Detroit Public Schools closed nearly all of its 97 schools on Monday as hundreds of teachers called in sick to protest the cash-strapped city’s revelation that it will soon run out of money to pay employees.

The shutdown due to “teacher sickouts” was announced on the website for Michigan’s largest public school system with 45,786 students, which has been under state control since 2009.

Detroit Federation of Teachers Interim President Ivy Bailey said in a statement on Sunday that the district was “effectively locking our members out of the classrooms” by failing to guarantee that teachers will be paid once the fiscal year wraps up on June 30.

“There’s a basic agreement in America: When you put in a day’s work, you’ll receive a day’s pay,” Bailey said in a statement.

The Michigan legislature approved $48.7 million in supplemental funding but that will allow the district to meet payroll only through the end of June, said Steven Rhodes, a former federal bankruptcy judge who is the schools’ emergency manager.

He urged state lawmakers to approve a $715 million rescue plan that would create a new Detroit Education Commission, with broad authority to control new school openings for the next five years.

Without that extra money, teachers on an annual 26-paycheck cycle will go unpaid and there will be no funds available for Summer School or year-round special education services, Rhodes said.

“Working without pay is the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Bailey said.

“Teachers have mortgage payments, utility bills, grocery bills. Being paid for their work isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Bailey said.

Summary: Because they might not get paid.


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take time off from leading the social network so he can be with his newborn child.

In a Facebook FB post on Friday, Zuckerberg wrote that he’s taking two months of paternity leave after his daughter is born. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced in July that they were expecting a baby girl.

“Studies show that when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families,” said Zuckerberg. “At Facebook we offer our US employees up to 4 months of paid maternity or paternity leave which they can take throughout the year.”

Zuckerberg’s decision to take an extended paternity leave is sure to be seen as a major endorsement of the practice. Even at the executive level employees can be reluctant to take full advantage of leave policies for fear of retribution in the workplace.

Parental leave is a hot topic as of late with many big companies announcing new and more generous policies. Spotify said on Thursday that it would grant new parents six months of leave. In early November, Amazon AMZN said it extended its parental leave policy to 20 weeks and that it would open it up to fathers as well as mothers.

In September, Nestlé kicked off a research project to track the attrition of employees who had taken parental leave. The idea was too see if people who took time off for new children stayed longer with the company, thereby proving that parental leave makes good business sense.

“We’ll be looking at whether or not the retention rates have changed over time, which we hope to be a positive outcome, and that success would encourage other companies to pile on and do this,” Paul Bakus, president of Nestlé corporate affairs, told Fortune in September.

Over the summer, Zuckerberg explained that Chan suffered three miscarriages, but she was far enough into her pregnancy this time that the “risk of loss is very low.”

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Summary: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he’s taking 2 months off on paternity leave when his daughter is born.


WASHINGTON – They may not have settled the enduring debate over whether gray hair makes a person look distinguished or just plain old, but scientists have identified for the first time a gene behind graying hair.

Researchers said on Tuesday an analysis of DNA from more than 6,300 people from five Latin American countries enabled them to pinpoint a gene that affects a person’s likelihood of getting gray hair.

The gene, called IRF4, is involved in regulating melanin, the pigment responsible for hair color as well as the color of the skin and eyes.

People with a certain version of the gene are predisposed to hair graying, according to University College London human geneticist Andres Ruiz-Linares, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers said hair graying is not driven exclusively by genetics, with other factors in the mix such as stress or experiencing a traumatic event.

“This is really the first study on the genetics of hair graying in humans,” University College London statistical geneticist Kaustubh Adhikari said.

People spend a lot of time and money dyeing gray hair back to their natural hair color. The researchers said identifying this gene could offer a path forward for developing a treatment that could prevent or reverse graying.

“A drug that has effects on the melanin-production pathway in hair follicles as the follicles develop internally might reduce the need to apply external hair dyes on the scalp hair after it comes out. This is certainly a research avenue worth pursuing,” Kaustubh said.

The researchers combed through genetic information from men and women in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru, with a combination of European, Native American and African ancestry.

The gene variant predisposing people to early hair graying was essentially only seen in those of European ancestry. “This might, to some extent, explain why hair graying is more common in Europeans than in other populations,” Ruiz-Linares said.

One of the researchers brushed aside the issue of whether or not gray hair is attractive.

“Personally I don’t have much of a view regarding the social response to hair graying, but I find it an interesting model to study aging in general,” said Desmond Tobin, a hair follicle and pigmentation biologist at Britain’s University of Bradford.

The study also identified genes related to other hair traits including curliness, beard thickness, eyebrow thickness and predisposition for eyebrows that join together, known as unibrow or monobrow.

Summary: WASHINGTON – They may not have settled the enduring debate over whether gray hair makes a person look distinguished or just plain old, but scientists have identified for the first time a gene…


Justin Possien, a paramedic from Albuquerque, N.M., recently took an overseas contract job in Kandahar, Afghanistan. “I called my bank and changed my address with my credit union,” he says. As time passed, Possien noticed he was being charged a strange $2.00 monthly fee. Turns out it was a “bad address fee.”

“I called [my credit union] and they promptly refunded the fees,” he says. “But my main complaint was that they didn’t call or e-mail me about the problem.”

A “bad address fee” may be uncommon, but banks and credit unions charging fees unbeknownst to their customers are not. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that in 2006 consumers paid over $36 billion in fees associated with checking and savings accounts.

“There are fees for everything but breathing the air in the bank,” says Ed Mierzwinski, a consumer program director at the U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups.

Some of the most common fees–and typically most costly for consumers–are non-sufficient (or insufficient) fund (NSF) fees and fees associated with overdraft protection programs. Every bank or credit union is different, but typically you are charged a standard NSF fee when you don’t have enough money in your account to make a purchase with a check, debit card or ATM card. If the bank doesn’t deny your debit or ATM card, they might cover the transaction but then charge you. For example, Citibank charges a $34 insufficient funds fee for each separate time you overdraw your checking account–capped at four times a day. Bank of America‘s charge is $35 each time you overdraft.

Many banks and credit unions also offer what is typically called overdraft protection. Any decent bank will offer overdraft protection free to those who enroll in the service and link their accounts. With overdraft protection, the bank will still charge you for overdrafting, but it’s typically a lot less (which is why it’s generally called “protection”). For example, if you have overdraft protection at Citibank, your account is overdrawn and you don’t move more funds into your account that day yourself, Citibank will transfer funds into your account from a linked account (typically a line of credit or savings account). The transfer fee is $10 and the transfer to cover overdraft is rounded to the nearest $100 to offer a “cushion” for additional transactions that may post the following day.

The amount you could pay in overdraft and NSF fees adds up, and most of the time it’s not really worth it. A 2007 study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a bipartisan organization in Washington, D.C., found the median debit overdraft is on a purchase of only about $20. And the median overdraft loan for a debt card transaction is about $2.00 for every dollar borrowed.

Overdraft fees also seem to be getting more prevalent. The 2008 GAO report found that the average overdraft fee has risen by about 11% (after inflation adjustments) from 2000 to 2007. A report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says 86% of banks have either an automated overdraft service or a simpler ‘line of credit’ program. The report speculates a few reasons for a rise; an increase in electronic banking makes it easier to charge overdraft fees. Also more banks automatically enroll you in overdraft protection programs.

There is a lot of disagreement over the value of overdraft fees. Banks see them as a service to their customer: “We provide a number of services that allow consumers to avoid or greatly reduce the cost of overdrafts,” says Elizabeth Fogarty, vice president of public affairs at Citi . Others, like Eric Halperin, a director at the CRL, don’t. “[Banks] are making a lot of money off of [overdraft fees],” says Halperin. “It’s a very safe loan for them.”

Many consumer advocate groups feel strongly that banks and credit unions charge too much in overdraft fees, and do so in an unfair way. They view it as a serious enough problem that it is being addressed in Washington, D.C., quite forcefully. Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., has introduced the “Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act” (H.R. 1456), which would require that consumers are notified at an ATM or when using a debit card to make a purchase if they are about to overdraft, so they choose whether or not to go forward with the transaction. The bill had a hearing before the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee of the full House Financial Services Committee a few weeks ago.

While the politicians battle it out, you should focus on not paying fees. The first step is realizing their existence. There are a few realities you should be aware of, too. Purchases made in one day may not be subtracted from your account in the order you make them, rather in order of highest to lowest amounts. If you have automatic payments set up, withdrawals may not always happen on the day you expect them to.

Take advantage of services offered by your bank to help you stay on top of your account. Citibank offers free e-mail and wireless alerts if you get near to overdrawing your account. Bank of America offers 41 different alerts you can set yourself. Most major banks also have online banking that allows you to transfer funds 24/7.

In terms of other fees, ask your bank to provide you with a list; you have the right to know all the fees your bank is, or could be, charging you. There are many small monthly service fees you could potentially be charged. For example, you don’t maintain a specific balance in your account. If you feel that you’ve been charged unfairly, call your bank and speak with them. As in the case with Possien, sometimes they will understand your situation and reimburse you.

The best strategy is to be smart; there are only so many times you can ask your bank for forgiveness. There sure is something to be said for learning how to balance a checkbook or at least be mildly aware of how much money you have in your account before you spend. A $6 six-pack could turn into a $50 beer bust.

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Summary: Your bank may help out if you're low on funds--but for a price.


Screening women for symptoms of postpartum depression shortly after they give birth may not be a sufficient, a new study found. Many women show signs of depression months after having a baby, and those who initially appeared the least likely to develop depression were later found to be at the highest risk, a study published in the Annals of Family Medicine found.

Researchers analyzed data from 1,432 women across the U.S., about a third of whom were first-time mothers. The women were asked to rate from 0 (none) to 3 (daily) their feelings of sadness, lack of appetite, thoughts of self-harm and other symptoms. Those with total scores of 10 or higher were identified as at-risk.

All of the women scored below 10 in their first screening, conducted four to 12 weeks after giving birth. Six months after giving birth, 10.9% of the women scored 10 or higher, and a year in, 16.9% of women did.

Though the American Academy of Pediatrics and American College of Nurse Midwives have advocated for regular screenings of postpartum depression during primary care visits, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force has said they worry about the repercussions of possible misdiagnoses on women and children.

About 15% of American women experience postpartum depression within a year of giving birth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity, domestic violence and several other factors contribute to the likelihood of experiencing depression symptoms. The researchers at the Olmstead Medical Center in Rochester did not have access to data about the women’s personal lives.

Summary: A new study shows that women who seem healthy after giving birth can develop symptoms of depression months later


(Reuters) – U.S. drug distributor McKesson Corp said on Wednesday it cut 1,600 jobs, or about 4% of its U.S. workforce, to slash costs after the company lost some key customers.

McKesson said in January it would review its cost structure and decided that “reductions to our workforce would be necessary to align our cost structure with our business needs,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.

Bloomberg first reported the news on Wednesday, which a McKesson spokesman later confirmed to Reuters.

The company said it started informing workers about the lay-offs in mid-March.

McKesson mck also said it was offering severance benefits and outplacement services for impacted employees.

The company, which distributes drugs to retailers such as CVS Health Corp, said in January its fiscal 2017 earnings would likely be hit by weak generic drug pricing.

McKesson also expects to be weighed down by an expiration of its contract with pharmacy benefit manager Optum and changes in contracts with Omnicare and Target tgt .

For more about pharmaceuticals, watch:

It has focused on inking deals to spur growth. McKesson said it would buy Canadian drugstore chain Rexall Health for $2.23 billion in March and said it was buying two privately held cancer care service providers for a total of $1.2 billion in February.

As of March 2015, the company employed about 70,400 full-time workers, according to a regulatory filing.

Summary: The drug distribution giant is downsizing.


Starbucks’ mobile investments helped the coffee giant report venti-sized profits and sales.

Starbucks SBUX on Thursday reported a stellar fiscal third quarter report that sent the company’s shares to fresh all-time highs. Same-store sales were up 8% globally, bolstered by a 9% increase in the U.S. as traffic dramatically increased. All regions performed well, and for the upcoming fiscal 2014 Starbucks projected revenue will increase about 10% to 13% bolstered by new store openings and growth as existing locations.

But the coffee giant’s executives talked more about investments in mobile rather than discuss the latest coffee or tea brews.

That’s because Starbucks says investments in the mobile experience, including a growing loyalty card program and digital payment apps, are what’s helping power the company’s growth.

“Mobile order and pay is enabling us to serve more customers more quickly and efficiently and to significantly reduce attrition off the line,” Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz told analysts.

Starbucks tossed out a few key statistics to make its case for why investments in mobile, while costly, are a worthy expense. The “My Starbucks Rewards” loyalty program now has 10.4 million active members, up 28% from a year ago, and those shoppers now account for about 30% of business in North America. Mobile payments account for 20% of all in-store transactions in the U.S., more than double the figure Starbucks reported two years ago. The company has also signed up recent partnerships with The New York Times, music streaming service Spotify and ride-sharing startup Lyft in an attempt to win over even more coffee and tea lovers.

Schultz pointed to comments he made two years ago when he noted that traditional brick and mortar retailers needed to recognize that there was a shift in consumer behavior when it came to mobile. He said most competitors invested in digital advertising, but Starbucks has spent money on improving the in-store experience by adding mobile to the check out and even in limited markets, ordering.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Starbucks was always ahead of the curve. It introduced WiFi in its stores back in 2001, and at that time, even charged for the service (it is now free). The rationale was that if coffee lovers were using Starbucks restaurants for their Internet needs, they’d spend some money on drinks and food while spending time in Starbucks’ restaurants. Not all investments outside of the coffee experience paid off (the first WiFi provider went bankrupt and a music label shut down). But Starbucks should get some credit for thinking ahead of the pack.

“Mobile order & pay continues to be one of SBUX’s most exciting digital initiatives and is expanding nationwide by the holiday season this year,” said Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog in a research note. Herzog said even despite Starbucks’ investments for this fiscal year, most notably to support the company’s “digital ecosystem,” she believed the coffee company was poised “to deliver strong results through innovation and its vast international opportunity, setting the stage for further incremental growth in FY16 and beyond.”

Summary: Mobile investments mean venti-sized profits and sales.


Amazon’s Prime Now is the latest on-demand service to anger French officials. After Amazon introduced the express delivery service in Paris last week, that city’s mayor raised concerns about it hurting local business and increasing pollution.

“This operation may seriously destabilize the Parisian trade balances,” the city’s Mayor Anne Hidalgo said on Monday in a press release.

Last week, Amazon announced that it would add Paris to a small list of cities with Prime Now, a two-year-old service that includes delivery of fresh and frozen food, alcohol, toys, and health care products. Customers who have Prime subscriptions can get their orders at not additional cost for two-hour delivery and an extra $7 for one-hour delivery.

In preparation for Prime Now, Amazon built a new distribution center in Paris, which Hidalgo said could create gridlock for people living near the new facility.

“The City of Paris will be intransigent vis-à-vis Amazon,” she said in the release. “The municipality requires the US to be exemplary on its human resources policy, the amounts of pollution emitted by its delivery vehicles and on maintaining the quality of life of people living near storage center located in the eighteenth arrondissement.”

For more on Amazon, watch:

This isn’t the first on-demand service to face pushback in France. Last year, Uber ceased operations in France after the government moved to shut down ride-hailing apps. Uber has since created an ad campaign to help rally French support.

Hidalgo said that she was notified by Amazon about Prime Now coming to Paris just days before its premiere. She questioned the service’s legality, said that there should be “safeguards” to prevent “unfair competition against traders and craftsmen.”

Earlier this year, Amazon was reportedly in talks to buy French shipping company Colis Privé, however those talks fell through over disagreements with French regulators.

Summary: She says PrimeNow could hurt businesses and cause pollution.


It’s simple. We want an Olympic Games that does not harm children and their families.

We all know that the financial benefits of organising major sporting events for host countries have been disputed. Decaying Olympic stadiums in Greece have been seen as a symbol of that country’s economic woes, and Hamburg’s population even voted against a bid.

But what about the impact of these events on the local population?

Marquee sports events often cause human rights violations or exacerbate existing ones, with children particularly vulnerable. That includes children’s rights abuses.

Related: Rio Olympics: view from the favelas – 'It is not the police's role to do social work'

Data from Brazil’s Dial 100 service, a national hotline for reporting abuse, suggests that the number of reported violations against children increased by 17% in the 12 World Cup host cities during the 2014 competition, compared with the same month in 2013.

In August, Brazil will host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro; meanwhile, violations against children’s rights continue.

When the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child last convened, clearances of street children in Rio ahead of the Games were reported. In order to “clean up” tourist areas for the half a million expected visitors, many street children were taken to young offenders’ units, where they reported violence and humiliation.

In Rio, at least 4,120 families have already been evicted from their homes, while a further 2,486 are threatened with forced removals to make way for projects directly or indirectly associated with the Games.

For thousands of children, the dream of the Rio Olympics bringing joy to all through the power of sport has not become a reality.

Yet policies adopted by the International Olympic Committee have the potential to prevent and respond appropriately to the risks posed to children before, during and after the Olympic Games.

With our Children Win campaign, we at Terre des Hommes are urging the IOC to prevent, mitigate, report on and respond appropriately to the full spectrum of risks posed to children throughout the Olympic cycle in line with the fundamental principles of the Games.

Related: Rio Olympics: view from the favelas – 'We need the freedom to be ourselves'

We want the IOC to implement a number of measures to ensure human rights, and especially child rights, are protected. Even at this late stage, it can act.

First, the IOC should put pressure on local government to halt forced evictions in Vila Autódromo, the favela community adjacent to the Olympic Park. The 15% who remain in this community, including children, are living in precarious conditions with no access to water and infrastructure.

Any displacement as a result of Olympic infrastructure should be dealt with in accordance with international human rights norms.

The clearance of street children in tourist areas must also be stopped.

In the long term, we want the IOC and other sports governing bodies to adopt a human rights commitment policy under which human rights would be considered when awarding the Games to a host country and commitments made binding in the host city contract.

For example, a Unicef study published in 2014, and based on data from 190 countries, showed that in 2012 Brazil had the second highest rate of child homicide, especially among young males aged 10-19. Was this taken into account when the Games were awarded?

Organisations such as Fifa and the IOC should not only monitor all stages of competitions, but also enable and support more credible external, independent monitoring.

From the beginning, a board should be set up to identify specific risks, such as child sexual exploitation linked to large construction sites and child labour concerns.

This would increase pressure on sponsors. After all, no sponsor wants to be associated with human rights violations.

The results of the bid and the subsequent monitoring process should be made public. Sports governing bodies should receive and investigate complaints, and carry out human rights due diligence.

Finally, governing bodies should engage with stakeholders throughout this process, so that the views of the most vulnerable groups affected, including children, are taken on board.

The Children Win campaign is committed to making the world aware of child rights violations and increasing the pressure on sports organisations like the IOC.

Related: Rio Olympics: view from the favelas – 'Many deaths go unexplained here' | Daiene Mendes

In our film The Fighter, 12-year-old Naomy describes losing her home in Vila Autódromo to make way for an Olympic Park through route.

“I saw everything I love being ripped apart to make way for the 2016 Olympic Park,” she says.

The “you bring the house, we bring the party” premise only works if those organising the party fully respect and value the hosts.

Leading sports bodies need to align their practice with their ideals by introducing all measures necessary to mitigate any preventable harm to children and respect their rights.

Andrea Florence is a human rights lawyer and strategic alliance officer of the Children Win campaign led by Terre des Hommes

Summary: With preparations for the Rio Olympics punctuated by clearance operations and evictions, the Olympic dream has turned sour for thousands of Brazilian children


Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined a more aggressive approach to fighting ISIS in a major speech Thursday that showcased a more hawkish approach to foreign policy than her former boss.

In a closely watched speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Democratic frontrunner called for sending more U.S. special forces to Syria, imposing a no-fly zone in northern Syria and possibly arming Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq.

The speech struck a more assertive tone than President Obama’s remarks on the same subject earlier this week, even as she was careful to keep from directly criticizing the current strategy.

“It is in many ways an intensification, an acceleration of the strategy,” Clinton said of her plan to attack and destroy ISIS. “There has been an evolution in their threat and we have to meet it.”

Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq War divided her and Obama in the 2008 election and was a decisive reason she lost the nomination. She has said repeatedly the vote was a mistake, but her reputation as being more aggressive on foreign policy issues than the president has not changed. In her time as Secretary of State, she called for more action to arm moderate Syrian rebels, and was a voice for more intervention in Libya.

Their differences may be amplified by their current positions too. Nearing the end of his second term and facing no more elections, Obama has grown increasingly impatient with the political side of his job, while Clinton is already looking ahead to a general election where she expects to square off against a Republican candidate who will use similarly tough rhetoric on foreign policy.

During a Q&A in Turkey Monday, Obama said he wasn’t going to take action against ISIS simply because it would “make America look tough, or make me look tough,” and compared critics to people who “want to pop off” on the issue.

By contrast, Clinton struck a more assertive tone in her speech.

“Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, but to defeat and destroy ISIS,” she said. “And we should be honest about the fact that, to be successful, air strikes will have to be combined with ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.”

Read More: Transcript of Clinton’s Speech on Fighting ISIS

She said that U.S. troops may need to take a greater role and more flexbility in Iraq and Syria, including in embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes.

“As part of that process, we may have to give our own troops advising and training the Iraqis greater freedom of movement and flexibility, including embedding in local units and helping target airstrikes,” she said. Clinton has also called for a no-fly zone in northern Syria, a policy that some critics including Robert Gates have said would be tough to implement.

Back in familiar territory three years after leaving her post as Secretary of State, Clinton’s understanding of the nuances in the Middle East were clear on Thursday. She parsed the complicated relationships in the region with familiarity, calling on Turkey to overcome its animosity towards the Kurds, for example. She detailed how she would convince Saudi Arabia to turn its attention from the Shiite Houthis to joining a coalition against ISIS.

She also called for better intelligence sharing between European countries and the United States, and warned that impenetrable encryption of mobile communications of the kind being developed in Silicon Valley could make it more difficult to prevent a future attack.

“The United States and our allies need to know and share the identities of every fighter who has traveled to Syria,” Clinton said.

Clinton also joined Obama in criticizing Republicans for calling for Syrian refugees to be denied access to the United States. Since the Paris attacks, GOP presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have argued that the U.S. can’t reliably run background checks on incoming refugees, while Chris Christie has even said he wouldn’t allow orphan children to enter.

“After a major terrorist attack, every society faces a choice between fear and resolve,” Clinton said. “Turning away orphans, applying a religious test, discriminating against Muslims, slamming the door on every single Syrian refugee – that is just not who we are. We are better than that.”

Read Next: Republican Candidates Weren’t Always Skeptical of Syrian Refugees

Summary: She showcased a more aggressive approach to foreign policy.


Some customers didn’t know what to make of Samantha Briody when they saw her behind the parts counter at AutoZone in Weymouth.

“Is there a guy here?” they would ask.

Little did they know how well equipped she was to help them.

Briody, 21, recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in automotive management from the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston, and just started a new position as a parts specialist at a Volkswagen dealership in Norwood.

But dealing with gender stereotypes is likely to remain part of her job. Even as the number of women taking automotive classes has remained steady or risen in schools around New England, the share of them working as mechanics and in auto parts sales has declined in recent years — reflecting a drop in females in many male-dominated industries.

But with technicians in demand, and women drivers outnumbering men, the automotive industry is doing more to attract women to the field — and keep them there.

The Automotive Women’s Alliance Foundation and the Car Care Council Women’s Board have attracted more corporate sponsorships in recent years, allowing them to greatly increase the number of scholarships they award.

Car makers, including General Motors Co., the first major automotive company to have a female chief executive, have laid out plans to recruit and better support female employees.

And the Automotive Industries Association of Canada released a report last month detailing the challenges women face in the industry and recommending ways to increase their numbers.

Automotive employers who come to the Benjamin Franklin Institute are increasingly seeking out women, especially to interact with customers, said Ashley Mansfield, director of student success at the school. With women involved in 80 percent of car-buying decisions, according to the research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, it makes sense to have more of them working in the industry, she said, not just to make female customers comfortable, but to capitalize on their communication and problem-solving skills and attention to detail.

Women make up only about 10 percent of approximately 150 automotive students at the Benjamin Franklin Institute, and to combat this lack of community, Mansfield recently helped form a women’s group where students meet to share stories of discrimination, hear from women in the industry, and travel to trade shows.

The women at the school may be far outnumbered by men, but they are serious about their education.

“The guys at the school just talk about how fast their cars are and don’t actually pay attention to the lesson,” said Cassie Olson, an 18-year-old Shrewsbury native who grew up helping her dad change the oil and is getting an associate’s degree in automotive technology. “The women actually want to hear the lecture.”

Diane Larson of Larson’s Service in Peabody says the business can still be tough for women.

Once they get out into the male-dominated workforce, however, many don’t last. The share of female mechanics has fallen 3 percentage points in the past 20 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In wholesale and retail auto parts, the percentage of women has dropped by a similar amount. The number of women in managerial positions in the auto industry has also dipped.

This decline reflects an overall decrease in the number of women in traditionally male fields over the past few decades, including agriculture, coal mining, and manufacturing. The reason for this, said Anna Beninger, director of research at the women’s advocacy group Catalyst Inc., boils down to company culture.

“The old boy’s club is alive and well,” she said.

The gender gap is not limited to blue-collar jobs. Women who enter STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and math — often start in lower-level positions and make less money than men from day one, said Beninger, who studied the gender divide among nearly 6,000 MBA graduates. Of those who do go into automotive, high tech, manufacturing, and other male-dominated fields, 53 percent of women left to work in another industry — compared to 31 percent of men — because they feel like outsiders, lack female role models, and experience both overt and unconscious discrimination.

But some areas of the automotive industry are retaining more female workers than in the past, including automobile sales. “It’s not the sons, it’s the daughters who are taking over the businesses,” said Melissa Steffy, general manager of Herb Chambers BMW of Boston.

And as cars become increasingly computerized, and the “grease monkey” stigma fades, repair work will become more accessible for women, too, said Kellie Treppa, a member of the Automotive Women’s Alliance Foundation board. “Brains can do it; you don’t necessarily need the brawn,” she said.

Diane Larson helped her husband open Larson’s Service in Peabody 30 years ago and took over the business after he died in 2008. Customers don’t hang up when she answers the phone like they used to, she said, but the industry can still be a tough place for women. When she was at a trade show with the 21-year-old son of another shop owner a few years ago, vendors automatically directed their comments to him.

But Larson’s shop is thriving, due in part to the innovative way she runs it. Customers come to her service station twice a year for prescheduled checkups, similar to a dentist’s office. This brings in regular business and keeps clients’ cars from breaking down. Women in particular love it. “You’re not going to end up with a dead battery or a light out or a fan belt breaking,” Larson said.

Incorporating women’s ideas are good for the industry, said Larson, who is grooming her female shop manager to take over in a few years.

Larson’s manager, Taylor Hill, 30, who has a degree in automotive management, said she was initially discouraged from getting into car repair. “It’s a guy’s world,” she recalls her father telling her. “You don’t want to deal with the hassle.”

It hasn’t been that bad, Hill said, but she has had to develop a thick skin — and to consider what it means when a man doubts her abilities.

“It’s more of an insecurity issue on their part,” she said, “because they may not know as much as I do.”

Summary: With women drivers outnumbering men and making key car-buying decisions, the automotive industry is doing more to attract and retain female employees.


What does it take to be named America’s greatest partier? A strong liver, for one. The ability to summon literally thousands of people to a house party is also good. A spread in Rolling Stone magazine won’t hurt, either.

That’s what happened to Bert Kreischer during his sixth year at Florida State University back in the late 1990s. He got a call — as he was in the middle of doing bong hits, naturally — from a magazine journalist interested in writing about FSU after it had been anointed the country’s top party school. Kreischer’s name had been mentioned by nearly every student the writer had spoken with as someone who knew his way around a bash.

The resulting article, called “The Undergraduate,” which detailed Kreischer’s out-of-control drinking, merrymaking and public nudity, made him a star — and inspired the 2002 Ryan Reynolds movie “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.”

“I’ve never seen it. I had nothing to do with it,” Kreischer, now 41 and a stand-up comedian and TV personality, says of the frat comedy.

Kreischer is responsible for “Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child,” a collection of outrageous anecdotes, on sale May 27.

In it, he writes about his unpredictable, Forrest Gump-ian life, including the time he was briefly in a band with the dude from Creed, and the time he cried on Whitney Houston’s shoulder while his daughter had dental surgery.

“Here’s the weird thing about me. I was never one to tell you stories about me. I was always the guy who others told stories about,” Kreischer tells The Post. “I was like that up until I was 35 years old. And then I started telling stories about me onstage.”

Kreischer has plenty of stories that never made it into the movie. Here, he shares tales from some of his wildest nights of partying, including a few from the days when he lived in New York.

I was working at the Boston Comedy Club [on West Third Street], standing out front “barking,” trying to bring people in to watch our comedy show. Tracy Morgan came out of the club. He asked me if I wanted to go get high. We took a left and walked down the block, to either Thompson or Sullivan. Tracy lit [a joint], and he passed it to me. I said, “This tastes funny.” He tells me, “Oh, it’s wet.”

“Oh, it’s PCP.” Then he walks away.

I’m like, “What the f- -k?” I’m spiraling. I ask my friend [comedian] Tony Woods, and he said, “No, Tracy doesn’t smoke PCP. You’re fine.” I’m like, “Seriously?” Tony said, “Listen, don’t go home. If you go home, you’ll think you’re on PCP.”

So now you’re in that gray area where you literally feel high with anxiety, and you’re spiraling because there is the possibility that you smoked PCP. The truth is, I was just a young, white comic, and I know for a fact that Tracy has a history of messing with young, white comics. They all come to me with their stories: “You should have heard what he did to me.”

Later, Tony and I went over to Madame X [on Houston Street]. Tracy was there holding court [with 20 guys]. We drank a ton of Champagne and I had some Heineken.

When the bill came, the waitress gave it to me [because I was the only white guy in the group]. I’m freaking out. Tracy got up and caused somewhat of a ruckus. “Ah, f- -k that. I’m the rich [N-word] in here! F- -k that white boy, he works the door,” he said. Tracy ripped off his shirt and the bouncers were on top of him.

Tony and I go outside. Tracy comes out and he looks like he’s been beaten. But he’s sly as a fox. He looks at me and Tony and goes, “Now that’s how you get out of paying the check.”

I suffer from an inability not to grab the mic. I’m the guy who needs to be front and center. I joined a fraternity to do that. The frat elections were such bulls- -t. So catty. What would happen is, I’d grab the mic and use it as an opportunity to get laughs. I’d write a song about the brothers or something.

One time, I went up totally naked with a tie on and delivered a speech that said I had nothing to hide. That was my platform. It killed, and it killed because once the shock of me being naked wore off, I’m still delivering a nine-minute speech naked. And I’m not really well-endowed, so it became almost surreal to these guys.

The next year, my buddies ask me, “Are you gonna do a naked speech?” I said, “I would, but I’m afraid I’ll s- -t all over the place.” They’re like, “That’s perfect!” So we go and get a tie. They go up and give a speech about how I’m trying to change, how I’m trying to become more of a serious person. Then I come up and I’m naked and the guys love it.

I go up and raise my hand and turn around to face a table of councilmen, and I push and I s- -t on a pizza box. The council didn’t see me s- -tting. All the council saw was me pissing on their feet. Because when you go number two, you also go number one. That’s why they call it number two: It’s number one plus another number one.

I piss all over their feet and they lose it. Then, they smell it. All hell was breaking loose. I swear to you, there were people jumping out of windows. Even me, when I had to clean it up, I gagged.

Later, we go in to tally up the votes, and they force the two candidates to stand next to each other, and everyone is still talking about the s- -t , and I’m standing next to [the other candidate] and he’s in a suit and tie with a laser pointer and I’m naked. They tally it up and I won by a landslide. [The other candidate] yells, “That’s bulls- -t!” And someone else from the back yells, “No, that’s Bert s- -t!”

When Oliver Stone optioned the rights to my life, and they were trying to develop a movie based on my life, there was this agent who set me up with writers, and they were going to write the script. These two writers had a great pitch, but they kept saying, “We don’t know how the story ends. We want to know how it ends.” One night, we go over to the Argyle [now called Sunset Tower, in West Hollywood], and they’ve rented the penthouse suite. We walk in and there’s a ton of coke on the table. They go, “You party, right?” I didn’t say no at the time. Then, very quickly I realized they were trying to kill me so that they’d have an end to the story. I go out on this tiny balcony overlooking Hollywood, and I think, “I need to get the f- -k out of here.”

My first night in New York ever, I went down to the Meatpacking District and a journalist friend named Steve Garbarino showed me my first gay bar. We went to an after-hours club called Marylou’s, and this guy recognized me. He said, “You’re the party animal! I just read about you. I got to get you a drink!” I went, “No, no. That’s OK.” I was just being coy. He called over to his friends, “Harvey, Abel, you gotta meet this guy. He’s the No. 1 party animal.” I’m looking, and the girl we’re with goes, “Holy s – -t! I can’t believe David Lee Roth wants to buy you a drink.” That was my first night in New York.

The most f- -ked up I’ve been and, hands down, one of the favorite moments of my life, was St. Paddy’s Day my first senior year. I had two senior years and two junior years. I’m at Potbelly’s bar and get a call on the bar phone. My buddy says he’s coming by. He pulls up on a scooter, and he goes, “I got a bag of mushrooms. Let’s go.” I eat the mushrooms and sit backward on the scooter so I am facing traffic. We proceed to drive through the campus at a slow speed, and it was literally one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was giggly fun and very peaceful. And just beautiful. We’d drive around and I’d say, “Let’s go see if we can get a corn dog inside the Tri Delt house.” It was that kind of energy.

Summary: What does it take to be named America’s greatest partier? A strong liver, for one. The ability to summon literally thousands of people to a house party is also good. A spread in Rolling Stone magaz…


I was always very into creativity and making things. Design is part of everything we do, everything we see, everything we touch, and for the public not to be engaged was a missed opportunity. We were trying to create a traditional museum in 2008-2009, the worst possible time to start a new museum. At the same time, there were underutilized spaces all over the place. We’re bringing the museum to places where people already go. We’re also in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco.

Most playgrounds are not very interesting for kids, don’t really challenge them or develop motor skills or social skills. As we dug in, we saw how designers design playgrounds based on liability and injury prevention, that playgrounds are designed more [for] maintenance and the municipalities’ needs rather than what kids need.

There’s a new movement in playgrounds called adventure playgrounds.

We [show] a couple of them in our exhibition, one in the U.K. It’s basically an outdoor junkyard — trees, scraps of metal. Kids can play with hatchets, light fires, and build forts. We show people and they say, “We can’t believe their parents let them do that!” I ask what their childhood was like, and theirs was like [mine]: falling down, getting hurt, figuring things out, and getting home before the streetlights came on.

The world has definitely changed. I had a lot of unsupervised playtime that research shows allows kids to establish creative thinking, risk taking — all these characteristics we want our kids to have, and it goes back to why we did this project.

GET OUTSIDE Let your inner child romp at the opening of the Extraordinary Playscapes exhibition on June 8 at the BSA Space at 290 Congress Street. Visit designmuseumfoundation.org for more information.

Summary: The Design Museum Foundation’s Sam Aquillano invites visitors to an exhibition on Extraordinary Playscapes.


If you have more Gap than Gucci in your closet, then Threadflip may be the clothing consignment shop for you. Like most of the others, this site caters to women's clothing and accessories, but they accept a much broader range of brands.

To use the site, you ship your goods to Threadflip using a prepaid shipping label they provide. Then, they inspect, price and list your items for you. Anything that doesn't meet their standards is returned or donated to Goodwill.

Fees work on a sliding scale. If your item is listed for $10-$29, Threadflip takes 70 percent of the sale price. For sales between $30-$74, the commission drops to 40 percent, and if you have something priced at more than $75, Threadflip's share goes down to 20 percent.

It's worth noting that Threadflip prices your items, and you don't control the amount. Listings expire after 90 days, too. If your goods haven't sold by then, they will be donated to Goodwill or you can pay $15 to have them shipped back to you.

Summary: Tired of eBay and Craigslist? Here are some new options that may make more sense for your goods


The Office of Personnel Management has revised its estimate for the number of fingerprint records compromised in cyberattacks that recently targeted the agency, the office announced on Wednesday.

The agency (commonly abbreviated as “OPM”), which serves as a human resources department for the federal government, has upped its figure to 5.6 million stolen fingerprint records from its original estimate of 1.1 million.

The higher figure does not affect the estimated number of federal employees who had their sensitive information, such as social security numbers and SF-86 security clearance forms, compromised in the attacks, OPM said in its news release. That figure remains pegged at 21.5 million.

As a means of authentication, biometric indicators such as fingerprints have made inroads in the past couple of years as a promising alternative to passwords, which can be difficult to remember and are often improperly—and weakly—applied by users. In 2013, for instance, Apple AAPL introduced its touch ID device-locking tech as a substitute for personal identification numbers with the launch of its iPhone 5s. The feature has been included on all the latest iPhone and iPad models since.

The OPM revelation exposes a major flaw lurking in fingerprint-protected systems though. People can easily change their passwords; they can’t easily change their fingerprints.

“Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited,” the agency said in a statement. “However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves.”

Fortune requested elaboration on this point. An OPM spokesperson replied via email: “The law enforcement and intelligence communities are best positioned to give the most fulsome answer to this question.”

Government security experts will team up to investigate the issue and devise future protections, the office said. This group includes members from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and other members of the intelligence community.

Unfortunately, no amount of free credit monitoring nor identity theft protection can un-steal fingerprint data.

Senator Ben Sasse told Fortune via email that the latest news “is the clearest sign yet that the administration still acts like the OPM hack is a PR crisis instead of a national security threat. The American people have no reason to believe that they’ve heard the full story and every reason to believe that Washington assumes they are too stupid or preoccupied to care about cyber security.”

Many security experts have attributed the OPM attacks to China. Ironically, given the news, Chinese president Xi Jinping is currently touring the U.S., visiting tech companies, and engaging with top officials in discussions about cybercrime and espionage.

For more on the OPM data breach, watch this Fortune video:

Subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily business-tech newsletter.

Summary: Original estimate: 1.1 million fingerprint records stolen. New estimate: 5.6 million.


Well, this will end well ...

in a new song, saying if Fif doesn't cough up the million bucks they bet on a boxing match earlier this year ... Webbie's gonna come take it.

We broke the story ... Webbie claims he and 50 made a not-so-friendly ONE MILLION DOLLAR wager on the

Crawford -- Webbie's BFF -- ko'd Gamboa, who is managed by 50. But when it was time to pay up, Webbie says 5-0 was a no show.

Now its seems Webbie has had enough of 50's Aaron Rodgers routine, and is lashing against the G Unit general in a new song called "What I Been Thru."

During the track Webbie attacks 50, calling him a "b*tch" and adding "You owe me a million, don't make me come get it, I'm telling you I'm serious."

He then invites 50 to engage in an adult activity involving his genitals.

As for 50, he's not usually one to back down from a feud -- just ask Floyd Mayweather -- so, keep a close eye on this one.

Summary: Well, this will end well ... Webbie is CALLING OUT 50 Cent in a new song, saying if Fif doesn't  cough up the million bucks they bet on a boxing…


The brother of Qandeel Baloch, whose risqué social media posts both titillated and appalled conservative Pakistan, on Sunday admitted to strangling her in a crime that reignited debate about so-called “honor killings” in the South Asian nation.

Muhammad Waseem said he gave a “tablet” to Baloch to subdue her and then strangled her in their family home over the weekend.

“I have no regrets,” he told journalists in a press conference arranged by the police early on Sunday.

The killing sent shockwaves across Muslim Pakistan and triggered an outpouring of grief on social media for Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem.

Violence Against Women Could Cost the U.S. $500 Billion a Year

In Facebook FB posts, Baloch, 26, spoke of trying to change “the typical orthodox mindset” of people in Pakistan. She faced frequent misogynist abuse and death threats but continued to post provocative pictures and videos.

“As per our initial investigation ‘honor’ is the motive of murder,” said Azhar Ikram, the police chief in Multan, where Baloch was killed.

More than 500 people—almost all women—die in Pakistan each year in such killings, usually carried out by members of the victim’s family meting out punishment for bringing “shame” on the community.

Waseem said he killed his sister due to her social media activities, which included a series of posts with a prominent Muslim cleric, Abdul Qavi. One video shows her sitting on the cleric’s lap.

Qavi, who was suspended from a prominent Muslim council in the controversy following the posts, told local media after Baloch’s death he had “forgiven her” and the matter was now in God’s hands.

How Women in Turkey are Using an App to Fight Domestic Violence

After Baloch’s death, many Pakistanis again called for the passage of an anti-honor killing law, aimed a closing a loophole that allows family members to forgive the killers.

“The death of Qandeel Baloch conveys an insidious message: that women will be kept back at all cost; murdered, if they dare nurture ambitions to break the glass ceiling,” the English daily Dawn newspaper wrote in an editorial on Sunday.

“Her murder…must serve as an impetus for legislators to renew demands for legislation to protect women who are threatened under false notions of ‘honor’.”

Baloch, who called herself a modern day feminist, was described as Pakistan’s Kim Kardashian and built a modeling career on the back of her social media fame.

“As women we must stand up for ourselves. As women, we must stand up for each other,” she told her 758,000 followers on Facebook, days before her death.

For more on empowering women, watch:

Earlier this year Baloch offered to strip if the wildly popular Pakistani cricket team beat arch-rival India.

She also appeared in a music video, gyrating bare legged to an Urdu-language song in high-heels and a see-through top.

Prior to her death Baloch spoke of worries about her safety and had appealed to the interior ministry to provide her with security for protection. No help was provided and the interior ministry has not commented on her death.

On social media, some celebrated her killing as she had been a “disgrace” to Pakistan’s culture.

But many grieved her death, saying she had helped the cause of women in a society where they are often banned from working or even appearing in public in ultra-conservative areas.

“There are far too many people who only know how to respond with violence here,” Meesha Shafi, a Pakistani model and actress, said on Twitter TWTR .

Summary: "As women, we must stand up for each other," Baloch wrote.


Baseball is a game so obsessed with its past that it borders on the self-destructive. Supposed true devotees are always insistent that the way it’s played now is wrong. Baby boomers claim the current game is too indulgent of the individual, too lacking in fundamentals, too reliant on showmanship. That’s the same thing boomers’ parents were saying when Mickey Mantle was playing. And on and on it has gone. The baseball historian John Thorn once quoted an old sportswriters’ complaint about baseball: “Oh, give us the glorious matches of old, when love of true sport made them great / And not this new-fashioned affair...

Summary: Will Leitch reviews “The Baseball Whisperer: A Small-Town Coach Who Shaped Big League Dreams” by Michael Tackett.


Making matters more challenging for Democrats is that the rural, Democratic-leaning parts of the state have suffered significant population losses over the last decade. The biggest declines have been in the most heavily Democratic majority-black counties along the Mississippi River.

The state’s Republican-leaning areas have had significant population growth since 2000; the state’s Democratic-leaning areas have suffered steady population losses.

The state’s most Democratic and black county, Phillips, exemplifies this trend. Phillips County gave Mark Pryor 65 percent of the vote in 2002, but its population shrank by 18 percent over the last decade — the second-largest decline in the state.

When Mr. Pryor first won his Senate seat, the five fast-growing Republican-leaning metropolitan counties held 19.9 percent of the state’s population. They now hold 25.6 percent of it. Democratic-leaning counties where Mr. Pryor received at least 60 percent of the vote now represent just 21.5 percent of the population, compared with 23.4 in 2000.

And the voters who remain in these Democratic-leaning areas are not as Democratic as they once were. Not only have many decidedly turned against the national Democratic Party, but a large percentage of the most Democratic voters have left the electorate. The so-called Greatest Generation of older voters, who came of age when Dixiecrats still reigned in the South, were the most reliably Democratic cohort in Arkansas. Voters over 65 even voted for John Kerry, according to the exit polls.

The “Greatest Generation,” people who were young adults during the World War II era, represented 11 percent of voters nationally in 2002, according to the Current Population Survey. Now in their late 80s or older, they represented just 2.4 percent of the electorate in 2012. The broader group of voters who were at least 65 years old in 2002 represented 23 percent of voters in that election, but now at age 75 or older had shrunk to just 9 percent of the vote in 2012.

Largely taking the place of the “Greatest Generation” as the oldest voter group is the so-called Silent Generation, people born roughly from the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. These voters are far less attached to the Democrats, and although their longtime memories of Mark Pryor and his father will allow Mr. Pryor to fare far better than President Obama did, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Pryor could run up the score among older voters the way he could have a decade ago — even if he were just as popular and even if national conditions were just as favorable. The rise of the Silent Generation is a big part of why Democrats struggle more with midterm elections than they did a decade and a half ago.

Many of these pro-Republican trends exist in other Southern states. But in Arkansas, there are virtually no trends working in the direction of Democrats.

The white share of the electorate barely declined at all between 2004 and 2012, falling from 84.1 to 83 percent, according to the census’ Current Population Survey. It’s possible that the actual decline was greater, but it is nonetheless clear that the Arkansas electorate has not become significantly more diverse over the last decade, even though the white share of the voting-eligible population has declined modestly.

Given those trends, Mr. Pryor would be hard pressed to win re-election in Arkansas today, even under better circumstances. That 2014 is an off-year election with the incumbent Democratic president extremely unpopular in Arkansas only makes matters worse.

Democrats say that Mr. Pryor still has a credible path to victory. But the polls don’t really show it: Mr. Pryor is stuck in the low to mid-40s, trailing Mr. Cotton by a modest but consistent margin. Very few candidates — let alone Democrats running in a state as conservative as Arkansas — manage to come back from numbers like these.

To the extent that the polls offer any cause for Democrats to be optimistic, it is that some have shown Mr. Pryor faring much better among registered voters than likely voters. Some surveys even show Mr. Pryor ahead among registered voters. If Mr. Pryor does indeed lead among registered voters — which is not at all clear — then Democrats can hope that a strong turnout operation could get many of these voters to the polls.

It is a glimmer of hope, but not a bright one: Leo, The Upshot’s Senate forecasting model, gives Mr. Pryor a 24 percent chance of winning.

Summary: Changes in the state’s population have helped create a political climate far more favorable to Republicans.


Thirty-five years ago when Fred Baer was looking to buy a house, he considered settling in New Jersey because he liked the suburban atmosphere.

Instead, he found a similar feel and more affordable prices in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fiske Terrace, an enclave in Flatbush covering just a few blocks, some of which dead end at the Q and B subway tracks. The streets are lined with large, detached Victorian houses that have driveways,...

Summary: The streets of Fiske Terrace, an enclave in Flatbush, are lined with large, detached Victorian houses that have driveways, garages, gardens and backyards as well as hundreds of curbside trees.


Baldini had offered to resign when Villas-Boas left but Levy rejected the Italian because he still valued his input. And it does appear that Baldini was among those who urged the chairman to stick with the model of a younger coach working alongside a technical director.

Given that Baldini was technical director, clearly there was a strong element of self-preservation in his approach, although his offer of resignation had been submitted, so he was prepared to go. Even then, his critics argue that was a shrewd move from Baldini as he knew Levy would not want to lose him at a period of such instability. But Baldini – like Villas-Boas, ironically – admired Pochettino.

Contact with Van Gaal definitely cooled amid rumours that Spurs were, indeed, casting around. It led to the accusation that they had mucked this one up and would lose their man.

In the end, United hired Van Gaal, announcing the news on May 19, 2014. Nine days later, Spurs announced that Pochettino was their new manager after formally approaching Southampton on May 26.

Summary: There was a reminder of one of those 'sliding doors’


Donald Trump is set to deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination Thursday night in Cleveland. Behind his words will be 30-year-old policy adviser Stephen Miller, who is tasked with drafting the speech of his life.

If it weren’t difficult enough to produce a blockbuster address for the most unpredictable Republican nominee in modern memory, Mr. Miller will need to shoulder the additional scrutiny foisted on the candidate after his campaign admitted on Wednesday that parts of the convention speech his wife delivered Monday were drawn from an earlier address given by Michelle Obama.

A writer in the Trump Organization, Meredith McIver, took responsibility for the speech. “This was my mistake and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama,” she said in a statement.

Mr. Miller, who spent nine years on Capitol Hill before joining the campaign in January, feels a close connection to Mr. Trump’s words.

“I remember saying a few years ago to friends that I hoped Donald Trump would run for president,” Mr. Miller said in an interview. “The clarity with which he talked about trade and immigration, and the sense that he alone had the power to disrupt the special interests and give government back to Americans, made clear to me that he was the leader we needed.”

Campaign officials say that Mr. Miller, more than anyone else on the campaign, has achieved a mind-meld with the candidate, capable of channeling Mr. Trump’s blunt, short sentences into well-argued addresses with stylistic flourish.

“Stephen is one of the most important people in the campaign,” said Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. “He clearly understands Mr. Trump’s voice.”

Growing up in a liberal Jewish family in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Miller quickly realized that his conservative views, if impeccably argued, would gain him notice far beyond the scope of his hometown. In high school, Mr. Miller was known to contact conservative talk-radio personalities when he perceived liberal bias tainting his education, such as the time a co-principal broadcast over the school’s public-address system his doubts about launching airstrikes on the Taliban.

Before joining Mr. Trump’s operation, he spent seven years serving as a communications and speech writing adviser to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), one of the chamber’s most conservative members and one whose protectionist trade and immigration views mirror Mr. Trump’s.

“When I hear Trump speak, I often hear Stephen speaking, especially when he talks about immigration and trade,” said one House staffer who worked with Mr. Miller on immigration policy while he was with Mr. Sessions.

The Alabama senator became one of the most influential voices against overhauling the immigration system, helping catalyze GOP opposition to it in the House in 2013 after a bipartisan bill passed the Senate. On the Hill, Mr. Miller became known as a zealous messenger of Mr. Sessions’s views, sending out an unusually high volume of notices flagging the senator’s speeches on the issue. On at least one occasion, Mr. Miller asked a reporter to read Mr. Sessions’s 25-page immigration handbook, which Mr. Miller helped write, before responding to narrower questions.

Mr. Miller has crafted many of Mr. Trump’s most important policy speeches delivered with a teleprompter, going as far back as the speech Mr. Trump delivered to a pro-Israel group in March, Mr. Manafort said. That address marked one of the first occasions where Mr. Trump’s remarks adhered to a straightforward argumentative structure.

But it is perhaps Mr. Miller’s own brash, straightforward style—even more than his views on Mr. Trump’s marquee campaign issues—that makes him the ideal envoy of the candidate’s message.

Mr. Miller has been warming up crowds at Mr. Trump’s rallies since March, a routine that began in Florida with a blistering takedown of Sen. Marco Rubio, one of Mr. Trump’s primary opponents, who had been one of the architects of the 2013 immigration bill.

“Marco Rubio campaigned for office in 2010 and he campaigned on a pledge that he was going to fight amnesty. Did Marco Rubio fight against amnesty?” Mr. Miller asked a crowd in Boca Raton. That returned raucous calls of “No!”

This week, the Melania Trump speech—which Mr. Manafort said Mr. Miller wasn’t involved in drafting—adds an extra challenge to Mr. Miller’s task.

“Under any circumstances, he’d be under a lot of pressure,” said Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter to President George W. Bush. “But after the Melania Trump debacle, every word of that speech is going to be scrutinized. If the pressure was at 100, now it’s at 110.”

Writing for a candidate like Mr. Trump could also come with other challenges, speechwriters say.

“It’s nearly impossible to write for such a mercurial candidate, because by definition they don’t want to give prepared speeches that sound like canned political boilerplate,” said Barton Swaim, a speechwriter for Rep. Mark Sanford when he was governor of South Carolina.

Mr. Trump has been known to veer off script, but Mr. Miller said the candidate closely edits his own speeches.

“His words have given hope to so many who’ve been waiting for a reason to hope,” he said. “His words are his own, and that is their power.”

Summary: Stephen Miller, a 30-year-old policy adviser writing Donald Trump’s nomination acceptance speech, has his own brash, straightforward style that makes him the ideal envoy of the candidate’s message.


On Monday, Wenche Elizabeth Amtzen, the presiding judge, said that Breivik's statement would take 30 minutes. In the event, he was afforded over an hour. Justice Amtzen interrupted four times to demand restraint, but Breivik was never silenced.

So Norwegians had to listen as he claimed that a concern for "human rights and international law" had led him to detonate a car bomb in the centre of their capital, before carrying out the Utoya island massacre.

"This was the most sophisticated and spectacular political attack committed in Europe since the Second World War," boasted Breivik. "If one can force the Norwegian Labour party to change their immigration policy by executing 77 people, that will contribute to holding our values and culture."

Reading a 20-page statement that he had spent months preparing in prison, Breivik looked directly at the judges. "I acted in defence of my culture and of my people and so I ask to be acquitted," he said.

Earlier, he had turned on the media, denouncing "100 per cent of" the world's news organisations for "pumping out multicultural propaganda 24 hours a day". Inexplicably, they were also portraying him as a "pathetic and mean loser without integrity".

With a special tone of indignation, Breivik added: "It has been suggested that I'm a child-killer despite not being indicted for killing anyone under the age of 14."

He would have preferred to bomb a journalists' conference in Oslo, but "unfortunately" that attack had been impossible to organise in time.

Numerous figures from history had inspired his struggle as a "Knight Templar", said Breivik, singling out Sitting Bull, the native American chief who defeated General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and Enoch Powell, the late Conservative politician.

Recalling Powell's infamous speech from 1968, Breivik said: "Enoch Powell predicted that rivers of blood would flow through our streets. Unfortunately no-one listened to him, or to the other Enoch Powells in Europe."

Britain came up repeatedly during Breivik's testimony. Luton was a city where the indigenous population "and even emergency vehicles" were unable to enter large areas, allegedly because of the depradations of Muslim immigrants.

"And three out of five Englishmen believe the UK has turned into a dysfunctional society because of multiculturalism," added Breivik, citing an opinion poll which he said had appeared in "The Times" in 2010.

The "Knights Templar" had been founded in London in 2002, he claimed, although the prosecution believe this network to be a figment of his imagination.

Turning to American inspirations, Breivik lamented that Europe had never possessed "an anti-Communist like McCarthy to prevent Marxists from infiltrating universities and schools". He added: "McCarthy was far too moderate. He thought about deporting all American Communists to the Soviet Union, but unfortunately he did not do so."

Yet Breivik had encountered a problem that generations of extremists, particularly Marxists, would recognise. "The majority of people are so indoctrinated that they do not believe they need to be saved," he complained.

After venting his phobias unchallenged, Breivik, 33, finally faced cross-examination. Inga Bejer Engh, the softly spoken prosecutor, did not attempt a bruising confrontation in the style of the Old Bailey. Instead, she politely and persistently tied Breivik in knots.

"Who gave you the authority to take the lives of Norwegians?" she asked. Breivik squirmed around this question for the best part of 20 minutes before confessing that he gave himself the "mandate" to kill Norwegians in order to rescue them.

As for Breivik's own past, Ms Engh forced him to admit that all of his various business ventures were hopeless failures until, at last, he set up an internet company selling fake diplomas, yielding a profit of Pounds 436,000. Peddling forged certificates was, he admitted, "morally despicable".

Along the way, Breivik had also evaded taxes, dodged Norway's compulsory military service, invented a story about having his nose broken by a Muslim, and lied about gaining a business degree from an American university.

After dropping out of secondary school, the killer claimed to have spent 15,000 hours in private study to remedy his lack of formal education.

"And what," asked the prosecutor, "was your main source of information?" Breivik's answer was emphatic: "Wikipedia," he said. "The English articles there contained a lot of information."

When he became an ultra-nationalist, he described himself as rising to be "commander of a cell" of the "Knights Templar". Under questioning, he admitted that he was the sole member of the cell he commanded. There were, apparently, two other "one-man cells" in Norway.

The "Knights Templar" itself was formed by a meeting of "four sweaty men in a basement" in London, he said. How did his various statements describe this gathering? They "pompously" called it an "inaugural rally," he said.

The aim was to defend Christian civilisation from the incoming tide of Muslim migrants. But Ms Engh brough Breivik's flow of rhetoric to an abrupt halt by asking: "Do you consider yourself a Protestant?"

After a long pause, he replied: "I have not been a religious person, but there's a proverb that there are no atheists in the trenches. I'm a member of the Church of Norway, but I'm more drawn towards the Catholic church."

Again and again, Breivik returned to the subject of his lack of education. "It's important to signal that one is not without knowledge," he said. "You could see me as a salesman: I sell ideology, a view of life."

Devoid of shame about massacring defenceless teenagers, Breivik appears tormented by his failure to go to university.

The case continues with another four days of his testimony.

Summary: Anders Behring Breivik, flushed with boastful self righteousness, claimed that "goodness   not evil" had caused him to murder 77 Norwegians, declaring: "I   would have done it again."


Fleetwood Town have confirmed they have accepted the resignation of manager Steven Pressley after nine months in charge of the League One side.

Pressley, 42, replaced former Scotland team-mate Graham Alexander in October 2015 with the club in the relegation zone and guided them to safety.

"The decision was made this morning following a meeting," said a statement on the club website.

"It was agreed it would be best to take the club in a different direction."

Assistant manager Neil McFarlane has also left Fleetwood on an announcement that came just 11 days before the start of the new season on Saturday 6 August, when Fleetwood travel to promoted Northampton Town.

Former centre-back Pressley, who was previously in charge of Coventry and Falkirk, had signed 10 players this summer ahead of the new campaign.

"Fleetwood would like to thank Steven for his professionalism and effort during his nine months at Highbury, particularly in successfully maintaining the club's League One status last season," the statement added.

"Our focus will now turn to the prompt recruitment of a new manager to take the club forward."

The Lancashire side failed to win any of their four pre-season friendlies and first team coach Barry Nicholson and academy director Stuart Murdoch will take charge of Tuesday's game against National League side Southport.

Having been beaten 5-0 at home by Liverpool, they went on a tour of the Netherlands where they drew 0-0 with Fortuna Sittard, lost 5-0 to AZ Alkmaar and were beaten 1-0 by Roda JC.

Former Fleetwood midfielder Keith Southern told BBC Radio Lancashire:

"Only he will know the reasons why he has decided to walk away, but it is frustrating from a fan's point of view because we're on the verge of a new season.

"It didn't think it worked out probably as he, or as chairman Andy Pilley, would have hoped.

"There will be reasons behind it but I think Steven Pressley will say he wasn't given the opportunity to bring in the players I'm sure.

"The way Fleetwood is structured at board level, Gretar Steinsson and Steve Curwood have a massive say on who comes into the club."

Summary: Fleetwood Town confirm they have accepted the resignation of manager Steven Pressley after nine months in charge.


For the second time this year, Donald Trump has retweeted a message from an apparent neo-Nazi, raising troubling questions about his judgment and the ideology of some of his supporters.

On Wednesday, Trump retweeted and then deleted a message from the dubiously named user WhiteGenocideTM. The message was innocuous enough —the user was complimenting the crowds the GOP front-runner routinely receives on the stump — but the messenger is hard to ignore.

WhiteGenocideTM’s account features the image of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, along with the phrase “the man who would be Hitler.” It also lists the user’s location as “Jewmerica,” and includes links to other hateful, anti-Semitic and racist content, including insulting tweets about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a link to a documentary questioning the validity of the Holocaust.

And this is not the first time Trump has retweeted a message from WhiteGenocideTM. In late January, he shared an image the user posted of Jeb Bush superimposed on the body of what appears to be a panhandler, holding a sign that reads: “Vote Trump.” That tweet had not been removed from Trump’s account as of Thursday. MSNBC reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the WhiteGenocideTM retweets but has not heard back at this time.

In the past, Trump has been criticized for sharing racially insensitive messages and sentiments on social media. Last October, he tweeted his thanks to a Dutch white supremacist who sang his praises. (That profile asks: “Race war, when?”) Then in November, he retweeted debunked crime statistics that incorrectly claimed black Americans committed 81 percent of murders against white victims in 2014. FBI statistics show that in actuality 82 percent of white murder victims were killed by white assailants. “I retweeted somebody that was supposedly an expert,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly afterwards. “Bill, am I gonna check every statistic?”

“All it was is a retweet,” Trump added. “It wasn’t from me.”

RELATED: The danger of Donald Trump

The next month, when British citizens proposed he be banned from their country via a petition, Trump encouraged his supporters to read the writings of U.K. conservative and former “Apprentice” cast-member Katie Hopkins. Hopkins has compared migrants to ”cockroaches” and “feral humans” and was reportedly investigated for “inciting racial hatred” in early 2015.

Last year, when two of his supporters attacked a homeless man and reportedly said, ”Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported” while they were doing it, the real estate mogul simply said that his backers are “very passionate.” And in November of last year, when he was asked if his call for a database where all Muslim Americans would need to be registered was reminiscent of Nazi policies, Trump responded: “You tell me.”

In the past, Trump has professed to have enjoyed a great relationship with “the blacks,” and he has spoken (albeit with the requisite degree of controversy) to Jewish groups. Still, that hasn’t stopped some white supremacists from enthusiastically embracing his campaign. The American National Super PAC, a white nationalist organization founded by American Freedom Party chairman William Daniel Johnson, conducted pro-Trump robocalls during the run-up to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.

“We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people,” a voice said in one New Hampshire robocall. “I am a farmer and a white nationalist. Support Donald Trump,” another said. The Trump campaign has yet to disavow or comment publicly on these robocalls, although the candidate himself has repeatedly lamented the fact that there is “too much” political correctness in the U.S.

“Most white people would prefer to live in majority white neighborhoods and send their children to majority white schools. And deep in their bones, they are deeply disturbed by an immigration policy that is making the United States majority non-white,” Jared Taylor, an editor at the white nationalist media outlet American Renaissance and one of the voices on the robocalls, recently told CNN. “So when Donald Trump talks about sending out all the illegals, building a wall and a moratorium on Islamic immigration, that’s very appealing to a lot of ordinary white people.”

And Trump is not the only 2016 Republican getting support from uncomfortable corners of the electorate. Earlier in this campaign cycle, Trump’s rivals Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul rejected thousands of dollars in contributions from Earl Holt III, the president of Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that was name-checked in the manifesto written by South Carolina church massacre suspect Dylann Storm Roof.

Additional reporting by Benjy Sarlin and Khorri Atkinson.

Summary: The message was innocuous enough, the user was complimenting the crowds the GOP front-runner receives on the stump, but the messenger is hard to ignore.


Despite Russian reassurances that Moscow’s troop buildup along Ukraine’s eastern frontier is for a military exercise, its growing scale is making U.S. officials nervous about its ultimate aim.

President Barack Obama on Friday urged Russia to stop “intimidating” Ukraine and to pull its troops back to “de-escalate the situation.” He told CBS that the troop buildup may “be an effort to intimidate Ukraine, or it may be that [Russia has] additional plans.”

Pentagon officials say they believe there could be close to 50,000 Russian troops bordering the former Soviet republic and inside Crimea, recently seized and annexed by Moscow. That estimate is double earlier assessments, and means Russian President Vladimir Putin could order a lighting strike into Ukrainian territory with the forces already in place. The higher troop count was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“We continue to see the Russian military reinforce units on their side of the border with Ukraine to the south and to the east of Ukraine,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday. “They continue to reinforce and it continues to be unclear exactly what the intent there is.”

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf played down the notion that there are as many as 100,000 Russian troops now bordering Ukraine, as Olexander Motsyk, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., said Thursday on Capitol Hill. “I hadn’t actually seen the hundred-thousand number,” Harf said. “There are huge numbers of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border. … We are concerned about Russia taking further escalatory steps with whatever number of tens of thousands of troops they have there, and have called on them not to do so.”

Washington got those assurances that the Russian troop buildup was only an exercise from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu a week ago. But no one in the U.S. government knows if Putin agrees—or if the Russian leader has changed his mind as the West has debated what level of economic and political sanctions might be imposed if Moscow takes an additional chunk of Ukraine beyond Crimea. “They made it clear that their intent was to do exercises and not to cross the border,” Kirby said. “Our expectation is they’re going to live up to that word.”

There is no plan to involve the U.S. military in what is happening in Ukraine, even if Russia takes more territory. Ukraine borders Russia, and Ukraine does not belong to NATO, where an attack on one member is deemed to be an attack on all.

“Should the Russians continue to move aggressively in that region and in the Ukraine, what does that mean—and NATO would have to respond, for example—what would that mean for the United States Army?” Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, asked the Army’s top officer Thursday.

“My responsibility is to make sure that the U.S. Army is prepared to respond as part of a joint force, as part of NATO,” General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, responded. “So what I’m focused on is improving our readiness in combat, combat service support and combat aviation capabilities to make sure we’re ready to respond whether it’s from a humanitarian assistance aspect or any other aspect.”

How many of the 67,000 U.S. troops in Europe might be involved? “I simply don’t know,” Odierno said. “And I would just remind people that, actually, some of the soldiers that are assigned to Europe actually right now are in Afghanistan.”

Lawmakers suggested that the world is abandoning Ukraine. “It appears to me Ukraine was left defenseless over the last two decades,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.

“Ukraine has stood with us both in Iraq and Afghanistan,” added Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J. “We’re highly appreciative and recognize their sacrifice.”

The U.S. has made plain it is not rushing military aid of any kind to Ukraine, despite Kiev’s requests. Ukraine has sought lethal military aid—small arms and ammunition—but that is off the table. “The rations, the Meals Ready to Eat, they are on the way,” Kirby said. “We expect them to arrive in Ukraine probably by the weekend is the best estimate. They’re going over land.”

Obama stressed Thursday that economic and political sanctions would be the primary weapons the international community would be brandishing to curb Russian aggression against Ukraine. “I’ve been very clear in saying that we are going to do everything we can to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” he said in Rome. “But I think that it’s also important for us not to promise and then not be able to deliver.”

Summary: American officials are worried that 50,000 Russian troops being massed near the Ukraine border and within Crimea, the pro-Russian peninsula recently annexed by President Vladimir Putin, aren't there for just a training exercise


Ronald Reagan famously stated, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But should we apply such thinking to the police? The answer depends on whom we ask. Many liberals who otherwise defend every government program and unionized job believe that the police are increasingly abusing their power. Many conservatives who otherwise complain about unaccountable government officials consider the police department beyond reproach and say that any form of de-policing will make America less safe. Crime has decreased significantly in the past two decades, and...

Summary: Edward P. Stringham reviews “To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police” by Norm Stamper; “A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad” by Del Quentin Wilber; “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe” by Heather Mac Donald; and “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America” by Barry Latzer.


David Tannenbaum, a lawyer turned startup executive, had been in chemotherapy for a brain tumor for almost a year when, in January 2015, he had two strokes that left him partly paralyzed on his right side.

After months of traditional physical therapy, and still partly paralyzed, Mr. Tannenbaum turned to a videogame for help. He used a device at NYU Langone Medical Center in which an interactive, on-screen canoe trip retrains the paralyzed hand and brain in basic movements.

New therapeutic devices for stroke recovery, made possible by advances in hardware and software, are transforming the typically low-tech world of stroke rehabilitation. Though the tools are still in the early stages, doctors say that they can be more motivating and engaging for patients than current standard therapies, and that they hold promise for stroke survivors who are too injured for traditional therapy.

“We’re entering a very exciting era,” says Dr. David Putrino, director of telemedicine at the Burke Medical Research Institute in White Plains, N.Y. “All of these new tools can really help us do our jobs much better.”

Strokes, which cause brain damage, are a major cause of death and disability in the U.S. Most survivors have some type of disability, and at least half are affected severely enough to require special care or a long-term facility.

While existing stroke therapies are useful, patients typically don’t get as much of these therapies as their doctors would like, both in the hospital and after they leave. It’s especially difficult to get patients to follow through on therapy routines in the long term, in part because the routines are often repetitive and tedious. The new methods, in contrast, are more engaging for the patients, and some can be done at home.

What’s more, while most stroke therapy works by exercising the part of the body associated with the injured portion of the brain, some of the new therapies take a different approach.

For instance, the simulated canoeing device at NYU Langone—which is undergoing clinical trials—engages both arms simultaneously in an effort to retrain the paralyzed hand and the affected portion of the brain. The design is based on research findings by its inventors that using an uninjured arm can help in retraining the injured one.

Their research suggests that both sides of the brain are involved in one arm’s movement, says Preeti Raghavan, a doctor at New York-based NYU Langone who, along with Dr. Donald Weisz, a former professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center, developed the therapeutic device through their company, Mirrored Motion Works Inc.

Mr. Tannenbaum’s experience speaks to the device’s effectiveness at getting him to stick with his therapy. “Two minutes in, you forget you’re doing exercise and you feel like you’re playing a game,” he says. Mr. Tannenbaum says that since his stroke he has regained some abilities, including the ability to walk and move his right arm up and down.

Among the newest therapeutic tools used for stroke victims, those most commercially available are robotic exoskeletons, which attach directly to the affected part of the body to facilitate or enable movement.

Robotic exoskeletons are well suited to therapy, since the support can be taken away gradually as patients improve, says Karen Nolan, a senior research scientist at the nonprofit Kessler Foundation, a West Orange, N.J., research and charitable institution for people with disabilities. Exoskeletons also may relieve physical therapists of having to manually move the patients, so they can focus on the quality of the movements instead, says Dr. Nolan.

Another approach, called telerehabilitation, aims to increase the amount of therapy stroke patients get by making supervised rehabilitation available at home—and making it fun at the same time. One system, developed by Steven Cramer, a University of California, Irvine, professor, and his team, integrates low-cost electronic videogame plug-ins, such as a Nintendo NTDOY -0.55 % Wii remote-controlled gun. Users’ movements control the games, with remote supervision by a therapist.

“People get all freaky jazzed when they shoot the little ducky on the screen,” Dr. Cramer says. The system is in clinical trials to test its effectiveness compared with in-person physical therapy.

Videogame technology used in stroke therapy also includes virtual-reality systems, with some that render scenes and objects in 3-D. Some games with immersive environments may offer the greatest promise to stroke patients because they address cognitive problems along with sensory and motor problems, says Dr. Mindy Levin, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and president of the International Society for Virtual Rehabilitation.

While stroke patients often have physical difficulty with such basic tasks as shopping, everyday environments such as malls can leave them feeling overwhelmed as well. A simulation developed by Israeli researcher and occupational therapist Dr. Debbie Rand, called VMall, can help reintroduce patients to such environments in a low-stakes way by capturing the patient’s image and movements and placing them in an on-screen virtual mall, where they look for items on a shopping list.

The future of these technologies likely lies in a multifaceted approach that combines exercise, therapy and medication, says Lee Schwamm, director of stroke services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

In addition to exploring the value of videogame devices such as the Wii and Microsoft MSFT 0.17 % ’s Kinect for rehabilitative purposes, Dr. Schwamm says he would like to see what can be achieved using more everyday consumer technology, such as Fitbits, the wearable devices that encourage users to be active by monitoring their movements and vital signs. Users also can make the data available online to compare numbers and compete with others.

Researchers are still determining how to match each patient with the technology he or she would benefit most from, depending on the nature and severity of the injury. Canadian clinical guidelines, for instance, recommend robotic exoskeletons for the shoulder and elbow but not for the wrist and hand, based on patient outcomes seen in a review of research.

There’s also a question about how insurers will cover treatments in this burgeoning field. Not all of these new products are available for patient in-home use, and some concerns remain about the effectiveness of those that are.

“If it helps, it helps, but it’s a young field,” Dr. Cramer says. “Most of these devices have yet to publish solid, well-powered, persuasive clinical studies that establish these things do something reliably, in a consistent way.”

It’s possible that using all the new approaches together could provide maximal effect, says Leonardo Cohen, chief of neuroplasticity and neurorehabilitation at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.

“It’s conceivable, if each of them improves learning by 5%, maybe when one administers them all together, it has an additive effect,” Dr. Cohen says. “I don’t know that, but it would be interesting to explore.”

Ms. Court is a reporter for MarketWatch in New York. She can be reached at ecourt@marketwatch.com.

Summary: New devices that help recovering stroke patients get the therapy they need are more engaging and motivating than traditional therapy. Some of the new devices use videogame technology and virtual reality.


Cartoonist Jack Davis, the "long-time legendary" artist on the US magazine Mad, has died at the age of 91.

Davis, who also created posters for films such as The Long Goodbye and Bananas, was one of the founding artists on the publication in 1952.

He contributed to the magazine for several decades, drawing many portraits of its mascot Alfred E Neuman.

Mad art director Sam Viviano said Davis' "immediately recognisable style revolutionised comic illustration".

A spokesman for the magazine, which began as a comic book in 1952, said a list of his "most legendary pieces would run to several pages in length".

He added: "Among his most iconic parodies from Mad's comic book days are of The Lone Ranger and High Noon.

"From the magazine, his notable parodies include spoofs of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gone with the Wind, and M*A*S*H."

The magazine's editor John Ficarra said there "wasn't anything Jack couldn't do".

"Front covers, caricatures, sports scenes, monsters - his comedic range was just incredible.

"His ability to put energy and motion into his drawings, his use of cross-hatching and brush work, and his bold use of colour made him truly one of the greats."

Davis began his career at the University of Georgia, where he drew for the campus newspaper - his depictions of the athletics teams, the Georgia Bulldogs, still grace the walls of the institution.

The university's alumni association tweeted that Davis would be "missed by the Bulldog family".

Georgia radio station WGAU said Davis' first success after university was to illustrate a Coca-Cola training manual, "a job that gave him enough cash to buy a car and drive to New York".

Once there, he worked as a freelance cartoonist, before finding a role with EC Comics, contributing to a number of their titles, including Tales From The Crypt and Incredible Science Fiction.

The editors of those titles - William M Gaines, Albert B Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman - went on to launch Mad, which Davis contributed to from the start as one of the "Usual Gang of Idiots", the magazine's spokesman said.

Away from the magazine, Davis drew posters for films and designed a stamp for the US Postal Service in 1989, breaking the rule banning the portrayal of living people by sneaking in a self-portrait.

He received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 and the Reuben Award in 2000 and was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2003.

Celebrities and fellow cartoonists paid tribute to Davis online. The Monkees' drummer Micky Dolenz retweeted a picture Davis had drawn of the group, while author Neil Gaiman said Davis was "so wonderful" and "a legend".

Marvel comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis described Davis as "one of the greatest cartoonists that ever lived", The Walking Dead artist Tony Moore said he was a "consummate professional and gentleman" and Gremlins director Joe Dante called him "the Maddest of the Mad artists".

Davis' final cover for the magazine came in 1995 - a picture of magazine mascot Neuman plunging radio presenter Howard Stern in a toilet bowl, which the spokesman said "remains a Mad classic".

Ficarra said Davis would "always be remembered for his charming modesty and Southern gentleman manner, which completely belied his rascally sense of humour and wry wit".

"Everyone at Mad and DC Entertainment send their heartfelt condolences to Jack's wife, Dena, and the entire Davis family," he added.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, on Instagram at bbcnewsents, or email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

Summary: Cartoonist Jack Davis, the "long-time legendary" artist on the US magazine Mad, dies at the age of 91.