This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at entrepreneur.com.

As so-called unicorns — or private companies that boast valuations in excess of $1 billion — become more and more commonplace, today’s IPO market has slowed significantly. If companies can continue to raise gobs of private equity, the thinking goes, then why withstand the scrutiny and liability of going public?

A handful of bold-faced IPOs have played out recently to mixed results. Alibaba raised $25 billion in the largest stateside offering of all time last September, though Etsy ETSY , following a successful April debut, has since plummeted to become the worst performing IPO of 2015.

Nevertheless, more offerings could be on the way, according to Pitchbook. The private equity and venture capital research firm has compiled a list of 10 U.S.-based companies that are likely to go public over the course of the next year.

Given that most companies tend to IPO after a Series C round of funding and after having raised $200 million in total, Pitchbook narrowed its findings accordingly. Additionally, IT and health care tend to be the most popular business sectors, accounting for 28 percent and 39 percent of all VC-backed IPOs over the past 10 years.

Check out the full list of 10 below:

Year founded: 2009 VC money raised: $5.9 billion Valuation: $42.8 billion

About: Perhaps no prospective IPO has been more fervently anticipated than that of Uber. As the second most valuable venture-backed company in the world — second only to Chinese electronics company Xiaomi — the ride-hailing platform currently operates in 57 countries. Uber is also eyeing a $2 billion round stateside and a $1 billion Chinese investment that could catapult its valuation to upwards of $50 billion.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer — Bloomberg via Getty Images

Year founded: 2010 VC money raised: $1.3 billion Valuation: $11 billion

About: Digital scrapbooking service Pinterest counts a reported 70 million users worldwide and most recently raised a $186 million Series G funding round in May. Despite the San Francisco-founded company’s rapid growth, CEO Ben Silbermann said last year, “We haven’t been focused on [an IPO] right now, because I think it’s pretty early for us. And I wouldn’t say it’s the end goal for the company.”

Tom Reilly, chief executive officer of Cloudera, attending the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on July 9, 2014.Photograph by Daniel Acker — Getty Images

Year founded: 2008 VC money raised: $1 billion Valuation: $4.1 billion

About: Cloudera is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of Apache Hadoop software, which stores and processes data for businesses. Intel INTC purchased an 18 percent stake in the company last year for $740 million, and Cloudera’s chief competitor, Hortonworks, went public in December.

“We’re of the size and scale that we could be a successful public company right now,” Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly said in February. “But we’re so well backed that we don’t need to go public to have access to financing.”

Year founded: 2010 VC money raised: $863.9 million Valuation: $3 billion

About: Moderna is a biotech company whose research revolves around messenger RNA to develop treatments for oncology, infectious and rare diseases. The company holds the distinction of having raised the largest single round of VC funding ever for a biotech startup: $450 million last January.

While Moderna doesn’t yet have a single drug in human trials, the company has garnered the eye of venture capitalists because its revolutionary proposition is to help people create medicine within their own cells — leading to a massive variety of potential treatments that are faster to test and cheaper to buy.

Tom Gonser, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of DocuSign. Photograph by Stephen McCarthy – Corbis

Year founded: 2003 VC money raised: $527.7 million Valuation: $3 billion

About: The electronic signature technology firm, which counts more than 50 million users across 188 countries, is the oldest company on this list. Initially created for real estate agents, DocuSign has come to be used in myriad sectors, including insurance, consumer goods, enterprise sales, financial, pharmaceuticals and more.

While reports of the company going public have been swirling for years, DocuSign said in May that it had indefinitely postponed an IPO when it raised $233 million from late-stage investors.

Year founded: 2010 VC money raised: $458.7 million Valuation: $2 billion

About: Domo, a computer software firm based in American Fork, Utah, vends a business management platform that organizes company data into clear visualizations that are easy to share in real-time.

After announcing a $200 million funding round last April, Domo’s CEO Josh James said that the team was putting processes into place to take the company public by year’s end. Last August, for instance, the company hired CFO Bruce Felt, who has already overseen several IPOs in his career.

Year founded: 2005 VC money raised: $360.9 million Valuation: $1.9 billion

About: Prosper is a peer-to-peer lending community of roughly 2 million members, where users can invest in and request personal loans priced between $2,000 and $35,000.

A handful of the traditional banks that may have once be considered Prosper competitors participated in a $165 million funding round last April, including the investment arm of Credit Suisse CS , JPMorgan Chase JPM , and SunTrust STI . The company’s biggest peer-to-peer competitor, Lending Club LC , went public last year in an offering that exceeded expectations.

Brian O’Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of AppNexus. Photograph by Maryanne Russell — AppNexus

Year founded: 2007 VC money raised: $313.2 million Valuation: $1.6 billion

About: New York-based AppNexus, which provides a real-time online advertising platform, acquired rival Yieldex in a $100 million deal last March that the Wall Street Journal said had “potential IPO ramifications.” Prior to that acquisition, AppNexus purchased cross-device advertising startup MediaGlu, ad-serving platform Open AdStream and French viewability shop Alenty for a collective total of over $200 million in 2014.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and founding developer of WordPress. Getty Images

Year founded: 2005 VC money raised: $205.7 million Valuation: $1.2 billion

About: Best known as the parent company of blogging host WordPress, Automattic raised $160 million last month in its first investment since 2008, led by Insight Venture Partners. Though raising large, late-stage rounds often points to an impending IPO, CEO Matt Mullenweg told the Wall Street Journal at the time, “We now have the liquidity to build the company to the next level without needing to turn to the public for money.”

Year founded: 2005 VC money raised: $283.6 million Valuation: $873.2 million

About: Oportun, formerly known as Progreso Finaciero, provides loans to the Hispanic community to help those without a credit history establish credit. Reports began to circulate in April that the company, which operates online and counts 140 locations across California, Texas and Illinois, was working with Goldman Sachs GS and Morgan Stanley MS on an IPO that could value the company at $1 billion.

More from Entrepreneur: • What You Need to Know About Those New Blue Price Tags on Pinterest • At SXSW: How Biotech Can Overcome Obstacles • How Big Data Helps Us Keep Pace (Infographic)

Summary: Keep an eye on the IT and health care sectors.


A woman checks her phone while at the computer. Cultura RF / Getty Images stock

Are gadgets making us dumber? Two new studies suggest they might be. One found that people who are interrupted by technology score 20 percent lower on a standard cognition test. A second demonstrated that some students, even when on their best behavior, can't concentrate on homework for more than two minutes without distracting themselves by using social media or writing an email.

Interruptions are the scourge of modern life. Our days and nights are full of gadgets that ping, buzz and beep their way into our attention, taking us away from whatever we are doing.

We've known for a while that distractions hurt productivity at work. Depressing research by Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, says that typical office workers only get 11 continuous minutes to work on a task before interruption. With smartphones reaching near ubiquity, the problem of tech-driven multitasking — juggling daily tasks with email, text messages, social media etc — is coming to a head.

Multitasking has been the subject of popular debate, but among neuroscientists, there is very little of that. Brain researchers say that what many people call multitasking should really be called “rapid toggling” between tasks, as the brain focuses quickly on one topic, then switches to another, and another. As all economics students know, switching is not free. It involves "switching costs" — in this case, the time it takes to re-immerse your mind in one topic or another.

Researchers say only the simplest of tasks are candidates for multitasking, and all but one of those tasks must involve automaticity. If you are good at folding laundry, you can probably fold laundry and watch TV at the same time, for example.

Despite this concern among brain scientists, many people overestimate their ability to multitask, such as the college student who thinks he can text and listen to a lecture simultaneously. He cannot, says brain expert Annie Murphy Paul, who writes "The Brilliant Blog."

"Multitasking while doing academic work — which is very, very common among young people — leads to spottier, shallower, less flexible learning," Paul warned in a recent column.

The two studies mentioned above underscore this point.

In the first, Alessandro Acquisti and Eyal Peer at Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction lab recruited 136 college students to take a standard test of cognitive abilities, and invented a controlled method of distraction. Test-takers were interrupted via instant message, which they were told contained important additional instructions, during the exam.

(The research was conducted in concert with research for The Plateau Effect, a book I recently co-authored with Hugh Thompson.)

The interrupted group answered correctly 20 percent less often than members of a control group.

The Carnegie Mellon test might seem a bit contrived, however, because the control group was pretty unrealistic. It's hard to find a group of college students who could take a test without being interrupted by gadgets.

Larry Rosen, a professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, published a study in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior that attempted to quantify how often students of all ages are distracted by technology while studying. Even under ideal circumstances, the results were dismal.

Rosen's observers followed 263 students into their normal study environments — bedroom, library, den — and told them to work on an important school assignment for 15 minutes. Even knowing they were being watched, the students couldn't resist texting or using social media. So-called "on-task" behavior started declining at about the two minute mark, and overall, only 65 percent of the time was used on schoolwork.

"We really assumed we set up a situation where people would try to impress us," said Rosen, an expert in the psychology of technology. "Frankly, I was appalled at how quickly they became distracted."

'Problem built into the brain'

The two studies, published closely together, generated strong reaction, particularly from students.

"Yes, we text in class, but if my grade in that class is and A or a B I don’t see why it’s a problem," wrote one student to Paul.

It's a big problem for both students and adults, Paul counters, for plenty of reasons. Assignments inevitably take longer when learners split their time between tasks, she says. All that task-switching wears out the brain and makes learners more tired and less competent. Most important, several studies have shown that information learned while partially distracted is often quickly forgotten, so the learning is tragically shallow.

The key to transferring new information from the brain's short-term to long-term memory is a process called "encoding." Without deep concentration, encoding is unlikely to occur, explained Nicholas Carr in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.”

So Paul is among a group of researchers who worry that the digital divide is not about the gadget haves and have nots, but rather about those who can resist the constant distracting tug of technology and those who cannot. She compares it to the famous marshmallow test, which shows that children who can delay eating one marshmallow for 10 or 15 minutes on the promise of gaining a second one are the most likely to succeed later in life. In a new "marshmallow" test, educators or employers might test to see how long people can resist "a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone."

"There are those people who think that multitasking is simply the way life is now and we should be focusing on getting better at it ... that we are a bunch of old fogies who don't understand," Paul said. "But scientifically, there is no evidence for that. There are fundamental biological limits to what the brain can pay attention to. This is a problem built into the brain."

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.


September 6, 2013 | 8:37pm

Mali native Cheick Diallo has more than 25 college basketball scholarship offers. Photo: Under Armour/Kelly Kline

Cheick Diallo came to New York from Bamako, Mali, with grand dreams of playing big-time college basketball and one day reaching the NBA.

Those lofty aspirations don’t seem so unrealistic now.

Two years after leaving home and three years after picking up a basketball for the first time, the 6-foot-9 dynamo has emerged as one of the top prep juniors in the country.

After a big sophomore year at Our Savior New American on Long Island, Diallo spent the summer playing alongside the top prospects in the country and impressing virtually everyone with his shot-blocking ability, relentless rebounding and improving versatility on offense. His signature trait, however, is his always-on, seemingly electric-powered motor.

“Every game or practice he plays it like it’s a championship game,” Our Savior assistant coach Eric Jaklitsch said of Diallo, who led local Team Scan to a big summer on the AAU circuit and was the MVP of the NBPA Top 100 camp.

In a pair of all-star games in August in the city featuring top-tier prospects, Diallo stood out, getting the better of Las Vegas phenom Stephen Zimmerman, ranked as the top junior in the country.

“I like competing against the best players,” said Diallo, ranked sixth overall by Rivals.com. “I need to be No. 1 in the country.”

Diallo holds more than 25 scholarship offers, Jaklitsch said, from the likes of Ohio State, St. John’s, Arizona, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Kansas. A decision is a long way off.

“He’s the No. 1 player in New York — regardless of class,” said Terrence “Munch” Williams, his AAU coach with Team Scan. “It’s about what he does. That kid performs every single game and he brings intangibles every single game. There’s not a lot kids in the country who are going to get you a double-double every night, get three or four blocks. He takes no plays off. He’s efficient [on offense]. You can’t really find anything wrong with him.”

Leaving his parents and five older siblings in Mali was a “hard” decision, Diallo said. He quit soccer in favor of basketball at his father’s suggestion and was spotted playing in a local league by a friend of Jaklitsch.

His transition was made easier by going to Our Savior with Mali native Kassoum Yakwe. Current St. John’s sophomore Felix Balamou, another French speaker who was at Our Savior for Diallo’s freshman year, also helped him adjust to life in America.

Diallo has dazzled not only on the court. He has excelled in his classes, putting him on pace to qualify academically for college, according to Jaklitsch, and his English has drastically improved. He’s well-liked at the Long Island private school, described by Jaklitsch as a “warm, fun-loving kid” who lets his actions speak louder than his words.

“He’s a really diligent kid,” the coach said.

Bishop Loughlin senior shooting guard Khadeen Carrington visited Seton Hall unofficially on Thursday and plans to see Texas A&M, Cincinnati and Vanderbilt shortly. He wants to use one of his five officials visits to Seton Hall as well, his mother Lima Dufont said.

“It was really nice,” she said. “We want to go back.”

Guard Isaiah Whitehead, the top prospect in the city, will take an unofficial visit to Seton Hall next Saturday. Minnesota and Pittsburgh will be in Coney Island to see him on Wednesday.

Highly ranked Bronx wing Terry Larrier was scheduled to take an official visit to Miami this weekend, but it was canceled because of a scheduling snafu, said Williams, his AAU coach. Larrier will take an official visit to VCU next weekend.

“It’s all about how he feels,” Williams said of Larrier, who attends The Phelps School in Pennsylvania. “If he’s in love with VCU, he’ll pick it. If not, he’ll look at something else and weight everything.”

Larrier, a senior, recently cut his list to UConn, VCU, Miami, Florida, Seton Hall and Florida State.

Paul Jorgensen, a point guard from Don Bosco Prep (N.J.), committed to George Washington on Thursday, picking the Colonials over Fairfield, Harvard and Lehigh.

St. Mary’s forward Jessie Govan picked up a scholarship offer from Seton Hall. The highly ranked junior also counts Arizona, Fordham, Cincinnati and Connecticut among his suitors.

Point guard Ethan Telfair, a former star at Lincoln and the younger brother of NBA free-agent guard Sebastian Telfair, signed with JUCO Northwest Florida.

Summary: Cheick Diallo came to New York from Bamako, Mali, with grand dreams of playing big-time college basketball and one day reaching the NBA.Those lofty aspirations don’t seem so unrealistic now.Two yea…


David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions, specialists in building industry voice through storytelling and social media. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be seen and heard regularly on Cranky Geeks, KQED, and ABC Radio.

Wouldn’t it be great if your company was as big a news story as Michael Jackson or maybe the Presidential election? Making yourself that popular is possible if you can somehow figure out a way to insert your business into that hot news story.

Traditional advertising is a drastic form of manipulation. It, like this paragraph, interrupts an audience’s current mindset and asks them to pay attention to you the moment they see and hear your advertisement.

Instead of trying to force the public to shift their thinking, companies are making the shift with their product, story, or marketing message just to ride the wave of current trends. Such is the case with the following five companies who saw an opportunity to connect their business with some big news story or hot meme, and then they capitalized on it.

In the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal, mobile game developer Cellufun created a cell phone game called "Made Off" where aspiring Madoffs recruit their friends to invest Cellufun's virtual currency in each other's Ponzi schemes. To ensure quick recognition, Cellufun ran on-deck advertisements with their carrier partners.

While designed to be silly, be forewarned that making comical content so close to a tragedy is rarely wise. Many people are still hurting and may not find such a game funny. Often, making games or jokes around tragedies works if you let some time pass. For example, Call of Duty successfully mimics World War II, while video game attempts at the Iraq war have been flops or stirred way too much controversy.

Regardless of obvious warnings, the tongue-in-cheek Madoff hook worked. Many media outlets, such as Fox News and ABC News Now, picked up the game as a news story. The comical bent on the financially tragic story obviously humored many people as "Made Off" became Cellufun's most popular game to date. In two weeks, 25,000 people downloaded and joined the game of which 40% spent real money to purchase FunCoins which give players additional capabilities such as attracting new investors, explained Keith Katz, Cellufun's VP of marketing.

Even though they designed the game to be cutthroat, users were so accustomed to cooperative play that they refused to play ruthlessly. Katz said he saw a lot of customers with blog posts that said, “Invest in my fund and I’ll RTF” (RTF is “return the favor” in Celluspeak). While shocked with the game’s cooperative play, Cellufun is still very happy with the outcome.

Expect more culturally hip games from Cellufun in the future, said Katz, "Because our production team is so nimble, we can quickly seize upon events that have struck a cultural nerve and build a game or application around it that our users will respond to. We’ll continue to do this moving forward."

The economy is hurting everyone, especially the tourism industry. Why spend money on frivolous holidays when you have more critical needs? That’s the common thinking, but Eric Garvey, Senior Marketing Director for Georgia’s Jekyll Island Authority, a visitor’s bureau for the family resort spot, wanted to change that common thinking.

Last month the Jekyll Island Authority launched an advertising campaign that argued, “Memories won’t wait for an economic recovery.” Time is passing by and even if you think you can’t afford a vacation, you have to figure out a way to do it.

To entice people to come to the island, the Jekyll Island Authority is offering a stimulus package with $200 worth of passes to island attractions, if visitors promise to share their Jekyll Island memories – photos, videos, and stories – on the Jekyll Island Facebook Page.

The promotion has been very successful, with more than 100 people signing up for Jekyll Island vacations. The Facebook Page has also become very active, swelling from 300 fans in May to close to 1,900 today. The visitor’s bureau is beginning to make some inroads into Twitter (@Jekyll_Island), but right now are finding that more visitors are congregating around photos and memories on Facebook.

For people who would in the past only go to Jekyll Island’s beach, the escape passes are tempting them to explore other aspects they wouldn’t necessarily experience such as tours of the historic district, golf, The Georgia Sea Turtle Center, and the Summer Waves water park.

Airbnb.com (formerly known as AirBed & Breakfast) dubs itself the "eBay of space.” It’s a listing service that lets people or businesses rent out their extra space to travelers by the night. It’s a risky notion since most people first look for hotels and rental properties when they travel. They often don’t even consider a service such as Airbnb.com. And most people only pull out their airbed when friends come over. They don’t think to rent it out by the day.

That lack of consideration of Airbnb.com’s listing service completely changed with the housing shortage at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Demand of filling the 80,000 seat Invesco Field severely outstripped Denver’s already sold out supply of 30,000 hotel rooms. The lack of places to stay created national news, and Airbnb.com was there to deliver a well-timed solution. Having yet to officially launch Airbnb.com, the DNC and the subsequent housing shortage story generated substantial press and brand awareness for Airbnb.com.

The same housing crunch story repeated itself again, but at a larger scale for Obama’s Presidential Inauguration. This time there were a million people coming to DC and definitely not enough hotel rooms in DC or nearby Philadelphia.

To get the buzz going, Airbnb.com started conversing with blogs and then moved to local television and newspapers in Denver and DC. Once they had enough supply they targeted national press and Obama groups to get the word out nationally. Airbnb.com got coverage on CNN, The Today Show, E! News, CBC, Conde Nast Portfolio, and Mashable. And for an extra hook, they created a fake cereal called Obamaos with its own catchy little song, and sold the cereal on their site.

For both events, hundreds of local Denver and DC residents listed their properties on Airbnb.com, resulting in hundreds of booked reservations. The DNC and the Inauguration generated thousands of dollars of revenue for a just-out-of-the-gate startup. They also made a nice chunk of change selling 1,000 Obamaos for $40 a box which have now become collectors’ items on eBay currently selling for over $300 a box.

Laura Hale runs the Fan History Wiki, an editable site that covers the history of fandom. By its nature, it tracks all entertainment stories, even the hot trending ones. In an effort to improve traffic, the wiki has been trying to capitalize on some bigger entertainment news stories (e.g. Michael Jackson and Jon and Kate Plus 8) and niche stories (e.g. Race Fail 2009).

But what really makes the site thrive is contributions. And the desire to contribute to Fan History Wiki is not just a function of traffic. For example, Hale's wiki will get mentions on other sites such as Fandom Wank. The recognition brings in huge spikes in traffic that don’t translate into any noticeable increase in site contributions or conversions.

But for these three big stories, Hale actively promoted them throughout the fandom blogosphere. She believes what drives Fan History Wiki's traffic is they're able to pick up on aspects of stories that the mainstream media miss. For example, in the case of the King of Pop, she saw a marked increase in traffic of people looking for Michael Jackson fan fiction.

Hale noticed when promoting these hot news stories, when people are all a buzz and talking a lot about the issues, they need a place to vent. Fan History Wiki gives people an opportunity to express pent up frustration and excitement through a live editable document. The call out works. During hot trending stories such as Michael Jackson and Jon and Kate plus 8, contributions increased as much as 50 percent, even though traffic only increased 5 percent.

New wiki editors are Hale’s most desirable traffic as those users have the highest conversion rates. They end up returning, reading, and contributing more.

When the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You” came out, it inspired J.T. O’Donnell, founder of the Gen Y career site, CAREEREALISM, to write a blog post entitled, "Why HR's Just Not That Into You."

Riding the relationship themes of the movie, O’Donnell created parallels to the world of connecting with business’ human resources departments. O’Donnell believed the article played well for a number of reasons:

- The demographics of the movie and her site, 18-40, were the same.- Even if you hadn’t read the book or seen the movie, if you were in that age group, you knew what it was about.- The book/movie title are sarcastic and memorable.- Career coaches often refer to a job search being like dating.- The 18-40 age group is being impacted the most by the current recession and they’re bitter and confused about it.

Thanks to retweeting and blog reposting, CAREEREALISM’s Technorati ranking and Google page rankings jumped considerably. The result was a 40 percent traffic boost for that week, with that dropping down to a continuing 10 percent overall increase in traffic. That jump in traffic translated into increased business with a string of advertising requests, professionals asking if they could guest blog, and a spike in sales of the CAREEAREALISM guidebook. Plus, the increased requests for career coaching help, prompted the launch of CAREEREALISM University, a private career network that teaches members how to execute an effective job search, O’Donnell said.

“Using the news as a foundation to write a post gave us some intense results that helped us understand and improve what we do at CAREEREALISM.com. It was a very valuable learning experience that has since helped us further define our approach with readers,” said O’Donnell.

By shifting your company's messaging and storytelling to the current news and trends, you're feeding off of existing editorial work that has already proven to attract attention. To successfully take advantage of huge news stories and hot memes for your business, ask yourself three questions:

1. What’s the public talking about?2. What's your relevant take on the issue?3. Can that viewpoint somehow be connected to your business?

Has your business ever capitalized on a hot news story or meme? Or maybe another company did it and you were so very impressed. If so, I'd love to hear the story.

For more analysis on how your business can capitalize on hot trends, I’ve written a step-by-step guide on how to ride the wave of a hot meme.

He's Just Not That Into You image via Wikipedia

Summary: David Spark (@dspark) is the founder of Spark Media Solutions, specialists in building industry voice through storytelling and social media. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can...


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WATCH: Hillary Clinton tells ABC's David Muir it was a mistake for her to use personal email.

Hillary Clinton today again stood by her belief that she did not send or receive classified information while she was secretary of state, despite an FBI investigation that concluded otherwise.

“I stand by what I said,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told ABC News’ David Muir today when asked about her use of a personal email server during her tenure at the State Department. “I did not send or receive any material marked classified, and I am very grateful for the hard work and professionalism of the FBI and the Department of Justice in resolving this matter.”

Last week, FBI Director James Comey said that 110 emails in 52 email chains were determined to contain some form of classified information at the time they were sent. He went on to specify that Clinton was on seven of those chains that were classified as top secret. (During a hearing before Congress this week, however, Comey clarified that three of those emails were not properly marked and therefore could have been missed by Clinton.)

The FBI investigation concluded that Clinton should not be charged criminally for her actions, but that she was “extremely careless” nonetheless.

Clinton brushed off this characterization today, arguing the State Department may have marked material classified that shouldn’t have been marked as such.

“I think Director Comey clarified that and certainly the State Department did. In fact, the State Department called the presence of a little ‘C’ in the documents in question ‘human error,’ that they should not have been there. They were not meant to classify something that ordinarily was not classified,” she said in the interview with Muir.

“I have said, and I repeat, that it was a mistake to use personal email,” she added. “I regret that but I am very glad that this is behind us now and we are moving forward.”

Summary: “I did not send or receive any material marked classified," she told David Muir.


For six years, John Serafini served his country as a US Army infantry officer. These days, Serafini, 40, serves as senior vice president at Allied Minds Inc., a Boston-based holding company that commercializes technologies spawned at major universities and federal research labs. He’s also a parent and philanthropist, and he takes both responsibilities very seriously.

1. Allied Minds was launched in 2006 to turn neglected laboratory research into profitable products.

“We believed that there was an arbitrage opportunity, essentially. There were fantastic technologies being produced by universities, but there weren’t dedicated entrepreneurs or investment groups or venture capital investors standing by to commercialize the intellectual property.

“Unless there are groups like Allied Minds that are willing to work with the raw building blocks of technology and build a company from scratch, a lot of that is just going to sit on a shelf and rot.

“There’s well over $100 billion worth of federal funding going into research, development, testing, and evaluation. . . . We are so far from even beginning to extract just a small percentage of value, on the commercial side, from that federal IP [intellectual property].”

2. Allied Minds looks for innovations that have both military and commercial applications.

“We were working with various groups within the US government to embed our mobile security technologies into Android devices to make them extremely secure. . . . If we can be successful in deploying that technology into areas of the federal government with the highest technical standards, then I can feel very comfortable that I can then bring that same technology to the banking industry or highly regulated industries or the utilities.”

3. Serafini holds Harvard University master’s degrees in business and public administration. He also served with the US Army in South Korea. He’s an honors graduate of West Point who studied systems engineering and English.

“My father was an English major. He became a lawyer. At the time, I had designs on becoming a lawyer myself. . . . In the English major at West Point, you have access to classes in the arts, philosophy, and literature. I’ve always believed that a well-rounded, well-read individual can become an even better officer in their ability to lead.

“I think my thesis was a comparative analysis of ‘Huck Finn’ and Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road,’ two books I found fascinating. . . . I thought that was a good way to expand my horizons a bit.”

4. He’s reading the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius, one of Rome’s better emperors, and father of Commodus, one of the worst. Serafini hopes to avoid Marcus Aurelius’s parenting blunders.

“As a father, you think about what you teach your children. I find it so fascinating that Marcus Aurelius lived this amazing life, and he had such great thoughts . . . but he utterly failed in his ability to transfer that knowledge to his son. So how do I, as a father, begin to teach my kids, my three children, the kinds of things that are stuck up in my head, that I want them to believe in, and not become the next Commodus? What’s the worth of having these great thoughts and publishing them, if you can’t pass them on to your own children successfully?”

5. Serafini sets aside time for several good causes. He serves as a trustee of the Judge Baker Children’s Center and the West Point Class of 1998 Memorial Scholarship Fund.

“You actively have to cordon off time in your schedule for doing things that you believe are important. So I’ve been blessed to be able to put away a little bit of time each month and each quarter to focus on Judge Baker, but there’s a couple of other nonprofits that I work with.

“We built a nonprofit specifically to support our classmates and the families of our classmates we lost — my West Point class of ’98. I’ve been so pleased to be able to build that organization with my partners. A few of us, right after our 10th reunion at West Point, we realized that we’ve lost some of our classmates. I think now, we’ve lost nine or 10 individuals. We felt the need to create some kind of a safety net to support their beneficiaries, their families, but also to be able to support each other, our living classmates who might need some help. . . . We’ve probably committed $250,000 to our beneficiaries.”

Summary: Serafini works at Allied Minds Inc., which commercializes technologies spawned at major universities and federal research labs.


I was about to have the most wonderful Fourth of July ever—folding all my vintage tank tops with the KonMari method while I watched season four of Orange is the New Black—when I got a text. It was Taylor Swift’s asswiftant: “How quickly can you get to Rhode Island?”

I went directly the 34th St. heliport and sidled up to the first exec I saw wearing an I LOVE RHODE ISLAND terrycloth headband. “Everything is booked,” I said. “Drop me off in Watch Hill, and I will get your daughters both autographed photographs of Taylor Swift.”

In just a few moments my feet were touching down in the white sand. Taylor Swift was running toward me, carrying a clipboard. She took a deep breath, smoothed her pageboy and got right down to business. “I know you’re an artist and totally respect that,” she said. “I want you to just take in all the love and friendship here at this event and sing your song with it.”

“Got it, great,” I said. “But… where’s the party?”

She looked confused. “It’s right here.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought we were in a giant, outdoor store that sold red, white and blue bathing suits, tops and sweaters.”

A guy wearing a tank top reading “I ♥ T.S.” appeared and wrapped his arms around her. Then he took three more pairs of fake arms out of a bag and wrapped them around her. “I think this should show the world how much I love you,” he crooned.

Several photographers jumped out from behind a lifeguard stand and snapped their picture.

“Oh my,” Taylor said. “Where in heaven’s name did they come from!”

“Hi, Loki,” I said. “I like your tank top.”

Taylor’s ice-blue eyes glittered at me from underneath a curtain of platinum bangs. “Tom is a very important English actor. He’s in a super long movie about a super long book that just happens to be on television.”

Loki didn’t hear me because he was murmuring in Taylor’s ear. “You look so patriotic in your swimming costume,” he said. “I hope you won’t be declaring your independence from me today!”

I went to work. I was just raising my camera to get a photo of Ryan Reynolds sitting under the porch with a towel over his head texting Blake Lively what he wanted on his hot dog when Taylor reappeared. “Okay,” she said, “Just a macro-note—if these photos are going to do their job, the words ‘squad’ and ‘squad goals’ should be printed on the internet at least 400,000 times next week. In fact, I have a shot list. Why don’t we start with the first thing on it?”

“Don’t you want to enjoy yourself?” I said.

She gave me that eyes-through-bangs thing again. “This is me enjoying myself,” she said.

We sauntered over to the pool where Gigi Hadid was sitting in Cara Delevingne’s lap, getting her hair braided. “Ugh, I wish you’d stop talking about George Saunders,” Gigi said. “He’s, like, so old.”

“Fine,” Cara said. “Let’s go back to drafting woke tweets about the Margot Robbie profile in Vanity Fair.”

Gigi sighed. “I’m, like, so sick of telling you white people can’t say ‘woke.’”

“You guys are both red, white and blue!” Taylor shouted. “Photo time!”

They stood on the lawn, scowling at me. “I like your tank top,” Gigi muttered.

“My agent told me no flags this weekend,” Gigi said.

Taylor glared at her. “I know you’re making that up,” she said.

“I’ll take a flag,” Cara groaned. “What do we do now?”

“Do I have to draw a map for you?” Taylor said. “Stick your butt out and wave the flag!”

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Jul 5, 2016 at 11:24am PDT

Next we went over to the slide she’d rented. I took a few pictures. “Oh no,” Taylor said, “You can’t see the strip of blue in the background like I want.”

“You mean the ocean?” I said.

“I’m going to go get Tom and get him to move the slide,” she said.

But she came back without Tom. “Tom said he’s having too much fun swimming in the ocean wearing a tank top.”

My heart sank. “We have to get him out of the water immediately,” I said. “As a professional photographer I can’t allow anyone to swim in the ocean in a tank top.”

Blake Lively came over resting her hand on her bump. “Ryan will move the slide,” she said. “He’s totally looking for something to do.”

Ryan Reynolds was eating a hot dog, but first he tried to eat while moving the slide. When he realized he needed two hands he just stuffed the hot dog in his mouth and held it there while he went to work.

We retook the slide pictures. This time Taylor was satisfied. “That strip of blue really makes everyone’s eyes pop,” she said.

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Jul 5, 2016 at 12:23pm PDT

A few minutes later she reappeared wearing a red bikini with America emblazoned across her chest.

“Squad in the water!” she shouted.

The air was a blur of skin and lycra. “Ohhhhh,” Taylor said, “Gosh. I didn’t expect there to be so many of you. Okay, who was in a major publication this week?” A few people raised their hands and she motioned them to come into the water. “Who was in US Weekly?” A few more raised their hands and she motioned them in. “Who was on the podcast WhoWeekly?” A few hands went up, this time more reluctantly. She beckoned to a few of them. To the remaining ones she said, “Can you guys go make some potato salad?” she said. “Make sure it has a lot of mayonnaise! Mayonnaise goals!”

I took a bunch of photos.

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Jul 5, 2016 at 11:32am PDT

“Don’t you want a few pics of you with, uh, Tim?”

She looked aghast. “No!” she said. “Other people have been assigned to take and post those. I can’t post my own Instagram photos of us together. It would look so calculated!”

That night when I got home I was sitting at the computer putting together the best pictures to send to Taylor. I was almost done when I got a text from the Asswiftant. “I know TS told you not to let anyone stick their tongues out because it’s like so Miley Cyrus? Well I feel like if a few girls don’t stick their tongues out it will look like it wasn’t fun and she will get mad so for me can you just like, photoshop in a few tongues?

I was just about to settle in with my tank tops and OITNB when I got a text from the helicopter guy asking about his photos.

“Dude,” I wrote back, “I totally forgot. But what about one of Ryan Reynolds holding a hot dog in his mouth while he moves a four-story water slide? Either like a big dog bone or a giant cigar! I LITERALLY have both!”

Summary: An imagined account by America's newest most important documentarian


The Veterans Room of Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory, which opened in 1881 and reopened as newly restored in March, is a riot of color, visual rhythm and contrasting details. Fine patterns of wood and metal intersect and overlap. Depending on where one’s gaze is set, the style is Moorish, Japanese, Greek, or Celtic. If walls could speak, these would alternately whisper of refinement and roar with audacity. Designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists, the room conveys the American Aesthetic Movement’s experimental ideas, now more than a century old, as freshly illuminated under gold-hued LED lighting.

In this jewel within an armory repurposed as a performance center, pianist Jason Moran has curated the series “Artists Studio,” which runs through Nov. 21 and involves a wide range of performers. When he began the series with a March solo-piano performance, the setting made sense. Now 41 years old, Mr. Moran has for half his life made music that argues for the vitality of jazz’s century-old tradition largely by reimagining its contours and isolating its distinctive details. Before his solo performance, he described his series to the audience as “conversations about what this room is.” His music might also be a series of discussions about what it sounds and feels like to sit within jazz.

Mr. Moran has recently released a recording of that inaugural performance, “The Armory Concert,” available as a download on bandcamp.com. It’s his first album for his independent label, Yes Records, marking his departure from the estimable Blue Note label as well as the growing sense of autonomy he’s displayed while casting off conventions of genre and even music as a strict discipline.

“I’m a straight-up jazz musician, no doubt,” Mr. Moran told me in an interview a decade ago. “But I also like to think of myself as an urban performance artist who happens to play piano.”

Mr. Moran’s only previous solo-piano recording, 2002’s “Modernistic,” formed one seeming narrative from compositions by stride-piano master James P. Johnson, avant-garde hero Muhal Richard Abrams, 19th-century classical composer Robert Schumann and hiphop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa. At the Armory, he played only original pieces that perhaps reflected yet broader ambition.

Two pieces—“Big News/More News” and “South Side Digging”—were explicitly about the blues as played in Chicago, the latter based on the tension within a single endemic gesture, its chiming and cascading, before offering the release of 12-bar form. These were drawn from “Looks of a Lot,” a larger commissioned work for Chicago’s “Symphony Center Presents Jazz” series. “Reanimation,” an urgent cycle of pointillistic phrases, was adapted from his collaboration of the same name with visual artist Joan Jonas. Mr. Moran has an installation of his own on exhibit at the Luhring Augustine gallery in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn through July 29. (He will perform there on July 22 and 23.) His work with visual artists, and now as one, implies a connection to the Veterans Room that goes beyond metaphor.

If Mr. Moran locates an essential jazz core, he does so obliquely, by looking in, as influenced by outsider heroes. At the Armory, before one piece, he recalled moving to New York specifically to study with pianist Jaki Byard, and lessons in “subverting the idea of historical piano.” In one of his long series of recent Facebook posts that serve well as liner notes to “The Armory Concert,” he discussed secrets of harmony shared by composer and saxophonist Henry Threadgill, with whom Mr. Moran has worked; Mr. Threadgill was in the audience at the Veterans Room.

There are pieces of startling abstraction within this recording. “All Hammers and Chains” relies largely upon crashing left-hand figures, frantic scalar runs and dances of dual glissandi. “Magnet” is a clamor formed by low-end figures and a cleverly deployed sustain pedal. In the Veterans Room, its sound accumulated like smoke into an enveloping presence. As recorded, it’s a dense aural ball, slowly revealing hidden clangs and ghostly howls.

There are also deeply tender moments here, and one composition that qualifies as catchy: “Alicia,” named for Mr. Moran’s wife, the singer Alicia Hall Moran. Three related tracks that punctuate these 10—“Wind” at the beginning, “Trade Winds” in the middle, and “Winds,” the finale—suggest newfound mysteries about harmonies that slide sneakily by, rhythms felt rather than stated and grand gestures turned intimate. At the Veterans Room, these came across as in-the-moment conclusions. On the album, they sound more like promises of things to come.

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

Summary: Pianist Jason Moran releases his second solo album—a live recording made at the Park Avenue Armory.


Theresa May will not trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty initiating the UK’s departure from the European Union before the end of 2016, the high court has been told.

At the opening of the first legal challenge to the process of Brexit, government lawyers conceded that the politically sensitive case was likely to be appealed up to the supreme court.

At least seven private actions – arguing that only parliament and not the prime minister has the authority to invoke article 50 – have been identified to the court.

Confirming that ministers are not aiming to push the exit button until next year at the earliest, Jason Coppel QC, for the government, conceded that there was nonetheless “some urgency” to the issue.

“Notification [triggering] article 50 will not occur before the end of 2016,” Coppel told the court. Should anything change, he promised, the court would be given advance notice.

That timetable is broadly in line with recent comments from the new government frontbench. The defendant appointed to resist the action is David Davis, whose formal title is secretary of state for exiting the European Union.

In an article for the Sun last week, the newly appointed Davis said the process of consulting “should be completed to allow triggering of article 50 before or by the start of next year”. There have been reports that civil servants were working on a deadline of Christmas this year while Theresa May has indicated that she wants to secure the support of the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, before beginning the exit process.

No question of whether the court has jurisdiction to decide the arcane constitutional issue was raised at the opening of the hearing. Sir Brian Leveson, one of two judges in charge of the directions hearing, said the full trial would take place in October.

So many lawyers participated in the first stage of the legal challenge that proceedings were moved to the lord chief justice’s expansive, Gothic wood-panelled courtroom, the largest in the Royal Courts of Justice.

Surveying the benches, Leveson remarked upon the “bewildering array of legal talent” and acknowledged that the case involved matter of great constitutional importance. The lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, is due to hear the substantive case in the autumn.

The lead case for the legal challenge will be that brought by an investment manager and philanthropist , Gina Miller, 51, who lives in London. Her claim is being coordinated by the law firm Mishcon de Reya.

She attended the hearing and afterwards said: “We believe in a fair society. This is very much along the lines of my belief [as a remain voter] ... This case is all about the sovereignty of parliament. It is very important that the (article 50) issues are dealt with in a serious and grown-up way. We are making sure that happens.”

Lord Pannick QC, who is instructed by Mishcon de Reya, said the law firm had already been subjected to racist and antisemitic abuse.

“The publicity that has accompanied notification of the legal issue has provoked a large quantity of abuse directed at my solicitors, Mishcon de Reya,” Pannick said.

“It’s racist abuse, it’s antisemitic abuse and it’s objectionable. It’s contempt of court for people to make threats [in relation to live proceedings]. We have asked that the names of those people who are making the [additional] claims should be redacted. People have been deterred from [making legal claims] by the abuse. It’s a very serious criminal matter for people to make threats.”

Leveson said that interfering with the course of justice by making threats was “an extremely serious matter”. He added: “Apart from the commission of a criminal offence, there’s a real risk that behaviour of this type is a contempt of court.”

Brexit supporters staged a demonstration outside Mishcon de Reya’s London office earlier this month with a banner and placards declaring: “Invoke article 50 now” and “Uphold the Brexit vote”.

One of the challenges has been brought by Deir Dos Santos, a British citizen who works as a hairdresser. He has also been abused online since his involvement was revealed. His claim will be heard alongside Miller’s though he may drop back to become an interested party depending on whether he obtains a protected costs order. Dos Santos was not in court on Tuesday.

The Dos Santos claim argues: “The result of the referendum is not legally binding in the sense that it is advisory only and there is no obligation [on the government] to give effect to the referendum decision.

“However, the [previous] prime minister has stated on numerous occasions that it is his intention to give effect to the referendum decision and organise the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.

“The extract from [Cameron’s] resignation speech ... makes it clear that [the government] is of the view that the prime minister of the day has the power under article 50 (2) of the Lisbon treaty to trigger article 50 without reference to parliament.”

The government says its powers are based on the royal prerogative.

That approach, Santos’s lawyers maintain, is “ultra vires” – beyond the legitimate powers of the government – because under the UK’s constitutional requirements, notification to the EU council of withdrawal “can only be given with the prior authorisation of the UK parliament”.

Dominic Chambers QC, an expert in international and commercial law from Maitland Chambers in London, and Jessica Simor QC, of Matrix Chambers, are acting for Dos Santos. The London law firm Edwin Coe is coordinating the Dos Santos case.

Related: Deadline approaches for government response to Brexit legal challenge

Lawyers representing Britons living in France are also expected to join the case.

The legal exchanges were permeated with reluctant references to working through the summer holidays to meet legal deadlines for exchanges of documents. Helen Mountfield QC, who represented some of the unidentified claimants, observed: “It’s buckets and spades down”. Leveson, smiling, replied: “August is always a good month to work in.”

The majority of MPs at Westminster are in favour of Britain remaining inside the EU. Moves to hand parliament ultimate authority over article 50 have been criticised as a devious and underhand means of frustrating Brexit.

Lawyers for the claimants insist the legal challenge is concerned with the constitutional principle of parliamentary sovereignty rather than being engineered for a particular political outcome.

Whether the majority of MPs who support remaining in the EU may now feel morally bound to vote in favour of Brexit if the issue comes to parliament is another question.

Summary: Government lawyers at first legal challenge to process of Brexit suggest case is likely to end up in supreme court


Update 7/16/2015: Thanks to alumnae promises to raise at least $12 million, Sweet Briar College has said it will reopen for classes in late August of 2015, and that as of mid-July at least 300 students had committed to return for the 2015-16 academic year. But school officials says they’ll need many more students and donations to put the college on a permanently sound financial footing.

The announcement that Sweet Briar College, a private women’s college in rural Virginia, would shut down this summer—even as elite private colleges such as Harvard reported record numbers of applications—reflects a new reality for students and colleges, experts say.

While the elite colleges can keep raising prices and soliciting big donations, small private colleges that don’t offer what today’s students want – generous financial aid, access to urban activities and job markets, and a name that will impress employers – are facing potentially devastating financial pressures that can lead to a “death spiral” of declining admissions, tuition revenues, and contributions.

The pressures facing small private colleges are part of a larger financial squeeze on almost all kinds of colleges. Nearly all of the nation’s public universities, for example, suffered dramatic budget cuts after the 2008 recession. Some public college systems, such as those in Louisiana and Maine, have been so debilitated by cuts that schools have had layoffs, closed entire departments, and are facing the prospect of having to shut down campuses entirely.

Several for-profit colleges, like Anthem and Corinthian, have shut down in the last year, in part because of government crackdowns on schools with low graduation and student debt repayment rates.

Many traditional nonprofit private colleges are struggling for two other reasons: declines in the number of 18-year-olds in certain parts of the country (especially the Northeast and Midwest) and the worsening financial outlook for the middle-class families who, historically, have wanted to send their children to private institutions.

The Census Bureau says the total number of college-age Americans (18-24) is expected to decline slightly between now and 2020. from 30.9 million to 30.8 million. In addition, the median income for American families was around $52,000 last year—about 5% less, in real terms, than it was a decade ago.

The result, according to a December 2014 Moody’s analysis of the financial situation facing colleges, is a widening winner-take-all divide, in which wealthy institutions with global reputations that can attract high-paying international students will continue to thrive. Schools that aren’t attractive to a national or international market and don’t have a “demonstrated return on investment…will face increased competition from cheaper public higher education as well as distance learning options,” Moody’s warned.

(MORE: See if your college offers a good return on investment.)

The rich and famous colleges are certainly enjoying unprecedented success. Harvard, for example, reported a record 37,305 applications for its fall 2015 freshman class. And between donations and the booming investment market, its endowment rose by $3.5 billion to $35.9 billion in 2014.

Meanwhile, the median American college saw an endowment gain of just $15 million, to bring the typical endowment up to just $113 million. And the average private college has had to provide so much financial aid to attract students that its net revenue per student from tuition, fees, and room and board have remained flat, in real terms, over the last decade, according to the College Board.

An analysis of schools that have recently shut down, or are facing an imminent closure, shows that certain kinds of private colleges, such as small, rural colleges that serve comparatively small communities, appear to be facing the most difficult struggles to recruit enough students to stay afloat.

(MORE: See how to tell whether your college is in deep financial trouble.)

Sweet Briar, located in a small community 120 miles southwest of Richmond, has only 710 students and was having trouble recruiting new ones because fewer women seem to want to attend an all-women’s college these days, college president James F. Jones Jr. said in the closure announcement. “The declining number of students choosing to attend small, rural, private liberal arts colleges and even fewer young women willing to consider a single-sex education, and the increase in the tuition discount rate that we have to extend to enroll each new class is financially unsustainable,” he explained.

Mid-Continent University, of Mayfield, Ky., a Baptist college that shut down last June after the federal government found problems in the financial aid office, had about 2,200 students in a town about 150 miles northwest of Nashville. And Lebanon College, a two-year private college 75 miles northeast of Manchester, N.H., had fewer than 90 students when it closed last summer.

Tennessee Temple University, which The Chatanoogan reported recently is considering closure, is a Baptist school with about 1,000 students.

Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, an association of small private schools, says predictions of a tsunami of private college closures are unfounded. “It is pretty hard to kill a college,” he notes. And in fact, while there is no official count of the number of college closures, a search of news reports for private, nonprofit colleges that have closed or considered closure in the last year turned up no more than about a dozen or so names out of the approximately 1,650 private nonprofit colleges operating today.

The vast majority of private colleges are responding to financial pressures by using technology and online materials to reduce their costs, raising more financial aid donations to be able to enroll more cash-strapped students, and developing new professional and online programs to attract new kinds of tuition-paying students such as working adults, Ekman says.

But Ekman acknowledges these strategies won’t save every college. There is growing competition among colleges for working adult students and online courses, for example, he notes. And most private colleges don’t have big endowments to allow them to ride out continuing economic stresses. “The colleges are doing what they should be doing,” he said. “The question whether they are doing it quickly enough.”

Summary: The closure of Sweet Briar College is an example of how winner-take-all economics is starting to hit colleges.


07/22/2016 AT 03:40 PM EDT

is bringing a little extra beauty to the already picturesque Amalfi Coast in Italy.

The actress was spotted out in a floral maxi dress in the village of Positano on Thursday, where she's in town as a special guest of the

Pairing her dress with black sandals and a red saddle bag, Aniston was seen laughing and chatting at lunch with a group of friends. She was also spotted soaking up the sun on luxury yacht off the coast.

star will be honored at the 46th Giffoni Film Festival on Saturday, where she is expected to discuss her career with the festival jury.

The sighting comes a week after her

, in which she vented her frustration over tabloid pregnancy rumors and body shaming.

"For the record, I am

pregnant. What I am is

," she wrote in an essay titled "For the Record" posted on Tuesday. She also asserted that women "are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies."

with Jason Bateman, hits theaters in December.

Summary: Jennifer Aniston is on vacation in Positano, Italy, where she will accept an honor at the Giffoni Film Festival


Social media platform Twitter’s fast-growing advertising business has always been the bright spot amid its stalled user growth, chaotic executive turnover, and confused identity.

As I noted last quarter, analysts are mostly positive about Twitter TWTR . Very few of them rate its stock a “sell;” one even calls Twitter “The Most Troubled 30%+ Compound Annual Growth Rate Company on Earth” while noting that the negative perception about the company “feels a bit extreme.” The point being? Even if user growth had stalled, Twitter’s business was solid.

That sentiment began to change last quarter, after the company revealed slowing revenue growth and continuing losses. The company lowered its revenue forecast for the year, too.

Twitter repeated same situation in its second quarter earnings announcement Tuesday. Revenue grew 20% over last year, a significant drop from the 50% to 100% revenue growth the company experienced when it first went public three years ago. Shares fell more than 11% in after hours trading.

Once again, Twitter executives attributed the shrinking growth to the fact that it has already sold ads to the biggest U.S. advertisers. (In investor parlance, the market is “fully penetrated,” Bain said.) What’s more, 80% of Twitter users are outside the U.S.

But the company has a solution: Video. More specifically, live video. The advertising world has become enamored with online video, pouring around $10 billion a year into the category. (That still dwarfs the $80 billion they spend on TV ads.) Twitter COO Adam Bain said Twitter has quickly become “video-centric” to meet advertiser demand. “Just a year ago those products did not exist,” he said. There is a whole new set of video budgets out there today.” He noted that Twitter is still missing out on some of the video advertising action because it doesn’t have the right products and features in place, but it is moving quickly to build them. Twitter’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL, for example, are attractive to advertisers. Twitter has already sold a meaningful percent of the inventory it controls around the NFL live video.

See also: How Twitter Makes Money on Periscope

Twitter executives emphasized that the company’s big selling point to advertisers is the conversation by users that happens around content like live NFL clips. But that means Twitter has to work harder to make sure that conversation is actually one of quality, and not, as some high profile writers and celebrities have found, a cesspool of racism and sexism. Bullying and harassment have become an increasing problem for the company that once took pride in its extreme stance on free speech, defending its users’ rights to post anything they wanted (including nudity, which most other platforms ban).

For more about Twitter, watch:

Earlier this month, Twitter permanently banned a blogger notorious for inciting the harassment of women on its service. On the earnings call, CEO Jack Dorsey defended the decision in what sounded like a prepared remark: “Abuse is not part of the civil discourse” that Twitter is designed to foster, he said. Recent events, he noted, have only confirmed how important it is to make Twitter a safe place. “No one deserves to be the target of abuse online,” he said.

Summary: As revenue from its other ad products slows


Of the thousands of people in Brooklyn, N.Y., who cross the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street daily, most don't realize that there's a secret tunnel running beneath them. Forget the London Underground—this 2,517-foot-long burrow, built in 1844 to prevent train accidents with pedestrians, was arguably the world's first subway. But after political corruption led to its closure in 1861, the place lay hidden until 1980, when 20-year-old Robert Diamond, with the help of Brooklyn Union Gas, broke through a concrete wall and started conducting tours for the public in 1982.

This is just one of the 5,757 entries currently described by Atlas Obscura, an online compendium of the "world's wondrous and curious places." Founded in 2009 by science journalist Joshua Foer and curiosity seeker Dylan Thuras, the site now boasts more than 700,000 unique visitors per month. The Wikipedia-style website, whose revenue comes from advertising and sponsorships, features a few hundred regular contributors, like "Alpha," who chronicles television transmitters and electricity pylons. Go figure.

As for the Atlantic Avenue tunnel, if your idea of a cultural experience involves penetrating the asphalt through a manhole cover, you're out of luck. It was shut down in December 2010 after city authorities declared it unsafe.

Atlas Obscura came into being after Mr. Thuras contacted Mr. Foer, who was seeking help staging an event inspired by his blog, "The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society," dedicated to the 17th-century German Jesuit polymath who published a wide range of books on topics like biblical studies and biology. For the society's first (and only) meeting, in January 2007—at the City University of New York's Graduate Center—Mr. Foer was contacted by Mr. Thuras, who conceived a performance of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene in Solresol, an obscure 19th-century language based on do-re-mi. Mr. Foer had also tracked down Kim Peek, the real-life "Rain Man," to give a talk on a subject "close to his heart," memory.

"We had a packed house, and The New Yorker did a Talk of the Town piece," Mr. Thuras says. "On top of that, we really enjoyed working together and found kindred spirits." Soon afterward, Messrs. Foer and Thuras began brainstorming a unique type of atlas, filled with things not typically shown in guidebooks. "There weren't many great resources for the kind of stuff we knew we wanted to see when traveling," Mr. Thuras says.

He then moved to Budapest with his girlfriend for a year and started writing some of the early entries for the Atlas on his blog, "Curious Expeditions." After Mr. Thuras returned in 2008, he and Mr. Foer found a web developer, generated additional content and launched Atlas Obscura—"for people who still believe in Discovery," one of the site's underlying themes.

Consider haunts like the Merry Cemetery in Săpânta, Romania, with its darkly humorous gravestones: "Ioan Toaderu loved horses. One more thing he loved very much. To sit at a table in a bar. Next to someone else's wife." Or Pedro Martín Ureta's "Forest Guitar," a 2/3-mile-long land-art instrument formed out of trees in the Argentine pampas—as a shrine to Mr. Ureta's wife, who died unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm.

Mr. Thuras, a 30-year-old self-avowed science geek—"I'm a big Tesla nerd"—says that beyond offering a platform for the weird and wonderful, the Atlas Obscura has an additional goal: "Creating a real-world community who are engaging with us, each other and these places and getting away from their computers to actually see them."

This is one reason Atlas Obscura began hosting events through various local chapters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco—like the Obscura Society SF's visit earlier this month to the DNA Lounge at the Zymoglyphic Museum in San Mateo, Calif., the world's only institution dedicated to images of fermentation. And there's still time to sign up for the "Evening Wolf Howl," an excursion to the Wolf Conservation Center of South Salem, N.Y., planned for Aug. 7 by Obscura Society NY.

"After we'd been running the site for a little bit, we thought this is going great, and it's kind of neat to write about these places and have them on the site, but what's really great is to visit them." Hence Obscura Day, which launched on March 20, 2010, with 80 events in 20 countries. (The next Obscura Day will be in April 2014.) The day began with Australians heading out to the Newnes Glow Worm Tunnel to view bioluminescent insects. In Rome, "obscuraphiles" ventured underneath the Circus Maximus to visit the temple of the ancient god Mithras. And things wound down (pun intended) in San Francisco at the Long Now Orrery, home of the world's only mechanical clock set for 10,000 years.

With such an amalgam of oddities, you'd think that most anything could make it into the directory. However, Mr. Thuras insists there are standards. So what does it take for something to be Atlas-worthy?

"This is a really tough question, because everyone has different things that their passions lead them to," Mr. Thuras says. "The really best Atlas entry is one that makes you go, 'How did I not know this existed?'"

Among Mr. Thuras's favorites is Skeleton Lake, in India, where a traveler in the 1940s discovered 200 skeletons dating back to the year 850. It wasn't until 2004 that a scientific team concluded that the mass of people had been killed by a sudden severe hailstorm. Closer to home, Mr. Thuras relishes the Grand Central Terminal Whispering Gallery—located outside the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant—whose configuration of "Gustavino" tile arches allows two people to converse at opposite ends of the 50-foot-wide chamber. "You stand with your face in the corner, like you're a maniac who has done something wrong."

And though this particular listing is hardly a secret, many of the other locales featured on Atlas Obscura are—leading one to wonder if the enterprise will unintentionally thrust some of these sites into the mainstream.

"This was a real concern when we started. And we got some pushback on this from people who knew some of them. But many of the sites are small museums and outsider art projects that are living on the edge," Mr. Thuras says. He notes that the scale of visitors is still limited enough so that an additional 10 or 15 people a year is not going to make a difference. In fact, he says the Atlas Obscura wants to help these places stick around.

"The push for homogenization is so strong; anything we can do to help these wonderful, unique places stay in existence is great. Our hope is to essentially follow National Geographic's footsteps and have a real society of explorers—but self-made explorers, people who are interested in knowing what's around them."

Mr. Cooper is a writer based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Summary: The Atlas Obscura, created by Dylan Thuras and Joshua Foer, is a compendium of destinations not typically shown in guidebooks.


With three weeks to go until the EU referendum, it’s knives out for David Cameron among a section of Conservative MPs. Win or lose, a leadership challenge is becoming increasingly likely. Meanwhile, a Guardian/ICM opinion poll shows a lead for the Brexit camp by 52 points to 48.

Joining Rafael Behr to discuss it all are political correspondent Rowena Mason, columnist Gary Younge and European affairs correspondent Jon Henley.

Also this week, a Vice News documentary on Jeremy Corbyn’s inner-circle showed how the Labour leader prepares for prime minister’s questions and his approach to the recent local election campaign in England. We hear from Vice’s Ben Ferguson, who gained unprecedented access to Corbyn in order to make the film.

And finally, as the French government squares off against the country’s biggest union, the country’s transport network is thrown into chaos. We hear from Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis on how the dispute can be resolved and what it means for President Hollande.

Summary: Rowena Mason, Gary Younge and Jon Henley join Rafael Behr to discuss another torrid week in the EU referendum campaign which appears to be evolving into a Conservative leadership campaign


08/01/2016 AT 04:50 PM EDT

The brother of an Ellicott City, Maryland, flood victim says his sister's last words before she was swept away by the

over the weekend were: "My God help us! God, help us!"

Jessica Watsula, a 35-year-old mother, was killed when her car became completely flooded with water on Main Street in the Baltimore suburb. She was headed home from a "painting and dinner" night-outing with her extended family.

"I loved my sister so much, she will be so missed," Jessica's brother, Curtis Brubaker, Jr., tells PEOPLE. "She was an awesome person, and an awesome mother."

Jessica is survived be her 10-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was her "best friend." The mother and daughter spent "every waking moment together."

"They shared an extremely strong bond, where one was, the other was there and they did everything together," Curtis says. "She was such a good mother, she did everything for Sarah."

Flood victim Jessica Watsula and her daughter, Sarah

Jessica worked as an assistant manager at a shoe retailer in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where she lived with Sarah. She was visiting her brother's mother-in-law and sisters-in-law for the evening when the flooding began.

"They headed to the car, it was raining, when they walked to the street, there was only two inches of water on the ground," explains Curtis. "Within seconds, the water was up to the windows and doors and the car drifted down the road."

He adds, "They escaped from the car and jumped out and grabbed a telephone pole, but Jessica drifted."

Jessica's body was discovered around 2:20 a.m. on Sunday on the banks of the Patapsco River.

Curtis and his son smile alongside Jessica.

The grieving brother says Jessica's entire life was devoted to her young daughter.

"Jess essentially chose a career in retail where she would have time to care of her daughter," says Curtis. "They loved spending time with each other. They went hiking and they absolutely adored anything having to do with mermaids. It was their thing! They were obsessed with mermaids ever since they watched

Curtis says he'll always remember his sister's love for camping with Sarah.

"She would get firewood and set up a campfire in her backyard and sit there and roast marshmallows. She loved sitting around the fire and feeling the warmth of it. They would sit there for hours together," he recalls.

Sarah is "holding up okay" with help from her father – Jessica's ex-husband – whom she's been staying with since her mother's death, says Curtis.

"Sarah's got her whole life ahead of her," Curtis adds. "But unfortunately she has to live life without her best friend."

Summary: "She was an awesome person, and an awesome mother," Curtis Brubaker, Jr. tells PEOPLE of his late sister


Even if he snubbed Tottenham, a move to Manchester City for Arteta would be similarly difficult for Arsenal fans to swallow. Wenger passed up the opportunity to offer a role to Patrick Vieira, who was made football development executive and then reserve team manager at City.

Vieira is now the head coach of one of City’s sister clubs, New York City, as the club attempt to groom the former Arsenal midfielder to one day take over as manager.

Arteta knows Guardiola from his time as a young player at Barcelona and would offer the Bayern Munich manager valuable knowledge of the Premier League once he moves to City in the summer.

Summary: Mauricio Pochettino wants Arsenal captain Mikel Arteta to make the short journey across north London to join his Tottenham Hotspur staff with the Gunners now at the back of the queue of clubs willing to give the Spaniard his first coaching role.


Blending vs. Juicing? Eating whole fruits is more beneficial than drinking fruit juices, but are smoothies, which involve blending whole fruits, more beneficial (in terms of fiber content and effect on blood sugar levels) than juicing?

The short answer is yes, if you’re referring to a homemade smoothie containing nothing but fruit. “But I’d still rather they have whole fruit,” said Robin Foroutan, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a trade group representing nutrition professionals.

Most juices have had all the pulp removed, so the sugar is more concentrated and the juice contains little if any fiber. Smoothies, on the other hand, maintain their fiber, even though it has been pulverized, and fiber helps slow down the absorption of fructose, the main sugar in fruit.

“Juice would cause the biggest spike in blood sugar,” Ms. Foroutan said. “An all-fruit smoothie would also cause a spike in blood sugar, though probably not as much. Eating the fruit whole would have the most gentle effect.”

Whole fruit also takes longer to eat and may be more likely to make you feel full, she said. In one study, adults ate either an apple or applesauce or drank apple juice with or without fiber shortly before a meal. Those who ate applesauce consumed fewer calories at the meal than those who drank juice, but those who ate an apple consumed the fewest calories of all.

It’s hard to make comparisons when it comes to juice and smoothies, but an eight-ounce cup of unsweetened apple juice or orange juice contains at least 22 grams of sugar (equivalent to about five and a half teaspoons of sugar), and both contain less than a gram of fiber. A smoothie made from a banana and a cup of frozen raspberries has only slightly less sugar – about 20 grams — but 12 grams of fiber (three grams in the banana, and nine grams in the raspberries).

If you’re concerned about fluctuating blood sugar levels, Ms. Foroutan suggests adding veggies like cucumbers, spinach or romaine lettuce. And if your smoothie is replacing a meal, add avocado for creamy texture, vitamins and healthy fats, and protein like nuts or silken tofu (these will boost the calorie count, of course).

But smoothies have a health halo they don’t always deserve. A store-bought smoothie can be just as caloric and loaded with added sugar as a milkshake — especially if it’s super-sized.

An all-fruit smoothie can cause a rise in blood sugar if you’re eating it alone, without any protein or fat, Ms. Foroutan said. If you find you’re often hungry shortly after drinking a high-calorie smoothie, “smoothies may not be a great weight loss strategy for you.”

Summary: The short answer is yes, if it’s a homemade smoothie containing nothing but fruit.


Leveraged, inverse and inverse leveraged funds, collectively known as geared funds, are primarily offered in the U.S. by ProShare Advisors and Direxion Investments, as well as a few issuers of exchange-traded notes, currencies and commodities. They often offer two or three times the daily return (positive or negative) of a stock or fixed-income index.

For stock funds, their apparent alchemy is achieved by holding the underlying stocks directly or a corresponding nonleveraged ETF, along with cash to finance a swap contract...

Summary: Leveraged ETFs, which typically offer two or three ties the daily return of an index, are often misunderstood. Here’s what you need to know.


Ka-Lam Pang's world has shrunk to a single narrow room, barely wide enough to accommodate his bed. Bars set in the wall allow him to swing himself along in his wheelchair to reach the stove or sink when he is alone during the long shifts his wife works in a garment factory.

Since a stroke left him partially paralyzed three years ago, Mr. Pang has not left his Eldridge Street room, and there are few visitors. The former construction worker eagerly welcomes a medical team - one of his few contacts with the outside.

The visits by a St. Vincent's Hospital team are part of a nationwide experiment aimed at bringing social and medical services into homes of the elderly. St. Vincent's ''Living-At-Home'' program is aimed at older Chinese, a group whose traditions of self-sufficiency often leaves them underserved, despite changes in family structure that mean more of them are alone and in need of help. Help in Remaining Home

The visits by a doctor, social worker, nurse and interpreter provide Mr. Pang, 68 years old, and 46 other poor and elderly Chinese in lower Manhattan with free health care and assistance in remaining in their apartments instead of a nursing home.

''He has to be the most upbeat man I see, never complaining, always glad when we come.'' said Dr. Philip W. Brickner, director of community medicine at the Greenwich Village hospital. ''He can't speak English but he says everything by smiling.''

Needy Chinese like Mr. Pang are a relatively new phenomena as seekers of medical care, said Dr. Brickner, observing that Americans tend to cling to the stereotyped view that Chinese elderly are always cared for within a close-knit extended family.

But family ties have broken down as new generations of young Chinese have gone to American schools, found employment, and moved away from the Chinatown community to the suburbs. Often, they leave behind the elderly and the frail, who cannot speak English and grow increasingly isolated. Many Are 'Sojourners'

Many of the Chinese needing care are men who came to the United States in the 1920's as ''sojourners,'' workers who found jobs in laundries or restaurants and meant to return home with their savings before war and political changes in China changed their plans. The number needing assistance is growing, here and in San Francisco and Boston, other cities with large Chinese populations, said Dr. Brickner.

As the nation's population as a whole ages, the costs of hospital and nursing home care have soared, leading to a search for alternatives. Living-At-Home was created three years ago by 35 philanthropies led by the Commonwealth Fund of New York and Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia.

Of the 200 hospitals and health agencies that applied, the 20 chosen were judged best able to provide a mix of medical help, counseling, and information about Medicare, food stamps and other government assistance that is available but often not utilized. The $7 million experiment, which includes programs in East Harlem and in the East 60's and 70's, will reach about 6,000 patients.

''One accomplishment of this program,'' said Dr. Morton D. Bogdonoff, director of Living-at-Home, which is administered by New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, ''is the experience compelled local agencies providing services to work cooperatively for the patient's benefit.''

The program also demonstrated that patients who do not speak English can win access to an array of services with help in dealing with confusing government forms, said Dr. Albert Yee, a Boston internist directing the only other Living-at-Home project aimed at elderly Chinese. 'Birds' Nests and Penicillin'

In some instances, said Dr. Yee, Chinese patients have never been examined by American physicians and have depended on traditional Chinese herbalists or dosed themselves with home remedies. In both Boston and New York, the programs work to accommodate these practices.

But there have been other problems: Many of the Chinese have chronic rather than acute ailments, and Medicare does not reimburse the cost of chronic care home-visits.

The nationwide program provides $116,000 annually for each of the 20 participating institutions, but this financing is assured only for 18 more months. St. Vincent's, which already substantially supports the program with hospital funds, will keep it going, said Dr. Brickner. Elsewhere, at least 16 are likely to succeed in finding alternative financing, said Dr. Bogdonoff. ''They have taken root.''

The St. Vincent's blue home-visit van has become a familiar sight at 200 East Fifth Street on Tuesdays - Dr. Brickner's visiting day at Cooper Square Senior Center, a federally subsidized residence for the aged. Watching and Talking

His first call was made to a couple in the program: Fook Wong is 87 and stroke walks with difficulty since suffering a stroke, using two canes. His wife, Ngon Wong is 85, a small, bird-like woman, who presses small gifts of candies on the visitors as she answers the doctor's inquiries. ''You can tell a great deal by just watching and talking to people,'' said Dr. Brickner.

Next, he visits three elderly women, all widowed, who are waiting together for the team in a cheerful, plant-filled apartment. Yuet Woo, 77, has a cough and Dr. Brickner pulls out his stethoscope. Fung Nui Lee, 85, is worried by numbness in her feet and he reassures her about her circulation. Kan Ng, 72, is advised to increase her intake of fluids.

During the half-hour visit, William Lo, a nurse, and Virginia Eng, an interpreter, help provide information about food stamps, invite questions and learn that the three widows are helped by Ko Kwan, Mrs. Ng's daughter. Water Is Restored

On East Broadway, the team climbs two flights to the cramped quarters of Share Bong Chu, who is 85 years old and can neither stand nor walk. The team helped even before they arrived: His running water was restored after three weeks when the landlord, told that visitors were coming, fixed a pipe.

Mr. Chu has no wife or children, but a nephew's wife stops by periodically. He has a dream: to get an apartment in a government-subsidized building.

''I never met a more upbeat man,'' said Dr. Brickner, forgetting momentarily that he had made the same admiring remark about Mr. Pang.

Photo of Ka-Lam Pang, a 68-year-old stroke victim, being examined by Dr. Philip W. Brickner and William Lo, a registered nurse, in his room on Eldridge Street. Virginia Eng served as translator. (NYT/Marilynn K. Yee)

Summary: LEAD: Ka-Lam Pang's world has shrunk to a single narrow room, barely wide enough to accommodate his bed. Bars set in the wall allow him to swing himself along in his wheelchair to reach the stove or sink when he is alone during the long shifts his wife works in a garment factory.


A juxtaposition of headlines from the Hill reveals a lot about politics and journalism in 2016: “Clinton to Press: ‘Hold Me Accountable’ ” and “Journalists Applaud Clinton at Event.”

The latter story appeared three minutes after the former Friday afternoon, and both were about the same event. The second story was not a direct response to the first, which is to say the journalists didn’t applaud Mrs. Clinton’s call to hold her...

Summary: Best of the Web: A journalist makes a case against fairness.


(BANGKOK) — Thailand’s junta leader says he will hold elections in November 2017, under a newly approved constitution that will ensure the military’s control over the next government.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief who took power in a coup in 2014, has insisted before that he will hold elections in 2017 but until now had not given a specific month.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, he dismissed a journalist’s suggestion that the polls could be postponed to 2018.

Following the junta’s so-called road map to democracy “would put us on November 2017 when the whole process would be complete. So why would the elections be held in 2018?” he said.

Summary: Until now, Prayuth had not given a specific month


With Britain’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union fixed for June, one thing is certain: The country will spend the next four months mired in claims and counterclaims about immigration, economics and security.

Investors are beginning to worry that it could be a bad time for them as well. They aren’t worrying nearly enough.

The long-run impact of a vote to leave is nigh-on impossible to assess. Major unknowns...

Summary: Streetwise: Investors aren’t worrying nearly enough about how markets will play out between now and the U.K.’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union.


When Chris Nik first saw a video of two Olympic divers' precision entry into a pool, his first thought was that it was so perfectly executed they could have "probably dived into cups".

So he took that thought and tried to bring it a step closer to reality.

He created an animated gif showing two Chinese divers jumping off the 10m-high diving board but ending up in two plastic cups. In less than a day it gathered more than 9 million views on image sharing website, Imgur.

The eight-second clip features China's Chen Aisen and Lin Yue, who both won Olympic gold for the 10-metre synchronised diving event.

The response to the gif has been completely "mind blowing", Mr Nik told the BBC.

"I first thought of the idea when I saw them jumping so perfectly," Mr Nik told the BBC. "So I challenged myself to see if I could do just that."

On Imgur the image was met with enthusiasm.

"Their dive is amazing. The amount of effort you put into making this is amazing. Me? I got out of bed before noon today" said one commenter on Imgur.

"I've watched this gif for ten minutes," said another.

Mr Nik says it was "insane when I saw the views keep going up higher than I expected".

"I was actually talking to some friends earlier tonight and I was talking about the gif and they told me they had already seen it. They didn't believe me at first when I told them I was the one who made it!"

The International Olympic Committee has prohibited news organisations from creating Olympic content into gifs - we are not reproducing the short animation here.

An IOC guideline for news outlets stated that the "use of Olympic Material transformed into graphic animated formats such as animated gifs, GFY, WebM, or short video formats such as Vines and others, is expressly prohibited".

The rule is meant to protect broadcasters by getting viewers to tune in for official Olympic broadcasts, instead of getting the content online.

Mr Nik says that for him "seeing a GIF doesn't satisfy my need for content, I'm not any less likely to want to watch the full video".

However, looking ahead, Mr Nik hopes to continue making more gifs that spread good cheer.

"It doesn't take any secret special skill to make a gif, but the big question is finding something that inspires you and that you know will make people laugh."

Reporting by the BBC's Yvette Tan.

Summary: An animated gif showing two Chinese Olympic divers swooping into two red plastic cups has taken the internet by storm getting more than 9 million views in a day.


BBC được biết Michael Phelps là một trong số 23 vận động viên bơi lội của Mỹ mong muốn có thêm các buổi kiểm tra thuốc kích thích trước khi diễn ra mỗi kỳ Olympics.

Vận động viên giàu thành tích tại các kỳ Olypmpics ký tên trong một lá thư gửi cho Liên đoàn Bơi lội Quốc tế (Fina) vào hồi tháng 12/2015.

Lá thư kêu gọi kêu gọi kiểm tra ít nhất ‘sáu mục tiêu’ trong số 10 vận động viên bơi lội ở mỗi cự ly của 34 cuộc tranh tài về bơi lội ở Olympic.

Fina đã chấp nhận lời đề nghị vào tháng Một 2016.

Các buổi kiểm tra nhằm phát hiện những chất kích thích bị cấm thông qua thử mẫu nước tiểu, thử máu và cho thấy ngày càng có nhiều trường hợp vi phạm.

Những vận động viên bơi lội khác của Mỹ cùng lên tiếng như Michael Phelps, có Ryan Lochte và Missy Franklin.

Cuộc tranh tài về bơi lội ở Olympics Rio có diễn tiến khá căng thẳng sau khi Ủy ban Olympic Quốc tế từ chối lời kêu gọi cấm toàn bộ đoàn vận động viên Nga dù McLaren có bài điều tra cho thấy chính phủ Nga bảo trợ cho vận động viên của mình sử dụng thuốc kích thích.

Có tất cả bảy vận động viên bơi lội của Nga được phép thi đấu ở Rio, dù trước đó bị cấm, dẫn đến việc vận động viên các nước khác không hài lòng.

Vận động viên Mỹ Lilly King và vận động viên Anh Chloe Tutton đều đặt dấu hỏi về sự có mặt của vận động viên Nga Yuliya Efimova, là người bị cấm hồi năm 2013 sau khi bị phát hiện sử dụng chất kích thích tăng sức mạnh cơ bắp.

Nhà vô địch cự ly 400m tự do của Úc, Mack Horton đã gọi Tôn Dương là ‘gian lận dùng chất kích thích’ sau khi vận động viên bơi lội người Trung Quốc thi hành án phạt bị cấm thi đấu ba tháng do dùng chất kích thích vào năm 2014.

Vận động viên bơi lội khác của Trung Quốc là Trần Hân Di, 18 tuổi, cũng là vận động viên đầu tiên không qua được buổi kiểm tra chất kích thích vào hôm Chủ nhật 07/08, khi bị phát hiện dương tính với chất diuretic hydrochlorothiazide- cùng ngày nữ vận động viên này kết thúc cuộc đua chung kết ở cự ly 100m bơi bướm với vị trí thứ tư.

Lá thư được các vận động viên bơi lội Mỹ còn có chữ ký của Camille Adams, Nathan Adrian, Michael Chadwick, Tyler Clary, Kevin Cordes, Conor Dwyer, Matt Grevers, Jessica Hardy, Chase Kalisz, Caitlin Leverenz, Simone Manuel, Katie Meilli, Cody Miller, Lea Neal, David Nolan, Alison Schmitt, Josh Schneider, Tom Shields, Austin Surhoff và Kelsi Worrell.

Lá thư có đoạn viết: “Từ ủy ban độc lập của Cơ quan phòng chống chất kích thích Thế giới (Wada), chúng tôi được biết chính phủ Nga hỗ trợ cho vận động viên của họ sử dụng chất kích thích ở nhiều môn thể thao khác, không riêng gì bơi lội.

“Chúng tôi cũng được biết các vận động viên bơi lội hàng đầu của một số nước khác đã có lịch sử sử dụng chất kích thích, và rất nhiều người đã đặt dấu hỏi về sự hiệu quả của các cơ quan phòng chống việc sử dụng chất kích thích trong thể thao của các nước này.

“Theo những vận động viên bơi lội trong sạch của thế giới, ưu tiên hàng đầu là kinh phí dùng cho chống sử dụng chất kích thích của Fina.”

Fina đã chi đến 560.000 bảng Anh để chống lại việc sử dụng chất kích thích trong năm 2015- trong khi Liên đoàn Xe đạp Quốc tế, UCI, chỉ sử dụng 1/10 số tiền này cho việc tương tự.

Trong những năm gần đây, có rất nhiều vận động viên bơi lội, đặc biệt là Nga, nơi diễn ra Giải vô địch Bơi lội Thế giới ở Kazan vào năm 2015, bị phát hiện sử dụng chất kích thích. Sau khi năm vận động viên bơi lội của Nga trượt các buổi kiểm tra hồi năm 2013, đã có thêm ba trường hợp khác sau đó.

Chủ tịch của Fina, Julio Maglione từng nói rằng Wada đã ‘vượt quá quyền hạn’ khi sử dụng báo cáo của McLaren về việc Nga hỗ trợ vận động viên của mình sử dụng chất kích thích.

Summary: Michael Phelps và 22 vận động viên bơi lội của Mỹ muốn có thêm các buổi kiểm tra thuốc kích thích trước khi diễn ra Olympics.