cleared of murder.
'About to leave'
June Steenkamp told The Times, which is serialising her book, Reeva: A Mother's Story, which is to be published on 6 November, that Reeva had told her the couple had not yet entered a sexual relationship and had "nagging doubts about their compatibility".
She says: "She had confided to me that she hadn't slept with him. They'd shared a bed, but she was scared to take the relationship to that level.
Media caption Judge Thokozile Masipa hands down the sentence
"She wouldn't want to sleep with Oscar if she wasn't sure. I believe their relationship was coming to an end. In her heart of hearts, she didn't think it was making either of them happy."
Ms Steenkamp, 68, who was not called to testify at the trial, says this may have played a part in what happened on the night of the shooting, Valentine's Day last year.
She rejects his version of events, that there was no row and that he had thought there was an intruder in the toilet cubicle when he fired four shots through the door "without thinking".
"There is no doubt in our minds that something went horribly wrong, something upset her so terribly that she hid behind a locked door with two mobile phones," June writes.
Media caption June Steenkamp speaks after the sentencing
Other words she uses to describe Pistorius are "arrogant", "moody", "combustible", "trigger-happy", "vague", "evasive" and "shifty".
She believes Reeva, 29, was about to leave Pistorius, 27.
She says: "Her clothes were packed. There is no doubt in our minds: she had decided to leave Oscar that night."
In the excerpt of the book serialised in the paper, Ms Steenkamp refers to Pistorius's apology to them in court.
"Why decide to say sorry to me in a televised trial in front of the whole world? I was unmoved by his apology.
"I felt if I appeared to be sorry for him at this stage of his trial on the charge of premeditated murder, it would in the eyes of others lessen the awfulness of what he had done. He was in the box trying to save his own skin."
Nevertheless, the parents say they do want to meet Pistorius.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Oscar Pistorius holds the hands of family members as he is led away
Although she says "I am not entirely sure what I am going to say", father Barry, 71, says he wants an apology.
"I would like him to really, truthfully say, although he said it in court, 'I'm sorry.' I would like him just to say it to our faces."
Ms Steenkamp also talks about the "wrenching pain that you get in your heart" when thinking of her daughter's death.
"It's always there. The minute your eyes open in the morning, or if you wake up in the middle of the night, there it is."
Pistorius, an amputee sprinter, became the first athlete to compete in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
He is serving his sentence in Pretoria's Kgosi Mampuru II jail.
Pistorius was also given a three-year suspended sentence for firing a gun in a restaurant.
Inside Oscar Pistorius's home
INTERACTIVE 1 2 3 5 4 ×
× Balcony × Mr Pistorius said he and Ms Steenkamp had dinner at about 19:00 before going to bed at 21:00. He said he woke in the early hours, spoke briefly to his girlfriend and got up to close the sliding door and curtains. Judge Thokozile Masipa questioned the reliability of several witnesses who said they heard screams and gunshots between about 03:12 and 03:17, saying most had 'got facts wrong'.
× Bathroom noise × Mr Pistorius said he heard the bathroom window sliding open and believed that an intruder, or intruders, had entered the bathroom through a window which was not fitted with burglar bars. Mr Pistorius said he grabbed his firearm and told Ms Steenkamp, who he thought was still in bed, to call the police. The judge said it made no sense that Ms Steenkamp did not hear him scream 'Get out' or call the police, as she had her mobile phone with her.
× Shooting × Mr Pistorius could see the bathroom window was open and toilet door closed. He said he did not know whether the intruders were outside on a ladder or in the toilet. He had his firearm in front of him, he heard a movement inside the toilet and thought whoever was inside was coming out to attack him. 'Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door,' he said. The judge said she did not accept that Mr Pistorius fired the gun by accident or before he knew what was happening. She said he had armed himself with a lethal weapon and clearly wanted to use it. The other question, she said, was why he fired not one, but four shots before he ran back to the room to try to find Ms Steenkamp.
× Bedroom × Mr Pistorius said he went back to the bedroom and noticed that Ms Steenkamp was not there. Mr Pistorius said this was when he realised she could have been in the toilet and rushed back to the bathroom.
× Toilet door × Mr Pistorius said he screamed for help and went back to the bathroom where he found the toilet was locked. He returned to the bedroom, pulled on his prosthetic legs and turned on the lights before bashing in the toilet door with a cricket bat. When the door panel broke, he found the key and unlocked the door and found Ms Steenkamp slumped on the floor with her head on the toilet bowl. He then carried her downstairs, where he was met by neighbours.
3D animation of the apartment ||||| POOL/REUTERS June (l.) and Barry Steenkamp seen during the sentencing hearing of Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius in October. POOL/REUTERS Pistorius was given a five-year sentence for Steenkamp’s death, but could serve as little as 10 months. Previous Next
Enlarge
Reeva Steenkamp never had sex with Oscar Pistorius and was about to leave him when he gunned her down through a bathroom door, her mother claims.
June Steenkamp told the Sunday Times of London magazine that her daughter "was scared to take the relationship to that level" and had avoided getting physical with the Paralympian known as the Blade Runner.
“She wouldn’t want to sleep with Oscar if she wasn’t sure,” she said. “I believe their relationship was coming to an end. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t think it was making either of them happy.”
In her memoir, "Reeva: A Mother's Story,” June says the couple had spent several nights together but never had sex. The 68-year-old believes the rocky, three month-old relationship was over and that Reeva planned to leave him Valentine’s Day 2013, the night she was killed.
"Her clothes were packed. There's no doubt in our minds: she decided to leave Oscar that night," she said.
FRENNIE SHIVAMBU/EPA Reeva Steenkamp (l.) with Olympian Oscar Pistorius, who was convicted of culpable homicide for shooting her to death on Valentine’s Day 2013. STR/EPA June Steenkamp's book goes on sale Nov. 6. Previous Next
Enlarge
She added that if Pistorius — whom she described as “volatile”, “combustible” and “trigger-happy” — hadn’t killed Reeva, the 27-year-old would have killed someone else "sooner or later."
Reeva, 29, was shot dead by Pistorius, a double amputee who uses prosthetics to walk and run, as she huddled inside a bathroom. The fallen Olympic runner has stood by his claim that he shot four times through the locked door because he thought there was an intruder in his Pretoria home.
Reeva's mother, though, claims that Pistorius, who is serving a five-year sentence for culpable homicide, lied in court and knew he was actually firing at Reeva.
“There is no doubt in our minds that something went horribly wrong, something upset her so terribly that she hid behind a locked door with two mobile phones,” June writes.
Amazon ‘Reeva: A Mother's Story.’
Convicted of culpable homicide last week, Pistorius will be able to seek parole after 10 months behind bars, and then apply to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home.
The marathon eight-month trial drew international attention to South Africa and featured the country’s most famous athlete and a gorgeous young supermodel.
Reeva’s parents, June and Barry Steenkamp, told a newspaper that they they never met Pistorius while the two dated.
June Steenkamp’s book is due out Nov. 6. ||||| REUTERS Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. File photo: Thembani Makhubele
Johannesburg - Oscar Pistorius and his law-graduate girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp did not have sex, her mother June Steenkamp wrote in her book, the Sunday Times reported.
In “Reeva: a Mother's Story”, June Steenkamp wrote that her daughter confided in her that although they spent nights together, they did not have sex because she “was scared to take the relationship to that level”.
Speaking about the athlete, she wrote: “To look at him now, he's a pathetic figure. He looks haunted. He's already been punished in a way.
“Whatever is in his head is in his head forever. He will have to live with that.”
Pistorius was sentenced to prison for five years for the culpable homicide of Steenkamp. He shot her through a locked toilet door in his Pretoria home on February 14, 2013, thinking she was an intruder.
Sunday Times reported that June Steenkamp wrote that she did not believe Pistorius's version.
“He said pulling the trigger was 'an accident'. What? Four times an accident? He said Reeva did not scream, but she would definitely have screamed. I know my daughter as she was very vocal,” she wrote.
“There is no doubt in our minds that something went horribly wrong, something upset her so terribly that she hid behind a locked door with two mobile phones.”
In the book, June Steenkamp dissects every text, tweet and email in the three month relationship, looking for hidden meaning, according to the report.
Steenkamp, 68, and her husband Barry Steenkamp, 71, will feature in Monday’s edition of UK celebrity magazine Hello.
The British media reported that June Steenkamp believes Pistorius “would have killed someone sooner or later” and that her daughter’s “bad luck” conspired against her.
In the seven-month trial, Pistorius was cleared of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva, but found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to five years in prison.
In an interview with The Times magazine, June Steenkamp describes Pistorius as: “moody”, “volatile”, “arrogant”, “combustible”, as well as “trigger-happy”, “possessive”, “gun-toting”, “vague”, “shifty” and “evasive”.
The newspaper said Steenkamp claimed that Pistorius had shot her daughter “in a jealous rage, then finished her off with three more bullets so she ‘couldn’t tell the world what really happened’.”
She said her daughter’s death haunts her at night – she regularly wakes up around 3am, the time Reeva died at Pistorius’s home.
“Why decide to say sorry to me in a televised trial in front of the whole world? I was unmoved by his apology,” she writes.
“I felt if I appeared to be sorry for him at this stage of his trial on the charge of premeditated murder, it would, in the eyes of others, lessen the awfulness of what he had done.”
Meanwhile a snippet and photos have been published on Hello’s website, announcing the magazine had the “world exclusive interview moments after the trial ended in South Africa” on Tuesday.
June Steenkamp told Hello the court’s decision to send Pistorius to jail “was the best sentence we could have expected”.
Steenkamp said she “believe(s) Oscar expected to go to prison” by the time his seven-month trial concluded. She told the magazine: “It’s been a terrible, long journey”.
“He was almost resigned to what was coming. It was obvious in the court from his manner; he was calm and wasn’t performing,” she said.
She said she and her husband were still coming to terms with “the vision of Reeva suffering this terrible trauma”.
Blood-splattered images of the crime scene were exhibited during the Pistorius trial.
Steenkamp added: “We’re not looking for vengeance or for him to get hurt; we’re just happy because he’s going to be punished for what he’s done.
“He may come out early on good behaviour, but by the time he’s served that time, it will have taught him that he can’t go around doing things like that.”
His five-year sentence has been criticised by some as too lenient.
But Reeva’s parents told ITV’s Good Morning Britain they accepted the sentence and “don’t want revenge”. They said their daughter’s Valentine’s Day death last year remained shrouded in mystery, and “only Oscar knows” the truth.
After sentencing, Pistorius was sent to the hospital section of the Kgosi Mampuru prison in Pretoria. He reportedly cried himself to sleep on his first night in jail.
The athlete’s fans meanwhile have written supportive messages on his website. One fan, Noluthando, wrote: “Oscar you made us proud in the world by your courage. Please keep strong.”
Another, Carina, wrote: “I feel so sorry for Oscar. He really doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail. He’s a great guy… ”
Weekend Argus and Sapa
Related Stories ||||| Henke Pistorius, 59, said that his family had "zero doubt" that Mr Pistorius had shot Reeva Steenkamp dead mistakenly thinking she was intruder.
"When you are a sportsman, you act even more on instinct," he said. "It's instinct - things happen and that's what you do."
He said the entire Pistorius family was "heart and soul" behind the athlete and would do "whatever needs to be done" to help him clear his name.
His comments to The Sunday Telegraph followed the release by the family of a statement in which they described the 26-year-old athlete as "numb with shock as well as grief" over the events of the past three days.
They said that evidence gathered by the police themselves "strongly refutes" any possibility of the premeditated murder charge with which prosecutors have said they will charge the athlete.
They also insisted that Mr Pistorius, whose position as South Africa's golden boy was cemented when he won two gold medals and a silver at last year's London Paralympics, had no reason to harm Miss Steenkamp, 29, his girlfriend of four months.
"All of us saw at first hand how close she had become to Oscar during that time and how happy they were. They had plans together and Oscar was happier in his private life than he had been for a long time," they said.
Reeva Steenkamp in the reality show Tropika Island of Treasure
The family fightback came as reports emerged that Mr Pistorius fought to save Miss Steenkamp's life after allegedly shooting her four times through the bathroom door in the early hours of St Valentine's Day morning.
Security guards and neighbours who rushed to his exclusive home on a security compound outside Pretoria saw Mr Pistorius running down the stairs with the blonde model in his arms, according to a source quoted by the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld.
Miss Steenkamp was still breathing, it said, and Mr Pistorius tried desperately to save her using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
"Blood splatters along the route that Pistorius carried her was further proof that her heart was still beating," the paper added.
And a close friend of Mr Pistorius told on Saturday how the athlete called him moments after Miss Steenkamp was shot.
Justin Divaris told the Sunday People: "Oscar called me at 3.55am saying that Reeva had been shot. I said to him, 'What are you talking about? I don't understand you.' He then repeated himself - 'There has been a terrible accident, I shot Reeva.
"Next thing his neighbour picked up the phone and told me it was true and told me to get to Oscar's home. I was in total shock. I asked the neighbour, 'Is she OK?' Did the gun go off by accident?' She replied, 'No. She's not OK. You need to get here'."
Beeld also reported that Mr Pistorius, who kept a machine gun under his window for security as well as the 9mm pistol by his bed - with which he is believed to have shot Miss Steenkamp - had seven firearm licence applications pending, including one for a .223 semi-automatic rifle - the same calibre of combat weapon used in the Sandy Hook school massacre in the United States, in which 20 children and six teachers died.
Henke Pistorius reaches out to his son Oscar (AFP/Getty)
In the Tropika Island of Treasure programme, filmed in Jamaica and screened on South African television last night with the blessing of her family, Miss Steenkamp was seen alongside other bikini-clad contestants taking part in a hunt for treasure. The winner of the contest was to receive £73,000 in prize money.
In a series of scenes she was filmed studying a treasure map on the deck of a yacht, jumping into the sea from a cliff, and swimming with dolphins.
In a poignant interview, filmed just days before she died as she prepared to return home she spoke about the importance of leaving a positive mark in life.
Dressed in a strappy top and a yellow and black bikini, with her blonde hair scraped back, she said: "Not just your journey in life but the way that you go out and make your exit is so important. You have either made an impact in a positive way or a negative way."
Mr Pistorius had delivered a prescient message of his own just days earlier, retweeting to followers the comment: "Learn to appreciate what you have, before time makes you appreciate what you had" with the additional words: "True that."
On Friday, during his first court appearance since the incident on Thursday morning, he repeatedly burst into tears as prosecutors discussed how they would charge him with murdering his girlfriend.
Mr Pistorius faces a murder charge in Pretoria (Reuters)
Standing behind him, his father and brother were seen reaching out to clasp his shoulder and pat his back. Henke Pistorius told The Sunday Telegraph on Saturday that they were a close family and had no doubt of his innocence.
"I let him know that all of us are in heart and soul with him," he said. "That's why we were there and whatever needs to be done we will do."
He said he felt no need to question his son too closely about the exact events of that night. "He is going to have enough of that, enough advocates asking him things over and over," he said. "I can just imagine how absolutely emotional it must have been for him."
But there was "zero doubt" in his mind that he had acted in fear of an intruder, he added. "Without any doubt there was no purpose in it, it's not an issue for us," he said. "I have zero doubt (that he thought it was an intruder) - it's totally absurd to even suggest anything different.
"When you wake up in the middle of the night - and crime is so endemic in South Africa - what do you do if somebody is in the house? Do you think it's one of your family? Of course you don't," he said. The family were keen hunters, he said, and his son had grown up with guns.
Reading a statement before television cameras yesterday, Mr Pistorius' uncle Arnold and sister Aimee said the entire family was "in a state of total shock".
"Firstly about the tragic death of Reeva who we had all got to know well and care for deeply over the last few months," they said. "We are all grieving for Reeva, her family and her friends. Oscar - as you can imagine - is also numb with shock as well as grief."
They said that they were also struggling to come to terms with the murder charge Mr Pistorius now faces. "The lives of our entire family have been turned upside down forever by the unimaginable human tragedy," they said.
"After consulting with legal representatives, we deeply regret the allegation of premeditated murder. We have no doubt there is no substance to the allegation and that the State's case, including its own forensic evidence, strongly refutes any possibility of premeditated murder or indeed any murder at all."
Last week was not the first time however that Mr Pistorius has brushed with police. In 2009 he received a warning over an alleged assault on a 19-year-old girl at his home. Last year, he was accused of sending a text message to a man he believed was involved with his former girlfriend threatening to break his legs.
Mark Batchelor, a friend of the man who got involved in the row, alleged Mr Pistorius also telephoned and threatened him.
"He called me 'boy' and said he wanted to clear the air, saying he had heard I had a problem with him. I told him that he can't go around threatening people. He said he wasn't afraid of me and the phone cut," he told Johannesburg's Star newspaper. "The man I heard on the phone is a different man from the image given out there. He carries a gun everywhere and I have seen him be controlling to women."
Reeva Steenkamp's uncle Michael, who like most of her family lives in Port Elizabeth on the south coast, said they were ignoring such reports and focusing on the case ahead. Mr Pistorius, who is being held this weekend in a polic station cell, will return to Pretoria Central Magistrates Court on Tuesday for a bail application.
"We do not want to speculate what happened. We would rather pay attention to the criminal process will take its course now," Mr Steenkamp told Beeld. "We are a religious family. And if you believe in God, then you know justice will be in his hand." | – Reeva Steenkamp's mother says the 29-year-old South African model "was scared to take the relationship to the next level" with Oscar Pistorius, so she never slept with the man who eventually killed her, the Sunday Times reports via the New York Daily News and the BBC. In the memoir Reeva: a Mother's Story, June Steenkamp says Pistorius and Steenkamp were together for several nights but never went all the way. "She had confided to me that she hadn't slept with him," says June, whose book is being serialized by the Times and is out Nov. 6. "There's no doubt in our minds that she decided to leave Oscar that night," says June. She adds that "something went went horribly wrong, something upset her so terribly that she hid behind a locked door with two mobile phones," the Independent reports. According to June, a jealous, "trigger-happy" Pistorius shot her daughter and fired three more bullets so she "couldn’t tell the world what really happened." June goes on to describe the athlete as "pathetic," "moody," "shifty," and "arrogant." |
An American citizen on a flight from Paris to Atlanta claimed to have a fake passport and said he had explosives in his luggage, forcing federal air marshals to intervene and the plane to land in Maine, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, believe the man's passport was authentic.
There were 235 passengers and 13 crew aboard Delta Air Lines Flight 273, which landed safely just after at 3:30 p.m. (1930 GMT) at Bangor International Airport, Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott said.
Federal officials met the aircraft at the airport. The Transportation Security Administration said the passenger was being interviewed by law enforcement.
After the man was apprehended, flight attendants moved passengers forward to clear out space in the rear of the plane, a passenger told CNN.
"We were told there was some danger and some threats made, but beyond that we weren't told anything else," said Adithya Sastry.
Elliott said late Tuesday afternoon that the Airbus A330 remained on the ground in Bangor but that the airline planned to continue the flight to Atlanta.
All passengers were taken off the plane because it was an international flight and they needed to clear customs, said Rebecca Hupp, a spokeswoman for Bangor International Airport.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, did not launch any military fighters in response to the flight, spokesman John Cornelio said. "By the time we were brought into the equation," the passenger was already under the control of air marshals, Cornelio said from Colorado.
The Bangor airport is accustomed to dealing with diverted flights.
It's the first large U.S. airport for incoming European flights, and it's the last U.S. airport for outgoing flights, with uncluttered skies and one of the longest runways on the East Coast. Aircraft use the airport when there are mechanical problems, medical emergencies or unruly passengers.
Delta, based in Atlanta, is the world's largest airline and has a joint venture with Air France-KLM on flights across the Atlantic.
___
Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Joan Lowy in Washington, Harry Weber in Atlanta, David Sharp and Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine, and John Curran in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed to this report. ||||| U.S. officials say they found no bomb on the Delta flight from Paris that was diverted to Bangor, Maine Tuesday after a passenger created a disturbance. Officials identified the passenger as Derek Stansberry of Apollo, Florida.
Stansberry's father, Richard, told ABC News his son is a former Air Force reservist. The elder Stansberry said he was notified late Tuesday by authorities that his son was involved in the incident.
"He's not a terrorist," said the elder Stansberry of his son. "I just found out and I am in total shock," he said.
Stansberry remains in the custody of the FBI.
Officials said an inspection of the aircraft after it landed found no evidence of explosives, as Stansberry reportedly boasted during the flight.
Play
Officials said Stansberry also boasted of having a fake passport, which they say also turned out not to be true.
Delta Flight 273 was heading for Atlanta when Stansberry reportedly made the comments that led two federal air marshals to take him into custody.
According to law enforcement sources, the incident began when Stansberry passed a note to a flight attendant that read, "Forgive me, I f---ed up, I'm sorry."
The flight attendant brought the note up to the flight deck.
One of the two teams of two federal air marshals aboard broke cover and approached Stansberry. Stansberry told the FAMs in a mutter that he had explosives in his bag.
The FAMs then subdued Stansberry. He told them he had taken a valium and a sleeping pill before the flight.
The officials said the marshals placed Stansberry's backpack and shoes in the rear of the plane and packed other luggage and blankets around them as part of a measure to minimize the potential damage from an explosion.
One official said the marshals "literally sat on the guy's chest" as the flight landed in Bangor.
Click Here for the Blotter Homepage. | – Another plane scare incident: A US passenger forced an international flight to be aborted after claiming he had a bomb in his luggage and a fake passport, the AP reports. The passenger allegedly made threats while in the air on a Delta flight from Paris to Atlanta, causing it to be diverted to Bangor, Maine. "We were told there was some danger and some threats made, but beyond that we weren't told anything else," said one passenger upon landing. The man is in custody, and few details were available about him. Two air marshals were aboard the plane and were "sitting on the guy's chest" upon arrival in Maine, a law enforcement official tells ABC. |
The Backstreet Boys asked and science answered: Being lonely means an increased risk for coronary heart disease.
That loneliness and social isolation could be risk factors for disease and death is an idea that has been brewing in the scientific community for some time now. In 2006, a JAMA study found social isolation in childhood may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease in adulthood. A couple years later, at Ohio State University, researchers found that social isolation, in mice anyway, makes strokes more deadly. The team conducted a second study in 2010 and found having no contact with friends or family can worsen the brain damages caused by a heart attack. Then, in 2015, Brigham Young University put it plainly: The prescription for living longer is to spend less time alone.
While experts have started to suspect loneliness negatively affects heart health, new research published today in the journal Heart argues that the topic has yet to be widely studied. Study co-author Nicole Valtorta, research fellow at the University of York, told Medical Daily that the existing literature her team reviewed focused more on how weakened social relationships increase risk for mortality overall. “It didn’t tell us if people who felt lonely were at increased risk of developing disease once they were in ill health,” she said. “We wanted to bring together the information of all the studies we could find and see what comes of it.”
Valtorta and her colleagues at York and the universities of Liverpool and Newcastle combed through 1 6 research databases for studies that investigated new cases of heart disease and stroke at the individual level as a function of loneliness, social isolation, or both. To measure for social aspects, the team put in place criteria for each term: Loneliness is the negative feeling a person has when she thinks her relationships are deficient, Valtorta said. A lonely person could be surrounded by lots of people and still be unhappy. Social isolation, on the other hand, is when a person is not in contact with anyone, including his friends and family.
The researchers chose 23 studies for analysis, ultimately including more than 181,000 adults. And the results showed that loneliness and social isolation was associated with a 29 percent increased risk of a heart attack or episode of chest pain and a 32 percent heightened risk of having a stroke. The two had a greater effect on heart health than general anxiety and job stress, the team wrote.
That said, this was an observational study, meaning Valtorta can’t rule out potential, unmeasured factors or reverse causation. For example, is it feeling like you’re alone that hurts your heart or is it an undiagnosed disease that promotes social isolation? At this point, it would be unethical to lean any one way, Valtorta said, but she does believe her findings are enough to start informing clinical practice.
“We need more studies, but little by little the evidence is growing,” she said.
In an accompanying editorial, doctors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith of Brigham Young University, the authors of the 2015 study that prescribed spending less time alone, argue that Valtorta’s study is the latest to show that “loneliness and isolation bolster the already robust evidence documenting that social connections significantly predict morbidity and mortality, supporting the case for inclusion as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.”
The World Health Organization does list social support networks as one of its determinants of health, as do other major organizations specific to heart disease. But this inclusion should extend to medical education, individual risk assessment, and the guidelines and policies applied to populations and the delivery of health services, the doctors wrote. "Given projected increases in levels of social isolation and loneliness in Europe and North America, medical science needs to squarely address the ramifications for physical health.”
Holt-Lunstad told Medical Daily that experts have been worried about the implications of reduced social network size in both the United Kingdom and United States. The average size of Americans’ core discussions networks has declined since 1985, according to the Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey : The average size dropped by about one-third, or a loss of approximately one friend, a small to modest change. And in 2014, the Independent Age and the International Longevity Center predicted that social isolation among the elderly population could reach epidemic proportions by 2030. Young people are at risk too: New Scientist has written that adults ages 18 to 24 report feeling more lonely than they have in the past.
Some sociologist believe new technology, like the internet and social media, have advanced the trend, while the Pew survey found that internet users were 55 percent more likely to talk to people they weren’t related to and that in-person contact remains Americans’ dominant means of communication.
Which leads back to Valtorta’s initial idea: We simply need more research.
“I was surprised by the scarcity of the data. We don’t really have much to refer to,” she said. “We compared people who are lonely to people who weren’t lonely, and people who were socially isolated and not.” But her study doesn’t have all the answers, she added. “It doesn’t tell us: if you’re lonely, and you try to change that, will it benefit your health?”
Sources: Valtorta NK et al. Loneliness and Social Isolation As Risk Factors For Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Observational Studies. Heart. 2016.
Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB. Loneliness and Social Isolation As Risk Factors For CVD: implications For Evidence-Based Patient Care and Scientific Inquiry. Heart. 2016. ||||| Photo
Loneliness may make you sick.
Researchers, writing in the journal Heart, pooled data from 23 studies and found that social isolation or feelings of loneliness were tied to an increased risk for coronary heart disease and stroke.
The studies included data from 181,006 men and women 18 and older. There were 4,628 coronary events and 3,002 strokes in follow-up periods ranging from three to 21 years. Three of the papers measured loneliness, 18 looked at social isolation and two included both. Social isolation and loneliness were determined with questionnaires; the researchers depended on medical records and death certificates for determining coronary events and stroke.
The scientists found that loneliness and social isolation increased the relative risk of having a heart attack, angina or a death from heart disease by 29 percent, and the risk of stroke by 32 percent. There were no differences between men and women.
“People have tended to focus from a policy point of view at targeting lonely people to make them more connected,” said the lead author, Nicole K. Valtorta, a research fellow at the University of York in England. “Our study shows that if this is a risk factor, then we should be trying to prevent the risk factor in the first place.”
The authors acknowledge that this was a review of observational studies and did not establish cause and effect. ||||| Researchers say analysis backs up public health concerns about importance of social contacts for health and wellbeing
Loneliness and social isolation have been linked to a 30% increase in the risk of having a stroke or coronary artery disease, the two major causes of death and illness in wealthy societies.
In findings which compared the effects of loneliness with recognised risk factors, such as anxiety and a stressful job, researchers said that their analysis backed up public health concerns about the importance of social contacts for health and wellbeing.
Loneliness had already been linked to a compromised immune system, high blood pressure and premature death, but its potential effect on heart disease and stroke risk has remained unclear.
Previous studies involving more than 181,000 adults were scrutinised by the researchers, whose findings have been published online in the journal Heart.
The pooled data showed that loneliness and social isolation was associated with a 29% increased risk of a heart or angina attack and a 32% heightened risk of having a stroke.
The researchers, from the universities of York, Liverpool and Newcastle, stress that their study was observational and that firm conclusions cannot be drawn about cause and effect, as well as pointing out that it wasn’t possible to exclude the potential effect of other unmeasured factors.
However, they state: “Our work suggests that addressing loneliness and social isolation may have an important role in the prevention of two of the leading causes of morbidity in high-income countries.”
They noting that a variety of interventions directed at loneliness and social isolation have already been been developed, ranging from group initiatives such as educational programmes and social activities, to one-to-one approaches including befriending and cognitive-behavioural therapy.
“These have primarily focused on secondary prevention, targeting people identified as isolated or lonely, but their effectiveness is unclear. Evaluative research is needed to investigate their impact on a range of health outcomes,” they add.
Reacting to the study, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said that while it suggested a physiological link between loneliness and heart health problems, it was not a clear one and much more research was needed to understand if there truly was a relationship between the two.
Christopher Allen, a senior cardiac nurse for the BHF, said: “Social isolation is a serious issue that affects many thousands of people across the UK. We know that loneliness, and having few social contacts, can lead to poor lifestyle habits such as smoking, which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.
He added earlier research, which the BHF had funded, had shown an association between social isolation and increased risk of dying.
A linked editorial which is also published in Heart argued for the inclusion of social factors in medical education, individual risk assessment, and in guidelines and policies applied to populations and the delivery of health services.
Its authors, Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Dr Timothy Smith of Brigham Young University, Utah, US, said that one of the greatest challenges would be how to design effective interventions to boost social connections, taking account of technology.
“With such rapid changes in the way people are interacting socially, empirical research is needed to address several important questions,” they write. “Does interacting socially via technology reduce or replace face to face social interaction and/or alter social skills?” ||||| The aim of this study was to investigate the size of the association between deficiencies in social relationships and incident coronary heart disease (CHD) or stroke, the two greatest causes of burden of disease in high-income countries. 10 We conducted a systematic review to answer the following primary question: are deficiencies in social relationships associated with developing CHD and stroke in high-income countries? Our secondary objectives included investigating whether loneliness or social isolation was differentially associated with incident heart disease and stroke, and whether the association between social relationships and disease incidence varied according to age, gender, marital status, socioeconomic position, ethnicity and health.
Researchers have identified three main pathways through which social relationships may affect health: behavioural, psychological and physiological mechanisms. 3 , 4 Health-risk behaviours associated with loneliness and social isolation include physical inactivity and smoking. 5 Loneliness is linked to lower self-esteem and limited use of active coping methods, 6 while social isolation predicts decline in self-efficacy. 7 Feeling lonely or being socially isolated is associated with defective immune functioning and higher blood pressure. 8 , 9 This evidence suggests that loneliness and social isolation may be important risk factors for developing disease, and that addressing them would benefit public health and well-being.
Adults who have few social contacts (ie, who are socially isolated) or feel unhappy about their social relationships (ie, who are lonely) are at increased risk of premature mortality. 1 The influence of social relationships on mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors, including physical activity and obesity. 2 Yet, compared with our understanding of these risk factors, we know much less about the implications of loneliness and social isolation for disease aetiology.
Finally, sensitivity analyses were performed to test whether our overall results were affected by internal study validity and small-study effects. Contour-enhanced funnel plots for asymmetry were drawn using STATA V.12 (Stata Statistical Software: Release 12 [program]. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP, 2011). The limited number and the heterogeneity of studies did not support the use of tests for funnel plot asymmetry. 20
Potential sources of variation were explored with prespecified subgroup analyses. Since heterogeneity could not be explained and removed based on these analyses, but we deemed studies sufficiently similar to warrant aggregation, we combined results using random effects models. This approach allows for between-study variation, and is consistent with our assumption that the effects estimated in the different studies were not identical, since they investigated different dimensions of social relationships and derived from different populations.
Patterns identified in the preliminary synthesis were formally investigated. Only papers for which an effect estimate and SE or CI were available (reported in the paper or provided by contacted authors), or could be calculated, contributed to this stage of the analysis. Where several papers reported results from the same cohort, we privileged the findings with the longest follow-up time. If a study included multiple measures of exposure and/or outcome, we selected the result relating to the most comprehensive measure. Where a study used statistical controls to calculate an effect size, we extracted data from the most complex model to minimise risk of confounding. All effect sizes were transformed to the natural log for analyses. Using Revman V.5.3 (Review Manager (RevMan) Version 5.3 [program]. Copenhagen: The Nordic Cochrane Centre, 2014), CHD and stroke effect estimates were plotted in separate forest plots, and heterogeneity between studies was assessed using the I 2 statistic.
We hypothesised that social relationships were associated with disease incidence, and that this association may differ according to the dimension of relationships measured, and individual-level and contextual-level factors. A preliminary synthesis was developed by grouping study characteristics and results according to their measure of relationships. The majority of papers reported relative hazards of new diagnosis, comparing people with higher versus lower levels of loneliness or social isolation. Since incidence of disease was low (<10%) in the three studies reporting ORs, these estimates were approximated to relative risks. 19 Where the lonely or isolated group was used as the reference, results were transformed to allow comparison across studies.
Based on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality framework and taxonomy of threats to validity and precision, 16 we selected the following domains as relevant for assessing studies: sampling bias, non-response bias, missing data, differential loss to follow-up, information error with regard to exposure and outcome measure, detection bias, confounding and study size. We identified age, gender and socioeconomic status as potential confounders (ie, factors correlated with exposure, predictive of outcome and not on the causal pathway). 17 , 18 No studies were excluded due to quality; instead, subgroup and sensitivity analyses were performed, to test the stability of findings according to internal validity.
After removing duplicates, two researchers independently screened titles and abstracts before assessing full records using a standardised screening sheet. Additional information was sought from authors when necessary (3 (60%) responded). When authors did not reply, we searched for information from related publications to inform our decision.
To complement the electronic search, we screened reference lists, searched for citations in Scopus (the largest database of abstracts and citations) and contacted topic experts identified through the UK Campaign to End Loneliness’ Research Hub.
We searched 16 electronic databases for published and grey literature published up until May 2015: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL Plus, PsycINFO, ASSIA, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Social Policy and Practice, National Database of Ageing Research, Open Grey, HMIC, ETHOS, NDLTD, NHS Evidence, SCIE and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Thesaurus and free text terms (eg, loneliness, social isolation, social relationships, social support, social network) were combined with filters for observational study designs and tailored to each database. The search strategy included no health terms, as it aimed to capture all disease outcomes, rather than focus on CHD and stroke. For the full electronic strategy used to search MEDLINE, see online supplementary appendix 1.
To meet inclusion criteria, studies had to investigate new CHD and/or stroke diagnosis at the individual level as a function of loneliness and/or social isolation. We defined CHD as encompassing the diagnoses listed under codes l20–l25 of the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), and stroke as ICD-10 codes I60–69. We excluded studies where CHD or stroke diagnosis was not the first instance of diagnosis among participants, except where analyses controlled for previous events. We applied no other exclusion criteria regarding study population. Measures of social relationships met inclusion criteria for loneliness if they were consistent with its definition as a subjective negative feeling associated with someone's perception that their relationships with others are deficient. 13 Measures of social isolation had to be consistent with its definition as a more objective measure of the absence of relationships, ties or contact with others. 14 We focused on longitudinal studies in order to investigate the temporal relationships between loneliness or isolation and subsequent disease. Our purpose was to clarify the public health challenge posed by deficiencies in social relationships in high-income countries, 15 so we excluded all other settings. We applied no language, publication type or date restrictions to inclusion.
Results
A total of 23 studies based on 16 cohorts were identified for inclusion in the review, after a two-stage process. See figure 1 for a flow diagram of the study selection process. Eleven studies on CHD and eight studies on stroke met inclusion criteria for the quantitative syntheses (ie, studies based on independent samples reporting data from which the natural log of the estimate and its SE could derived).
Figure 1 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram. CHD, coronary heart disease.
Table 1 summarises the descriptive characteristics of the evidence included in our review (see online supplementary appendix 2 for individual study characteristics).
Supplementary appendix 2 [heartjnl-2015-308790supp_appendix2.pdf]
Table 1 Characteristics of the included evidence
Assessment of loneliness and social isolation Prevalence of loneliness or social isolation ranged from 2.8%40 to 77.2%.31 Three papers measured loneliness,21 ,30 ,42 18 measured social isolation22–43 and two papers used a measure combining both dimensions.34 ,35 The three papers on loneliness used different tools: a direct question asking about loneliness feelings during the day,30 a question on feelings of loneliness in the past week42 and a 13-item tool encompassing the perceived availability, adequacy or accessibility of social relationships.21 Across the 18 studies on social isolation, 11 tools were used: six studies used the Berkman–Syme Social Network Index,44 two studies used the 10-item Lubben Social Network Scale45 and the remainder used nine different tools on the availability and/or frequency of contacts. One cohort study used a measure combining social isolation and loneliness, the 11-item Duke Social Support Index, which asks about frequency of interaction and satisfaction with relationships.46 Loneliness and social isolation were predominantly treated as a categorical variable; two studies analysed them as continuous variables.29 ,42 Only one study reported results based on measuring social relationships more than once.42
Ascertainment of CHD and stroke A total of 4628 CHD and 3002 stroke events were recorded across the 23 papers. Eighteen studies measured incident CHD and 10 measured stroke (five studies reported on both outcomes). Diagnosis was ascertained from medical records, death certificates or national registers in all but four studies. Others used self-report,34 ,35 or telephone interviews with a nurse or physician.33 Two studies verified self-reported events against medical records.29 ,36 ,38 The majority of studies with a measure of CHD focused on myocardial infarction and/or CHD death (11/18). Four studies included angina pectoris within their measure of CHD and two presented results for angina separately. The remit of the CHD measure was unclear in one study.43
Study validity Figure 2 summarises risk of bias across the studies included in our review (see online supplementary appendix 3 for details of criteria). For many of the instruments assessing social relationships, information on reliability and validity was limited (online supplementary appendix 4 displays detailed information on the validity and reliability of tools). Four cohorts (six articles) relied on subjects reporting new diagnosis for all or part of the outcomes measured, and were judged to be at greater risk of misclassification (see online supplementary appendix 2 for details of outcome assessment). Limited information on attrition and blinding of outcome assessment meant that susceptibility to differential loss to follow-up and detection bias was unclear. We note that the multiplicity of risk factors investigated and the differential length of follow-up suggest that outcome assessment is unlikely to have been influenced by knowledge of baseline information on social relationships. Supplementary appendix 3 [heartjnl-2015-308790supp_appendix3.pdf] Supplementary appendix 4 [heartjnl-2015-308790supp_appendix4.pdf] Figure 2 Internal validity. NA, not applicable. The results reported in 12 papers were at lower risk of confounding, that is, analyses controlled or accounted for age, gender and socioeconomic status.21 ,22 ,27 ,28 ,30 ,33 ,36 ,37 ,39 ,40 ,42 ,43 Four studies presented results from univariate analyses,31 ,34 ,35 ,41 with a further study adjusting for age only.26 The remaining eight reports did not control for socioeconomic status, although in the case of the Health Professionals Follow-up Study the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample may limit the impact of this omission.22 ,24
Loneliness, social isolation and CHD Across 11 studies (3794 events; one study did not report numbers) based on independent samples, the average relative risk of new CHD when comparing high versus low loneliness or social isolation was 1.29 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.59; see figure 3). We found evidence of heterogeneity within this comparison (I2=66%, χ2=29.16, df=10, p=0.001) and explored whether this could be explained by social relationship domain (loneliness vs social isolation), gender, risk of confounding and higher risk of bias due to exposure measurement error. We found no evidence that effects differed according to each subgroup (see online supplementary appendix 5). We were not able to explore other potential sources of heterogeneity due to limited information and study numbers. Supplementary appendix 5 [heartjnl-2015-308790supp_appendix5.pdf] Figure 3 Forest plot of studies investigating incident CHD. CHD, coronary heart disease.
Social isolation and stroke Across nine independent study samples (2577 events; one study did not report numbers), the average relative risk of stroke incidence was 1.32 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.68; see figure 4). Following confirmation of heterogeneity (I2=53%, χ2=17.07, df=8, P=0.03) we performed subgroup analyses according to risk of confounding and risk of bias due to outcome measurement error (there were too few studies to perform any other analyses). There was no evidence of effects differing according to subgroup (see online supplementary appendix 6); we had insufficient information to explore other potential sources of heterogeneity. Supplementary appendix 6 [heartjnl-2015-308790supp_appendix6.pdf] Figure 4 Forest plot of studies investigating incident stroke.
Risk of bias across studies To test whether our findings were sensitive to internal study validity, we compared results with and without studies at greater risk of bias. We found no evidence of a difference in the ratio of the relative risks for CHD and stroke according to study validity (see table 2). Table 2 Sensitivity analyses Visual assessment of contour-enhanced funnel plots suggested that studies might be missing in areas of statistical significance (see figure 5A, B). Comparing fixed-effects and random-effects estimates, we found the random-effects estimate to be more beneficial (CHD: relative risk (RR) random-effects: 1.29, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.59, compared with RR fixed-effects: 1.18, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.31; stroke: RR, random-effects: 1.32, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.68, compared with RR fixed-effects: 1.19, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.36). This suggests the presence of small-study effects, which could be due to reporting bias. Although we found no evidence that study quality and true heterogeneity explained small-study effects in our review, these, along with chance, remain possible explanations. Figure 5 (A) Contour-enhanced funnel plot, coronary heart disease studies. (B) Contour-enhanced funnel plot, stroke studies. | – Sgt. Pepper better have good insurance because—if its name is accurate—his Lonely Hearts Club Band has a dramatically increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. According to a study published Monday in Heart, people who feel lonely or are socially isolated have a 29% increase in risk of coronary heart disease and a 32% increase in risk of stroke. While previous studies have shown a person's general health is influenced by their social relationships, this may be the first to show "deficiencies in social relationships" are no good for your heart. Medical Daily reports researchers looked at 23 studies—a total of 181,000 people—about loneliness, social isolation, and health to come to their conclusion. The Guardian notes that coronary heart disease and strokes are the two leading causes of death in first-world countries. And the new study shows loneliness and social isolation are bigger risk factors for those problems than either work stress or general anxiety. “People have tended to focus from a policy point of view at targeting lonely people to make them more connected,” the New York Times quotes study co-author Nicole Valtorta as saying. “Our study shows that if this is a risk factor, then we should be trying to prevent the risk factor in the first place.” The research is especially important as other studies show social isolation growing and young people feeling more lonely than ever before. (Also bad—and potentially lethal—for your heart? Heartbreak.) |
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Doctors in South Africa say they transplanted part of a liver from a mother with HIV to her critically ill but HIV-negative child, concluding that the chance to save a life outweighed the risk of virus transmission.
The mother and child recovered after the 2017 transplant, though it is not yet known whether the child has the virus that causes AIDS, according to the team from the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg.
The University of the Witwatersrand experts explained the procedure in an article published Thursday in the journal AIDS. Medication provided to the child before the transplant may have prevented HIV transmission, though that will only become clear over time, they said. A liver from a donor without HIV was not available in a country where there is a chronic shortage of organs available for transplant.
"The transplant team faced the dilemma of saving the child's life whilst at the same time knowing that the child might end up HIV-positive because of this decision," the university said.
The mother, who was taking antiretroviral drugs to combat HIV, had asked if she could donate part of her liver to save her child's life, and the medical team explained the risks of "living liver donation" to her, according to the university. The organ is able to regenerate and become complete again.
"In the weeks after the transplant we thought that the child was HIV-positive because we detected HIV antibodies," transplant surgeon Jean Botha said in a statement. But more testing by HIV experts at South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases did not find any active HIV infection in the child.
South Africa has the world's biggest antiretroviral therapy program, improving the lives of many people with HIV.
The doctors had to consider that with today's improved HIV medications, the child could "lead a relatively normal life" with one pill a day even if he or she did become infected, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a leading HIV expert.
"If it is a choice between death and living reasonably well with a treatable infection, I think they made a quite reasonable choice," he said.
But Fauci stressed that one case doesn't mean the approach is ready to be tried again: "Everything has to be on a case-by-case basis."
There have been cases in which HIV-infected organs were unintentionally transplanted into HIV-negative patients. And in the United States, Johns Hopkins University in recent years pioneered HIV-positive donor to HIV-positive recipient transplants.
___
Associated Press reporter Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed.
___
Follow Christopher Torchia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/torchiachris ||||| South Africa has a dire shortage of organ donors. This means that doctors struggle to find suitable donor organs for critically ill patients who would die without receiving a transplant. Sometimes they have to make tough calls such as using a blood group incompatible organ to save a patient’s life – even if this comes with additional risk.
About a year ago we made a tough call of our own: we could save a child’s life by giving the child a liver transplant – but risked infecting the child with HIV in the process. The donor was the child’s mother, who is HIV positive and the child was HIV negative. The procedure came with a risk of transmitting HIV to the child.
South Africa’s law does not forbid the transplantation of an organ from a living HIV positive donor to an HIV negative recipient, provided that a robust informed consent process is in place. But this isn’t universally accepted as best clinical practice because of the risk of HIV transmission to the recipient.
The young recipient had been on the organ donor waiting list for 181 days. The average time on the waiting list in our transplant programme is 49 days. The child’s mother had repeatedly asked if she could donate a part of her liver, but we could not consider this because it was against the policy in our unit at the time. Without a transplant, the child would certainly have died.
After much consideration, and with permission from the Medical Ethics Committee at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, we decided to go ahead with the transplant. With careful planning we were able to give the child antiretroviral drugs in advance, with the hope of preventing HIV infection.
The transplant, which happened at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Donald Gordon Medical Centre, was a success. The child is thriving, but at this point we are unable to determine the child’s HIV status. In the first month after the transplant we detected HIV antibodies in the child and it looked like HIV infection might have taken place. But as time went by the antibodies declined and are now almost undetectable. We have not been able to work out for certain whether the child has HIV or not. Even with ultra-sensitive, specialised testing, we have not been able to detect any HIV in the child’s blood or cells.
It will probably still be some time before we can be sure. However, the child is doing very well on antiretroviral treatment. And we know from cases where HIV was transmitted inadvertently that people who get HIV from an organ transplant do as well as those who get an HIV-negative organ.
This operation could be a game changer for South Africa. The country has a large pool of virally suppressed HIV-positive people who have previously not been considered for living liver donation. Viral suppression is when a person with HIV takes their antiretroviral medication as prescribed and their viral load – the amount of virus in their blood – is so low that it is undetectable.
Ethical and legal considerations
Organ transplant comes with many ethical and legal challenges. In this case, some unique and complex issues were carefully considered.
We took great care to consult widely before doing the transplant. This included speaking to the members of the transplant team, bioethicists, lawyers, experts in the field of HIV medicine and Wits University’s Medical Ethics Committee. The committee’s function is - among other things - to protect patients in medical research, and to make sure doctors are doing procedures for the correct reasons.
It was clear that a transplant was in the child’s best interests. The bigger ethical question was whether it was right to deny the mother the opportunity to save her child’s life. A fundamental principle of ethics is to treat people fairly. People with HIV should have the same health care options as everyone else.
We, along with the Ethics Committee, agreed that as long as the child’s parents understood that there was a risk the child could acquire HIV, it was acceptable to go ahead with the transplant.
Then, to ensure that the child’s parents were properly informed and in the best position to make a decision, we used an independent donor advocate. The advocate was not employed by the hospital and their main role was to support the parents by ensuring that they understood exactly what the risks were for the mother as a donor. The advocate also engaged with the transplant team on the parents’ behalf, if needed.
In this case, the parents were committed to go ahead with the operation, and had already come to terms with the risk of HIV transmission to their child. They were appreciative that the team were willing to carefully consider this option for them, given that there were no alternatives available and their child was critically ill. We asked both parents to consent to the procedure, as both are responsible for taking care of the child going forward.
Lessons and opportunities
This operation has shown that doctors can do this type of transplant, and that outcomes for the HIV positive donor and the recipient can be good. It has also created a unique opportunity for scientists at Wits to study HIV transmission under very controlled circumstances.
For now, doctors will not be able to tell parents whether or not their child will get HIV from this type of transplant. This is because this is a single case with many unanswered questions that will hopefully be answered through ongoing research.
Going forward, we will continue to ensure that parents are fully aware of the uncertainty in this situation. All future cases will be part of an ongoing research study that will investigate HIV transmission in children in more detail and the ways in which HIV may or may not be spread through organ transplantation. ||||| This was the ethical dilemma faced by doctors at Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre to save a child's life.
In 2017, doctors from the Transplant Unit at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre performed what is believed to be the world's first intentional liver transplant from a mother living with HIV to her critically ill HIV negative child, who had end-stage liver disease.
Now, more than a year later, the mother and child have fully recovered, however, doctors are unsure the HIV-status of the child.
In South Africa, a country with the largest anti-retroviral therapy (ART) programme in the world, people with HIV live long and healthy lives.
The success of this world-first operation thus presents a potential new pool of living donors that could save additional lives.
Leveraging "living positive" to save more lives
In a paper published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journal AIDS on October 4, 2018, scientists in surgery, ethics, and HIV from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) explain how a chronic shortage of organs compromise their efforts to save lives, and how the decision they made to perform a world-first operation could advance transplantation.
Jean Botha, principal investigator and transplant surgeon is Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery in the School of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits University.
"Two aspects of this case are unique. Firstly, it involved intentional donation of an organ from a living HIV positive individual. Secondly, pre-exposure prophylaxis [medication to protect at-risk individuals from contracting the HI virus] in the child who received the organ may have prevented the transmission of HIV. However, we will only know this conclusively over time," says Botha, who is also Director of Transplantation at the Transplant Unit at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre.
Currently, the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre is the only Transplant Programme doing living donor liver transplantation in southern Africa. It is also the first privately administered teaching hospital in Johannesburg and, as a Wits hospital, advances specialist training and research.
Stringent adherence to ethical guidelines
In this case of transplanting a liver from an HIV positive donor to a non-infected recipient, the transplant team had to unpack the potential risks and benefits to both. The Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical) at Wits University approved the liver transplantation from the mother living with HIV to her HIV negative child. Their personal details remain confidential.
The child - on the waiting list for a deceased donor for 180 days (the average is 45 days) - was frequently admitted for life-threatening complications of end-stage liver disease. Without transplant, the child would certainly have died. However, saving the child's life needed to be balanced against harm to the donor and the risk of almost certainly transmitting HIV if the mother was the donor.
Dr Harriet Etheredge is a medical bioethicist who holds an honorary position in the Department of Internal Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine at Wits, and oversees Ethics and Regulatory Issues at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre.
"Extensive efforts were made to identify either a deceased liver donor or an HIV negative living donor for the child before considering an HIV positive parent donor. Transplanting HIV positive organs is not illegal in South Africa; however, it is not considered best practice internationally because of the risk of HIV transmission to the recipient. To minimise risk to donors and recipients, this operation is offered only under exceptional circumstances. Full consent is required from the parents who must be able to care for a child infected with HIV," says Etheredge, whose PhD is in the field of medical ethics and organ transplantation.
In this transplantation case, the mother asked a number of times for the opportunity to save her child's life by donating a segment of her liver. For this mother, quantifying the risk was simpler for the transplant team. Dr Francesca Conradie, HIV clinician, notes, "When considering an HIV positive parent, it is important that they have an undetectable viral load. This means that they know they are HIV positive and that they have been taking their antiretroviral medication properly for at least six months".
This made the risk of donation equivalent to that of an HIV negative living donor. However, living liver donation is never a risk-free procedure, and the team took care to ensure that the mother understood the full ambit of the risk she was undertaking.
"Our Independent Donor Advocate helps the parents understand the risks, makes representations to the transplant team on behalf of the donor if necessary, and provides emotional support throughout the process," says Etheredge.
Intentional transmission of HIV to save a life
The transplant team faced the dilemma of saving the child's life whilst at the same time knowing that the child might end up HIV positive because of this decision. However, because this intentional HIV positive living donor liver transplant is likely a world first, the actual chance of transmitting HIV was unknown.
The team decided to work on the basis that the child would contract HIV, and provide management accordingly. But in the time since the transplant, there have been some surprises when it comes to the child's HIV status.
"In the weeks after the transplant, we thought that the child was HIV positive, because we detected HIV antibodies," says Botha.
The transplant team then accessed specialised testing by HIV experts at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) who subsequently could not find any active HIV infection in the blood stream of the child, meaning there is a chance that the child is HIV negative.
Caroline Tiemessen is Research Professor in the School of Pathology at Wits and head of Cell Biology within the Centre for HIV and STIs.
"At the moment, we are developing new methods for testing the child, and we hope to be able to have a definitive answer to the question of seroconversion in future. For now the child will remain on ART until we have a more comprehensive picture," says Tiemessen who, in 2017, led the laboratory investigations in the case where of a South African child living with HIV had remained in remission without ART since 2008.
Seroconversion is the period of time during which a specific antibody develops and becomes detectable in the blood. After seroconversion has occurred, HIV can be detected in blood tests for the antibody.
Expanded organ donor pool to advance transplantation in Africa
More than a year since the intentional liver transplantation from a mother living with HIV to her HIV negative child, both donor and recipient have recovered and are well.
Dr June Fabian, a nephrologist and Research Director at Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre says, "We have formalised this procedure as a research programme. As we offer this type of transplantation to more children, we hope to be able to draw more definitive conclusions."
Organ transplantation at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre is offered to any person irrespective of income or demographic according to "sickest first" criterion. This is possible through an existing partnership between the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre and the Gauteng Department of Health.
"We hope that this ground-breaking operation will be the first of many like it and will contribute towards promoting justice and equity in liver transplantation in South Africa," says Fabian.
### | – Doctors in South Africa had a wrenching dilemma: A baby in desperate need of a liver had been on the organ-donor waiting list for 181 days and wouldn't live much longer. The child's mother pleaded with doctors to take a portion of her own liver for a transplant, but one big issue stood in the way: The mother has HIV. Finally, surgeons at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre decided they had no choice and performed what is believed to be the world's first transplant from an HIV-positive donor, per a university release. The surgery itself went well, and, more significantly, the child is HIV negative one year later. It's too early to say whether that will hold true permanently, but the news is being hailed as a potentially big development, especially in countries such as South Africa where HIV is prevalent. "This operation could be a game changer for South Africa," write three officials from the University of Witwatersrand (affiliated with the hospital) in the Conversation. "The country has a large pool of virally suppressed HIV-positive people who have previously not been considered for living liver donation." The piece details the ethical quandaries the hospital faced, including whether it would be right to deny the mother a chance to save her baby, even with the risk of HIV infection. The story is drawing international attention, and in the US, Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health says doctors made the right choice—even if the child had emerged with HIV. "If it is a choice between death and living reasonably well with a treatable infection, I think they made a quite reasonable choice," he tells the AP. (A canceled HIV test resulted in a huge payout for one patient.) |
Michael Dell is close to finishing a risky $23 billion deal to take private the computer company he founded nearly 30 years ago, in an effort to remake Dell Inc. for a post-PC era.
Dell's deal to go private is one of the latest steps Michael Dell has taken in re-vitalizing the p.c. maker, Benjamin Pimentel reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.
Late Monday, Mr. Dell was in talks with Microsoft Corp. and private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners to offer shareholders between $13.50 and $13.75 a share, said people familiar with the matter, about a 25% premium to Dell's stock price in January before the possibility of a deal became public.
Enlarge Image Close Lucas Jackson/Reuters Michael Dell's company once had a market cap of more than $100 billion.
Dell Inc. on Monday was close to finishing a $23 billion deal to take itself private at between $13.50 and $13.75 a share, said people familiar with the matter. WSJ's Ben Worthen reports on Digits. Photo: Dell.
The buyout, if approved by shareholders, would be the largest such deal since the financial crisis.
It also would be an admission by Mr. Dell that he wasn't able to pull off the changes needed to improve his company's revenue and profit under Wall Street's glare. The buyout would give Mr. Dell the largest stake in the company, ensuring that the 47-year-old is the one who gets to oversee any changes.
The Round Rock, Texas, firm once boasted a market capitalization above $100 billion as the world's largest PC maker. But the company's market share has since dwindled to third behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. as tablets and smartphones became more popular.
Mr. Dell has also had to endure critical comparisons of the financial performance of his company and Apple Inc., a matter of particular frustration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Timeline: Dell's Ups and Downs View Graphics
Interviews with current and former Dell executives, plus other people who know the CEO, paint a picture of a man who appeared increasingly worried about his legacy. These people said it has been years since Mr. Dell showed the enthusiasm he did when he reclaimed the title of CEO in 2007 after a short period where he served only as chairman of the PC maker.
Mr. Dell didn't respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the company declined to comment.
Dell shares slipped 2.6% Monday to $13.27 on the Nasdaq Stock Market .
As part of the deal to go private, Mr. Dell would contribute his nearly 16% stake valued at about $3.7 billion, plus $700 million from an investment firm he controls, the people said. Microsoft would invest about $2 billion in the form of a subordinated debenture, a less-risky investment than common stock.
Microsoft isn't expected to get board seats or governance rights in a closely held Dell, one of the people said. Instead, the companies would tighten their relationship regarding use of Microsoft's Windows software, the person said.
Silver Lake Partners would invest more than $1 billion. Four banks are expected to arrange about $15 billion in debt to help fund the deal, and each would handle about a quarter of that amount, one of the people said.
The move to take the computer maker private is as much about Dell the man as Dell the company. "It's pretty simple: His name is on the door," one former company executive said of Mr. Dell.
When Mr. Dell, who started the company in 1984 in his dorm room at the University of Texas, returned in January 2007, he promised to reposition the company for the new age.
Mr. Dell brought in several new executives, including ones to run operations, marketing and lead Dell's consumer push. But while sales grew during Mr. Dell's first year back, he couldn't sustain the momentum. The operations and marketing chiefs left after less than two years. The consumer chief left in 2010, after failed attempts at music players, phones and high-end laptops.
Mr. Dell began taking a step back from public scrutiny. In 2011, he stopped making prepared remarks on Dell's earnings calls, leaving that to his finance chief and other lieutenants.
Mr. Dell still dominated operational reviews, said people who attended the meetings, and he sometimes appeared to focus more on minutiae than big strategic decisions. Several years ago, Mr. Dell wrote a four-page memo after he first played with the XPS One, a high-end desktop that embedded all its parts inside the monitor. Mr. Dell's notes, sent late the night he received the machine, included his thoughts on the Styrofoam used to package the computer.
By late 2010, Mr. Dell had largely abandoned his efforts to develop products for consumers and advocated a new path to become a one-stop shop for businesses. He spent billions acquiring makers of security software, storage systems and other products, with an eye toward reinventing itself as a smaller International Business Machines Corp.
The products for businesses have a higher margin than PCs, but so far haven't been able to offset declines in the PC business, which still accounts for half of Dell's annual $62 billion in revenue. Overall, PC sales dropped 13% in the first three quarters of the company's fiscal 2013. Total revenue was down 7% over that period.
While Mr. Dell hasn't said what he might do with a closely held Dell, analysts said Dell now has most of the pieces it needs to become a one-stop technology shop. But it has to make those pieces work together, both technologically and organizationally.
A private Dell could focus on that and possibly exit some lower-margin parts of the PC business, such as retail sales to consumers, they said.
Mr. Dell has tried to position Dell as something other than a PC company, pointing out that the machines account for just a third of Dell's profits.
The people who have worked with him expect some changes to the PC business, but don't anticipate Mr. Dell will stop making PCs altogether.
Indeed, Mr. Dell has appeared wedded to PCs. When Hewlett-Packard briefly considered spinning out its PC business in 2011, Mr. Dell in private conversations derided the idea as a big mistake.
Mr. Dell has said that some of the PC industry's changes caught him unaware.
When asked in a 2011 interview with The Wall Street Journal what surprised him most since he returned as Dell CEO in 2007, Mr. Dell said the rise of tablets had been unexpected for him.
"I didn't completely see that coming," he said, before adding that he didn't anticipate business users would give up PCs soon.
—Ian Sherr and Don Clark contributed to this article.
Write to Ben Worthen at [email protected] and Anupreeta Das at [email protected]
A version of this article appeared February 5, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Dell Nears $23 Billion Deal to Go Private. ||||| Kimihiro Hoshino/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For Dell, a $24.4 billion deal to take itself private is a bold move out of Wall Street’s harsh spotlight as it tries to remake itself in a world where personal computers are no longer the big business in technology.
Yet the buyout — which was announced on Tuesday and would be the biggest by far since the days of the recession — is a huge gamble. It will saddle Dell with $15 billion of new debt, and it does nothing to divert the forces reshaping the technology industry and undercutting the company’s business.
Fifteen years ago, Dell made enormous profits from selling customized PCs directly to customers. Six years ago, it was the world’s leading maker of personal computers. Today, it is in third place, behind Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, and falling.
Dell’s share of an already contracting market for PCs slipped to just 10.7 percent last year, from 16.6 percent six years earlier.
No-name rivals from Taiwan and China grind earnings to razor-thin margins. Android smartphones and iPads, not Windows laptops and desktops, are the best-selling and most moneymaking devices.
And while a shift to cloud computing has increased demand for data centers — an opportunity for Dell to sell servers — big customers like Google and Facebook build their own equipment cheaply. The rise of cloud services has also prompted many companies to forgo buying additional machines, instead relying on rented time and applications running on faraway computer networks.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Dell’s share of the market for servers, slipped about one percentage point, to 22.2 percent of 9.5 million servers sold in 2011. The greater problem in this segment is the pressure on profit margins. Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee, estimates operating margins on servers, once about 15 percent, are now “in the high single digits, compared with the mid-single digits for PCs.” It is likely that servers will soon have PC-like margins, he said.
Michael S. Dell is betting his stake in the company and some $700 million of his fortune that he can meet those challenges and turn around a business he started in 1984 in his dormitory room at the University of Texas.
“Dell’s transformation is well under way, but we recognize it will still take more time, investment and patience,” Mr. Dell wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday. “I believe that we are better served with partners who will provide long-term support to help Dell innovate and accelerate the company’s transformation strategy.”
Mr. Dell’s investment means he will maintain control of the company if its shareholders approve the deal. The private equity firm Silver Lake, one of the most prominent investors in technology companies, is contributing about $1 billion in cash.
And Microsoft, seeking to shore up one of its most important business partners, has agreed to lend Dell $2 billion. Microsoft itself is under pressure, with longtime suppliers flirting with rivals to its Windows operating system.
“Microsoft is committed to the long term success of the entire PC ecosystem and invests heavily in a variety of ways to build that ecosystem for the future,” the software giant said in a statement.
Despite taking on an additional $15 billion in debt, Mr. Dell and Silver Lake argue that the company will survive, thanks to the cash that the PC business still generates.
A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research, estimated that the amount of debt Dell will pay is less than what it has spent in stock dividends and share repurchases. “This debt load is manageable,” he said, “as long as the cash flow from PCs holds up.”
People involved in the transaction said that the buyers had prepared for potential further declines in the PC business, but intend on at least maintaining the company’s position. Dell’s cash from operations has held steady for four of the last five years, coming in at $5.5 billion for the most recent fiscal year.
The size of the transaction evoked the frothy deal-making days before the financial crisis. Dell would be the biggest buyout since the Blackstone Group’s $26 billion takeover of Hilton Hotels in the summer of 2007. Yet few expect a resurgence in giant leveraged buyouts. While the continued availability of cheap financing makes such deals possible, financiers caution that Dell represents a special case because of the founder’s big equity stake.
The deal is the biggest test yet for Mr. Dell, 47, who has a fortune estimated at $16 billion. After a three-year absence, he returned as chief executive of the company in 2007, vowing to restore his creation. His strategy has focused on moving into the business of data centers and corporate software services, marked by numerous acquisitions that have cost billions of dollars.
So far, that has yielded little. Dell’s shares have fallen 31 percent over the last five years, closing on Tuesday at $13.42 — below the buyout’s offer price of $13.65.
But that strategy will largely remain in place if the management buyout is completed. The company will cut its PC offerings further and buy more companies involved in corporate computing for small and medium-size businesses, said Brian T. Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer.
Though Mr. Dell has bemoaned his company’s dismal stock performance for years, his plan to take it private began in earnest only last year. The billionaire maintains a home in Hawaii near the residences of two prominent private equity executives, Egon Durban of Silver Lake and George R. Roberts of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and began floating the idea of a deal with them, people briefed on the matter said.
By August, Mr. Dell formally approached the board with a proposal to take the company private, prompting directors to form a special committee to study alternatives to a deal, these people said. One priority was keeping the process devoid of conflicts of interest to head off potential legal challenges, including the hiring of JPMorgan Chase to provide advice and Evercore Partners to solicit other suitors.
The committee considered ways to keep the company public, including borrowing money to buy back shares, but concluded that the management buyout was the most attractive option.
Mr. Dell had aligned himself with Silver Lake, which he let handle virtually all of the board negotiations, these people said. Mr. Durban used his close ties with Steven Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft and to whom he had sold the video chatting service Skype for $8.5 billion, to bring in Microsoft as a partner.
Microsoft was wary of getting involved, fearing fracturing relationships with other partners, according to a person briefed on its deliberations. The software company insisted on providing a loan instead of taking equity in the newly private Dell. Silver Lake also hired four banks to arrange the $15 billion in financing.
By the time word of the deal talks leaked last month, the two sides had the outline of a final proposal. But Dell’s special board committee, led by Alex J. Mandl, battled with the buyers on price until Monday night, pressing for the highest possible bid.
Hamstringing them was a lack of other potential buyers. The committee’s advisers had unsuccessfully approached both K.K.R. and TPG Capital, another big investment firm, hoping to flush out another offer. And despite the talk last month, no strategic buyer emerged as a rival.
Secrecy was important. Mr. Dell was known in talks as “Mr. Denali” — a nickname he liked so much he referred to himself by it regularly — while the PC maker was “Osprey” and Silver Lake was “Salamander.”
Nick Wingfield and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting. | – Dell has reached a deal to go private, the company has announced. Shareholders will receive some $13.65 per share in a $24 billion deal, the New York Times reports, which marks a 25% premium over Dell's January share price. The privatization deal with Microsoft and private equity company Silver Lake Partners is the biggest since the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal notes. Once the biggest PC maker on the planet, the struggling Dell is now third; the move comes as founder and CEO Michael Dell hopes to retool his company. The deal incorporates Michael Dell's own 16% stake, some $700 million from his investment company, $1 billion from Silver Lake, and a $2 billion Microsoft investment. In return, Dell will likely work more closely with Windows, as was previously rumored. Meanwhile, four banks are backing the deal with $15 billion in evenly-divided debt. For Michael Dell, the company's floundering image is central to the overhaul, the Journal adds: "It's pretty simple: His name is on the door," says a former exec. |
The National Park Service says engineers have discovered several additional cracks in the top portion of the Washington Monument.
The cracks were found Wednesday during a daylong inspection of the interior of the monument. A 4-inch (10-centimeter) crack was discovered Tuesday during an inspection of the exterior by helicopter, shortly after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook the capital.
The monument is closed to visitors indefinitely.
Park service spokeswoman Carol Johnson could not say how many additional cracks were found but says engineers found three or four "significant" ones.
The park service is bringing in engineers from two firms with extensive experience investigating earthquake damage to conduct a more detailed inspection on Thursday.
Johnson says it's likely that the additional cracks mean the monument will take longer to repair. ||||| — While the angst over whether this country’s political system is broken seems likely to go on for the foreseeable future, it gave way to some degree Wednesday to more immediate concerns about how badly the Washington Monument had been cracked.
The monument was damaged Tuesday by a magnitude-5.8 earthquake that rattled nerves across much of the East Coast, particularly the parts that directly experienced the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although the quake’s epicenter was less than 100 miles away, the Washington metropolitan area suffered mostly minor damage to homes, schools, office buildings and other businesses, and most of the region’s infrastructure was unscathed.
The National Cathedral appeared to be the hardest hit, with fallen capstones, broken statues and cracks in several flying buttresses.
However, fractures in the walls of the Washington Monument, a towering icon of American strength and influence, had the potential to become the only vestige of the earthquake to capture more than fleeting national attention.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
While schools were closed, most of Washington returned to normal on Wednesday. But the monument, which at more than 555 feet is the world’s tallest stone structure, was closed to visitors so that engineers could hover in helicopters and examine its interior walls to determine the extent of the cracks in its peak.
Photo
“We’re not sure how long it will take,” said Bill Line, a spokesman for the National Parks Service, when asked when the monument might reopen. “The engineers are going up there today. They may need to go tomorrow. And they may need to go again the day after that. But until we figure out how badly the structure has been damaged, no one else will be going up other than them.” | – Further inspection has revealed even more cracks in the top portion of the Washington Monument, which was damaged by this week's 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Engineers discovered the cracks during a day-long inspection of the interior of the monument, AP reports. A 4-inch crack was discovered during an inspection of the exterior by helicopter soon after the quake, which also damaged the National Cathedral. The 555 foot-tall monument—the world's tallest stone structure—will remain closed to visitors indefinitely while engineers figure out how badly it has been damaged. Visitors at the site yesterday said they were relieved the monument survived the quake. "People may say the monument is broken like our political system,” one visitor tells the New York Times. “But the fact is, it’s still standing and so are we." |
Passaic bodega owner claims $338 million Powerball prize
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
Photos: Powerball jackpot claimed in Passaic
CHRIS PEDOTA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Pedro Quezada at Eagle Liquors Monday.
Every evening, Pedro Quezada buys a lottery ticket at Eagle Liquors in Passaic. On Monday, though, he came to cash in.
Surrounded by a media gantlet and a pack of joyful neighbors, the 44-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who runs a nearby bodega signed the Powerball ticket he had bought two days before —the one that hit the $338 million jackpot, the one that everyone had been buzzing about all afternoon, hoping it had gone to someone they knew.
Then he called his family to give them the news. “Tell her to come here and help me count it,” he said into the phone.
Moments later, his wife was on the line.
“I'm a millionaire, Ines,” he said. “Did you hear?”
Rarely does good news arrive in such fantastic fashion in this neighborhood, one of North Jersey’s poorest enclaves tucked in the bell curve of the Passaic River and cut off from the rest of the city by the six traffic-clogged lanes of Route 21. It’s a place where the typical household income is $26,000, half the children live in poverty, half the adults lack a high school diploma, only 10 percent own their homes.
When the news did arrive — in the form of the numbers 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31 — it didn’t matter that Quezada’s was a form of luck that would likely never strike here again.
“It’s a blessing for the neighborhood,” said Daphne Robinson, 44, “It gives people hope that there is a blessing somewhere, for somebody.”
News of the winner’s identity traveled quickly along streets where most of the pedestrians seemed to know each other. Neighbors who had waited under awnings all day for the winner’s identity — ever since the state Lottery Commission announced that morning that the lone winning ticket in the Saturday Powerball drawing was sold in the City of Passaic — now hollered to each other about the sudden good fortune of one of their own.
“Hey, Charlie,” one man yelled to another outside a barbershop. “Why wasn't it you that won all that money?”
The fervor continued around the Quezadas’ apartment building, one of about a dozen beige-and-brown buildings along School Street.
“I'm living next to a millionaire!” a woman announced from her doorway.
Quezada, a father of five who has owned the Apple Deli and Grocery on Eighth Street since 2006, seemed to be still processing the news as he fielded questions. He answered in Spanish.
How was he feeling? “I’m nervous and tired.”
How does it feel to be a millionaire? “I don't know, I don't have it.”
What would he do with the money? “I want to help a lot of people, in whatever they need, in rent, in whatever.”
Later, outside his apartment building, his wife, Ines Sanchez, said she hadn’t really grasped the idea … yet.
“We never expected it, but thank God,” she said. “I couldn't believe it. I still don't.”
The Quezada family was hit with their share of bad luck recently. Thieves broke into their small apartment about two years ago, stealing everything from clothes to jewelry, friends and neighbors said.
About a year before that, a fire destroyed much of their bodega.
“They had nothing for a while,” said longtime friend Alberto Liranzo. “Now they got enough money to buy a million bodegas.”
Neighbors described the family as a quiet, tight unit. Ines would walk her children to school every day while Pedro worked days and nights. His first job in the States was at a T-shirt printing factory, said a friend who worked there with him.
“Usually it's people that are already millionaires winning these things,” said neighbor Eladia Vazquez, 55. “I'm just glad it went to somebody that could use it.”
The lump sum payout is $211 million, amounting to about $152 million after state and federal taxes, Lottery Executive Director Carole Hedinger said. One second-prize ticket worth $1 million was also sold in New Jersey, at a 7-Eleven in Mahwah, she said.
Powerball is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is about 1 in 175 million.
Sunil Sethi, 51, the owner of Eagle Liquors, said lottery officials informed him when he opened at 9 a.m. that his store had sold the jackpot winner, sending a shock wave of excitement through the neighborhood.
The predominantly Latino, African-American and Polish area has been on a downward trajectory for decades, residents said. The single-family homes were split into apartments long ago, and residents complain about petty crimes and sidewalk drug dealing.
Recently, there have been glimmers of a better future, from the bright green artificial turf on the new baseball field behind the Vreeland Village public housing development to the big sign in front of the boarded-up Uniroyal factory building announcing that a 550-unit apartment and retail complex is coming.
But such promises don’t measure up to the dreams of a better life elsewhere shared by seemingly everyone on the street. For Michel DeLillo, 51, it’s a house with a back yard where the 3-year-old grandson she is raising can play. For Daphne Robinson, it’s the promise of more available work in Atlanta. For a 27-year-old man who goes by the name Johnboy, it’s someplace not too far away, maybe on the border of a blue-collar stronghold like neighboring Garfield or Saddle Brook.
“I’ve got house dreams,” he said.
Perhaps it is those dreams that propel so many to Eagle Liquors, a nondescript storefront between a mini-mart and a store that sells live poultry where, once a year or so, someone will buy the $219 bottle of Louis Roederer champagne but the most popular choice is the $1 shooter of Paul Masson brandy. The cardboard “Lucky Location, play here” sign that dangles over the lottery ticket counter was provided by the lottery commission because the store “sold a winning ticket in the past,” said Judith Drucker, a commission spokeswoman.
So many people stop in regularly to play the lottery that one employee, Pravin Mankodia, 67, does nothing but sell tickets six days a week, from opening until closing, and neighbors said a line forms around noon every day.
“That line is too long,” said Angel Manguel, 30, who lives around the corner. “And everyone is familiar.”
Elsa Ramirez, who runs the poultry store two doors down, is a regular. “I spend $50 a day on the lottery,” she said. “Last year I won $20,000, but you can see I’m still here with the chickens.”
More than $41 million worth of Powerball tickets were sold in New Jersey ahead of Saturday’s drawing, Hedinger said. Eagle Liquors will receive a $10,000 commission for selling the winning ticket.
Neighbors said they wouldn’t blame Quezada if he left with his winnings, but hoped he would be able to invest some of it in the community.
“It’s not a neighborhood no more,” said Kasim Washington, a local community activist. “You would be a fool to stay in the ’hood with that type of money.”
Douglas Frederick, 50, said he comes to Eagle Liquors twice a day to buy tickets — scratch games in the morning and Pick 3 in the afternoon. He’s won several times, usually around $100 or $300.
“I wish I could win the big one,” he said. “I would still stay here. I would represent my community. We need to have it built up a little better.
“I would like to open up a gym around here so that the kids could have someplace to go instead of being out here on the street.”
Staff Writers Jim Norman, Michael Linhorst and Dave Sheingold contributed to this report. Email: [email protected] and [email protected] ||||| The winner of a $338 million Powerball jackpot told several media outlets Monday that his first priority will be helping his family.
FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 23, 2012 file photo, a Powerball form and purchased ticket are on the counter at the Jayhawk Food Mart in Lawrence, Kan. A single ticket sold in New Jersey matched all six... (Associated Press)
Pedro Quezada, 44, entered Eagle Liquors store, where the ticket was sold, late Monday afternoon. The Passaic store owner ran Quezada's ticket through the lottery machine to validate that it was a winner as a newspaper and television outlets recorded the moment.
The New Jersey Lottery confirmed that the winning ticket was validated at the store at 4:30 p.m. Monday, but officials said they didn't yet know the winner's name.
Quezada told reporters in Spanish that he was "very happy" and that he intends to help his family.
His wife, Ines Sanchez, told the Bergen Record that Quezada called her with the news Monday afternoon.
"I still can't believe it," she said. "We never expected it but thank God."
The numbers drawn Saturday were 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31. A lump sum payout would be $221 million, or about $152 million after taxes. It's the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball history.
The family's apartment sits at the end of a short dead end block that abuts a highway in Passaic, 15 miles northwest of New York City. Neighbors stood out in the rain Monday night and spoke with pride that one of their own had struck it rich.
Eladia Vazquez has lived across the street from Quezada's building for the past 25 years. The block has a half-dozen three-story brick apartment buildings on each side, and Vazquez says it's a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone, including what car they drive and what parking space they use.
Vazquez described Quezada and his wife as "quiet and not overly talkative" but sensed that they seemed to be working all the time.
"This is super for all of us on this block," she said. "They deserve it because they are hardworking people."
Richard Delgado, who lives down the block from Quezada's building, said the man was "a hard worker, like all of us here. We all get up in the morning and go to work."
Delgado said he got up Sunday morning and was going to take his dog for a walk when he heard the radio announce the Powerball results.
"When I heard there was one winner and it was in New Jersey, I immediately went and checked my tickets," Delgado said. "I wanted to be that guy."
When asked what it would be like to suddenly win such a large amount, Delgado said a person would have to set priorities.
"No. 1 is your health, because if you don't have that, the rest doesn't matter," he said. "No. 2 is your family. You take care of your own and live the rest of your life in peace. That's all anyone can do."
No one had won the Powerball jackpot since early February, when Dave Honeywell in Virginia bought the winning ticket and elected a cash lump sum for his $217 million jackpot.
The largest Powerball jackpot ever came in at $587.5 million in November. The winning numbers were picked on two different tickets _ one by a couple in Missouri and the other by an Arizona man _ and the jackpot was split.
Nebraska still holds the record for the largest Powerball jackpot won on a single ticket _ $365 million _ by eight workers at a Lincoln meatpacking plant in February 2006.
Powerball is played in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is about 1 in 175 million.
___
Associated Press writer Angela Delli Santi contributed to this report from Lawrenceville, N.J. | – Bodega owner Pedro Quezada has seen his share of hard times. The 44-year-old father of five lives with his wife and kids in Passaic, one of the poorest areas of North Jersey; years ago, a fire destroyed much of their store, and just one year later, thieves stole everything they could from the family's apartment. But now, finally, Quezada's luck has changed: On Saturday, as he did every night, he bought a Powerball ticket from Eagle Liquors—but this time, his was the winning ticket. He returned to Eagle Liquors last night to reveal himself to his excited neighbors as the winner of the $338 million jackpot. With the lump sum payment, he'll take home about $152 million after taxes, the Record reports. He also broke the news to his family: He called them only after signing the ticket, telling his wife, "I'm a millionaire, Ines. Did you hear?" Neighbors described the couple as quiet but hard-working, and expressed happiness at their good fortune. "I'm just glad it went to somebody that could use it," says one. Another calls the win "a blessing for the neighborhood," because "it gives people hope that there is a blessing somewhere, for somebody." As for what Quezada will do with the money, he says, "I want to help a lot of people, in whatever they need, in rent, in whatever." First, he'll help his family, the AP reports. In Spanish, he told reporters that he's "very happy." |
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Tuesday that he will return all gifts from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and indicated for the first time that he was not aware of everything that the Star Scientific executive had given to his family.
McDonnell (R) made the promise during a radio interview as part of his new strategy to try to win back Virginians who have lost faith in him over a scandal involving luxury gifts and loans.
McDonnell announced that he was returning the gifts one week after apologizing for the scandal and disclosing that he had repaid $120,000 in loans that Williams provided: $70,000 to a real estate company owned by the governor and his sister and $50,000 to first lady Maureen McDonnell. (Related: What was given to the McDonnells )
McDonnell’s remarks on WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor” program were his first about the gifts and loans since last week’s written announcement, issued as he was en route to Afghanistan to visit Virginia troops. He struck a tone Tuesday that was by turns contrite and defiant — one moment vowing to “restore trust with the people of Virginia,” the next noting that his Democratic predecessors had also received gifts. He said he was trying to regain the commonwealth’s faith but seemed reluctant at times to concede that there had been anything inappropriate in his interactions with Williams that would have caused him to lose it.
“I have made as sincere an apology as I can to people who looked at my judgments or my actions or those of my family with regard to these loans and said that I am deeply sorry if I — for breaching the trust between the citizens,” he said.
View Graphic Timeline: Star Scientific and Gov. McDonnell
With about five months left in his term, McDonnell is trying to move past the controversy even as it remains the subject of state and federal probes. It has consumed the administration since late March, when The Washington Post first reported that the governor and first lady had promoted Star’s nutritional supplement about the time Williams paid the $15,000 catering bill for the wedding of one of the McDonnells’ daughters.
Attention to the McDonnells’ ties to Williams has grown since then, with The Post reporting that the Star executive also provided a $6,500 Rolex watch for the governor, a $15,000 Bergdorf Goodman shopping trip for the first lady and a $10,000 engagement gift to another daughter. Investigators are also looking into whether Maureen McDonnell received free cosmetic dental work from a Richmond area dentist and jewelry from a state delegate, people familiar with the investigation have told The Post.
The radio interview yielded the governor’s most extensive statements on those gifts and the effect they have had on his legacy, family and administration. At one point, he defended the first lady, saying: “She’s probably been the most active first lady that I’ve seen in the 22 years I’ve been in office. I could go on with the list of the things that she has done.”
But when asked about her work promoting Star’s product, he said, “Ultimately, the first lady makes her own schedule.”
McDonnell lost patience with the WTOP radio hosts as they stayed on the topic for the first 45 minutes of the hour-long show. He tried in vain to switch the conversation to his trip to Afghanistan.
After the radio interview, McDonnell told reporters gathered outside the studio that the scandal has been a distraction to his administration. But he vowed not to let “detractors and naysayers” cause him to lose focus. He has kept a low profile since The Post reported the loans and $10,000 engagement gift July 9, but he went ahead with plans Tuesday to promote an adoption initiative in Fairfax County.
It was not clear from his radio remarks exactly what he will return besides the Rolex — something he acknowledged would go back to Williams only after one of the “Ask the Governor” hosts pressed him. McDonnell later told The Post that he will return all gifts from Williams, including those to family members. It remained unclear whether that will include reimbursement for the $15,000 in wedding catering Williams provided to Cailin McDonnell. Jeanine McDonnell recently returned her $10,000 engagement gift.
“Those gifts that I have in my possession I am working with my counsel to return,” McDonnell said. He declined to say afterward if some are not in his possession.
McDonnell repeated that he has tried to observe Virginia’s ethics laws, which allow officeholders to accept gifts of any size but require them to report any worth more than $50. McDonnell insisted from the start that he did not have to report the $15,000 in wedding catering because it was a gift to his daughter, not him. None of the other gifts — including the watch — was reported.
The $70,000 loan to the real estate company was not disclosed, but McDonnell has said it did not have to be because it was a corporate loan. McDonnell reported the $50,000 loan to his wife, but in a way that did not identify the lender. He said last week that he repaid those loans using personal and family assets as well as assets from the real estate company.
“Some of [the gifts] I did not know about at the time,” he said on the radio. Afterward, he declined to specify those gifts. At one point on the radio, McDonnell noted: “These are gifts that came to me. I didn’t ask for them.”
When the hosts noted that according to reports, Maureen McDonnell had asked Williams for the Rolex, McDonnell said: “I have not read many of the reports over the last 30 days because much of what I have read . . . about either me or my wife has not been accurate.”
He went on to say it would be inappropriate to discuss whether his wife had asked for that or any other gifts because of the ongoing investigations.
McDonnell reiterated that neither Williams nor his company received any economic-development money or appointments in return for the gifts, touting the findings of a review conducted by former Democratic attorney general Tony Troy. McDonnell did not mention that Troy, now in private practice, was acting as the governor’s lawyer when he produced that report.
On Monday, McDonnell’s office released documents showing that Troy’s firm, appointed to represent him and his staff in matters related to an embezzlement case involving the former chef at the executive mansion, billed taxpayers $54,000 for its first five weeks on the job, concluding May 31. That amount includes part, but not all, of the cost of producing the report, which was completed shortly before its July 18 release, the governor’s office said.
McDonnell said taxpayers incurred those expenses because Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), now running to succeed him, had been recused from representing the governor’s office in matters related to the chef’s case.
“My lawyer is generally the attorney general. . . . But he determined he had a conflict,” McDonnell said.
McDonnell’s statements provided a new complication for Cuccinelli, who also accepted $18,000 in gifts from Williams. Democrats pounced, demanding that he, too, return gifts from Williams, although most came in in-kind travel and entertainment that would be difficult to return. Cuccinelli’s campaign said the issue was a distraction.
The pledge to return gifts appeared to be the next prong in a series of steps McDonnell has taken in recent weeks to attempt to move past the scandal. Next, he told reporters, he will unveil proposals to tighten Virginia’s disclosure laws to help ensure that future governors do not have to “endure some of the things I have been through.”
However, he said he does not plan to call a special session of the legislature to address the issue.
Asked whether Williams or anyone else had provided as-yet undisclosed gifts or loans to his family, McDonnell replied, “I can only say that I’ve disclosed under the law what I believe the law requires me to disclose.” ||||| Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has said his daughter and her husband paid for their own wedding. So a $15,000 check from a major campaign donor to pay for the food at the affair was a gift to the bride and groom and not to him and therefore did not have to be publicly disclosed under the law, the governor says.
But documents obtained by The Washington Post show that McDonnell signed the catering contract, making him financially responsible for the 2011 event. The governor made handwritten notes to the caterer in the margins. In addition, the governor paid nearly $8,000 in deposits for the catering.
When the combination of the governor’s deposit and the gift from the donor resulted in an overpayment to the caterer, the refund check of more than $3,500 went to McDonnell’s wife and not to his daughter, her husband or the donor.
The new documents suggest that the governor was more involved with the financing of the wedding than he has acknowledged.
The question of who was responsible for paying the catering bill is a key one because Virginia law requires that elected officials publicly report gifts of more than $50. But the law does not require the disclosure of gifts to the official’s family members.
McDonnell has cited the statute in explaining why he did not disclose the payment in annual forms he has filed with the state.
Attention to the wedding gift intensified Tuesday as state Sen. A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico) called for a review of Virginia’s disclosure laws, saying the General Assembly should examine whether elected officials should be required to report gifts to immediate family members.
A spokesman for McDonnell, who is in his final year in office, said he would be “open to supporting future changes” to require disclosure of such gifts.
The gift came from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., chief executive of Star Scientific Inc., a company near Richmond that makes dietary supplements. Three days before the wedding, the governor’s wife, Maureen, flew to Florida to speak about the company’s new product, an anti-inflammatory made from a chemical found in tobacco. Shortly after the wedding, the governor and his wife hosted a luncheon at the Executive Mansion marking the launch of Star’s latest product.
“Mr. Williams gave my daughter a wedding present,” McDonnell (R) told reporters in Richmond on Monday in his first public comments about Williams since The Washington Post detailed the relationship on March 31. The comments came before he was asked about the new documents.
“As you know, under the reporting laws, the gifts that come to me, I report. And I’ve been doing this for 22 years. Gifts that come to me, I regularly and diligently report those. . . . But gifts that come to other family members under the current law are not reportable,” he added.
McDonnell’s comments were in response to a question about whether Williams had provided members of the first family with any other gifts, which the governor declined to answer.
Later, in a written statement, McDonnell spokesman Jeff Caldwell said the governor agreed to a request by his daughter to review the catering contract months before Williams’s gift.
“He signed the contract and made two initial installment payments for her to secure the catering, unbeknownst to his daughter until after the fact,” Caldwell said. “The governor’s daughter and future son-in-law insisted on paying for the costs of the wedding, as the governor and first lady had done for their own wedding.”
He said Cailin McDonnell and her husband, Chris Young, paid other expenses relating to their June 2011 wedding. He cited the rehearsal dinner, flowers, the DJ and honeymoon.
The refund, he said, covered part of McDonnell’s original deposit.
“All of Mr. Williams’s gift was applied to catering and was not part of Mrs. McDonnell’s refund,” he said.
The comments came as McDonnell faces new questions concerning his relationship with Williams and his company, which McDonnell and his wife showcased even as they received other gifts and campaign donations. The company has revealed it is the subject of a federal securities investigation.
McEachin, chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, said he was confident that the legislature will reexamine gift laws during its session next year.
“Obviously, we’re going to have to define what family looks like. Are we talking extended family? Immediate family?” he said. “I certainly think we should wrestle with it. We’ve seen a good example of why we need to wrestle with it.”
Williams and Star Scientific gave McDonnell and his political action committee more than $120,000 in publicly disclosed political donations and gifts.
On the wedding contract, the client’s name is listed as “Chris & Cailin’s Reception.” “Cailin McDonnell” is listed as the contact for the event, which was held at the governor’s mansion.
But McDonnell signed the document, initialed each page and made some handwritten changes, which he also marked with his initials. For example, next to a line on the contract mentioning a required deposit, McDonnell added in pen: “The deposit will be refunded if an act of God or death occurs which prevents the wedding reception from occurring.”
He also added a note requiring that the catering company be held liable for damages “caused by its own negligence or intentional acts.”
“I have made a few reasonable changes to the contract which I hope you find acceptable,” McDonnell wrote in a handwritten note attached to the document. “Likely find headcount closer to 200-210 and will advise in advance. Thanks Bob McDonnell.”
He added, “PS: Thanks for all your help with Cailin to get this set up.”
The catering company was owned by Todd Schneider, who had trained with Martha Stewart and was hired by the McDonnells to serve as the chief chef of the Executive Mansion in 2010.
Schneider left his job in 2011 amid a Virginia State Police investigation into alleged improprieties in kitchen operations. He was recently charged with four counts of embezzlement. Through an attorney, he declined to comment.
The catering documents indicate that the company offered the McDonnells a significant discount for the event. They were charged $30 a head for food that would generally cost $50 per guest. Discounts were also provided for equipment rentals and staffing costs. The documents also indicate that alcohol was to be supplied by the client.
McDonnell’s spokesman has said the governor does not know whether any other wedding expenses were provided as gifts by guests.
The catering invoice includes a $1,300 floral charge as part of the bill that was paid by Williams’s check.
Also, the owner of a bridal shop in the Hampton Roads area said Tuesday that she provided the bride’s dress free of charge. “It’s because it’s the governor’s daughter,” said Maya Holihan, owner of Maya Couture Bridal Salon. “We really just wanted to do business with them.”
A McDonnell spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about the flowers or dress on Tuesday.
Williams’s check, drawn from the account of the “Starwood Trust,” signed by his assistant and stamped with his Florida address, is dated May 23.
Just over a week later — three days before the wedding — Maureen McDonnell flew to Florida, where she spoke at the gathering of doctors and investors interested in anatabine, the key chemical found in Star Scientific’s supplement Anatabloc.
The reimbursement check to Maureen McDonnell is dated June 6, two days after the wedding.
Three months later, McDonnell allowed the company to hold an event at the governor’s mansion to mark the official launch of Anatabloc.
A picture of a smiling McDonnell holding a packet of Anatabloc had also been featured on the product’s Facebook page until recently.
McDonnell’s spokesman has said the governor and his wife consider Williams and his wife, Celeste, personal friends. They have known each other for about five years.
Jerry Kilgore, Williams’s attorney, has said that the CEO intended the gift for Cailin McDonnell to ensure she had a special wedding day. He has declined to comment further.
Laura Vozzella and Alice Crites contributed to this report. ||||| A prominent political donor gave $70,000 to a corporation owned by Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his sister last year, and the governor did not disclose the money as a gift or loan, according to people with knowledge of the payments.
The donor, wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., also gave a previously unknown $50,000 check to the governor’s wife, Maureen, in 2011, the people said.
The money to the corporation and Maureen McDonnell brings to $145,000 the amount Williams gave to assist the McDonnell family in 2011 and 2012 — funds that are now at the center of federal and state investigations.
Williams, the chief executive of dietary supplement manufacturer Star Scientific Inc., also provided a $10,000 check in December as a present to McDonnell’s eldest daughter, Jeanine, intended to help defray costs at her May 2013 wedding, the people said.
Virginia’s first family already is under intense scrutiny for accepting $15,000 from the same chief executive to pay for the catering at the June 2011 wedding of Cailin McDonnell at the Executive Mansion.
View Graphic Timeline: Star Scientific and Gov. McDonnell
All the payments came as McDonnell and his wife took steps to promote the donor’s company and its products.
The payments to the corporation, confirmed by people familiar with the transactions, offer the first public example of money provided by Williams that would directly benefit the governor and not just his family.
The money went from a trust, controlled by Williams, to MoBo Real Estate Partners, a limited-liability corporation formed in 2005 by McDonnell and his sister, the sources said.
McDonnell viewed the payments to MoBo and to his wife as loans and not gifts, according to three people familiar with the transactions. State law requires elected officials to disclose their personal loans but not loans made to their corporate interests.
Tucker Martin, a spokesman for the governor, declined to comment on the payments other than to say that McDonnell has been diligent in filling out legally mandated disclosures.
“The rules that I’m following have been rules that have been in place for decades,” McDonnell said Tuesday on a Norfolk radio show. “These have been the disclosure rules of Virginia. I’m following those. To, after the fact, impose some new requirements on an official when you haven’t kept record of other gifts given to family members or things like that obviously wouldn’t be fair.”
State law requires the disclosure of any gift valued at more than $50, but gifts to family members are exempt.
Jerry Kilgore, an attorney for Williams, declined to comment on the payments. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney investigating the payments also declined to comment.
On state-mandated disclosure forms, McDonnell indicated that a member of his immediate family owed money to an unnamed individual creditor in 2011 and 2012. In one year, he described the creditor as someone in “medical services.” In the other year, the governor said the creditor was in “health care.” Star Scientific makes nutritional supplements.
The form did not specify the exact amount owed; the governor checked a box saying it was between $10,001 and $50,000.
The people familiar with the payments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of state and federal investigations of the governor, differed on whether any kind of payment plan had been established to reimburse Williams. They agreed that none of the money to the corporation or Maureen McDonnell has been repaid.
Revelations of the additional payments came as a federal grand jury was scheduled to hear testimony in the case this week. Separately, state prosecutors in Richmond are looking into whether the governor has complied with all disclosure laws.
McDonnell has said that Star Scientific received no special benefits from his administration and that any actions he or his wife took to boost the company were standard for any administration promoting state-based enterprises.
The $145,000 in payments from Williams came in addition to other undisclosed gifts that Williams gave to the governor’s family, including $15,000 in luxury clothing he bought for Maureen McDonnell and a $6,500 Rolex watch she asked him to purchase so she could give it to her husband.
McDonnell has disclosed receiving $9,650 in gifts from Williams, including private plane trips and the use of a summer lake-house vacation.
Wedding catering
Williams’s first payment to the McDonnell family came in a $50,000 check made out to Maureen McDonnell from his trust on May 23, 2011, the people familiar with the transactions said. That was the same day Williams wrote a separate check for the catering at Cailin McDonnell’s wedding.
Then, in March 2012, Williams wrote a $50,000 check from his trust to MoBo, which was followed by an additional $20,000 payment to the corporation that spring, the people said.
In annual financial-disclosure forms, McDonnell has indicated that he owns a stake in MoBo, which he reported was associated with two Virginia Beach rental properties he purchased in 2005 and 2006 with his wife and his sister, who is also named Maureen.
The name of MoBo, formed in 2005, apparently comes from the combination of the names “Maureen” and “Bob” and is the entity that makes mortgage payments on the homes and pays for the properties’ renovations and upkeep.
Virginia law allows elected officials to accept gifts of any size, including money, provided they annually disclose those worth at least $50. The law does not require the disclosure of gifts given to members of an elected official’s immediate family, nor gifts provided by relatives or “personal friends.”
McDonnell has said he considers Williams, whom he met shortly before his 2009 campaign for governor, to be a “family friend.” He has said the catering at the 2011 wedding was a gift to his daughter and did not need to be disclosed.
State law requires officials to disclose loans made to them and members of their immediate family. But it does not require elected officials to spell out their business liabilities.
One person familiar with MoBo’s finances indicated that corporate records show the governor and his sister agreed to a low-interest loan with Williams. Terms of the loan dictated that they would make no payments for three years but return the $70,000 by 2015.
That person indicated that MoBo had trouble keeping up with expenses after the collapse of the real estate market and had accepted three previous loans, two from McDonnell’s family in 2007 and 2008 and another from a family friend in 2010.
He indicated that the loan to the family friend has been satisfied and the loans from the family member have been partially repaid.
The payments came as Maureen McDonnell told friends that the first couple was facing financial stress, two people said, in part because of difficulty renting the beach houses.
The governor, his wife and sister purchased one of the homes for $1.15 million in 2005 and the other for $850,000 in 2006. According to assessments, the beach properties have declined in value since the McDonnells purchased them during a red-hot real estate market.
In his annual financial disclosures, the governor has also indicated an ownership stake in another rental property: at the Wintergreen mountain resort in central Virginia, purchased for $1 million in 2007.
Also, the first couple bought a $835,000 house in the Richmond suburbs in 2006, where they were living until they moved to the state’s 200-year-old Executive Mansion when McDonnell became governor in 2010.
Consulting payment alleged
As governor, McDonnell is paid $175,000 a year. His wife is not paid by the state for her volunteer work as first lady. However, the chief executive of a coal company recently said he paid her $36,000 last year to attend two or three meetings and act as a consultant to his company and family’s charitable efforts.
The governor has said Star Scientific received no government contracts, economic incentives or grants.
However, the company was allowed to use the governor’s mansion to hold a luncheon to mark the launch of a new product in August 2011.
A few weeks before, Maureen McDonnell arranged and attended a meeting between Williams and a top state official during which the executive presented new research about the potential health benefits of the supplement, Anatabloc, and proposed that Virginia consider examining whether its use could reduce health-care costs in the state.
And Virginia Secretary of Health Bill Hazel said for the first time last week that he also met one-on-one with Williams in 2010 so the chief executive could pitch Star Scientific.
Hazel said the meeting came at the urging of someone in the governor’s or first lady’s office, but he could not remember which.
He said such meetings are not unusual. He concluded that Williams’s product was “not ready for prime time” and said he was confident that Williams received no benefit from the meeting.
Alice Crites and Carol Leonnig in Washington and Laura Vozzella and Errin Whack contributed to this report. | – The investigation into the relationship between Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Jonnie R. Williams Sr., CEO of Star Scientific, continues, with a new $130,000 reveal. Williams gave $70,000 to a McDonnell-owned corporation last year, another $50,000 to McDonnell's wife, Maureen, in 2011, and $10,000 to McDonnell's daughter in December, sources tell the Washington Post. The governor didn't disclose any of those amounts. Previously revealed gifts included another "wedding gift" for McDonnell's daughter and a $6,500 Rolex, among other things. More unpleasantness for the McDonnell family: Sean McDonnell, the governor's 21-year-old son, was busted early Saturday on a public drunkenness charge, the Daily Progress reports. Police found him intoxicated in Charlottesville, where he attends the University of Virginia. And, facing pressure over the misuse of Executive Mansion resources for his family, McDonnell recently paid the state $2,400 to reimburse it for food and household supplies his kids used, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. Specifically, McDonnell has been accused of sending things like paper towels and laundry detergent back to college with his children. |
Like an ice age radiator, heat from volcanoes helped Antarctica's plants and bugs survive Earth's glacial periods, scientists think based on the result of a new study.
The findings suggest that volcanoes can provide a cozy home for plants and animals during ice ages, either in ice caves or on warm ground heated by geothermal features such as hot springs, the researchers said. The study was published today (March 10) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Volcanoes are generally seen as these big, explosive destroyers of life, but they might be important in promoting biodiversity," said Ceridwen Fraser, a biogeographer at Australian National University in Canberra and lead study author. "This explains how life survived in Antarctica, but we think this idea of geothermal refuges could also apply elsewhere."
Frozen in place
Today, mosses, lichens and small invertebrates thrive along Antarctica's coast. In some spots, the bright green mosses form a thick, lush carpet, growing up to 10 feet (3 meters) deep.
But even these hardy plants suffered during Earth's last ice age 20,000 years ago, when the planet's temperature dropped and Antarctica's ice sheets covered nearly all its land and cloaked the sea.
Genetic and fossil evidence suggests that during the ice age, any Antarctic species that could cross the Southern Ocean fled, with penguins, seals and birds heading for warmer refuges. "The only species that were left in Antarctica were those that couldn't get off," Fraser said.
Genetic analyses also indicate that Antarctica's mosses, lichens and small invertebrates have been isolated from their relatives on other continents for millions of years. More than 60 percent of its bugs live nowhere else on Earth. This means these species probably survived the ice age by sheltering in place, rather than repopulating Antarctica by crossing the vast Southern Ocean after the ice age ended.
A hot haven
A BBC television documentary on Mount Erebus, Antarctica's largest volcano, inspired Fraser and her colleagues to test whether Antarctica's volcanoes were an ice age haven. Mount Erebus is an active volcano, with ice caves that harbor microbial life today. [Fire and Ice: Images of Volcano-Ice Encounters]
"I thought that ice caves would be a fantastic place for life to hang out during an ice age," Fraser told Live Science's Our Amazing Planet. "We decided to look at whether there was any evidence that these species could have survived at volcanoes, and that is what we found."
Antarctica has at least 16 volcanoes that have erupted in the past 20,000 years (more evidence of as yet undiscovered eruptions could be hidden below the ice.) At spots such as Deception Island, underlain by a large magma chamber, geothermal heating could have kept the ground ice-free during the past ice age, the researchers said.
"These were not only ice-free, but much warmer," Fraser said. "These were really nice, warm places."
Fraser and her co-authors analyzed more than 38,000 records of Antarctic species, and discovered there are more moss, lichen and bug species close to Antarctica's volcanoes, and fewer farther away.
The pattern supports the idea that these species weathered the worst of the ice age at Antarctica's volcanoes, then gradually expanded their habitat range after the ice receded.
"This suggests that all of the colonization has been from the volcanoes slowly over time," Fraser said.
A man stands in a cloud of volcanic steam in the Antarctic South Sandwich Islands. Credit: Pete Convey
Bringers of life
Another potential ice age refuge was Antarctica's nunataks, isolated peaks that are surrounded by ice. But nunataks usually have a unique assortment of life that is different from lowland species, so it's unlikely that plants and small invertebrates repopulated the coast from nunataks, Fraser said.
In the Northern Hemisphere, scientists have also discovered fossil evidence of ice age refuges in the high latitudes, where plants such as white spruce trees thrived in places like Norway, despite chilly weather and giant glaciers. These "cryptic refugia" have not yet been directly linked to volcanoes or geothermal areas.
"We know that they existed but we don't know why," Fraser said. "We think that volcanoes and geothermal areas could have potentially helped life survive in those regions as well."
Fraser and her colleagues now plan to test whether the genetic patterns of moss and other species also support the idea of volcanic refuges in Antarctica.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article at Live Science's Our Amazing Planet. ||||| Some plants and animals were able to survive through ice ages because of volcanic steam and and heat emissions, according to scientists. This image shows a man standing in volcanic steam in Antarctica. (Photo : Peter Convey / British Antartic Survey)
Some plants and animals were able to survive through ice ages because of volcanic steam and heat emissions, according to scientists.
The research focused on Antarctic species which have been collected throughout the decades. Of these tens of thousands of species on record, the researchers found that more species were collected close to volcanoes than there were specimens collected farther away.
If the researchers' theory is correct, it could solve a long-standing mystery surrounding why some species survived and continued to evolve through past ice ages in parts of the planet covered by glaciers.
Share This Story
"Volcanic steam can melt large ice caves under the glaciers, and it can be tens of degrees warmer in there than outside," research leader Ceridwen Frase, a biogeographer from the Australian National University, said in a statement. "Caves and warm steam fields would have been great places for species to hang out during ice ages."
"Volcanoes are generally seen as these big, explosive destroyers of life, but they might be important in promoting biodiversity," Fraser said, according to LiveScience. "This explains how life survived in Antarctica, but we think this idea of geothermal refuges could also apply elsewhere."
"We can learn a lot from looking at the impacts of past climate change as we try to deal with the accelerated change that humans are now causing," she added.
The researchers examined diversity patterns of mosses, lichens and bugs which are still common in Antarctica today. About 60 percent of Antarctic invertebrate species are found no where else on Earth, said British Antarctic Survey's Peter Convey.
"They have clearly not arrived on the continent recently, but must have been there for millions of years. How they survived past ice ages - the most recent of which ended less than 20,000 years ago - has long puzzled scientists," Convey said.
Antarctica has at least 16 volcanoes that have been active since the last ice age 20,000 years ago.
Fraser and her colleagues, including Aleks Terauds from the Australian Antarctic Division, suggest that this revelation may help scientist understand how species survived past ice ages in icy regions other than Antarctica.
"The closer you get to volcanoes, the more species you find. This pattern supports our hypothesis that species have been expanding their ranges and gradually moving out from volcanic areas since the last ice age," Terauds said.
The researchers said these biodiversity "hot spots" can be identified and protected as Antarctica continues to be affected by anthropogenic climate change.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | – Volcanoes are usually in the news for their destructive power, but a new study suggests they've got some protective power to boast of as well. Scientists think that bugs and plants have survived Antarctica's ice ages only because they found warmth near live volcanoes, reports AFP. They did so either in underground caves formed in the ice or by camping out on ground warmed by geothermal heat, explains LiveScience. "Volcanic steam can melt large ice caves under the glaciers, and it can be tens of degrees warmer in there than outside," says a lead researcher from the Australian National University. "Caves and warm steam fields would have been great places for species to hang out during ice ages." The finding—based in part on the discovery that more mosses, lichens, and small bugs are found near volcanoes today—helps answer a question that has vexed Antarctic researchers: How did species that have been in the region for millions of years manage to survive those ice ages? Now it seems they waited them out in relative warmth before expanding their range again. The researchers say their discovery likely holds true outside Antarctica as well, notes Nature World News. (If you prefer volcanoes of the destructive variety, click to read about this doozy of 125 million years ago.) |
The Onion botched a joke about congressmen taking children hostage this morning on Twitter. Now, the U.S. Capitol police are investigating the joke. Everyone chill out!
Today, The Onion tweeted: "BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building."
This, by itself, was not funny at all and many people, including me, believed the account might have been hacked. Either way, no big deal: It's still fake! The Onion followed up a minute or two later with: "BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen." This made it clear the tweets were related to a story on the Onion's website "Congress Takes Group of Schoolchildren Hostage," satirizing the budget fight—an article about as offensive as anything on the Onion any day.
Still, Twitter was outraged. More than that, the US Capitol Police sent out an email to counter the reports: "There is no credibility to these stories or the twitter feeds," the press release reads. "The U.S. Capitol Police are currently investigating the reporting." So, looks like a bad Twitter joke by a fake newspaper has led to a Capitol Police investigation? It's like something from the Onion! yuk yuk. Here's hoping the Onion gets cleared quickly.
Here's the full USCP press release:
From: Schneider, Kimberly A.
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 11:01 AM
Subject: USCP Notice: False Reporting via Twitter It has come to our attention that recents twitter feeds are reporting false information concerning current conditions at the U.S. Capitol. Conditions at the U.S. Capitol are currently normal. There is no credibility to these stories or the twitter feeds. The U.S. Capitol Police are currently investigating the reporting.
Disclosure: I'm a former contributor to the Onion's IFC show ||||| The U.S. Capitol Police issued a statement calling conditions at the Capitol building “normal” Thursday morning in apparent response to a series of tweets and an article from the satirical web site The Onion.
“It has come to our attention that recents twitter feeds are reporting false information concerning current conditions at the U.S. Capitol. Conditions at the U.S. Capitol are currently normal,” read a press release from Sergeant Kimberly Schneider.
“There is no credibility to these stories or the twitter feeds,” Schneider’s release read. “The U.S. Capitol Police are currently investigating the reporting.”
A Twitter search indicates a few tweets from The Onion regarding the Capitol on Thursday morning.
“BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building,” one read.
“BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen. #CongressHostage,” a second read.
A third tweet included a link to an article titled “Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage.” From the article:
“Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage this morning, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda, where they remain at press time.”
More Twitter news
Twitter to sell political advertising
The NBC News Twitter hack — or how not to yell ‘fire!’
Twitter hits 100 million active users ||||| "Unfortunately an incorrect item was released on our website on Friday which included a fake opinion poll on popularity rate of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US President Barack Obama. The news item was extracted from the Satirical Magazine, The Onion, by mistake and it was taken down from our outlook in less two hours," Editor-in-chief of FNA's English Service said.
"We offer our formal apologies for that mistake," he added.
"FNA makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of its reports, however very occasionally mistakes do happen," he said.
"Although it does not justify our mistake, we do believe that if a free opinion poll is conducted in the US, a majority of Americans would prefer anyone outside the US political system to President Barack Obama and American statesmen," he added.
Active and well-known media occasionally make mistakes, and no media is an exception to this rule.
Also, It's not the first time a news outlet has been duped by The Onion.
On April 25, 2011, The New York Times admitted they made the mistake of treating a fake creation from The Onion as something legitimate.
A week earlier the Times printed an article documenting the history of the squeaky-clean teen magazine Tiger Beat, and included a retrospective of past magazine covers. Unfortunately (or humorously depending on one's perspective), in the collection they also included a parody cover created by The Onion, which featured President Obama.
In 2002, the Beijing Evening News, one of the Chinese capital's biggest newspapers, picked up a story from The Onion that claimed members of Congress were threatening to leave Washington unless the building underwent a makeover that included more bathrooms and a retractable dome.
Also, in February, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), deleted a Facebook post in which he linked to an Onion article about Planned Parenthood that he did not realize was satirical.
All media, at least those you know like the BBC, CNN, etc., have had many goofs. During a report on the ongoing conflict in Syria, the BBC used an image of Iraq alleging that the image was taken after a massacre in Hula in Syria.
According to The Telegraph, the image - which shows of Iraqi child running over rows of bodies found in desert - was captured in 2003.
The photographer who caught the image in 2003, Marco Di Lauro, said he was shocked that a press institution like BBC did not check their sources and published such an image.
The time ITV also presented clips from Arma II as real-life footage of IRA soldiers shooting down a British Helicopter.
The BBC has made a series of embarrassing blunders over the years. Here is a selection cited by the Telegraph on December 6, 2010.
"The weather finger"
Tomasz Schafernaker, a BBC weather presenter, was caught making a rude gesture on-air, forcing the BBC and the Met Office to issue apologies. He was caught live on air making the obscene gesture just before the 11am bulletin in August, 2010 after news presenter Simon McCoy made a lighthearted remark. The camera cut to Schafernaker who, not realizing he was now being broadcast live, was clearly seen raising his middle finger to McCoy in a well-understood gesture. Instantly realizing his mistake, Schafernaker moved his hand to his face to disguise it.
"F------ trumpet."
The BBC was forced to apologize after a member of staff delivered a four-letter tirade without realizing he was being broadcast live on Radio 5 Live. Thousands of listeners heard the unnamed producer swearing at a jazz music recording. He was heard to say "f****** trumpet" before adding: ""It drives you mad that f****** Stanley Clarke." The BBC apologized.
Caught in the "Today show duck house".
Sir Peter Viggers's £1,645 duck house, first disclosed by The Daily Telegraph, provoked Today show host Evan Davis to fall into fits of the giggles. "Evan, just shush... it's serious stuff," co-presenter Sarah Montague, said all the time trying not to laugh herself.
"Leg over".
The 'Leg Over' has become a commentary classic since 1991. Commentating on a Test match between England and the West Indies, Test Match Special legends Brian Johnston and Jonathan Agnew were undone by what has been described as the most famous fit of giggles in broadcasting history. Johnston was describing a dismissal in which Ian Botham's inner thigh had brushed his stumps, dislodging a bail. "He just didn't quite get his leg over," Agnew added. Johnston then erupted in snorts, whimpers, sneezes and, finally, uncontrollable laughter. Listeners were similarly afflicted; motorists had to pull on to the hard shoulder to wipe away the tears.
"Nicky Campbell and west Kent Hunt"
The BBC presenter Radio 5 Live made a memorable slip-up in 2009 when he introduced the "master of the west Kent hunt". He introduced Georgie Worsley as the master of the Old Surrey, Burstow and West ----.
"Nicky Campbell and hunting mark II"
The presenter then shocked listeners in April by accidentally swearing after a slip of the tongue during his breakfast show. Campbell introduced a Countryside Alliance guest on his breakfast show and said he was "pro ----ing". What he had meant to say was that Tim Bonner, the pressure group's head of media, was pro-hunting. | – The Onion seems to have registered a rare misfire in the joke department. It set off a scare at the US Capitol this morning with a fake tweet reading, “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building," reports the Washington Post. A few others in a similar vein followed, and it turns out the site was promoting this satirical story, headlined "Congress Takes Group of Schoolchildren Hostage." Capitol Police weren't laughing, issuing a statement that all was well at the building and adding that the fake reports were under investigation. Reaction on the Internet has been mostly negative. ("I mean, I know you guys do satire, but I really don't get this one..." went one typical Twitter post. "The Onion botched a joke," says Gawker in its writeup.) The Onion's New York office wasn't apologetic: "This is satire. That’s how it works.” The tweets came a day after this guy got arrested and charged with plotting to blow up the Capitol. |
You may have guessed from Melissa Gilbert’s red wedding dress (and her desire to one day wear it again) that the Little House on the Prairie star doesn’t often follow the crowd. And one more way she’s setting herself apart from Hollywood trends: She’s made the decision to remove her breast implants.
Charles Sykes/Getty
In a Dec. 31 blog post entitled “A Tale of Two Titties,” the star writes that she scheduled surgery this week to reverse surgery she got in her 20s. “I am concerned for my health and I don’t like the way they look or feel,” she writes. “Frankly, I’d like to be able to take a Zumba class without the fear that I’ll end up with two black eyes.”
Gilbert says she got the implants after divorcing her first husband, who made her self-conscious about her post-breastfeeding chest. “Dating posed the terrifying prospect of the guy I chose to make love with next, undoing my bra and running away in abject terror,” she writes. She loved the results until she had a second child, and then went for another lift, which she proudly showed off in a low-cut gown at the 2011 SAG Awards. “The irony of the fact that I was president of SAG when my breasts were doing the opposite of sagging is not lost on me,” she jokes.
RELATED PHOTOS: See your fave stars on the red carpet, then vote on their looks!
“I had spent most of my life pressured to look a certain way and I believed the hype,” she goes on, adding that her Dancing With the Stars appearance fed her insecurity. But she says that now, she’s feeling good about herself and is looking forward to embracing her new, old chest. “Most of the time, I’m really happy with the way I look. I’m enjoying aging. It’s not going badly either. My sweet husband [Timothy Busfield] … is perfectly supportive of my decision to do this. He only wants me to be healthy.”
And the result? Gilbert seems happy with her decision (which was confirmed by her personal rep) — check out her Tweet from Tuesday:
In recovery. Surgery went great. No the recovery begins. #boobies! — Melissa Gilbert (@MelissaEGilbert) January 6, 2015
What do you think of her blog? Is she brave for sharing?
–Alex Apatoff ||||| Anne Ziegenhorn lives in Florida, but shares a connection with Paula Blades. Both were diagnosed with Saline Biotoxin Illness, and received an explant from Dr. Susan Kolb.
Paula Blades shared this picture of her back, riddled with scars. For years, she dealt with sores that would not heal.
Many are willing to pay the price and go under the knife to fix their insecurities, including Paula Blades. She chose breast augmentation. Then, after years of severe mystery illnesses, it turns out the very thing she needed to feel good about herself was killing her.
The Choice
Down a quiet Gilbertsville road, you'll find Paula Blade's home.
"We live on a little farm. I love animals," Paula said.
The lawn is manicured. Inside, her home is tastefully decorated, every detail thought out. Growing up, Paula had less control over her appearance.
"I actually had this little Skipper Barbie doll growing up, and you could twist her arm and her chest would expand," Paula said. "So my cousins, they would try to, they would, like, try to twist my arm trying to get them to grow."
Paula laughs about it now, but the teasing harbored insecurities about her chest size. She was determined to have a breast augmentation. She even asked her parents for one when she graduated high school. They said no, but in 1992, at 20 years old, Paula was capable of making the decision on her own. She did her research and chose saline breast implants.
"Was told they were totally safe, would last me a lifetime," Paula said. "If they did rupture, it's no big deal."
The implants had a valve, like many on the market. They are placed into the breast deflated, then a syringe is used to fill the implant with saline through the valve.
Trouble With Her Health
Even in the beginning, there was trouble. Two years after her surgery, she went back under the knife to fix the look of the implants. They looked wavy under her skin.
It wasn't until years later that serious health problems began to plague her.
"I started getting like chronic sinusitis and different infections —bronchitis, things of that nature that wouldn't go away," Paula explained. "I got these sores all over my upper torso that wouldn't heal."
"Severe chronic sinusitis and running a temperature every day. My white blood cell count was increased," she recalled.
Paula also lost a lot of weight, dropping to just 80 pounds. She went to doctor after doctor and faced diagnosis after diagnosis. She went through multiple hospital stays.
"Just one thing after another," Paula said. "It seemed like it never ever was going to end."
No one could tell her the source of her illnesses, and she only got sicker.
"I was to the point where I was planning my funeral. I knew I was gonna' die," Paula said.
One night, Paula was channel surfing and happened to stop on Discover Health. The show 'Monsters Inside Me' was on. Paula saw a woman. She was a stranger, but her symptoms were all too familiar to Paula.
"She was like me. She had the same symptoms, everything, and I was just like 'Oh my gosh, that's me,'" Paula said.
Paula also saw Dr. Susan Kolb, with Plastikos Plastic Surgery Center in Atlanta, on the program. Paula reached out to her.
"The next week I was in Atlanta, met with her on a Wednesday," Paula said. "She's like 'Honey, I know what's wrong with you.'"
Getting Answers
Kolb told Paula she had something called saline biotoxin illness.
"Most doctors have never heard of this disease, so they don't know anything about it," said Kolb. "I think most doctors right now that are internal medicine, neurology, family practice and plastic surgery have patients in their practice that are diagnosed with you know, MS, lupus, other auto-immune diseases and fibromyalgia, that are curable. Curable, if they had explant, anti-fungals, treatment of co-infections.
She has treated thousands of patients like Paula.
"She probably wouldn't have lived very much longer had she not had some intervention in her health," Dr. Kolb explained.
Paula's implants were removed in a procedure called an explant. In Paula's case, the procedure lasted hours, because it's not as simple as removing the implant.
"Specifically, you have to have the entire scar capsule removed. Not just the implant," Kolb said.
The implants were then sent to Dr. Pierre Blais with Innoval Failure Analysis in Ottawa, Canada, for further testing. That testing found "the valve capping mechanism...faulty", the "filling fluid grossly contaminated" and indication of "aspergilli-related entities," —mold.
"It can do all sorts of things in the body," said Kolb.
Kolb also discovered silicone from the shell of her saline implant had leaked, collecting in certain areas of her body.
Finding Support
Anne Ziegenhorn and Paula talked with a British radio station about their stories the day we interviewed them. Anne's from Florida, but she knows exactly what Paula's been through.
"After going through what I've gone through —hundreds and thousands of dollars in medical bills, I've lost my career. It was taxing on our marriage," Anne said, explaining the toll her illness has taken on her life.
To read Anne's blog concerning her health issues related to her breast implants, click here.
The two each thought they were alone, then found each other. Kolb performed explants on both women.
"She saved our lives," Anne said of Dr. Kolb.
Spreading Their Message
Now, they plan to spread the word.
"If I had known some of these symptoms to look for then, I would have thought 'Hey, it's my breast implants, and I need to get them out,'" Paula said.
Life is better for Paula. Her health has improved, although she does have long-term neurological damage. She says she can accept that, because she's alive.
"Does it all look a little different to you now?" I asked her of her life.
"Oh yeah. Yeah," Paula answered. "Life's totally, my outlook on life's totally changed."
"I'm just happy to be here."
Paula and Anne have consulted with an attorney to see if there are legal options available to them. They've also started a group called The Implant Truth Survivors Committee, with the goal of connecting women who have this condition and providing funds to women who do not have the finances to pay for an explant procedure. To learn more, click here.
Considering Implants?
Kolb, meanwhile, says women need to be informed about all the possible side effects and complications of any cosmetic procedure, short and long term.
"In general, most patients don't become ill before eight to 15 years," Kolb said.
She also urges women to consider where they live. If you live in a climate that is humid and moldy, you may be more susceptible to this condition. In that case, saline implants may not be the best option for you.
As far as finances, Kolb says women need to make sure they are financially prepared to not only pay for the surgery, but upkeep on the implants. She told me silicone implants, for example, need to be changed out every eight years. Others can last longer. Beyond the upkeep, make sure you can pay for an explant or emergency surgery to fix them if something goes wrong.
To learn more about Kolb, click here. To see more about her book, "The Naked Truth About Breast Implants," click here. ||||| Local woman warns of the dangers of breast implants
A Shalimar woman has a warning for them. She says her implants nearly killed her. You may have seen some of the articles popping up on Facebook and various websites, linking mold in saline implants to a host of health problems. Anne Ziegenhorn says they are frighteningly accurate.If Ziegenhorn had known the price she'd pay for beauty, she would have run the other way. She said, "It's not a story a multi-billion dollar industry wants to get out."Anne keeps a video on her phone of the saline breast implants covered with mold, that were removed from her body after a two-year nightmare. Ziegenhorn said, "I felt like that was it, I was gonna die, and the doctors were gonna let me die."It started in 2011. The woman who was a picture of health suddenly started gaining weight, losing her vision and experiencing burning, unrelenting pain. She had sores all over her body. Her thinking was so cloudy she thought she might have Alzheimer's. She was misdiagnosed with everything from lupus to arthritis to thyroid problems. She said, "Silicone sickness in and of itself is one entity. And then you add the mold to it that we had, and then you've got two illnesses going on."The diagnosis that Anne believes saved her life came from Dr. Susan Kolb, author of "The Naked Truth About Breast Implants." Dr. Kolb said, "My experience in doing this for thirty years is that eventually everybody will become ill from their breast implants, unless they die sooner from something else."Dr. Kolb says she's seeing lots of women with mold in their saline implants, often from defective valves. She says some patients also have detoxification problems, that make them particularly sensitive to the silicone shells of the implants. She says in 25-30 percent of the population, the reactions are debilitating. The doctor is not anti-implants, she has them herself. But she believes for safety, women need to get their implants replaced every eight to fifteen years. Amanda Gilcrease is a patient who had her implants removed. She said, "All the neurological symptoms... the burning, numbing, stabbing, shooting, electrical shocking pains throughout my body went away immediately."Through Dr. Kolb, Anne Ziegenhorn met other women suffering the same frightening symptoms. They formed "The Implant Truth Survivors Committee" to educate women and doctors, and to force the FDA to listen. She said, "I literally willed myself to live and willed myself to get this message out here This is my purpose, this is why I'm here."Channel 3 called the FDA to see if they're getting any reports of illnesses from mold in saline implants or from the silicone shells. Their spokesperson said he's not familiar with any such reports. The agency does say that most women will eventually need to have their implants replaced. CLICK HERE to find out more about "The Implant Truth Survivors." Committee" | – Melissa Gilbert has had her breast implants removed, and in an extremely long blog post written on New Year's Eve but getting picked up now, she explains why. But most of the blog post is taken up with an explanation of why she got them in the first place: She had "perfect A cup" boobs, and she was happy with them. They grew to C cups during her first pregnancy, but after she stopped breastfeeding, when they deflated to their original size, they did not return to "their original place," she writes. "They were lower....much, much lower." Her then-husband once referred to her breasts as looking like "socks full of marbles with knots at the top," and though they ended up getting divorced, she remained insecure about her breasts and decided to get them augmented. She got saline implants, and during her second pregnancy, the cycle repeated itself. This time, while her boobs drooped a little post-breastfeeding, they remained "perky-ish" thanks to the implants. But after 12 years, they needed to be replaced, so she got a breast lift and silicone implants. That was when she realized she would need to keep replacing them: "It was possible that at 80 years old I might have to get new implants!" She was also worried about the silicone and ultimately decided it was time to get the implants removed. "The bottom line...or top line.. is that; A. I am concerned for my health and 2. I don't like the way they look or feel. Frankly, I'd like to be able to take a Zumba class without the fear that I'll end up with two black eyes." Click for her full piece, which also includes a lot of commentary about society's expectations when it comes to a woman's appearance. |
Dallas Police Chief David Brown dismissed criticism that the tactic, believed to have been the first use of a police robot for that purpose in the United States, went too far. | AP Dallas police chief on robot bomb: I'd do it again
Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Sunday sharply defended his department's decision to send in a robot rigged with C4 explosive to end the standoff between officers and Micah Johnson, the man believed to have killed five law enforcement officers Thursday night.
"I was in radio contact with the SWAT team negotiating once we had him pinned down in the second floor of the El Centro College building," Brown explained on CNN's "State of the Union." "And they began conveying to me that this person was in a ... gunfight with them. And he was in a position such that they could not see him, he was secreted behind a brick corner.” Any effort to get a sniper shot “to end his trying to kill us would be to expose officers to grave danger."
Story Continued Below
The other option, Brown said, was continuing negotiations, which had already lasted two hours and had not been productive.
"He just basically lied to us, playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more and that there were bombs there so there was no progress on the negotiation. And I began to feel that it was only at a split second he would charge us and take out many more before we would kill him," Brown said, recalling that he told officers to use "your creativeness to come up with a plan to do it."
After he came back from a news conference, Brown said officers presented a plan to arm a robot with "a device to detonate behind the corner within a few feet of where he was that would take him out."
"And I approved it," Brown said. "And I'll do it again if presented with the same circumstances."
Brown dismissed criticism that the tactic, believed to have been the first use of a police robot for that purpose in the United States, went too far.
"I just don't give any quarter to critics who ask these types of questions from the comforts and safety away from the incident. You have to be on the ground and try and determine — I've got former SWAT experience here in Dallas, and you have to trust your people to make the calls necessary to save their lives. It's their lives that are at stake, not these critics' lives who are in the comforts of their homes or offices," Brown said.
"So, you know, that's not worth my time to debate at this point. We believe that we saved lives by making this decision. And you know, again, I appreciate critics, but they're not on the ground, and their lives are not being put at risk by debating what tactics to take. And I'll leave that to them for a later discussion."
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said he "supported [Brown] completely" on the decision, telling CBS' "Face the Nation" that "it was the safest way to approach it, and we talked to this man a long time and he threatened to blow up our police officers."
"We went to his home, we saw that there was bomb-making equipment later," Rawlings said of the investigation. "So it was very important that we realized that he may not be bluffing, so we ask him, do want to come out safely or do you want to stay there and we're going to take you down, and he chose the latter."
This article tagged under: Police
Robots
Dallas Shooting ||||| A Crofton man who owned a cache of weapons repeatedly threatened to "blow everybody up" at his former workplace and declared himself a "joker," police said, in what authorities believe is a reference to last week's mass killings during a midnight screening of"The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo.
Neil Edwin Prescott, 28, was taken into custody at his apartment early Friday and transferred to Anne Arundel Medical Center for an emergency psychiatric evaluation, Prince George's County police said. He has not been charged with a crime, and the investigation is continuing.
Police said Saturday that Prescott has now been hospitalized, and could be there for a week. No charges are expected during the time he is being treated.
"I truly believe we saved people from being harmed," said Anne Arundel County police Chief James Teare Sr.
Officers said they found two dozen firearms — including shotguns, a tactical rifle and handguns — along with accessories and several thousand rounds of ammunition at Prescott's apartment on the 1600 block of Parkridge Circle during a search Friday. He had registered at least 13 of the guns, according to court documents. At an earlier visit, police said he had been wearing a T-shirt that read "Guns don't kill people, I do."
According to an application for the search warrant, Prescott called his former supervisor, Gary Crofoot, at mail services supplier Pitney Bowes in Capitol Heights on Monday and repeatedly said, "I am a joker. I'm going to load my guns."
He also said he wanted to "see the supervisor's brain splatter all over the sidewalk," the search warrant application says. Police confirmed that there was animosity between the two men but said the threat was directed toward "everybody."
Crofoot, who alerted police to the statements, declined to comment Friday when reached via cellphone.
The Batman allusion led police to fear a copycat killing modeled on the Aurora shooting, in which 12 people were killed and 58 wounded. The man accused in those shootings, James Holmes, had his hair dyed reddish-orange and called himself the Joker, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said.
"In light of what's recently happened, it's fairly obvious and that's how we took it," Prince George's County police Chief Mark Magaw said during a news conference Friday.
"We can't measure what was prevented here," he said, but added that a "violent episode" was likely avoided.
Prince George's County State's Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks praised the cooperation among authorities.
"Law enforcement is all about preventing loss of life," she said in a statement. "Today's efforts are an example of the many ways we work collectively to keep our citizens safe."
Prescott has no criminal record in Maryland, according to an online court database. His only infraction was a traffic stop in 2007. He was accused of driving a 2001 Volkswagen at a speed of 42 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone on Crofton Parkway and given probation before judgment. He was described as being 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 270 pounds at the time.
Research shows that many atypical violent crimes covered extensively by the media attract copycats, said Dr. James McGee, retired chief of psychology at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and former chief psychologist of the Baltimore County Police Department.
"There are a lot of people out there who are thinking about doing something," said McGee, who is not involved in the Crofton case.
When police first went to Prescott's home Thursday, he told them — through a closed door — that he had a firearm, according to police. Police said they instructed him to drop his weapon and come out, which he did, wearing the gun T-shirt. Based on his appearance and conversations with him, police said, they sought approval for the emergency evaluation and the search warrant, which they executed the next day.
Prescott had either recently been fired from his position working for a Pitney Bowes subcontractor or was in the process of being fired, according to police records.
Pitney Bowes spokeswoman Carol Wallace said in an emailed statement that Prescott had not been on company property for more than four months. He had raised alarms at the company before, she wrote.
"We have clear security protocol, and when we had concerns about this individual, we contacted authorities," Wallace wrote. She declined to answer questions, and employees at the Capitol Heights location refused to discuss Prescott or his alleged threats. ||||| Story highlights "It's too bad that it happened this way," suspect's mother says
A bullet-riddled chase ends when police cut off his options to flee
His aunt begs him to surrender as authorities negotiate with him by phone
A SWAT team surrounds his house; robot goes in to tell him to give up
After allegedly leading police on a bullet-riddled chase and barricading himself inside a house, a wanted man in California surrendered early Saturday, authorities said.
It may have been the fact that a California SWAT team had him pinned down, or that his relatives were tugging at his heart strings to come out.
Or it could have been the robot police sent into the house to tell him to obey police orders.
All of it may have persuaded Samuel Duran to walk unarmed out of the house in Roseville, near Sacramento, said local police spokesman Brian Jacobson.
Pleading aunt
Hours earlier, his aunt had begged him to give himself up.
"Sammy, I love you," Donna Sandoval said into CNN affiliate KOVR's camera. "Just come home."
But it's unlikely Duran will return home soon.
He is accused of shooting four law officers on Friday with an "assault-style rifle," police spokesman Lt. Cal Walstad said.
On Saturday, the suspect's mother, Celia Duran, visited the scene where her son peacefully surrendered.
"My thoughts is on him right now. I just want to know where my baby's at," she told CNN affiliate KOVR . "It's too bad that it happened this way.... It's a shame it happened this way. I did not want it to happen this way, and it did."
ICE sought him
Authorities had been searching for Duran for weeks. Police did not say why.
They traced him to Roseville, and a special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement went looking for him there together with local police on Friday afternoon.
The ICE agent's division is responsible for chasing down alleged drug smugglers, gun smugglers and human traffickers, among other criminal suspects operating across U.S. borders.
When the officers found Duran, a gunfight broke out, Walstad said.
A bullet struck the ICE special agent in the leg, and he was taken to a hospital, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. By late Friday, he was said to be stable and alert.
The chase
Duran took off running, and local police officers chased him as he cut across yards, jumped fences and shot at them, Walstad said.
His gunfire allegedly struck one of them in the jaw and another in the shoulder. Flying bullet fragments wounded a third officer, Walstad said.
One of the officers was in serious condition Friday, while the other two were stable, police said. None of them suffered life-threatening injuries.
Officers from various law enforcement units cooperated to cut off the suspect's path. They asked residents to stay inside their homes, while they contained the scene and tracked down Duran's exact whereabouts, they said.
No way out
The suspect was near Brenda Bell's house. Her "dogs went crazy," she told CNN affiliate KCRA. So, she ran outside, where she saw him coming through her back gate.
She fled to a neighbor's house, and Duran holed up inside of hers, she told the affiliate.
A voice boomed out toward the house, droning at it continuously.
"(They) keep repeating, 'We have the house surrounded. Come out with your hands up,'" Jim Stewart, the neighbor who invited Bell in, said Friday night. "They've been doing this for hours now."
Officers formed a perimeter around the neighborhood.
A SWAT team joined them, and under the cover of darkness, they tightened the perimeter, while Duran hunkered down inside the house, Jacobson said.
Walstad was confident he had nowhere left to go.
"I know he's pinned down," he said.
A negotiator called Duran by phone.
Hours later, an ambulance drove off with him in the back of it to take him for a medical exam, Jacobson said.
Then Duran will be booked into jail. | – After an attempted murder suspect armed with a rifle was chased into the desert on Sept. 8, he barricaded himself using a dirt berm and wire fencing; Los Angeles County sheriffs say they tried for six hours to get him to surrender. Finally, officers skillfully plucked the gun right out of Brock Ray Bunge's hideout—without putting their lives in danger. "The robot was a game changer," Capt. Jack Ewell tells the Los Angeles Times of the department's $300,000 Andros robot that did the deed; it's typically used to defuse bombs but is becoming increasingly useful in other cases. Officers say they were using the device to learn more about Bunge's position when they noticed Bunge was lying on his stomach with his weapon at his feet. While officers distracted Bunge, the robot grabbed the gun "without him noticing," says Ewell. The robot then went back to remove the fencing, and Bunge surrendered as soon as he realized his gun was missing, police add; he has pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder and robbery. Though the robot that nicked the gun is expensive, "when it saves lives, it is more than worth it," Ewell says. Officers also used a robot during the Dallas shooting. Dutch police believe robots can even replace drug-sniffing dogs, reports the NL Times. |
(CNN) — Nudists in Paris France , will soon be able to shed their clothes without fear of arrest, as city council members have approved plans for an official park for naked people.
A campaigner working on the project told CNN the exact location is yet to be decided, but it will likely be near Lac Daumesnil in the southeast of the city.
A spokesman for Deputy Mayor of Paris Bruno Julliard, who has supported the plan, confirmed it was approved in principle Monday at a meeting of the city council.
The proposal was put forward by the Green Party of Paris.
In a written submission to the city council, environmentalists from the party said France is a top world destination for nudists, with two million Germans, Dutch, British and Belgians coming to the country to take their clothes off.
They added that there are 155 naturist holiday centers in France.
Going au naturel is increasingly popular in the French capital, but public nudity is against the law and can be punished by a $15,000 fine or up to one year in prison.
There is only one location in the city that allows private nudist events -- the Roger Le Gall swimming pool in the 12th arrondissement -- and it's restricted to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
A popular nude beach in Florida is also a protected wildlife refuge. CNN affiliate WFLA has more.
Jacques Frimont, vice president of the Association for the Promotion of Naturism in Liberty (APNEL), told CNN: "It is getting too small and the pool is closed in summer. We are about 1,000 members and our numbers are increasing."
He is working on the project to make a bigger venue available to those who want to skinny dip.
"We don't have an exact location just yet, but we are thinking of Lac Daumesnil," he said.
"There's water, and we will be able to take our towels and lay down. Hopefully we will be able to settle there during the summer of 2017."
The government already has plans to turn the lake into a public swimming zone.
Denis Porquet, a member of the Nudist Association of Paris committee (ANP) told the French newspaper 20 Minutes that the pool is too small -- and closed in the summer.
Porquet said there were 150 people there on the evening of September 21 and the venue is too cramped. Frimont told 20 Minutes that nudity should not be associated with anything unseemly. ||||| Paris city councillors will debate Monday on creating spaces for nudists, an idea that Mayor Anne Hidalgo thinks is “très sympa [nice/fun]”.
The proposal, put forward by three Green councillors, will be debated Monday. Hidalgo’s deputy Bruno Julliard told RMC radio earlier in the day (see tweet below) that “we will accept the creation of a nudist camp in Paris”.
"Nous allons accepter la proposition d'un camp naturiste à Paris", déclare le 1er adjoint au maire @BrunoJulliard sur RMC #BourdinDirect pic.twitter.com/PGh0PwKZRH — Jean-Jacques Bourdin (@JJBourdin_RMC) September 26, 2016
Paris has very little to offer those who like to relax and exercise in the great outdoors in nothing but their “birthday suits”, and nudism is considered indecent exposure, punishable by up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of 15,000 euros. Paris has also banned the “monokini”, a revealing one-piece swimsuit, and the g-string, in public spaces.
There is just one swimming pool, the Roger Le Gall in the city’s 12th arrondissement, which allows nude swimming (three times a week after 9pm).
Green councillor David Belliard, who sponsored the proposal, told journalists: “France is the world’s top destination for naturists, and every year two million Germans, Dutch, Britons and Belgians come to the country for its nudist beaches. It shouldn’t be impossible to accommodate them in Paris too.”
“We have to find an outdoor space where nudism is allowed, in the city’s parks, forests or on the banks of the Seine,” he added. | – Paris, a place for fashionistas and nudists alike? Maybe. Parisian city councilors have given the green light to a plan that would see the creation of a clothing-free zone somewhere within the city limits, the BBC reports. The location of the nudist area has yet to be determined, but Deputy Mayor Bruno Julliard—a supporter—said the intention is to prevent any disruption of "public order" and suggested two wooded areas, the westside Bois de Boulogne or eastside Bois de Vincennes. France is famous for its nude beaches, and proponents—including the mayor—say that nudists should have a place within the capital city. For a country that's said to have 2 million nudists, the capital has been a mostly unwelcoming place. Currently, nudism in Paris is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $16,800, reports France24. It notes a single swimming pool in the city allows naked swimming, but even then, only after 9pm on certain days of the week. Opponents worry about inflaming tensions between conservative and liberal groups, particularly on the heels of the burkini brouhaha. Despite those objections, the BBC suggests the zone could be in place as early as next summer. |
The Help
'The Help' review: Period piece take on Kathryn Stockett's novel oversimplifies, miscasts Emma Stone
Emma Stone's 'plain' writer character Skeeter is miscast in the oversimplified period film 'The Help.'
With Emma Stone, Viola Davis. Racism divides the women of 1962 Mississippi. Director: Tate Taylor (2:17). PG-13: Mature themes. At area theaters.
In her best-selling novel "The Help," Kathryn Stockett didn't simply introduce us to a few memorable individuals. She offered a meticulously etched portrait of a specific way of life.
Tate Taylor's eagerly anticipated adaptation is impactful in parts, but noticeably lacking in Stockett's instinctive nuance.
Though he grew up there himself, Taylor's Jackson, Miss., could be any suburban Southern neighborhood in the early '60s. Similarly, many of his actresses have little apparent connection to the intricate culture they are meant to portray.
Emma Stone, for example, is no one's idea of an ugly duckling. And though she offers a sincere effort, she never quite settles into the role of Skeeter, an aspiring author whose plain looks and spinster status — at age 23 — horrify her beauty-queen mother (Allison Janney, also miscast).
While her small-minded friends gossip through Junior League meetings, she envisions her first book idea: to give voice to the African-American housekeepers ritually abused by the employers who need them.
In 1962, when blacks and whites are divided by both prejudice and the law, Skeeter's plan is dangerous for everyone involved.
But having been pushed to the limit, both Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) agree to share their experiences. All the while, they have to hide the project from their bosses, viciously racist Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard), ignorant Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly) and flighty Celia (Jessica Chastain).
While the book's minor — but crucial — details are often overlooked, the major themes are thrust on screen with forceful simplicity, as if Taylor doesn't trust us to understand the stakes.
Despite his unsubtle script, Davis and Spencer are experienced and assured enough to give their characters considerable depth, and their stirring portrayals make the film worth watching.
Their younger castmates, unfortunately, needed more guidance than they evidently received. How much more powerful Hilly's shameful cruelty, and Skeeter's tentative rebellion, would have been if they felt intimate and complex, rather than grandly symbolic.
Stockett's Jackson was a suffocating hothouse where tendrils of ugliness grew amid women raised to be nothing more than beautiful. She illuminated both sin and valor by exposing — for better and worse — the humanity in all her characters.
In contrast, Taylor's characters are familiar because we've seen them in movies so many times before: heroes and villains drawn in broad strokes, residents of a world regrettably lacking shades of gray. ||||| A lawsuit against Kathryn Stockett, the author of best-selling novel "The Help," has divided brother and sister in a dispute about the real-life identity of one of her fictional characters.
Ablene Cooper, the longtime nanny for Stockett's brother, has filed a $75,000 lawsuit against the author, claiming she was upset by the book that characterizes black maids working for white families in the family's hometown of Jackson, Miss., during the 1960s.
Cooper also once babysat for Stockett's daughter, according to the Jackson Clarion Ledger, and the lawsuit alleges that she had been assured by Stockett, 42, that her likeness would not be used in the book.
The 2009 novel was an instant favorite among book clubs, written in the voice of black "help" by a woman raised by maids herself and who is white.
Cooper, 60, maintains that the book's fictional character -- Aibileen Clark -- is her. She says the alleged unauthorized appropriation of her name and image is emotionally upsetting, and her employers, Carol and Robert Stockett III agree.
He is Kathryn Stockett's brother and employs Cooper as a nanny and maid.
The book focuses on the friendship of three women: a young white woman, Skeeter, who aspires to be a writer, and two African-American maids, Aibileen and Minny.
Aibileen speaks in heavy ethnic lingo and, in one passage, compares her skin color to that of a cockroach.
"That night after supper, me and that cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor," Aibileen says in the book. "He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me."
Cooper has said the portrayal of Aibileen -- an almost saintly figure who is subjected to the racial prejudices of the period -- is "embarrassing."
Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who is-African American, said, "There is an old saying, 'You can joke about your own crowd, but not about someone else's.
"Whether you are writing for yourself or a poetic work of fiction, you take a risk; like if I tried to write a book with a Yiddish dialect," he said, noting that the book has generated mixed reaction.
But in addition to being mortified by the black patois, Cooper is angry that the character so closely resembles her in many details.
"Ain't too many Ablenes," Cooper, who was unavailable for an interview, told the New York Times.
"What she did, they said it was wrong," said Cooper, who looks after the Stocketts' two children. "They came to me and said, 'Ms. Abie, we love you, we support you,' and they told me to do what I got to do."
The character Aibileen is a "wise, regal woman raising her 17th white child," according to the book jacket flap. "Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way."
Saintly Aibileen Has Gold Tooth Like Ablene
Cooper has said the likeness is uncanny. Besides their names, both maids have a gold tooth. Like the fictional Aibileen, she lost her son to cancer several months before the birth of the Stocketts' first child.
Her lawyer, Edward Sanders, who did not return calls from ABCNews.com, has said the similarities between both maids -- Aibileen and Ablene -- "seem very striking."
The lawsuit said the author's conduct "is not a mere insult, indignity, annoyance or trivial matter to Ablene. Kathryn Stockett's conduct has made Ablene feel violated, outraged and revulsed," according to the Jackson Clarion Ledger.
"Despite the fact that Kathryn Stockett had actual knowledge that using the name and likeness of Ablene in 'The Help' would be emotionally upsetting and highly offensive to Ablene, Kathryn Stockett negligently and-or intentionally and in reckless disregard for the rights and dignity of Ablene proceeded with her plans," it says.
"Kathryn Stockett's appropriation of Ablene's name and likeness was done for Kathryn Stockett's commercial advantage, namely to sell more copies of 'The Help.'"
The author's father, Robert Stockett Jr. of Jackson Miss., told ABCNews.com that he is "neutral" in the division between his son and daughter, but agreed that plenty of people are profiting, especially filmmakers who plan to release a movie version of the book this year.
The film, directed by Tate Taylor and starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, looks at what happens when a Southern town's unspoken code of rules and behavior is shattered by three women who strike an unlikely friendship. Shot in Mississippi, it is set for release in movie theaters Aug. 12.
"I don't have a position," he said, playfully correctly the reporter's pronunciation of Ablene. "It's AY-blene."
He also noted that his author daughter, who has moved north to Atlanta, "is also a New Yorker now." Stockett, a retired developer and lawyer, said he did not know her phone number.
"Sure, I liked the book. It's fiction. They didn't give me the critics' copy until it was too late," he said. "I would have got some factual things changed. But I'm low down the totem pole."
He charged media with "stirring up the pot" in the dispute between his son's maid and his daughter, adding that the ensuing publicity surrounding the feud would benefit his daughter financially.
"Kathryn will appreciate that she gets a cut," he said.
Publisher Says Novel Is 'Work of Fiction'
His son, Robert Stockett III, who is a real estate developer with Madison Properties, did not return telephone calls from ABCNews.com at his home or office.
The author also could not be reached but her husband, Keith Rogers, said from their home in Atlanta that he and his wife "don't know [Cooper] well."
"I know nothing about it [the lawsuit]," he said, referring ABCNews.com to his wife's publisher.
Amy Einhorn, whose imprint at Penguin Group USA published the book, was also unavailable, but she had earlier issued a prepared statement to the media: "This is a beautifully written work of fiction and we don't think there is any basis to the legal claims. We cannot comment further regarding ongoing litigation."
Stockton, herself, who has described the novel as, "fiction, by and large," admitted in several earlier interviews that the book had not been embraced enthusiastically in her hometown.
"Not everybody in Jackson, Mississippi's thrilled," she told Katie Couric last year, acknowledging that a few "close family members" were so unhappy that they were not talking to her.
One of Cooper's neighbors said she had not read "The Help," but had heard about the dispute on the television news.
"Miss Cooper is very friendly lady," said Emma Sims, 57, who is a substitute teacher. "We have had some neighborly conversations, but we have only talked three or four times. She's usually at work or at church."
The lawsuit, which was filed in Mississippi state court in Hinds County, asks for $75,000 with no punitive damages or other fees.
The author's father puts little stock in the suit.
"Ablene will probably be the last one to get a nickel out of it," Stockett Jr. said. "You can't buy that much for $75,000." | – Critics are impressed with certain aspects of The Help, Tate Taylor’s film about a young white woman interviewing black maids in 1960s Mississippi. But while some say the overall package is lacking, others are glowing. Compared to Kathryn Stockett’s novel of the same name, the film is “impactful in parts, but noticeably lacking in Stockett's instinctive nuance,” writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. “Taylor’s characters are familiar because we've seen them in movies so many times before: heroes and villains drawn in broad strokes, residents of a world regrettably lacking shades of gray.” In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis offers a similarly mixed reaction to the “big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokum.” But “Viola Davis invests this cautious, at times bizarrely buoyant, movie with the gravity it frequently seems to want to shrug off.” Buoyancy isn’t a problem for Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times: “Laughter, which is ladled on thick as gravy, proves to be the secret ingredient—turning what should be a feel-bad movie about those troubled times into a heart-warming surprise.” And in Rolling Stone, Peter Travers notes that “a deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak is rare in any movie season, especially summer.” |
Ahmed Chatayev, Chechen suspect for #IstanbulAttacks was in Russia's Most Wanted list. pic.twitter.com/9loKGnXVk3 — Aud™ (@CodeAud) June 30, 2016
Authorities suspect Akhmed Chatayev, a Chechen once given asylum in Europe and acquitted in another attack in Georgia, may have masterminded the coordinated terrorist attacks on the Istanbul airport. His name is sometimes given as Ahmed or Chataev, and several media sites say he previously avoided extradition to Russia after Amnesty International advocated on his behalf. Georgia’s former president says he was treated as a political prisoner in that country.
CNN reports that Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, told the news site that it’s suspected Chatayev “directed the three suicide bombers” who slew 44 and injured more than 230 people in the attack on the Istanbul airport. Turkish media made the same claim, using a nickname for Chatayev, the BBC says. The suicide bombers opened fire with rifles before exploding suicide bombs, says the Voice of America. The Voice of America says it was the Turkish pro-government newspaper, Yeni Safak, that identified Chatayev as the possible mastermind of the Istanbul attack.
The U.S. government had previously suspected Chatayev of planning terrorist attacks against Turkish and American interests, although he was given asylum in Austria years ago. NSNBC International reported on July 1 that Turkish authorities had arrested Chatayev, but CNN said his whereabouts were still unknown.
Here’s what you need to know about him:
1. Akhmed Chatayev Has Only 1 Arm
Chatayev’s deformity earned him the nickname “Akhmed One-Arm,” reports Fox News.
According to the International Business Times, Chatayev has claimed that his arm was chopped off in prison. Other sites have said Chatayev lost the arm while fighting in the Second Chechen War, but it was this claim of torture that may have assisted him in avoiding extradition to Russia before the Istanbul airport attack.
2. Chatayev Was Granted Asylum by Austria & Had an Austrian Passport
Back then, Amnesty International reminded Ukraine Chataev had refugee status in Austria https://t.co/xPAHJNHw73 pic.twitter.com/r254GgSsKR — Nahia Sanzo (@nsanzo) June 30, 2016
According to Radio Free Europe, Chatayev was previously granted asylum by Austria. The Voice of America reports that, Chatayev became an Austrian citizen in 2003, two years after he left Russia and applied for asylum there, and had an Austrian passport that “allowed him to travel freely in Europe and elsewhere.”
The International Business Times also reports that Chatayev was granted Austrian asylum after fleeing Russia 12 years ago. Austria this April passed tough new asylum laws allowing migrants to be rejected at the border, says the BBC.
3. Chatayev Avoided Extradition Back to Russia
The European Union advised against extradition back to Russia, reports RT Question More.
Citing translations of Russian newspapers, the site reported that Chatayev was detained in Sweden in 2008, where police found “Kalashnikov assault rifles, explosives and ammunition in his car. As a result, he spent more than a year in Swedish prison.” The site says that he was then arrested in 2010 in Ukraine with “his mobile phone files containing a demolition technique instruction and photos of people killed in a blast” but the European Court for Human Rights opposed the extradition, with Amnesty International also speaking out against it.
The Amnesty International press release uses a slightly different spelling of the name — Ahmed Chataev — but refers to the man as physically disabled, when arguing that his return to Russia could mean the risk of torture.
NSNBC International reported that Chatayev spent a year in a Swedish prison and that Ukraine would not extradite him. The news site says the European Court of Human Rights has advisory status and “ruled against the extradition of Chataev, claiming that he could risk an unfair trial and that he would be at risk of torture and ill-treatment.” In 2011, Chatayev avoided extradition again, says the site. The Voice of America puts it this way, “In 2010, he was arrested in Ukraine at the request of Russia’s security services but later released. In 2011, he was arrested on the Bulgaria-Turkey border. He appealed the arrest and a court ordered his release under Geneva Refugee Convention.”
4. The Suspected Chechen Ringleader Is Accused of Training Russian-Speaking Militants & the U.S. Had Designated Him a Terrorist
Fox News reports the possible mastermind “appears to be a one-armed Chechen terrorist who trained Russian-speaking militants.” Radio Free Europe reports that Chatayev leads a Russian-speaking ISIS brigade called the Yarmouk Battalion. He is one of nine Chechens believed to be fighting in Syria, Radio Free Europe says.
McCaul told CNN Chatayev was “probably the No. 1 enemy in the Northern Caucus region of Russia.” The Voice of America says Turkish media identified one of the bombers as also being from Chechnya.
Chatayev targets immigrant men with European Union passports and controls 130 ISIS fighters, the UK Daily Mail reports, citing the United Nations Security Council for the latter figure. CNN says Chatayev is a lieutenant in ISIS’ war ministry.
The BBC says Chatayev was already on a United States counter-terrorism sanctions list. In a 2015 press release, the U.S. Department of the Treasury named Akhmed Chatayev as a terrorist, saying, “As of mid-2015, Chatayev was a member of ISIL and was part of a group of militants that was planning attacks against U.S. and Turkish facilities.”
The Treasury Department said that Chatayev posted a video online, greeting militants who, in December 2012, “pledged allegiance to ISIL and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” In the video, the U.S. government says, Chatayev calls for more militants to also pledge allegiance to ISIS.
5. Chatayev Was Cleared in a Previous Attack & Georgia’s Former President Says He Was Treated as a Political Prisoner
Istanbul airport attack: One-armed Akhmed Chataev reportedly behind Ataturk massacre https://t.co/3qz8usjtXy pic.twitter.com/mRSaQXYP0j — IBTimes UK (@IBTimesUK) June 30, 2016
Chatayev was arrested in Georgia in 2012 in the Lopota Gorge incident, a conflict between armed Islamist Chechen militants and Georgian security forces, says Radio Free Europe. However, he was acquitted a year later despite being “named by the Georgian Foreign Ministry as a member of the armed group that clashed with Georgian special forces in August 2012.” Fourteen people died in the incident, including three Georgian special forces and 11 members of the armed group.
Radio Free Europe says Chatayev was tried for illegal weapons possession and for purchasing and carrying an explosive device, but his lawyers said he’d only gone to Lopota Gorge to help with negotiations.
Former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page that he opposed Chatayev’s release by the new Georgian government but was overruled. He said Chatayev was treated as a “political prisoner” by many government leaders. ||||| (CNN) Days after the Istanbul airport massacre , reports emerged about the identities of the suicide bombers as well as the organizer -- a man who a U.S. official says is a top soldier in the ISIS war ministry .
Two of the three assailants in the terror attack that killed 44 people at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport have been identified as Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov, according to Turkey's state news agency Anadolu, citing an anonymous prosecution source.
The Friday report did not identify the third attacker.
The report did not reveal their nationalities. But officials have said they believe the three attackers are from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and entered Turkey a month ago from Syria's ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.
The report came a day after U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the man who directed the attackers is Akhmed Chatayev, a terrorist from Russia's North Caucasus region
Akhmed Chatayev speaks to the media in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2012.
Turkish media reported that a man nicknamed "Akhmed One-Arm" organized the attack.
While his whereabouts are unclear, Chatayev's ties to jihadist activities are well-documented, McCaul said.
"He's ... probably the No. 1 enemy in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia. He's traveled to Syria on many occasions and became one of the top lieutenants for the minister of war for ISIS operations," he told CNN's Brianna Keilar.
Suspect on U.S. list of terrorists
Of the hundreds wounded, 80 are still hospitalized, Istanbul officials said.
Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Photos: Istanbul airport attacked People flee the scene of a terror attack at Istanbul's Ataturk airport on Tuesday, June 28. Three terrorists armed with bombs and guns attacked the main international terminal, opening fire and eventually detonating their devices. Hide Caption 1 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Investigators remove a body after the attack. Hide Caption 2 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Police investigators work inside the airport. Hide Caption 3 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Turkish special forces secure an area of the airport after the attack. Hide Caption 4 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A wounded girl is taken to a hospital in Istanbul. Hide Caption 5 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A Turkish police officer directs a passenger at the airport. Hide Caption 6 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Travelers embrace outside the airport. Hide Caption 7 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked One of the bombs was located just outside the international terminal on the pavement, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told CNN. Another was at the security gate at the entrance to the airport. Hide Caption 8 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Children and their relatives embrace after reuniting outside the airport. Hide Caption 9 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A police officer sets up a security perimeter. Hide Caption 10 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked People stand outside the airport after the attack. Hide Caption 11 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A wounded woman talks on the phone following the attack. Hide Caption 12 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Passengers cry as they leave the airport. Hide Caption 13 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked People on their phones wait with their luggage outside the airport. Hide Caption 14 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Workers clear glass debris on the day after the attack. Hide Caption 15 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Bullet holes are seen at the airport on Wednesday, June 29. Hide Caption 16 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Hide Caption 17 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A worker cleans blood from the upper walls of the international departure terminal. Hide Caption 18 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A police officer stands guard as a man walks at the airport a day after the attack. Hide Caption 19 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A woman cries in Istanbul on June 29. Hide Caption 20 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked Security personnel scan passengers and employees at a checkpoint on June 29. Hide Caption 21 of 22 Photos: Istanbul airport attacked A worker repairs the airport's damaged ceiling on June 29. Hide Caption 22 of 22
"We believe he (Chatayev) coordinated with the three suicide bombers in Istanbul to conduct this attack during the season of Ramadan," McCaul said.
Officials believe the attackers brought suicide vests, bombs and a deadly plan from ISIS leadership.
Anadolu said Osmanov was identified through a passport photocopy that was given to a property agent in Istanbul's Fatih district, where officials said the three attackers rented an apartment.
Growing trend
McCaul said his information on Chatayev came from Turkish intelligence. Turkish officials have not confirmed Chatayev's involvement to CNN.
The allegation reflects a growing trend of battle-hardened fighters from Russia and former Soviet republics joining ISIS in recent years.
"Russian citizens -- many of whom are Chechens or Dagestanis from the largely Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia -- are the largest group of foot soldiers in ISIS from a non-Muslim majority country," analysts Peter Bergen and David Sterman wrote in an opinion piece for CNN
Chechnya produced many fighters following the 1990s wars that pitted Russian forces against Chechen separatists.
Russians deployed brutal tactics in Chechnya, which radicalized the insurgents and moved them in an Islamist and militant direction, Bergen said.
In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said between 5,000 to 7,000 fighters from Russia and the former Soviet republics are in Syria.
"Ask anybody inside ISIS or who's fought ISIS. People from the former Soviet Union tend to be the most ... willing to die," said CNN contributor Michael Weiss, author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror."
ISIS leadership involved
Chatayev's alleged connection may not be a surprise.
Turkish officials have strong evidence that ISIS leadership was involved in the planning of the Istanbul terrorist attack, a senior government source told CNN.
Police showed residents of Fatih this image of three suspects.
And the attacks appear to have been well-organized. The three terrorists rented an apartment in the Fatih district of Istanbul after they arrived from Syria a month ago, officials said.
After the airport attack, authorities discovered one of the terrorists left behind his passport in the apartment, according to a Turkish government source.
Turkish police visited the Fatih area and showed neighbors airport surveillance video and photographs of the three men, residents said.
One man who owns a real estate agency said one of the men in the picture had lived in his apartment. He said he was shocked the man was a suspect in the attacks.
No claim of responsibility
JUST WATCHED Istanbul airport attacked despite heavy security Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Istanbul airport attacked despite heavy security 03:01
"One of the toughest battalions in ISIS is called the Uzbek battalion," he said. "These were the guys who were essentially on the front lines guarding Falluja, the city they just lost in Iraq."
The tactic used in the airport attack -- shooting, and then detonating explosives -- is called "inghimasi," and it's being used more frequently by terrorists.
"The 'inghimasi,' their (modus operandi) on the ground in Syria and Iraq, is to shoot up checkpoints and then they actually -- some of these guys actually run up to the enemy and hug them before detonating the bomb to take them out with themselves. So in a sense, the ultimate Kamikaze warrior," Weiss explained.
ISIS also has a history of airport attacks. It claimed responsibility for dual suicide bombings at the main airport in Brussels in March. At least 10 people died in those blasts.
The victims
Other fatalities included nationals from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Tunisia, China, Iran, Ukraine, Jordan and Uzbekistan. At least two Palestinians were also killed.
One U.S. citizen suffered minor injuries, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said.
Authorities have detained 24 people in connection with the attack investigation, including 15 foreign nationals, state media reported. | – The attack on Istanbul's airport that left dozens dead and hundreds injured Tuesday was likely organized by a one-armed Chechen terrorist who goes by "Akhmed One-Arm," Fox News reports. A news organization in Turkey identified Ahmed Chatayev as the organizer of the terrorist attack, as did US officials, according to CNN. The news has yet to be confirmed by officials in Turkey. A report released in October said Chatayev was part of a "group of militants that was planning attacks against US and Turkish facilities.” He is or was a top ISIS soldier, and the UN says he has 130 militants directly under his command. "He's ... probably the No. 1 enemy in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia," US Rep. Michael McCaul tells CNN. Heavy has a list of five things to know about Chatayev, including that he claims he lost his arm while being tortured in a Russian prison but may have actually lost it in combat. He spent time as a political prisoner in Georgia and has been arrested in Sweden and the Ukraine in the past decade or so. Amnesty International helped prevent Chatayev from being extradited to Russia, where he was wanted, claiming he would be tortured there. Only two of the three suicide bombers that killed 44 people and wounded more than 200 at Ataturk Airport have been identified, but US officials don't believe Chatayev was the third. The bombers have been linked to Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. And while ISIS hasn't claimed responsibility, officials believe the terrorist organization is behind the attack. |
Hedge fund operator Robert Mercer almost never talks about himself, and neither do the people who know him. Yet Mercer's money is sure making a lot of noise on the campaign trail.
The third most generous Republican donor this cycle, Mercer has cut checks for a total of $37 million in the past six years, supporting pro-life candidates, those who deny man-made global warming, as well as helping fund the effort to block construction of a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York. In fact, this year he gave more to the Koch brothers' organization, $2.5 million, than the Kansas founders, David and Charles, who each chipped in just $2 million to Freedom Partners Action Fund.
Bloomberg Visual Data
Yet the man who first made his mark by upending the field of computer linguistics and is now seeking to bend the national political debate in his conservative direction, is a stranger to the electorate he seeks to sway and the public that would be affected should he succeed. He is the ultimate behind-the-scenes kingmaker in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate who almost never talks—publicly or otherwise. An address to computer scientists at an awards ceremony in Baltimore this summer was a rare exception, and he admitted to finding it daunting.
It was only after he agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award that it dawned on him that he'd have to address attendees for about an hour. "Which, by the way, is more than I typically talk in a month," he said. About 10 minutes into the lecture, he paused, and took a sip of water. "I've just reached one week of speaking," he said, "so I have to take a little drink."
Asked to share their impressions about Mercer, people who have met him at conservative gatherings said they could recall little about about the man behind the checkbook. "I've only talked to him one time," said James Bopp, a normally outspoken campaign finance attorney who runs the USA Super PAC, a boutique political group backing Republican Pete Ricketts' gubernatorial bid in Nebraska. Bopp's super-PAC has just seven donors, including Mercer. Senator Rob Portman, the National Republican Senatorial Committee's finance chair and a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate simply said, "I don't have any insights" about the man who is one of two people who've donated to the Portman Victory Committee. The other contributor is Mercer's wife of more than 40 years, Diana. "The conversation I had with him was about the direction of the country. His focus with me was on the economic issues and the fiscal issues," Portman said.
Mercer declined to comment for this story via his a spokesman, Jonathan Gasthalter. Mercer's daughter Rebekah, who runs the $37.6 million Mercer Family Foundation and sits on the board of at least one conservative non-profit that the family funds, didn't respond to messages seeking comment. Along with her two sisters Jenji and Heather Sue, she operates a pastry store in mid-town Manhattan. (The business, unlike the vast majority of Mercer's projects, has bipartisan support. The shop's website includes rave reviews from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.) Rebekah Mercer is also a budding political donor, and among the recipients of her largess is Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican.
In addition to a broader desire to shape national policy, Mercer has business interests in the midterms. His company, Renaissance Technologies, which runs the Medallion fund and has produced 35 percent returns annualized over two decades, was hauled before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in July and quizzed over how the firm calculates its taxes. According to the committee, RenTech has used sophisticated financial maneuvers to lower the amount it's investors paid to the Internal Revenue Service by $6 billion over 14 years.
“It meant enormous profit for both the banks and the hedge funds,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat who chairs the panel. “Ordinary Americans had to shoulder a tax burden of billions of dollars, a burden that was shrugged off by those hedge funds.”
Gasthalter, also a spokesman for RenTech, said in a statement at the time that the IRS has been reviewing the hedge funds transactions for the past six years. “We believe that the tax treatment for the option transactions being reviewed by the [Senate committee] is appropriate under current law," he said.
With RenTech's outsized profits, Mercer is earning more than enough to fund political campaigns, and so far this cycle, he's contributed $8.8 million.
The beneficiaries of that money have been, across the board, Republicans—House candidates, Senate candidates, institutional super-PACs that give to lots of candidates and smaller super-PACs focused on individual candidates and conservative non-profits. Mercer has dipped into state races, including Ken Cuccinelli's 2013 gubernatorial contest in Virginia to which he gave a $600,000 contribution to an outside group. Cuccinelli recalled asking Mercer for support just after Mitt Romney had lost his 2012 presidential bid, when Republican money people were in what he referred to as deep donor depression. "He's very solid and understated," said Cuccinelli, who met with him on a fundraising trip to New York. "You wouldn't know you were talking to someone with that kind of force." Pet causes such as gun rights and charter schools don't seem to be the primary motivator for Mercer, unlike some donors, Cuccinelli said. "He just thinks our country is off track and he's in a position to do something to get it back on track," he said.
Only once during Mercer's talk in Baltimore did his conservative politics show. He recounted how he worked at a military base during college and he'd re-written an unwieldy computer program to make it faster. The bosses, to his surprise, added more to the program, slowing the computer back down. "The point of government-funded research was not to get answers but to consume the computer budget," he quipped to the crowd. "Which has left me with a jaundiced view of government research."
Mercer was born in July 1946 and grew up in New Mexico. He was obsessed with computers—writing code in high school even though he didn't have a machine to run it on. In graduate school he studied computer science. "I loved the solitude of the computer lab late at night," he said, during a 2013 talk to computer scientists. "I loved the air conditioned smell of the place. I loved the sound of the disks whirring and the printers clacking."
Later, he joined IBM and worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, focusing on the then-vexing problem of programming computers to recognize speech. He and his IBM colleague Peter Brown both joined RenTech in 1993, where the two men are now co-CEOs. The company's founder, James Simons, is the 54th richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He's also a hefty political donor—to Democrats. In March he wrote a $2 million check to the Senate Majority PAC, dedicated to keeping Democrats in power in the Senate.
The company was profiled in one chapter of Sebastian Mallaby's book "More Money Than God," which details the world's most successful hedge funds. In it, Mallaby shared only a few observations about Mercer. "He was an icy cold poker player; he never recalled having a nightmare; his IBM boss jokingly called him an automaton." Mallaby wrote. Last year, Mercer's household staff sued him, claiming their wages were improperly docked for failing to replacing shampoo bottles, closing doors improperly and not straightening pictures.
Get the latest on global politics in your inbox, every day. Get our newsletter daily.
Despite Mercer's material success, he political record is mixed. In 2010, he poured money into an Oregon House race to support a man—Republican Arthur Robinson, who was challenging incumbent Representative Peter DeFazio—who's skeptical work on climate change Mercer had funded. DeFazio's campaign put Mercer front and center that year, running radio ads saying Robinson was funded by a secretive donor with Wall Street ties.
"Oregon isn't a state that likes outside interference," DeFazio said. "Once we focused on who Mercer was we began to move our poll numbers." DeFazio won. This year, Robinson is running again to oust DeFazio, but Mercer hasn't dropped mega-dollars into the race. Robinson declined comment for this story. ||||| Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, are considering forming their own super PAC to direct their campaign contributions. (John Locher/Associated Press)
Efforts by potential Republican presidential candidates to win over wealthy donors have set off a series of contests for their support that could stall the GOP race for months.
In Florida, allies of former governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio are tussling over many of the same donors. In Texas, bundlers are feeling pulled by Bush, Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz. Perry and Cruz are also competing for the backing of wealthy evangelical Christians, as are Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
Despite the appeals, which have stepped up in recent weeks, many top donors have committed to being noncommittal, wary of fueling the kind of costly and politically damaging battle that dominated the 2012 primaries. Senior party fundraisers believe that most campaigns will not be able to fully set up their fundraising operations until at least the spring.
A telling sign of the mood can be seen in the attitude of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, one of the GOP’s biggest donors, who has expressed reluctance about engaging in the early primary fight. Instead, he and his wife, Miriam, are likely to set up their own super PAC to influence 2016 congressional campaigns as well as the White House race.
The hesitancy among the party’s financial patrons about jumping into the White House race right away could hamstring the ability of some candidates to ramp up their campaign operations and quickly break out of a pack of hopefuls that could number as many as two dozen.
From left, GOP backer Sheldon Adelson, Israeli American Council chairman Shawn Evenhaim and Hillary Clinton supporter Haim Saban attend the Israeli American Council Conference on Nov. 7 in Washington. (Shahar Azran)
Veteran fundraisers said there is a widespread desire among donors to pool their funds with other like-minded contributors, so as not to undercut their impact. Many are holding back from picking a candidate until Bush signals whether he will run.
With so many potential candidates — but no clear front-runner — the early maneuvering has had the effect of “just freezing” many donors, who are meeting with candidates but not making an early commitment, said Dan Senor, who advised GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.
“You would be hard pressed to find any invisible primary going back decades that was this fluid,” Senor said. “This is going to be chaotic and cluttered for some time.”
Establishment Republicans contemplating bids by figures such as Bush, Perry, Romney and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are pondering how to whittle the field to one of them, worried that a drawn-out primary process could produce a weakened GOP nominee.
“It’s really important for those donors who share the center-right philosophy to try to clear the field,” said Bobbie Kilberg, a longtime Republican fundraiser in Virginia who, with her husband, raised more than $4 million for Romney’s 2012 campaign. “We have to have one candidate we can all get behind.”
Doing their homework
The discussions are not just about rallying around a single candidate but also about how to pick the strongest one.
“There is a heightened awareness of the need for further and deeper homework on candidates and how they are going to win,” said one major GOP fundraiser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
The upheaval on the right stands in stark contrast with the coalescing of major Democratic financiers behind the expected candidacy of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. Operatives running a network of independent groups poised to flank her campaign began soliciting financial commitments the day after last month’s elections. Billionaire media mogul Haim Saban, a longtime Clinton backer, recently said he would spend “whatever it takes” to get her into the White House.
The prospect of Clinton’s financial might has spurred anxious conversations among GOP donors about identifying early funding for the opposition-research group America Rising and others to take aim at Clinton while the Republican primaries are underway.
“There will be a coalition of people who are going to really focus on making sure the Democratic candidate is not able to take a huge advantage over the Republican, as happened in 2012,” said Ron Weiser, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman. “If Hillary is the Democratic candidate, she will be in a position of being able to define the leading Republican candidate long before it’s clear who has won. The same must be done to Hillary in order to be sure she doesn’t gain an advantage.”
The prospective 2016 candidates face more intense pressure than ever to raise substantial sums of money, with GOP strategists predicting that the winner will need at least $75 million to get through the first three primaries — and $1 billion by Election Day.
In a field of as many as 23 Republican candidates, raising that kind of money will not be easy.
“It’s a very large field of very competent candidates, and there’s just so much money to go around,” Kilberg said.
GOP White House hopefuls began reaching out to party donors in earnest as soon as this year’s midterm elections were over. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) held strategy sessions in Washington with advisers and supporters last month. Perry is inviting hundreds of wealthy Republicans to dinners he is holding in a tent outside the Austin governor’s mansion this month. Aides to Christie and Bush, among others, have individually contacted wealthy party backers.
The perennial discussions about assembling a national finance team have been accompanied by conversations about which billionaires will fund candidate-specific super PACs.
The Adelson effect
Wealthy donors such as Adelson “have an amazing ability to affect an outcome,” said one party fundraiser. “What if one of them plops $50 million into one of the primary candidates?”
At a gathering of major donors to the Republican Governors Association last month in Boca Raton, Fla., aides to some of the prospective candidates hinted to contributors that Adelson was behind them as a way to signal momentum, according to people in attendance.
In fact, while the casino mogul has been meeting privately with the top prospective candidates for months, he is holding off on making any commitments, his associates said. “He is meeting with everybody,” says Andy Abboud, his top political adviser. “But any decision about 2016 candidates is a long ways down the pike.”
This week, Adelson was scheduled to host a dinner in Las Vegas with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and top Republican donors. The event follows private conversations he has had in recent weeks with Christie, Huckabee, Cruz and Jindal.
While Adelson and his wife assess the field, they are taking steps to dramatically change the way they spend their political money. After contributing nearly $100 million in 2012, largely to independent groups that backed GOP candidates, the couple are leaning toward setting up their own super PAC, as the New York Times first reported.
The decision to create an independent political operation follows an informal study by Adelson’s staff of spending in the 2012 and 2014 federal elections.
“We found a lot of inefficient and wasteful spending,” said a person close to Adelson,who asked not to be identified by name.
Adelson has become convinced that a shift to direct giving would permit the couple “to participate more directly in individual congressional campaigns without going through” the committees controlled by party leaders, the Adelson associate said.
Adelson is not alone in his cautious posture toward the 2016 White House race.
“The adage of jumping on the bandwagon early doesn’t apply this presidential cycle,” said Richard Hohlt, a Washington lobbyist who has served on the finance committees of GOP candidates since the days of Ronald Reagan. Hohlt has been attending meetings with potential 2016 candidates since the fall and says that he senses a noticeable hesitancy in the donor community.
“What most of us have learned in the last two cycles is that you need to verify the effectiveness of the campaign organization and the ability of the candidate to get across the finish line,” he said. “With so many candidates potentially running, most of us are thinking, ‘It is better to keep our powder dry.’ ”
Philip Rucker in Austin contributed to this report. | – If other GOP contenders shrugged off Ted Cruz's chances of winning the nomination, it's a safe bet they're reassessing things after four new super PACS announced they'd raised a staggering $31 million to support his new candidacy. "Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest," writes Mark Halperin at Bloomberg. The super PACs in question are only a week old, and it's unprecedented to have raised so much so quickly. So who's behind the money? The New York Times identifies the main player as a "reclusive Long Islander" named Robert Mercer. Mercer began his career at IBM but now runs a hedge fund called Renaissance Technologies, and like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, he is taking advantage of the Citizens United case that loosened restrictions on wealthy donors. He's "a very low-profile guy, but he’s becoming a bigger and bigger player,” says one campaign finance expert. And his backing of Cruz “sends the message to other donors that Cruz is a serious guy,” which in turn encourages other donors. The Times notes that Mercer's hedge fund is under investigation by the IRS, an agency that Cruz would love to abolish. A previous profile of Mercer at Bloomberg describes him as "one of the most powerful men in Republican politics that nobody is talking about." |
DENVER -- Denver Health Medical Center confirms an anesthesiologist accused of posting a racially charged comment on Facebook is no longer seeing patients at the hospital until further notice.
The post on a picture of a yelling Michelle Obama said, "doesn't seem to be speaking too eloquently here, thank god we can't hear her! Harvard??? That's a place for "entitled" folks said all the liberals!” The poster goes onto comment, "Monkey face and poor ebonic English!!! There! I feel better and am still not racist!!! Just calling it like it is!"
The poster, Dr. Michelle Herren, is a pediatric anesthesiologist at Denver Health Medical Center and Children's Hospital Colorado and is listed online as an assistant professor at CU's School of Medicine.
While the hospital told Denver7 Tuesday that it couldn't control the opinions their staff express as private individuals, on Thursday the company confirmed, "Until further notice, Michelle Herren, MD, will not be seeing patients or providing anesthesia services at Denver Health Medical Center."
The University of Colorado School of Medicine has also begun the process of terminating Dr. Herren's faculty appointment.
"She has expressed values that are at odds with ours and she has compromised her ability to meet the teaching and patient care missions of the School of Medicine," said School of Medicine Dean John J. Reilly, Jr. in a statement Thursday afternoon.
The comment has since been removed and Herren has taken down her Facebook page.
Dr. Herren told Denver 7's Molly Hendrickson over the phone that her comment was taken "out of context" and insists she didn't realize the term “monkey face” is offensive. Herren said she was responding to another post pointing out people say whatever they want about Melania Trump, but if they do the same about Michelle Obama they're considered racist.
Denver Health said Dr. Herren had been employed there since October of 2007.
Denver Health wrote on Facebook:
"Denver Health is deeply disappointed by the remarks posted on social media by Dr. Michelle Herren against the First Lady of the United States. We are offended by the comments made by this individual, who was acting independently in her private capacity. Her views are contrary to the mission and values of Denver Health, and to our staff and patients. Denver Health proudly serves people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and social backgrounds – and our staff and patient population truly reflect our diverse community and nation. We are reaching out to all of our patients, employees and physicians to reinforce our culture, mission and beliefs that all individuals regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation are deserving of dignity and respect."
Children's Hospital Colorado says Dr. Herren is neither employed by, nor caring for patients at the hospital.
--------- Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
Or, keep up-to-date on the latest news and weather with the Denver7 apps for iPhone/iPads, Android and Kindle. ||||| DENVER -- It's the Facebook post Joann Nieto calls "entirely unacceptable."
"I think it's sad," Nieto said.
It depicts a picture of a yelling Michelle Obama with the comment, "doesn't seem to be speaking too eloquently here, thank god we can't hear her! Harvard??? That's a place for "entitled" folks said all the liberals!” The poster goes onto comment, "Monkey face and poor ebonic English!!! There! I feel better and am still not racist!!! Just calling it like it is!"
"Hiding behind the excuse that you're not racist, doesn't negate the fact that you are being racist," Nieto said.
What's worse, Nieto discovered the poster is Dr. Michelle Herren, a pediatric anesthesiologist who works at Denver Health Medical Center, Children's Hospital Colorado and is listed online as an assistant professor at CU's School of Medicine.
"I think you have to hold yourself to a higher standard as being a public employee, as well as being a professor in such a critical field," Nieto said.
The comment has since been removed and Herren has taken down her Facebook page.
"It stayed on there for four days until I had said something to the CU Board of Regents, and I sent an email to them. If I never would have mentioned anything to them, how much longer would that comment have been out there in the public world?" Nieto said.
Dr. Herren declined an on-camera interview, but told Denver 7's Molly Hendrickson over the phone that her comment was taken "out of context" and insists she didn't realize the term “monkey face” is offensive. Herren said she was responding to another post pointing out people say whatever they want about Melania Trump, but if they do the same about Michelle Obama they're considered racist.
Denver Health released the following statement Tuesday night:
Denver Health's mission is to provide high quality health care to all, regardless of income levels, ethnicity, gender or social background. Our staff and our patient population are reflective of the diverse Denver Community we serve. We don't condone nor do we agree with the statements Dr. Herren made, as they are inconsistent with Denver Health's mission and values. However, we cannot control the opinions our staff choose to express as private individuals.
Denver Health said Dr. Herren has been employed there since October of 2007 and currently makes $363,600 a year.
--------- Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
Or, keep up-to-date on the latest news and weather with the Denver7 apps for iPhone/iPads , Android and Kindle . ||||| The University of Colorado’s School of Medicine is planning to cut ties with Dr. Michelle Herren, a faculty member and pediatric anesthesiologist, who made a racist remark on Facebook.
“We are beginning the process to terminate Dr. Herren’s faculty appointment,” Mark Couch, spokesman for the school, said Thursday. “She has expressed values that are at odds with ours and she has compromised her ability to meet the teaching and patient care mission of the School of Medicine.”
Herren, who works at Denver Health Medical Center, holds a non-paid faculty appointment at the CU School of Medicine and a medical staff appointment at Children’s Hospital, where Denver Health physicians supervise residents and other medical practitioners in training.
Herren responded to a Facebook post praising First Lady Michelle Obama with the statement: “Monkey face and poor ebonic English!!! There! I feel better and am still not racist!!! Just calling it like it is!”
It remains unclear whether Denver Health will take similar action against her.
“We are bumping up against a first amendment right,” said Kelli Christensen, Denver Health spokeswoman. “A lot of people are working very hard to resolve this situation.”
After The Denver Post and other media covered the story, first reported by Denver7, the hospital said Herren would not be seeing patients or providing anesthesia services there until further notice.
Denver Health also released a statement saying that officials were offended by the comments, which were made while Herren was “acting independently in her private capacity.”
First Amendment protections for those in the public sector make it difficult to terminate or otherwise take action against an employee for offensive statements outside the workplace, according to legal experts.
“Government employers can impose restrictions on statements made within the workplace or referring to the workplace, but they can’t act on statements made outside of the workplace unless they show a substantial likelihood of material impact on the employee’s performance or disruption within the workplace,” said Steven D. Zansberg, a First Amendment lawyer in Denver.
The hospital is “a political subdivision of the state,” Christensen said.
But a private employer can fire someone for comments made outside the work place, even if there is no obvious impact on their business, without worrying about First Amendment protections, said Lorri Ray, a lawyer with Mountain States Employers Council.
If the public spotlight on the comments has an impact on the hospital, its legal department might find it easier to take adverse employment action, Ray said. “But I’m sure the lawyers are looking at it very carefully because the right of free speech is protected in the public sector.”
In a letter obtained by The Denver Post, Dr. John Reilly Jr., the CU vice chancellor for health affairs, expressed concern to Herren over the remarks, saying community members distributed them to CU Regents, the School of Medicine, affiliated hospitals and local media.
“I ask that you inform me of your perspective on whether you can continue to teach effectively given the multiple communications I have received from students, faculty and public expressing their opinion that your posting demonstrates that you should not be involved in the education of our students,” he wrote.
Reilly’s letter also suggests that Herren’s comments has caused wide-spread damage. “Your comments and tone are harmful to the students we teach and the patients we care for,” he wrote. “Your derogatory, insensitive remarks have resulted in harm to others in our community and beyond.”
CU’s Board of Regents requires faculty members “to remember that the public may judge their profession and institution by their utterances,” he wrote. | – A pediatric anesthesiologist at the University of Colorado's medical school is losing her job there after racist Facebook comments directed toward Michelle Obama were flagged, the Denver Post and Denver 7 report. Dr. Michelle Herren reportedly posted a photo that showed the first lady screaming with the comment, "Doesn't seem to be speaking too eloquently here, thank god we can't hear her! Harvard??? That's a place for 'entitled' folks said all the liberals!" She then added: "Monkey face and poor ebonic English!!! There! I feel better and am still not racist!!! Just calling it like it is!" Also calling it like it is: Joann Nieto, who informed the university of the comments after she saw the post stayed up for four days. A school spokesman said Thursday "we are beginning the process to terminate Dr. Herren's faculty appointment" (a nonpaid position), adding she has "compromised her ability" to teach and care for patients. It's not yet clear what the fate of her $363,00-a-year job at Denver Health Medical Center will be, though it confirms to Denver 7 she won't be seeing patients "until further notice." A rep adds, "We are bumping up against a First Amendment right," with the Post noting it's difficult to fire public-sector employees who make offensive remarks when they're not at work. Herren tells Denver 7 her remarks were taken "out of context" and were in response to another comment that argued people can criticize Melania Trump freely but the same isn't true for Obama. She added she had no idea "monkey face" might be considered offensive. |
CLOSE Nigel Sykes is suing Seasons Pizza and the Newport police department after a failed robbery attempt in 2010 in which employees tackled and subdued Sykes, who came into the store weilding a handgun. (07/23/14)
Buy Photo Misael Madariaga, a deliveryman for Seasons Pizza on Maryland Avenue in Newport, heads out the back door with deliveries Monday afternoon. Madariaga was working at Seasons the night Nigel Sykes robbed the restaurant on Nov. 30, 2010. Sykes is now suing six employees that he claims assaulted him with unnecessary force. (Photo: JENNIFER CORBETT/THE NEWS JOURNAL)Buy Photo
The first time Nigel Sykes tried to get money from the Seasons Pizza in Newport, he did it with a gun, forcing his way into the business through the back door.
This time, Sykes is trying to get money from the pizzeria by suing the employees who tackled him and wrestled his gun away during the robbery.
Sykes alleges assault in a federal civil complaint claiming the rough treatment was "unnecessary" and that as a result of the injuries he suffered during his attempted hold-up, he is due over $260,000.
Sykes also claims in his suit, filed without an attorney, that after employees subdued him, two Newport police officers improperly used stun guns on him and denied him access to medical attention.
Normally lawsuits like this are tossed out after a brief review by the court. And while U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson tossed out several of Sykes' claims, she allowed the case to move forward against the pizza employees, two arresting officers and Seasons.
(Photo: Submitted)
Newport Police Chief Michael Capriglione said, "It is a joke lawsuit."
"It is sad to see this kind of suit being looked at. The court shouldn't waste the taxpayers' money," he said.
Seasons Pizza district manager and Capriglione respond further in a video interview.
Sykes, 23, of Wilmington, filed his federal civil action in 2013 from prison, where he is serving a 15-year sentence for robbery and attempted robbery.
In his self-written complaint, Sykes admits, "I committed a robbery at Seasons Pizza" on Maryland Ave. on Nov. 30, 2010, just before 8 p.m. He admits he "displayed" a handgun and that an employee – a delivery driver and one of the named defendants – "handed me $140."
He says he then started to make his way forward in the store when a different employee grabbed him from behind and other employees wrestled the gun from him, with at least one shot being fired during the struggle.
STORY: Beretta says gun law forcing move out of Maryland
STORY: Police seek knife-wielding thief in Milltown robbery
"That is when the assault began," according to Sykes' suit. "All of the Season's Pizza employees participated in punching, kicking and pouring hot soup over my body. I was unarmed and defenseless and had to suffer a brutal beating by all of the employees of Seasons Pizza," he wrote, adding the beating knocked him unconscious.
In Sykes first 2011 complaint, which is significantly different than the most recent one, he claimed an unknown person robbed him at gunpoint "and then forced me, after giving me a gun, to [rob] a nearby Seasons Pizza."
"I complied with his commands and proceeded to rob the establishment." he wrote in 2011, adding he informed employees that he was being forced into the hold-up by someone outside.
In that account, which was tossed out on procedural grounds, Sykes also claimed employees beat him with pots and pans, rendering him unconscious and described the beating as "unnecessary."
Sykes claims in both suits, "I was aroused from my state of unconsciousness, only to realize that I was handcuffed and being tasered," by the police. He concludes by alleging the officers denied him needed immediate medical attention for the burns and stun gun wounds and other injuries for 8 hours. And one officer used a racial slur, he wrote.
Sykes demands $20,000 each from six Seasons employees, $20,000 from each of the two arresting officers and $100,000 from Seasons.
Employees at Seasons remember the robbery and said one employee was shaken up by it for a long time. In the restaurant's kitchen, they still have a trash can that was hit by a bullet from Sykes gun and someone wrote the name of the employee who was narrowly missed by the shot over the bullet hole.
Attorneys for the two Newport police officers recently filed a response to the suit, seeking to have it tossed out on statute of limitations grounds.
At the time of his 2010 arrest, police said Sykes was linked to at least eight other robberies including a bank, three other pizzerias, two fast food restaurants and two convenience stores.
Sykes pleaded guilty in New Castle County Superior Court in July 2011 to five counts, resolving some 51 charges against him including counts related to the attempted robbery at Seasons and the Sept. 2010 robbery of a WSFS Bank. A Superior Court judge then sentenced him in April 2012 to 15 years for robbery, attempted robbery and three weapons counts.
Shortly after entering his plea, Sykes attempted to withdraw it claiming in a motion that he had not taken his medication that day. Both the Superior Court and the Delaware Supreme Court denied the request, citing the fact that Sykes attorney said on the day of the plea that Sykes had no mental issues and was not on medication.
In his motion, Sykes also wrote that he should be allowed to take back his plea because, "I'm not good at making good choices."
Contact Sean O'Sullivan at (302) 324-2777 or [email protected] or on Twitter @ SeanGOSullivan.
Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/1rwFI0I ||||| A man who attempted to rob a pizza store is now suing the same restaurant. NBC10's Tim Furlong has the details. (Published Tuesday, Jul 22, 2014)
A man is suing the same Delaware pizza place that he tried to rob several years ago.
Nigel Sykes, 23, filed a lawsuit against Seasons Pizza as well as the police officers who arrested him four years ago, claiming he was assaulted and injured at the time. It is the latest in a string of unsuccessful complaints Sykes has filed since his 2010 arrest and subsequent guilty plea.
"It's a mockery," said Andy Papanicolas, the Director of Operations at Seasons. "It's a joke for it to even make it to the courts. It's pretty pathetic."
On Nov. 30, 2010, Sykes entered the Seasons Pizza restaurant on the 600 block of Maryland Avenue in Wilmington, police said. Sykes was armed with a gun and demanded money but was detained by several employees inside, according to police. During the struggle, the gun was discharged though no one was struck. He was eventually arrested by responding police officers.
According to Delaware Online, Sykes was linked to at least eight other robberies at the time of his arrest.
While serving time in February of the following year, Sykes filed a lawsuit, without an attorney, against both Seasons Pizza and the Delaware State Police. In the complaint, Sykes claimed he was forced by an unidentified person to rob Seasons Pizza. Sykes stated he was knocked unconscious at least twice by employees at the restaurant and then shot several times with tasers by responding police officers.
Sykes claimed he was escorted to a police vehicle and then punched in the stomach and head and then slammed against the trunk. In the complaint, Sykes sought compensatory damages of $100,000 from the Delaware State Police as well as $100,000 from Seasons Pizza, accusing them of “violating his civil rights.”
The court dismissed Sykes’ complaint on May 9, 2011. An amended complaint was also dismissed after the court determined that he did not follow the proper processes.
In July of 2011, Sykes pleaded guilty to charges against him in relation to the attempted robbery at Seasons as well as a previous robbery. He was sentenced in April of 2012 to 15 years for robbery and attempted robbery.
In July of 2013, Sykes once again sued Seasons Pizza and the Delaware State Police, making the same allegations. His complaint was once again dismissed without prejudice.
On Feb. 5, 2014, Sykes filed an amended complaint that was more detailed than the initial one and was also against the Newport Police Department and three officers rather than the Delaware State Police, in addition to Seasons Pizza.
In the amended complaint, Sykes admitted that he entered the business and displayed a revolver handgun.
“The defendant handed me $140,” Sykes wrote.
Sykes then claimed he was grabbed by one of the employees as he tried to leave the store.
“After a short struggle, the defendants successfully obtained the handgun from me,” he wrote. “That is when the assault began.”
In the complaint, Sykes claimed the employees punched and kicked him and poured hot soup over his body.
“I was unarmed and defenseless and had to suffer a brutal beating by all the employees of Seasons Pizza,” Sykes wrote.
Sykes claimed he was eventually knocked unconscious and then assaulted by three responding Newport Police officers.
“They handcuffed me behind my back,” Sykes wrote. “I was aroused from my state of unconsciousness only to realize that I was handcuffed and being tasered. I was tasered a total of three consecutive times while handcuffed.”
In the lawsuit, Sykes claimed one of the officers called him a racial slur and that he was denied medical treatment despite paramedics being at the scene. Sykes claims he continues to suffer the effects of the beating, including bruises, headaches, contusions and burns.
Sykes sued the Newport Police Department for $100,000, three Newport Police Officers for a total of $60,000, Seasons Pizza for $100,000 and six employees of Seasons Pizza for a total of $120,000.
On April 17, the court dismissed the claims made against the Newport Police Department as well as one of the officers. However, the court also allowed Sykes to proceed on the assault claims against Seasons Pizza and its employees as well as the excessive force claims against the two other Newport officers.
On July 16, attorneys for the two officers filed a motion to dismiss Sykes’ complaint.
Executives at Seasons Pizza's corporate office say that everything that happened to Sykes was caused by his decision to rob the store. Newport Police Chief Michael Capriglione told NBC10 the lawsuit was a frivolous waste of taxpayer time and money. | – Nigel Sykes' attempted robbery of a Delaware pizzeria failed miserably—but he'd still like to get some cash out of the whole to-do. Armed with a gun, Sykes, 23, busted into the back door of Newport's Seasons Pizza in 2010 but eventually got tackled by employees. In a federal civil complaint, filed without an attorney, Sykes admits, "I committed a robbery at Seasons Pizza" but now alleges that the workers "unnecessary" roughed him up during that robbery, the News Journal reports. He wants $260,000 from the pizzeria, its employees, and Delaware State Police for his troubles. Though NBC Philadelphia reports similar complaints from Sykes have been thrown out in the past, a judge has so far allowed this latest suit—which Newport's police chief calls "a joke"—to move forward. Sykes' self-written suit alleges the pizzeria's employees forced his gun from his hand, then "participated in punching, kicking and pouring hot soup over my body" while "I was unarmed and defenseless." Sykes, who's serving a 15-year sentence for robbery and attempted robbery, also argues he was knocked unconscious and awoke to two police officers using stun guns on him. |
Skip Ad x Embed x Share San Francisco police are investigating the discovery of human body parts stuffed inside a suitcase on the sidewalk of a downtown street. Jillian Kitchener reports.
A San Francisco Police Department squad car on Jan. 27, 2015. (Photo: Chris Kievman for USA TODAY)
SAN FRANCISCO — Police responding to reports of a suspicious package in an up-and-coming area here Wednesday afternoon instead found something horrific — a suitcase containing human body parts.
The body was so mutilated that officers had to call the medical examiner in to determine if it was from a human being or an animal, police spokeswoman Grace Gatpandan said.
The race and gender of the person were unknown, she said.
The roller-type suitcase had been left next to a pile of garbage and debris at 11th and Market streets, Gatpandan said.
Police initially responded to a report of a suspicious package at 4:14 p.m. Wednesday.
The block was shut down as part of the investigation and remained shut down late Wednesday night, she said.
More remains were found in the surrounding blocks. "It is unclear at this time if all the remains belong to one victim," Gatpandan said.
Police had a "preliminary, distinct suspect description," but it wasn't being released as officers are "actively attempting to locate this particular person of interest," Gatpandan said.
Exactly when the suitcase was left in the area is under investigation.
The street is in a long-troubled area with large numbers of homeless people. It is also just a block from Twitter headquarters and part of an emerging tech corridor.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1K8IPAB ||||| Story highlights Police are looking for one suspect, talking with other people
Suitcase was found on sidewalk with other items
(CNN) Police answering a suspicious package call in San Francisco made a most unpleasant discovery when they opened a suitcase and found it contained human body parts.
The San Francisco medical examiner's office determined the parts were human remains and the body had been dismembered, Officer Grace Gatpandan said.
"We do have people of interest that homicide investigators are speaking to," she said. Detectives are also reviewing surveillance camera footage and officers are looking for a suspect. She declined to identify the suspect.
The suitcase was found Wednesday afternoon on 11th Street in the Mission District. Police closed four blocks while they investigated.
The Los Angeles Times reported that remains were also found at three locations within a three-block radius. Asked about the reporting, a police spokeswoman told CNN there are no updates.
There were other items around the suitcase, Gatpandan said.
The gender and age of the person were unclear, she said. ||||| Dismembered human body parts were found Wednesday in a suitcase and scattered around a three-block radius in downtown San Francisco, police said.
Police responded about 4:15 p.m. to reports of a suspicious package on 11th Street between Market and Mission streets, said Officer Grace Gatpandan.
After opening the suitcase, officers found the body parts. On-scene staff from the San Francisco Medical Examiner's office confirmed that the remains were those of a human, Gatpandan said.
As investigators searched the city's South of Market neighborhood, human remains were found at three locations within a three block radius.
"There was one crime scene -- it was just very large," Gatpandan said.
Police could not confirm that all of the body parts belonged to one person.
Investigators have identified and are actively searching for a suspect wanted in connection with the dismembered body, but declined to release further details.
For breaking news in California, follow @MattHjourno. ||||| Body parts found in suitcase, and nearby, in SoMa
window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-3', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 3', target_type: 'mix' }); _taboola.push({flush: true});
Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Image 1 of 3 Buy photo San Francisco Police investigate a suitcase full of body parts found on 11th Street near Mission Street in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. San Francisco Police investigate a suitcase full of body parts found on 11th Street near Mission Street in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. Photo: Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Buy this photo Image 2 of 3 Buy photo San Francisco police investigate a suitcase full of body parts found on 11th Street near Mission Street on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. San Francisco police investigate a suitcase full of body parts found on 11th Street near Mission Street on Wednesday, January 28, 2015. Photo: Scott Strazzante / Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Buy this photo Image 3 of 3 Body parts found in suitcase, and nearby, in SoMa 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
San Francisco police discovered a suitcase full of body parts in the South of Market area on Wednesday night and then found more remains nearby, officials said.
The case is being treated as a homicide after police responded to a call of a suspicious package about 4:15 p.m. and found a roller-type suitcase amid garbage and debris on 11th Street between Market and Mission streets. It contained “dismembered body parts of a human being,” but the gender and race of the victim were not immediately known, said police spokeswoman Officer Grace Gatpandan.
After the grisly discovery, 11th Street was shut down and officers began a search of the area. They found more body parts, but they would not say what they were or where they were found.
Homicide detectives were at the scene and trying to recover surveillance footage from nearby businesses, Gatpandan said, and investigators had a rough suspect description, though she said police were not releasing it as the investigation was ongoing.
Mission and 11th streets remained closed late Wednesday as homicide detectives continued their probe.
“Investigators are still searching to determine if there are any other body parts in the area,” Gatpandan said. “This was an extremely gruesome crime scene.”
Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @sfkale | – Police responding to a call about a suspicious package on a downtown San Francisco street yesterday found what a spokeswoman calls "an extremely gruesome crime scene." Next to a pile of garbage and debris, a rolling suitcase held dismembered human body parts, police say, per the San Francisco Chronicle. In case that isn't horrific enough, the police rep tells USA Today the body was so mutilated, a medical examiner was needed to determine if it belonged to a human or animal. A search turned up more body parts at three locations within a three-block radius, the Los Angeles Times reports, though it isn't clear if they belong to the victim in the suitcase, whose race, gender, and identity is unknown. "There was one crime scene—it was just very large," the rep says, adding authorities have a "preliminary, distinct suspect description" and are "actively attempting to locate this particular person of interest." The same rep tells CNN, "We do have people of interest that homicide investigators are speaking to." Police are also attempting to nab surveillance footage from nearby businesses. Officers first arrived to the scene in the South of Market area around 4:15pm yesterday, but it isn't clear when the suitcase was left. USA Today describes the spot as a "long-troubled area" known for its high population of homeless people. Twitter's headquarters sits just about a block away. |
“It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting, I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but…don’t defend it please.”
Following a racist Twitter rant that cost Roseanne Barr her show on ABC, the television star apologized and bid farewell to the social media platform. Then, she returned and blamed the sleep aid Ambien in a tweet that was later deleted.
On Tuesday morning, Barr tweeted: “I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter.”
I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter. — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
For a while, all was quiet.
But Barr did not leave Twitter.
Instead, she launched a tweetstorm late Tuesday evening, first with apologetic tweets, some of which were also deleted.
“I just want to apologize to the hundreds of people, and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet,” she wrote.
In one of her few remaining tweets, Barr asked her followers not to defend her, saying, “it’s sweet of you 2 try, but…losing my show is 0 compared 2 being labelled a racist over one tweet-that I regret even more.”
hey guys, don't defend me, it's sweet of you 2 try, but...losing my show is 0 compared 2 being labelled a racist over one tweet-that I regret even more. — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 30, 2018
And then she opened fire with a volley of defensive retweets that appeared designed to make her look like a victim of “double standards,” as one user said, punished because she supports President Trump and conservative views, “the sacrificial conservative celebrity.”
I look like a monkey. Why? My DNA is 96% similar to a monkey's. It makes scientific sense. But due to emotions, double standards & feelings science is cancelled this year. There are 5,000 genders & if you don't agree with me you're a racist xenophobe. — An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) May 30, 2018
Her retweets, among other things, called out Disney, the parent company of ABC, for tolerating an anti-Trump screed by Keith Olbermann, who recently returned to ESPN, also owned by Disney. Some retweeted posts also criticized ABC’s lack of response to comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s mocking of Melania Trump’s accent as well as “The View’s” Joy Behar calling Vice President Pence mentally ill because of his faith. Kimmel and Behar later apologized.
Even Harvey Weinstein was treated better by Disney than Barr, suggested one of her retweets.
Many of the retweeted posts were also later removed from Barr’s Twitter feed.
Here’s a sampler:
.@Disney, owner of @ABCNetwork fought to keep contracts with Harvey Weinstein confidential, fires @therealroseanne over a dumb joke tweet. https://t.co/STiNEZNyBd — Chadwick Moore (@Chadwick_Moore) May 30, 2018
Hollywood punished Roseanne for a tweet faster than they punished Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey for being sexual predators. — The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 29, 2018
JUST IMAGINE IF ANY LEFTIST CELEB GOT THIS TREATMENT.
I can't either.https://t.co/aP7yhexSrs — Nobody (@Nowhere27) May 30, 2018
This Rosanne thing was always a proxy for Pres Trump. They brought the show back so they could inevitably cancel the show when she said something they didn’t like. They can’t beat Trump so this is a symbolic show of force. Rosanne was always going to end this way. — 🇺🇸 A Free Black Man. 🇺🇸 (@AFreeBlackMan) May 29, 2018
And finally, early Wednesday morning, Barr tweeted:
“I’m sorry 4 my tweet, AND I will also defend myself as well as talk to my followers. so, go away if u don’t like it. I will handle my sadness the way I want to. I’m tired of being attacked & belittled more than other comedians who have said worse.”
She later deleted that tweet, as well.
Meanwhile, the “Ambien tweet” had caused its own ruckus, despite its deletion.
I hope ambien has to issue a statement saying they don’t make people racist — Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) May 30, 2018
AMBIEN SIDE EFFECTS: Peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, voting for white nationalists, doing photo shoots while dressed as Hitler and tanking your career by calling black women apes. If your racism lasts longer than four hours, please see a doctor. pic.twitter.com/Q3GdHA8myV — Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) May 30, 2018
More from Morning Mix:
On Fox News, Rep. Trey Gowdy and Andrew Napolitano dismantle Trump’s ‘spy claims’ ||||| Despite having faced a multitude of criticism and condemnation throughout her career, Roseanne Barr is still haunted by the tweet that brought her show's revival to a screeching halt. In a short, but rather to the point YouTube video released Friday, a visibly agitated Barr defended her Valerie Jarrett tweet by screaming six words into the camera: "I thought the b*tch was white!"
"I'm trying to talk about Iran!" a frustrated Barr shouts at a producer offscreen after taking a drag on a cigarette. "I'm trying to talk about Valerie Jarrett wrote the Iran deal. That's what my tweet was about."
"I thought the b*tch was white, godd*mmit!" the comedian screams in the roughly 60-second long video. "I thought the b*tch was white. F*ck!"
Barr's latest attempt to explain away her tweet comes nearly two months after ABC canceled their revival of Roseanne, claiming her tweet about Jarrett was "abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values." In May, Barr tweeted that Jarrett, a senior adviser of former President Barack Obama who also happens to be an African-American woman, would be the result if the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby.
The tweet, which has since been deleted, was widely criticized as racist and sparked heavy criticism from Barr's co-stars, fans, and critics.
Roseanne Barr on YouTube
Initially, Barr claimed she'd been under the influence of the sedative Ambien when she'd written the tweet. She later said she'd been misunderstood and that her tweet was really about anti-Semitism. "I've never practiced 'RACISM' in my entire life," she tweeted in June. "Rod Serling wrote Planet of The Apes. It was about anti-semitism. That is what my tweet referred to — the anti semitism of the Iran deal. Low IQ ppl can think whatever they want."
She reiterated her use of Ambien in an interview with Rabbi Shmuly Boteach conducted over the phone shortly after she'd been fired by ABC. "That's no excuse, but that is what was real," the comedian said after claiming she'd written the tweet at 2 a.m. on Ambien. "There's no excuse. I don't excuse it. It's an explanation. I was impaired, you know?"
In that same interview, Barr also told Boteach that she thought Jarrett was white. "I did not know she was a black woman," she said. "When ABC called me and said, 'what is the reason for your egregious racism,' I said, 'Oh my God, it is a form of racism.' I guess I didn't know she was black and I'll cop to it, but I thought she was white."
"I'm not a racist, I'm an idiot," Barr said.
Barr's YouTube video dropped 10 days after the star told fans she would — and then wouldn't — do a TV interview. "I decided that I won't be doing any TV interviews, too stressful and untrustworthy 4 me & my fans," the actress tweeted July 10, a day after claiming she'd be doing a TV interview. "I'm going to film it myself & post it on my youtube [sic] channel... the entire explanation of what happened & why!" Barr said she wanted to "speak directly" to her fans "and cut out any middlemen."
ABC has since said it will continue on without Barr, turning its Roseanne revival into The Conners. ||||| Following days of heavy backlash for a string of controversial tweets, Roseanne Barr on Thursday said she “begged” ABC to give her a chance to “apologize & make amends.”
“I begged Ben Sherwood at ABC 2 let me apologize & make amends,” the embattled TV star tweeted about the ABC president. “I begged them not to cancel the show. I told them I was willing to do anything & asked 4 help in making things right. I'd worked doing publicity4 them 4free for weeks, traveling, thru bronchitis. I begged4 ppls jobs.”
She went on to apparently recall a conversation during which she claimed she “begged 4 my crew jobs.”
“He said: what were you thinking when you did this? I said: I thought she was white, she looks like my family! He scoffed & said: "what u have done is egregious, and unforgivable.' I begged 4 my crews jobs. Will I ever recover from this pain? Omg”
"I also told Ben Sherman that I would go in hospital to check my meds, bc the stress had made them less effective. I begged like 40 motherf-----s," she later wrote. "Done now."
Those tweets had since-been deleted.
ABC CANCELS ‘ROSEANNE’ AFTER BARR’S RACIST TWEET
The tweets followed a series of others, in which Barr spoke of God and religion, and appeared to specifically want to make amends to a few individuals who were the focus of her provocative tweets. She later deleted the tweets.
“Attempting to also get phone numbers for Jarrett, Michelle and GS to personally apologize to them tho I disagree with their politics,” Barr tweeted. “I was still wrong 2 dehumanize them-they r not my enemy, harboring hate & anger is my enemy. I can speak respectfully 2 those w whom I disagree.”
The tweet appeared to be in reference to former President Obama’s aide, Valerie Jarrett, as well as former first lady Michelle Obama and liberal donor George Soros. That tweet was also deleted.
Earlier this week, Barr tweeted that Jarrett, who is African-American and born in Iran, is like the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” She also sent a politically charged tweet linking Chelsea Clinton to Soros.
The comments elicited wide criticism against the star, ultimately leading to the next season for the reboot of her namesake show being canceled and her talent agency, ICM Partners, deciding to drop her.
ROSEANNE BARR SAYS SHE MAY FIGHT ABC FIRING, RETWEETS CLAIM MICHELLE OBAMA WAS BEHIND OUSTER
Amid the ongoing fallback for her comments, Barr returned to Twitter and retweeted an unproved claim posted by a right-wing activist, which accused ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey of consulting the former first lady before canceling the reboot.
Barr tweeted Thursday that she asked “God2 help me use this bad experience 2 move in2 a better place where I can be more useful to help suffering people who are homeless battered & hopeless in this world, everywhere.”
She continued on to say she is “so flawed” and thanked her followers for their “loving support.”
Barr also said she "intended to bring ppl together" and said it was "a joyous experience" to get "to work on the Roseanne show again." ||||| Refresh for updates Roseanne Barr says the tweet that got her sitcom Roseanne canceled – the one likening former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to a Planet of the Apes character – was not only not racist, but was a condemnation of anti-semitism.
“Rod Serling wrote Planet of The Apes,” Barr tweeted tonight. “It was about anti-semitism. That is what my tweet referred to – the anti semitism of the Iran deal. Low IQ ppl can think whatever they want.” (The Twilight Zone creator wrote the script for the 1968 film, an adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel).
In Barr’s original tweet that prompted the firestorm, she wrote: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” The tweet was widely interpreted as racist. Barr has not previously mentioned the anti-semitism angle.
Earlier tonight, Barr directed questions to Thomas Muhammad, her 2012 presidential campaign manager and director of a new Malcolm X documentary, but now says she’ll be speaking for herself “soon.”
Rod Serling wrote Planet of The Apes. It was about anti-semitism. That is what my tweet referred to-the anti semitism of the Iran deal. Low IQ ppl can think whatever they want. — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 14, 2018
Also tonight, Barr writes that she has “developed a bit of palsy” in her head and hands due to recent stress, but is now sleeping “without ambien.” She thanks God, bids her followers goodnight and says “we are winning! don’t give up! PEACE is coming!”
I have developed a bit of palsy in my head and hands due to the stress I have lived thru-I sleep alot now-without ambien too, thank G0D!! goodnight-we are winning! don't give up! PEACE is coming! — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 14, 2018
thank u to my friends @LionelMedia and @seanhannity @normmacdonald and my family & friends 4 helping me when I was broken. — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 14, 2018
And she retweets a birthday greeting to President Donald Trump (along with a photo that, well, see for yourself below) and thanks Rosie O’Donnell “for support and love and understanding even when we disagree!”
i want to thank my dear friend, @Rosie for support and love and understanding even when we disagree! I LOVE YOU! — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 14, 2018 ||||| Roseanne Barr Says Ambien Played Role In Racist Tweet That Spiked Her Show's Reboot
Enlarge this image toggle caption Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET
Actress Roseanne Barr says she was "Ambien tweeting" at 2 in the morning when she posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, that caused ABC to cancel her TV show.
The reboot of Barr's eponymous TV show was canceled Tuesday after one season. ABC Entertainment's president announced the network was pulling the plug after Barr tweeted that Jarrett, who now serves on several corporate boards and is a senior fellow at the University of Chicago Law School, is the product of the "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes."
Barr said shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday: "I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter." She later sent dozens of tweets in which she apologized and offered up a number of reasons for her offensive comment.
"It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting — it was memorial day too — I went 2 far & do not want it defended," Barr said in a tweet Tuesday night.
She also said she believed Jarrett was Saudi or Jewish or Persian, rather than black. But when she invoked the sleep aid, her critics pounced.
From Ragnorak Lobster, on Twitter:
"AMBIEN SIDE EFFECTS: Peddling bizarre conspiracy theories, voting for white nationalists, doing photo shoots while dressed as Hitler and tanking your career by calling black women apes. If your racism lasts longer than four hours, please see a doctor."
Ambien's manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis, responded to the news on Wednesday, saying via Twitter, "While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication."
Listing Ambien's actual side effects on its website, the company's warnings and precautions for Ambien include a section on "Abnormal Thinking and Behavioral Changes" — saying the side effects can include a lack of inhibition.
Sanofi-Aventis also tells people to stop taking Ambien if they find themselves performing complex behaviors — like making phone calls or driving a car — without being fully awake.
"It can rarely be determined with certainty whether a particular instance of the abnormal behaviors listed above is drug induced, spontaneous in origin, or a result of an underlying psychiatric or physical disorder," the company says.
Later, Barr denied that she was putting the blame on Ambien, saying it was "just an explanation not an excuse."
On Wednesday morning, Barr replied to one critic on Twitter, "Yes, I have had odd ambien experiences on tweeting late at night-like many other ppl do. I BLAME MYSELF OK?"
President Trump has since chimed in on Twitter — not exactly defending Barr, but rather complaining about his own treatment. "Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that 'ABC does not tolerate comments like those' made by Roseanne Barr," he wrote. "Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn't get the call?"
It's not immediately clear what statements Trump was referring to.
With the Roseanne show canceled, others who were involved with the project weighed in on the star's comments — including Sara Gilbert, who had been executive producer on the reboot.
Gilbert said the remarks are "abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show," adding that she is disappointed in her longtime friend and colleague.
In her initial response to that tweet, Barr said, "Wow! unreal."
But on Wednesday, she took a softer stance, coming to Gilbert's defense after one of her followers sent a critical tweet.
"No, I understand her position and why she said what she said," Barr said. She added that she forgives Gilbert, saying, "It just shocked me a bit, but I indeed [f*****] up."
In addition to her remark about Jarrett, Barr is also being criticized over her recent attacks on both Chelsea Clinton and billionaire George Soros, who is a prominent donor to Democratic campaigns. On Monday, Barr regurgitated a rumor that Clinton had married a nephew of Soros — a rumor that was popularized by actor and Trump supporter Scott Baio shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton replied to Barr early Tuesday, "Good morning Roseanne — my given middle name is Victoria. I imagine George Soros's nephews are lovely people. I'm just not married to one."
Barr apologized but then followed it up by repeating another conspiracy theory — that Soros and his father worked with Nazis during World War II (a rumor that has been debunked and that Soros denounced again yesterday).
On Wednesday morning, Barr also invoked President Trump. Barr said, "i feel bad for @POTUS-he goes thru this every single day."
In addition to the cancellation of her rebooted show, reruns of the original program, which ran for much of the 1990s, were pulled by Viacom. | – Roseanne Barr's quick return to Twitter was full of apologies for a racist tweet. But Barr, who told Twitter followers not to defend her after ABC canceled her hit show and talent agency ICM Partners severed ties, has now taken to retweeting users coming to her defense, reports CNBC. "You had no idea VJ had any black blood … U made a political joke that fell flat," reads one comment retweeted by Barr on Wednesday, referring to the subject of Barr's racist tweet, Valerie Jarrett. Another retweeted comment reads, "I look like a monkey. Why? My DNA is 96% similar to a monkey's. It makes scientific sense," per the Washington Post. Other Barr tweets are also getting attention, including two targeting billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The 87-year-old, who was 13 when Nazis invaded his native Hungary, "turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth" and now aims to "overthrow" the US "by buying/backing candidates 4 local district attorney races who will ignore US law & favor 'feelings,'" Barr claimed Tuesday. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted the claims to his 2.8 million followers, despite the New York Times describing them as "baseless." Soros "did not collaborate with the Nazis. He did not help round people up. He did not confiscate anybody’s property," a rep says in a statement, calling the accusations insulting "to all Jewish people, and to anyone who honors the truth." |
Image copyright Classic Tetris World Championship Image caption Joseph Saelee and finalist Jonas Neubauer at the contest.
A 16-year-old boy from California was the surprise winner of the grand final of the Classic Tetris World Championship in Oregon.
The iconic block stacking computer game is 13 years older than him.
Joseph Saelee beat Jonas Neubauer, who has won seven times in the tournament's eight-year history.
He told the BBC he had started playing as a hobby after watching the championships in 2016, and he plays on an original 1985 Nintendo NES console.
He said he practises for a couple of hours each day on the device, hooked up to a "blocky" cathode ray tube (CRT) television screen rather than a modern thin screen.
Mr Saelee said he prefers using the old-fashioned monitor because there is less latency - a tiny time difference between the controller and the visual.
"My friends are like, 'what is this guy playing'," he said.
"Tetris is easy to learn but it can take years to master."
He added that he intends to take part in the competition again next year.
"I feel like I could still improve - it isn't just a one-time thing." ||||| All photos © Coley Brown
Most days, Jonas Neubauer wakes up a little before noon and either goes to work as a taproom manager in southern California or to his other job where he helps run a recreational marijuana startup. But today the 37-year-old Los Angeles native rolled out of bed a little earlier, still groggy, to talk on the phone about his other life—his most prominent and public one—as the greatest Tetris player in the world.
It’s a title that grows more inarguable as Neubauer racks up championship after championship. Eight Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) tournaments have been held since the competition’s inception in 2010. Neubauer has won seven of them.
On one hand, Neubauer is just a normal guy who works at a bar, drinks a lot of coffee, and plays video games in his downtime. On the other, he’s a niche rock star in a rapidly growing e-sports community that one day hopes to be represented at the Olympics—with Neubauer as its spokesperson. “It’s kind of a D-list celebrity,” Neubauer laughs. “But in a certain circle, you’re pretty popular.”
This weekend, the reigning champ plays for his eighth world title against the largest and most competitive field he's ever faced. Players from all over the world are traveling to Portland, Oregon, for the tournament, including the European Champion Svavar Gunnarsson, Japanese Tetris Grandmaster and renowned hyper-tapper Koji "Koryan" Nishio, and 16-year-old American prodigy Joseph Saelee.
"It’s basically the entire field vs. Jonas,” says Adam Cornelius, who organizes the CTWC tournament each year and directed the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. For 362 days of the year, Neubauer may be a regular guy who wakes up late and works at a bar. But during the CTWC tournament, he's the most respected man in the room.
Jonas Neubauer playing Tetris at home. © Coley Brown
Most days, Neubauer goes to work and comes home without discussing his niche fame. It took some coworkers years to find out. Neubauer remembers walking into the taproom one day and hearing a teasing voice yell out, “You bastard! I saw a video of you playing. Why didn’t you tell me?” Some days, when his hobby does come up, he signs autographs, takes pictures, and humors challengers at the bar with a quick game, rapidly and effortlessly stacking blocks.
Neubauer uses a unique and chaotic approach to playing Tetris, stacking blocks high from left to right and quickly spinning pieces and tucking them into the right position at the very last second. It’s a hectic strategy that makes you believe he can’t find a way out, until he miraculously does.
“What makes Jonas so scary and dominant is that he is somehow the most solid, fundamentally sound player, and the most light on his feet and creative at the same time,” Cornelius says. “He's like Tim Duncan one minute and then Steph Curry the next.”
Neubauer likens his playing style to a jazz pianist: chaotic, unpredictable, and always improvising without much of a plan. His playing style echoes his personality, which his wife Heather Ito describes as interesting and quick-witted, yet ironically oblivious. When Neubauer asked Ito to marry him, she replied, “Are you sure?” just to make sure he actually thought about it beforehand. Ito’s watched him play Tetris nearly every day for more than half a decade. If anyone knows how spontaneous he can be with his decisions, it’s her.
“I actually got burnt out playing that way for a while,” Neubauer says. “It’s kind of a stressful way to play Tetris. Especially if you’re in a tournament and in front of a crowd, because it’s actively thinking with your front brain, and that’s the part that gets overwhelmed and distracted.”
When he plays, however, Neubauer seems as cool as a cucumber. He started streaming his games on Twitch under the username “NubbinsGoody” last year, drawing tens of thousands of viewers. As blocks rain down his screen, Neubauer laughs at comments and casually responds to questions from viewers, sharing tips and strategies as he goes. Oftentimes, he looks away from his screen to check on something in the room around him or chat with Ito, who’s also a highly proficient gamer. The two make an entertaining pair.
In the early days of the tournament, Neubauer would only play Tetris in the month leading up to the championship to dust off his skills. Now, between streaming on Twitch and practicing to take on more competitive challengers, “I’ve been playing pretty much nonstop,” Neubauer says. “[Tetris] used to not be a big part of my identity, but now it is.”
Jonas Neubauer and Heather Ito. © Coley Brown
Streaming his practice sessions on Tetris also means sharing his playbook. “You can’t grow something when you have the same dude [winning] the tournaments each year,” the champion says. “I want to equip people with a more confident and stronger game so they can continue to come in every year and look forward to it."
Saelee, the 15-year-old prodigy making his first appearance at the CTWC this year, is one of the many new players who learned Tetris strategy by watching Neubauer play online. “I watch Jonas's Twitch channel every time I can,” says Saelee, who became the first player to ever reach Level 31 in Classic Tetris in late September—something even Neubauer hasn’t done. “I would say most of my gameplay is based off Jonas's gameplay. I try to play exactly like him for the most part.”
Neubauer and Ito often talk about how it would probably be best for someone else to win the tournament. Harry Hong is the only player to beat him in 2014. “They call it a ‘world championship,’ but really it’s just these two guys from LA who have won every year,” Ito says. “Now there’s people coming from Japan and Finland and Iceland, and if someone from the rest of the world could actually win it, it would legitimize the tournament in a really nice way.”
It's clear talking with Neubauer that the future of Tetris is on his mind these days as much as his own future. He talks about transitioning to being a teacher and ambassador of the sport as if it’s his duty—giving back to a video game that, in many ways, has shaped his life and helped get him through the toughest parts of it.
© Coley Brown
Neubauer entered the 2010 tournament soon after his father’s death earlier that year. “It was this new adventure that I could embark on and try to make a positive trajectory out of a bummer situation,” he says. “Maybe I needed that first [win]. The ones that came afterwards were icing on the cake.”
Neubauer describes navigating the roadblocks of life the same way he strategizes with the virtual blocks of Tetris. “You can’t control what happens to the people in your life, but you can control what comes after,” he says. As he puts it, the secret to playing the game is coming to terms with your decisions and making the best move based off your current situation.
“The way he plays Tetris, he never settles for a move,” Ito said. “There’s always more. There’s always some different way of looking at it, even if it’s always not necessarily going to work out for you. Even if it’s not the optimal choice, it’s still worth considering.”
Ito was drawn to Neubauer’s self-described “obsessive” personality when they first met. He is always curious, she says, and constantly engrossing himself in new topics and making an effort to learn as much as he can about his hobbies—which, recently, have included craft beer, hand-grinding coffee, and sourcing his own denim from Japan.
But Tetris has left Neubauer trapped in an unconquerable loop since he was about ten. “I’ll never have that kind of moment [of closure] with Tetris,” he says. “It’s a little bit of both a blessing and a curse. It’s put me on an adventure, that’s for sure.”
Jonas Neubauer. © Coley Brown
Neubauer has always been the best at Tetris, ever since he was a young kid playing against friends in his parents’ basement. By the time he was a teenager, no one wanted to play against him because they knew they'd lose. Neubauer kept practicing, however, pushing himself to the highest achievable level. His loss in 2014 was shocking. No one expected it. He'd become so good at Tetris, his defeat is a bigger story than any of his wins.
Last year’s tournament was the most nerve-racking competition Neubauer’s ever participated in. There's more pressure as his legend balloons within the gaming community. But no matter how long his reign as world champion lasts, Neubauer's influence will undoubtedly trickle down. It’s already evidenced in players like Saelee, who is one of 39 other competitors looking to dethrone him this weekend. The field’s getting bigger and better, and Neubauer knows it’s only a matter of time before he's eclipsed.
“I’ve found it easier to deal with what’s in and out of my control because of Tetris,” Neubauer says. “You get a certain sequence of pieces in Tetris, and that’s out of your control, but what you do with them is in your control. [...] I don’t think there are a lot of regrets if you just trust that you’re doing the right thing and certain things are out of your hands.”
Update: On Sunday night, 16-year-old Joseph Saelee ousted seven-time Tetris world champion Jonas Neubauer, taking first place at the 2018 Classic Tetris World Championship. Watch Saelee's winning moment in the clip below:
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
Follow Sean Neumann on Twitter. ||||| The Classic Tetris World Championships is one of the best gaming events to spectate all year. It's easy to understand, gets real intense, and the commentary adds a ton to the proceedings.
But this year had an extra element of spice, after 16-year-old Joseph Saelee obliterated a seven-time world champion to become the king of Tetris.
The Tetris championships are full of familiar faceds, with people who have been playing for aeons. Saelee, on the other hand, had to qualify for the finals. But qualify he did, coming into the final bracket as the fifth seed - not a bad effort for his first finals appearance.
Saelee nearly didn't make it to the finals, having found himself on the ropes in the semi-finals against Japanese grand master Koryan. The intensity is fascinating, as players make split-second decisions on whether to continue building their playfield versus clearing lines faster.
The Tetris World Championships is almost like watching a fighting game. The commentary has a similar beat and pace, there's constant planning ahead as players calculate their playfield ahead of time. You've also got RNG, dealing with the prospect of never getting those crucial long pieces that are necessary for a full Tetris (clearing four lines at once).
What's worth keeping in mind is that these players are using the traditional NES pads, which can't be comfortable if you're tapping the D-pad constantly (as Joseph does with the "hypertapping" technique).
And there was plenty of history. The other finalist was Jonas Neubauer, a seven-time Tetris champion and the current world champion three times running. It was a story straight out of a shonen anime: the new up and comer and the king at the top of the summit, looking down below at the competition.
The second and third game of the series also went completely to the wire. Saelee amassed a lead of more than 160,000 points at one stage by the second game, but had to tap out after things went haywire in the 27th level. Neubauer, behind in points, carried on but went 25 pieces without a long bar - and consequently couldn't get the points needed to catch up.
Neubauer took a more aggressive stance in the third game, and built a solid lead in the earlier stages. Saelee found himself over 100,000 points behind, but some good reactions and a bit of luck on the long bar helped even out proceedings:
Neubauer had a solid lead in level 26 - not far from the kill level - and an input error from Saelee left the latter languishing 110,000 points behind. But with his skill on the D-pad and some clutch decisions to hold out for the long bar, Saelee ended up getting two crucial tetrises at level 28 and 29, becoming the new Tetris world champion at the age of 16.
For someone who picked up the game after watching videos on YouTube, it's an astonishing accomplishment against people with literal decades of experience.
"I'm still recovering ... I came into this tournament just to qualify, just to meet all these great people," Saelee said in the final interview.
Saelee's performance has already led some to question whether more people will try to emulate his "hypertapping" technique - where players tap the D-pad as fast as possible rather than holding the D-pad down. Regardless of whether that happens, upsets are fascinating and inspiring. Not just for people watching, but for people who have been playing NES Tetris for decades as well.
You can watch the full finals bracket below. | – A California 16-year-old is the new world champion of Tetris. Joseph Saelee beat Jonas Neubauer in the Classic Tetris World Championship grand final Sunday night in Oregon; a definite stunner, per Kotaku, considering Neubauer, a 37-year-old taproom manager, has come out on top seven times in the eight years the tournament has been held. Saelee, on the other hand, just started playing after watching the 2016 championships, he tells the BBC. And yes, he plays the iconic video game on an original 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console. Saelee, it should be noted, is 13 years younger than the NES version of the block stacking game. You can watch nearly seven hours of gaming in our video gallery or just skip to the winning moment; if you're not convinced all those hours are worth it, take note of what Alex Walker writes at Kotaku: "The Classic Tetris World Championships is one of the best gaming events to spectate all year. It's easy to understand, gets real intense, and the commentary adds a ton to the proceedings." (To lose weight, play Tetris?) |
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE
The federal government may say it has improved HealthCare.gov but insurers say they are not so sure. And customers signing up for health insurance need to make sure they really are covered. The key? Look for the orange pop-up notice.
Lots of people may be in that position. A senior administration official told NBC News that 750,000 people had visited the site as of 5.30 p.m. Eastern time Monday.
Visits don't equal enrollments, but it's a far higher number of visitors than the site's been forced to handle since the first few days of its disastrous launch.
The so-called back end — where the actual business of paying for and getting enrolled in insurance takes place, isn’t working perfectly. Officials say they’re aware of it, and reminding people to make sure they are, in fact, fully enrolled.
“When a consumer selects a plan and enrolls in marketplace coverage, an orange message is clearly displayed letting them know that they must make payment to be covered,” said a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is running the website.
“If a consumer doesn’t receive that notice or is unsure as to whether they successfully enrolled, they should contact our call center or the insurer of their choice. The consumer will then be contacted by their insurer on how and when to make payment.”
CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said the agency will try to confirm that those who have enrolled know their next steps to ensure they are covered.
Robert Zirkelbach of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group, says forms called “834s” are still glitchy. They are a kind of digital enrollment form that conveys crucial information about new customers to the insurance company. “Health insurers are still seeing enrollments that are duplicated, missing information, things like that," Zirkelbach said.
CMS officials say they’re working on it. "We have fixed many of the bugs that led to the 834 issues," Bataille said Tuesday. She said a single bug involving social security numbers caused 80 percent of the problems, and had been fixed.
This past weekend was the government’s self-imposed deadline for fixing the faulty HealthCare.gov website. Jeff Zients, the incoming White House economic adviser named by President Barack Obama to lead repair efforts, gave his team’s efforts a glowing review on Sunday.
“After clearing through fewer than 100 bugs across the entire month of October, the speed has more than tripled, with over 400 bugs fixed,” Zients told reporters in a telephone briefing.
He said HealthCare.gov was now working more than 90 percent of the time and up to the promised capacity of 50,000 users at any given time. Bataille said traffic slowed the site down Monday morning, with error rates going up and response time going down.
When about 30,000 users were on the site at one time Monday morning, the technology team deployed a new queuing system that tells users the site is too busy and offering to send them an email when traffic eases, Bataille said.
That's fewer users than the promised 50,000 at once but Bataille declined to say so directly.
Separately, a person familiar with the numbers who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss them said an estimated 100,000 people had been able to choose a health plan using the federally run site in November. That compares to around 27,000 in October, and far fewer than what officials had hoped for.
New York reported on Monday that 91,103 New Yorkers have managed to fully enroll on that state's site. "Of these enrollees, 50,119 have enrolled in a Qualified Health Plan and 40,984 have qualified for Medicaid," the state health department said in a statement.
The White House will officially report the November enrollments in mid-December. Officials say the numbers must be “scrubbed” to make sure they are accurate. In the meantime, the best way to tell how things are going will be in anecdotes, says Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “We will see if people are being helped,” he said.
It was the litany of first-person stories that fueled the heavy news media coverage about people losing their private plans, Levitt said. On top of having their plans canceled, their best hope for finding alternative care was the balky website. “It was so hard for people to find out what their options are,” he said.
Obama relented and said the federal government would allow private insurers to continue issuing plans in 2014 even if they didn’t meet the new, strict requirements for coverage — although it’s been left to the states to decide whether they really can.
The White House and CMS were preparing, and hoping, for a rush of enrollees in December. Experts say experience shows that Americans tend to wait until the last minute to sign up for health insurance. Plus, the Obama administration slid the open enrollment period back a little, giving people until Dec. 23 to sign up for coverage that would start on the first day possible, Jan. 1.
People have until March 31 to sign up for coverage and get credit for being covered in 2014. Anyone going without medical insurance in 2014 may have to pay a tax.
More than 40 million Americans lack health insurance and one of the primary goals of the 2010 Affordable Care Act was to get them covered — either by buying tightly regulated, private insurance on the exchanges, or by getting expanded Medicaid in the states that choose to expand it, or through an employer under new requirements for covering workers.
CMS officials say the website’s repair is an ongoing process. Zients leaves for his job at the White House in January and White House spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said he will be replaced, but didn’t say whether there is a candidate.
· Follow NBCNewsHealth on Facebook and on Twitter
· Follow Maggie Fox on Facebook and on Twitter ||||| Weeks of frantic technical work appear to have made the government’s health care website easier for consumers to use. But that does not mean everyone who signs up for insurance can enroll in a health plan.
The problem is that the systems that are supposed to deliver consumer information to insurers still have not been fixed. And with coverage for many people scheduled to begin in just 30 days, insurers are worried the repairs may not be completed in time.
“Until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” said Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group.
The issues are vexing and complex. Some insurers say they have been deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment. Others say information they received about new enrollees was inaccurate or incomplete, so they had to track down additional data — a laborious task that will not be feasible if data is missing for tens of thousands of consumers.
In still other cases, insurers said, they have not been told how much of a customer’s premium will be subsidized by the government, so they do not know how much to charge the policyholder.
In trying to fix HealthCare.gov, President Obama has given top priority to the needs of consumers, assuming that arrangements with insurers can be worked out later.
The White House announced on Sunday that it had met its goal for improving HealthCare.gov so the website “will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.”
In effect, the administration gave itself a passing grade. Because of hundreds of software fixes and hardware upgrades in the last month, it said, the website — the main channel for people to buy insurance under the 2010 health care law — is now working more than 90 percent of the time, up from 40 percent during some weeks in October.
Jeffrey D. Zients, the presidential adviser leading the repair effort, said he had shaken up management of the website so the team was now “working with the velocity and discipline of a high-performing private sector company.”
Mr. Zients said 50,000 people could use the website at the same time and that the error rate, reflecting the failure of web pages to load properly, was consistently less than 1 percent, down from 6 percent before the overhaul.
Pages on the site generally load faster, in less than a second, compared with an average of eight seconds in late October, Mr. Zients said.
Whether Mr. Obama can fix his job approval ratings as well as the website is unclear. Public opinion polls suggest he may have done more political damage to himself in the last two months than Republican attacks on the health care law did in three years.
People who have tried to use the website in the last few days report a mixed experience, with some definitely noticing improvements.
“Every week, it’s been getting better,” said Lynne M. Thorp, who leads a team of counselors, or navigators, in southwestern Florida. “It’s getting faster, and nobody’s getting kicked out.”
But neither Mr. Zients nor the Department of Health and Human Services indicated how many people were completing all the steps required to enroll in a health plan through the federal site, which serves residents of 36 states.
And unless enrollments are completed correctly, coverage may be in doubt.
For insurers the process is maddeningly inconsistent. Some people clearly are being enrolled. But insurers say they are still getting duplicate files and, more worrisome, sometimes not receiving information on every enrollment taking place.
“Health plans can’t process enrollments they don’t receive,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Despite talk from time to time of finding some sort of workaround, experts say insurers have little choice but to wait for the government to fix these problems. The insurers are in “an unenviable position,” said Brett Graham, a managing director at Leavitt Partners, which has been advising states and others on the exchanges. “Although they don’t have the responsibility or the capability to fix the system, they’re reliant on it.”
Insurers said they were alarmed when Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the federal website, estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the federal insurance marketplace was still being built. He told Congress on Nov. 19 that the government was still developing “the back-office systems, the accounting systems, the payment systems” needed to pay insurers in January.
While insurers will start covering people who pay their share of the premium, many insurers worry that the government will be late on the payments they were expecting in mid-January for the first people covered.
“We want to be paid,” said one executive, speaking frankly on the condition of anonymity. “If we want to pay claims, we need to get paid.”
Insurers said they had received calls from consumers requesting insurance cards because they thought they had enrolled in a health plan through the federal website, but the insurers said they had not been notified.
“Somehow people are getting lost in the process,” the insurance executive said. “If they go to a doctor or a hospital and we have no record of them, that will be very upsetting to consumers.”
Thomas W. Rubino, a spokesman for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, which says it has about 70 percent of the individual insurance market in the state, said the company had received “some but not a lot” of enrollments from the federal exchange.
Federal officials are encouraging insurers to let consumers sign up directly with them. But in the middle of this online enrollment process, consumers must be transferred to the federal website if they want to obtain tax credit subsidies to pay some or all of their premiums in 2014.
In a document describing problems with the federal website in late November, the administration said some consumers were “incorrectly determined to be ineligible for” tax credits. In some cases, it said, enrollment notices sent to insurers were missing the amount of the premium to be paid by a consumer, the amount of subsidies to be paid by the government and even the identification number for a subscriber.
In some cases, according to the document, government computers blocked the enrollment of people found eligible for subsidies that would pay the entire amount of their premiums. In other cases, the government system failed to retrieve information on a consumer’s eligibility for financial assistance.
Mr. Zients said that software fixes installed on Saturday night should improve not only the consumer experience, but also the “the back end of the system,” which consumers rarely see.
Ben Jumper, 29, of Dallas, said he had repeatedly been thwarted trying to use HealthCare.gov, most recently on Wednesday.
“I would get one or two steps further along, and then something else would be broken,” Mr. Jumper said. “It is not very user-friendly. It is not very intuitive. Eventually, we just gave up.”
But Urian Diaz Franco, a navigator with VNA Health Care in Aurora, Ill., said on Saturday, “We’ve seen nothing but improvements.”
A week ago, he said, it often took 10 to 15 seconds for a page to load, but “now it’s just boom, boom, boom — it comes up as soon as you click the button.” | – Many of HealthCare.gov's well chronicled problems have reportedly been fixed, but that doesn't mean it's ready for prime time, insurers say. The site's ability to send consumer data to insurance companies remains flawed, and "until the enrollment process is working from end to end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage," says insurance trade group head Karen Ignagni. People have been calling insurers thinking they've signed up for a plan, but insurers have been missing some information—or lack any record of the transaction, the New York Times reports. Although insurers "don’t have the responsibility or the capability to fix the system, they’re reliant on it," says one consultant. "Somehow people are getting lost in the process," says one exec. "If they go to a doctor or a hospital and we have no record of them, that will be very upsetting to consumers." Sometimes, it remains unclear how much coverage the government is paying for, and insurers are concerned about late payments from the government. Some insurers and states are pushing for a way to leapfrog the federal site, the Wall Street Journal reports. Connecticut, for instance, wants to rely on its own data for confirming enrollees' citizenship and other information. |
UPDATE 2: Kanye West has shared 30-second snippets of every song on his recently released The Life of Pablo on his website alongside full credits of the album.
UPDATE: Kanye West released his new album The Life of Pablo early Sunday morning after numerous last-minute changes to the track list. The album will be available on Tidal for subscribers and as a paid download exclusively on Kanyewest.com for one week before being available to other major retailers.
Kanye West has revealed the final track list and title for his seventh album, The Life of Pablo, on Twitter. The LP is set to be released Thursday, February 11th.
For the album debut, West will host a listening party at Madison Square Garden on its release day. While West will not perform, he'll debut Yeezy Season 3 and performance artist Vanessa Beecroft will take the stage. The event will stream at select theatres as well as on Tidal.
TLOP has been teased since early 2015 when West debuted the sweet ode to daughter North West, "Only One." Soon after, he released the trap-folk single "FourFiveSeconds" featuring Rihanna and Paul McCartney. His third official single of 2015 was "All Day." All three singles were scrapped from the final track list.
Two songs he debuted in 2015 during his fashion shows, however, did make the final cut. "Wolves" featuring Sia and Vic Mensa served as the soundtrack for his Yeezy Boosts show in February. "Fade" was debuted during New York Fashion Week last fall.
Over the last month, West has drastically changed the track list for the LP, having shown a constantly changing pad of paper before debuting the cleaner one on Wednesday night. His collaboration with Kendrick Lamar, "No More Parties in L.A.," has been cut from the final list as well as "Nina Chop" and "30 Hours."
The Life of Pablo has gone through several name changes as well, first being referred to as So Help Me God and even getting an official album cover. He switched it to Swish last summer, and since January, the album has been referred to as Waves.
The Life of Pablo Track List
1. "Ultra Light Beams"
2. "Father Stretch My Hands" Part 1
3. "Father Stretch My Hands" Part 2
4. "Famous"
5. "Feedback"
6. "Low Lights"
7. "High Lights"
8. "Freestyle 4"
9. "I Miss the Old Kanye"
10. "FML"
11. "Real Friends" featuring Ty Dolla $ign
12. "Wolves" featuring Sia & Vic Mensa
13. "Silver Surfer Intermission"
14. "30 Hours"
15. "No More Parties in L.A."
16. "Facts"
17. "Fade" ||||| Yeezus! Kanye West doesn't think that he dissed Taylor Swift in his new song "Famous," in which he says that he "might have sex" with her because he made "that bitch famous." The rapper took to Twitter to address the critics on Friday, February 12, just hours after he debuted the song during his Yeezy 3 collection presentation in NYC.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Yeezy Season 3
"I did not diss Taylor Swift and I’ve never dissed her. First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship," West, 38 tweeted on Friday. "2nd thing I asked my wife [Kim Kardashian] for her blessings and she was cool with it."
Kevin Winter/MTV1415/Getty Images For MTV
But that's not all. West claims that the "Bad Blood" singer, 26, actually came up with the idea herself. "3rd thing I called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings," he wrote.
"I’m not even gone take credit for the idea… it’s actually something Taylor came up with," he continued. "She was having dinner with one of our friends who’s name I will keep out of this and she told him I can’t be mad at Kanye because he made me famous! #FACTS."
West also shared that "bitch" is actually an "endearing term in hip hop." And despite the backlash, he's proud of what he accomplished on Thursday night. "They want to control us with money and perception and mute the culture but you can see at Madison Square Garden that you can stop us," he wrote.
In his No. 9 point, he added: "It felt like a seen from The Warriors ALL GODS ALL GODS ALL GODS in the buildin. not just the famous people there but the kids the moms the dads the families that came to share this moment with us." (West and Swift previously buried the hatchet in February 2015 after his infamous 2009 VMAs stage-crash performance. They were photographed hugging at the Grammy Awards at the time.)
For more of West's tweets, check out below:
I did not diss Taylor Swift and I’ve never dissed her… — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
2nd thing I asked my wife for her blessings and she was cool with it — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
3rd thing I called Taylor and had a hour long convo with her about the line and she thought it was funny and gave her blessings — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
5th thing I’m not even gone take credit for the idea… it’s actually something Taylor came up with … — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
She was having dinner with one of our friends who’s name I will keep out of this and she told him — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
I can’t be mad at Kanye because he made me famous! #FACTS — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
6th Stop trying to demonize real artist Stop trying to compromise art — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
7th I miss that feeling so that’s what I want to help restore — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
8th They want to control us with money and perception and mute the culture — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
but you can see at Madison Square Garden that you can stop us — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
9th It felt like a seen from The Warriors ALL GODS ALL GODS ALL GODS in the buildin — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016
not just the famous people there but the kids the moms the dads the families that came to share this moment with us — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 12, 2016 ||||| Kanye West and Kim Kardashian were struggling to keep up even before his November 21 hospitalization for extreme exhaustion. In the aftermath of the October 3 Paris robbery, during which Kardashian, 36, was tied up and held at gunpoint while thieves stole $10 million in jewelry, “it’s just been hell for them,” a source says in the new issue of Us Weekly. Find out more in the video above, and detailed below.
While the reality star struggled to feel safe again, West, 39, returned to his 63-date Saint Pablo tour. But Kardashian, normally a backstage fixture, was too anxious to tag along. “The trauma of the incident made her more hesitant to do things,” explains the source. “Of course it strained their relationship, because she hadn’t seen him.”
When he was home at their 11,000-square-foot Bel Air spread with kids North, 3, and Saint, 12 months, West’s workaholic tendencies got the best of him. “He would be up all night ranting about things,” says a source close to the 21-time Grammy winner. “They were fighting because he was impossible to live with.”
Kardashian’s Paris ordeal left West paranoid and “completely freaked out,” says an insider. The fact that it happened near the nine-year anniversary of the loss of his mother, Donda, only deepened his distress. “The mere thought of his wife being taken from him was too much — it was like his mother’s death,” says a source close to West. “Seeing Kim close to death did a major number on him. It sent him into a tailspin.”
Kardashian, meanwhile, was enduring her own nightmares and flashbacks, say sources. But when she tried to lean on her husband of two years, she was disappointed. “She felt like now she needed him to be stable and her rock instead of the other way around,” explains the Kim confidant. “Kanye’s so used to getting Kim’s constant support and coding, but it’s always about Kanye.”
But then — as she was preparing to attend the November 21 Angel Ball in New York — she got that fateful call. West, who hadn’t slept “in about a week,” according to a source — was at the L.A.-area home of his trainer Harley Pasternak acting paranoid and psychotic. “He was having difficulty identifying what was real,” explains the source.
Despite the recent rocky patch, Kim sprang into action, setting up camp in West’s private hospital room at UCLA Medical Center. And though the incident was scary for the reality star, a source close to the couple says she thinks it will heal their relationship. “Kanye’s behavior took a huge toll on their marriage,” says the source. “But Kim feels relieved he is getting the help he needs. She thinks this is what it will take to save him — and help their marriage.”
For more on the pair’s struggles — and how Kim is nursing West back to health — pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now!
Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox!
Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! ||||| Kanye West performs during the launch of his show Yeezy Season 3
Rap star Kanye West says he is $53m (£36m) in debt.
The 38-year-old tweeted before appearing on Saturday Night Live in the US: ''Let's dance in the streets. I am consumed by my purpose to help the world.
''I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt... Please pray we overcome... This is my true heart...
''This is all all is fun all in good feelings... We will all be gone 100 years from now but what did we do to help while we were here!!!
''They are calling me to the SNL stage now ... Speak soon... (sic).''
1 / 31 Gallery: Kanye West At New York Fashion Week Kanye West (C) and Lamar Odom arrive at West's Yeezy Season 3 presentation and listening party for the new The Life of Pablo album during New York Fashion Week
He appeared on Saturday Night Live as the musical guest and also in a sketch alongside comedian Kyle Mooney, who challenges him to a rap battle.
West didn't say how he had plunged so far into the red, but he has previously confessed to losing around $16m (£11m) in developing his Yeezy clothing line.
"I was trying to play a sport that's a billionaire sport," he told showbiz and lifestyle website BET last year, adding: "It’s not a millionaire sport and I'm proud of the debt."
West, who has two children with wife Kim Kardashian, launched New York Fashion Week with his Yeezy Season 3 show last week.
He also used the show to preview his latest album The Life Of Pablo. ||||| Never one to shy away from controversy, Eminem wrote his track Berzerk — in which he calls Khloe Kardashian ugly — months before her marriage scandal with husband Lamar Odom broke, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.
The first single off of his upcoming album, Marshall Mathers LP 2 (MMLP2) has soared to the top of the charts, and it features a verse about Khloe & Lamar.
“They say that love is as powerful as cough syrup and styrofoam / All I know is I fell asleep and woke up in that Monte Carlo / With the ugly Kardashian, Lamar O. Sorry, yo, we done both set the bar low,” Eminem raps.
PHOTOS: Khloe Kardashian: No Smile, No Ring During Marital Crisis With Lamar Odom
Eminem’s rep, Dennis Dennehy told RadarOnline.com exclusively the track “was indeed recorded without any knowledge of recent news” — months before the infidelity & drug scandal that is rocking the reality starlet’s marriage to the NBA star.
“She has a lot going on in her world right now, and hasn’t given it any attention,” sources close to Khloe tell us. “But, she is a sensitive girl at heart and had been a fan of Eminem’s in the past.”
Odom has smoked more than $50,000 worth of cocaine in the past three years, including one wild binge before an NBA game just six months ago, a man claiming to be the star’s drug dealer previously told us.
The troubled two-time NBA championship winner’s preferred method of substance abuse is to freebase cocaine, a process popular amongst the Hollywood party crowd, by which the drug is purified by burning it and the user then inhales the fumes, the dealer said.
PHOTOS: Hollywood Divorce Lawyers Tell All — Prostitutes, Cross Dressing, Drugs & More Shocking Split Secrets
The first-hand account of Odom’s descent into a seedy world of hard drugs comes after he was linked sexually to two women behind the back of wife Khloe.
Despite his increasingly concerning troubles — Odom was also arrested last Friday for a DUI — the basketball star has refused to enter treatment, and even rejected desperate pleas during an intervention at a Los Angeles hotel last Monday, attended by some of his ex-Lakers teammates and current Clippers.
Meanwhile, the single has received positive buzz from critics, but others have criticized Eminem for his choice of words about Khloe’s appearance.
“The fact that Eminem called Khloe Kardashian ugly is horrible,” one Twitter user wrote. “She is so beautiful and funny.”
Eminem’s new album drops on Nov. 5. | – It's Thursday, but it might as well be Kanye Day. The rapper unveiled both his new album—The Life of Pablo—and clothing line—Yeezus Season 3—during an event at Madison Square Gardens in New York City. The whole thing was livestreamed around the world. And, as with most things having to do with Kanye West, it was all the Internet was talking about. Here are five things you need to know about Kanye's day: It was huge. The Verge reports more than 20 million tried to watch the stream of the nearly two-hour event at one time. "The early viewership numbers are insane…There aren't many other musicians who could pull this off." Lamar Odom was there. It was the former NBA player's first public appearance since nearly dying following an overdose at a Nevada brothel in October, according to People. Odom continues to recover from his coma and sat with estranged wife Khloé Kardashian after entering with the rest of West's family. Kanye made a video game. The Verge reports it's called Only One and depicts his late mother "traveling through the gates of heaven," apparently alternating between her own set of wings and a pegasus. West says a lot of people turned down his pitch for the game. Martin Shkreli tried to steal his thunder. The legally troubled "pharma bro" offered West $10 million for The Life of Pablo, hoping to delay or prevent its release to the public, according to the New York Times. "Instead of releasing this product for your millions of fans, I ask you to sell this recording solely to me," Shkreli tweeted. "I believe you (and your partners) will find this financial arrangement more attractive than your current course of action." Kanye is still super quotable. Cosmopolitan lists 16 of the lyrical highlights from The Life of Pablo, including "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why, I made that [expletive] famous" and—inevitably—"I love you like Kanye loves Kanye." |
By now you've probably heard about a lunatic with a small airplane named Joe Stack who crashed his plane into an IRS building Austin, Texas in an attempt to get back at the man-or "Big Brother" as he so eloquently stated on his website.
I'm not about to blame Joe Stack's kamikaze mission on Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, or the Tea Baggers like some on the left. That is irresponsible and reprehensible. Anybody who would blame Stack's suicide mission on Limbaugh, Palin, or the GOP, is purely agenda-driven and not looking at the facts.
Joseph Andrew Stack (gotta love how the media always includes the middle name) was a middle-aged man who tired of the political system and felt like yet another little guy that was neglected by Uncle Sam.
His rantings are the words of a lunatic. I won't call him "right-wing" or "left-wing" and will just say this guy was nuts.
"We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers."
This type of rant reminds me of something you'd hear from a Lynden LaRouche supporter or someone who speaks of the Illuminati.
I certainly wouldn't call this guy a religious extremist. He ranted about the Catholic church in his manifesto as well.
"My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy."
People who knew the Joe Stack say he showed no signs of snapping-the mark of someone who goes insane. He talked politics, but not like that guy we all have met or know who we suspect will possibly go postal or shoot up a shopping mall.
There's an old saying that a sucker is born every minute. These days it seems like a lunatic is born every minute. My, my how things have changed in America. And, that is very frightening.
For a link to Joe Stack's manifesto, check out this site. ||||| Alienated in Austin
Joseph Stack was angry at the Internal Revenue Service, and he took his rage out on it by slamming his single-engine plane into the Echelon Building in Austin, Texas. We now know this thanks to the rather clear (as rants go) suicide note Stack left behind. There's no information yet on whether he was involved in any anti-government groups or whether he was a lone wolf. But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.
Here are excerpts I was able to snag before the FBI took Stark's site down:
If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?”
We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers.
Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?
In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.
I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.
Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
Joe Stack (1956-2010)
02/18/2010
My Facebook and Twitter buddy Steve Beste made a wry observation about Stack's last stand. "If a white Texas guy flies into a government building it is a contained criminal act," he Tweeted. "Oh. OK. McVeigh was disgruntled." McVeigh was more than disgruntled. He was murderous. And the alienation he felt from his government in 1995 still affects more than we care to admit 15 years later. | – Joseph Stack’s anger at big government in general and the Internal Revenue Service in particular sounds very much like another of the day’s big noise-makers to Jonathan Capehart. “After reading his 34-paragraph screed,” Capehart writes in a Washington Post blog of the Austin suicide pilot, “I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we’re hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement.” This is just the type of finger-pointing that makes Dennis Bakay’s blood boil. “I’m not about to blame Joe Stack’s kamikaze mission on Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, or the Tea Baggers like some on the left,” he writes for Philly2Philly. “That is irresponsible and reprehensible … purely agenda-driven and not looking at the facts.” |
Dear technology journalists of the world: You know how you called that gadget you just reviewed sexy? Tell me, do you intend to fuck it, or do you simply plan to shove it up your ass?
"Sexy." You see it applied to non-human objects all the time, but especially electronics. And the thing is, those writing it almost never mean it. When a writer unleashes "sexy," more often than not what is meant is "desirable." And because sexual desire is something that almost all adults can understand, it's commonly applied. Easy!
Yet what once may have been original is at this point just a horrible cliché. It's a crutch too frequently applied, even by the biggest names in the business. And I doubt that it is ever meant sincerely.
Walt Mossberg! Please explain to me exactly how you intend to use this Dell touch screen in a sexually stimulating way! David Pogue! Where, exactly, did you put your penis in this Macbook Air? Joshua Topolsky! I know it is significantly smaller than the original, but, I am genuinely flummoxed, how in the world did you fit an iPad2 in your ass?
Now look, gadgets can have certain attributes that might be considered legitimately sexy by some—for example you may find yourself taking intentional wrong turns, again and again, all around your neighborhood late at night, listening to the disembodied voice from your GPS telling you to turn right, turn left, go straight, you naughty thing, you—but these tend to be human attributes. It could be a voice, an avatar, perhaps even a texture.
Or maybe you are writing about the Fleshlight, or some other sexual stimulation device. You can call that sexy, go right ahead! I might personally feel a little sad for you, but you are using the word correctly.
Or maybe you actually do want to get it on with your iPhone. Maybe you really do find vaporware coffeemakers sexually stimulating. That's fine! No judgement from me. Rule 34 and all that. But make it clear. Let your readers know that you plan to make sweet, sweet love to that all-in-one printer.
Otherwise it's just bad writing. It's lazy. It means you don't give a damn about your audience. It means you don't care enough to try and use a real descriptor. It means you can't be bothered to come up with an actual description of what you like about something, so you're just going to call it sexy.
While this post is directed at writers, we need help from readers in order to make this happen. So to you, dear reader, I exhort you: The next time you see a professional writer refer to an inanimate object full of circuitry and cadmium as "sexy," please inquire as to whether said writer does in fact find it to be arousing.
Yes, okay! We have done it on this very site. Mea culpas! Change must start at home, so we're ending the practice now. You'll not see it used here improperly again. We challenge the rest of our community to also stop using the word sexy to describe gadgets unless you intend to fuck them.
And if that is what you mean, please post pictures.
[Photo by Shutterstock] ||||| Jason Segel and Michelle Williams are just so darn cute, it's a bit nauseating. But then you remember what Michelle's been through and take one look at Jason holding hands with little Matilda, and it's not so bad. In fact, I'm rooting for them to make it as a couple. I mean, not that they're confirmed as a couple yet, but Segel's iPhone is proof enough for me.
The Five Year Engagement star appeared on Leno last night and his smartphone was caught on camera. Clear as day, taped to the back cover were photo-booth pics of Michelle and the words "I love you." Awwww! He sure as heck can't hide now. Then again, maybe he doesn't want to! Look at how he's holding that phone for the cameras to see! And featuring your S.O. on your iPhone is a bold move -- one you only make if you want to declare your love, loud and proud.
After all, in our Facebook profile-obsessed world, our gadgets are how we express ourselves and communicate to the rest of the world how we self-identify. Honestly, I can't help but glimpse at someone's iPhone cover and not draw instant conclusions about what they must be like. RPatz? Total Twi-Hard. Leopard print? Wild child. Kate Spade? Princess, clearly.
The same theory applies to what's going on inside the phone -- meaning your lockscreen wallpaper or background. I just recently, not so sneakily, changed my fiance's lockscreen wallpaper to a cute pic of us. And mine's a somewhat mushy one of us (also via a photo booth!), which I figure is okay, it's semi-private ... semi-self-expressive, if you will.
Also, let's be real. Our smartphones are attached to our hands and faces more hours than we'd like to admit. Why shouldn't they sport the smiling face of the person we love? I'm sure that's what Jason had in mind when he tacked Michelle's adorable pic on the back of his phone ... (or she did!). Just hope they know, though ... once you "come out" via iPhone, you're out for good.
Do you have a photo of your S.O. on your lockscreen or case?
Image via Rachid Ait/Bruja, PacificCoastNews.com ||||| When I woke up this morning to see that a friend of mine had sent me Tom Junod’s essay, “In Praise of 42 Year Old Women,” I felt a lot of things. First of all, I felt happy. I mean, I had been following Junod’s career for many years, and so I’ve watched him begin so many articles with the word “You.” And this piece began with “Let’s face it,” which was obviously progress. So yeah, I felt good, the kind of good you feel when you see a kid who always walks in Little League get a hit, or when your dog is choking on a piece of rawhide and then just suddenly stops. Except with a dog you were thinking you might have to reach down its throat at some point, and I have never gotten to the point where I thought about reaching down Junod’s throat to extract something other than the pronoun “you.” And now, I don’t have to!
The next thing I felt was relief: Tom Junod still wanted to have sex with me, and more importantly, laugh over hamburgers afterward, as he admired me in a stunning shift. Because according to Junod, I’m still hot — not like 42-year-old women used to be, back when they were super gross, like Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. And according to Junod what makes me hot isn’t just being hot, it’s that, unlike other women who just haven’t had all this time, I also finally figured out how to be sort of interesting.
Because — to borrow a phrase — let’s face it. Young women may still be perfect physical specimens. They can put on a bustier and high heels and arrange their legs, as 42-year-old Sofia Vergara has here, in a pose that’s not quite open and not quite closed, but they just don’t have, according to Junod, my “toughness, humor, and smarts.” He doesn’t come out and say that they don’t, but he definitely doesn’t say here, “Oh, the reason 42-year-old women are hot is because of what they look like.” No, it’s because we have a certain gravitas combined with what remains of our beauty. Young women don’t have that gravitas. So we sort of have the best of femininity.
I guess this is supposed to make me feel good. I guess it’s supposed to make me feel good that at a party in a summer dress, I am “the most unclothed woman in the room.”
Or, well, I want that to make me feel good, but first I have to figure out what “most unclothed” means. According to Junod, I’m “the most unclothed” because “you know exactly what she looks like, without knowing exactly who she is.” (We couldn’t escape that second person singular for long!) I’m trying to figure out this idea of not knowing who I am? As opposed to the younger women at the party? Is it easy to know who they are, because at this point, they’re just body parts? Is 42 years how long it takes for the female brain to develop, and then, there’s, like, this sweet spot where a woman has brains and a body? And you (the universal male you, of course, otherwise known as Tom Junod’s BFF) want to just crawl up in that “lust with laughs” sweet spot and have a blast?
OK, Tom. To borrow another phrase, “Are you trying to seduce me?” I am actually 44, so I hope my collagen-intelligence ratio is still in your ballpark. Oh, I just looked you up on Wikipedia and I see that you’re 55. Oh, yeah! That is such a hot age. It’s like, you’re still alive, but only for about 30 more years.
Art by Jia Tolentino.
Sarah Miller is the author Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl. She lives in Nevada City, CA. Follow her on Twitter @sarahlovescali. | – While we all love our smartphones, laptops, and other tech gadgets, it's inaccurate to refer to them as "sexy"—unless of course you plan to make love to them, says Gizmodo writer Mat Honan. The characterization has become so standard among tech reviewers, Honan believes it's time readers call out the cliche: "The next time you see a professional writer refer to an inanimate object full of circuitry and cadmium as 'sexy,' please inquire as to whether said writer does in fact find it to be arousing." It's lazy writing, and "it means you don't give a damn about your audience." Since "sexy" is a descriptor pretty much everyone old enough to buy a gadget can understand, writers don't hesitate to throw it around to easily get their point across. "Maybe you actually do want to get it on with your iPhone. Maybe you really do find vaporware coffeemakers sexually stimulating. That's fine! No judgment from me," Honan writes. "But make it clear. Let your readers know that you plan to make sweet, sweet love to that all-in-one printer." (Click to see a few examples of "sexy"-usage offenders, here, here, and here.) |
Despite its title, "Elysium" is no promised land.
Expectations were high that the film starring Matt Damon would carry the flag for thoughtful, big-budget films that care about more than profits. But it has ended up as something of a disappointment, an epic that has gone over to the dark side without realizing it.
That anticipation came courtesy of "District 9" — the 2009 science fiction film by Neill Blomkamp, "Elysium's" South African writer-director — which came out of nowhere to be nominated for four Oscars, including best picture and adapted screenplay.
PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments
"District 9" succeeded in part because of the strength of its unexpected core idea: that aliens coming to Earth were not necessarily a dominant species but instead were rounded up and segregated in their own parts of town the way blacks had been in South Africa.
"Elysium" makes a similar attempt to graft socio-political concerns onto a sci-fi framework, but the idea is less electric here and the combining of genre and theme not as adroitly done.
Initially, however, things do seem promising in "Elysium," in large part because of how its subject matter is compellingly visualized on screen (Philip Ivey is the production designer).
PHOTOS: Celebrities by The Times
The year is 2154, and Earth, thanks to the destructive effects of pollution, overpopulation and related ills, is in horrific shape. Blighted, devastated slums cover the planet, and they are home to the poorest people (a Mexico City garbage dump stands in for Los Angeles).
Anyone of wealth and status now lives on Elysium, a circular space station whose shape is reminiscent of the much smaller one in Stanley Kubrick's "2001." The air is pure, robots do the work, and everywhere there are healing machines that cure what ails you. Think of a flesh-and-blood version of the disparities in Disney's "Wall-E" and you'll get the general idea.
Making the best of things on the planet is Max, played by a bulked-up, head-shaved, tattooed Damon. Max is a former car thief, once a legend in his Los Angeles neighborhood, who is working on a factory assembly line hoping to better his lot and maybe even get to Elysium someday.
PHOTOS: Summer Sneaks 2013
Clearly, social inequality is very much on Blomkamp's mind, and when you add in illegal, clandestine space flights from Earth to Elysium by people desperate for medical attention, it's clear that hot-button issues like illegal immigration and universal access to healthcare are on the table as well.
This is all well and good, but, paradoxically, once the actual plot of "Elysium" kicks in, these issues fade from the film's consciousness and the traditional, less involving tropes of good-guy-versus-bad-guy action take center stage. Although the pulp energy that Blomkamp brings to this material makes it consistently watchable, the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped.
Max, given a hard time by the humorless droids who police Earth, has to go to the local hospital where he gets reacquainted with nurse Frey (Alice Braga), his childhood soul mate from, no kidding, the orphanage where they both grew up.
Back at the plant where Max works, things get worse. Our hero is put in a dangerous situation and ends up with a lethal dose of radiation that will kill him in five days. His only hope is to somehow get to Elysium and make use of one of those miraculous cure-all machines.
PHOTOS: Billion-dollar movie club
Not averse to helping Max are his neighborhood pal Julio (Mexico's Diego Luna) and Spider (Brazil's Wagner Moura), who runs illegal shuttles to Elysium. But the price is steep: Max, fortified by an exoskeleton that gives him added strength, will have to capture one of Elysium's top dogs, evil plutocrat John Carlyle (William Fichtner) and download information from the man's brain, a situation riskier than anyone imagines. And more pedestrian.
For one thing, the villains in "Elysium" are very conventional. Aside from Carlyle, Jodie Foster — displaying excellent French and a stern visage — is one-dimensional as the Armani-clad Dragon Lady villainess determined to protect Elysium no matter the cost. Kruger, her thuggish enforcer ("District 9" star Sharlto Copley) is even more of a cliché.
Countering all this is Damon, who is a big plus as always, instinctively humanizing thankless roles like Max and making them look easy.
But once Max faces off with Kruger and his gang, as they inevitably must, all thoughts of anything besides hand-to-hand combat fade into insignificance. The plot gets unnecessarily confusing, and violent images, including a particularly grotesque blown-away face, push everything else away. "Elysium" may think it is about issues, but at times like these, that's very hard to see.
[email protected]
'Elysium'
MPAA Rating: R, for strong bloody violence and language throughout
Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
In general release ||||| Jodie Foster plays Secretary of Defense Delacourt, protector of Elysium, a refuge in space for the rich and elite, from Earth's undesirables.
Jodie Foster plays Secretary of Defense Delacourt, protector of Elysium, a refuge in space for the rich and elite, from Earth's undesirables.
If his directing career ever dries up (not likely), Neill Blomkamp could make a killing in the merchandise biz: Dystopia R Us, featuring rusted toaster ovens, custom graffitied bathroom fixtures, tattered T-shirts, and temporary tattoos.
In Elysium, Blomkamp's rabble-rousing sci-fi allegory, Earth is a wasteland. It's the mid-22d century, and the whole world is the Third World: shantytown sprawl; high-rise ruins; a planet that is, we're told, "diseased, polluted, and vastly overpopulated."
It's as if the squalid precincts of Johannesburg depicted in the South African filmmaker's 2009 debut, District 9, had spread everywhere. Blomkamp, handed a bigger budget and a big movie star to go with it - Matt Damon, shaven-headed and angry - paints a canvas of epic decay.
Among the slew of recent futuristic hell-in-a-handbasket spectacles, Elysium takes the cake.
And while the teeming and miserable masses eke it out on terra firma, orbiting up there in the sky is the giant, gleaming hubcap known as Elysium, where the elite live in elegant McMansions, swim in endless-horizon pools, partake of gourmet feasts, and, of course, speak French. This is the ultimate gated community: Wealthy expats from Earth stroll their sumptuous grounds and strike their supermodel poses, and if a shuttle ship crammed with illegals breaches the perimeter, Secretary of Defense Delacourt (a suitably officious Jodie Foster) orders it blasted beyond what's left of the ozone layer.
And if, by chance, a band of dirty immigrants makes it onto Elysium's surface, deportation is immediate. An army of droids makes sure of that.
There's nothing subtle about Blomkamp's message in Elysium, which finds our hero, Damon's Max, outfitted with an "exo-suit" that turns him into the combat equal of the droids. He's got a hard drive screwed to the back of his skull, and he's got five days to make it from Earth to Elysium. Thanks to a mishap at work - he's on the assembly line at a droid plant, and he's been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation - that's all the time he has.
Unless, that is, he can get himself onto one of those Elysium medical bays: They look like tanning pods and can re-atomize your body, curing you of cancer, warts, and bad breath. No one is sick on Elysium.
There are plot complications: Frey (Alice Braga), a hospital nurse Max has known since they were children, has a child of her own, a daughter with leukemia. And Secretary Delacourt has Kruger (Sharlto Copley, District 9's Afrikaner eviction officer), a madman enforcer with a posse of mercenaries, chasing Max down. Delacourt has a plan, too, in cahoots with snooty industrialist John Carlyle (William Fichtner), to usurp the presidency. A program that would reboot Elysium's computer systems - a coup d'etat in cybercode - is the movie's MacGuffin.
Thumping and thrilling, Elysium takes its Haves vs. Have Nots parable seriously. There's not much in the way of comic diversion here, although Blomkamp pokes fun at the weary indifference of government bureaucrats by turning them into funhouse automatons - literally.
Yes, the inevitable climactic square off between Max and Kruger slips into the Hollywood generic - haven't we just seen all this head-bashing, hanging-from-catwalks, mixed-martial-arts mayhem in The Wolverine and Iron Man 3? But as summer movie sci-fi extravaganzas go, Elysium is easily the best thing out there right now.
And the bleakest, too.
Elysium *** (Out of four stars)
Directed by Neill Blomkamp. With Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copely, Alice Braga, and Diego Luna. Distributed by Sony Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 49 mins.
Parent's guide: R (intense action, violence, profanity, adult themes)
Playing at: area theaters
Contact Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or [email protected], or follow on Twitter @Steven_Rea. Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at www.inquirer.com/onmovies. | – Much like in real life, Matt Damon's character in the sci-fi thriller Elysium isn't too fond of government bureaucrats. Set in royally screwed-up Los Angeles (home to the masses) and an idyllic space station in the clouds (home to the rich) circa 2154, this flick from Neill Blomkamp (District 9) has both the compelling themes and action-packed fight scenes to make it a summer blockbuster. So is it one? Critics are split. The action sequences, complete with "futuristic CGI flying machines" are impressive, but it's "Blomkamp's critique of a society riven by class and racial differences" that sets it apart, Soren Anderson writes for the Seattle Times. "Few mainstream moviemakers have painted as sprawling and densely detailed a portrait of humanity in extremis as Blomkamp does here." But at the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan's high hopes were dashed. "Elysium is no promised land." Though Matt Damon is great as always and the visuals are equally as impressive, "the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped." District 9 did a much better job of connecting genre (sci-fi) and theme ("socio-political concerns"). Even with the talented Damon along for the ride, Dana Stephens at Slate writes Elysium "does a little, sometimes shockingly little, with a lot ... Blomkamp proceeds to spend the last two-thirds of his film crashing spaceships into lawns, or staging high-tech fistfights. It’s a waste of a perfectly good dystopia." But over at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Steven Rea sees things differently. "Among the slew of recent futuristic hell-in-a-hand-basket spectacles, Elysium takes the cake." Sure, it can be a little generic at times—"haven't we just seen all this head-bashing, hanging-from-catwalks, mixed-martial-arts mayhem in The Wolverine and Iron Man 3?—but "as summer movie sci-fi extravaganzas go, Elysium is easily the best thing out there right now." |
By Daryn Kagan , Contributing Writer
About five months ago, Ryan Garcia’s world changed forever.
He and his wife, Lindsey, became first-time parents to Isla Quinn.
“She’s gorgeous!” he gushed to me the other day.
So what’s the big deal, you might ask? Millions of men become fathers every year. Ah, but this new dad has let the love for his daughter inspire a revolution. A kindness revolution.
“I was sitting on my couch at the end of the year,” he remembers, “thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Should I try to lose weight? Do something else predictable?”
He looked over at his sweet baby girl and inspiration hit him. “I decided I wanted to do something that would inspire her in the future. I wanted to be a better person.”
That’s how 2012 became his year of random acts of kindness. Each day for this calendar year, he’s committed to doing something nice for someone else. Sometimes, it’s for people he knows.
“I tracked down my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Plecas,” he said, “and wrote him a letter thanking him for being my favorite teacher ever. He had a way of making learning fun. I’ll never forget him, and he needed to know that.”
Ryan has also sent a letter to a family who lost their son while he was serving in Afghanistan. “I wanted to send my condolences and thank them for everything their family has sacrificed, he explained.
There have been funny days, too. Like the time he made a point to compliment 25 total strangers. That was as great as the day he stood on the corner and offered free hugs.
If it sounds like quite the journey, it is. Ryan is sharing his kind acts with the world on this blog, 366randomacts.org (online at 366randomacts.org). He invites you to follow along. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, for every “like” and “follower” he gets, he’s donating a dime to charity.
This giving thing has a way of growing. Ryan figures it’s the least he can do. “I never meant to do any of this for me,” he says. “I just can’t believe how much I’m getting out of it. The little bit of kindness I put out seems to multiply the way it comes back to me.”
“And what about Baby Isla?” I ask. “She’s too young to appreciate her dad doing any of this.”
“That’s the main reason I’m doing the blog,” he says. “When she’s old enough, she’ll see all the stories, photos and videos. She’ll see how she inspired one man to become a better person.”
This kindness streak is such a fun ride, Ryan is suggesting you try it out for yourself.
“You know what people will say to that,” I offer, “it’s nice for this guy, but I’m way too busy to fit all this in.”
“No one is busier than I am,” he counters. “I’ve got a newborn, a demanding full-time job, groups I belong to, and I work out. I’ve found out that being nice doesn’t take extra time.”
So are you in? If your ride is anything like Ryan’s, sounds like putting a little kindness out there will take you places you never imagined.
Daryn Kagan is the creator of DarynKagan.com. She is the author of “What’s Possible! 50 True Stories of People Who Dared To Dream They Could Make a Difference.” ||||| Noah, the main character in the film "The Notebook," wrote a love letter every day of the year to win Allie's affection, but a real-life New Jersey man has outdone Ryan Gosling's beloved character.
Interested in ? Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest
Toms River resident Bill Bresnan, 74, has written a love letter every day to Kirsten Bresnan, 74, his wife of almost 40 years, and there are more than 10,000 of them filed chronologically in 25 boxes at their home.
And he continues to write them to this day.
"All the letters are signed, 'I love you, my darling' with an infinity sign," Bresnan told ABC News today. "They're essentially a love diary. For example, I could pick out a day in 1982, and it’ll begin with the restaurant we ate in or a movie we saw and then a reaction to that."
Elara Mosquera/ABC News
The daily expressions of love began as notes scribbled on napkins and small pieces of paper he gave to his wife over coffee while commuting together shortly after they met, Bresnan said. They met while he was teaching a class to license students in the security industry.
"She was this beautiful Northern European woman who struck me like a bolt of lightning," he said.
Their relationship blossomed. They had a simple wedding in the city and have lived happily ever after since, he said.
"We've never had a fight once in almost 40 years of marriage," Bresnan said. "We might disagree on something, but we talk about it rather than argue."
Elara Mosquera/ABC News
Bresnan's never a missed giving Kirsten a card, he said. Even when they're away, he makes sure to send postcards or write letters in advance.
"My biggest fear now, given my age, is forgetting -- but luckily I'm still pretty sharp," he said.
One of his favorites out of the 10,000-plus letters were a series of 50 cards, one for each of the 50 days before her 50th birthday, he said.
The daily cards are part of Bresnan's recipe for making a relationship last, among other things, he said.
"The key to any relationship is that you both have to work at it every day," Bresnan said. "And never go to bed mad. Talk about everything. Everything should get resolved before your goodnight kiss."
Courtesy Bill Bresnan
The couple continues to keep the romance alive through little things they do together in their daily routine, such as playing 'Boggle' over breakfast and having candlelit dinners with wine, he said.
Bresnan also goes big once in a while.
"We once reenacted the Katherine Hepburn movie 'Summertime'" Bresnan said. "I took Kirsten to Italy. We sailed across the Mediterranean, took a train to Venice, wandered the city, had pizza at San Marco Piazza and literally did everything in that movie together."
He also gave her a friendship ring featuring hieroglyphics he saw during a trip to Egypt that were an expression of a pharaoh's eternal love for his son.
Elara Mosquera/ABC News
Despite the countless good times, the couple has weathered many a storm together, as well, he said.
"When the doctor told me I had cancer a few years ago, Kirsten was right next to me holding my hand," Bresnan said. "It wasn't, 'You have cancer," it was, 'We have cancer.' And I did the same thing for her when she got cancer a few years later."
Bresnan hopes that their love story will hope inspire younger couples, who seem to be more in love with their gadgets, he said.
"I see youngsters at restaurants sitting across from each other buried in their screens but never talking or looking at each other," Bresnan said. "I want them to enjoy the time they have with each other and treasure it."
Though Bresnan has already sent his wife plenty of Valentine's Day cards before the date, he said they'll still do something simple to celebrate.
"We'll probably have a nice dinner, a special bottle of wine and a piece of chocolate," Bresnan said. "We're past the craving for jewelry and expensive nonsense. We just enjoy simply being together." | – When Ryan Garcia and his wife welcomed their new baby into the world last year, Ryan got inspired to begin what the Dayton Daily News calls "a kindness revolution." He resolved for the entire year of 2012 to perform a random act of kindness every day. “I decided I wanted to do something that would inspire her in the future," said the new dad. "I wanted to be a better person." And so Ryan launched his year of altruism. Examples: “I tracked down my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Plecas, and wrote him a letter thanking him for being my favorite teacher ever." He also sent a condolence letter to a family who lost their son in the Afghanistan war. In one day, he complimented 25 strangers, and on another day he stood on the corner doling out free hugs. Yesterday, he took firefighters to lunch. You can keep track of his random feats at his blog, 366randomacts.org. (He's up to day 39). |
The sound of an actual ticking clock can speed up women’s attitudes on reproductive timing
New York | Heidelberg, 13 August 2014
The metaphor of a ticking clock is often used to refer to a woman’s growing urge – from puberty onwards to menopause – to conceive before her childbearing years are over. New research in Springer’s journal Human Nature shows that there’s more truth to this phrase than you might think. The subtle sound of a ticking clock can quite literally speed up a woman’s reproductive timing. That is, the sound of a ticking clock can lead women to want to start a family at an earlier age, especially if she was raised in a lower socio-economic community. This is according to Justin Moss and Jon Maner of Florida State University in the US.
Reproductive timing refers to the time frame and the specific years during which people begin to focus their energy and resources towards bearing and caring for their offspring. Some researchers reason that when and how this happens is greatly influenced by a person’s childhood years, his or her socio-economic background, and other subtle environmental factors.
Moss and Maner completed two experiments to test the influence of a subtle environmental factor – the ticking of a small white kitchen clock – on people’s reproductive timing attitudes. In the first, 59 men and women were asked questions about the age at which they’d like to marry and start a family. It assessed how socio-economic background might influence some people to press the snooze button of their biological clocks, or begin to act. In the second experiment, the researchers examined to what extent 74 participants would alter the characteristics they normally sought in potential mates to possibly settle for less just in order to have children sooner.
Their findings suggest that priming the idea of the passage of time through the sound of a ticking clock can influence various aspects of women’s reproductive timing. The effect was especially noticeable among women who grew up in lower socio-economic communities. They wanted to get married and have their first child at a younger age than women with more resources. They also lowered the priority that they placed on men’s social status and long-term earning potential.
However, the effect of the clock did not do the same for men. The researchers were not surprised by this because men are able to father children well into their old age. Their reproductive lives are therefore not as limited as that of women.
“The very subtle sound prime of a ticking clock changed the timing with which women sought to have children and the traits they sought in potential partners—both central aspects of women’s mating-related psychology,” says Moss.
“The findings suggest that a woman’s childhood years can interact with subtle environmental stimuli to affect her reproductive timing during adulthood,” adds Maner.
Reference: Moss, J.H. & Maner, J.K. (2014). The Clock Is Ticking: The Sound of a Ticking Clock Speeds Up Women’s Attitudes on Reproductive Timing. Human Nature. DOI 10.1007/s12110-014-9210-7.
Further information
About Human Nature
Services for Journalists
The full text article and interviews with the authors are available to interested journalists upon request.
Contact
Alexander K. Brown ||||| There’s a category of social-science experiment where the only reasonable response is “Huh, that’s weird.” The latest such experiment comes from the journal Human Nature, and it involves that least fun of subjects: biological clocks. Researchers interviewed a bunch of men and women about the age at which they’d like to start a family, as well as what qualities mattered in a partner. In some of the interviews, there was a clock ticking audibly nearby. In others, no clock.
The results:
Their findings suggest that priming the idea of the passage of time through the sound of a ticking clock can influence various aspects of women’s reproductive timing. The effect was especially noticeable among women who grew up in lower socio-economic communities. They wanted to get married and have their first child at a younger age than women with more resources. They also lowered the priority that they placed on men’s social status and long-term earning potential. However, the effect of the clock did not do the same for men. The researchers were not surprised by this because men are able to father children well into their old age. Their reproductive lives are therefore not as limited as that of women.
It’s unclear what to take away from this experiment. There’s obviously a difference between women’s real-life reproductive decisions and what they say about their plans in the context of an experiment at a particular moment in time. Plus, we’ve known for a while that all sorts of subtle cues can affect how people answer questions, whether for an experiment or a poll.
Still: kinda weird. And if you’re in a relationship with a woman who’s unsure about having kids and you want them, it suggests an easy way to better your odds. To the clock store! | – Ladies, you know your biological clock—the one that "ticks" away as you start feeling like it might be time to reproduce? Well, it turns out the sound of an actual ticking clock can speed up your reproductive timing, making you want to have babies earlier, according to a new study published in Springer's journal Human Nature. Researchers asked men and women questions about their reproductive attitudes—things like when they'd like to marry and have kids and how much they'd be willing to alter their "requirements" for a mate in order to start a family earlier—and they found that the sound of a ticking clock influenced women's answers, possibly because it made them think about the passage of time. "The very subtle sound prime of a ticking clock changed the timing with which women sought to have children and the traits they sought in potential partners—both central aspects of women’s mating-related psychology," says one of the lead researchers. Women who grew up in lower socioeconomic areas were particularly affected, wanting to get married and start families even earlier—and placing a lower priority on their mate's status and earning potential—than women who were raised with more resources. Not surprisingly, men, who can typically father children well into their later years, were not affected by the clock sound. As Jesse Singal notes in New York, "all sorts of subtle cues can affect how people answer questions," but this result is still "kinda weird." (Click to read about why some doctors don't think freezing your eggs is a good idea.) |
Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes responded forcefully Wednesday night to a lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson after her contract was not renewed as a daytime host at the network, calling the allegations “false” and “offensive.”
In the wake of Carlson’s suit against Ailes, which alleged sexual harassment and wrongful termination, the network’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, said it had launched an internal review of conduct by Ailes and by Steve Doocy, Carlson’s former co-host on “Fox & Friends.” The statement said the company has “full confidence” in Ailes and Doocy.
Carlson’s hosting of “The Real Story” ended on June 23, when her contract expired, which had not been made public until now.
The salacious nature of the lawsuit, filed in Bergen County, N.J., generated immediate headlines online. Carlson alleged that Ailes made comments about her physical appearance, and once told her that he would pick her to be stranded with on a desert island and that they should have had a sexual relationship long ago.
Ailes said in his personal statement: “Gretchen Carlson’s allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network’s decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup. When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit.”
The Carlson suit also alleged that Doocy “had created a hostile work environment by regularly treating her in a condescending and sexist way.” The suit says Ailes responded to her 2009 complaint to a supervisor by telling her to learn to “get along with the boys.”
While the lawsuit is based in part on alleged comments by Ailes in private conversations with Carlson, it provides no e-mail, texts or voice mail as evidence.
Carlson says in the suit that Ailes limited her opportunities at the network and did little to promote her career. When she was taken off “Fox & Friends” in 2013, Ailes created the 2 p.m. show and installed her as solo anchor.
“Ironically,” Ailes says in his statement, “Fox News provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11-year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book. This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously.”
When the new program was announced, Carlson said: “I am thrilled that Roger Ailes has given me the opportunity to host a signature show for Fox that will focus on the real stories of the day.”
In her book “Getting Real,” published last year, Carlson called Ailes “the most accessible boss I’ve ever worked for,” and said “he saw Fox as a big family, and he cared about everything we did.” She said he had even urged her to speak occasionally about having been Miss America in 1989.
The former host said in her own statement that she has “strived to empower women and girls throughout my entire career. Although this was a difficult step to take, I had to stand up for myself and speak out for all women and the next generation of women in the workplace."
In her book, Carlson wrote of her time on the morning show with Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, “I teasingly called Steve and Brian my ‘work husbands’ because I spent more time with them than I did with Casey.” She is married to sports agent and former pro baseball player Casey Close.
In describing her success, Carlson says in the suit that her daytime show consistently ranked first in its time slot. But it is also true that she lost to CNN more often than any other Fox News program.
The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the decision not to renew her contract.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. ||||| Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson is suing the network's CEO and chairman Roger Ailes, alleging a pervasive practice of sexual harassment.
Now Ailes is vigorously denying her accusations and Fox's parent company is conducting an "internal review."
Carlson, 50, was removed from her 2 p.m. newscast "The Real Story" in late June. The lawsuit said she was terminated for "refusing Ailes' sexual advances."
But Ailes said in a Wednesday evening statement that the allegations are "false."
"This is a retaliatory suit for the network's decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup," he said. "When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit."
Earlier in the day, Carlson's attorney Nancy Erika Smith, of the firm Smith Mullin, told CNNMoney that the lawsuit "didn't begin with her termination."
Smith asserted that Ailes' harassment was "very consistent and very pervasive."
In the hours since the lawsuit was announced, "at least ten" other women have contacted the law firm, wanting to speak about Ailes' treatment, according to a spokesman for the firm.
Smith emphasized that Carlson is only suing Ailes, not the network, but the lawsuit also describes "sexist" treatment from a fellow Fox host, Steve Doocy.
Just before Ailes spoke out, his bosses -- Rupert Murdoch and the two Murdoch sons who run 21st Century Fox -- issued a corporate statement.
"The Company has seen the allegations against Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy," the statement said. "We take these matters seriously. While we have full confidence in Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy, who have served the company brilliantly for over two decades, we have commenced an internal review of the matter."
The Murdochs had no further comment.
But Ailes did.
He said Fox News "provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11 year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book."
His statement concluded, "This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously."
The lawsuit is a bombshell that could have serious consequences for Fox. In the tight-knit, ultra-competitive television business, there was immediate speculation about whether other women at Fox would come forward to back up Carlson's claims.
Ailes, now 76, founded Fox News in 1996 and has run the network with an iron fist ever since, with employees famously loyal to him. He signed another multi-year contract last year.
Ailes is known for having a bawdy, politically incorrect sense of humor. But Carlson's lawsuit alleges that he went much further with her.
It alleges that Ailes repeatedly "injected sexual and/or sexist comments" into conversations; made "sexual advances by various means;" and said to her last September, "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you'd be good and better and I'd be good and better."
The suit says Carlson requested the September meeting because she was seeking to "bring to an end the retaliatory and discriminatory treatment she had endured."
Instead, the suit alleges, the "retaliation" continued through June, when her contract was not renewed.
The eight-page lawsuit, filed with the Superior Court of New Jersey on Wednesday, specifically alleges that Ailes violated the New York City Human Rights Law.
Asked whether Carlson has any recordings or other evidence, Smith said, "We are very confident in our evidence. We have very powerful evidence. But we don't want to discuss what the evidence is outside of the courtroom."
Smith said that the 2014 book about Fox and Ailes, "The Loudest Voice in the Room," by Gabriel Sherman, contains other accusations of sexual harassment by Ailes.
"The law is very clear that other victims' testimony is relevant in a sexual harassment case... We may be asking these other women to testify," she said.
At the same time the lawsuit was announced, Carlson wrote on Facebook, "As you may have heard, I am no longer with Fox News. I value your support and friendship, especially now, so please stay in touch with me."
In a statement, she called the lawsuit "a difficult step to take," but said, "I had to stand up for myself and speak out for all women and the next generation of women in the workplace."
Carlson, a Stanford graduate and a former Miss America, joined Fox News in 2005 after five years at CBS. She hosted the channel's flagship morning show "Fox & Friends" before being reassigned to the 2 p.m. hour.
In the complaint, Carlson's attorneys also spelled out what they said was "sexist and condescending" treatment that she experienced at the hands of another coworker: her longtime "Fox & Friends" co-host Steve Doocy.
Doocy, the complaint alleges, "engaged in a pattern and practice of severe and pervasive sexual harassment of Carlson, including, but not limited to, mocking her during commercial breaks, shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air, belittling her contributions to the show, and generally attempting to put her in her place by refusing to accept and treat her as an intelligent and insightful female journalist rather than a blond female prop."
In response to Carlson's complaints about Doocy, Ailes allegedly called Carlson a "man hater" and "killer," and admonished her to "get along with the boys."
That episode happened in 2009, according to the complaint. In 2013, the complaint claims, Ailes moved Carlson from the morning show to the 2 p.m. hour as "further retaliation for her refusal to accede to sexual harassment and retaliation."
The ratings for Carlson's program "The Real Story" were, by Fox standards, relatively weak, even though the numbers are up year-over-year thanks to the election news cycle.
Executives at Fox were well aware that the program had been falling behind CNN in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic.
"The Real Story" has been hosted by fill-ins in the days since her contract was not renewed.
On Wednesday it was hosted by 5 p.m. co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle, who made no mention of the controversy.
Meanwhile, Carlson's biography was taken off of the Fox News web site.
--Tom Kludt contributed to this report. ||||| On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015
Getty 21st Century Fox launching 'internal review' at Fox News following Gretchen Carlson lawsuit
Fox News has launched an internal review of the behavior of CEO Roger Ailes and "Fox & Friends" co-host Steve Doocy, after one of Fox News Channel's top anchors filed a lawsuit against Ailes, alleging wrongful termination and sexual harassment.
The news of the lawsuit came in a bombshell email sent to reporters on Wednesday morning by the law firm representing Gretchen Carlson, the host of “The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson” and former co-host of the morning show "Fox & Friends."
According to the lawyers at Smith Mullin P.C., who are representing Carlson, her contract was terminated on June 23. Fox News did not publicly announce the contract termination, and Carlson said on her Twitter account at the time that she was on “on vacation”.
"I have strived to empower women and girls throughout my entire career,” Carlson said in a statement. “Although this was a difficult step to take, I had to stand up for myself and speak out for all women and the next generation of women in the workplace. I am extremely proud of my accomplishments at Fox News and for keeping our loyal viewers engaged and informed on events and news topics of the day.”
A spokesperson for 21st Century Fox released the following statement Wednesday afternoon:
"The Company has seen the allegations against Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy. We take these matters seriously. While we have full confidence in Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy, who have served the company brilliantly for over two decades, we have commenced an internal review of the matter."
Ailes released a statement Wednesday calling the lawsuit "defamatory" and "retaliatory."
“Gretchen Carlson’s allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network’s decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup" Ailes's statement said. "When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit. Ironically, Fox News provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11 year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book. This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously.”
The complaint was filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey and claims Ailes made “sexually-charged comments” to Carlson, "ranging from lewd innuendo, ogling and remarks about Ms. Carlson’s body to demands for sex as a way for her to improve her job standing."
“[D]uring a meeting last September in which Ms. Carlson complained about ongoing discriminatory and retaliatory treatment, Mr. Ailes stated, "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better," adding that "sometimes problems are easier to solve' that way,” according to Carlson’s lawyers.
On other occasions, the complaint alleges Ailes asked Carlson to "turn around so he could view her posterior, commented repeatedly about her legs, and instructed her to wear certain outfits that he claimed enhanced her figure.” Ailes also allegedly “directed sexist comments” about Carlson in public and announced to others at a industry event that “he had slept with three former Miss Americas, but not with her.”
The complaint goes on to allege that Carlson was fired from “Fox & Friends” in 2013 because she complained about co-host Steve Doocy’s actions. Ailes, the complaint alleges, mocked Carlson and told her to stop being offended “so God damned easy.” Though she was moved to host her own show in the afternoon hour, the complaint alleges that the move was a demotion and that Ailes “reduced her compensation and withheld network support and promotion for her show.”
"We believe that the evidence will confirm that Gretchen was fired from ‘Fox & Friends’ for speaking up about demeaning and discriminatory behavior on and off the set,” Nancy Erika Smith, employment litigator at Smith Mullin P.C., who is representing Carlson, said in a statement.
Though the complaint was filed against Ailes, Doocy is also cited for alleged sexual harassment.
"Doocy engaged in a pattern and practice of severe and pervasive sexual harassment of Carlson, including, but no limited to, mocking her during commercial breaks, shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air, belittling her contributions to the show, and generally attempting to put her in her place by refusing to accept and treat her as an intelligent and insightful journalist rather than a blond (sic) female prop," the complaint alleges.
Carlson, a former Miss America (1989), joined Fox in 2005 after five years as a news correspondent and co-host of "The Saturday Early Show" on CBS. In her 2015 book "Getting Real", Carlson detailed several instances of sexual assault, starting from the beginning of her career, without naming any names.
“We believe that Mr. Ailes’ behavior toward Gretchen, as described in the complaint, speaks volumes about what she had to endure. The evidence will show that Ailes deliberately sabotaged the career of a talented, hard-working journalist and loyal Fox News employee. Opposing sexism and rejecting unwanted sexual come-ons should never cost a woman her job or subject her to disparagement and emotional anguish,” said Martin Hyman, a partner in the New York firm Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell & Peskoe LLP, who, is co-counsel for Carlson.
The complaint seeks compensatory damages, damages for mental anguish, and punitive damages.
This story has been updated throughout... ||||| "I have never been instructed on the length of my skirt or the color of my lipstick," says Fox News anchor Sandra Smith.
A growing contingent of Fox News employees are coming forward to publicly support embattled chairman and CEO Roger Ailes in the wake of the sexual harassment claims by former anchor Gretchen Carlson.
"I have had a great personal and professional relationship with Roger. He's always been very open. We've had a lot of great one-on-one conversations," Martha MacCallum, who co-hosts America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer, tells The Hollywood Reporter. MacCallum, who has been at Fox News for 12 years, describes Carlson's allegations as "shocking. Everybody I know at Fox was shocked."
"I was very surprised and a little bit confused," adds Sandra Smith, who hosts the all-female afternoon program Outnumbered and came to Fox News in 2007 from Bloomberg.
Mercedes Colwin, a Fox News legal analyst since 2005 and a veteran employment lawyer, says she was "furious" when she heard about the suit.
The women join a list of female Fox News employees including Greta Van Susteren, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, a former New York prosecutor, who have come to the defense of Ailes. Megyn Kelly, the most high-profile female anchor on the network, has yet to speak out about the controversy.
Carlson, who left the network last month after 11 years, seven and a half them as the lone female co-host of morning show Fox & Friends, alleged in a lawsuit filed in New Jersey Superior Court that she was terminated after rebuffing sexual advances from Ailes and complaining of pervasive sexual harassment at the hands of her Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy, with whom she was known to have an icy relationship.
A devout Christian who taught Sunday school and is married to sports agent Casey Close, Carlson was taken off the show in 2013 and given her own 2 p.m. program. According to Carlson's suit, Ailes responded to her complaints about Doocy by "calling Carlson a 'man hater' and 'killer' and telling her that she needed to learn to 'get along with the boys.'" Carlson's attorney also alleges that Ailes ogled her, at one point asking her to "turn around so he could view her posterior" and encouraging her to wear clothes that accentuated her figure.
"Amazing, a television executive who cares what his television screen looks like. I mean, this isn't a shocker," says Smith, who adds she has "never been instructed on the length of my skirt or the color of my lipstick. It doesn't happen. I do work with women who do like to look good and feel good. Many of us are athletes and we work out, some of us work out together. That's just the environment we're in. We do care about — not just what we sound like and what we know — but what we look like. And image is important, believe it or not, when you're on a television screen."
Since the allegations exploded into public view on July 6, six more women have come forward with stories of alleged harassment at the hands of Ailes, all of them before Ailes started Fox News Channel in 1996. The stories are lurid and include propositions of sex and in many cases retaliation for fending off advances. Ailes' attorney has denied all of the allegations.
Combative and fiercely competitive, Ailes, 76, is known to have little patience for what he views as the out-of-control political correctness of today. But many Fox News employees past and present often describe him as "loyal," especially to talent. Television news divisions have endured a particularly male-dominant hierarchy. But there is a zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment in today's corporate culture. And while news organizations are also known to be hotbeds of office gossip, all three women deny that there were rumors about the treatment Carlson is alleging.
"There's a big difference between that kind of thing and the allegations that are being discussed here," says MacCallum. "So I would say no, nothing like sexual harassment or impeding someone's career. No. I would put that in a whole different category from anything that I have ever heard."
Adds Smith: "If I ever felt like I was working in a hostile environment, I wouldn't be here."
Says Colwin: "By her demeanor and the way she comported herself, you would never ever conceive that [Carlson] had these allegations and would bring them to light, ever."
But people who know Carlson, who earned a sociology degree in organizational behavior from Stanford, suggest she went into the lawsuit with her eyes fully open to the potential consequences. In her 2015 book, Getting Real, Carlson recounted vague sexual harassment encounters when she was on the Miss America pageant circuit and also first attempting to break into the TV news business.
"It had never occurred to me, because I hadn't experienced it, that there were people who thought women weren't equal to men in the workplace — much less that some men would try to take advantage of me," she wrote.
Her suit, suggest multiple sources who know Carlson and believe her charges against Ailes are true, could burnish her credentials as a defender of women's rights — and just may help revive a flagging TV career. "She has nothing to lose," says one.
In response to Carlson's claim, Ailes released a statement on July 6: "Gretchen Carlson's allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network's decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact that her disappointingly low ratings were dragging down the afternoon lineup. When Fox News did not commence any negotiations to renew her contract, Ms. Carlson became aware that her career with the network was likely over and conveniently began to pursue a lawsuit. Ironically, Fox News provided her with more on-air opportunities over her 11-year tenure than any other employer in the industry, for which she thanked me in her recent book. This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously."
In a statement released the same day, Fox News parent 21st Century Fox said the company takes "these matters seriously," voiced "full confidence in Mr. Ailes and Mr. Doocy" and announced that they have "commenced an internal review of the matter."
It's unclear if results of that review will be made public. Neither MacCallum nor Smith have been contacted by 21st Century Fox personnel handling the review, they say.
Meanwhile Ailes' personal lawyer David W. Garland filed a motion on July 8 attempting to get the dispute to confidential arbitration, citing a provision in Carlson's contract stipulating that disputes be arbitrated by a three-member panel. Such provisions are common in employment contracts, but Carlson attorneys argue the arbitration clause doesn't apply because she sued Ailes individually, not Fox News. Ailes' outside counsel Barry Asen countered in a statement: "Ms. Carlson voluntarily entered into an agreement with Fox to arbitrate all claims and disputes related to her employment; she cannot avoid that agreement because she now wants to soil Mr. Ailes's reputation in the media. She did not object to the arbitration clause when she signed her lucrative employment contract three years ago. The first time that she objected was last week in the media."
Asked what the atmosphere at Fox News is like today, Smith answers: "Business as usual." | – Gretchen Carlson made waves last month when she voiced approval for an assault weapons ban, but that was nothing compared to the bomb she dropped Wednesday: that she's no longer employed by Fox News and she's filing a sexual harassment and wrongful termination suit against her former boss, Roger Ailes, Politico reports. "As you may have heard, I'm no longer with @FoxNews. I value your support and friendship so please stay in touch," the now-former host of The Real Story With Gretchen Carlson tweeted Wednesday, adding links to her social media pages and website. The news about her suit was emailed to reporters from the law firm representing her, noting her contract had been terminated June 23, even though Fox never announced it; Carlson's own tweets from last month suggested she was simply on vacation. The complaint alleges Ailes made "sexually-charged comments [to Carlson], ranging from lewd innuendo, ogling and remarks about Ms. Carlson's body to demands for sex as a way for her to improve her job standing." Those remarks reportedly included statements about Carlson's legs and behind, requests that she wear form-fitting outfits, and "sexist comments." She also claims she was fired in 2013 from her co-host chair on Fox & Friends and given less money for her own show after she complained about "demeaning and discriminatory behavior on and off the set," specifically from co-host Steve Doocy, per an attorney statement. "Opposing sexism and rejecting unwanted sexual come-ons should never cost a woman her job or subject her to disparagement and emotional anguish," another lawyer tells Politico. As for Carlson herself, she says in her own statement: "I have strived to empower women and girls throughout my entire career. Although this was a difficult step to take, I had to stand up for myself and speak out for all women and the next generation of women in the workplace." Read Ailes' response here. |
(Note: Language in paragraph four may offend some readers.)
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday told U.S. President Barack Obama to “go to hell” and said the United States had refused to sell some weapons to his country but he did not care because Russia and China were willing suppliers.
In his latest salvo, Duterte said he was realigning his foreign policy because the United States had failed the Philippines and added that at some point, “I will break up with America”. It was not clear what he meant by “break up”.
During three tangential and fiercely worded speeches in Manila, Duterte said the United States did not want to sell missiles and other weapons, but Russia and China had told him they could provide them easily.
“Although it may sound shit to you, it is my sacred duty to keep the integrity of this republic and the people healthy,” Duterte said.
“If you don’t want to sell arms, I’ll go to Russia. I sent the generals to Russia and Russia said ‘do not worry, we have everything you need, we’ll give it to you’.
“And as for China, they said ‘just come over and sign and everything will be delivered’.”
China “did not understand the situation”, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, however, in a statement sent to Reuters.
Duterte’s comments were the latest in a near-daily barrage of hostility toward the United States, during which Duterte has started to contrast the former colonial power with its geopolitical rivals Russia and China.
In Washington, U.S. officials downplayed Duterte’s comments, saying they were “at odds” with the two countries’ warm relationship and decades-long alliance. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there has been no communication from the Philippines about making changes in that relationship.
Earnest did not, however, back down from criticism of Duterte’s tactics in his deadly war on drugs.
“Even as we protect the strong alliance, the administration and the United States of America will not hesitate to raise our concerns about extrajudicial killings,” he said at a briefing.
‘HELL IS FULL’
On Sunday, Duterte said he had received support from Russia and China when he complained to them about the United States. He also said he would review a U.S.-Philippines Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement.
The deal, signed in 2014, grants U.S. troops some access to Philippine bases, and allows them to set up storage facilities for maritime security and humanitarian and disaster response operations.
Duterte said the United States should have supported the Philippines in tackling its chronic drugs problems but that instead it had criticized him for the high death toll, as did the European Union.
“Instead of helping us, the first to hit was the State Department. So you can go to hell, Mr Obama, you can go to hell,” he said.
“EU, better choose purgatory. Hell is full already. Why should I be afraid of you?”
At a later speech he said he was emotional because the United States had not been a friend of the Philippines since his election in May.
“They just ... reprimand another president in front of the international community,” he told the Jewish community at a synagogue.
“This is what happens now, I will be reconfiguring my foreign policy. Eventually, I might in my time I will break up with America.”
It was not clear if by his “time”, he was referring to his six-year term in office.
According to some U.S. officials, Washington has been doing its best to ignore Duterte’s rhetoric and not provide him with a pretext for more outbursts.
While an open break with Manila would create problems in a region where China’s influence has grown, there were no serious discussions about taking punitive steps such as cutting aid to the Philippines, two U.S. officials said on Monday.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (C) clenches fist with members of the Philippine Army during his visit at the army headquarters in Taguig city, metro Manila, Philippines October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco
Several of Duterte’s allies on Monday suggested he act more like a statesman because his comments had created a stir. On Tuesday, he said his outbursts were because he was provoked by criticism of his crackdown on drugs.
“When you are already at the receiving end of an uncontrollable rush, the only way out is to insult,” he said.
“That is my retaliation.” ||||| MANILA (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to liken himself to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on Friday and said he would “be happy” to exterminate 3 million drug users and peddlers in the country.
Although the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama played down the remark, Duterte’s comments triggered shock and anger among Jewish groups in the United States, which could create pressure on the U.S. government to take a tougher line with the Philippines leader.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference following a meeting Southeast Asian defense chiefs in Hawaii that he personally found Duterte’s comments “deeply troubling”, though the matter wasn’t discussed at the meeting.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner had earlier described Duterte’s remarks, made in a rambling speech in Davao City, as “a significant departure” from America’s partnership with the Philippines “and we find them troubling.”
Duterte told reporters that he had been “portrayed to be a cousin of Hitler” by critics.
Noting that Hitler had murdered millions of Jews, Duterte said, “There are 3 million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I’d be happy to slaughter them.
“If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have ...,” he said, pausing and pointing to himself.
“You know my victims. I would like (them) to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition.”
U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Adama Dieng, expressed alarm and urged the Philippines leader to exercise restraint in his use of language, a U.N. statement said.
Dieng also called on Duterte to support an investigation into the reported rise in killings resulting from his anti-drug campaign, the statement said.
In August, Duterte threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations after it called for an end to the killings.
In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman, Anna Richey-Allen, had repeated concerns about reports of extrajudicial killings but offered no response to Duterte’s comment referring to Hitler.
A White House official on Friday stuck to a strategy of stressing Washington’s long-standing ties with Manila, saying, “We continue to focus on our broad relationship with the Philippines and will work together in the many areas of mutual interest.”
How relations between the U.S. and the Philippines evolve will depend more on what Duterte does than on what he says, administration officials have said.
U.S. officials had said they would use the defense chiefs meeting in Hawaii to clarify comments by Duterte that throw into doubt his commitment to military ties with the United States, including joint exercises and patrols.
While expressing his own unease with Duterte’s comments, Carter described Washington’s partnership with Manila as “an alliance of independent and strong nations.”
“And like all alliances it depends on the continuation of a sense of shared interests. So far in US-Philippine history we have had that. We would look forward to continuing that but that’s something that we continue to discuss with the Philippine government,” he said.
‘TONE-DEAFNESS’
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte gestures during a news conference upon his arrival from a state visit in Vietnam at the International Airport in Davao city, Philippines September 30, 2016. REUTERS/Lean Daval Jr
Since Duterte took office on June 30, more than 3,100 people have been killed since then, mostly alleged drug users and dealers, in police operations and vigilante killings.
Duterte, who was elected in May on the back of a vow to end drugs and corruption in the country of 100 million people, has insulted Obama and in a number of remarks he has undermined the relationship between Manila and Washington.
On Friday, reacting to critical comments on his war on drugs by U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Benjamin Cardin, Duterte said: “Do not pretend to be the moral conscience of the world. Do not be the policeman because you do not have the eligibility to do that in my country.”
Jewish groups quickly condemned Duterte’s Hitler comments.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate project, called them “outrageous”.
“Duterte owes the victims (of the Holocaust) an apology for his disgusting rhetoric,” Cooper said.
The Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish group based in the United States, said Duterte’s comments were “shocking for their tone-deafness”.
“The comparison of drug users and dealers to Holocaust victims is inappropriate and deeply offensive,” said Todd Gutnick, the group’s director of communications. “It is baffling why any leader would want to model himself after such a monster.”
Duterte has said there will be no annual war games between the Philippines and the United States until the end of his six-year term, and his hostility may make Washington’s strategy of rebalancing its military focus toward Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China more difficult to achieve.
Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said Obama was “taking the long view” in dealing with Duterte. Obama leaves office in January.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte gestures during a news conference upon his arrival from a state visit in Vietnam at the International Airport in Davao city, Philippines September 30, 2016. REUTERS/Lean Daval Jr
Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, said the U.S-Philippines alliance was not necessarily at risk, but Washington could seek to focus on ties elsewhere in the region.
“We are all in some sense becoming, by necessity, desensitized to Duterte’s language,” he said.
“Diplomatically, the U.S. would say they’ll continue to work with him and the alliance is strong. But it’s whether they’ll continue to strengthen that alliance or not.” | – Perhaps teeing up his next apology, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte continued his string of inflammatory, anti-US statements by telling President Obama to "go to hell" Tuesday, Reuters reports, after the US refused to sell him weapons to continue his violent crackdown on drug dealers. "If you don't want to sell arms, I'll go to Russia," Duterte said. "I sent the generals to Russia and Russia said 'do not worry, we have everything you need, we'll give it to you.' And as for China, they said 'just come over and sign and everything will be delivered.' " Duterte previously called Obama a "son of a bitch," and a State Department rep calls his latest stance "at odds with the warm relationship" the two countries have long enjoyed. Duterte's bloody campaign is averaging 38 deaths a day, Al-Jazeera reported in September, and his methods have drawn harsh criticism from the international community, including the US. Duterte on Tuesday expressed frustration at this slight, saying: "Instead of helping us, the first to hit was the State Department. So you can go to hell, Mr. Obama, you can go to hell." He then threatened to "break up" with the US, then added, for good measure: "EU, better choose purgatory. Hell is full already. Why should I be afraid of you?" (On Sunday, he was busily apologizing to the Jewish community for a jab about Adolf Hitler.) |
WASHINGTON – After saying there was no evidence the two had ever met, the White House acknowledged Thursday that President Obama once lived for a few weeks with his uncle, Onyango Obama, a Kenyan who was in the United States illegally and faced possible deportation.
The president met his father’s half-brother when he moved to the Boston area to attend Harvard Law School and stayed with him until his apartment was ready, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. After moving out, Obama saw his uncle, known as Omar, once every few months until he graduated.
“The president has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoken with him in a decade,” Carney said.
The update follows Onyango Obama’s statement in court this week that the president had lived with him. The elder Obama was in court for a deportation hearing following a drunken driving arrest. He won status as a legal permanent resident. He came to the United States in 1963 on a student visa that expired in 1970, and he has lived in the country illegally ever since.
PHOTOS: 2013's memorable political moments
The Boston Globe reported last year that the White House said the president had never met his uncle. White House aides say they actually told the Globe that there was no record of the two having met.
On Thursday, Carney said no one at the White House had actually asked the president if he’d come face to face with his uncle before making that statement to the press.
“Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the president’s book, and there was no evidence that they had met,” Carney said. “Nobody spoke to the president.”
When the issue came up again this week, Carney said, he personally took the question to the president.
“The president said that he, in fact, had met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school, and that he stayed with him for a brief period of time until his apartment was ready,” Carney said.
After that, aides say, uncle and nephew saw each other once every few months while the president was in Cambridge, and then gradually fell out of touch after the president graduated from law school.
Carney said there was “absolutely zero interference” by the White House in Obama’s legal case.
Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook
[email protected]
Twitter: @cparsons ||||| President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting.
Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation.
On Thursday, a White House official said the press office had not fully researched the relationship between the president and his uncle before telling the Globe that they had no record of the two meeting. This time, the press office asked the president directly, which they had not done in 2011.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
“The president first met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “The president did stay with him for a brief period of time until his apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months, but after law school they fell out of touch. The president has not seen him in 20 years, has not spoken with him in 10.”
The White House said Obama’s immigration case was handled “without any interference from the president or the White House.”
Onyango Obama’s immigration case raised numerous concerns about a potential conflict of interest after his arrest in August 2011 for drunken driving in Framingham. The arrest revealed is outstanding deportation orders and his relationship to the president.
Shortly after his arrest, he told an officer, “I think I will call the White House.”
Obama is the second relative of the president’s father to face deportation to Kenya since he took office.
Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s sister, won asylum in 2010 after a federal official disclosed days before the president’s historic election in 2008 that she was living illegally in the United States, in Boston public housing.
President Obama had written in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” that he had met Zeituni Onyango, his aunt.
But his relationship with his uncle, nicknamed Omar, was less clear.
In November 2011, a White House spokesman said he had no record of the two ever meeting. The Washington Post had also reported that scholars believed the two had never met.
The White House never moved to correct the record, until the president’s famously private uncle took the witness stand in Boston immigration court two days ago.
Onyango Obama, now a 69-year-old liquor store manager in Framingham, said he had helped numerous students and had relatives in the United States, including his nephew, Barack Obama.
He said the president had stayed with him at his Cambridge apartment for three weeks when he came to attend Harvard Law School in the 1980s.
“It’s a good thing to let your nephew stay with you,” he said after the hearing, adding that in his family, “your brother’s kids are your kids as well.”
The president’s father, Barack Obama Sr., had helped Onyango Obama come to America in 1963 to attend an elite boys’ school in Cambridge. But Obama testified that he could not afford the tuition after the first year and graduated instead from public school in Cambridge. He said he went on to earn a degree in philosophy from Boston University, but the university would not confirm that.
On Tuesday, immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro granted Obama legal residency based on what he said was his good moral character and a section of federal law that allows him to get a green card because he arrived before 1972.
The president’s father, Barack Obama Sr., and his family were rarely in the president’s life. Obama Sr. died in a car crash in 1982. The president was raised by his mother’s family. | – Whoops. The White House had to make a strange about-face today and acknowledge that President Obama has, in fact, met his Uncle Omar. Not only that, but the younger Obama actually lived with his uncle for a few weeks in Cambridge in the 1980s, reports the Boston Globe. The tidbit surfaced this week during Onyango Obama's deportation hearing in Boston. Onyango—Omar is his nickname—testified that his nephew stayed with him for a brief spell when Barack arrived in town to attend Harvard Law School. “It’s a good thing to let your nephew stay with you,” he said afterward, explaining that "your brother’s kids are your kids as well.” This wouldn't have caused headlines if not for the fact that a White House spokesman said in 2011—after Omar's arrest for drunken driving—that the two had never met. Jay Carney explained the mistake today by saying no staffers had actually asked the president in person, reports the LA Times. This time, they did. “The president has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoken with him in a decade," he added. But given that Omar was allowed to remain in the country, maybe that will change? |
Dressed in green prison fatigues, R. Allen Stanford entered a federal courthouse in Houston today to hear U.S. District Judge David Hitner pronounce his prison sentence. The decision: 110 years.
Prosecutors had asked that the one-time billionaire financier get 230 years in prison. (note: Bernard Madoff is serving 150 years). The prosecutor told Judge Hitner, “230 years will not get anyone their money back but on sleepless nights they will know that he got the maximum.” I think 110 years will give them just as much comfort.
During the proceeding, Stanford’s attorney, Ali Fazel, objected to the use of the term “Ponzi scheme,” but Hittner said the evidence at trial justified it. It’s not like Stanford could be any more insulted. The prosecutors also compared him to Bernie Madoff. That too caused Fazel to speak up on behalf of Stanford by saying of Madoff, “he didn’t invest time in anything.” Not sure what he was going for with that comment but I took it that Stanford worked harder at his fraud than did Madoff.
Speaking on his own behalf, Stanford recounted his last three years, including his beating in September 2009. The best that he could say as a compliment for those who prosecuted him was, “I wouldn’t wish this on them.” While he acknowledged that he felt sorry for depositors, employees and his own family for the failure of Stanford Financial, he managed to slip in, “I’m not a thief,” and, “I never defrauded anyone.” Victims in the courtroom, all dressed in black, begged to differ. One of the victims, Jaime Escalona, who represented Latin American victims, addressed the court. Looking at Stanford he said, “You sir are a dirty, rotten, scoundrel.” The other victim spokesman, Angela Shaw of the Stanford Victims Coalition, said of Stanford, “He took our lives as we knew them.”
The prison sentence represents a long fall for the once-knighted Antiguan, who has been in prison since his arrest in June 2009. Declared indigent by the court, all of Stanford’s assets were frozen and he was represented by a public defender. In March, Stanford was found guilty of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. However, his road to the courthouse was not without controversy. First, there was that strange interview on CNBC in which Stanford proclaimed his innocence. Then Stanford sued Lloyd’s of London, the underwriter of Stanford Financial Group’s Directors and Officers insurance, to pay for his legal fees. In the end, Lloyd’s won and Stanford got the legal help of public defenders Ali Fazel and Robert Scardino.
Stanford learned that prison can be a difficult place to live. Long before being tried in court, Stanford was severely beaten by another inmate. He was hospitalized and later transferred to a federal prison medical facility in Butner, NC, as result of an addiction to anti-depressants, which he developed after the beating. The trauma, his lawyers claimed, left their client unable to remember anything. After a year’s delay in heading to trial, government psychologists determined he was faking it and set a court date.
In January, just 12 days before Stanford’s trial was to begin, Fazel and Scardino wanted out of the case on the grounds that budget restrictions were hurting their ability to defend him. Prior to that, a number of supporting groups and expert witnesses for the defense said that they too wanted to quit because they were not being paid by the government. Eventually, some money was released and Stanford was off to trial.
With all of this drama, there still has been no distribution of the funds that have been seized by the government to victims who had invested their savings with Stanford in the hopes of incredible returns on supposedly safe certificates of deposit. The trial and the prison sentence will bring some closure, but the restitution to investors will come up a little short. With regard to the losses for U.S. taxpayers? We will be paying for Stanford’s prison stay and his future legal fees. Stanford is planning to appeal and the court will be giving him a new public defender.
Stanford’s most memorable statement was, “If I live the rest of my life in prison …. I will always be at peace with the way I conducted myself in business.” He can think about that one for a while.
My thanks to Twitterers Ronnie Crocker and CNBC’s Scott Cohn, who gave us all updates during the sentencing.
See Also:
Allen Stanford Appeals To A Higher Power–CNBC
Feds Say Fugitive Day Trader Ran Ponzi Scheme On Gay Community
The Latest In Ponzi Schemes: Pretend You Know George Soros ||||| Convicted Ponzi-schemer R. Allen Stanford has been sentenced to 110 years in prison, marking the latest chapter in a case that has captivated parts of the financial world for three years.
Bloomberg News
The government has come down on Stanford as more than just some white-collar criminal. In a blistering sentencing proposal, prosecutors sought a life sentence of 230 years for Stanford, calling him a “ruthless predator responsible for one of the most egregious frauds in history.”
Stanford, however, sought only ten years, which the government asserting he was essentially looking for “time served.” He maintains that his operations were not, in fact, a Ponzi scheme at all, given he was actually investing the money in real-estate and other properties.
That left a wide gap of time and beliefs between the two sides, and the court came down at 110 years.
Here are some of the more memorable points from their filings about the sentencing. | – R. Allen Stanford's epic fall from billionaire to imprisoned fraudster came to a conclusion today as a judge sentenced him to 110 years in prison, reports the Wall Street Journal. Stanford was convicted in March of bilking investors in a $7 billion Ponzi scheme that spanned 20 years. Prosecutors sought 230 years, calling him a "ruthless predator" who orchestrated one of the biggest frauds in history. Stanford's lawyers hoped to get him out on time already served. Investors weren't having any of that: "You, sir, are a dirty rotten scoundrel," said one of the victims allowed to address the court, notes Forbes. |
As military missions go, this one is unique: Relocate desert tortoises inhabiting desert land eyed to train Marine Corps brigades to safer areas away from human activity and military training.
By the sixth day of a two-week effort, the Marine Corps was almost halfway through its goal to relocate about 1,100 tortoises in a “translocation” program to re-home desert tortoises from its recently-expanded Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif. The combat center is the Marine Corps’ premier training center for desert warfare and houses numerous live-fire, maneuver and urban warfare ranges and operating bases where units train before they are certified to deploy overseas.
But the home of the desert tortoise, which is federally listed as a species “threatened” with extinction, includes those swaths of the Mojave desert.
The relocation plan began April 8, when 125 biologists fanned out to find the first group of desert tortoise in the expansion areas of mostly federal recreation desert lands west and south of the existing base. They located the tortoises, and each got a full health assessment, including blood work and a physical exam, food and water. The following day, a helicopter piloted by a biologist carried bins bearing tortoises to their new homes in one of five sites within MCAGCC or nearby federal lands.
On Wednesday, 98 tortoises — all tagged with transmitters and ranging in age from about six to 60 years– were taken to their new future homes, or “receiving site,” via a contracted helicopter, officials said.
“This is the last recovery requirement before we can proceed with full-scale use” of the expansion areas, Walter Christensen, conservation branch head of the center’s Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs division, told USNI News on Thursday.
Over the past two years, biologists had placed radio transmitters on the shells of tortoises marked for relocation. Last year’s planned relocation was stymied by California’s extended drought, which shorted the water and growth of plants that provide the tortoise’s nourishment and lifelines. Legal challenges by conservation groups also put the brakes on the Marine Corps’ airlift plans. Those delays had hampered the service’s initial plans to enable brigade-sized forces to conduct the first large-scale exercise in August 2016.
It’s no small feat to find new homes for the desert tortoise, whose native region in the Mojave is besieged by increasing human activity, development, diseases, commercial and energy uses and recreational off-roaders. Then there’s the threat from predators: Ravens, coyotes, even jackrabbits who find the soft underbellies of fledgling juvenile desert tortoises a tasty treat.
Yet the tortoise has found kin among Marines. For more than a decade, the Marine Corps has taken point in finding better ways to ensure survivability and viability of the critters.
Desert tortoises found to be too small to relocate instead are placed in holding pens at the combat center’s Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site, Christensen said. The site, known as TRACRS, covers about six acres and houses large fenced pens where clatches of eggs and juveniles are housed and monitored as part of a long-running study with the University of California. TRACRS, considered by some as the tortoise’s “head start” program, was established in 2006.
The first group of 35 TRACRS tortoises was released in October 2015, but the region’s drought delayed a planned spring 2016 release. Recent rains across California sprouted more native plants across the desert, so, in March, a second group of 50 tortoises were moved from TRACRS to new habitats, Brian Henen, a combat center biologist and resident tortoise expert, told USNI News. About 390 tortoises remain in the pens at TRACRS, Henen said.
The Marines’ relocation program had come under legal challenge by conservation groups, some who pointed to failed previous attempts by the Department of Defense to save tortoises by moving them from military training areas in California, at Fort Irwin and Edwards Air Force Base. The Marine Corps “learned from past lessons,” Christensen said, adding it “took the time to do it right.”
“People feel very strong about the tortoise,” he said. “The tortoise is very charismatic. We are pretty careful about what we do here.”
The service has funneled money and focus into ways to improve the odds of tortoise survivability, including TRACRS and its long-term study and tracking and the relocation program once Congress approved the combat center’s expansion into mostly former federal lands controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. For the relocation mission, combat center officials followed U.S. Fish and Wildlife guidance that provided methods to up the odds that the tortoises could persevere against predators and manage in their new environment.
Biologists had affixed transmitters to each desert tortoise, which enabled tracking and monitoring and helped identify any social groupings of tortoises that could be moved together. The Marine Corps will track these tortoises for 30 years, with consistent tracking for the first five to 10 years, Henen said, adding, “we are committed to doing 30 years.”
Tortoises were moved from areas in the Western Expansion Area, west of the main combat center, to five areas 15 to 20 kilometers away but within the training base or on BLM-controlled lands, all identified as supportable tortoise habitat. “We are not fencing these areas off,” Henen said. A smaller number, about 85, will be moved from the combat center’s Southern Expansion Area in the upcoming week. It’s uncertain whether tortoises would return or venture to lands busy with military activity or remain in their new areas, but by their nature they tend to stay within six miles or so of their location. “The tortoises are mobile,” Christensen said, “but yes, they are slow.”
That lack of speed makes them vulnerable to coyotes and ravens. Ongoing efforts are trying to track and control the raven assaults, official said. Those ravens found to target tortoise nests can be removed by Fish and Wildlife Service personnel, Christensen said. Coyotes, which frequent the combat center, also are targeted by existing base regulations. In recent incidents, Christensen said, a Marine training in the field was bitten, and several base residents reported attacks on their household pets by coyotes. ||||| More than 1,000 desert tortoises are taking a trip with the Marine Corps this month.
The military is using helicopters to relocate the tortoises to another part of the Mojave to make way for an expansion of its desert training grounds.
During the two-week-long process, the hubcap-sized tortoises are being loaded into plastic containers, which are then stacked and strapped to a helicopter.
Their new home will be swaths of federal land to the north and southeast of the Twentynine Palms base, Marine officials said. The areas were deemed far enough away that the tortoises wouldn’t migrate back to the original habitat.
The cost of the whole effort, including a 30-year monitoring program to ensure the health of the federally protected species, is $50 million.
The Marines at the Twentynine Palms base want to be able to practice large-scale exercises with live fire and combined-arms maneuvering.
The campaign goes back to 2008, when the Corps began studying how to do it without breaking environmental law.
The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act handed land formerly managed by the Bureau of Land Management to the Defense Department. Tortoises living on that land are now being moved.
In March 2016, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue, arguing that the federal government failed to fully examine how the move might harm the tortoises.
However, the move went ahead this month after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told the Marine Corps that its review wouldn’t be done before the spring window for the move, Marine Corps officials said.
It’s not the first time that the Corps has been in the tortoise-moving business.
In 2006, the Twentynine Palms base relocated 17 adult tortoises in order to build a training range. Marine officials say no tortoises died during three years of post-move monitoring.
This time, Marine Corps biologists will monitor tortoises intensely for the first five years. Then monitoring requirements will diminish over time until the 30-year obligation is met, officials said.
About 235 juveniles too small for relocation are being admitted to the base’s “head start facility,” where they will remain until they grow large enough to better survive on their own.
CAPTION A series of Santa Ana wind-driven wildfires have destroyed hundreds of structures, forced thousands to flee and smothered the region with smoke in what officials predicted would be a pitched battle for days. A series of Santa Ana wind-driven wildfires have destroyed hundreds of structures, forced thousands to flee and smothered the region with smoke in what officials predicted would be a pitched battle for days. CAPTION A series of Santa Ana wind-driven wildfires have destroyed hundreds of structures, forced thousands to flee and smothered the region with smoke in what officials predicted would be a pitched battle for days. A series of Santa Ana wind-driven wildfires have destroyed hundreds of structures, forced thousands to flee and smothered the region with smoke in what officials predicted would be a pitched battle for days. CAPTION A wildfire destroyed several homes in one of Los Angeles' most exclusive neighborhoods. As the House and Senate reconcile their tax bills, some provisions appear designed to achieve policy goals. Former national security advisor Michael Flynn reportedly promised Russia sanctions would be "ripped up." A wildfire destroyed several homes in one of Los Angeles' most exclusive neighborhoods. As the House and Senate reconcile their tax bills, some provisions appear designed to achieve policy goals. Former national security advisor Michael Flynn reportedly promised Russia sanctions would be "ripped up." CAPTION The fire ignited shortly before 5 a.m., authorities said. The fire ignited shortly before 5 a.m., authorities said. CAPTION Strong winds were pushing the blaze in a southwest direction toward the cities of Santa Paula and Ventura, leading to new evacuations of homes north of Foothill Road in Ventura and reports of power outages. Strong winds were pushing the blaze in a southwest direction toward the cities of Santa Paula and Ventura, leading to new evacuations of homes north of Foothill Road in Ventura and reports of power outages. CAPTION The 14,000-acre Creek fire has prompted evacuations in parts of Sylmar and Lake View Terrace. (Video by Irfan Khan and Genaro Molina) The 14,000-acre Creek fire has prompted evacuations in parts of Sylmar and Lake View Terrace. (Video by Irfan Khan and Genaro Molina)
[email protected]
Steele writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
ALSO
Rattlesnake season begins with a vengeance in Southern California
The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying. Fast.
Polar bear at SeaWorld San Diego dies after a brief, unexplained illness ||||| Wildlife biologist Scott Welch looked out over the Mojave Desert and readied for action when he heard a distant helicopter flying in.
Just seconds after the aircraft landed, he and two others began loading it with plastic storage bins containing desert tortoises captured at an expansion area of the U.S. Marines Corps training base at Twentynine Palms.
They carefully packed 26 of the imperiled reptiles — one or two per bin — onto cargo carriers on the helicopter that looked like oversized saddlebags.
Biologists work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Veterinarian Shannon DiRuzzo, DVM, weighs a Desert Tortoise as biologist work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
A six-month-old baby Desert Tortoise crawls across the Mojave Desert floor as Biologists work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Dr. Brian Henen explains operations to Commanding General, Brig. Gen. William Mullen III as biologists work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Dozens of desert tortoises packed and ready to be helicoptered out of the Johnson Valley as the Marine Corps relocates them Wednesday, April 12, in order to conduct live-fire exercises.
Tortoises ready for transport. Biologists work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Biologist Glenn Rink gives wind direction to the incoming helicopter as they work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
A Desert Tortoise is measured as biologists work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Dr. Peter Praschag rehydrates a Desert Tortoise with Veterinarian Shannon DiRuzzo as biologist work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Biologist Scott Welch walks boxes of Desert Tortoises to a helicopter as they work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
Biologist Scott Welch and Glenn Rink load boxes of Desert Tortoises onto a helicopter as they work with the USMC, BLM, the California and US Fish & Wildlife Services to relocate about 1,100 to 1,500 Desert Tortoises from the Bessemer Mine area of Johnson Valley in Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Wednesday, April 12, 2017. (Eric Reed/For The Press Enterprise/SCNG)
And within minutes, the tortoises were flying toward a safer haven of the recently created Mojave Trails National Monument — about 25 miles away from the crushing treads of tanks, the boots of soldiers and the blasts of bombs.
Operation Desert Tortoise was in its fifth day. As of Wednesday morning, 266 of the animals had been moved out of the Johnson Valley, about 30 miles northwest of Yucca Valley.
Before the end of the month, the Marines, working with about 125 wildlife biologists expect to have moved 1,156 tortoises, with a focus on clearing transportation corridors and other areas expected to be most disturbed by live-ammunition training missions.
It’s part of a multi-year, $50 million-plus tortoise relocation and study program at the base that was OK’d by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service following a 2013 vote by Congress to add about 88,000 acres in Johnson Valley to the combat center.
For the Marines, the expansion will allow them to hold longer and more-involved live-ammunition desert training missions to prepare Marines to intervene in global hot spots, such as the Middle East, should it be necessary. Such training is expected to start this summer.
For the tortoise, a species listed as threatened with extinction, it means the loss of more than a hundred square miles of quality habitat, as evidenced this year by robust blooms of yellow desert dandelions and other annual plants that are their primary food source.
The resources of the U.S. Defense Department were put to work to minimize harm to the tortoises, said Brian Henen, an ecologist for the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.
Analysis and field work for the move began more than two years ago. Scores of specially trained biologists have methodically walked the valley and fitted each tortoise they found with radio transmitters, so the animals could be gathered for this month’s move. It’s the largest tortoise move yet in the Mojave Desert.
The five areas of public land around the base that are receiving the animals were carefully chosen for their quality habitat and their distances from human habitation, Henen said.
Tortoises that lived near each other are being released in similar proximity in the recipient areas to preserve their social structure.
“We are moving them in groups. We are trying to sustain the similarity and the structure of their origin,” said Henen, standing by a makeshift medical checkup station for the tortoises.
There, Peter Praschag, a world-renowned tortoise and turtle expert from Austria, was working with veterinarian Shannon DiRuzzo to screen tortoises for signs of disease and other health issues.
A large male dubbed MC-2013 appeared frightened by the checkup and voided the water stored in his bladder, called a coelomic cavity. This was a serious matter, because a tortoise may get only one or two chances a year to get a good drink of water.
So Praschag used a syringe to carefully refill the animal’s coelomic cavity with a saline solution of water.
The work of the biologists won’t be finished until long after the last load of tortoises are flown out this month. Henen explained that the biologists will return frequently during the next four years to search for any reptiles that may have been left behind. They expect to move another 300 tortoises during that time.
The plans also include tracking and studying the relocated tortoises, as well as those already in the recipient area, for as long as 30 years. For this research, three groups of 225 tortoises — relocated ones, those already there and an unaffected control group — will be fitted with transmitters to track their movements and survival rates.
Biologists hope that the knowledge gained from this research will help the species recover.
But the loss of more than 100 square miles of prime habitat is still harmful to the tortoises, which has faced declines since the 1970s, prompting its 1990 listing under the Endangered Species Act, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
“It is going to be a big hit on the species,” she said.
She said it is not known if the public property outside the base will have enough food and other resources for both residents and newcomers to survive, and that wildlife biologists don’t know for sure why tortoises numbers have dropped in those areas.
She’s also worried that the tortoises may try to find their way back to their birthplaces in the base expansion areas.
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined in January that moving the tortoises from the Johnson Valley won’t jeopardize the survival of the species.
Scott Hoffman, who was observing the relocation effort for the FWS, said the species may benefit in the long run.
“Yes, we are losing habitat. But are we are using the relocated tortoises to supplement the populations in the critical habitat areas,” said Hoffman, referring to some of the recipient areas. | – The mission: to airlift 1,156 desert tortoises to a place where there's no threat of being flattened by tanks. The Marines are this month moving the reptiles out of a corner of California's Mojave Desert where the Corps will soon begin extensive live-fire training, the Los Angeles Times reports. Packed up two per plastic bin, the hubcap-sized creatures are being loaded into helicopters and flown 25 miles away to federal lands beyond the Marines' Twentynine Palms base northeast of Palm Springs. Their new home is far enough away to keep tortoises from wandering back into the line of fire when the Marines begin "longer and more involved" training exercises this summer that the Press-Enterprise reports will better position them to carry out missions in "global hot spots." Operation Desert Tortoise doesn't come cheap: Its $50 million price tag covers everything from the 125 biologists USNI News describes as setting out to locate, examine, and box up the tortoises to an agreed-upon 30 years of monitoring. The Marines have been pushing for this move since 2008, an effort complicated by the tortoises' "threatened" status. Environmentalists threatened to sue, citing the harm that taking away 100 square miles of habitat might do, but the Times reports the program got final approval after the US Fish and Wildlife Service said it couldn't finish its review before the spring relocation window closed. A biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity expressed concerns there might not be adequate food in the new habitat. (This really old tortoise is the "savior" of the Galapagos.) |
A pilot climbs out of a British Typhoon jet fighter of the Royal Air Force's Number 3 Squadron, parked at Gioia del Colle air base near Bari, Southern Italy, as Italian army trucks stand nearby, Monday... (Associated Press)
Coalition forces bombarded Libya for a third straight night Monday, targeting the air defenses and forces of Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, stopping his advances and handing some momentum back to the rebels, who were on the verge of defeat just last week.
But the rebellion's more organized military units were still not ready, and the opposition disarray underscored U.S. warnings that a long stalemate could emerge.
The air campaign by U.S. and European militaries has unquestionably rearranged the map in Libya and rescued rebels from the immediate threat they faced only days ago of being crushed under a powerful advance by Gadhafi's forces. The first round of airstrikes smashed a column of regime tanks that had been moving on the rebel capital of Benghazi in the east.
Monday night, Libyan state TV said a new round of strikes had begun in the capital, Tripoli, marking the third night of bombardment. But while the airstrikes can stop Gadhafi's troops from attacking rebel cities _ in line with the U.N. mandate to protect civilians _ the United States, at least, appeared deeply reluctant to go beyond that toward actively helping the rebel cause to oust the Libyan leader.
President Barack Obama said Monday that "it is U.S. policy that Gadhafi has to go." But, he said, the international air campaign has a more limited goal, to protect civilians.
"Our military action is in support of an international mandate from the Security Council that specifically focuses on the humanitarian threat posed by Col. Gadhafi to his people. Not only was he carrying out murders of civilians but he threatened more," the president said on a visit to Chile.
In Washington, the American general running the assault said there is no attempt to provide air cover for rebel operations. Gen. Carter Ham said Gadhafi might cling to power once the bombardment finishes, setting up a stalemate between his side and the rebels, with allied nations enforcing a no-fly zone to ensure he cannot attack civilians.
At the United Nations Monday, the Security Council turned down a request by Libya for an emergency session. Libya wanted "an emergency meeting in order to halt this aggression."
Henri Guaino, a top adviser to the French president, said the allied effort would last "a while yet."
Among the rebels, as well, there was a realization that fighting could be drawn out. Mohammed Abdul-Mullah, a 38-year-old civil engineer from Benghazi who was fighting with the rebel force, said government troops stopped all resistance after the international campaign began.
"The balance has changed a lot," he said. "But pro-Gadhafi forces are still strong. They are a professional military and they have good equipment. Ninety percent of us rebels are civilians, while Gadhafi's people are professional fighters."
Disorganization among the rebels could also hamper their attempts to exploit the turn of events. Since the uprising began, the opposition has been made up of disparate groups even as it took control of the entire east of the country.
Regular citizens _ residents of the "liberated" areas _ took up arms and formed a ragtag, highly enthusiastic but highly undisciplined force that in the past weeks has charged ahead to fight Gadhafi forces, only to be beaten back by superior firepower. Regular army units that joined the rebellion have proven stronger, more organized fighters, but only a few units have joined the battles while many have stayed behind as officers struggle to get together often antiquated, limited equipment and form a coordinated force.
Discord also plagued the coalition. The U.S. was eager to pass leadership off, but the allies were deeply divided on the issue. Turkey was adamantly against NATO taking charge, while Italy hinted Monday it would stop allowing use of its airfields if the veteran alliance is not given the leadership. Germany and Russia also criticized the way the mission is being carried out.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin railed against the U.N.-backed airstrikes as outside meddling "reminiscent of a medieval call for a Crusade."
In contrast, the British parliament lent clear support, voting 557 to 13 in favor of using armed forces to enforce the Security Council resolution to use "all necessary measures" to protect civilians in Libya.
in Libya, a "political leadership" has formed among the rebels, made up of former members of Gadhafi's regime who defected along with prominent local figures in the east, such as lawyers and doctors. The impromptu nature of their leadership has left some in the West _ particularly in the United States _ unclear on who the rebels are that the international campaign is protecting.
The disarray among the opposition was on display on Monday.
With Benghazi relieved, several hundred of the "citizen fighters" barreled to the west, vowing to break a siege on the city of Ajdabiya by Gadhafi forces, which have been pounding a rebel force holed up inside the city since before the allied air campaign began. The fighters pushed without resistance down the highway from Benghazi _ littered with the burned out husks of Gadhafi's tanks and armored personnel carriers hit in the airstrikes _ until they reached the outskirts of Ajdabiya.
Along the way, they swept into the nearby oil port of Zwitina, just northeast of Ajdabiya, which was also the scene of heavy fighting last week _ though now had been abandoned by regime forces. There, a power station hit by shelling on Thursday was still burning, its blackened fuel tank crumpled, with flames and black smoke pouring out.
Some of the fighters, armed with assault rifles, grenade launchers and truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns, charged to the city outskirts and battled with Gadhafi forces in the morning. A number of rebels were killed before they were forced to pull back somewhat, said the spokesman for the rebels' organized military forces, Khalid al-Sayah.
Al-Sayah said the fighters' advance was spontaneous "as always." But the regular army units that have joined the rebellion are not yet ready to go on the offensive. "We don't want to advance without a plan," he told AP in Benghazi. "If it were up to the army, the advance today would not have happened."
He said the regular units intend to advance but not yet, saying it was not yet ready. "It's a new army, we're starting it from scratch."
By Monday afternoon, around 150 citizen-fighters were massed in a field of dunes several miles (kilometers) outside Ajdabiya. Some stood on the wind-swept dunes with binoculars to survey the positions of pro-Gadhafi forces sealing off the entrances of the city. Ajdabiya itself was visible, black smoke rising, apparently from fires burning from fighting in recent days.
"There are five Gadhafi tanks and eight rocket launchers behind those trees and lots of 4x4s," one rebel fighter, Fathi Obeidi, standing on a dune and pointing at a line of trees between his position and the city, told an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
Gadhafi forces have ringed the city's entrance and were battling with opposition fighters inside, rebels said. The plan is for the rebel forces from Benghazi "to pinch" the regime troops while "those inside will push out," Obeidi said. He said a special commando unit that defected to the opposition early on in the uprising was inside the city leading the defense.
Regime troops are also besieging a second city _ Misrata, the last significant rebel-held territory in western Libya. According to reports from Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, new fighting erupted Monday at Misrata, Libya's third largest city, which the forces have shelled repeatedly over recent days while cutting off most food and water supplies to residents.
So far, allied bombardment has concentrated on knocking out Libyan air defenses, but a significant test of international intentions will be whether eventually the strikes by ship-fired cruise missiles and warplanes will try to break the sieges of Ajdabiya and Misrata by targeting the Gadhafi troops surrounding them.
Al-Sayah said there had been allied strikes against Gadhafi positions outside Ajdabiya early Monday, but there was no independent confirmation, and the troops were still in place Monday afternoon.
Ali Zeidan, an envoy to Europe from the opposition-created governing council, told The Associated Press that rebels want to drive Gadhafi from power and see him tried _ not have him killed. He said that while airstrikes have helped, the opposition needs more weapons to win the fight.
"We are able to deal with Gadhafi's forces by ourselves" as long as it's a fair fight, he said in Paris. "You see, Gadhafi himself, we are able to target him, and we would like to have him alive to face the international or the Libyan court for his crime .... We don't like to kill anybody ... even Gadhafi himself."
At the Pentagon, Ham said Monday afternoon that during the previous 24 hours, U.S. and British forces launched 12 Tomahawk land attack missiles, targeting regime command-and-control facilities and a missile facility and attacking one air defense site that already had been attacked.
"Through a variety of reports, we know that regime ground forces that were in the vicinity of Benghazi now possess little will or capability to resume offensive operations," he said.
A spokesman for the French military, whose warplanes have been conducting strikes in the Benghazi region, said there is a "very clear scale-down in the intensity of combat and, therefore, threats to the population" because of the bombardment.
"There still are pro-Gadhafi elements in the zone where we're working. Nevertheless, these elements haven't necessarily been dealt with because they are mixed in, for example with the civilian population," Thierry Burkhard said.
___
Associated Press writers Hadeel al-Shalchi in Tripoli, Libya, Diaa Hadid in Cairo, Jamey Keaten and Cecile Brisson in Paris, and Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| At the United Nations, the Security Council rejected a request from Libya for a meeting to discuss the situation.
Qaddafi forces were holding out against the allied military campaign to break their grip. Rebel fighters trying to retake the eastern town of Ajdabiya said their advance was halted on Monday by tank and rocket fire from government loyalists still controlling entrances to the city. Dozens of fighters fell back to a checkpoint about 25 miles north of Ajdabiya, in Zueitina.
By the early afternoon, the fighters said at least eight of their confederates had been killed in the day’s fighting, including four who were killed when a tank shell struck their pickup truck.
Video
In the western city of Misurata, forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi were still at large and were using civilians as human shields, Reuters reported, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
At the Pentagon, officials said that the intensive American-led assault unleashed over the weekend was a classic air campaign, chosen by Mr. Obama among a range of military options, which was intended to have coalition aircraft in the skies above Libya within days and without fear of being shot down. “You don’t do that piecemeal,” a United States military official said. “You do it all at once, and you do it as fast as you can.”
The targets included radar installations, fixed and mobile antiaircraft sites, Libyan aircraft and hangars, and other targets intended to make it safe for allied aircraft to impose the no-fly zone. They also included tanks and other ground forces engaged with the rebels around the country, reflecting the broader aim of pushing Colonel Qadaffi’s forces to withdraw from disputed cities. Communications centers and at least one Scud missile site were also struck.
Explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli on Monday in a third straight night of attacks there against Colonel Qadaffi’s forces.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
United States military officials said that there were fewer American and coalition airstrikes in Libya on Sunday night and Monday, and that the number would probably decline further in coming days. But Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the United States Africa Command, who is in charge of the coalition effort, said that there would be strikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s mobile air defenses and that some 80 sorties — only half by the United States — were flown on Monday.
General Ham also said he had “full authority” to attack the regime’s forces if they refused to comply with President Obama’s demands that they pull back from Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zawiya.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
By Monday night, explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli in the third straight day of attacks.
In Santiago , Chile , Mr. Obama restated that the United States would soon turn over full responsibility to the allies to maintain the no-fly zone. He also sought to distinguish the stated goals of the United Nations-authorized military operation — protecting Libyan civilians, establishing a no-flight zone and forcing Colonel Qaddafi’s withdrawal from the cities — with his own administration’s demand, not included in the United Nations resolution, that Colonel Qaddafi had to leave office.
“It is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference with the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera. “And we’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military effort to support that policy.” Mr. Obama cited economic sanctions, the freezing of assets and other measures to isolate the regime in Tripoli.
Video
United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. “We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed,” Mr. Sayeh told reporters.
On Monday night, a United States military official responded that “we know of no instances where this has occurred.”
Earlier in the day, General Ham repeatedly said in answer to questions from reporters that the United States was not working with the rebels. “Our mission is not to support any opposition forces,” General Ham said by video feed to the Pentagon from the headquarters of Africa Command in Stuttgart , Germany .
Mr. Sayeh said that there were no Western military trainers advising the rebel fighters, but that he would welcome such help. He added, with evident frustration, that the rebel fighters on the front in Ajdabiya “didn’t take orders from anybody.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Like other rebel military officials, Mr. Sayeh said the rebels had been working to better organize their ranks to include members of specialized units from the Libyan Army that would attack Colonel Qaddafi’s forces when the time was right. But evidence of such a force has yet to materialize.
The rebels appeared to have fallen into some disarray as they returned from Ajdabiya, with one commander at the checkpoint trying to marshal them with a barely functioning megaphone. He tried organizing the assembled fighters into columns for an attack, but nearly fell off the truck as he ordered the fighters to move.
“I know most of you are civilians,” he said. “But we have to charge.” Only a few trucks inched forward as other fighters stood and argued among themselves.
At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday, members of the military alliance came to no agreement on who would take the lead on a no-fly zone or how to proceed on enforcing a United Nations arms embargo against Libya.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said responsibility for the no-fly zone would be transferred to NATO. But France objected to that, with its foreign minister, Alain Juppé, saying: “The Arab League does not wish the operation to be entirely placed under NATO responsibility. It isn’t NATO which has taken the initiative up to now.”
Turkey , a NATO member that has opposed the use of force in Libya and was still seething over being omitted from a planning meeting in Paris on Saturday, refused on Sunday to back a NATO military plan for the no-fly zone. But its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denied that his country was against NATO participation in the operation, saying only that he wanted assurances that it would be brief and not end in an occupation. | – Coalition forces pounded targets in Libya for a third night yesterday, but the general leading US forces says the pace of air attacks is likely to slow soon. The campaign to destroy Moammar Gadhafi's air defenses and establish a no-fly zone is almost complete, and American officials are seeking to hand over leadership of the operation to European allies, reports the New York Times. "My sense is that unless something unusual or unexpected happens, we may see a decline in the frequency of attacks, " said Gen. Carter Ham. Coalition forces aren't attempting to provide air cover for rebels, he added, warning of a potentially long stalemate between Gadhafi's forces and the rebels, AP reports. President Obama says that he expects control of the operation to be handed over within days. "It is US policy that Gadhafi needs to go,” he told reporters. “And we’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military effort to support that policy." |
Subsets and Splits