WASHINGTON, June 7 (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan strongly disavowed Donald Trump's allegations of bias against a Hispanic judge, calling such remarks the "textbook definition of a racist comment," even as he reiterated his support for Trump's White House bid.

Ryan, speaking at an event to unveil U.S. House Republicans' policy proposals, said the comments by the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee were unacceptable and indefensible.

SEE ALSO: Former GOP figure: Donald Trump is 'clearly' a racist

"I regret those comments that he made. Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed," Ryan told reporters.

Nonetheless, Ryan said that a Trump presidency would be preferable to a White House occupied by Democrat Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.

Ryan, the country's highest-ranking elected Republican, just last week endorsed Trump's presidential bid after withholding support for weeks in part because of Trump's past controversial statements about Mexicans and Muslims.

Since then, Trump has become embroiled in a new controversy - over his comments last week about Mexican-American U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

The real estate developer refused on Monday to back down on his comments suggesting that Curiel, who is overseeing fraud lawsuits against Trump University, is biased against him because of his heritage and Trump's campaign statements on preventing illegal immigration from Mexico.

See Paul Ryan through his career:

Paul Ryan blasts Trump's comments as 'textbook' racism

Speaker of the House Denis Hastert (L) administers the oath of office to Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin as his family looks on January 6, 1999 at the start of the 106th Congress. The oath is a recreation as the formal oath is administered to the entire congress as a body on the floor of the House. (photo by Rex Banner)

UNITED STATES - DECEMBER 12: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks at a news conference in which House Republican leaders called for Permanent Tax Relief. (Photo By Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images)

KRT US NEWS STORY SLUGGED: SOCIALSECURITY-DISCUSSION KRT PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE BRIDGES/KRT (April 14) Conversation on Social Security between Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), shown, and William Novelli, head of AARP, April 5, 2005 (lde) 2005 (Photo by George Bridges/MCT/MCT via Getty Images)

In this photo taken Dec. 1, 2015, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington.Talks on a massive, government-wide spending bill hit a snag Wednesday as Republicans pressed demands to block new power plant rules, weaken financial services regulations and make it more difficult for Syrian and Iraqi refugees to enter the U.S. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

UNITED STATES - JULY 22: MEDICARE BRIEFING--Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., speaks at a Cato Institute briefing on Medicare reform in the Rayburn House Office Building. Tom Miller, director of Health Policy Studies at Cato, looks on. (Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - SEPTEMBER 24: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) questions Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, during a hearing on Capitol Hill about the impact of recent market turmoil on the federal budget on September 24, 2008 in Washington, DC. Orszag reported that while the impact is currently unknown, it is likely to be substantially less than $700 billion. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - APRIL 27: House Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) (R) delivers an opening statement during a conference committee meeting with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) (L) and House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) in the U.S. Capitol April 27, 2009 in Washington, DC. House and Senate lawmakers have already struck a tentative deal on the FY2010 budget resolution and they hope to file a conference report after today's meeting. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - MARCH 19: (L-R) U.S. House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) listen during a news conference on the health care legislation March 19, 2010 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The House will vote on the Health Care Reform Legislation on Sunday, March 21. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. U.S. House Republicans today unveiled a plan to overhaul the federal budget and slash the deficit in coming years by about three-quarters, with a $6-trillion cut in spending and 25 percent cap on tax rates. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

MEET THE PRESS -- Pictured: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) left, and moderator David Gregory, right, appear on 'Meet the Press' in Washington, D.C., Sunday, April 10, 2011. (Photo by William B. Plowman/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

MILWAUKEE, WI - APRIL 01: Republican Presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) jokes with U.S. Rep Paul Ryan (C) (R-WI) during a pancake brunch at Bluemound Gardens on April 1, 2012 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. With less than a week before the Wisconsin primary, Mitt Romney continues to campaign through the state. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 26: House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is introduced before speaking about 'America's Enduring Promise,' and the federal budget, in a speech at Georgetown University April 26, 2012 in Washington, DC. During his speech, Ryan said that his proposed budget confronts the nation's growing $15 trillion debt before it impacts future generations of Americans. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

NORFOLK, VA - AUGUST 11: Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (L) jokes with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) (R) after announcing him as the 'next PRESIDENT of the United States' during an event announcing him as his running mate in front of the USS Wisconsin August 11, 2012 in Norfolk, Virginia. Ryan, a seven term congressman, is Chairman of the House Budget Committee and provides a strong contrast to the Obama administration on fiscal policy. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

UNITED STATES - SEPTEMBER 14: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Vice Presidential candidate, waves to the crowd after addressing the Values Voter Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Woodley Park. Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

NEWPORT NEWS, VA - SEPTEMBER 18: Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), pauses as he speaks during a campaign rally at Christopher Newport University September 18, 2012 in Newport News, Virginia. Ryan continued to campaign for the upcoming presidential election. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

MIAMI, FL - SEPTEMBER 22: Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) hugs waitress, Lourdes Alcerro, during a campaign stop at Versailles restaurant in the Little Havana neighborhood on September 22, 2012 in Miami, Florida. Ryan continues to campaign for votes across the country. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) and running-mate Paul Ryan share a laugh as they are introduced at a campaign rally September 25, 2012 at Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GettyImages)

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, arrives at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015. Ryan said he'd be willing to run for speaker of the U.S. House if Republicans unify behind him now, end leadership crises and let him continue spending time with his family. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, center right, walks down the steps of the U.S. Capitol building following a vote in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Oct. 9, 2015. Ryan is under heavy pressure from fellow Republicans to run for U.S. House speaker after a hard-line faction forced Speaker John Boehner to resign and his top lieutenant to drop out of the race. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., leaves his office before a House GOP meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, walks to a meeting in the basement of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015. Ryan is set to meet with a group of House conservatives Tuesday as he weighs a potential run to replace Speaker John Boehner under pressure from fellow Republicans. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis. leaves his office before a House GOP meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, center, talks to the media after walking out of the U.S. Capitol building following a vote in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Oct. 9, 2015. Ryan is under heavy pressure from fellow Republicans to run for U.S. House speaker after a hard-line faction forced Speaker John Boehner to resign and his top lieutenant to drop out of the race. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis. leaves his office before a House Republican meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

UNITED STATES - OCTOBER 20 - Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks at a news conference following a House Republican meeting, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2015. Ryan is stating that he will run for speaker only if he receives enough GOP support by the end of the week. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call)

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., center, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015, following meetings with House Republican leaders and the Freedom Caucus members. Ryan seeking unity in a place it's rarely found, is telling House Republicans he will serve as their speaker only if they embrace him by week's end as their consensus candidate. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, awaits the arrival of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin for a meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, December 10, 2015. AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB / AFP / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 10: House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) holds his weekly press briefing on Capitol Hill on December 10, 2015 in Washington, D.C. Paul Ryan spoke on topics including Donald Trump and the spending bill. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 15: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, (R-WI) speaks during a Politico interview at the Grand Hyatt on December 15, 2015 in Washington DC. Ryan was interviewed by Politico's Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen during a Politico Playbook Breakfast. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. welcomes Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

On Sunday, in response to questions, Trump said it was possible a Muslim judge might be similarly biased against him based on his campaign call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

The controversy has taken center stage in the presidential campaigns. It overshadowed Ryan's attempt to showcase on Tuesday a new welfare reform plan that Republicans hope to run on through the Nov. 8 election and turn into legislation next year if they maintain control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Other Republican lawmakers also piled on pressure on Trump to stop making incendiary remarks and to focus more on issues that can attract a broader electorate in the general election.

Ryan's counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said on Tuesday that Trump should avoid such comments, saying, "The less said about all that the better."

On Sunday, McConnell, interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," attacked Trump's remarks about Curiel but stopped short of calling them racist.

"We are trying to get in line, but he keeps taking the subject away from unifying the party, which he needs to be doing right now by reaching out and bringing people with whom he competed, and talking about the issues the American people care about," the Senate majority leader told Fox Business Network in an interview on Tuesday.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, who has been supportive of Trump and has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, took to MSNBC on Tuesday to plead for Trump to switch gears and focus on defeating Clinton in the five months until the election.

"It's up to him now to pivot. I want to encourage that," Corker said. "He has time  I will continue to encourage him until it's too late."

Clinton has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination, according to U.S. media outlets. But her campaign urged supporters to get to the polls on Tuesday in a swath of late primaries to avoid a loss to Bernie Sanders in California as she seeks to unite Democrats ahead of the November match-up with Trump.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Frances Kerry)

More from AOL.com: Gary Johnson says Donald Trump 'clearly' a racist Trump will reopen controversial Trump University after litigation ends Ronald Reagan's son: My dad wouldn't support Trump

Summary: Trump has faced a barrage of criticism from his own party over his allegations of bias against a Hispanic judge.


By the end of the century most of the world will be too hot to host the Olympics in summer, researchers say.

A study from the University of Auckland has found by 2085 almost 90 per cent of the large cities in the Northern Hemisphere will be so affected by climate change, the temperature and humidity will be too high to safely run a marathon in summer.

But epidemiology and biostatistics professor Alistair Woodward, who co-authored the study, says where to host the Olympics would only be the start of the problem for outdoor exercise in the future.

"Increasing restrictions on when, where, and how the Games can be held owing to extreme heat are a sign of a much bigger problem," he said.

"If the world's most elite athletes need to be protected from climate change, what about the rest of us?"

The study found only three cities in North America, two in Asia and none in Africa would be considered "low-risk" for outdoor exercise in the future.

"Projections to early next century suggest the last cities with low-risk summer conditions will be Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow," Prof Woodward said.

The study, published on Friday in The Lancet, is a collaboration with the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and universities in Cyprus and California.

Prof Woodward said some parts of the world already had temperatures too high to do strenuous exercise outdoors - as measured by a combination of temperature, humidity, heat radiation, and wind - and climate change would mean more regions would get worse for more of the year.

"The world beyond 2050 poses increasingly difficult challenges, not only because of the inherent uncertainties in long-term predictions, but because the extent and speed of change might exceed society's ability to adapt," he said.

Summary: By 2085 most of the Northern Hemisphere will be too warm to host the Olympics, New Zealand researchers say.


Dan Nemets, a sophomore at Central Michigan University, likes the TV show "Family Guy," heavy-metal musician Ozzy Osbourne and a good pipe.

Mr. Nemets took up pipe smoking 18 months ago after strolling into a pipe and tobacco store near the Mount Pleasant campus with a friend. Mr. Nemets can't smoke in his dorm room but has networked with other youthful smokers on Facebook in the Collegiate Gentlemen's Pipe Smoking League.

"They say everyone has an inner child," the 19-year-old says. "I guess I have an inner old man."

Friday is International Pipe-Smoking Day, when a number of puffers will unite to protest tobacco taxes and smoking bans. They will also engage in slow-smoking competitions to see who can keep a pipe going the longest. Each contestant is given just two matches. Events, which will go on all weekend, are promoted by the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.

Health advocates may warn of oral cancer, mouth lesions and rotting teeth, but Mr. Nemets and his online brethren are in the vanguard of an unlikely set of smokers taking to the brier -- people in their 20s.

"They're eager to learn," says 71-year-old Vernon E. Vig, president of the New York Pipe Club and the United Pipe Clubs of America. Mr. Vig started smoking a pipe as an undergrad at Carleton College 53 years ago. "Back then, everyone smoked a pipe," Mr. Vig says. His group, which meets monthly in Manhattan, has seen a definite increase in college students and young professionals, he says.

No one tracks how many young men and women are pipe smokers. But sales of pipe tobacco are rising again after years of decline, and many think young smokers are the reason. U.S. sales of pipe tobacco plummeted to 4.9 million pounds in 2006, from 52 million pounds in 1970, says Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America. Sales climbed to 5.3 million pounds in 2008. Pipe tobacco and smokeless tobacco sales are on the rise, offsetting over a decade of decreases in cigarette sales.

Pipe-smoking groups on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have attracted thousands of members. Questions in the forums include: A bent or straight pipe? Does anyone have a favorite perique Louisiana tobacco blend? What is the consensus on corncob pipes?

Sykes Wilford, 28, burned his tongue when he first started smoking a pipe as a freshman at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn. He now walks new smokers through the first puffs in his own store in Little River, S.C., to ensure they don't meet the same fate. Although he mostly carries traditional pipes, he's trying to bring a modern edge to the ancient habit. "For me to have an iPhone in one hand and a pipe in the other is not unusual," he says.

To appeal to his own demographic, Mr. Wilford hired another young pipe smoker, Adam Davidson, 27. The two created a Web site where they post photos of their inventory. They tout the thriftiness of smoking a pipe in newsletters. The two contend that smoking a pipe, in the long run, is cheaper than smoking cigarettes. That has been a great selling point with the cash-strapped, ramen-noodle-eating crowd, the men say.

Money played a role when Ed Rice picked up his first pipe. The 21-year-old junior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign began puffing two years ago. "We bought the cheaper-end ones," he says. His pipe cost around $30, but he estimates he spends much less than cigarette smokers do on their tobacco habits -- less than $10 a week.

Tom Moran, owner of the 115-year-old Rich's Cigar Store in Portland, Ore., noticed a recent uptick in sales of corncob pipes, which retail for $4 to $7 in his store, and "starter" brier pipes that sell for as much as $22.95. Although the youngsters have less cash than some of his older clientele, he welcomes the business. "You hate to watch your customers die off," Mr. Moran says.

Bill Shindler, the pipe specialist who works the store floor of Rich's, estimates that 60% of the younger pipe smokers who come in once stay with it. "They're looking for an alternative to cigarette smoking."

Mr. Shindler also says that smoking trends reflect the changing economy. His store did a booming business in expensive cigars during the bull market of the nineties.

"Cigars said, 'I've made it,' " Mr. Shindler says. "It was a form of reward for yourself. When Wall Street crashed, people backed off from that." Pipe smoking, he says, has a more calming effect. "It's a comfortable aroma. It reminds you of grandpa. People are looking for that kind of comfort."

Joanna Murakami, a statistics graduate student at University of California at Riverside, took up pipe smoking at 19 because "it looked like the coolest thing ever." The 24-year-old lights up about once a week.

Her reaction to onlookers, surprised at the sight of a young woman with a pipe? "I don't care," she says.

Public-health experts, of course, don't think pipe smoking is at all cool. It's smoking, and it's dangerous, they say.

"The end result would be they'll have fewer teeth," says Jasim M. Albandar, a professor of periodontology at Temple University, in Philadelphia. Dr. Albandar headed up a study published in December 2000 that focused on the dental impacts of pipe and cigar smoking. He found that pipe smokers had severe plaque, inflamed gums and higher risks of periodontal disease, even though they tend to smoke less often than cigarette smokers do.

"It's a misconception that pipe smoking is a healthy alternative," says Thomas J. Glynn, director, cancer science and trends, for the American Cancer Society. Dr. Glynn says that pipe smoking has been associated with oral cancers and lesions of the lip, tongue and gums which can cause severe facial disfiguration.

Youthful pipe smokers seem to think the habit is less harmful than smoking cigarettes because the smoke isn't inhaled. "I recognize that it can be hazardous in the extreme," Ms. Murakami says, but "it seems healthier than smoking a cigarette. It helps me calm down, and it helps me think."

Others like that it's still unconventional in style. "There's something culturally attractive about smoking a pipe," Mr. Wilford says. "There may be some nostalgia there, too."

There will be some serious puffing and pondering at slow-smoking competitions today and this weekend to commemorate this year's International Pipe-Smoking Day.

Skip Elliott, owner of the Briary in Homewood, Ala., will hold a slow-smoking competition on Saturday and expects some of his more youthful regulars to attend. He estimates that a quarter of his business comes from people under 30. "They come in groups," Mr. Elliott says.

He says that smokers pile in from the nearby universities, text each other, "and soon there's a line out the door."

Young smokers have been swapping emails, sending Facebook messages and Googling for information about techniques and strategies for smoking competitions. Many are competing for the first time.

But, as Mr. Nemets learned at his first competition in October, young lungs aren't necessarily a ticket to earning a tobacco trophy.

"I competed against a 96-year-old," Mr. Nemets says. "I got my butt kicked." Mr. Nemets's time was 26 minutes. The 96-year-old kept his pipe lit for more than two hours, Mr. Nemets says.

"There's a technique," Mr. Nemets says. "And I've still gotta learn it."

Write to Mary Pilon at mary.pilon@wsj.com

Summary: An unlikely set of smokers is taking to the pipe -- people in their 20s.


No resort is ranked so highly, or so consistently, as Whistler. And with the help of Ski Independence, a family firm of 50 years’ experience, you’ll be able to plan a truly exceptional holiday in Canada’s greatest mountain playground.

There are many reasons why the resort has attracted such a following: its prestigious hotels and wealth of fine restaurants, its family-friendliness, and the legendary can-do attitude of ski instructors and resort staff.

But it all starts with the skiing. The twin mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb make up the biggest area of skiable terrain in North America: a total of 8,171 acres with more than 200 marked trails.

There’s no shortage of insanely steep gullies and couloirs where experts can test their abilities

Skiers and snowboarders can expect good conditions throughout the long season. The Coastal Mountains of British Columbia are blanketed in an average 39 feet of snow each year.

And although there’s more than a mile of vertical between village and mountain top, the resort is at a low elevation. Any breathlessness will be down to the beauty of the surroundings rather than the effects of altitude.

There’s terrain to suit every skier. You’ll find no shortage of wide, flowing runs where the snow has been groomed to corduroy consistency, and the seven-mile Peak to Creek trail is an absolute must for beginners and intermediates.

No one should miss the views from the Peak 2 Peak gondola that links the twin mountains – the longest and highest lift in the world.

If deep powder snow is what you’re seeking, places such as the Flute Bowl offer a back-country experience within the safety of the ski area.

Advanced skiers will want to check out the Dave Murray Downhill, used in the 2010 Olympics. There’s no shortage of insanely steep gullies and couloirs where experts can test their abilities. Names like Couloir Extreme, Outer Limits and Spanky’s Ladder give the game away.

Ski Independence can make arrangements for equipment hire, discounted lift tickets and tuition. Whistler Blackcomb Snow School is first-rate, and particularly geared to helping children become skilful snow bunnies.

Whistler Kids programmes are split into different age groups to ensure they progress at the right pace. To discover how to ski the steepest and deepest terrain, you can sign up with Extremely Canadian: its instructors are among British Columbia’s best freeskiers.

If you’d like to search for untouched powder snow, the sky’s the limit. Whistler is among the best places in North America for helicopter skiing or boarding. Away from the slopes, you can try out zip lining, dog-sledding or snowmobiling, or enjoy the romance of an evening’s outing by horse sleigh.

Ski Independence offers an enviable range of accommodation. A local landmark is the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, with a peerless standard of luxury and service (and more often than not, several Hollywood A-listers in residence). Book by 31 August and save up to 55 per cent.

If you’re travelling as a family, you’ll love the flexibility and value for money of a self-catered condominium such as The Aspens, with ski-in/ski-out access and spacious apartments.

The town comes alive after the lifts close, and few places in North America can boast the lively après-ski of Whistler. It’s a time to swap ski tales across a jug of Kokanee beer at the famous GLC Bar and Grill, or kick back and relax beside the fireside at Dusty’s.

When it comes to dining, you’ll have to make some tricky decisions. There’s a dazzling array of different scenes and cuisines to choose from.

On one night, you might opt for a gastronomic blow-out of West Coast oysters, Wagyu steak and champagne cocktails at Bearfoot Bistro; the next, a simple feast of chicken wings and tacos at El Furniture Warehouse.

With all this on offer, the question is less “Why choose Whistler?” than “Why choose anywhere else?” – and Ski Independence will be happy to tailor-make every aspect of your Canadian trip.

For more information on tailor-made ski holidays, visit ski-i.com or call 0131 243 8097

Summary: With excellent ski conditions, prestigious hotels and top restaurants, Whistler is a great option


West Ham skipperÂ Mark Noble: "It is another late goal, just like Monday night [against Chelsea]. We have anotherÂ game, we have an away goal but a massive game on Sunday against Bournemouth.Â We need toÂ get a couple of players back.

"This is the first weekÂ of the season and we travelledÂ a long way, we should have held on. I am pretty sure the second game will be a goodÂ one.

"We didn't score from open play tonight, we have to score and win games.

"It is not ideal if you fly for three hours then drive anÂ hour-and-a-half to aÂ game and don't come away with a result."

Summary: West Ham concede a late goal to leave their Europa League play-off tie against Astra Giurgiu of Romania in the balance.


The Anglican Archbishop of Perth denies he was intimidated by a former senior clergyman accused of child sex abuse, with whom he had three conversations that he cannot remember.

Archbishop Roger Herft, who was in charge of the Newcastle diocese until 2005, on Monday conceded documents indicate he spoke to former Dean Graeme Lawrence about allegations over numerous years.

But he has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he has no recollection of the conversations and is concerned by the fact that the appropriate file notes don’t seem to have been made.

He denied trying to protect Mr Lawrence, who has since been defrocked.

“Are you intimidated by Graeme Lawrence?” counsel assisting the commission Naomi Sharp asked.

“I'm not intimidated by Graeme Lawrence,” Archbishop Herft replied.

Archbishop Herft told the public hearing in Newcastle he had placed great trust in Mr Lawrence and accepted his denials against the allegations even years after they first surfaced.

"It could be said … that by 1999 the allegations were no longer a whisper and were now a roar?” Ms Sharp said.

“That is not the way I understood it, Ma'am.”

In a 2010 letter to the diocese's professional standards director Archbishop Herft wrote that it was “inconceivable” no action would have been taken in response to the allegations because Mr Lawrence was the chaplain of Newcastle Grammar School.

The action taken was "to inquire of Graeme Lawrence" he told the commission.

Summary: The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is expected to continue hearing evidence from the Archbishop of Perth.


The CFA is disappointed a resolution to its pay deal dispute will be further delayed after a Victorian Supreme Court trial was set back almost a fortnight.

The expected 10-day trial between Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria and the CFA was meant to start on September 22 but has been rescheduled to October 3.

"While we are disappointed the resolution of legal questions related to the proposed operational agreement has been delayed, we respect the court's decision to reschedule the hearing," CFA chief executive Frances Diver said in a statement on Friday.

Summary: A Victorian Supreme Court trial on the controversial CFA pay deal has been delayed until October.


Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus is playing down a potential deal on a national same-sex marriage vote, leaving the issue in the coalition's court.

It's up to Attorney-General George Brandis to explain how the government will win over Labor with changes to a plebiscite, he says.

Despite earlier hinting a deal could be in sight and reeling off a wishlist, Mr Dreyfus firmed up his stance on Friday afternoon.

"At the moment, it does not appear to me that the right wing of the Liberal Party is prepared to compromise on anything," he told reporters in Melbourne.

The pair will meet in Brisbane on Monday, as the coalition attempts to break a political deadlock on a national vote.

Mr Dreyfus doesn't characterise the meeting as an attempt to reach a compromise.

However, he earlier listed changes that could make the plebiscite more palatable for the opposition, a different tune to that of Labor leader Bill Shorten who stuck to his fierce opposition on Friday.

Among them were scrapping $15 million in public funding for the "yes" and "no" campaigns and making the vote automatically trigger a new law should the nation vote yes.

But Mr Dreyfus later clarified he "in no sense" knew what Senator Brandis was going to say at the requested meeting.

"I'm not going into this meeting with a list of conditions," he said.

The clarification came after Mr Shorten said the only compromise he was considering was the prime minister allowing MPs a free vote on same-sex marriage legislation in parliament.

Labor caucus is yet to formally decide its position on a plebiscite but Mr Shorten is expected to recommend its opposition.

"The whole Labor team have grave reservations about the shocking waste of money that this plebiscite is (and) the unnecessary division it causes in our community," Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney on Friday.

"Let's be clear: we haven't heard so far any good argument to support this plebiscite and I'm still waiting for the first one."

Mr Dreyfus earlier tried to convince the Freedom for Faith conference in Melbourne the fear of same-sex marriage encroaching on religious freedom was unfounded.

"The two are not related," he told delegates.

"It is not right for us to deny equal rights to another person because they do not match with what our idea of love should be.

"'Love thy neighbour' does not come with conditions."

He used libertarian senator David Leyonhjelm's support for same-sex marriage to prove it would not be an encroachment of the state on religious belief systems.

The world and organised religion would not end when same-sex marriage became reality, as it had not in the United States, Ireland or New Zealand, he said.

"Marriage equality will happen in Australia," Mr Dreyfus said.

"It is not a question of if, but when and how."

Summary: Attorney-General George Brandis will meet his opposition counterpart on Monday to discuss a way around the deadlock over a same-sex marriage plebiscite.


Yahoo Inc. said Thursday that hackers backed by an unnamed foreign government had stolen personal information from more than 500 million of its users’ accounts, one of the largest security breaches of the Internet age.

Meanwhile, a website with suspected ties to the government of Russia leaked stolen information about the travel itinerary of Vice President Joe Biden and First Lady Michelle Obama, including a scanned image of her passport.

The Yahoo breach puts at risk passwords, e-mail address, and phone numbers for millions of users. Yahoo urged consumers to be wary of suspicious e-mails.

The two episodes are the latest sign that the world’s best computer security engineers seem incapable of securing the nation’s critical computer networks against spies and criminals.

Federal law enforcement officials are looking into both cyber attacks.

Last month, US officials said Russian hackers attacked voter registration computers in Illinois and Arizona, and stole personal information on as many as 200,000 Illinois voters. In July, thousands of e-mails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were made public; again, US intelligence officials blamed Russia. In June 2015, the Office of Personnel Management said criminals believed to be working on behalf of China had stolen the records of 21.5 million current or former US government employees.

“You cannot assume that anything electronic is safe, that anything digital is safe,” said Jeff Pollard, a digital security analyst for Cambridge-based Forrester Research.

The Yahoo saga began in August, when the website Motherboard reported that a hacker known as “Peace” was attempting to sell copies of a file containing 200 million stolen Yahoo user accounts for about $1,900. Yahoo investigated and concluded there was no truth to the claim. But during the investigation, Yahoo’s researchers uncovered a much worse data breach that had gone undetected for two years.

Yahoo said it believes the hack was carried out by “a state-sponsored actor” — in other words, an unidentified foreign government. The stolen data are believed to include names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords.

Yahoo said the thieves did not gain access to computers containing unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information. Yahoo urged its users to check their accounts for signs of suspicious activity and to change their passwords and security questions immediately.

Users of Yahoo Mail were also told to beware of suspicious e-mail messages. These could be fraudulent “phishing” messages sent to people whose addresses have been stolen, seeking to get further data.

‘‘We take these types of breaches very seriously and will determine how this occurred and who is responsible,’’ the FBI said in a statement.

Yahoo, founded in 1994, was an early star of the dot-com boom, but its Internet search business was eclipsed by Google’s and it struggled to compete for advertisers. Its finances steadily weakened, and in July it struck a deal to be acquired by Verizon Communications Inc. for $4.83 billion. Thursday’s disclosure could complicate the deal, as Verizon said it learned of the hack “within the last two days.”

Still, the company is one of the world’s leading online destinations for news and information, and its e-mail service is used by hundreds of millions of people. Its websites, which include Yahoo News and Tumblr, attract about a billion users per month worldwide. In the United States alone, the company’s various Internet services attract over 200 million users a month, making it the third most popular Internet destination, after Google and Facebook.

The typical Yahoo user might not seem important enough to be targeted by foreign agents. But Stuart Madnick, professor of information technologies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said the records of a seemingly insignificant person could someday prove useful. “It’s stockpiling weapons,” Madnick said. “At some point in the future you might be somebody important.”

Besides, he said, a successful raid on Yahoo would teach lessons that could be used in attacks on other targets. “If it does work,” he said, “I’m going to do it to Microsoft next, I’m going to do it to Google next.”

Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, said the Yahoo breach was very serious because so many Internet users routinely store sensitive data on Internet-based systems — not on the hard drives in their desktop PCs, for example. “We no longer keep our stuff on our computers,” he said. “We keep our stuff on their computers.”

But Schneier, who is also chief technology officer of Resilient, an IBM data security company, said consumers are still better off relying on cloud-based services. These systems, despite their flaws, are still more secure than the average home computer. “For most people,” he said, “these companies do a much better job of protecting their data then they do.”

The stolen information about Michelle Obama was part of a batch of e-mails from February 2015 through July 2016 and purportedly hacked from the Gmail account of a White House “advance” staffer responsible for the logistics of official trips. The breach included the photo and information page of her passport, including passport number, birth date, and place of birth — most of which is public information.

The White House said it was looking into the breach, as did the attorney general.

NBC News reported the e-mails were sent from the Gmail account of Ian Mellul, a contractor at the White House. They included sensitive information such as the names of Secret Service and White House Military Office personnel who traveled with President Obama to Cuba; a guide to computer security for the president’s staff while traveling abroad; and travel schedules for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Summary: Yahoo is blaming a ‘‘state-sponsored actor’’ for the hack of at least half a billion of its users.


WASHINGTON — on Sept. 10 the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet issued Decree No. 588, which strips me of my nationality, for “gravely threatening the essential interests of the state.” This measure is just one more addition to the shameful history of the violation of human rights committed by the military junta.

On Tuesday, Orlando Leteller, who was Chilean Foreign Minister in the Government of President Salvador Allende Gossens, was killed in Washington when a bomb exploded in his car. He had been a leader of Chilean political exiles in the United States who opposed the military junta that overthrew President Allende in 1973. He wrote the following article for the Op‐Ed page of The New York Times, at his own initiative, a few clays before his death.

In the chronicle of Latin American dictatorships, political rights have frequently been denied to critics and opponents. The Chilean junta, not to be outdone as leader in the field of such violations, has made the entire Chilean population a victim through decree that ordered the burning of the country's electoral register in fact, all the citizenship rights of the population have been destroyed.

Today, having exhausted this repressive mechanism they can only resort to the absurdity of pretending that those who oppose their designs are no longer part of the Chilean nation.

Needless to say, this decree violates the intent of the Constitution that applied in Chile before the rule of law was destroyed there on Sept. 11„ 1973, together with the norms of international law, especially Article 15 of the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. This action has no precedent in our history. Never have governments vested themselves with the authority to confer or take away Chilean nationality at will.

Because of my position as Minister of State and Ambassador [to the United States] of the constitutional Government of Chile, I was incarcerated in the concentration camp on Dawson Island until I was expelled from the country without any formal charges ever being made against me. was not granted any of the basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution or by the laws of my country.

Among other violations, I was deprived of my passport and thus of my status as a Chilean abroad. Many of my fellow countrymen were subjected to the same arbitrary measures.

It would seem, then, that this decree constitutes a complete absurdity. But behind it one sees the logic of a Wall,. tarian mentality, that it projects Itself from within a system based on terror and vengeance. Its purpose is to intimidate those who fight from abroad for the restoration of human rights, freedom and democracy in Chile. It tries to erase a whole sector of Chileans from the history of our country, to eliminate the protagonists of a social and political ideal with deep roots in our history, which has survived persecution and is today the emblem of the struggle against tyranny.

What the junta is fighting is not so much the men who three years ago led a democratic Government but rather the ideas we represent. What they are denying is the nationality of values, such as Chilean democracy, that for 150 years constituted an example for Latin America and for the world.

What they are attempting to destroy are the political parties that channeled the aspirations of the Chilean people, its trade‐union organizations, and its convivial way of life, based on the free play of ideas and respect for the human being.

Accordingly, to Pinochet none of this has any place within the Chilean nationality, and the fascist ideology that Pinochet professes can be seen in this most delirious expression of his fanaticism.

The patriotic obligation of all Chileans is to‐contribute to the and of the dictatorship. We do it as members of a nation and as Inheritors of a tradition of freedom to which the Pinochets do not belong.

The things that destroy our nationality are the concentration camps, torture, repression and hunger. That which makes us vulnerable as a nation is the utilization of the armed forces against the Chilean people. it is all this brutal conduct and not the actions of those who want to put an end to it that isolates us today from the community of civilized nations.

The image of Chile will return to what it once was when democracy is re‐established along with the human rights that have been usurped by the dictators. At that moment no one will be in any doubt about the nationality of the Chileans who are in power today on the contrary, as such they will be made to answer to Chilean tribunals in accordance with the Chilean judicial system for crimes committed against their country.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on September 27, 1976, on page 31 of the New York edition with the headline: A Testament. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Letelier article, written shortly before his death, expresses horror at violation of human rights committed by Chile's mil junta, scores dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and hopes that country will return to dem principles; Letelier por (M)


A man entered a woman's home before threatening her with a syringe and stealing her handbag and mobile phone, WA police say.

The man, 40, entered the 77-year-old's Perth home about 3pm on Tuesday and was taken into custody about 11pm after being spotted in Fremantle.

He has been charged with a range of offences including aggravated burglary, aggravated indecent assault and possessing a prohibited drug.

Summary: A man has been charged after he allegedly entered a Perth woman's home and threatened her with a syringe before stealing her handbag and mobile phone.


After Sree Sreenivasan lost his job this summer as the chief digital officer of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, he made a move most people wouldn’t: he broadcast the news to thousands of Facebook friends in a detailed post.

Sreenivasan told the world what had happened to his job (“financial restructuring” at the Met), invited people to join him for coffee or walks around Central Park (he had more free time), and even asked people to fill out a Google form with ideas for what he should do next.

Sreenivasan’s very public gamble paid off. More than 1,200 people “liked” the post, and 1,300 people filled out the form. A few even offered jobs. And, a couple of months later he was offered the position of chief digital officer for the City of New York. The position came about “directly from City Hall reading about my availability,” Sreenivasan says.

Welcome to 2016 and a new approach to networking for a job. Of course, it helped that Sreenivasan already had a network of thousands and was a social media guru. But, what about for the rest of us? Is this a smart approach to dealing with being downsized and getting back in the game if you have 500 Facebook friends rather than 5,000 as Sreenivasan does?

It doesn’t mean tell a million people. It means tell people who can help you

Yes, says Sreenivasan. Just do it in the way that is right for you. “You don’t have to do a public Facebook posting,” he says. “You can write to 15 of your closest friends and tell them. It doesn’t mean tell a million people. It means tell people who can help you.”

And don’t just tell them you need help. “Be very specific about the things you can do and what you are looking for because even your best friend typically has no idea what exactly your job is or what your skill set is or what you want to do,” he says.

Don’t wait until you need people to connect with them.

“Reach out to people when you don’t need them. Build your network when you don’t need them. Connect to people when you don’t need them,” Sreenivasan says.

When you do need them a month or year from now, it’s much easier because you’ve stayed in touch but not because you were asking for something

It can be as simple as letting someone know you are thinking about them through a text or a quick call or even a comment or a few extra likes on Facebook. “That’s all you have to do, and it gives you so much good will,” he says. Then, when you do need them a month or year from now, it’s much easier because you’ve stayed in touch, but not because you were asking for something. “That is what social media allows you to do,” he explains.

This can also help you tap into extended networks, which are where you are more likely to find leads or jobs, according to Claudia Jonczyk, associate professor at ESCP Europe business school’s London campus. People often make the mistake of assuming job leads and referrals only come from their close networks. But those people “tend to have the same type and level of information that you have,” Jonczyk says. Instead, it’s those “more distant pockets of knowledge,” the people who they know who might know of someone or something that could help you in your search.

When deciding what — if any — message to put out there, it’s important to “always remember that in our digital age, everything we do leaves a permanent footprint,” says Tampa, Florida-based Adam Lloyd, president of global executive search firm Webber Kerr Associates. So remain professional in your social media posts. “If your message isn’t a sustainable one, don’t broadcast it.” Always ask yourself first, “What do I have to gain from this?” suggests Lloyd, and, “What do I have to lose?”

In our digital age, everything we do leaves a permanent footprint

While writing a vengeful post about your former employer might feel good in the moment, posting something like that is ill advised, even if you feel you're warning future prospects about a dishonest boss or company culture. It could gain you some social media attention, but “future potential employers could view your actions poorly and may associate you with high risk and that you burn bridges,” Lloyd says.

Lloyd recommends pausing before clicking send. “If you decide to go public, I suggest avoiding immediate, emotional reactions; never taking personal jabs, not leaking proprietary information, letting the facts speak and staying positive,” he says. In addition, consider where you are posting it. “LinkedIn may not be the appropriate stage for a broadcast intended for Facebook,” he says.

It also depends on where you are located, says Jonczyk. “Having been made redundant is more of a taboo in France or Germany than in countries with a more fluid job market with lower barriers of entry,” she says. So, it’s something else to weigh when deciding what you might or might not share.

If you decide to go public, I suggest avoiding immediate, emotional reactions

The type of job search can also help you decide whether you want to share your news publicly, according to Lisa Rangel, managing director of New York-based ChameleonResumes.com. “If social media and digital communications are a part of the target job, outbound social media activity is smart to do to demonstrate skills,” she says. But, “if your job search is confidential or sensitive, publicly outing the search may not be best and is a decision to be made on a case-by-case basis.”

No matter what type of search you are doing, avoid saying anything disparaging about a prior boss or employer, whether you are online or offline, says Rangel. “There is just never a scenario where this works.” Instead, “phrase departures as a learning experience.”

Avoid saying anything disparaging about a prior boss or employer, whether you are online or offline

And, take a page from Sreenivasan’s approach. “In a time where there’s such a high premium on authenticity and humility, [he] humanised himself and made himself vulnerable,” says Webber Kerr’s Lloyd. “Not careless, but transparent and real. In addition to exposing an unfavourable situation, [he] goes further to leverage it as a learning and engagement opportunity.”

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

Summary: Broadcast it on Facebook? Your next move will set the stage for a comeback. Here's what to do and how to do it.


The manager of a Brisbane veterinary clinic where a depressed dog groomer took her own life with a drug used to euthanise animals says it's possible an opened bottle of the substance could go missing without raising alarm.

A pre-inquest conference in August heard Donna Alexia Cowley-Persch, 58, was found by her colleagues in September 2013 after having administered the "rapidly fatal" substance.

Now, the inquest is investigating regulations applied to the drug, which legally must be locked away and monitored when in tablet form but not when in injectable form.

Practice manager of the Ascot Veterinary Clinic Kate Miller told the Coroners Court on Wednesday the site now kept the injectable version in a locked safe after Ms Cowley-Persch's death.

But she said the practice was not required to keep a record book dedicated to the use of the drug and admitted it was possible for an amount of the drug to go missing without anybody noticing.

"It would be fair to say that at least a part bottle could go missing from the practice and no one would necessarily blink an eye?" counsel assisting Peter De Waard posed.

"It's possible, yes," she replied.

She said staff didn't necessarily know where the drug was stored but acknowledged the substance "wasn't hidden".

The inquest also heard the deceased dog groomer had handed Ms Miller a letter outlining personal stress in the days before her body was found.

But while the letter detailed her feelings that she was losing "perspective" and needing to muster all her energy to get through the day, Ms Miller said she didn't regard her colleague as suicidal at the time.

Asked by Mr De Waard if the letter, taken as a whole, was essentially Ms Cowley-Persch "crying out for help", Ms Miller replied: "In hindsight, yes".

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.

Summary: An inquest stemming from the death of a dog groomer after using an animal euthanasia drug has began in Brisbane.


There will be even more of the small bars credited with injecting much-needed vibrancy into Perth's social scene if WA Labor wins the state election in March, leader Mark McGowan says.

When in power in 2006, the party changed liquor laws to make it easier for new small bars to be established.

Mr McGowan told a business forum on Friday he was keen to further deregulate, reducing the three years an unsuccessful applicant must wait to try again.

"I'm going to do a second phase of those. It's one of those issues I'm very keen on advancing," he said.

Summary: WA Labor leader Mark McGowan promises to further deregulate liquor licensing laws, saying unsuccessful small bar applicants have to wait too long to try again.


The car was quickly swept underwater. (9NEWS)

Emergency services have recovered a car that was driven into Melbourne's Yarra River overnight.

The car, being driven by a woman, went into the Yarra near the Swan St bridge around 11pm on Monday.

She was driving along Batman Avenue heading toward the city when her car left the road and into the river.

The current swept along the river and the car quickly sank.

The woman could not be saved.

Police are not treating the incident as suspicious.

Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Divers have found a car that witnesses saw a woman drive into Melbourne's Yarra River near the Swan Street bridge.


LEXINGTON, Mass. — Iconoclasts (literally, “breakers of ikons”) rarely provoke greater opposition than when they begin to attack or destroy our most cherished ikon, the flag—which became the national symbol by act of Congress 194 years ago today. There should have been no surprise at the vehemence of the hard‐hat workers who “defended Old Glory” by beating student antiwar demonstrators. The recent Federal law imposing a $1,000 fine and/or a year in jail for those who “desecrate” a flag which may have cost only a few dollars reflects a widespread scale of values.

Emotions always run high when an emblem epitomizing a group of people or a way of life seems threatened. In the 1870's France refused to accept the restoration of the monarchy be cause Charles V, the king‐to‐be, in sisted on replacing the Tricolor with the old Bourbon banner.

In our own country the last few years have borne witness to hundreds of “flag incidents.” A teacher in Flori da lost his job for refusing to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. In Illinois students were charged with flag des ecration when they displayed the “ecology flag.”

What can be clone to end our na tional dispute over symbols? Is there hope for agreement in this country about the meaning and proper use of the flag? Emotional involvement often tends to distort our perception, but experience makes certain facts clear.

The flag is a symbol. An attack on It will not end a bad war, overturn an unjust ruling, alter a prejudiced at titude. Since a majority holds the flag to be above politics, to attack it is politically counterproductive. Flag burning may be offensive, but protect ing the flag as a physical object does nothing to protect the principles that flag represents.

Symbols are mutable. Over time our flag has stood for war as well as peace, slavery as well as freedom, authoritarian rule as well as democ racy, civil strife as well as harmony. Yet its meaning today and in the fu ture depends entirely on us, not on the past.

Symbols are respected when respect able, reviled when disrespectable. No law, fine or jail term will coerce a man into honoring a ‘flag he believes to have been dishonored by the nation it stands for.

Respect for a flag (or other symbol) is also correlated with its expression of the real aspirations and beliefs of a people. Men who feel themselves excluded from the symbolism of flag, or limited in their use of it, will be tempted to institute alternate badges of legitimacy.

These observations suggest a pro gram which might help us find again the high regard in which the Star Spangled Banncr has traditionally been held. First, we must repeal all flag‐desecration laws if the courts do not have the wisdom to declare them unconstitutional. They are fundamen tally contrary to First Amendment civil liberties. Such laws attempt to coerce universal conformity with majority canons of taste, thereby negating the essential meaning of the flag.

Once recognized as a set of volun tary guidelines, our flag etiquette code must be revitalized. Much improper flag usage could be eliminated quite simply if the rules for flag display, written 50 years ago, were brought up to date.

Students, for example, would re spond more readily to a new version of the flag pledge proclaiming: “I salute the flag of the United States of America by committing myself to the principle that the nation for which it stands shall ever be indivisible and dedicated to liberty and justice for all.”

We should also consider readopting the original Stars and Stripes. This 13‐star flag is esthetically superior to the 50‐star model, as well as easier and less expensive to make. But more importantly, a ring of stars better symbolizes our harmony in diversity. Restoring this as our official flag would herald the continued commit ment of Americans from all parts of the political spectrum to our revolu tionary heritage.

The 13‐star ring of unity design would be a flag for all Americans Citizens from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the territories would no longer be excluded from the flag. Nor would those who feel a greater loyalty to race, religion, class, or local community than to a particular state.

Ultimately, attitudes toward Old Glory both at home and abroad would be determined by the policies and, leadership of the nation. But the pro gram outlined here could shift cur rent debate away from the flag to substantive issues, while reaffirming the principles the flag was originally adopted to represent.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on June 14, 1971, on page 37 of the New York edition with the headline: The Star‐Spangled Banner. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Dr W Smith article on flag as symbol, desecration and reaction it provokes; offers program to help Amers find again high regard in which flag has been traditionally held; urges repeal of flag-desecration laws, revitalizing of flag etiquette code and readoption of original 13-star flag; flag illus


A woman has been attacked with a walking stick and her vehicle stolen while loading groceries into a car at a Brisbane shopping centre.

The 57-year-old was in the car park of the centre on the corner of Gympie and Webster Roads, Chermside, when she was set upon by a man in his 30s on Wednesday afternoon, police say.

He stole her grey 2011 Suburu Impreza hatchback, with Queensland registration 870-RRX, and is described as Caucasian, approximately 191cm tall and of a medium build.

Summary: A woman who had just returned to her car after buying groceries at a Brisbane shopping centre was attacked with a walking stick and her car stolen.


Before you go, we thought you'd like these...

Milwaukee can expect a lump of coal in its Christmas stocking this year. The Wisconsin city tops the country's 10 Naughtiest Cities list, according to a

But, Texas can expect lots of goodies in its Christmas stocking, because the state boasts 6 of the top 10 Nicest Cities, according to the real estate data company.

The report looked at number of sex offenders, unemployment, foreclosures, crime and elementary school scores to determine the naughty and nice cities in the U.S. with populations more than 100,000 and for which there was sufficient data available. To make it on the naughty list a city needed to be worse off than the all-county average for each of the five factors, while to make it on the nice list a city needed to be better off.

The report found 20 "naughty" cities where unemployment, sex offenders, and foreclosure inventory were above the national averages along with school ratings below the national average and a crime rating of C or below. Of the top 10 "naughtiest," three are in California.

The report showed 55 cities with unemployment, sex offenders and foreclosure inventory below the national averages along with an average school score above the national average and a crime rating of B or above. Cary, North Carolina, hit the top spot on the top nicest cities list, and Texas claims six of the top 10 nicest cities.

Summary: Milwaukee can expect a lump of coal in its Christmas stocking this year, after topping RealtyTrac's 'naughtiest' cities list.


By THOMAS GALVIN Daily News Washington Bureau

Thursday, October 30th 1997, 2:03AM

WASHINGTON From "dead" donors to fugitive fat cats, the Democratic National Committee is finding that shady donors who have dodged scrutiny are having no problem cashing their refund checks.

The DNC in March said it was returning $3,000 from Michelle Lima of Jackson Heights, Queens, because auditors thought she had been dead for 10 years. Lima wasn't as dead as many thought she cashed her refund check shortly after it was sent in June.

Efforts to reach her yesterday were unsuccessful.

Likewise, Charlie Trie, a one-time Little Rock, Ark., businessman who has left the country and skirted attempts by federal and congressional investigators to discuss his donations, cashed his checks.

The DNC sent his $182,000 in donations to his lawyer, who apparently forwarded the money to Trie in Asia.

The DNC returned $3 million in donations raised for the 1996 elections because they were from foreign-linked entities or came from shady characters.

The last batch of $1.36 million was sent out in June. So far, $106,500 in DNC refund checks were sent back or undeliverable. The DNC gave that cash to the Treasury to reduce the national debt.

Summary: WASHINGTON From "dead"donors to fugitive fat cats, the Democratic National Committee is finding that shady donors who have dodged scrutiny are having no problem cashing their refund checks. The DNC in March said it was returning $3,000 from Michelle Lima of Jackson Heights, Queens, because auditors thought she had been dead for 10 years. Lima wasn't as dead as many thought she cashed her refund check shortly after it was sent in June.


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY with Baird Jones

Tuesday, April 15th 1997, 2:02AM

Harvey Keitel has bolted the set of "Eyes Wide Shut" after reportedly clashing with director Stanley Kubrick. But Keitel's co-star Tom Cruise is hanging in there.

Cruise admits that "it can be grueling" trying to please the perfectionist, airplane-hating director of "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange."

"He rehearses, we work on the scene, he rewrites, we work on the scene, then he rewrites again," Cruise told us recently. But the "Jerry Maguire" star doesn't have a problem with the regimen on the hush-hush project now shooting in England.

"As an actor, you have to support the director. It's his vision."

Cruise did have some apprehension about Kubrick's psychological thriller, in which the actor and his real-life wife, Nicole Kidman, play out all manner of sexual fantasies.

"I wondered, `Is he going to let me work on the character give me room?' But he does all of that. He knows that we are working on very complex scenes and he builds in time to work on them."

Cruise discounted talk that Kubrick has made him dress up in women's clothing.

"I've read a lot of stuff. No one's gotten it right. They're reaching.

"It is a very, very challenging role. But [Kubrick] doesn't make any great demands on me. He's very sweet, and really patient. He's got a wonderful sense of humor. We sit around and laugh. But we're working our a off. ... He's one of the most intelligent people I've ever met."

Kidman has said that when "people see the film, they're going to have a field day analyzing our relationship." Is the kinky project putting any stress on th e couple?

Cruise called their movie mind games "exciting."

"Making movies is stressful. It's physically and emotionally demanding. Nic and I are very good to each other when we're doing it." Judging by their ravenous public nuzzling at Vanity Fair's Oscar party, they're holding up fine.

We talked with Cruise before word came that Keitel had been replaced by Sydney Pollack on the film. (Keitel's publicist told New York magazine that he left simply because he had another movie commitment.) But Cruise observed that you never know who'll be left the next morning on the set when Kubrick sets about trimming his budget: "We'll have a crew of 35 people and I'll say, `What happened to Tony?' I'm told, `He got cut loose.' "

RANGERS RUB SPIKE THE WRONG WAY

Ever wonder why rabid Knicks fan Spike Lee isn't rinkside at Ranger games? The director writes in "The Best Seat in the House" (Crown) that he gave hockey the cold shoulder after former Ranger coach Emile Francis rubbed his head as a boy.

"It was an insulting tradition among some people, rubbing a pickaninny's head for luck," writes Lee. "Never been a Ranger fan since that incident."

Lee interviews fans and players in the book, including former Sen. Bill Bradley, who reveals that he refused all offers of commercial endorsements when he played for the Knicks. "I failed badly my first year.... I was too slow to play guard," Bradley told Lee. "At the same time, I was receiving these rather sizable offers. The Dairy Association wanted me to be a spokesperson for milk. Olivetti wanted me to be its national spokesperson. I felt these things were coming to me not because I was the best player on the team, which I wasn't, but because I was white. So I just decided, I'm not going to do it, and I never did."

Rita Jenrette, who made headlines when she revealed she had sex with her then-husband, Congressman John Jenrette, on the Capitol steps, claims she's being stalked by an ex-boyfriend who allegedly bilked her of her savings.

Now a Manhattan real estate broker, Jenrette says her ex-lover "has harassed me and terrorized me for two years.... I obviously have bad judgment in men."

The boyfriend wouldn't comment on Jenrette's charges. Meanwhile, Jenrette, who once posed for Playboy, confesses that she recently had her breast implants removed. "I was always very tired," she explained. "It was chronic fatigue from an allergic response to seeping silicone. But don't worry, I'm still a size D."

Fred and Kim Goldman, Robert De Niro, Christopher Reeve, Mira Sorvino, Yaphet Kotto and Ron Silver are among those being courted by major media to sit at their tables at the April 26 White House Correspondents dinner. But some potential guests are still grumbling that the press group scheduled the black-tie fete smack in the middle of Passover. "This was something done last year," said Terry Hunt, White House Correspondents Association president. "We are accommodating anyone who requests a special meal." ...

Yonkers is doubling for Dublin in "Nora," the movie that Christopher Walken is making with director Michael Almereyda. Walken told us at the Patroon party for "Paradise Road" that he loved Kevin Spacey's imitation of him at the Oscars: "I laughed my head off." ...

Word is that Johnny Depp and Kate Moss may show up to help their pal Michael Hutchence celebrate the INXS show at Irving Plaza Thursday which sold out in a record five minutes. Band members will repair to Chaos, the cushy Watts St. lounge, for an afterparty to benefit the AIDS charity LIFEbeat ...

Chalk up another celebrity joining the exodus out of L.A.: Kevin Costner has bought a place in Tucson, according to People Online ...

Busy day for the Burns clan: As newly single heartthrob Ed Burns (he and girlfriend/co-star Maxine Bahns have split) was shooting "Long Time Nothing New" with Lauren Holly in Rockaway Thursday, brother Brian was casting their ABC sitcom pilot, to be shot here next month, and sister Mary was giving birth to her third son, Jack Edward ...

Brooklyn Congressmen Charles Schumer, Major Owens and Edolphus Towns introduce a bill today to have baseball legend Jackie Robinson awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor. Meanwhile, Mayor Giuliani will quietly remember another New York athlete. The mayor will plant the first tree at Runners Grove, near Tavern on the Green, in honor of superrunner A.J. Bruder, who died at 36 last year.

Summary: Harvey Keitel has bolted the set of "Eyes Wide Shut"after reportedly clashing with director Stanley Kubrick. But Keitel's co-star Tom Cruise is hanging in there. Cruise admits that "it can be grueling"trying to please the perfectionist, airplane-hating director of "Dr. Strangelove"and "A Clockwork Orange.""He rehearses, we work on the scene, he rewrites, we work on the scene, then he rewrites again,"Cruise told us recently. But the "Jerry Maguire"star


Newt Gingrich’s love of history and respect for the accomplishments of previous presidents – he has said Franklin Roosevelt, not Ronald Reagan, was the greatest 20th century president – could get him into hot water with some Republicans.

It was Teddy Roosevelt who was very much in the news today. President Obama gave a speech in Kansas trying to emulate Roosevelt’s populism and nationalism 100 years after Roosevelt left the Republican Party to run for president in 1912 as a Progressive. Read more about Obama’s speech here.

Gingrich was on the other side of Teddy Roosevelt in history during a spirited radio interview with conservative Glenn Beck today. Gingrich was played a 2003 quote of himself in which he endorsed the idea of a mandate that Americans buy health insurance because a previous Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who went on to become founder of the Progressive Party, endorsed it.

But it’s actually Franklin D. Roosevelt, who enlarged the government more than any other president, that Gingrich most admires.

Gingrich reached the heights of Washington power in 1995 when he became speaker of the House, the first Republican to hold the position in 40 years. In a speech to the House of Representatives, he outlined the need for spending cuts to balance the budget, which he thought should exempt Social Security. But he said Washington should not be afraid of cuts elsewhere. And to make that point he invoked F.D.R..

“But let me say about everything else, whether it is Medicare, or it is agricultural subsidies, or it is defense or anything that I think the greatest Democratic president of the 20th century, and in my judgment the greatest president of the 20th century, said it right. On March 4, 1933, he stood in braces as a man who had polio at a time when nobody who had that kind of disability could be anything in public life. He was president of the United States, and he stood in front of this Capitol on a rainy March day and he said, `We have nothing to fear but fear itself.`”

Elsewhere in that speech, Gingrich gave praise to Franklin Roosevelt for the style of his leadership, not his policies.

“The fact is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who gave hope to a nation that was in distress and could have slid into dictatorship. Every Republican has much to learn from studying what the Democrats did right,” Gingrich told the House of Representatives in 1995.

Listen to Gingrich’s 1995 speech here.

Gingrich’s view of FDR’s being the greatest 20th century president has not changed in the intervening years. Asked by Jake Tapper last month who the fifth president n Mt. Rushmore should be, Gingrich said he’d “go for five and six: F.D.R. and Reagan.” Read Tapper’s Interview with Gingrich.

On the radio, Gingrich was taking fire from conservative Glenn Beck for endorsing Teddy Roosevelt’s view on health reform.

“I were going to characterize my – on health where I come from, I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican and I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning is okay,” he said in 2003.

It’s a view some conservatives find distressing. Beck told Gingrich that the idea of government regulation ”scares the crap out of me.”

Gingrich sought to distinguish between early Roosevelt, the Republican president, and later Roosevelt, the progressive.

“Well, that depends on which phase of Roosevelt you’re talking about. The 1912, he’s become a big government, centralized power advocate running an a third party candidate,” Gingrich said.

But he did defend Roosevelt for creating the Food and Drug Administration.

“For example, Roosevelt advocated the Food and Drug Act after he was eating … sausage and eggs while reading Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” which has a scene in which a man falls into a vat at the sausage factory and becomes part of the sausage. And if you go back to that era, where people had dealing with the Chinese where the people had doctored food, they had put all sorts of junk in food, they, you know, I as a child who lived in Europe and I always marveled at the fact that American water is drinkable virtually anywhere. So there are minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety that are I think really important.”

“OK,” Beck asked, “so you’re a minimum regulation guy on making sure the people don’t fall into the vats of sausage?”

Summary: Newt Gingrich’s love of history and respect for the accomplishments of previous presidents – he has said Franklin Roosevelt, not Ronald Reagan, was the greatest 20th century president – could get him into hot water with some Republicans. It was Teddy Roosevelt who was very much in the news today. President Obama gave a speech in Kansas trying to emulate Roosevelt’s populism and nationalism 100 years after Roosevelt left the Republican Party to run for president in 1912 as a Progressive. Read more about Obama’s speech here. Gingrich was on the other side of Teddy Roosevelt in history during a…


WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.

The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, said investigators from the Criminal Investigation Command and the 18th Airborne Corps inspector general had pressed him to divulge the names of two sergeants from his former battalion who also gave accounts of abuse, which were made public in a report last Friday by the group Human Rights Watch.

Captain Fishback, speaking publicly on the matter for first time, said the investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses.

"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he is going through Army Special Forces training. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and the two sergeants described abuses by soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division, including beatings of Iraqi prisoners, exposing them to extremes of hot and cold, stacking prisoners in human pyramids, and depriving them of sleep at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja. The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

After fruitlessly trying for 17 months to get his superiors to take action on his complaints, Captain Fishback said, he finally took his concerns this month to aides to two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. When the Army learned he was talking to Senate aides, Captain Fishback said that Army investigators suddenly intensified their interest in his complaints.

Senior Pentagon and Army officials said Tuesday that the new allegations, which focus on the division's First Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, were being pursued vigorously. "All I know is that the Army is taking it seriously," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference. "To the extent somebody's done something that they shouldn't have done, they'll be punished for it."

Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman, added: "But it will take time, given the period of time that's elapsed since when these allegations took place."

Captain Fishback, 26, a West Point graduate from Michigan and son of a Vietnam War veteran, said he was troubled by the Army's response to his concerns, starting in the spring of 2004 after the abuses at Abu Ghraib became known, about the treatment of detainees that he believed violated the Geneva Conventions.

In the months before, Captain Fishback said he had seen at least one interrogation where prisoners were being abused and was told about other ill treatment of detainees by his sergeants. But he said his commanders left the impression that the United States did not have to follow the Geneva Conventions when dealing with prisoners in Iraq, so he did not report the incidents.

That changed, he said, after he heard Mr. Rumsfeld testify to Congress after the Abu Ghraib abuses became public that the Conventions did apply in Iraq. But when he took his complaints to his immediate superiors, Captain Fishback said his company commander cautioned him to "remember the honor of the unit is at stake." He said his battalion commander expressed no particular alarm.

As he moved up his chain of command, he said no one could give him clear guidance on how the Geneva Conventions applied in Iraq.

"We did not set the conditions for our soldiers to succeed," said Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We failed to set clear standards, communicate those standards and enforce those standards. For us to get to that point now, however, we have to come to grips with whether it's acceptable to use coercion to obtain information from detainees."

By this summer, Captain Fishback had met with Human Rights Watch researchers several times. He gave the organization the names of other members of his unit who could support his allegations.

Captain Fishback said that when his command learned about 10 days ago that he was preparing to speak to Senate aides about his concerns, they directed him to talk to criminal investigators, which he said he did for 90 minutes on Sept. 19. But when he refused to divulge the sergeants' names, he said, investigators told him there wasn't much they could do immediately.

But last Thursday, a day after Human Rights Watch notified the 82nd Airborne that it would be releasing a copy of its report outlining the allegations, Captain Fishback said he was summoned back to Fort Bragg from field training for six hours of questioning by investigators.

The report was made public last Friday, and Captain Fishback said investigators had questioned him for about an hour on Monday and again on Tuesday. "They're asking the same questions over and over again," he said. "They want the names of the sergeants, and they keep asking about my relationship with Human Rights Watch."

Captain Fishback said he has refused to disclose the names of the two sergeants - one who has left the Army and another who has been reassigned - because he promised not to disclose their identities if they came forward. But he said his command told him Tuesday that he could face criminal prosecution if disobeyed its "lawful order" to disclose.

Captain Fishback said he had no regrets about coming forward, adding, "It's the right thing to do."

Summary: An Army captain said the investigation appeared to be focusing on those bringing the allegations, and not on the officers who may have shared responsibility.


NEW YORK - The founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc., who was ousted as chairman for a stock sale that violated company policy, said the transaction was triggered after he was caught off-guard by a swift drop in the coffee maker’s stock price.

Robert Stiller, who also dumped his $50 million stake in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc., said in an interview Wednesday that he did not expect Green Mountain’s shares to fall so steeply last week. The decline forced him to sell the shares on a margin call, which happened to occur during a blackout period in which the company prohibits the sale of its stock by insiders.

Summary: The founder of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc., who was ousted as chairman for a stock sale that violated company policy, said the sale was triggered after he was caught off -guard by a swift drop in the coffee maker’s stock price. Robert Stiller, who also has dumped his $50 million stake in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc., said in an interview Wednesday that he didn’t expect Green Mountain’s shares to fall so steeply last week. The decline forced him to sell the shares on a margin call, but it occurred during a blackout period in which the company prohibits the sale of its stock by insiders.


Maybe all Kelly Clarkson ever wanted was Texas Rep. Ron Paul for President.

Clarkson, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and first "American Idol" winner, endorsed the 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Thursday and immediately faced a barrage of criticism from the Twittersphere.

"I love Ron Paul," Clarkson tweeted. "I liked him a lot during the last republican nomination and no one gave him a chance. If he wins the nomination for the Republican party in 2012 he's got my vote. Too bad he probably won't."

The pop idol's Twitter followers blasted Clarkson for backing the Libertarian-leaning Texan, who finds himself on the defensive amid revelations that he published a series of racist and homophobic newsletters under his name in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I have never heard that Ron Paul is a racist or a homophobe," tweeted Clarkson, who said she backs Paul because he believes in less government.

Clarkson, who has previously addressed rumors of her own sexuality, later apologized if her endorsement offended anyone. "I do not support racism," she tweeted. "I support gay rights, straight rights, women's rights, men's rights, white/black/purple/orange rights."

Paul, who would return America to the gold standard, bring home U.S. troops from overseas, and defund the federal government, is statistically tied for the lead with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Republican voters in next Tuesday's Iowa caucuses, according to a CNN/Time/ORC International poll released this week.


Natalie took a marker pen and on the shop window wrote “ALL YOU CAN EAT. PAY AS YOU WISH.”

“I liked the idea because it had a funny side and it was easy. The response was good from the start, so we thought okay we can keep going until further notice.”

They never had to stop.

More than eight years later, the restaurant, Der Wiener Deewan, still lets customers set their own price; those who insist on a number are directed to a take-away menu with prices ranging from 4.5 to 9.5 euro ($6.12 to $12.92).

The three-room, 75-seat restaurant serves five curry dishes, rice, salad and dessert. When customers are ready to go, they pay the cashier, stating what they had to drink (alcoholic beverages and packaged soft drinks are a fixed price) and what they want to pay for the food. The philosophy is simple, Natalie explained: “They should choose based on how much they ate, how much they liked the food and how much money they have.”

Der Wiener Deewan is one of a growing number of restaurants that allow customers to choose their own price. Among them: Pay As You Please in Ireland, Lentil as Anything’s four restaurants in Australia, the Seva Cafe in India, Annalakshmi’s two restaurants in Singapore, and five Panera Cares cafes in the United States.

It might seem like a recipe for financial disaster. Why pay if you don’t have to? But the vast majority of customers do pay — a study of the restaurant by economists Gerhard Riener of the University of Dusseldorf and Christian Traxler of the Hertie School of Governance, both in Germany, found that only 0.5% of patrons didn’t pay anything for their meal.

With an average payment of 5 to 6 euro ($6.84 to $8.21) per person for food, the Deewans aren’t getting rich, but they are serving a packed house of about 500 customers a day, enabling the owners to meet their expenses, pay their 15 employees and realise an annual profit of 30,000 to 40,000 euros ($41,043 to $54,724).

“Since we have a lot of customers who are quite regular they somehow choose a fair price that keeps us running,” said Natalie.

That’s a common theme. Pay–as-you-wish restaurants rely on their customers’ sense of goodwill and fair play to remain financially afloat. Some are successful, while others end in disappointment.

In December, the owners of the pay-what-you-wish Five Loaves and Two Fish in Fuzhou, China, announced that the venue has lost the equivalent of $41,000 since it opened last August, with an estimated 20% of customers eating for free. Several US pay-what-you-wish restaurants have shut their doors in recent years, including Terra Bite Lounge in Seattle and Santorini Grill in New York. Panera Bread has had success with its non-profit Panera Cares cafes, but the for-profit Panera Bread restaurants recently suspended a pay-what-you-wish offer on turkey chili, after a disappointing response from customers. The program, though self-sustaining, was mostly ignored by patrons.

Ayelet Gneezy, associate marketing professor at the University of California San Diego in the US, believes that cultural factors may influence a pay-what-you-wish restaurant’s success, noting that the model appears to do well in countries with high taxes and strong social welfare systems. The culture of an individual shop is also important. That may be why Panera’s chili offer failed even as the non-profit cafes have done well, she said.

“If you go into a Panera Cares cafe, you know what it’s about. When you go to a regular [Panera Bread] cafe in a mall, you don’t know what it means,” said Gneezy. “It’s not in keeping with the identity of the store, so maybe you don’t pay attention to it.”

Appealing to a higher cause is one way that many such restaurants encourage generosity. In addition to Panera Cares, the United States has several independent non-profit restaurants that employ the pay-as-you-wish model.

In Melbourne, Australia, Lentil as Anything restaurants also operate as not-for-profit enterprises that are staffed by volunteers and a smaller number modestly paid employees. There, better-off patrons are encouraged to pay a little more so that customers of lesser means can have a meal more cheaply — and the restaurant can still stay afloat. Payments are anonymous, slipped into a black box at the front of the restaurant.

Founder Shanaka Fernando said the 14-year-old establishment is self-sustaining and all of the profits go toward building more restaurants — there are now four, all in the Melbourne, Australia, metro area. The busiest Lentil As Anything, located in a former 1850s convent, serves 1,500 meals day. In addition to the chain’s 120 volunteers, the restaurants are staffed by 40 employees, though their pay (from $65 to $120 a day) is often more a stipend than a salary.

But sterling intentions don’t always guarantee success. A Lentil as Anything restaurant in a primary and secondary school canteen closed after 18 months because students didn’t respect the system; a take-away restaurant also failed to inspire generosity.

“We found that they have to feel the experience,” of sitting in the restaurant said Fernando.

The same goes for Killarney, Ireland, Pay as You Please owners Rob O’Reilly and Barry McBride, who see their share of free riders. Teenagers, in particular, can be a headache.

“They don’t know any better about the hard work that goes on in the background, so they pay 20 cents or something for loads of stuff,” said O’Reilly.

The owners responded such antics by displaying a small sign saying that customers 18 and under must be accompanied by an adult, though O’Reilly stresses that most of their teenage customers do not abuse the system and are very welcome in the restaurant.

As with Der Wiener Deewan, Pay As You Please makes up for the occasional freeloader with volume. In Killarney, a tourist town with more than 100 restaurants, media attention, word of mouth and sheer curiosity keep Pay As You Please bustling during the summer, when outdoor seating enables them to serve as many as 120 meals a day (the restaurant itself seats 25). The restaurant makes enough to provide salaries for themselves and six employees, as well as pay all the restaurant’s bills.

The restaurant gives customers a list of suggested prices and a tin can at their table in which to deposit the payment of their choice.

The loose system, O’Reilly hopes, creates a more relaxing experience for the customer, who won’t have to stress about adding extras.

“Normally, you want more cake or more coffee you’re thinking ‘All of this is going to add up to a lot.’ We wanted it to feel more like you were in someone’s house. The whole vibe is a giving vibe and hopefully they will give back.”

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Summary: An unconventional strategy: Is âpay what you wishâ a recipe for financial disaster?


Recently the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games announced that they had completed their "food vision". I won't dwell on what this was, but it was final proof that the word "vision" has suffered drastic devaluation. Once it applied to the experiences of exalted saints and prophets, which inspired dazzling paintings and books of the Bible. Now it means something slightly stronger than "memo".

The suburban borough of Croydon has also been subject to repeated "visions" over the past two decades, namely Croydon: The Future; Vision 20:20 and Will Alsop's Third City. Famous architects have zipped in and flourished brightly coloured images that turn Croydon's pervasive grey into flashes of neon, and striven to find an inner Manhattan in its array of towers.

There have been TV shows and articles, mostly with same shtick: Croydon is sexy, really. Yet, as Emma Peters, head of planning, regeneration and conservation, pithily remarks: "Every time we have another vision we've declined economically." From 1995 to 2005, when employment in London grew by 18%, in Croydon it grew not at all.

The borough hasn't given up, however, which is why I find myself sitting with a group of planners who are trying to make the place better. Opposite me is Finn Williams, pale and delicate as a consumptive poet, who looks a decade younger than his 27 years. To one side is Vincent Lacovara, 31, and to the other Tom Sweeney, aged 35. They are describing the deals they are making with heavyweight developers, and their efforts to steer many millions of pounds of investment to beneficial effect.

Planners aren't supposed to look like this. Normally you expect them to be worn and middle-aged, and to have turned the colour of manila through blending with their environment, as certain moths come to resemble tree bark. Williams, Lacovara and Sweeney are signs of the borough's intent to do things differently. It is a long-standing ambition, given new impetus by the arrival in 2007 of Jon Rouse as the borough's chief executive. Rouse, a former chief excutive of both the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the Housing Corporation, is one of the country's more effective civil servants.

The selection of this young band of planners could just be another doomed attempt to sex up Croydon, but what is striking is their determination not to do another "vision". "Every plan for Croydon," says Williams, "has always been desperate to undo the mistakes of the previous plan." Lacovara adds: "The first question people ask when we consult them is: 'Is anything going to happen this time?'"

They embody the attitude of many young architects, which is to take things as you find them rather than impose a grand plan, and to find the spirit of the place, even if that place is not particularly charming. In the 18th century, Capability Brown talked of genius loci in the design of landscapes. These contemporary architects apply the same attitude to office blocks, rather than hills and woods. They also think there's something good about suburbs, in contrast with older architects such as Lord Rogers, for whom dense, Barcelona-like cities are everything.

In the case of Croydon the place was once delightful enough for the Archbishop of Canterbury to build his holiday home there, and it keeps fragments of its ancient past. It was then a stolid Victorian town, before the spread of London's semi-detached suburbia absorbed it into the metropolis. In the 1960s, thanks to a quirk of official policy, it boomed. The government wanted to push new office development out of the centre of London, with the result that it migrated to Croydon.

Its distinctive skyline of stubby towers was created, but when policy was reversed, so was the boom. Croydon has struggled ever since, with BT the latest business to move out. It has resumed its status as a place that prompts faint sniggers among metropolitan types, despite being the location of the world's first international airport, and the town where Malcolm McLaren pioneered punk. It may have given the world Kate Moss, but she now lives elsewhere. Terry Major-Ball, the gnome-selling brother of John Major, was the Croydon resident who stayed.

Yet it is only 15 minutes by train from central London, and the borough's mixture of suburban semis, detached houses and terraced streets mean that there are homes for every stage of life ("nursery to nursing home" as Lacovara puts it). And given the desperate hunger for homes in southern England, it can't be impossible to make it into a place where people want to live. Much of it already is, but the centre remains problematic.

Williams and co don't want to make it into something it is not, but a better version of what it is now. Their proposals are mostly quite obvious, like building a bridge across dividing railway tracks, planting trees, removing the most destructive 1960s road systems, and making it possible to access public places now cut off by roads. But they also get developers to think about what's good and/ or distinctive about Croydon, such as its tendency to place little and large buildings, and ancient and modern ones, side by side.

Above all, although they stress that previous visions left behind ideas of value, like opening up the buried river Wandle, they want something to happen this time. In this they are not just a bunch of young turks, but part of a collective effort that includes more experienced officers such as Emma Peters. This effort includes the creation of delivery vehicles and joint ventures and other devices too technical to be digested over Sunday breakfast, but none the less important. If they succeed, they could finally make Croydon an example that other towns will follow.

There are some things to like about the designs for the new US embassy, unveiled last week. That it is moving from posh Mayfair to tattier Battersea is good for both places, as the residents of one hated the effects of security barriers, while the other could do with the investment.

It claims to be exceptionally green, and its architects KieranTimberlake have a record that makes this believable. The design deals with the immense security measures by trying to disguise them as landscaping, which is at least tactful, while the intricate surfaces shown in the images give an air of quality.

Yet it is a lump. A green, well-dressed, diplomatic lump, but still an ungainly, dominating object that makes minimal attempt to relate to its surroundings. There is no sense that it will join with its existing and future neighbours in creating a cohesive piece of city. It will be a singular object that will loom awkwardly over what is already a disjointed area of London.

For this blame does not only attach to the state department or the architects, but also to the inability of London's planners, from the mayor down, to plan in three dimensions. Battersea was identified as a place of opportunity under Ken Livingstone, meaning that it would be a place where office towers could flourish, yet there has been minimal investment in designing what kind of places this new development might create.

What will make this area succeed or fail is not the artistry of individual facades, but the kind of places that will be made by several buildings working together. And, yes, as many have pointed out, the embassy does look like a Norman keep, complete with moat. We all know it has to be exceptionally bomb-proof, but was it really necessary to rub this point in?

Summary: Croydon gave the world Kate Moss, but can it ever be sexy? An exciting team of young planners are set to revive the south London suburb and blaze a trail for all British towns, writes Rowan Moore