Malcolm Turnbull has used a favourite term of one of his predecessors to describe how he felt during a too-close-for-comfort protest in Melbourne this week.

"I felt safe and comfortable, relaxed and comfortable, as John Howard would say, at all times," the prime minister told Neil Mitchell on 3AW radio on Friday about a female protester jumping on stage and getting to within five metres of him as he addressed a business lunch on Wednesday.

The Australian Federal Police was investigating the incident and presenting him with a report, Mr Turnbull said.

Summary: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insists he was unfazed by a protester who jumped on stage as he addressed a business lunch on Wednesday.


WA's unenviable title of having the nation's highest rate of use of the drug ice is also driving thefts from Kalgoorlie's goldfields.

The temptation for people who work in gold mining to steal some of the product for themselves has been going on since WA's first gold rush in the 1890s.

The phenomenon of ice abusers pinching gold though is more recent.

Years of job losses and cost cutting in the mining industry around Kalgoorlie, which produces three-quarters of Australia's gold, were also contributing to a rise in thefts, said the head of the WA police's Gold Stealing Detection Unit Detective Inspector Bill Little.

"A lot of people are going on to mining company leases and removing ore, doing backyard production to try and extract gold ... there seems to be a bit of an increase in that going on, especially in the Goldfields area," Det Insp Little told reporters.

"One thing common to a lot of them is drug users and it is a way of trying to get enough money raised so they can go buy their next hit."

It is not as if the thieves are stealing processed 10 ounce gold bullion bars, valued at about $18,000 each at current prices, because the security is too great.

They are usually desperate and grab whatever they can out of the ground, Det Insp Little said.

"The sad thing about it is it is a lot of effort to basically extract a minimal amount of gold," he said.

There were two major matters currently in the courts: a Perth Mint worker charged with stealing $78,000 worth of gold and four illegal prospectors who allegedly stole more than a kilogram from the goldfields, worth more than $63,000.

The police gold stealing squad was set up in 1907 in the wake of a royal commission into a gold stealing epidemic during the gold rush.

The squad had good relationships with gold buyers in Kalgoorlie and monitored who was buying and selling online.

Summary: WA's major meth abuse problem has resulted in a rise in thefts in the goldfields, police say.


One of the ritualistic sounds of the artistic summer season was heard yesterday with the announcement of the shortlist for the Turner Prize - the sound of critics sharpening their knives. The candidates for the £20,000 prize include a woman who once cast an entire north London bedroom in plaster and a Vietnamese-born installation sculptor whose work has featured streams of rice being poured over snapshots of his family.

The prize has outshone its literary counterpart, the Booker, in stimulating internecine warfare among rival factions in its brief life since 1984.

Apart from the customary arguments over the merit of the work, critics have demanded to know why no woman has ever won the prize, why it is limited to artists under 50 and why Damien Hirst - famously fond of incorporating rotting animals' heads in his work - has never won. In the running this year are:

Rachel Whiteread, nominated for the continuing development of her work as shown in exhibitions at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Sydney Biennale, and her recent exhibition at Galerie Burrus, Paris. At 30, she is the youngest nominee.

She became widely known with her first exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery, in London in 1990, which consisted of one sculpture entitled Ghosts. This was a white plaster cast of an entire room - eerily white and deserted. "I wanted to give certain spaces an authority they'd never had," she said. She has since made works using casts of kitchen sinks, baths, beds, mattresses, floors and mortuary slabs. Her bed pieces, cast in rubber, are clearly places of sexual encounter, birth and death.

Vong Phaophanit, unexpectedly shortlisted for his installations at the Serpentine Gallery, Aperto at the Venice Biennale, and Killerton Park, Devon.

Born in 1961 in Laos, he left his homeland at 11 to be educated in the West. The trauma of exile from Laos and his family is the main inspiration of his art. Strongly influenced by Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, his installations meditate on themes of separation, memory and transience of life. In Just a Moment in 1987, he projected snapshots of his family on to a white-sheeted bed and over it poured a stream of rice. He says that his work is "based on nothing, no strict discourse, no rules except perhaps a new subjectivity . . . if there is an object, an aim, it is to start from a point and lead outwards".

Sean Scully, nominated for the exhibitions of his recent work at Waddington galleries, Mary Boone Gallery and his retrospective at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Born in Dublin in 1954, Scully is an abstract painter whose richly coloured works express strong emotions. In this sense he relates to Rothko who used the rectangle as a non-objective form through which he could be, in Scully's words, emotionally specific, using heightened colour to communicate feeling. He also speaks of creating a 'compressed experience' in which paint and image work together.

Hannah Collins, nominated for exhibitions at the Third International Istanbul Biennial and at the Centre d'Art, Santa Monica, Barcelona.

Born in 1956, Collins now lives and works in Barcelona. She is a photographer involved with creating an experience of dramatically enhanced reality. She photographs a wide range of subject matter: landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, still lives and the figure. She favours black and white and prints her work on canvas. Her best work is very strong and it is clear that although she attempts to create emotional drama, she is also drawn to the purely aesthetic potential of photography. 'I would say that my work is both sculptural and pictorial,' she says.

Commenting on the shortlist, Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery and chairman of the jury, said: "Art in Britain is being enriched by artists who bring experience of other cultures to this country."

The members of this year's jury are: Iwona Blazwick (curator), Carole Conrad (collector and representative of Patrons of New Art), Declan McGonagle (director, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin), David Sylvester (art historian) and Nicholas Serota. The winner of the £20,000 prize will be announced at the Tate Gallery on November 23.


A remorseless Victorian pedophile priest who used position within the Catholic Church to sexually abuse children is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Predator Robert Patrick Claffey, 73, has been jailed for more than 18 years for abusing 12 Victorian children between 1969 and 1992.

Victims drew parallels between Claffey and serial pedophile Gerald Francis Ridsdale, who abused more than 50 victims - one of whom was also attacked by Claffey.

The 19 charges Claffey admitted constitute what Victorian County Court Judge Felicty Hampel described in sentencing as a shameful and protracted abuse of his authority as a priest.

One of his victims said the sentence for the "unbridled and unbroken rape" of the children of western Victoria was just, fair and tantamount to a death penalty.

"Bob Claffey has taken a fair portion of everyone's lives and he deserves to have a fair portion of his life taken from him," Frank Hampster said outside court.

Another of his victims said she suspected there were others out there.

Claffey's total sentence is 18 years and four months, of which he must serve 13 years and four months.

Summary: One of Victoria's most dangerous pedophile priests is behind bars, and is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.


China has shut down more than 100 websites carrying pornography and closed thousands of accounts on social media sites in an renewed effort to clean up the internet, state media reported.

The campaign, named "Cleaning the Web 2014", was launched in response to the spread of online pornography despite repeated bans, according to a circular issued by the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.

Pornography is illegal in China, but some overseas critics are concerned that the crackdown on material deemed obscene is the latest government attempt to tighten its grip on the internet and will be used in broader censorship of websites.

Read MoreThe secret behind Ford's success in China

In the latest drive, authorities have closed 110 websites and more than 3,300 accounts on China-based social networking services, and deleted more than 200,000 items containing pornography since January, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

"Disseminating pornographic information online severely harms the physical and mental health of minors, and seriously corrupts social ethos," an unidentified official with the State Internet Information Office was cited by Xinhua as saying.

The campaign, set to last until November, comes after a crackdown on Wechat, Tencent Holdings social messaging app, which has had dozens of widely read accounts run by outspoken columnists shut down.

It also follows a move last year to purge online rumor-mongering, widely seen as a tool to punish critics of the ruling Communist Party, which has chilled political disclosure especially on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

Read More'Fix this, and we can fix shadow banking': China Minsheng

Sina, a major Chinese web portal, temporarily shut down its entire online reading section shortly after the campaign was launched, because "works containing inappropriate content have appeared," the company said in a statement on one of its Weibo microblogs.

Last week, a Beijing court sentenced a man to three years in prison for spreading rumors on Weibo that the court said defamed celebrities and the government.

Summary: China closed more than 100 websites carrying pornography and thousands of social media accounts in an renewed effort to clean up the internet.


The 2.3m snake. (NSW Police)

A snake owner has had a lucky escape after his 2.3m boa constrictor attempted to constrict him in his sleep.

Police seized the 2.3-metre snake from a home in Singleton, near Newcastle, on Tuesday after reports the 57-year-old owner was keeping the reptile in his home without a licence.

Police also say the snake may have eaten a small dog before it was confiscated.

The boa constrictor is due to be put down after National Parks and Wildlife officers deemed the snake a non-native species and posed a risk to local wildlife.

The snake was seized from a residence on Wentworth Avenue in Singleton on Tuesday.

The man is expected to be charged with possession of an exotic species without a licence.

Summary: A 2.3m boa constrictor has been seized by police after trying to kill its owner and possibly eating a small dog in NSW.


In the early morning hours Wednesday, Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Republican Donald Trump. Based on most poll predictions from major news outlets in the week leading up to Election Day, this was a stunning result.

Athletes, although not fixtures of the White House or Capitol Building, have a powerful reach thanks to their loyal fans. Select athletes took to social media Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to express an opinion on election results. Consistent with the voting results, the sports world expressed mixed reaction to Trump's victory. Some expressed sadness, some joy, some ambivalence and some comedy.

These athletes expressed negativity toward the Election Night outcome:

— Enes Kanter (@Enes_Kanter) November 9, 2016

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) November 9, 2016

— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) November 9, 2016

— Joakim Noah (@JoakimNoah) November 9, 2016

What happens next? I seriously don't know...

— Frank Kaminsky III (@FSKPart3) November 9, 2016

The Divided States of America

— Justin Tuck (@JustinTuck) November 9, 2016

— Ricky Rubio (@rickyrubio9) November 9, 2016

— Allen Robinson (@Thee_AR15) November 9, 2016

I sure will miss you @BarackObama.

— Lance Moore (@LanceMoore16) November 9, 2016

Wtf.. Let's put all the idiots around the world in power and see what happens. Next gen reality TV. #SadWorld

— Vincent Kompany (@VincentKompany) November 9, 2016

— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) November 9, 2016

These athletes took to social media to celebrate Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States:

This is a night that u can tell ur kids about. This will create a world wide tidal wave.

— Joe Theismann (@Theismann7) November 9, 2016

Time for Hollywood to pony up and head for the border #illhelpyoupack #beatit

— Jake Arrieta (@JArrieta34) November 9, 2016

Congrats my grt friend & President of the US! @realDonaldTrump #NowMakeAmericaGreatAgain bc I know u will! Thk u 4 putting Americans 1st

— John Daly (@PGA_JohnDaly) November 9, 2016

— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) November 9, 2016

We are about two minutes in, but I like President-elect Trump better than candidate Trump.

— Jacob Tamme (@JacobTamme) November 9, 2016

— Dillon Gee (@DillonGee35) November 9, 2016

Hug for u Hillary. Goodbye

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) November 9, 2016

A group of level-headed individuals showed a moderate view for the country's future:

The WEIGHT of The White House; rounds n softens the edges of any man or woman. It demands greatness n inspires all souls towards leadership!

— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) November 9, 2016

We voted- but we need to be the change, help unify, join together in & through our brokenness. One by one-change the world WE live in!

— Jennie Finch (@JennieFinch) November 9, 2016

Last thing i will say... LETS GIVE HIM A CHANCE TO PROVE US "non believers" WRONG. #WeMustComeTogether #DivisionIsNotTheAnswer

— Garrett Temple (@GTemp14) November 9, 2016

Election has almost equally divided America. Challenge moving forward is reunite us to continue making the USA the greatest country in earth

— Willie Bloomquist (@williebloom) November 9, 2016

No matter who the president is, we all still have the choice everyday to be positive, respectful, and to spread love to one another.

— evan turner (@thekidet) November 9, 2016

Pray for our country and our leadership.

— Vernon Wells (@VernonWells10) November 9, 2016

We all need to give President-Elect Trump a chance. Support the good. Lobby against what we disagree on. No one is bigger than us all

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 9, 2016

LeBron James shared mixed feelings as he offered the encouraging words from the perspective of a father -- "Don't lose a bit of faith!" -- while choosing a cut from Kendrick Lamar's "Alright," which features NSFW lyrics and an angry vibe, as his musical inspiration.

And a team of admirable athletes gave America a string of jokes:

Well America is tanking!!! All we can do is Trust The Process...

— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) November 9, 2016

Election TV is awesomely entertaining...we should shorten terms just to do this every year

— Huston Street (@HustonStreet) November 9, 2016

Cubs vs Indians game 7 was better

— Chris Betts (@ChrisBetts26) November 9, 2016

Rather than being upset, use this opportunity to embrace the fact that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

— Osi Umenyiora (@OsiUmenyiora) November 9, 2016

The end of my @MLS dream in the future? #AmericanElection #EleccionesEEUU2016

— Javi Martínez (@Javi8martinez) November 9, 2016

— Vontae Davis (@vontaedavis) November 9, 2016

— kslife (@kevin_seraphin) November 9, 2016

— Patrick Patterson (@pdpatt) November 9, 2016

— norman powell (@npowell2404) November 9, 2016

-- Follow Jeff Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Like Jeff Eisenband on Facebook.

DeMarcus Cousins, Dwyane Wade, Enes Kanter, Joel Embiid, Trevor Bauer

Summary: After Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, Dwyane Wade, John Daly, LeBron James, Jake Arrieta, others show opinion.


Donald Trump's election victory is unleashing shockwaves throughout financial markets as investors scramble to gauge the impact of the White House campaign that defied the odds.

While markets foresaw aggressive selling of emerging-market currencies and a spike in volatility across asset classes in the event of an unexpected Trump victory, few predicted it would help investors in a media and property company in Turkey, or a Chinese auto-parts manufacturer whose name sounds an awful lot like that of the conceding Democratic nominee. Here are some of today's most exotic market reactions from around the world.

The market-implied odds of an interest rate cut in Australia by mid-2017 have soared to 60 percent, rising from 30 percent before the results flooded in, amid expectations that weaker investment and trade flows from its Asian partners will crimp economic output. "A Trump presidency would increase the risk the [Reserve Bank of Australia] may move back to an easing bias," wrote Citigroup Inc. analysts led by Paul Brennan.

Shares of software and heavy equipment provider Wisesoft Co. Ltd. moved more than 6 percent higher on Wednesday morning. The local name of the company sounds like "Trump Wins Big" to Chinese speakers. It's fitting that as a man who accumulated wealth through licensing deals en route to the presidency is now helping others profit off the association with his own. Meanwhile, at Yunnan Xiyi Industrial Co. Ltd., an auto-parts manufacturer whose name sounds like "Aunt Hillary," shares tumbled by 10 percent.

Dogan spent much of the year trying to get Trump's name scrubbed off the facade of the skyscraper it owns in Istanbul's central business district. Today, the partnership they forged in 2008 isn't looking so rash. As Trump's victory came into view, shares of Dogan Holding climb as high as 12 percent when trading opened in Istanbul, and led gains on the Turkish stock market.

In Europe, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, Copenhagen-based Vestas Wind Systems A/S, was battered by Trump's victory, opening down almost 14 percent.

The president-elect has often tweeted about his disdain for wind farms.

The market moves have transcended borders, even entering the virtual realm. The cryptocurrency Bitcoin also ramped higher along with Trump's odds of winning, rising more than 4 percent into the midnight hour.

Summary: Investors are scrambling to gauge what will follow.


Australians gave more than $11 billion to charities in 2015, with those working in the education and health sectors taking the lion's share of income.

While religious charities were the largest sector in sheer numbers, they took in about a tenth of the annual income of those relating to education and research, the latest Australian Charities Report, released on Wednesday, shows.

Almost $7 out of every $10 earned by charities was in the areas of education and health.

There are about 51,000 charities registered in Australia, with a combined income of $134.5 billion in 2015 - the most recent year for which data is available.

Across charities of all sizes, about half their income came from sources other than donations or government grants.

Governments gave $55.6 billion, with almost half of this going to the 142 largest charities (those with an annual income of more than $100 million).

Fewer than two in five charities had the legal status that means donations to them can be deducted from people's tax bills each year.

The larger the charity, the more likely it was to have this status.

Across the board, charities grew by an average of two per cent between 2014 and 2015.

But more than two in five had shrinking incomes during that year.

Two-thirds of all charities are based in Australia's urban centres and they attract three-quarters of the almost three million volunteers.

Summary: Australia's 51,000 charities had an income of $134.5 billion in 2015, with almost $7 in every $10 going to those working in education and health areas.


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Happy Monday and welcome to your AM Daily Buzz! Check out the hottest stories happening right now!

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AM Daily Buzz: Heidi Klum's amazing Halloween costume, Taylor Swift and Idina Menzel sing on stage and more!

This fan got the ultimate stamp of approval when Miley Cyrus shared a photo of her totally on-point getup with her nearly 40 million followers.

All eyes might have been on Heidi Klum's curvalicious Jessica Rabbit costume at the "Project Runway" host's annual Halloween soiree, but model Shanina Shaik looked just like Rihanna's twin in her spot-on costume.

Two Karl Lagerfelds are definitely better than one! This silver-headed duo nailed the iconic look at the New Museum's Annual Members Halloween Party presented by Stella Artois.

YouTuber Jordyn Jones had Gigi Hadid's "Bad Blood" character Slay-Z down to the pose ... impressive!

No need to apologize for this incredible imitation of Justin Bieber's "Sorry" dance video!

This had to be done! Props to Twitter user Stephanie_mileo's mom for the breaking the Internet with this killer Kim K. Paper Mag costume.

With so many Kim K. looks to choose from, fans had a field day on Halloween. This one channeled Kim in a Yeezy Season 1-inspired ensemble.

Most people wait for Halloween to try out wild 'dos, but donning rainbow locks is part of Kylie Jenner's daily routine. How spot-on is this fan's imitation?

Talk about a throwback! Its hard to tell which "Simple Life" duo is the original.

Model Camille Rowe went for Britney's iconic "Oops I Did It Again" red bodysuit. Where can we get our hands on one of these for next year?

Nicki Minaj could not get enough of fans who dressed like her for the spooky night, and she posted a particularly accurate reproduction of the "Feeling Myself" music video with Beyoncé.

Scores of buzz-worthy music videos were released this year -- and perhaps none more talked about than Drake's "Hotline Bling." Check out this masterly counterfeit complete with the rapper's smooth moves.

Summary: Heidi Klum's amazing Halloween costume, Taylor Swift and Idina Menzel sing on stage and more from your AM Daily Buzz!


I first heard the words "disastrous opportunity" from a man named Gavin Smith. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Smith worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (he now heads the Mississippi Office of Recovery and Renewal), and the phrase, though it seems like an oxymoron, is apparently not uncommon in emergency-management circles. "On the one hand," Smith explained, "you've got catastrophic loss. You're almost starting from scratch again; the housing stock is just gone. To some degree, you can step back and say, 'This is a chance to rebuild better than it was."'

Casinos have been a driving force in Biloxi's economy. Here, the wreck of Treasure Island.

A recent aerial view of a street in Biloxi.

In Biloxi this past March, the disaster part of the phrase was not just evident but inescapable. The city sits at the eastern end of a piece of land that juts out into the Gulf of Mexico like an upside-down T. At night, bonfires burned in fields and yards; six months after the storm, there were still thousands of tons of debris to be removed, and in many cases the easiest way to dispose of it was simply to incinerate it. By day, the city looked as if it had been on the wrong end of a long war. Entire neighborhoods of pretty coastal homes had been swept away, leaving nothing behind but the footprints of the houses that once stood there, and sad little clusters of FEMA trailers. Mixed in with the rubble were stands of oak trees looking blasted and bare. On both ends of the peninsula, the bridges joining it to the mainland had collapsed.

The opportunity part was a little harder to find. A few stores were open here and there amid great stretches of retail wreckage. There were herds of volunteers roaming the quiet streets in groups of 20 or 30: college kids on spring break, church groups from around the country, plumbers, contractors, mold-removal experts  all pitching in. Before Katrina, there had been casinos on enormous barges a few feet out into the gulf; during the storm, they were heaved up onshore (one of them landed on top of a Frank Gehry-designed museum that had yet to open, crushing it to the ground); afterward, they were allowed to rebuild on solid ground, like Darwinian fish growing legs and coming on land. The two or three that had reopened seemed booked to capacity, full of glazed-eyed gamblers who played the slots as if nothing had ever happened, even as the debris from the old barges was being cleaned up outside. In the lobby of one of them, the Isle of Capri, the racket of gaming machines made it impossible to think; in the lot outside, a stream of vehicles jockeyed for parking. Once you got off the property and back into Biloxi, everything was quiet again.

Katrina hit Mississippi harder than it did Louisiana, and the destruction there was more complete. If the state has received less attention in the aftermath, that's partly because it has no coastal city the size of New Orleans and partly because it has been less politically paralyzed. Within two weeks after the storm, Gov. Haley Barbour put together a commission to jump-start the rebuilding and asked Jim Barksdale to be its chairman. Barksdale is an Ole Miss graduate who went on to become C.E.O. of Netscape in the late 90's and then came home to Jackson, where he ran an investment and advisory firm. He agreed to head the commission and donated $1 million of his own money to finance it. The Knight Foundation donated another million, and it was up and running, charged with a task of boggling magnitude: 45,000 homes and businesses in three counties damaged or destroyed  and all of it needing to be redesigned and rebuilt, as Gavin Smith suggested, "better than it was."

One of Barksdale's first advisers was Leland Speed, a dapper man with a vivid manner, who had retired from the real-estate investment funds he managed and had gone to work for the Mississippi Development Authority. "They want to tell me how it's going to be," he said by way of explaining how the M.D.A. interacts with local governments. "I say: 'I got filthy rich in the real-estate business. Now you're going to tell me something about it?' And then they tend to listen to me." Barksdale listened, too, and Speed persuaded him to consider a new way of thinking about cities and how they function, a movement in zoning and planning that emerged about 25 years ago and goes by a handful of informal names  "smart growth," "sustainable development," "form-based code"  and, more formally, by one: New Urbanism.

New Urbanism arose as a reaction to sprawl, the default American landscape of highways lined with strip malls and big-box stores and suburban subdivisions populated by a homogeneous and insulated middle class. The New Urbanists proposed higher-density, pedestrian-friendly communities: old-fashioned neighborhoods with schools and shops, parks and offices, single-family homes and low-income apartment buildings, all mixed together and connected by shady streets and wide sidewalks. Seaside, Fla., was the first real New Urbanist project, and it remains the most famous, in large part because the movie "The Truman Show" was filmed there. But the Congress for the New Urbanism, which was founded in 1993 by six like-minded architects, now has 2,500 members who have built scores of communities. Leland Speed convinced Barksdale that the New Urbanists had a vision for how cities should look and had experience designing huge parcels of land. They also had access to hundreds of architects and designers and a knack for preserving land values. "You see, it works," Speed told me. "It's good. It makes money."

Jim Lewis last wrote for the magazine about soldiers on R.&R. in Qatar. His most recent book is "The King Is Dead," a novel.

Summary: The New Urbanists thought they had just the plan for remaking the Mississippi Gulf Coast city after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA, the mayor and a councilman thought otherwise.


ASHINGTON, Feb. 11 - A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda, given to Condoleezza Rice as she assumed the post of national security adviser in January 2001, warned that the terror network had cells in the United States and 40 other countries and sought unconventional weapons, according to a declassified version of the document.

The 13-page proposal presented to Dr. Rice by her top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, laid out ways to step up the fight against Al Qaeda, focusing on Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan. The ideas included giving "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups "to keep Islamic extremist fighters tied down"; destroying terrorist training camps "while classes are in session" and then sending in teams to gather intelligence on terrorist cells; deploying armed drone aircraft against known terrorists; more aggressively tracking Qaeda money; and accelerating the F.B.I.'s translation and analysis of material from surveillance of terrorism suspects in American cities.

Mr. Clarke was seeking a high-level meeting to decide on a plan of action. Dr. Rice and other administration officials have said that Mr. Clarke's ideas did not constitute an adequate plan, but they took them into consideration as they worked toward a more effective strategy against the terrorist threat.

The proposal and an accompanying three-page memorandum given to Dr. Rice by Mr. Clarke on Jan. 25, 2001, were discussed and quoted in brief by the independent commission studying the Sept. 11 attacks and in news reports and books last year. They were obtained by the private National Security Archive, which published the full versions, with minor deletions at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, on its Web site late Thursday.

Under the heading "the next three to five years," Mr. Clarke spelled out a series of steps building on groundwork that he said had already been laid, adding that "success can only be achieved if the pace and resource levels of the programs continue to grow as planned."

He said the C.I.A. had "prepared a program" focused on eliminating Afghanistan as a haven for Al Qaeda.

It would feature "massive support" to anti-Taliban groups like the Northern Alliance and the destruction of training camps occupied by terrorists. "We would need to have special teams ready for covert entry into destroyed camps to acquire intelligence for locating terrorist cells outside Afghanistan," he wrote, saying that this would either require Special Operations troops or some other "liaison force capable of conducting activity on-the-ground inside Afghanistan." Predator drones, some of which could be armed, would support those forces, he wrote.

Some of what he proposed in the way of support for the Northern Alliance or for Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan to the north, was deleted from the document before it was declassified. But some of the actions he proposed were not intended to be kept secret, like "overt U.S. military action" aimed at the command and control of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's military.

The previously secret documents were at the heart of a fiercely partisan debate over Mr. Clarke's contention, in a book and in public statements, that the Bush administration had ignored his warnings of the imminent danger posed by Mr. bin Laden and his terrorist organization.

The shorter memorandum was written in response to a request for "major presidential policy reviews" worthy of a meeting of "principals," the president's top foreign policy advisers. It began: "We urgently need such a Principals level review on the al Qida network." The word "urgently" was italicized and underscored; the "al Qida" spelling was used in both documents.

"We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge al Qida poses," the memorandum said.

The principals' meeting on Al Qaeda took place, but not until Sept. 4, 2001, a week before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Summary: A strategy document outlining proposals for eliminating the threat from Al Qaeda was given to Condoleezza Rice in January 2001.


An 81-year-old man from the Finger Lakes region became the first New Yorker to die this year from the West Nile virus.

The Schuyler County man, whose name was not released, was hospitalized Aug. 8 with symptoms of encephalitis, a swelling of the brain characteristic of the mosquito-borne illness, and died Tuesday.

"It's likely this person was infected with a mosquito bite," state Health Department spokeswoman Kristine Smith said.

One other case of West Nile infection in a human has been reported in New York this year. That patient, an 86-year-old woman from the Pelham Gardens section of the Bronx, became ill Aug. 11. She was hospitalized a week later and is being treated, according to city health officials.

Pesticide spraying was slated to begin last night in parts of Queens and Staten Island, and is to hit Brooklyn tonight.

Summary: An 81-year-old man from the Finger Lakes region became the first New Yorker to die this year from the West Nile virus. The Schuyler County man, whose name was not released, was hospitalized Aug. 8 with symptoms of encephalitis, a swelling of the brain characteristic of the mosquito-borne illness, and died Tuesday. "It's likely this person was infected with a mosquito bite,"state Health Department spokeswoman Kristine Smith


By MICHELE McPHEE DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

Monday, November 24th 2003, 1:03AM

They strut the streets of Chinatown and Flushing in packs, knives secreted in satin jackets, biceps tattooed with dragons.

The teen thugs call themselves "A-E" for American Eagles or Asian Empire, and they mark a resurgence of organized Chinese street gangs.

"This is the first new Asian gang we've seen since all the heads of the Flying Dragons and Ghost Shadows went to jail," said one law enforcement source. "These kids are mostly into gang assaults right now, but we know they are organizing and the larger gangs have an eye on them."

The gang counts nearly 50 teenagers among its crew, an unusual merging of young immigrants from China's Fujian province and ABCs - American-born Chinese. The immigrant gangsters speak to their American-born counterparts in fractured English.

Since forming within the last year, they have staked out stretches of Mulberry St. in Chinatown and Main St. in Flushing, Queens, gang experts said. So far they have largely targeted black and Hispanic teens who trespass on their turf.

Inspector William Tartaglia, the commanding officer of the NYPD's gang division, said his detectives have been monitoring the American Eagles in recent months and said the gang is being kept in check.

"There have not been an alarming number of incidents involving them," Tartaglia said. "We have enough resources to track them and effectively deal with them."

But the Daily News has learned that the NYPD is forming an Asian-crime task force to deal with the gang and an influx of criminal activity in the immigrant Chinese community.

The task force harks back to the Jade Squad, a joint NYPD-Manhattan district attorney's office probe of crime in Chinatown that began in the 1980s.

This year alone, there has been a feud between rival bus companies that has sparked two murders and ongoing assaults.

And a dozen lawyers, restaurant owners and doctors with offices in Chinatown have been the victims of violent push-in robberies in recent months.

Although older gangs like the Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons extorted merchants and set up mini-empires funded by prostitution and gambling in Chinatown, the American Eagles have begun to cut a violent swath outside lower Manhattan.

On Oct. 30, brothers Eddie and Omar Donis were standing outside a Duane Reade drugstore in Flushing when they were set upon by at least a dozen American Eagles members who beat them with baseball bats before slashing them with knives and broken bottles, according to a criminal complaint.

"These kids are all over the neighborhood, the A-E's. There are a lot of stories about them," said Eddie Donis, 15, who was stabbed in the stomach and underwent surgery to remove part of his damaged intestines.

Two teenagers were arrested in the attack on the Donis brothers, who are Hispanic. Bin Bin Dong, 16, and Zhong Huang, 18, both of Queens, were charged with gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Dong, who has a dragon tattoo on his arm, admitted membership in the American Eagles, sources said.

Dong is suspected in other attacks that police believe were racially motivated, including multiple beatings of a black teen, Dennis Hoffman, who said the American Eagles shouted racial slurs at him during three separate attacks since March.

The most severe beating came Sept. 23, when the gangsters cracked his skull, a wound that required doctors to staple his scalp back together.

"These guys . . . are going around terrorizing people," said Hoffman, 15.

Summary: They strut the streets of Chinatown and Flushing in packs, knives secreted in satin jackets, biceps tattooed with dragons. The teen thugs call themselves "A-E"for American Eagles or Asian Empire, and they mark a resurgence of organized Chinese street gangs. "This is the first new Asian gang we've seen since all the heads of the Flying Dragons and Ghost Shadows went to jail,"said one


NEW YORK - Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, used his annual letter to shareholders to rail against “contrived’’ and confusing financial rules that he said may stymie lending.

US and international officials “made the recovery worse than it otherwise would have been,’’ Dimon wrote in the letter released Wednesday. They almost botched the US debt-ceiling vote, constrained bank leverage “at precisely the wrong time,’’ and adopted bad and uncoordinated policy, he wrote.

Dimon, 56, defended a banking industry that has been besieged by new rules and public contempt after lax mortgage lending contributed to the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. He championed the use of derivatives and the right of banks to lobby lawmakers and hailed the US economy and corporations as engines of job growth.

“We have hundreds of rules, many of which are uncoordinated and inconsistent with each other,’’ Dimon said in the 38-page letter, his longest since becoming chief executive in December 2005. “Complexity and confusion should have been alleviated, not compounded.’’

Dimon called a cap on debit card transaction fees, a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act, “price-fixing by the government that will have the unfortunate consequence of leaving millions of Americans unbanked.’’ Stricter capital rules will make it “prohibitively more expensive’’ for banks to lend to consumers with subprime credit scores, about 40 percent of all Americans, he said.

“Jamie has taken on this mantle of defending this entire industry,’’ said Michael Driscoll, who worked for Dimon as a trader at the Smith Barney brokerage and is now visiting professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. “He’s combative by nature. And like a lot of these alpha dogs, when he’s backed into a corner, he’s going to bark back.’’

Still, Dimon said he agreed with the intent of most of the financial reforms passed by Congress. He said he supported giving regulators the authority to unwind failing firms and say on some executive compensation issues.

“But the result of the financial reform has not been intelligent design,’’ he wrote. “Simplicity, clarity, and speed would be better for the system and better for the economy.’’

Dimon said big businesses tend to not get enough credit for creating jobs in the United States.

“We often read that small business is the primary driver of new jobs - this is both incorrect and overly simplistic,’’ he wrote. Large corporations generally are more stable and resilient in a recession and companies with more than 500 employees account for 51 percent of all jobs, he wrote.

Most of the “bad actors’’ responsible for the financial crisis are gone, Dimon said in the letter.

Summary: Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, used his annual letter to shareholders to rail against “contrived’’ and confusing financial rules that he said may stymie lending.


In a boisterous speech in Fairfax, Va., today, President Obama made a renewed push for support among female voters, reiterating his commitment to women's health care and introducing a new diagnosis for what he cast as Mitt Romney's "backtracking" and "sidestepping" on issues like contraception and abortion: "Romnesia."

Mr. Obama, speaking before a crowd of 9,000 at a "Women's Health Security" event, accused his rival of attempting to muddy his positions on issues like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and free access to contraceptive care in an effort to confuse voters.

"Now that we are 18 days out...Mr. 'severely conservative' wants you to believe he was kidding on all things he said last year," the president said. "He's forgetting what his own positions are and he's betting that you will too. We've got a name this condition that he's going through. I think it's called Romnesia!"

Ticking off a list of symptoms that suggest one "might have Romnesia," the president offered up a solution.

"I'm not a medical doctor, but I do want to go over some of those symptoms so no one else catches it," he quipped. "If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you made over the six years you've been running for president, here's the good news: Obamacare covers preexisting conditions! We can fix you up! We've got a cure!"

With polls showing Mr. Obama and Romney in a dead heat in Virginia, both candidates are making a hard sell to voters they think could make or break it for them in a state that could be a tipping point in the electoral race to 270. Women, particularly, are being targeted by both sides, and the Obama campaign is increasingly zeroing in on health care issues like contraception and reproductive rights, as well as the Ledbetter act, in an attempt to paint Romney as out of touch with women's issues.

"Governor Romney wants to take us to policies more suited to 1950," Mr. Obama said. "Even his own running mate said he's kind of a throwback to the '50s - that's one thing we agree on. But he may not have noticed we're in the 21st century and in the 21st century a woman deserves equal pay for equal work."

Romney has said he supports equal pay for equal work and would not repeal the Ledbetter act - which, as Mr. Obama pointed out, was the first bill he signed into law as president. But Romney will not say whether he would have signed it had it landed on his desk in 2009, and some of his advisers have suggested that he would not have.

Seizing on Romney's "binders full of women" comment from the last presidential debate, Mr. Obama reminded the crowd that the former Massachusetts governor, if elected, would be in charge of tapping new justices to the Supreme Court.

"You don't want someone who needs to ask for binders full of women - you don't want that guy," he said. "You want a president who's already appointed two unbelievable women to the Supreme Court of the United States."

Mr. Obama also renewed his attack on what he's casting as his rival's "sketchy" plan to fix the economy.

"Governor Romney's got his sales pitch. We heard it the other night in the debate, he's been running around talking about his five-point plan for the economy," he said. "He wants you to believe that somehow he'll create 12 million jobs, cut taxes by $5 trillion, even though it favors the wealthiest Americans. None of this will add to the deficit. When folks who don't actually work for Governor Romney start crunching the numbers, turns out tax plan doesn't add up, jobs plan doesn't create jobs, deficit plan doesn't reduce the deficit."

He continued: "Virginia, you've heard of the New Deal, you've heard of the Square Deal, the Fair Deal, Mitt Romney's trying to give you a sketchy deal," he said, to cheers. "And it's really just a one-point plan, not a five-point plan. One point. Folks at the very top play by a different set of rules than all of you."

Finally, he urged voters to give him a chance to "finish the job" he started four years ago.

"I believe in you. I need you to keep believing in me," he said. "I want to finish the job."

Romney addressed the president's new line of attack at an evening rally in Daytona Beach, Fla. - though he refrained from directly referencing "Romnesia."

"They've been reduced to petty attacks and silly word games," Romney said to thunderous applause from a crowd of thousands, some of whom were in town for the 'Biketoberfest' motorcycle festival. "Just watch it. The Obama campaign has become the incredible shrinking campaign."

Romney, who focused for much of his speech on the struggling economy and his plan for job growth, attacked Obama for failing to lay out plans for a second term in office. "They have absolutely no agenda for the future," he said. "No agenda for America. No agenda for a second term. It's a good thing they won't have a second term."

That brought an immediate response from Obama campaign spokesman Danny Kanner, who said that "just part" of Obama's second-term agenda is to "double our exports, create a million manufacturing jobs, cut oil imports in half, recruit 100,000 math and science teachers, train 2 million workers at community colleges, and reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion."

Summary: At rally in Fairfax, the president goes after his rival for "forgetting what his own positions are," offers up a "cure": Obamacare


Inside the darkened shell of the original Filene’s store, Debra Taylor Blair glimpsed the beginning of a new life for downtown Boston.

Seated before her was an unusual crowd for this part of the city: more than 80 residential real estate brokers, all of whom had accepted the housing researcher’s invitation for a tour of the Filene’s site and others around the district where new housing is planned.

“It was the first time so many residential brokers have come out to take a fresh look at this area,” said Blair, president of LINK, a real estate information service. “We were totally shocked by the turnout.”

Promised for years, the revitalization of the city’s long-struggling downtown is finally underway, with construction of residential towers transforming the largely commercial area into a full-blown neighborhood. The supply of housing is planned to double to more than 10,000 units in coming years, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and there is a sudden influx of retail shops and restaurants.

“There are so many deals going on, so many new people and businesses interested in downtown,” said Randi Lathrop, the BRA’s deputy director of community planning. “Every day I get a phone call about someone else who wants to open here.”

The construction of homes is particularly important to changing the neighborhood, as it will bring around-the-clock activity to streets that today feel desolate after the workday ends.

Two residential towers are under construction and a third is planned at Filene’s, where developers have won approval for a 625-foot apartment and condominium tower that will become a new marker on the downtown skyline.

Meanwhile, Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s administration is pumping millions of tax dollars into road and sidewalk repairs, new lighting, and other upgrades. Those public works complement new investments by property owners, who recently received government approval to form a so-called business improvement district to provide better upkeep of the neighborhood. The major performance theaters have been modernized, and new technology tenants are bringing a younger workforce to the area.

The Kensington, an apartment tower being constructed near where Chinatown meets Downtown Crossing, will feature a pool, solarium, and yoga lounge.

Lisa Macalaster, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, said that downtown is finally emerging as a viable housing alternative to Boston’s other neighborhoods, where a shortage of available units is pushing buyers to look elsewhere.

“This feels like the next exciting rebirth of Boston,” she said during the recent tour of the area. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand for housing right now.”

The downtown’s renaissance remains a work in progress, however. Several streets are pockmarked with empty storefronts, and the area lacks a critical mass of modern shopping options. But five years after the Big Dig reshaped nearby streets, the next wave of improvements and construction is reaching into downtown’s side streets and pedestrian thoroughfares.

More than 600 housing units are under construction at the edge of what was once the Combat Zone.

Across the street from the strip club Centerfolds is the Kensington, a 381-unit apartment tower that will feature an outdoor pool, solarium, and yoga lounge for young, affluent renters.

A block away on Washington Street, a 15-story residential building is rising across from the Ritz Carlton Residences. The complex, known as Millennium Place, will include 256 luxury condominiums, a winetasting room, and outdoor gardens.

And soon to tower above them all is the Filene’s project, on which construction is scheduled to begin next year. Its developers have won approval for what would be the tallest residential building in Boston.

Estimated to cost $620 million, the project will add up to 600 housing units as well as offices and retail stores at the base of the tower and behind the facade of original 1912 Filene’s building.

Nearby, 59 Temple Place is being renovated as a 240-room boutique hotel, while Hamilton Co. is transforming an office building at 8 Winter St. into 50 mid-priced apartments. Even though construction is ongoing, 40 percent of the Winter Street units are rented.

Harold Brown, Hamilton Co.’s president, said that downtown has improved considerably since the mid-1990s, when Menino first began trying to spruce it up.

“If the downtown is seven or eight now, it was a two back then,” he said.

City officials are hoping the wave of construction brings much-needed retail staples, such as a supermarket, as well as stores that don’t currently operate in the area.

Among the retailers coming soon is Walgreen Co., which is opening an emporium next year at Washington and School streets with an expansive natural foods section, a sushi bar, and a hair and nail salon.

Pret A Manger , the British prepared foods chain, recently opened an outlet at Post Office Square.

The largest concentration of new retail space will be at the former site of Filene’s, where at least 100,000 square feet will be added — enough for a supermarket and multiple restaurants and stores. A former Barnes & Noble bookstore is also available across the street, and the owners of Lafayette City Center are planning to convert part of the office complex into retail space.

During the recent real estate tour, several brokers said they are beginning to recommend that clients look for properties downtown. Among the options is 45 Province St. Completed in 2009, the 137-unit tower initially struggled to attract buyers; today, 70 percent of its condominium units are sold or are under agreement.

“We’re finding a greater awareness of all the things going on in this part of the city,” said Wayne Lopez, the building’s sales director. “The downtown’s live-work dynamic is really starting to catch on.”

Summary: Promised for years, the revitalization of the city’s long-struggling downtown is finally underway, with construction of new residential towers transforming the largely commercial area into a full-blown neighborhood. The supply of housing is planned to double to more than 10,000 units in coming years, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which is also seeing a sudden influx of new retail shops and restaurants.


"It wasn't supposed to be this way," intones an announcer; "President Obama's plan: spend more... the economy's slowing... but our debt keeps growing."

The ominous music fades and the bleak shades of grey video ends with a message for the president and a pitch to potential donors: "Tell him for real job growth, cut the debt. Support the new majority agenda at NewMajorityAgenda.org."

The ad, "Tried," mimics the look, feel and sound of super PAC ads getting so much publicity for dominating the airwaves. But this one isn't from a super PAC. It was paid for by the non-profit Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies. The IRS classifies Crossroads GPS as a 501(c)(4), a "social welfare nonprofit." ProPublica's Kim Barker calls these c4s the "cousins" of the much-hyped super PACs, but they aren't the younger, smaller cousins. Barker reports that, overall, nonprofits have spent over $71 million so far on this election. Two conservative nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity have poured almost $60 million into television ads to date, outspending all super PACs put together (according to CMAG, Super PACs have spent an estimated $55.7 million on TV ads to date).

"Basically what you have is millions of dollars and it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars coming into this election where we are not going to know where that money is coming from," explained Barker on "Face the Nation."

Not only are these groups outspending super PACs, but also they're doing it with even less accountability to the voters they're purporting to help. These non-profit groups, unlike Super PACs, do not have to disclose their donors. Barker reports these groups have hidden behind weak reporting rules and used their vague to operate "exclusively for the promotion of social welfare," to pour millions of dollars into electioneering.

"Nobody's actually talking about it. It's just sort of accepted that this is the way it is. You have all of this anonymous money coming in and there's nothing we can do about it," said Barker. She continued, "we've seen it since 2010, we're going to see it to a much greater extent in 2012"

When applying for tax-exempt status, a number of these groups checked that they would not be engaging in political activity. Later filings show they did just that - in a big way. Other "groups submitted tax returns spelling out the millions they poured into the 2010 election, they had stopped operating, or disbanded and reformed under new names." ProPublica identified a number of groups, than when they did file with the federal government, gave conflicting reports to the IRS and the Federal Election Commission as to the amount of political activity the groups undertook.

With just 80-some days left until the election - and $70-some million already spent by these social welfare non-profits -experts tend to agree nothing will change the campaign finance landscape before November. Paul S. Ryan, senior counselor for the Campaign Legal Center summed the issue up for Barker: "The political players who are soliciting these funds and are benefiting from the expenditure of these funds will know where the money came from. The only ones in the dark will be American voters."

Read Barker's full article, How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare

Summary: ProPublica's Kim Barker explains her findings that social-welfare groups have outspent Super PACs in TV ad spending


Chris Hansen, the arena investor who wants to bring the NBA and NHL to town, says Seattle is one of the best -- if not the best -- cities in the country in which to start up two more teams. The population is more affluent than the average, there are lots of NBA fans and Seattle is the 12th-biggest U.S. television market.

But an expert panelist for the King County Council says Seattle is actually the third-worst city in the country for adding two more teams.

"Right now, given the teams that we have -- we have four right now, including the WNBA -- we rank No. 8 in terms of what I call sports saturation," local economist Dick Conway told a council committee Thursday. "If we add two more teams, then we become the third worst-saturated city with regard to professional sports.

"You don't come up with Seattle being the best place to put teams. That ends up being arithmetically impossible."

As a member of the County Council's arena review panel, Conway conducted what he called an "admittedly crude" analysis comparing Seattle to other U.S. cities with professional sports teams.

Using the Seahawks, Mariners, Sounders and Storm, he took the potential total yearly attendance of these four teams and found that each of the region's 3.5 million residents would have to attend 1.7 games per year to fill 5.9 million seats.

By adding NBA and NHL teams, Seattle's potential sports attendance would jump to 7.4 million a year. Residents would each need to go to 2.1 games a year to fill the seats. That would make Seattle the nation's third-most saturated sports market behind Denver (currently at 2.6 games per year) and Cleveland (2.4 games), Conway found.

Meanwhile, the New York City area has 11 pro teams, but its huge population of 19 million gives it a sports-saturation factor of 0.7 games, ranking it just 21st in the nation. And Los Angeles scored 1.0 for a rank of 17th, Conway said.

"Based on this test, Seattle does not compare favorably with New York or Los Angeles as a place for a new professional sports team," said Conway, who is on the UW's geography faculty and founded Dick Conway & Associates.

"This does not necessarily mean," he added, "that Seattle cannot handle two more teams. But it does suggest that the marketing of the basketball and hockey teams might be more difficult than currently presumed."

UW geography professor emeritus Bill Beyers conducted a separate analysis that came to a similar conclusion. But he added that two extra teams would likely divert some attendance away from Seattle's current sports teams.

Asking whether Seattle can support two additional teams, Beyers said, is a difficult question.

"We know from the past," Conway said, "that we can support the Sonics under pretty much the same situation." But adding hockey and a new arena complicates the matter.

Conway said further study, such as a survey of potential basketball and hockey attendees, may be warrented.

But it should be noted that, these days, attendance is no longer the largest factor in a sport's team's financial success. The majority of a team's revenue comes from broadcast contracts and sponsorship deals -- though the more attendance, of course, the better.

The arena panel's presentation to the King County Council's Budget and Fiscal Management Committee on Thursday also included an analysis of the proposed arena's potential effect on traffic -- both in Sodo and across the metro area.

That's been a point of contention for the Port of Seattle and other organizations that represent the shipping industry. They have warned that increased weeknight traffic in Sodo would hamper shipping operations and could be a "job killer" if the port lost business.

"The fact that sports traffic affects Sodo is reflected in the data," said Doug MacDonald, former Washington state secretary of transportation, who did his own analysis of potential arena traffic.

Weeknight events at a new arena would add about 6,000 cars to the road, mostly on Interstates 5 and 90, he said, which already carry 17,000 to 18,000 cars during rush hour. But because Hansen expects most arena traffic to occur between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., Seattle's rush hour would effectively be extended about another hour, MacDonald said.

That would happen between 71 and 101 times per year -- depending on whether the NBA, NHL or WNBA teams made their respective playoffs. If you add that to the number of weekday Mariners, Sounders and Seahawks games that already occur, there would be 136 to 180 weeknight events in Sodo per year. Other arena events, such as concerts, would push that number higher.

Considering all six Seattle teams, there would be six weeknights a year on which multiple sports events would occur, MacDonald said. During a banner year, if all six teams made it to the playoffs, there would be 22 weeknights with multiple games.

The county councilmembers -- and the Seattle city councilmembers, for that matter -- will have to ask themselves, "Is this what we want as a transportation scenario out of this opportunity?" MacDonald said.

He said the effects of extra congestion on port operations will need to be studied further. The port should clarify, he said, how shipping traffic might be affected if most cargo loading and unloading stops at 4:30 p.m. Hansen has said arena traffic wouldn't be an issue for the port because most games wouldn't start until 7 p.m.

Meanwhile, Conway said, Seattle's shipping industry is facing steeper competition from other ports and could be under threat by the widening of the Panama Canal. While transportation issues in Sodo should not be ignored, the Port of Seattle has even bigger things to worry about if it really wants to nearly double its cargo traffic in the next 25 years, as is the plan.

"If I were at the Port of Seattle," Conway said, "I would think the arena would be the least of what we are worried about."

Finances and a new arena

Hansen had been working behind the scenes with Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's office for nearly a year on a plan that could bring the NBA back to town -- and potentially the NHL. Once the conversation went public in February, it only took a few months for the city and county to announce a "memorandum of understanding" that spells out a proposed structure for the government's involvement with building a $490 million arena.

Under the agreement, the city and county would contribute $200 million total, obtained via bonds, to the arena project if Hansen can nail down both an NBA and NHL team. The city's share is $120 million; the county's is $80 million.

Of that total, $100 million is set aside to purchase the land -- which Hansen already owns and has estimated is worth around $50 million -- at the land's appraised value, whatever that ends up being. The remainder of that $200 million would go to purchasing the arena building once it's built, about two years later.

That's one scenario. If only an NBA team is involved, the city would contribute $115 million and the county would front just $5 million. The arena would still be built, with the extra cost being made up by Hansen's investment group. And the arena would still be capable of hosting professional hockey if Seattle eventually got an NHL team.

This makes for two 30-year public bonds: One for buying the land and one for buying the arena about two years later.

Over those 32 years, the bonds would be paid back by taxes on arena operations -- mainly through admissions and B&O taxes -- and by $2 million in annual rent from Hansen's group. If the taxes and base rent don't add up to the city and county's required annual bond payment, Hansen has pledged to make up the difference by paying extra rent.

Any annual surpluses would go to a public reserve fund for improvements to the arena, and eventually -- potentially -- into the general fund, where the city and county's revenue could be used for civic projects.

Justin Marlowe, a public fiscal management specialist at UW's Evans School of Public Affairs, did his own analysis as part of the King County Council's arena review panel and concluded that the proposed financing deal is fair for all parties and adequately protects public funds.

"As far as the risk allocation," Marlowe said Thursday, "this is one of the best allocations we've seen. ... The risks are appropriately shared."

"It is very unlikely," he added, "that you would see, at least in my opinion, any adverse effects on King County's general budget as a result of this proposal."

Marlowe also noted that Hansen's group would have a much more sustainable business plan if public financing were involved. In the wake of the recent economic downturn, it is difficult for private companies to get 30-year or even 20-year financing plans.

But Beyers said it is still unknown how a new sports arena with two new teams would affect the economy of the entire region. Much of the money generated would go to a handful of high-paid professional athletes, to Hansen's ownership group and to the city of Seattle.

The county should do a more in-depth study of the proposal's economic effects on the entire region, he said.

"Clearly, this project is a winner for the City of Seattle tax revenue stream, as the admission tax would be a large gain to city revenues," Beyers wrote in his presentation to the County Council. "However, I argue that the relevant geography for evaluating the fiscal impracts of this proposal is NOT the City of Seattle, but rather the larger regional economy."

The city and county councils are scheduled to hold a public hearing on the arena proposal at 5:30 p.m. on July 19 at Seattle City Hall.

Nick Eaton can be reached at 206-448-8125 or nickeaton@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/njeaton. Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news.

Summary: Chris Hansen, the arena investor who wants to bring the NBA and NHL to town, says Seattle is one of the best -- if not the best -- cities in the country in which to start up two more teams. But an expert panelist for the King County Council says Seattle is  actually the third-worst city in the country for adding two more teams.


Dramatic and sometimes haunting images of Cornish shipwrecks and rescues that were gathered by four generations of a family over 125 years have been bought by the National Maritime Museum.

The museum acquired an archive amassed by the Gibsons of Scilly when it came up for sale at Sotheby's in London.

Lord Sterling of Plaistow, chairman of the Royal Museums at Greenwich, called it a "remarkable archive" that "will enable us to create a series of exhibitions that will travel across the country, starting with the south-west. I know that the Gibson family are delighted that their family archive will remain and be displayed in this country."

The collection consists of 1,360 glass and film negatives recording more than 200 shipwrecks in the treacherous waters off Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

It was John Gibson who founded the family photographic business in the 1860s, taking his first wreck photograph in 1869. But it was his sons Alexander and Herbert – born four years apart but inseparable brothers – who perfected the technique of photographing the raw drama of wrecks. The images have been featured in newspapers, magazines and on TV and film, as well as in books by John Arlott, John Fowles and John Le Carré.

If a ship ran aground off the Cornish coast, a member of the Gibson family would be one of the first on the scene. The wrecks include that of the 3,500 ton German steamer Schiller in 1876, which caused 300 deaths, and happier stories such as the British-owned barque Glenbervie, which went ashore on rocks at Coverack – all the crew were saved plus much of its cargo of 600 cases of whisky and 400 cases of brandy.

The collection also includes ledgers of telegraphic messages sent from the Isles of Scilly, which contain human stories of disaster, courage and survival.

The NMM paid £122,500 for the collection.

Summary: National Maritime Museum buys archive of 1,360 photographs amassed over 125 years by one family in the Isles of Scilly


The streetsand squares in front of the building were illuminated with bonfires and pyrotechnics, and the interior fluttered with flags and banners. The decorations of the great Union mass-meeting of Thursday night still adorned the hall, and on the platform HIRSCHMAN's fine brass band discoursed patriotic music.

At 7 1/2 o'clock the assemblage was called to order by Mr. ALFRED ERBE, who, amid universal acclamation, nominated for Chairman, Prof. FRANCIS LIEBER, of Columbia College. The Chairman having, with a few appropriate remarks, assumed his duties, Mr. EMIL KIRCHNER proceeded to read a list of Vice Presidents, comprising the names of Augustus Weissmann, Prof. Koerner, Hugo Wesendonck, A.C. Rau, Dr. H. Brugmann, Col. E. Kapff, W. Hardt, Dr. Theo. A. Tellkampf, and 150 others, with 80 Secretaries.

Mr. OSCAR FALKE then read a series of eight resolutions, the first of which repeated professions of devotion to the Union and the Republic; the second declaring that the Republic is now struggling for existence, and, pending the struggle, individual rights must yield to the interests of universal freedom; the third pronouncing the ticket headed by the names of WADSWORTH and TREMAIN the only one proper to be sustained by German-American citizens, as it is that which will awaken no joy in Richmond; the fourth congratulating Germans on the valiant deeds of their brethren in the Union army of freedom; the fifth calling upon the State authorities to permit the soldiers of the cause to vote; the sixth enumerating with pride the names of the Union German Generals; the seventh enthusiastically indorsing the emancipation policy; and the eighth pledging every energy to the election of the Union candidates. These were adopted with tremendous cheering.

Gen. JAMES S. WADSWORTH was then introduced, and after the tremendous applause with which he was received had subsided, spoke as follows:

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the warmth and kindness of the present reception, and I wish it were in my power to address you all in the beautiful language of your fatherland. [Great applause.] It is a language which I have often desired to understand, and my only regret now is that I did not ere this endeavor to acquire it. Last Winter when I observed theenemy, and marched my pickets in his very face, and when I listened to the German soldiers' voices, I and others of our officers often hailed the accents of the language, and my disappointment was that I could not hail them in their own tongue. [Applause and loud cheers.] Yes, the gallant men who had come to defend this country at the peril of their lives. [Renewed cheers.] It is not my intention to detain you this evening with any lengthened remarks, as I am glad to learn that you will be addressed by able orators in your own language, and will merely content myself by making some re'erence to the present war. [Applause and cries of " Go on," from the dense assemblage.] The name of war, I detest, as much as any men living; and particularly for its destruction of human life, for its awful devastation, and for the waste which it causes. [Hear, hear.] The present war will be a very costly one to the country, but I fondly trust that as it has been commenced and carried on to the present, that it will be conducted well to the end. If it be, and continues to be fought heroically through, it will be recorded in all history and pronounced in all ages after it is ended -- and I hope it will terminate gloriously and in good results -- as one of the greatest wars that ever was waged on the face of the earth. [Vociferating cheers.] Let the vicissitudes be what they may -- let the end come -- and unless we are either subjugated or disgraced, there can be no doubt whatever but that human Slavery must come to an end. [Great Applause.] That in itself would be a good and desirable result, but that would not be the only good which the war is destined to accomplish --for this result would be followed by others still more benign and more magnificent, that no one would venture to question the good arising out of this war. (Hear, hear.] I ask you, gentlemen, to look at the area of this great country, larger in its extent than the whole of Western Europe, and see how it has been blighted and scourged by the awful institution of war. [Applause.] Labor appears to be ended through the introduction of this war; and where labor is useful and productive it distinguished the civil white man from the savage. [Loud cheers.] Yes; and I have no hesitation in saying that three-fourths of the area of this country possess climate and soil calculated to make its occupiers happier than even the State of New-York. One-fourth of it may prove malarial to us, but if it be so, it is suited for the African, the slave and their masters. [Great cheering.] The white man occupies three-fourths of this country now, and being only inhabited by ten or twelve millions, as compared with Europe, such a tract of country may look something like a wilderness. Then, I ask, can a war, which is intended to achieve the results I have referred to be called a wicked and unjust war, when its objects are to extend civilization and extend the privileges of the white man. [Applause.] Let the rebellion be crushed, and not only so, but let Slavery also be crushed with it. [Renewed applause.] Then, and not till then, shall we see the fields produce their fruits, the valleys rich with the vine, and even the very mountain tops abounding with everything that can support and nourish man. I detest Slavery in the abstract and I detest it also in every form it may assume in every man. There can be no questioning the fact, but that the war was brought on by the white men of the South, but the result of it will be, that it will prove the instrument which shall strike from under them the very foundation of their arrogance and power. [Deafening plaudits.] I am sure you have heard of the gallant SIEGEL.

Here enthusiastic cheers were given for Gen. SIEGEL, and afterwards for Gen. WADSWORTH.

Summary: The German Union men assembled in their might, last evening, at the Cooper Institute. At an early hour every corner of the edifice was densely thronged, a large number of ladies adding their smiles to the bright auspices of the occasion.


As Easy as 123 is a new series, in association with Santander, delivering simple advice on the questions that bother us most. The campaign is running in an online hub and six weekly features in relevant sections of the Saturday Telegraph (Weekend, Property, Sport, Motoring, Gardening). As Easy as 123 highlights the benefits of Santander's 123 Current Account and 123 Credit Card alongside helpful, how-to guides and simple 1-2-3 tips for easy, stylish living. Telegraph Experts answer the most searched for questions, covering a range of topics from family, property and motoring to gardening, food and sport.

For more information contact Chris Davy on 020 7931 3536

Summary: Santander's latest account and credit card campaign - as easy as 123.


05/04/2014 at 03:30 PM EDT

is still standing toe to toe with her new beau.

Though she is said to be simply "

" rapper French Montana, the 29-year-old reality star decided to party in Las Vegas over the weekend – with

and little sister Kylie Jenner, 16, in tow.

While Kardashian made an appearance at Beacher's Madhouse, the main event of her weekend was the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Marcos Maidana. The youngest Kardashian sister showed up to the fight with Montana and the two watched as Mayweather, with pal

close by, took down his opponent in a controversial win. (Jenner and Bieber

Following the fight, the couple stopped off at 35 Steaks + Martinis around 11:30 p.m., where Montana kept his arm around Kardashian as they led a party of 20 to a table and enjoyed dinner. Leaving the restaurant arm-in-arm, Montana calling Kardashian "baby" multiple times.

's after party at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Summary: The rumored couple attended the boxing match before eating out and partying with Diddy


Disney has found a way to make Frozen even better: The fan favorite and box office monster is coming to the ice.

Disney announced that the wintery film will be turned into an ice spectacular this year, and it’s set to tour across the country starting in September with a cast of 39 skaters.

While most Disney on Ice shows features vignettes with other Disney characters, the New York Times reports that 98% of this show will follow Frozen’s story line. Mickey and Minnie will host the show, which will feature a blizzard made possible with the help of 20 snow machines.

Summary: The wintery fan favorite will turn into an ice skating spectacular this September


The National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street is a building you could quite easily walk past and not notice. But it is a gem: a beautiful, elaborate, 1880s Gothic building of red sandstone, designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson.

Inside there is a lot of old oak and it has a gorgeous period feel. It houses Scottish portraits, from Mary Queen of Scots to the great and the good of modern Edinburgh, but I don't go there for the art so much as for the atmosphere. It is grand and imposing and mysterious. In fact, it's a bit like the Beast's castle in the Disney film of Beauty and the Beast - without such a grand staircase, admittedly. I like the fact that the gallery is immensely traditional and old-fashioned, not as slick as the other national galleries, which seem to cater largely for the tourist trade. It's a lovely place to be.

Our Dynamic Earth, near Holyrood and the site of the new parliament building, looks much like a mini Millennium Dome. I'm not sure we needed one of those, and we certainly don't need two. I think its architectural style is faddish and I can't see how it will last. Once you've seen the exhibition inside it - which is very good and very educational about the evolution of life on Earth - that's it. It is not a building to return to. It is too tent-like and the acoustics are very hollow.

I don't think it does any favours to the area it's in, either: mingling old and new styles has to be done so carefully and it doesn't work in this case. No disrespect to the people who work there - but demolish it.

· Karen Koren is artistic director of the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh.

Summary: Wonder: National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh  Blunder: Our Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh


FORTUNE — Less than six months after Apple AAPL launched its music streaming and recommendation service, iTunes Radio has taken the No. 3 spot in the crowded U.S. market, according to Edison’s monthly radio report.

Pandora P , with 80 million U.S. users and a 31% share, still dominates the field, and iHeart Radio, with a 9% share, is No. 2. But Apple’s entry, with more than 20 million users, is growing fast, according to a report Monday in Electronista that predicts iTunes Radio will overtake iHeart before the end of the year.

“This spells trouble for Spotify,” Electronista suggests. Spotify is bigger than iTunes in Europe but has had trouble gaining traction in the U.S.

“People want to own their music,” Steve Jobs famously declared in 2007, explaining why Apple was willing to sell iTunes songs through its archrival Microsoft MSFT but had no interest in getting into the subscription-based music streaming business. “Never say never,” he added, “but customers don’t seem to be interested in it. The subscription model has failed so far.”

The next year, Pandora and Spotify both set out to prove him wrong.

LINK: Statista: iTunes Radio already 3rd most popular music streamer

Summary: But Pandora, with a 31% market share, still dominates Internet music streaming.


Warm colours ... chopping cotton in White Plains, Green County, Georgia, June 1941. To see a slideshow of images from the exhibition, click

If you have an image of the 1930s, the odds are it will be in black-and-white. This was the decade of the Great Depression and in both Britain and the United States, photographers worked almost exclusively in monochrome. Many books, songs and documentaries of the era - from The Grapes of Wrath and The Road to Wigan Pier to Woody Guthrie and John Grierson - are suffused with the same austere spirit, exacting a full look at the worst (hunger, poverty and oppression) with the aim of changing conditions for the better. The work isn't uniformly grim, but even the more hopeful images seem to be filtered through a lens of dusty grey - like the cold, post-apocalyptic ash that overlays the landscape in Cormac McCarthy's gruelling new novel, The Road.

"Is there even one photograph of the depression in colour?" the critic Max Kozloff asked in 1975. The answer seemed to be no, despite the fact that colour photographs had been produced (with variable results) since 1861. But the Eastman Kodak company began marketing their revolutionary new colour film, Kodachrome, in 1936, and it was known that several professional photographers in the US - including Jack Delano, Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott - made use of it. So where did their transparencies go?

In 1978 a historian called Sally Stein solved the mystery - a classic case of bureaucratic misfiling - when she turned up 700 colour pictures taken for the Farm Security Administration (and its successor, the Office of War Information) in the archives of the Library of Congress. Even then, people were slow to respond to the significance of her discovery, doubtless from a prejudice that colour photography lacks the purity of monochrome.

Do the FSA's colour images change the way we see the 1930s? A little, yes. The received image of the US rural south, for instance, comes from the photos Walker Evans took of three sharecropper families in Alabama in 1936, which formed part of James Agee's classic book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. By contrast, the new exhibition offers a homesteader family from Pie Town, New Mexico, shot in colour by Russell Lee in 1940. They are no more smiling than their Alabama counterparts, and, to judge by their dugout log cabin home, can lay claim to even less affluence. But the bright hues of the clothes the children wear, reflected in their blue eyes and pink cheeks, convey a message of wholesome perseverance, not dirt and despair.

Boys fishing in a blue bayou in Louisiana, a Mississippi storefront with a red Coca-Cola advertising sign, a Texas schoolgirl with auburn hair being given a typhoid injection, a whitewashed church stranded in green fields in Kansas, the fun of a state fair under blue skies in Vermont - the colours are subdued rather than garish, but there's a warmth to them and a patchwork comprehensiveness (the united colours of America) that monochrome can't match. Most haunting of all is an image of five black workers chopping cotton on rented land in Georgia, each differently dressed but with their hoes leaning at the same angle. The work is hard, all the more so since their feet are bare, but the stony earth exudes a rich orange glow. In the background you can just make out a small child who carries the hope that for the next generation, life will be more rewarding.

If monochrome can make things look bleaker than they are, colour can make them look too cheery; that's the risk, so these photos would seem to suggest. But the mood of optimism may be just an accident of chronology: no colour photos taken for the FSA before 1939 have survived, so those we have all date from a period when - following the dictates of its leader in Washington, Roy Stryker - the project changed direction, away from highlighting social hardship on the land, towards celebrating patriotic unity. "Emphasise the ideas of abundance," Stryker wrote in a letter to one of his photographers, Jack Delano, in September 1940. "Pour maple syrup over it - you know - mix well with white clouds and put on a sky-blue platter. I know your damned photographer's soul writhes, but to hell with it. Do you think I give a damn about a photographer's soul with Hitler at our doorstep? You are nothing but camera fodder to me."

Luckily, the men and women shooting for Stryker were more than supine propagandists. They knew a good image when they saw one, regardless of whether or not it helped the New Deal or built national pride. By the end of 1941, though, with the US belatedly at war, patriotism was unavoidable. Most of the photos from the next two years show people in cities working with machines, rather than rustics struggling on the land. Many are women, soldering wire, turning lathes and tightening bolts on bombers.

According to Gary Ross's film Pleasantville, America was repressed and monochrome until the late 1950s, and would have remained so for much longer but for two American teenagers whisked back in time from the 1990s. It's a nice jokey premise. But now we know that Ross was out by two decades. America got colour - in all its sumptuous splendour - in 1939.

· Bound for Glory: America in Colour 1939-1943 opens at the Photographers' Gallery, Great Newport St, London WC2, on December 8. The complete collection of 170,000 FSA photographs is available at lcweb.loc.gov/rr/print

Summary: We know the American Depression through black and-white photographs. Now you can see it in colour. By Blake Morrison


When the chair finally ended the presentation, we looked at each other in disbelief. We weren’t just unsure about the proposal, but also unsure of the person who brought the proposal. I think you can guess how we voted.

Don’t let this be you.

People present to corporate boards for many reasons—they could be suggesting a new direction for the company, explaining a complex legal issue that needs to be decided quickly, or simply giving an update on an on-going project. But boards come in all shapes and sizes, be they school boards, neighbourhood watch boards, apartment boards, non-profit boards, employee committees.

No matter the context, the principles of presenting to decision making bodies are the same, and getting it right is crucial. It’s not as difficult as it sounds, so long as you keep some guidelines in mind. Here are nine do’s and six don’ts of being effective:

Clear, Concise, and to the Point

Think of your presentation as a memo, not a novel. Board members thrive on facts presented in a clear concise manner. Even if you leave your presentation without getting the answer yes you hoped for, you will at least leave the people at the table with a good impression of you. And that will go a long way if you come back to the board with a revised proposal.

Give it a go and let me know if it helped, and if you know someone who preparing to give a presentation, clip this and send it to them. Chances are not only will they be grateful, but so will the board members who hear the presentation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the do’s and don’t of board presentations, as well as any additions you think people should know. Tweet them to me at @lucymarcus and to @bbc_capital and we’ll share them. Also, head on over to BBC Capital’s Facebook page and we can talk about it there too.

Also, let me know your board questions and I’ll try to address them in future columns.

Lucy Marcus is an award winning writer, board chair and non-executive director of several organisations. She is also the CEO of Marcus Venture Consulting. Don’t miss another Above Board column by subscribing here. You can also follow Lucy on Twitter @lucymarcus.

To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

Summary: Whether you are presenting to a local school board or a Fortune 500 company, Lucy Marcus reveals the nine doâs and six donâts of being heard.