The skies of Boston may be raining broadband in another year or two. We’re in line to host two startups that might free us from today’s Internet monopolies, offering multiple options for getting online.

Starry Inc., a company based in Boston and New York, got a lot of ink last week when it announced it will sell a wireless Internet service capable of cable-like performance. Just attach a Starry antenna to the outside of your home, the company claims, and you’ll get download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. Starry said it is carrying out technical trials and expects to plug in customers in the Boston area by summer.

Artemis Networks LLC is a San Francisco outfit that also wants to transmit data sometime this year. It has joined with Webpass Inc., another San Francisco company that has installed a wireless Internet system in 10 Boston apartment buildings, including the luxury high-rise going up at Downtown Crossing where Filene’s used to be.

Webpass founder Charles Barr told me he’d love to serve the entire city, but its wireless technology is too costly for single-family homes. Enter Artemis, which plans to set up hundreds of “pWave” radios, each of them a miniature 4G LTE transmitter that will connect to the Internet through the Webpass fiber network. The companies expect to provide connections of around 12 megabits per second for mobile devices and as much as 100 megabits for users in fixed locations, such as houses.

All these little radios will interfere with each other, and that’s usually a recipe for disaster. But Artemis claims it has invented a way to use the interference itself as a channel for transmitting and receiving data. The more interference, the better pWave is supposed to work. Artemis founder Steve Perlman told me that if the Federal Communications Commission gives the nod, service in Boston could begin this year.

The founder of Aereo, a TV streaming service that collapsed after losing a copyright case in the U.S. Supreme Court, is unveiling more details about his new startup.

Both Starry and Artemis rely on radical new technologies that may prove less impressive in the real world than in a lab. So skepticism is justified. But I’m hopeful about these two, because the people behind them are unusually good at failure.

Consider Starry’s founder, Chaitanya “Chet” Kanojia. His last brainstorm was Aereo, an alternative TV system that transmitted broadcast television shows over the Internet. Kanojia said he didn’t have to pay the TV networks for the privilege; the US Supreme Court disagreed. Goodbye Aereo.

But I tried Aereo, and it worked exactly as advertised. Kanojia may not have a good handle on intellectual property law, but the man knows how to build a network.

Meanwhile Artemis’s Steve Perlman fathered two of the tech industry’s most interesting failures. In the mid-1990s, he developed WebTV, a now-forgotten attempt to turn living room sets into Web browsers. It worked so well that Microsoft Corp. bought the company for half a billion dollars, only to learn the hard way that consumers weren’t interested.

Then in 2009, Perlman launched OnLive, an ahead-of-its-time service that ran best-selling video games at a remote data center. For a monthly fee, OnLive subscribers could simply log on to play dozens of games. Again, the technology worked; again, the company flopped. Still, Sony Corp. bought the OnLive technology and now runs a similar game-subscription service through its PlayStation video-game console.

Perlman doesn’t always lose. His Mova motion-capture video technology premiered at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center 10 years ago. Since then, it’s won an Oscar, and been used in countless videogames, commercials, and Hollywood films.

With track records like these, Perlman and Kanojia are probably onto something. I desperately hope so. Today, Boston is a broadband wasteland because of the near-monopoly held by Comcast Corp.

I get excellent service from Comcast in my Dorchester home. But when my South End church asked Comcast about broadband service a few years back, the company demanded $20,000 to plug us in. Why? Because they could. Rival carrier RCN Telecom Services LLC covers only a few parts of the city. Google Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have both refused to spend millions to plant fresh fiber in Boston, and Verizon’s slow DSL service is a pitiful substitute for true broadband.

Our digital salvation must come from above. Boston already has NetBlazr Inc. of Allston, a wireless Internet carrier with a few hundred clients scattered around town. If Starry and Artemis each work as advertised, we’ll have a truly competitive broadband market for the first time. That’s an idea that’s too good to fail.

Summary: The skies of Boston may be raining broadband Internet in another year or two.


State prosecutors say that the accused belong to a right-wing group Boermag, also known asÂ Afrikaaner Force, which carried out a series of bomb attacks and planned to assassinate South African president Nelson Mandela.

They are said to have planned to destabilise the country and then stage a coup and recreate a whites-only Afrikaaner state.

They are also facing charges of terrorism, murder, and a plot to assassinate former South African president Nelson Mandela.

The plan involved bombing Mandelaâs motorcade as he travelled to a school in the north last year. It failed because Mandela travelled by helicopter instead.

According to South African media reports the Boermag planned to exploit the violence the assassination would unleash among black South Africans to stage a coup.

"Their plan was to cause a series of riots to divert the attention of the security forces," said the Daily Star.

"Make it dark, but ensure that electricity supplies can be fixed in five days. Eliminate traitors. Take over radio stations", were some of the instructions drawn up by the group in a secret plan called Dokument 12,Â said the Star.

"Blame power failures on black people. Call white people to arms. Stop public transport and ground the air force. Take charge of or destroy defence force bases. Kill blacks and Indians. Destroy all non-Christian places of worship."

Prosecutors allege that Boermag aimed to reinstate the old Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Vrystatat. The republics formed part of a Union consisting of South African states and British-controlled provinces of Natal and the Cape in 1910 after the Afrikaaners lost the Anglo-Boer war at the turn of the century.

The accused are aged between 22 and 54. Their appearance in court follows a series of arrests since October last year.

The state has more than 360 witnesses and 600 witness statements, and the trial is expected to last two years.

It is also thought thatÂ the caseÂ will become a trial within a trial as the men challenge the legality of the court to hear their case.

The trial isÂ also expected to be littered with postponements and adjournments.

At Monday's hearing, the trial was postponed for a week following legal arguments.

Summary: The trial of 22 white extremists in South Africa accused of plotting to overthrow the government has begun in Pretoria in the first treason case since the end of Apartheid.


In the couple's ledger, Bethany's balance is -$80,421.10, largely money she owes Danny from grad school. Sometimes she pays for more things out of pocket in "the real world" to bring down her debt in the private books. The plan is their startup's eventual success will wipe out the balances.

"Sometimes it will feel unfair in the short term, but you have to trust that it will be fair in the long term," said Danny.

They do use some tricks to make it easier, like separate bank accounts. To cut down on bookkeeping they also say a random number between one and 10 when they haggle. The chore still gets done, but only if their two numbers match is there a payout, which they multiply by 10 to make up for only one in 10 bids matching.

"Normal people have perfect good approximations of this," said Danny. "This is just nerd level turned up to 11."

For two people who met online and share advanced degrees in computer science, it's a great system.

"You need to really appreciate that money is utility, you have to trust in the math so much," said Bethany.

There's no bartering in the bedroom, they say.

"I don't think we've ever disagreed," said Bethany, because there's never been a time when only one of them was in the mood.

Family therapist Terrence Real has no problem with the cash component. "They use it as a gauge to ask the critical question... 'what's it to ya?'" he said.

However, there can be dangers if kids are involved. "If I was their child and I learned that they were bidding over the task of putting me to sleep I might get upset," said Real.

Another wrinkle is that the couple hasn't factored for how Danny didn't give birth to two children. He's also earned more in his life, giving him a bigger pot to bet with. They're mulling over whether to give Bethany a lump-sum payment to fix the imbalance.

It sounds mercenary, even cruel. But there are ways within the system to show affection.

Recently Danny and Bethany haggled to see if he would drive her home after a long day of work or if she would have to ride her bike. She bet $15, and he intentionally "lost," so that he could do her the favor.

Communicating in a series of brief instant messages, she replied back with a smiley face emoticon, 21st century love boiled down to two characters.

--By Ben Popken, NBC News

Summary: When a chore comes up that neither wants to do, one couple just thinks of how much they'd pay the other to do it.


After 170-plus nations signed the Paris climate agreement last week and now with trans-Atlantic trade talks back on President Obama’s agenda, it’s clear that the international community’s trade rules will need to be rethought, revamped, and rewritten if we’re going to be successful in curbing climate change. When the top emitting countries – United States, China and India, for example – are busying taking each other to court for supporting renewable energy investments, and effectively preventing them from going forward, this significantly hampers our ability to tackle global warming and ramp up the necessary renewable energy to transition the grid.

While India appeals to the World Trade Organization – which ruled in the U.S. government’s favor and demanded a level playing field for foreign solar companies – dangerous precedents are being set, post-Paris climate agreement, that bode ill for countries keen to curb their emissions. The idea that the U.S. – or any of these big three emitters – is serious about a level playing field when it comes to their energy industries holds little merit.

Worldwide, based on the latest figures from the International Energy Agency, the fossil fuel industry – specifically coal, oil, and gas industries – were subsidized to the tune of $550 billion annually. This is four times what the renewable energy industry received. In the United States, the government is subsidizing coal, oil and gas industries at $20 billion a year. And it’s worth noting that President Obama increased these subsidies by 35% since taking office in 2009.

If the United States – or any other country – genuinely wants a WTO-brokered level playing field then it must stop subsidizing the energy industry and that includes oil, coal, and gas. It’s likely Washington D.C. legislators are keeping quiet because oil and gas firms are among the top three biggest lobbying industries contributing to Congress, ranked beside the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually to ensure taxpayer subsidies continue.

See also: How Corporate America Can Support the Paris Climate Deal

This has got to stop if we care at all about our national carbon footprint. There is nothing sustainable about this agenda, especially if you consider all the costs countries have to cover when considering fossil fuel’s negative externalities. According to the International Monetary Fund, $5.5 trillion is being paid by governments globally in order to “fully reflect the environmental damage associated with energy consumption”. What a devastating sum that could be spent in substantially more constructive ways. For Washington and Beijing and Delhi to show serious commitment to their climate targets, a new agenda is necessary.

First, stop the finger pointing. It’s unhelpful and disingenuous of the United States government – and, frankly, the myriad environmental nongovernmental organizations that backup the administration – to use any kind of stick when instigating a conversation about China’s and India’s climate commitment when the U.S. is equally guilty of undermining an energy transition.

Second, stop fortifying fossil fuels. Mindful of the White House’s own report this month connecting health impacts to climate change, something similarly identified in a Lancet report last year, any subsidies to oil, coal, and gas are a direct hit to public health, a bill which taxpayers should refuse to support. It’s illogical, bordering on the absurd, to financially support a practice that simultaneously undermines one’s health. And as long as we continue to prop up methane-heavy natural gas, carbon dioxide-heavy oil, and toxic-laden coal, that is exactly what we’re doing.

Third, start enforcing change. Big promises came out of Paris on the climate front. Big pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Big targets to tackle. And just in time. This month’s study that sea levels are rising much faster than previously thought, and will hit six feet by the end of this century if we don’t act fast, shows that we don’t have much time. We need to move now. Not in 2050.

Fourth, start rapidly ramping up investments in the energy infrastructure of the future. It’s poor planning to build more oil and gas pipelines when we clearly can’t be relying on them in 10, 20, or 30 years. Renewable energy infrastructure should be the sole focus for U.S., China, and India going forward and nations should support each other’s efforts, rather than undermining them within the WTO. The price point is behind us on this. There’s no good argument anymore for weak investments or laissez-faire strategies. This is where the economic growth opportunity is and it comes with an immediate health and climate co-benefit.

The planet does not have time to witness more stalled sustainability measures, scuttled by trade texts and WTO tribunals. Revise the trade language now to be more climate-friendly – including investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms which rarely come down on the side of the environment – before more hottest year and highest carbon records are broken. Globalization at the price of global warming and its increasingly raucous extreme weather helps no one. The time to tweak our trade texts, so they’re 100% more climate-friendly, is now.

Michael Shank, is an adjunct assistant professor of sustainable development at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs graduate program. Carolyn Kissane is the academic director of the NYU’s Center for Global Affairs.

Summary: There's no more time for stalled sustainability measures.


The Turnbull government could restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cuts to the financial regulator made in the Abbott government’s first budget, while boosting the regulator’s intervention powers at the same time.

The changes could be announced as early as Tuesday, in a bid to dampen the popularity of Labor’s call for a royal commission into the financial services sector two weeks ago.

Related: Pesky facts are spoiling Scott Morrison's economic story | Lenore Taylor

Federal cabinet met on Monday and considered a suite of policies to boost the resources of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), with its proposals to be taken to a party room meeting on Tuesday.

Labor has ramped up its attack, claiming the government has had its head in the sand on financial misadventure for the past two years.

The proposals considered by the Turnbull cabinet could involve restoring all of the $120m funding that Asic lost in the Abbott government’s 2014 budget.

It also considered introducing a tougher regime of civil penalties, and giving Asic product intervention powers.

A user-pays funding model – in which banks and other institutions that need regulation are required to contribute to the funding of the regulator – could also be introduced.

The Asic chairman, Greg Medcraft, has called repeatedly for such a funding model to be introduced.

The Coalition’s plans come as Labor ramps up its attack on the government, buoyed by the popularity of its recent call for a royal commission.

Labor says a review of speeches and public comments from Asic executives from the past two years shows the regulator has warned the government on 41 occasions that it is unable to do its job properly without greater powers and resourcing.

The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, says the government has repeatedly ignored these warnings “as scandal after scandal has been revealed by the press and through Senate economics committee inquiries.”

“In October 2014, Asic chairman Greg Medcraft declared that Australia was a ‘paradise’ for white-collar criminals because of its soft punishments of corporate offences, calling on the government to give the regulator the power to impose harsher jail terms and bigger penalties for white-collar crime,” Bowen said.

“Asic has been calling on this government to take action repeatedly in public and parliamentary forums.”

Related: John Hewson tells Q&A Turnbull is taking a big risk with election

A Fairfax/Ipsos poll published on Monday showed 65% of voters support Labor’s call for a royal commission, while 26% oppose the idea.

Labor and Greens voters are the biggest supporters, at 78% and 79% respectively, while over half of Coalition voters support the idea, at 53%.

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the treasurer, Scott Morrison, told parliament on Monday that Labor’s call for a royal commission was populist, whereas the government’s plan would be about taking action.

“We are taking action to ensure that Asic does its job,” Turnbull said.

Summary: Cabinet considering restoring $120m in cuts to Australian Securities and Investments Commission in a bid to dampen popularity for the opposition’s call for a royal commission


Aaron Copland, America's best-known composer of classical music and a gentle yet impassioned champion of American music in every style, died yesterday evening at Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, N.Y. He was 90 years old.

His physician, Charles L. Starke, said the cause of death was respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia. Mr. Copland, who was suffering from diabetes, had two strokes within the last three weeks, Dr. Starke said. Integrating Opposites

Of many notable achievements, Mr. Copland's greatest gift was his ability to be both serious and popular, to adhere to the formal integrity and moral earnestness of modernism and also to espouse the generous accessibility of the dominant political mores of the 1930's and 40's.

In ballet scores like "Billy the Kid" (1938), "Rodeo" (1942) and above all "Appalachian Spring" (1944), and in concert pieces like "El Salon Mexico" (1937), "Fanfare for the Common Man" (1942) and "Lincoln Portrait" (1942), Mr. Copland touched a chord in the American psyche reached by no other classical musician this country has produced.

Yet in less programmatic works, some of them even embracing the supposedly elitist 12-tone system of Arnold Schoenberg, like the Piano Variations (1930), the "Short" Symphony (1934), the Third Symphony (1946) and "Connotations" (1962), Mr. Copland managed to speak with an uncompromisingly rigorous voice. That musical integrity underlay his more popular pieces and lent gravity to their charms. A New Appreciation

Attacked by admirers of his more popular style, the later works now increasingly seem the work of the same man, whose breadth of vision and warmth of spirit could unite Teutonic Serialism and all-American hoedowns.

Mr. Copland's tireless industry as a concert organizer and promoter of new music was nearly as important a part of his legacy to American music as the paramount importance of his compositions.

Blessed with what the composer David Diamond once called an "innate, natural sense of diplomacy," Mr. Copland worked throughout the 1920's and 30's to organize concert series of new music, to publish American scores and to further the cause of the American composer in a time in which cultural fealty was still paid to Europe. He was particularly active in forging bonds between composers in the United States and Latin America, Mexico especially.

His most important steps as a promoter of new music included the founding, with Roger Sessions, of the Copland-Sessions Concerts in New York. He was the President of the American Composers Alliance from 1937 to 1945 and a member of the executive board of directors of the League of Composers. For 25 years a leading member of the faculty at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, he helkped, along with the Boston music director Serge Koussevitzky, to make that festival a center for contemporary music of all kinds and nationalities.

In 1932, he directed the First Festival of Contemporary Music at Yaddo, the artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The festival included a selection of songs by Charles Ives, an important step in the revival of Ives's then-obscure music. Among the now-important composers that Mr. Copalnd encouraged in their formative years were Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, David Diamond, Toru Takemitsu and David Del Tredici. It Was Jazz, And It Outraged

Mr. Copland had his occasional detractors. In the 1920's, conservatvies criticized his use of jazz rhythms as tantamount to barbarism. At the Boston premiere of his Piano Concerto in 1926, audience members accused Koussevitzky of insulting them.

Twenty-five years later, Mr. Copland offended dismay many listeners and many of his old champions by adopting, in his own manner, the very idiom they thought he stood staunchly against -- Schoenberg's 12- tone composition. Such works as the Piano Quartet (1950), the Piano Fantasy (1957), "Connotations" and "Inscape" (1967) have made their way more slowly into the repertory than his easily accessible works.

In 1951, Mr. Copland was the first American composer to deliver the Norton lectures at Harvard University. He lectured about American music throughout the world. Although not a prose stylist, he nonetheless produced many influential booka articles, especially in popular journals, about the lot of the composer in today's society.

His books includied "What to Listen For in Music" (1939), "Our New Music" (1941, revised and published in 1968 as "The New Music 1900-1960") and "Music and Imagination" (1952). In 1984, "Aaron Copland: 1900 through 1942," an autobiography assembled from interviews conducted with the American musicologist Vivian Perlis, was published by St. Martin's Press. The second and final volume, "Copland Since 1943," appeared in 1989.

Julia Smith, in her biographical study "Aaron Copland: His Work and Contribution to American Music," called the composer "this simple and great man in our midst." In an essay on Mr. Copland in his book "American Music Since 1910," Virgil Thomson observed, "The Copland catalogue has good stuff under every heading, including opera."


T-Mobile will provide wireless connections for a new service from communications startup Twilio aimed at the growing Internet of things, or IoT, an emerging market of connected devices including everything from smart sensors to self-driving cars.

Under Twilio’s new effort, developers will be able to tap the company for wireless voice, text or data service that can be embedded into Internet-connected devices or sensors. A connected drone or water meter could use Twilio’s service to send information over T-Mobile’s wireless network back to a customer’s data center, for example.

Most consumer-oriented connected devices currently rely on home Wi-Fi networks for connectivity, which is cheaper and simpler than connecting via a cellular network. Twilio’s service aims to make the cellular connection simpler and cheaper.

Prices will start at $2 monthly per connected SIM card, Twilio said in a press release. Data usage across a pool of devices starts at 10 cents per megabyte. For services requiring higher capacity bandwidth, data is $25 for an initial one gigabyte and $15 for additional gigabytes.

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“Modernizing communications and moving it into the realm of software has been Twilio’s mission from day one,” Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson said in the release. “With enterprises needing to manage mobility more than ever before and the unrealized promise of IoT, there’s never been a better time to lift the barriers on cellular communications.”

T-Mobile tmus chief operating officer Mike Sievert said the partnership was another extension of the company’s “un-carrier” strategy that rejects the wireless industry’s common approaches. “By partnering with Twilio to deliver these capabilities to Twilio’s vast developer network, we support developers in building the cellular-connected solutions of tomorrow,” he said in a statement.

T-Mobile’s larger competitors, Verizon Communications vz and AT&T t , are also taking aim at the Internet of things opportunity. The bigger players are aiming to establish their own similar services for developers as well as partnering with various tech companies like Cisco Systems csco and Ericsson eric . Verizon says 4,000 developers have signed up for its ThingSpace platform.

Summary: Carrier will partner with startup Twilio


The Vietnamese government restricted access to Facebook Inc inside Vietnam for several days this week as part of a broader crackdown on human rights and political dissidents during a visit by President Barack Obama, two activist organizations said on Thursday.

Officials of Access Now, a digital rights organization, and Viet Tan, a Vietnamese pro-democracy group, said the social media site was restricted and at times blocked inside Vietnam from Sunday to Wednesday, citing reports from people inside the country on Twitter twtr and to Access Now’s digital security help service.

The move coincides with a trend toward restrictions on Facebook in countries including China, Uganda, and Turkey during politically sensitive times as the 1.6 billion-person social network grows more powerful.

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Obama’s three-day visit to Vietnam ended on Wednesday. Obama largely focused on normalizing relations with Vietnam. But he also promoted human rights and chided Vietnam about restrictions on political freedoms after critics of its communist-run government were prevented from meeting him.

The Facebook fb shutdown was part of a stepped-up campaign by the Vietnamese government to limit use of the social network for political protests, activists said in phone interviews.

Facebook was blocked several times earlier this month as street protests erupted over an environmental disaster that resulted in mass fish deaths, the two groups said.

The social media site was also unavailable inside Vietnam ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday as pro-democracy activists called for a boycott, members of the two groups said.

Facebook declined to comment. Vietnamese government officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted via a government website.

For more about the debate over Facebook’s Trending Topics, watch:

Uganda’s government blocked Facebook and Twitter in February during presidential elections. In March, after a deadly bombing in Turkey, an Ankara court ordered a ban on access to Facebook and Twitter.

And during the 2011 Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, social networks were repeatedly shut down.

Facebook is often shut down in Vietnam during politically sensitive times, Angelina Huynh, advocacy director for Viet Tan, which has members around the world, including in Vietnam, said in a phone interview.

“People were using Facebook to call for protests. They did not want people to take to the streets,” Huynh said.

Summary: The social network was blocked several times earlier this month


05/27/2016 AT 11:35 AM EDT

is clearing up any confusion about his relationship status â¦ while also affirming his early morning pizza cravings.

took to Twitter to set the record straight about what happens when "liberties are taken for headlines."

"I'm very single y'all," he tweeted. "That is all."

all. Two minutes later, he added: "In other news â¦ I want pizza!"

I'm very single y'all. That is all.

Hate when liberties are taken for headlines.

In other news... I want pizza!

Despite being "very single," the 23-year-old singer has fueled rumors that he's

with Kate Hudson, 37, telling

magazine in their February/March issue that he and Hudson had a "beautiful connection." In early May, the two enjoyed

The two have skirted questions about their relationship since they were first

. Friday's tweets, however, seem to reference a recent

article where Jonas mentions he and actress Lily Collins "

Summary: The "Close" singer is just like us!


Remember JoJo, the teenybopper behind the one-hit wonder, “Leave (Get Out)”? Now she’s back and fully grown with her long-anticipated “tringle,” a set of three singles from her newest album.

The three-track release was supposed to come out on Friday, but the pop singer decided to drop them on her site a day early on Aug. 20. Her fans are delighted — #tringle is already trending on Twitter.

The singles include R&B love ballads “Say Love” and “Save My Soul” that show off JoJo’s vocal range. There’s also a dancier track called “When Love Hurts.”

JoJo has been hinting at the singles over the past few days, posting clips of her recording sessions on Instagram.

The singer’s journey to releasing these singles was fraught with difficulty thanks to a prolonged feud with her former record label.

Listen to the songs on her site.

Summary: The pop singer decided to drop the three singles a day early.


has been sued by a man who claims Singer molested him when he was a young teenager at raunchy Hollywood parties ... but Singer says the suit is an outrageous pack of lies.

The lawsuit claims the teen -- who is now around 30 -- was lured to a mansion in Encino, CA when he was 14 or 15 to attend a party that allegedly had a rep for featuring "sexual contact between adult males and the many teenage boys who were present for the parties."

The lawsuit claims Singer provided alcohol for the boy and offered him a role in one of his upcoming movies, and then told him how "this group" controls Hollywood. The suit claims Singer performed oral sex on the boy and then strong-armed the boy to return the favor -- allegedly forcing him to perform the act underwater in the pool.

The suit goes on to accuse Singer of providing the boy with drugs -- including coke -- on another occasion, allegedly promising him a role in an "X-Men" flick.

, says, "The claims made against Bryan Singer are completely without merit. We are very confident that Bryan will be vindicated in this absurd and defamatory lawsuit."

Attorney Singer adds, "It is obvious that this case was filed in an attempt to get publicity at a time when Bryan's new movie is about to open in a few weeks."

Summary: "X-Men" director Bryan Singer has been sued by a man who claims Singer molested him when he was a young teenager at raunchy Hollywood parties ... but…


Every once in a while, there’s news that you could swear you have read before. Such is the case with Wednesday’s announcement that Microsoft is buying Xamarin, a mobile software development specialist. Microsoft executive vice president Scott Guthrie broke the news in a blog post.

If it sounds familiar that’s because Microsoft’s intent to buy this company has been written before. CRN had it two years ago, for example. Bloomberg and others followed up.

But, after those initial stories—crickets. Instead of acquiring Xamarin, Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with it in November of 2014.

Fortune’s Q&A with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

So now it’s doing the deed, and the only real question is why now? Clearly San Francisco-based Xamarin, which grew out of an earlier project called Mono, fills a void in Microsoft’s mobile strategy now as it did before.

Sravish Sridar, chief executive of Kinvey, another mobile development specialist, said Xamarin provided Microsoft .NET developers with an “excellent” toolset to deliver cross-platform native mobile apps.

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“One of the weaker parts of Microsoft’s mobile-first strategy was making it easy for developers to build cross-platform apps, and with the acquisition of Xamarin, Microsoft has shown that it is trying bring value to developers, irrespective of mobile OS platform they are building apps on,” Sridhar added.

Xamarin co-founders Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman, both well-respected among developers, will stay at Microsoft, a spokesperson said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft msft chief executive officer Satya Nadella has stressed that the company will support all manner of mobile devices, including those that do not run its operating systems. This makes sense because most smartphones and tablets run Apple appl iOS or Google Android, not any flavor of Windows.

Summary: So, what took so long?


Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.

The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words "wrong region" came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or "special partnership", as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint.

A Downing Street spokesman said he was "confident" that any gift Obama gave Brown would have been "well thought through," but referred me to the White House for assistance on the "technical aspects".

A White House spokesman sniggered when I put the story to him and he was still looking into the matter when my deadline came last night.

By the way, when Obama's unlikely gift was disclosed, a reader emailed me to ask if Clueless was among the films. Funnily enough, it was not.

Brown, on the other hand, presented a rather more thoughtful gift to the American President in the form of a penholder carved from the timbers of an anti-slavery ship. The sister ship, in fact, of the one that was broken up and turned into the desk in the Oval Office.

Summary: While not exactly a film buff, Gordon Brown was touched when Barack Obama gave   him a set of 25 classic American movies – including Psycho,   starring Anthony Perkins on his recent visit to Washington.


There are lots of ways to quit being taken seriously in America. You can deny climate change; you can pretend the Earth is only 6,000 years old. But there’s nothing that quite seals the nincompoop deal like linking something—anything really—to autism. Don’t like sugar, gluten, junk food, meat? Tell people they cause autism. It’s the go-to, check-the-box, one-stop-shopping for know-nothingism.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which yields to no group in its ability to be outrageous, has mostly avoided that inevitable step. But in an earlier ad campaign that’s gaining new attention—and that remains on the group’s website—the folks who love animals but apparently have a cooler relationship with facts have come through big. The ad shows a bowl of cereal making a frowny face, accompanied by the slogan “Got autism?” The tag line elaborates on that provocative question: “Studies have shown a link between cow’s milk and autism.”

So where to begin—aside from the fact that no, studies haven’t shown that? OK, to be perfectly fair, when pressed, PETA does cite two scientific papers that seem to support its claim. One, published in 2002, observed some possible improvement in autism symptoms when children were put on a diet free of gluten, gliadin and casein, proteins found either in grains or milk. Not only is the study old, it’s vague—with the researchers broadly blaming the problem on “processes with opioid effect,” whatever that means. It was also tiny—relying on a sample group of just 20 kids. Finally, the study was admittedly single-blind, which means that the experimenters knew which kids were getting the special diet and which weren’t. Got bias?

The second study came even earlier—in 1995, which is the dark ages of autism research—and it was almost as small, involving just 36 subjects. It detected no real link between dairy products and autism, instead finding only antibodies to milk proteins in the blood of autistic children. That suggests, well, who knows what? Association, as people who understand basic science will tell you, is not causation, and blood chemistry is only a broad, imprecise starting point for proving a link between any suspected cause and observed effect in research of this kind. Nineteen years after the paper was published, its authors have not moved one step closer to drawing that line between milk and autism—and neither have the thousands of other studies that have come since.

PETA has been getting justifiably blowtorched for the ad since it was resurfaced by various media outlets in the last day. But even in light of the criticism and the science that shows no such effects of milk, the group stands by its insupportable claim, saying, in a statement, “PETA’s website provides parents with the potentially valuable information that researchers have backed up many families’ findings that a dairy-free diet can help kids with autism.”

Look PETA, activism is easy; scaring people is easy; making parents feel guilty because they fed their autistic child a bowl of Cheerios and milk is easy. Science is hard—which is why not everyone gets to do it.

Oh, and while we’re on that, you know what else is hard? Autism. It’s hard for the children who have it; it’s hard for the families wrestling with it; it’s hard for the researchers knocking themselves out every day to understand it and treat it and prevent it. They don’t need agitators and fabricators making things worse. There’s nothing wrong with protecting the animals, but try to do it without hurting the kids.

Correction: The original version of this article misstated when the PETA campaign on milk and autism began.

Summary: An anti-milk campaign plays the autism card, putting the animal rights group in some very disgraceful company


This article is published in partnership with Entertainment Weekly. The original version can be found here.

Well, Woody Allen’s TV show just got even more interesting.

The 80-year-old, Oscar-winning film director has now cast Miley Cyrus and Elaine May in his ’60s-set Amazon series, EW has confirmed.

Allen, who will serve as writer and director on the project, also will star in the six-episode series with Cyrus and May, according to Deadline, which first reported the news.

May, 83, starred in Allen’s 2000 film Small Time Crooks, which is her most recent acting credit. She also wrote such movies as Heaven Can Wait, The Birdcage, and Primary Colors and directed The Heartbreak Kid and Ishtar.

The 23-year-old Cyrus, who starred in Hannah Montana before becoming a multi-platinum-selling singer, has starred in the films like The Last Song and LOL and guest-starred on Two and a Half Men.

(A rep for Amazon would not comment for this story.)

Allen seemed to have entered his Amazon series with more than a little trepidation, telling Deadline last year that the streamer pursued him intensely, even after he said that he didn’t have an idea for a series. When the streamer offered him total creative freedom, “a lot of money,” and a guarantee of making a first season instead of just a pilot, he finally signed on.

“I have regretted every second since I said OK,” he said. “It’s been so hard for me. I had the cocky confidence, well, I’ll do it like I do a movie… it’ll be a movie in six parts. Turns out, it’s not. For me, it has been very, very difficult. I’ve been struggling and struggling and struggling. I only hope that when I finally do it — I have until the end of 2016 — they’re not crushed with disappointment, because they’re nice people and I don’t want to disappoint them.”

At the TCA Summer Press Tour last August, Amazon Studios chief Roy Price was asked why his company pacted with Allen in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations made by Dylan Farrow (which Allen has denied). “I think you have to look at the whole picture — yeah, take everything into account, but our focus is on the fact that he is a great filmmaker and storyteller,” he said. “And so we look forward to the show in 2016.”

Amazon boasts such original series as Transparent, The Man in the High Castle, and Mozart in the Jungle.

Allen recently wrapped filming on a still-untitled film starring Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg, and Steve Carell.

Summary: Oscar-winning director Elaine May, 80, is also joining the show.


NEWARK, March 4 - Charles Kushner, a multimillionaire real estate executive, philanthropist and one of the top Democratic donors in the country, was sentenced on Friday to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

Mr. Kushner, 50, built a construction business begun by his father into a private real estate empire that owned more than 25,000 apartments, millions of square feet of commercial and industrial space and thousands of acres of developable land.

But Mr. Kushner also became embroiled in a bitter family feud over the business and how proceeds were distributed. That dispute, plus his growing prominence as a political financier, helped lead to his downfall. The intrafamily acrimony was such that Mr. Kushner retaliated against his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities, by hiring a prostitute to seduce him. He then arranged to have a secretly recorded videotape of the encounter sent to his sister, the man's wife.

The two-year sentence was the most Mr. Kushner could have received under a plea agreement, reached last September with the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, that called for 18 to 24 months in prison. But it was less than the sentence of nearly three years that Mr. Christie had sought in recent weeks after concluding that Mr. Kushner had failed to show "acceptance of responsibility" for his crimes as required by the plea deal.

Details of that heated fight between prosecutors and Mr. Kushner's lawyers were unveiled in more than two and a half hours of argument on Friday before Judge Jose L. Linares in Federal District Court.

In the end, the judge rejected the prosecution's argument but said he was nevertheless left with the difficult task of weighing the "horrific" nature of Mr. Kushner's acts against his sister and brother-in-law versus his many philanthropic acts in determining whether leniency was warranted.

"It is difficult for me to reconcile the generous man with the revengeful, hateful man," Judge Linares said. "But I must take into consideration the vengeful nature in which this was done. In light of all the relevant circumstances, I find that you be imprisoned for 24 months."

Mr. Kushner, dressed in a navy blue suit, white shirt and polka-dot tie, told the judge that while he did not believe he was as saintly as his lawyers and the letters sent to the judge on his behalf would suggest, neither was he as evil as the prosecution portrayed him. He nonetheless acknowledged that "the actions which bring me before you today were disgraceful and reprehensible."

Mr. Kushner, who will continue to be free on $5 million bail, was ordered to surrender on May 9 to begin serving his sentence at a federal prison at a military base in Montgomery, Ala. He was also ordered to pay a $40,000 fine.

After the sentencing, Mr. Christie said he was pleased. "It shows that no matter how rich and powerful you are in this state you will be prosecuted and punished for crimes you commit," he said. "This sends a strong message that when you commit the vile and heinous acts that he has committed you will be caught and punished."

Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Kushner's lead lawyer, said that while he was pleased that Judge Linares did not throw out the original plea deal's sentencing recommendations, he was "angry and disappointed" that the judge chose not to sentence his client to 18 months in prison.

"It disappoints me because I thought that after years of being one of the kindest and giving persons, it would matter in this state," Mr. Brafman said. "It does matter in other states, but apparently it doesn't mean anything in this state."

Mr. Kushner's lawyers provided Judge Linares with about 700 letters praising Mr. Kushner's charity and philanthropy, among them letters from people who had benefited from Mr. Kushner's acts, including schoolchildren and the sick.

While Mr. Christie said that his investigation into Mr. Kushner's campaign contributions was continuing, the sentencing on Friday capped a rapid-fire series of events last summer in which Mr. Kushner, a major contributor to Gov. James E. McGreevey, was arrested, followed a week later by Mr. McGreevey's resignation after admitting to an adulterous homosexual affair.

The arrest of a businessman who was so close to Mr. McGreevey had fueled speculation that the governor, already besieged by federal investigations of his campaigns, aides and other associates, was himself on the brink of political destruction at best and federal charges at worst.

Mr. Kushner had put the man with whom Mr. McGreevey's aides said the governor had the affair, Golan Cipel, an Israeli citizen, on his payroll for a time. He also helped Mr. Cipel to get the United States work permits that allowed Mr. McGreevey to appoint him to a top counterterrorism post that he was later forced to quit.

Mr. McGreevey appointed Mr. Kushner to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and nominated him to become its chairman, but Mr. Kushner quit after complaints were raised that his contributions to New Jersey Democrats may have violated campaign-finance and conflict-of-interest laws.

In seeking the longer prison term, an assistant United States attorney, Scott Resnick, told Judge Linares that Mr. Kushner had failed to comply with subpoenas for business documents and had not presented sufficient proof that all the videotapes made of his brother-in-law and the prostitute had been turned over or destroyed.

Rather than seeing these things as Mr. Kushner's "failure to accept responsibility," Judge Linares faulted the prosecution for not securing stronger guarantees for compliance, and he accepted Mr. Kushner's assurance in court and in affidavits that the videotapes had been destroyed.

Summary: Real estate executive Charles Kushner is sentenced to two years in prison for tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal donations to former New Jersey Governor James E McGreevey campaign; photo (M)


Given the recovering economy, emerging jobs and pure human nature, career switches are common. What may have been a great job 10 years ago can be obsolete now. But how can you prepare yourself for a career switch? These experts share the following advice for planning your next career steps.

Before you quit your job, know what you're getting yourself into. "When people change careers in this market, the No. 1 thing they must be aware of is that they need to develop the new industry or role experience and knowledge," says Megan Fox, career coach and resume writer. "A lot of people think they can tweak a few transferrable skills and land their dream job, when in fact it takes strategic planning and re-education to make a successful career change. These kinds of activities not only make you more qualified for the new role, but they display a sincere passion for the switch. I also encourage my clients to pick either an industry change or a functional role change, one at a time, as it is much easier to do than trying to completely change your job and industry type at the same time. Take baby steps and you'll be able to make the change without sacrificing too much in salary."

More: Sign Up For AOL Jobs' Newsletter

You may think you're ready for a career switch, but how can you convince hiring managers that you'll be a valuable employee? "For job seekers dealing with career changes, we find it advantageous to conduct an assessment of the transferable knowledge and skills that were developed in the individual's previous career and how that may apply to the new career path they intend on following," says Lynda Zugec, managing director for The Workforce Consultants, a human resources consultation company with offices in Toronto, Ontario and New York. "Interpersonal skills, problem-solving ability and project management are all examples of knowledge and skills that can be applied in differing context and careers. We try to focus on these transferable skills to understand the benefits and applicability to our business. Some of the skills we focus on include the following:

More: 3 Great Reasons To Pursue Work Outside Of Your Field

You can start making your career switch before you leave your current role. Krista Mazzuca, director of human resources at Community Renewal Team, a nonprofit human-services agency in Hartford, Conn., offers these suggestions:

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Summary: By Susan Ricker   Given the recovering economy, emerging jobs and pure human nature, career switches are common. What may have been a great job 10 years ago can be ob


After three years, Lowe’s is giving its Iris home automation hub a facelift, reducing the price, and expanding its capabilities.

On Monday, it introduced a new hub to let people automate the lights, locks, cameras, and even pet doors in their homes.

The chain store also wants to rebrand “from a home improvement retailer to a home improvement company,” says Mick Koster, who leads Lowe’s Iris home systems. That means the company plans to focus more on installing connected home products, as well as focus on providing recommendations to consumers related to home services like electricians and plumbers.

The latest version of the Iris hub costs $59.99, down from $99.99. The price is $10 more than the corresponding Wink hub sold at rival Home Depot stores.

Lowe’s is also reducing the number of premium plans it offers for the Iris hub from three to two. One is a paid plan costing $9.99 monthly that allows users to notify up to six people when an event occurs, create conditional rules for the devices (if my garage door opens, turn on the porch light), and store video for up to two weeks.

The other is a free plan that lets users get notifications sent to their own phone, let users remotely control their gadgets, and stores video for 24 hours.

Lowe’s was early in the home automation when it introduced the Iris platform in 2012. Since then, the company has pulled together a compelling array of connected devices that work with the hub.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Iris platform because the free features and the number of compatible devices felt too limited. Other options from SmartThings and other Do-It-Yourself hubs out there offered more.

With the upgrade, Lowe’s has addressed some of those concerns. It works with 75 devices that are branded with the Lowe’s Iris name, up from a couple dozen. It also operates with Bluetooth, which means that it will likely add coming Bluetooth light bulbs and some of the new connected locks over time.

The hub also supports the AllJoyn standard ,which means it should work with a surprising array of other devices outside of the hub. For example LG TVs support AllJoyn so an Iris hub might be able to one day send a message that an Iris water sensor noticed a leak to an LG TV in the house, letting someone get a message that their home was in danger of flooding even while immersed in watching the big game.

And from a functionality and use perspective, the Iris platform does have good customer support and fairly intuitive software.

What’s more interesting, is where Lowe’s intends to take the Iris platform and its retail strategy as consumers become more willing to purchase connected products. “Obviously we are a DIY focused retailer, and we continue making Iris more intuitive and simpler to manage on your own,” said Koster.”But we want to integrate more smart tech into other categories where it is relevant.”

That might start with the addition of more obscure devices outside the Iris platform such as Wi-Fi enabled water heaters.

Lowe’s plan is to sell services in addition to the Iris hub like home security monitoring, which costs $9.99 monthly. The idea is transform Lowe’s beyond its roots as a home improvement retailer into a company homeowners can go to directly for fixing problems with their homes.

Koster cites Lowe’s involvement with Porch.com last year, as an example of this mindset. Porch.com offers recommendations to homeowners seeking services like plumbers or electricians.

As more complicated devices such as water flow measurement sensors are offered, they require professional installation which Lowe’s could offer through Porch.com. Koster views connected devices, not as whiz-bang gadgets, but as devices that improves the home itself.

“As connectivity becomes omnipresent, that becomes just another check in the box of features, so we have look at how it adds to the value of our brand and the device,” Koster says.

He declined to say how much money Lowe’s currently makes from Iris or from selling connected home devices. But he clearly thinks it will rise considering his interest in the market.

Overall, he said that he expects prices for connected products to decline, so consumers won’t have to spend $250 for a connected thermostat forever. That’s good news for mainstream consumers who are interested in the technology.

Of course, it’s also potentially good news for Lowe’s, which wants to help install and manage connected devices for customers.

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Summary: The home improvement retailer wants to recast its image based on connected home technology.


Maybe he’ll just tell knock-knock jokes.

Okay, so Donald Trump probably won’t speak in riddles after the Indiana primary on Tuesday evening, but that’s just about the only thing that we can rule out. Tuesday will likely be a good night for Trump, as he is expected to win the Indiana primary and all but assure that he will be the Republican presidential nominee.

We’ve seen it all from Donald Trump in his victory speeches this primary season. There was the brash, mocking Trump of March 8, where he trotted out the “Lyin’ Ted” nickname for Ted Cruz.

This was the same speech where he talked about Trump Steaks and other defunct Trump products:

Then there was the victory speech from April 26, which was more like a press conference, where Trump just kind of rambled:

There’s also his speech from March 1 — the one where Chris Christie stood behind Trump looking like he was being held captive. He also called Marco Rubio a “lightweight” in this speech.

It’s anyone’s guess which Trump will show up on Tuesday evening. If recent trends offer any indication, Trump will act more dignified and “presidential.” He’ll most likely focus on Hillary Clinton, his most probable opponent in November’s general election, instead of Cruz. But then again, perhaps something will be wrong with his dinner, he’ll get irked, and he’ll go full Trump on us.

Summary: Schoolyard bully or political candidate?


Five stinkin' dollars ... that's what started a massive argument this weekend between several police officers and "

-- all because the couple didn't want to pay a tiny beach entrance fee, sources tell TMZ.

Here's the back story -- the Giudices were kickin' it on Ship Bottom beach on Long Beach Island, NJ Saturday afternoon (with roughly 30 friends and family members) when they were approached by a teen girl beach worker.

Sources on the scene tell us, the employee asked to see the Giudices' "beach badges" -- basically $5 admission tickets required to chill in the sand -- and the family flipped, refusing to "pay to go to the beach."

We're told one family member even yelled at the girl, saying, "F*** you, f*** this we are not paying for the f***ing beach. This is a joke!" Remember: 5 dollars per person.

We're told the girl started crying, and when beach PD responded ... the Giudices continued to kick up a stink, but eventually coughed up chump change.

Of course, Teresa and Joe are facing massive money fraud charges, but still -- 2 TV stars oughta cough up 5 dollars without a fight.

Summary: Five stinkin' dollars ... that's what started a massive argument this weekend between several police officers and "Real Housewives" stars Teresa and Joe…


Paul Fichtenbaum is stepping down as editor of Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated Group, in a major shake-up at the publisher.

Fichtenbaum has held the top job for four years and is a 26-year veteran of Time.

The move comes six months after SI was moved into a group headed by Executive Vice President Rich Battista, who already had People and Entertainment Weekly in his stable.

A replacement is expected to be named this week.

Fichtenbaum, 55, had worked at Sport magazine and the now-defunct Sports Inc. before joining Time Inc. He said his departure “might be a surprise to the outside world but not to me. I loved it, but I’ve been here a long time.”

There is a perception that SI, despite its prestige, has not fully benefitted amid the explosive growth of sports in the US, and has lost market share to Disney’s ESPN.

Summary: Paul Fichtenbaum is stepping down as editor of Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated Group, in a major shake-up at the publisher. Fichtenbaum has held the top job for four years and is a 26-year veteran o…


How should you reply to crazy interview questions? Most employers don't ask weird

but it's a good idea to prepare for how you'd address them, just in case.

These strategies will help you answer any oddball interview question.

If you say, "What does this have to do with the job?" you might as well get up and walk out of the interview. (Unless they are looking for a contrary or difficult candidate, which is unlikely.)

In fact, it's a good idea to take a deep breath before delving into your answer. You may also want to repeat the question to make sure you understand it correctly.

More: 13 Mistakes To Avoid In Job Interviews

For example, in answering the question about what state to eliminate from the U.S., don't let on that you'd like to axe California because it's reliably democratic, or Texas because it is always "red."

Maybe he is trying to see if you have a sense of humor, in which case you could respond with a funny answer. Petco asked an analyst candidate, "How would you direct someone else on how to cook an omelet?" It's likely the job requires being able to explain concepts and possibly action steps to people, which makes the question seem reasonable and not so off-the-wall.

More: 6 Nonverbal Ways To Wow The Job Interviewer

For example, interviewers at JetBlue who asked a pricing/revenue management analyst candidate, "How many quarters would you need to reach the height of the Empire State building?" probably don't expect a correct answer. Replying, "500,000" isn't going to give the interviewer any insight about you. Instead, talk out your thought process. For example, "It's best to stack the quarters on top of each other. A quarter is about .05 inches thick, so there are about 240 quarters in a foot. If the Empire State Building is about 1,400 feet tall, it would take about 336,000 quarters to reach the top. That doesn't include the antennae!" When you answer this way, even if your specifics are not correct, you can still win points for your thought process. (And for the details you include, such as stacking the quarters and considering the antennae.)

At Trader Joe's (a food store), they asked a crew candidate, "If we came to your house for dinner, what would you prepare for us?" This is a great opportunity for the job seeker to demonstrate what he or she knows about the food at Trader Joe's. "I would select some of Trader Joe's best, fresh vegetables -- asparagus is in season now, to serve with organically fed poultry. I'd cook them with Trader Joe's brand mole sauce and, voila -- a great meal."

Amanda Lachapelle, director of HR and talent acquisition at

, a jobs and career community said, "The worst answer you can give is a short response with no explanation or say 'I don't know.' When answering tough questions, take your time, ask the interviewer to clarify if necessary, show your personality and explain how you can problem solve out loud."

Looking for a job? Click here to get started.

Summary: How should you reply to crazy interview questions? Most employers don't ask weird questions like these, but it's a good idea to prepare for how you'd addre  them, just in ca


There are curses and cheers, flashing bulbs and blinking phones. On the manicured field here at Gillette Stadium outside Boston, before some 67,000 crazed fans, Tom Brady is about to take the first snap of the 2015 NFL season. The atmosphere is electric, and everyone—from the cheerleaders to the beer vendors—seems to be watching the quarterback’s outstretched hands.

The 34-year-old chief executive of DraftKings, the ascendant daily-fantasy-sports startup, is standing in a mammoth luxury suite high above the action. He has a perfect view of the field—but he’s glued to his smartphone. He can’t resist looking at new registrations for his company’s service, the result of a relentless advertising campaign timed to the first week of the new season.

“Two hundred thousand sign-ups today,” he says with genuine disbelief. That’s 10 times what DraftKings has ever seen in a day and it’s just the latest addition to a user base that totals more than 4.5 million people. On the field, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski bats away two defenders. “There’s too much happening,” Robins says without looking up.

You could say the same for the fantasy-sports business. The notion of playing general manager by assembling an imaginary sports team has been around since the 1960s, when a company called Strat-O-Matic created a card game based on the concept. Then, as now, gamers would “play” a season based on the real-life performance of the players on their virtual team. Over time, websites replaced pencil and paper and made results instantaneous. Today, mobile applications threaten to replace websites.

DraftKings, founded in 2012 and based in Boston, is one such app. FanDuel, founded in 2009 and based in New York, is another. Both companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars (and garnered billion-dollar valuations) from blue-chip investors as they vigorously compete for eyeballs and wallets in an estimated $15 billion business. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association, created in 1997 to lobby for the industry, estimates that there are 57 million fantasy-sports participants in North America. This year 8 million of them are expected to try the shorter, more casual “daily” version that DraftKings and FanDuel offer.

How does it work? Select a sport and a contest; draft your players, priced on projected performance (but don’t exceed the salary cap); pay the entry fee; pray your lineup fares better than everyone else’s. DraftKings saw entry fees rise from $45 million in 2013 to $304 million in 2014—a year in which it reported $30 million in revenue. It remains unprofitable.

New England Patriots tight end Rob GronkowskiPhotograph by Jim Davis—The Boston Globe/Getty Images

All this is legal in most states—for now. The passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 left room for “games of skill,” opening the door to new entrants and revenue streams. Today dozens of companies are engaged in the practice, including CBS, Disney, and Yahoo. But DraftKings and FanDuel control 95% of the daily-fantasy market, estimates Eilers Research, and for now DraftKings appears to have the edge. “DraftKings is outspending FanDuel by 4X,” says Eilers partner Adam Krejcik. “So they’re seeing the result.”

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Robins’ luxury suite at Gillette Stadium, the only two-floor suite the venue offers. Inside, former Patriots player Deion Branch reviews his DraftKings lineup on his phone. (He was paid a fee to be here, but he’s close with Patriots owner Bob Kraft, who invested in DraftKings.) Twenty DraftKings employees mill about, decked out in company apparel. In the corner is a clutch of gamers who won a DraftKings contest with the ultimate prize: a visit to the real thing. Televisions in the suite are all set to “DKTV,” a DraftKings-branded channel that runs an endless loop of promotional videos about the company.

Before kickoff Robins led a group down from the private suite to the public lower levels to see the brand-new DraftKings Fantasy Sports Zone. It’s a large space plastered with the company’s branding that is open to anyone with a ticket to the game. (Similar spaces opened this season at Madison Square Garden in New York, the Staples Center in Los Angeles, AT&T Stadium in Dallas, and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.) In the center is a well-stocked bar; in the corner is an area with tablets where you can sign up for DraftKings. Televisions tuned to ESPN, a new corporate partner, line the walls.

DraftKings CEO Jason RobinsPhotograph by Wesley Mann for Fortune

As Robins approached the area for the very first time—he hadn’t yet seen it—he looked up at the TV screens. All of them were playing a FanDuel commercial.

He grinned with amusement. “Awesome,” he said. “The DraftKings-FanDuel Zone!” Robins snapped a photo with his phone and turned to CFO Tim Dent: “We have got to do something about that.” They can’t, really—though DraftKings has an exclusive partnership with ESPN, the exclusivity part won’t kick in until January.

Meanwhile, the competition between DraftKings and FanDuel will grow only fiercer, especially on TV. On one Monday afternoon this fall, ESPN aired NFL Primetime presented by DraftKings. Following that program was NFL Insiders presented by FanDuel. When that ended, NFL Live presented by DraftKings came on. At times ESPN has played back-to-back DraftKings and FanDuel ads.

Robins is respectful toward his rival and resists trashing it. “I like the product,” he says. “I don’t think FanDuel’s bad. I just think we’re better. The fundamental product that both companies have created is good.” (FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles also admits to testing his competitor’s service.)

FanDuel beat DraftKings to market by three years, but its early lead has eroded. Robins tells this story: At an industry event, a FanDuel board member supposedly boasted to a DraftKings board member, “You guys are done. We win; you get 10%. Law of distributions.” It hasn’t happened that way. “Having an early lead in a nascent market didn’t matter,” Robins says. Spending $20 million in week one of the NFL season—enough to briefly make it the single-biggest advertiser on television—does. (DraftKings would not comment on its burn rate.)

Screens displaying online statistics in the software development department at DraftKings headquarters in Boston. Photograph by Stephan Savoia—AP

Back on the field, Gronkowski strolls into the end zone to put the Patriots up 6–0 over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The crowd in the stands erupts with approval. By halftime the Patriots widen the gap to 14–3. Through it all, DraftKings and FanDuel ads incessantly appear on the radio, on television, on billboards, on buses, on websites, and in apps.

Still, both companies face a hurdle much larger than each other: the law. At issue is whether daily-fantasy-sports contests are indeed games of skill and not chance. Put simply, most states say they are. Five states—Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, and Washington—disagree. In September, Frank Pallone, a U.S. Democratic congressman from New Jersey, called for a hearing on the legality of fantasy sports. Days later Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey said her agency was also looking at the legal issues. Pressure comes from both sides: Pallone has advocated legal sports betting in his state; Healey is a vocal opponent of gambling. (For more on this issue, read: “Are DraftKings and FanDuel legal?”)

If Robins is concerned, he doesn’t show it. He’s too busy taking it all in. Back in the DraftKings suite he proudly displays his phone, which is buzzing as some of his 300 employees react to the barrage of new sign-ups. “This is nuts,” writes one. “I’ve never seen the lobby light up so much,” writes another, referencing the homepage of the DraftKings website and app.

Robins smiles. He’s confident that DraftKings has a billion-dollar product. He just needs to get it to the millions of people who haven’t yet tried daily fantasy sports—let alone spent money doing it. “Once they try it, they like it,” he says. “It’s sticky.”

A version of this article appeared in the October 1, 2015 issue of Fortune magazine with the headline “Flight of Fantasy.”

For more fantasy sports news, watch this Fortune video:

To see the rest of Fortune’s 2015 40 Under 40 list, click here.

Summary: Jason Robins of DraftKings, No. 8 on Fortune's 2015 40 Under 40 list, wants to be the leader in daily fantasy sports. He has stiff competition.


Seemingly confirming the familiar warnings of pediatricians and other researchers, a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics finds that fast food commercials featuring toy giveaways led children to ask their parents to take them to the restaurants. And the more the children saw the fast-food commercials, the more frequently they ate fast food.

The study, performed by researchers from Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, focused on the advertising of Burger King and McDonald’s, the two major fast-food brands on ad-supported children’s networks, such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.

But the study concerned national advertising from 2009, and the youth-focused marketing practices of fast food have since then improved, by some measures. A 2013 report suggested that both McDonald’s and Burger King had scaled back their marketing toward children.

Some practices still raise hackles, however. Earlier this year, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, the regulatory body, reprimanded McDonald’s for a Happy Meal commercial in which a “Teenie Beanie Baby Boo” toy got a third of the screen time. McDonald’s has stopped airing the ad.

Summary: Toy giveaways in fast food ads grab children's attention, study finds


The Life and Work of Richard Yates.

Illustrated. 671 pp. New York:

RICHARD YATES is one of literature's nearly men -- no loser but never quite an outright winner. Born into an impoverished and dysfunctional family (whose dysfunctions and monetary crises he reproduced, with Xerox fidelity, in his own roles of husband and father), he missed out on a university education. Throughout life he nursed a corrosive anger against novelists who had that advantage over him. ''I'd give anything to have gotten a college education,'' he exclaimed in later life. ''I feel the lack of it all the time.'' He was, as photographs (and innumerable sexual partners) confirm, strikingly handsome, but in a style that he himself despised. Yates privately thought his looks feminine. And he had, as Blake Bailey records in ''A Tragic Honesty,'' ''a lifelong horror of being perceived as homosexual.'' Despite a graceful appearance he was in his movements clumsy ''on a legendary scale.'' At school, as Yates said of one of his characters, ''the shower room was the worst part'' of his day. Morbid shyness afflicted him through life.

Yates, born in 1926, served in World War II and was a single I.Q. point short of qualifying for officer training. He was discharged ''with a Good Conduct medal and the rank of private first class.'' He brought back no good war stories but, typically, he made good fiction out of the lack of them. His early and finest short story (as he liked to think), ''A Really Good Jazz Piano,'' was turned down nine times, with gushing praise, by the best magazines in the United States. Only the devoted persistence of his agent, Monica McCall, got it into print. Yates's first published novel, ''Revolutionary Road,'' had the misfortune to be a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962, an annus mirabilis for American fiction. It came up against ''Catch-22,'' ''Franny and Zooey,'' ''The Pawnbroker'' and ''The Moviegoer,'' which won. Budgeted by its publisher to sell 20,000 copies, Yates's novel went on to clear less than half that.

On the strength of the award publicity, he was hired by the director John Frankenheimer to do a screenplay of his friend William Styron's ''Lie Down in Darkness.'' Had it come off, Yates might, like his other friend Brian Moore, have supported a career in quality fiction with quality film work. Alas, the project fell through. In later life, Yates taught creative writing (very well, apparently) at various universities. But he failed to get tenure at his main base, the University of Iowa -- something that embittered him inordinately.

Bitterness stoically concealed -- except when in drink or mania -- was the flavor of his career. Yates had, as Bailey records, ''two great ambitions -- publication in The New Yorker and front-page notice by The New York Times Book Review.'' The first he never achieved (despite some of the most glowing rejections in literary history). Nor the second. He might have struck lucky with ''The Easter Parade'' (1976), but the review (a good one) ''ended up on Page 4.''

Nothing ever went quite right. A little luck mixed with his genius and Yates would be secure among the American immortals. He never had a best seller, never won the big prizes. He arrived slightly too late on the literary scene and was overtaken by what he contemptuously called the ''post-Realistic School.'' He survives by a process that the novelist Richard Ford sees as Masonic. Admiration for Yates, Ford says, is ''a sort of cultural-literary secret handshake among its devotees.'' Writers have always stood by him. One wonders whether it is their discreet lobbying that keeps so much of his work in print.

Yates's reputation will not be damaged by this compulsively readable biography. Yates was, as Bailey portrays him, both a great writer and ''almost a parody of the self-destructive personality.'' He was a lifelong four-pack-a-day man. He chain smoked in a tuberculosis sanatorium and puffed on even when chained to oxygen cylinders, his lungs rotted with terminal emphysema. On at least one occasion he burned down his apartment, toasting his work in progress.

His workplace in such apartments, during his years of divorced solitude, was spartan in its simplicity and gothic in its squalor. ''Visitors were struck by certain awful details to which Yates himself seemed oblivious: the bloodstains on his desk-chair cushion (from piles), the calm roaches in plain sight, nothing but bourbon and instant coffee in the tiny kitchen.'' His daily routine in later life was described by one of his daughters: ''He'd wake up tremendously hung over, and put himself together for about two hours. Then he wrote, and then he went out and got drunk for the rest of the day.''

Children of a failed sculptor mother and a failed singer, Yates and his sister spent their infancy flitting from apartment to apartment. It was, as he described it, a domestic environment smelling of ''mildew and cat droppings and Plasticine.'' In later years his mother, always hysterical, descended into alcoholism and eventual dementia. Her image -- ambivalently accented -- haunts his fiction. The one aesthetic pleasure Yates records in his boyhood is the movie theater, the hovel on his childhood heath. What saved him for literature was the good fortune of a few years at a private school, during one of the family's upswings. His experience at Avon Old Farms School is chronicled in his novel ''A Good School'' (1978). Here he learned to write for student magazines. Words, he discovered, came easily to him.

Summary: A TRAGIC HONESTY   The Life and Work of Richard Yates.   By Blake Bailey.   Illustrated. 671 pp. New York:   Picador. $35.


Two weeks after the Brexit referendum, analysts, editors and politicians are still grappling with its consequences. Most of the predictions range somewhere between gloomy and apocalyptic.

Many warn that Britain’s vote to leave will trigger a series of copycat referendums across the European Union. The severity of market reactions, especially in some southern European countries, has been taken as an omen that the end of the euro may be near. In short, doomsayers argue that Brexit spells the beginning of the end for the European project. It does no such thing.

Decades of joint lawmaking, policy coordination and economic integration have created manifold interdependencies between the EU countries in the areas of trade, investment, regulation and politics. Just as the U.K. cannot extricate itself from the EU overnight, so the rest of the EU cannot discard its many achievements quickly, even if it wanted to. While euroskepticism has risen in many countries, including the founding countries of France, Germany and the Netherlands, recent surveys show that most Europeans support EU initiatives in concrete areas, from managing migration to improving infrastructure and dealing with external threats.

The EU has been hugely successful in removing barriers to the movement of goods, capital and people. But this integration has come at a time of major change in the global economy, felt most noticeably through the competitive pressures emanating from China and other emerging markets. No wonder many Europeans equate the EU with the larger forces of globalization. For those who feel left behind, Brussels has become the catch-all for their fears and anger.

In the face of such sentiments, European leaders cannot simply push ahead with more EU integration.

Nor is a “fresh start,” consisting perhaps of a rapid round of eurozone expansion or the establishment of a political union, necessary to preserve the EU’s achievements. If anything, such efforts, if rushed, could intensify the populist backlash. Several recent trends go against the federalists’ vision of an ever-closer union. But, if reinforced, they could lead to a more flexible, resilient and politically acceptable EU.

First, in a heterogeneous group of 27 countries, integration will inevitably take place on different levels and at different speeds. Some countries take part in the Schengen agreement on borderless travel, share a single currency and participate in building a banking union. Others do not. This variable integration process makes the EU more complex, but it also leaves room for national political developments to be taken into account. The EU needs to reconsider the principle that all countries should move at the same speed.

Second, many European voters feel that the EU is a bureaucratic behemoth with a built-in bias toward more regulation, and they do not like it. That message is starting to register at the top. More and more European politicians are calling for the EU to respect the principle of subsidiarity, which requires that the EU take decisions only in areas where it clearly adds value, while leaving others to the national, regional or local levels. The current European Commission under President Jean-Claude Juncker has also changed tack by introducing fewer new laws and reviewing existing ones that may have become superfluous or counterproductive.

Most importantly, the EU must dispel the belief that integration reinforces the pressures of globalization. If Brussels is looking for a new narrative to replace the vision of an ever-closer union, it would have to be this: The EU isn’t the cause of globalization, nor is it responsible for the repercussions on job markets or income distribution. Instead, it can help to alleviate and navigate these forces.

Responsibility for managing the consequences of globalization and technological change remains mainly with Europe’s national governments. But there is much the EU can do to help. Many policies and programs exist that could be used to better effect, including Europe-wide cooperation in research and education, and training programs for unemployed youth. Funds for cross-border infrastructure, including digital networks, venture capital for startups and support for the Union’s weaker regions.

Such measures are not a quick fix. But if the EU stops talking and starts delivering, its crisis of legitimacy could abate over time.

The EU’s coming achievements will be more piecemeal and less spectacular than the big integration treaties and new institutions of the past 60 years. But perhaps a period of consolidation is what’s needed to preserve the EU’s achievements in the long run. While the EU should do less in some areas, most notably in regulation, it could do more in providing concrete support for the disappointed and disaffected.

For investors and businesspeople, that means lowering the bar for judging the EU’s success. There is no need to panic if the next EU summit fails to agree on an eye-catching new integration plan. That could just mean the EU is finally beginning to learn the real lessons of the Brexit vote.

Mr. Heise is the chief economist at Allianz SE .

Summary: Future goals will have to be more modest, with less emphasis on uniformity among member countries, says Michael Heise in The Wall Street Journal.


Flamboyant German tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom is planning to relaunch file-sharing website Megaupload in January 2017, five years after the U.S. government took down the site accusing it of piracy.

Megaupload, founded in 2005, had boasted of having more than 150 million registered users and 50 million daily visitors. At one point, it was estimated to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the internet.

Dotcom, who announced his plans in a series of tweets on Friday, said most of the Megaupload users would get their accounts reinstated with premium privileges.

He also hinted and that the new website will use bitcoins.

Dotcom did not immediately respond to a mail seeking comment.

Dotcom and three others were arrested on Jan. 20, 2012, after armed New Zealand police raided his country estate at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

U.S. authorities had said Dotcom and three other Megaupload executives cost film studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million by encouraging paying users to store and share copyrighted material, such as movies and TV shows.

Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, has denied charges of internet piracy and money laundering and has been fighting extradition to the United States.

He has contended that the website was merely a storage facility for online files and should not be held accountable if stored content was obtained illegally.

A New Zealand court in 2013 granted Dotcom access to all evidence seized by police in the raid of his house.

While Kim Dotcom’s net worth was not known, he became well known for his lavish lifestyle as much as his computer skills.

He used to post photographs of himself with cars having vanity plates such as “GOD” and “GUILTY,” shooting an assault rifle and flying around the world in his private jet.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated in 2012 that Dotcom personally made around $115,000 a day during 2010.

The assets seized earlier included nearly 20 luxury cars, one of them a pink Cadillac, works of art, and NZ$10 million invested in local finance companies.

“I’ll be the first tech billionaire who got indicted, lost everything and created another billion $ tech company while on bail,” he tweeted on Sunday.

Summary: Five years after the government shut it down


There aren’t many things in the digital sphere that have created as much anticipation as Magic Leap, a company that has raised over $1 billion in venture funding for what it calls “mixed reality” technology—a technology only a few people have actually seen in action.

To hear co-founder and CEO Rony Abovitz tell it, in an interview with Fortune‘s Michal Lev-Ram at the Brainstorm Tech conference on Tuesday, what Magic Leap is building will be as far beyond Google Glass as the Apollo moon landing was from the original Mercury space program.

“I give Google a huge amount of credit for jumping in, but we’re doing things that are fundamentally different,” Abovitz told attendees at the Fortune conference in Aspen, Colo. “But we did learn a lot from them, and they’ve been very helpful in sharing both the good and the bad from that with us.”

While companies like Facebook-owned Oculus Rift and Samsung’s GearVR create virtual or augmented reality using a headset, Abovitz says that Magic Leap’s “light-field” technology essentially mimics the brain’s visual-perception mechanisms to create objects and even people who look and behave just the way they would in the real world, and interact with that world seamlessly.

“Our system basically replicates how your eyes and brain work, how our neuro-visual system is designed to work, and it turns your brain into this kind of display,” Abovitz said. “So the idea is not to have a display that you look at, but to use the display that nature gave us and talk directly to it.”

So while VR generates a virtual world that you look at on a head-mounted display, and augmented reality creates a kind of “Terminator-style heads-up display,” the Magic Leap founder said his technology “creates a neurologically-true light-field that simulates actual reality.”

Using this technology, Abovitz said Magic Leap can not merely create realistic-looking objects that users can interact with in the real world, but it can also allow for other kinds of behavior. While the early applications are all games or entertainment, he said the company is also looking at business applications and commerce-related features as well.

“So my system could recognize that I’m looking at your sweater, and then an alert pops up from Amazon or Alibaba, and it says if you buy it now you can get 10% off,” said chief marketing officer Brian Wallace. Or a user could see at a glance how a new couch might look in their living room, and then buy it.

Abovitz, who also co-founded and sold a bio-medical device company called Mako Surgical for $1.65 billion, said that he and his investors are also excited about the possible medical applications that such a technology could offer, from diagnosis to actual treatment. Abovitz said he has been thinking about and working on ideas related to Magic Leap since he was a child.

Magic Leap now has over 600 people working for the company, many of whom are building and developing the technology in a former Motorola complex in Florida, where the company is based. Abovitz said that the hardware and software are “not a decade out—this is happening,” and that the public would get a glimpse of what they will actually look like “soon-ish.”

Summary: Co-founder Rony Abovitz says Magic Leap "uses the display that nature gave us."


After nearly a year of debate, five months of primaries, 17 candidates, and much sniping, the Republican National Convention will finally begin on Monday in Cleveland, with Donald Trump and Mike Pence set to be formally nominated as the presidential and vice presidential nominees for the Republican Party. Here’s everything you need to know:

For the prime time speeches, every major network — NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and PBS — will be airing the convention live. You’ll also be able to watch coverage on the major cable news networks like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.

If you’re a true convention nerd, though, and you want to watch the actual convention happenings all day for four days, the place to go is CSPAN. The cable channel, which normally shows live happenings within the halls of Congress, will have gavel-to-gavel coverage of the convention.

For the cord-cutters out there, there are plenty of options. Many news channels will be streaming the speeches on their websites, and CBS is working with Twitter to air the convention via the social network. CSPAN will be airing its coverage via Facebook Live.

While the speaker list is tentative and subject to change, here is who you should be watching for on each night of the convention.

Monday: As is tradition, the biggest speech on Monday night will be made by the spouse of the candidate; in this case, Melania Trump. Melania is a non-traditional first lady, being a former model and a naturalized immigrant, so this speech could offer a signal of the role she’ll play in the campaign going forward. Other major speakers on Monday include former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Iowa Senator and Tea Party favorite Joni Ernst, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

Tuesday: The most prominent speaker on the second day of the convention will likely be Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran against Trump during the primaries. One of the most unorthodox speakers, UFC President Dana White, will also address the RNC on Tuesday. And two of Trump’s children, Tiffany and Donald Jr., will speak on Tuesday.

Wednesday: The biggest speech on Wednesday will come from Indiana Governor Mike Pence, in his acceptance speech of the vice presidential nomination. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will also address the convention on Wednesday. The most fascinating speech, though, may come from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who came in second in the Republican nominating process. Cruz hasn’t formally endorsed Trump, and the tone of his speech may be a setup for a potential presidential run in 2020, if Trump were to lose in 2016. Eric Trump, Donald’s son, will also speak on Wednesday.

Thursday: The biggie on Thursday will be Donald Trump himself. Ivanka Trump, his daughter, who has been very visible on the campaign trail, will also speak. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, will take the stage, as will Peter Thiel, the tech entrepreneur who is a staunch libertarian and is a delegate for Trump from California.

A number of prominent Republicans have decided not to travel to Cleveland this week. This includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. It also includes former Republican presidential nominees Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Some of those who ran against Trump in the nominating process, including Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Rand Paul, and Lindsay Graham, also won’t be there. A number of prominent Republican senators, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, are also skipping the event.

The biggest story of the convention will be similar to the story of the entire campaign — which Donald Trump is going to show up? At times, Trump has been able to dial down his brash personality. He’s given speeches from a teleprompter, and he’s refrained from name-calling and personal attacks. Other times, he’s focused on petty grievances and behaved like an angry child. If the Republicans have any hope of coming out of this convention unified and on a path toward victory, the first Trump had better show up.

There are still plenty of Republicans with serious questions about Trump. Many of them will be in Cleveland, some as delegates. While an attempted coup in the GOP rules committee seems to have been thwarted, it’s an open question if any of the dyed-in-the-wool conservative RNC attendees will cause a commotion.

What impact will Pence have?

As far as VP picks go, Mike Pence is pretty boring. He’s an older white guy from a Midwestern state who made his bones as a fierce advocate for Christian conservative values. Socially conservative positions, especially those that relate to gay marriage, aren’t the reliably resonant wedge issues they once were for the Republicans. Pence is also a fairly establishment figure running alongside a fiercely anti-establishment Donald Trump. In the end, vice presidential candidates are largely inconsequential to election outcomes, because voters largely cast their ballots with the top of the ticket in mind. An especially weak appearance from Pence, though, could hurt Trump among undecided voters watching at home.

What will be going on outside the convention?

The controversies that have followed Trump throughout his campaign — his comments about Muslims and Mexicans, and his popularity among white nationalists in particular — seem primed to come to a head. Groups on both sides, including the New Black Panthers and the Oathkeepers, have promised to come armed. And they’ll be allowed to carry their weapons without hassle from the police, thanks to open carry laws in Ohio. While convention protest activity never quite seems to live up to the hype, the streets may be quite chaotic this year.

Can the GOP get on track?

It has been a tough election season for the Republicans. The party’s primary season was messy, yielding a winner with only marginal connections to the party. Many of the party elders are questioning the future of the GOP. If the convention is disciplined, on message, and smooth, polls could show a bounce for Trump and signs of life for the party. If it is an amateur hour, though, more independents and moderate Republicans could defect to Hillary Clinton or simply choose to stay home on election day.

Summary: It all starts on Monday.


When Jorge began taking immigrants from El Salvador to the U.S. some 15 years ago, he was just joining the family business. Long before the most recent flood of child migrants made headlines this summer, Jorge lead his first journey north, with seven immigrants. He called his father every so often for directions.

We met this guideâalso known as a âcoyoteâ or âpolleroââin a home in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, during the shooting of Fault Linesâ latest investigation, âNo Refuge: Children at the Border.â (The episode airs Saturday, September 13 at 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific on Al Jazeera America.)

Jorgeânot his real nameâagreed to speak to us under the condition of anonymity. The following are excerpts from our conversation with him.

Fault Lines: How do people find you? Do they call you saying, "I need someone to take me?â

Jorge: When someone calls me, they say someone recommended me to them. I tell them:"It's a tough journey, but if you want to do it I will explain to you how things are. If you get caught, I can take you back if the mistake was made by the guides. But if things go wrong because you ran away or you did something stupid, I won't take the responsibility. If you agree with these terms I will do it. If not, then find someone else."

So they are told the deal ahead of time. Up to this day nobody has complained about me.

Why do you think that the amount of children leaving doubled in just one year?

They are taking advantage, because they are granting them permission in Texas. If they get you, they call your relatives, they get you a plane ticket and send you over to them just like that. And you don't have to deal with walking through the desert. I don't know why they created the law, but it's convenient for children.

Everyone took advantage and sent them over. Some coyotes charge less because they know if you turn yourself into immigration, there is no problem. You will always go through.

But others take advantage and charge them the normal rate and they deliver them to immigration. When they realized they could do that, everyone took advantage and left. But they only grant permission to mothers with children.

Some people have said that the coyotes told them to go because they would be able to stay. Do you think that is what happened?

In parts, yes. But only in the case of children and women or minors accompanied by an adult. All the coyotes know that, and they are making money from that. They are all in the game.

I imagine there are good coyotes and there are others who throw you wherever and don't care. There are all kinds. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. Some are corrupt and others are honest. It's like with every kind of business.

Some are like rats. They take your money and they leave you wherever.

In the past ten months, 66,000 kids have entered the U.S.ânot just from El Salvador, but also from Honduras and Guatemala.

Do you think more kids are leaving because of the violence in El Salvador?

Moms or fathers or uncles, they know that here there is a load of gangsters, and they are recruiting kids to turn them into gangsters. They don't want their kids to end up in a gang. That's why they are sending so many children away. Because when the gangsters find out you have family in the U.S., they write you notes and tell you if you don't pay them a certain sum of money, they will screw you over.

Gangs are everywhere. Who says anything? Nobody. It needs to stop. They beat people up, steal from them, charge them fees.

So it's a lot of money to get to the U.S.?

Ten thousand dollars, $8,000âit depends how much the person is willing to give. They pay a part here, a part on the way and the rest at the end.

You get to keep $2,000. And that is a good amount. With three, you make $6,000.

Yes, but it's a tough journey.

What precautions do you take when you take people to Mexico?

Iâve known the way since I was young. You get to know people on the streets that are honest and that are corrupt. So I go with the people I know who are loyal. I get in touch with them and tell them I want to take these people from here to there.

They do everything. If they need to pay immigration, they tell you, "Yes, this is doable, but the police are charging this much, the feds are charging this much.â I give money to that guy, and he pays the authorities, and they let them through. Nobody stops them because the authorities get paid to let them through.

Do you take precautions when you take unaccompanied children? Or is it the same?

Everyone takes care of children. Even if they are drug dealers or whatever.

Some people are not good to them and treat them as if they were cattle or poultry.

Do people still call you to travel?

It has gone down. Because it's got tougher. Because the Zetas are killing people in Mexico. There are people who still want to leave, but it's not the same as before. And it's not convenient to us anymore. Now everyone wants to charge a fee and people don't want to pay more.

The U.S. is now asking all the countries to be tougher and to not let people leave. What do you think about the U.S. putting pressure on Mexico here and there to stop? There is no pressure from the U.S. on Mexico. That is a lie. Anyone can go through Mexicoâwhoever carries money. They probably catch two or three, so they say they are working. But how many buses leave here every day?

Summary: A man who guides migrants from Central America to the U.S. border tells Fault Lines about his dangerous treks.