The council, alarmed to be told that Miss G was planning to leave her property to her new carers, moved to have her ruled as lacking “mental capacity” by the Court of Protection, despite a finding to the contrary by an eminent independent psychologist whom she had paid to examine her. Her case was therefore put in the hands of the Official Solicitor, a state official.

Redbridge had already taken control of her bank account, allowing her just £100 a week to live on; the barrister for the Official Solicitor, said by another lawyer to be earning £400 an hour (taken from Miss G’s savings), told the judge at one hearing that, because her money was running out, he could no longer represent her – even though, regardless of her wishes, he had seemed to act in complete accord with the local authority.

Because of media interest, it was ruled that Miss G, who as I knew from talking to her was vehemently articulate about what was being done to her, could have no further contact with any journalists.

In her long, final judgment on the case, Mrs Justice Russell rehearsed all the evidence against “C”, some of it hearsay, portraying her in a very unfavourable light – although she did concede that C had given Miss G a “high standard of physical care”. She agreed that whenever Miss G had been allowed to speak in court, she had “consistently and firmly stated” that “C and F should continue to reside with her”, and that the council “and other professionals should leave her alone”. She also had “a particularly strong wish to remain in her own home” and not to be “placed in a care home”.

The judge observed that, during the months the case had lasted, she had noticed Miss G looking frailer and more distressed. She ruled that Miss G must have no contact with C, and that she must again be looked after by carers sent by the council. But she also ruled that, although Miss G’s savings had now all gone to pay the costs of the case, she must still be allowed to remain in her own home.

Since this means that Redbridge cannot now sell her house to pay for her care, it leaves the council in rather a hole – and taxpayers must foot the bill. This sorry mess it has brought entirely on itself, by allowing its social workers to intervene so officiously in this admirable old lady’s life.

See our energy policy collapsing

Hundreds of times, when travelling by train between London and my Somerset home, I gazed up at the 375ft cooling towers of the coal-fired power station outside Didcot in Oxfordshire, each higher than St Paul’s Cathedral.

Now they are vanished as though they had never been. But few of the thousands who gathered at 5am on a Sunday last month to see them collapse within 10 seconds were aware of how perfectly this spectacle symbolised the collapse of our national energy policy.

At the time when the plant’s German owners closed down Didcot A last year – having decided that it was not worth paying hundreds of millions of pounds to modify it to comply with an EU pollution directive – the 2,000 megawatts of electricity it was capable of supplying to the National Grid were only slightly less than the average total of 2,200 megawatts then being unreliably generated by all of Britain’s thousands of subsidised wind turbines put together.

Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, may wish to see all our remaining coal-fired power stations shut down in favour of thousands more wind farms. Yet the cost of producing electricity from coal is only a sixth of what we pay for intermittent power from his offshore wind farms – more than two-thirds of it in subsidies.

Truly, Mr Davey is leading us into a dark and uncertain future.

We don’t know how lucky we are to have a brilliant health service

When I saw a recent article by an Australian journalist ecstatically acclaiming the NHS for the amazingly swift, efficient treatment she had been given after finding she had breast cancer, I could only join in her paean of praise.

As she herself put it, in the weeks after her operation, she had felt “a powerful urge to shout at the Brits: 'Do you know what an extraordinary health system you have? How civilised your society is to afford everyone, rich, poor, young and old, a world-class health safety net?’ ”

I myself recently had a minor operation for skin cancer. After two delightful conversations with specialists, I soon found myself under the knife of a leading surgeon in Bristol, who operated under a local anaesthetic so effective that, when I asked him: “When are you going to start cutting?”, he replied: “I’ve finished all that, I’m just sewing you up.”

When my friend and colleague Dr Richard North had a serious heart condition, he was full of praise for the specialist he saw in a Bradford hospital, before being sent off for a major operation, at NHS expense, to a branch of the Nuffield. His care and treatment could not have been equalled.

Yet even now Ed Miliband and the Labour Party are still whinging on about how they want to stop the NHS calling on the private sector to help out.

When a member of our village cricket team “died” on the pitch a year or two back, saved only by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, we were amazed to see three ambulances and a paramedic team arrive on the ground within 15 minutes of the emergency call.

As that Australian lady might have said: “You Brits don’t know how lucky, most of the time, you are”.

Summary: The case of 'Miss G' is a tragic lesson for our times


Mr Webb caused controversy the day after the Budget when he said that he was "relaxed" about the idea of pensioners spending their savings on a Lamborghini.

Appearing yesterday before MPs on the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, Mr Webb said that in future pensions will be able to have a “mixture” of capital and income to allow them to enjoy their retirement.

Mr Webb said: “The significance here is that in the past we’ve thought about what we need in retirement [is] a regular income but actually what you need in retirement is quality of life and that might be a mixture of capital and income and it might be different at different points in retirement.”

He also said that the changes to pensions will allow elderly people to pay off debts that have been “getting them down”.

Mr Webb said: “One of the great things about these new freedoms is some people will pay off debts that have been hanging over them, that have been getting them down, that they wouldn’t have been able to pay off. They’ll be able to do that and they’ll feel great about it.”

The minister also insisted that his reforms have not dealt a “death blow” to the annuities market.

He said that around 100,000 to 200,000 annuity sales could still take place every year and said these products are likely to become competitive as providers will know that retirees have a greater choice of options available to them.

Controversy over annuities has been growing amid tumbling rates in recent years and concerns that people are not getting the best deal they could by shopping around. Up until now, around 400,000 people a year have bought an annuity.

Mr Webb said: “I don't think it is a death blow to annuities. Clearly there is a set of people, and we can argue and discuss how large that will be, who won't buy annuities now, and estimates, and they are only guesstimates really, vary considerably.

“But clearly an awful lot of people still need an income in retirement.”

Mr Webb said: “It depends who you listen to, but it's still thought 100,000, 200,000 annuities a year will be sold... I don't think that the process is irredeemable.”

Summary: Steve Webb, the pensions minister, indicates that people should be able to   withdraw their pension pot if it makes them happy.


Last night in Dallas, five law enforcement officers were killed; seven officers and two civilians were wounded.

The coordinated ambush and deliberate, brutal executions were acts of cowardice – hiding behind innocents to target and savagely slaughter peace officers dedicated to preserving life and our freedoms.

The full force of the law must ensure all responsible are brought to justice and our communities are kept secure.

Justice will be served, but justice is small solace for the families left behind.

We mourn for the families of the fallen, for the law enforcement community and for our nation.

Respect for our law enforcement officers must be restored in our nation.

The badge every officer wears over his or her heart is a reminder of a sacred trust, a commitment, a contract with each of us.

For law enforcement officers to stand in front of us and all that threatens, we must stand behind them.

With each innocent life lost, we lose more of our humanity.

It is time for us to unite as Texans, as Americans, to say no more.

No more will we tolerate disrespect for those who serve.

No more will we allow the evil of hate merchants to tear us apart.

Though anguish and sorrow may darken the days ahead, we will not be overcome by evil – we will overcome evil with good.

Texas is an exceptional state with exceptional people. We’ve faced tough challenges in the past, but we have come together to overcome those challenges.

In the coming days, there will be those who foment distrust and fan the flames of dissension.

To come together – that would be the greatest rebuke to those who seek to tear us apart.

There is far more that binds us together. We see that great strength in times of tragedy, in times of great need. Whether fire or flood or the acts of depraved individuals, Texans are the first to open their hearts, their homes, their wallets to offer charity and love.

I ask for your prayers – for our law enforcement officers, for the city of Dallas, for our state and for our nation.

May God comfort those who’ve lost a family member.

And may God heal the hurt in our communities.

I have faith in the goodness of Texas, of America. For in the end, evil always fails.

Summary: Five officers were slain in Dallas by gunmen after a protest


Blackcurrants have a long folkloric history as a cure for a range of ailments including coughs, constipation and cystitis.

But we may be rediscovering the benefits of the wonder fruit only just in time. The bushes need an old-fashioned freezing British winter to crop well, and these are in increasingly short supply.

"It's a testing time for the industry," says Thompson. "Blackcurrants were affected early by climate change, because they have a higher requirement for chill than any other fruit. We had a crop failure in 1998 and it took three years to work out what caused it."

Pixley has been forced to bring in plants from abroad that can cope with warm, wet winters. Central Europe is another big producer of blackcurrants, but with summer temperatures predicted to top 40C within our lifetimes, he admits, "there are interesting times ahead".

Despite the huge quantities produced by British farms, it can be hard to buy blackcurrants, perhaps because more than 90 per cent of the crop goes to make Ribena.

The answer may be to pick your own. Visits to pick-your-own farms for strawberries are part of the traditional British summer, so why not blackcurrants, too?

Track down a PYO near you at www.pickyourown.org.uk, and don't forget to wear old clothes and gloves, since the juice stains everything it touches.

Once you've got your basketful home, the next trick is to use them. Unlike strawberries or raspberries, which can be eaten straightaway, blackcurrants are mouth-puckeringly sour.

They need generous sweetening, and even then, taste so intense that it's hard to eat many. It's not that they are unpleasant, far from it, but the rich flavour, best described as a blend of red wine and fresh mint, is astonishingly powerful.

The best way to eat them is in combination with other ingredients. Add a handful to an apple crumble, or a summer pudding.

Mix a teacupful into a plain sponge mixture and bake to make a blackcurrant cake, dimpled with inky pockets of fruit, to eat with clouds of whipped cream.

Alternatively, purée the currants in a liquidiser with sugar and rub through a sieve to make a smooth sauce to eat with ice cream or trickled over cake.

Use the same purée to make ice cream or sorbet, or stirred into more whipped cream to make a magenta fool.

Any leftover blackcurrants can be frozen for six months or more, either as a purée or as whole fruit, and could be just the thing to stave off the winter's coughs and colds.

Summary: Forget exotic berries and indulge in British blackcurrants, says Xanthe Clay.


In Missoula, where the department also investigated a campus of the University of Montana, the inquiries focused specifically on gender and also examined the actions of prosecutors. In a 20-page report issued in 2014, the Justice Department said county prosecutors so thoroughly ignored rape cases that they were placing “women in Missoula at increased risk of harm.”

But experts and advocates agree that the problem is especially complex, and perhaps more acute, in Baltimore because so many women there are poor and black.

A Justice Department investigation into the practices of the Baltimore police department found "reasonable cause to believe that the BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law."

“Baltimore is worse in the sense that Baltimore is a city that has more people of color and more poor people of color, so we are likely to see more excesses, and that is manifest in the report,” said Lisalyn R. Jacobs, an expert on race and gender bias who works closely with the Obama administration on issues including sexual assault.

The Baltimore police commissioner, Kevin Davis, who vowed Wednesday to turn his department into “a model for the rest of the nation,” did not dispute the Justice Department’s findings. He said in an interview Thursday that he was already taking steps, including putting a trusted captain in charge of a new sex offense unit and assigning a sergeant to act as an “L.G.B.T. liaison,” to address the problems.

“The challenge of interacting respectfully with victims of sexual assault is a challenge to our profession,” Commissioner Davis said, “and we are getting better at it in Baltimore, and we are paying attention to it.”

African-Americans make up 63 percent of the population in Baltimore, and the city has been in the thick of its own painful conversation about race and policing since the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who sustained a fatal spinal injury in police custody. Tessa Hill-Aston, the president of the city’s branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said the Justice Department’s report this week had pushed the conversation about victims of police bias beyond black men.

“There’s a lot of women in the same communities that have been victimized just as much,” Ms. Hill-Aston said, adding of the police, “They just didn’t care, because it was a poor black woman or a poor black neighborhood.”

Civil and women’s rights advocates in Baltimore have been saying for years that the police do an inadequate job of investigating rape and sexual assault cases. In 2010, The Baltimore Sun reported that in the previous four years, the police had routinely failed to solve rape cases; in reviewing F.B.I. data, the newspaper found that the percentage of rape cases dismissed as false or baseless was higher in Baltimore than in any other city in the country.

But so little progress was made that Justice Department investigators felt compelled to raise the issue, though they did not formally cite the Baltimore police for violating women’s constitutional rights, said Vanita Gupta, the department’s top civil rights official, who supervised the report. “We were troubled by the lingering problems associated with gender-biased policing in Baltimore,” she said Thursday in an interview.

The Police Department’s lackluster investigation of rapes was of particular concern, the report said. From 2010 to 2014, the department found, rape kits, which hold forensic evidence gathered by doctors and nurses, were tested in only 15 percent of Baltimore cases involving sexual assault victims.

Officers failed to perform basic detective work, the report said.

One woman reported a rape by a taxi driver, but the department never tried to test the suspect’s DNA. Another woman reported a sexual assault by an unlicensed cabdriver, and although a detective identified a suspect, the police never tried to contact him, and the investigation faltered. Neither of these victims were named in the Justice Department report.

“We have many, many women who will never go to the police about a rape ever again because of the way they’ve been treated,” said Jacqueline Robarge, the director and founder of Power Inside, an organization that works with victims of gender-based violence, some of whom shared their stories with Justice Department investigators. Ms. Robarge said she had also recorded at least 15 interviews with women and had given them to the department.

Ms. Robarge added that she had worked with women who had been the victims of sexual misconduct by officers themselves. She recalled a 24-year-old prostitute who said a police officer had ordered her into his car and coerced her to have sex.

The woman, fearing retaliation, did not talk to investigators, Ms. Robarge said. But Justice Department investigators cited similar instances in their report.

“We heard complaints from the community that some officers target members of a vulnerable population — people involved in the sex trade — to coerce sexual favors from them in exchange for avoiding arrest, or for cash or narcotics,” the investigators wrote.

The report also described deep insensitivity on the part of some Baltimore officers toward transgender people, which reflected “underlying unlawful gender bias.” One transgender woman, for instance, said that an officer who was ordered to search her had protested in disgust, complaining to a colleague, “I am not searching that.” Then the officer turned to the woman and declared: “I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl. And I really don’t care. I am not searching you.”

Commissioner Davis said he was committed to improving the treatment of sexual assault victims, and spoke Thursday of a “sea change” in policing culture.

In an interview, Capt. Steven Hohman, the commander of the department’s Special Investigations Section, which contains the Sex Offense Unit, declined to respond to individual examples in the report. “I believe that much of the work was being done,” Captain Hohman said. “We just weren’t very good at documenting.”

Experts agree that these problems are not unique to Baltimore. In December 2015, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, concerned by the findings of the inquiries in New Orleans, Puerto Rico and Missoula, issued guidance to law enforcement agencies on how to prevent gender bias.

“We saw time and time again where women were discounted and officers would ask them: ‘Did you have an orgasm? Was this regret sex? Do you have a boyfriend?’” said Jonathan Smith, a former Justice Department official who supervised those inquiries, referring to the Missoula investigation. He added: “Those are privileged kids. Low-income women are facing sometimes worse.”

In each of those instances, the department demanded improvements as part of a consent decree, in which police practices are overhauled under the supervision of a federal judge. That will now be the case in Baltimore, Ms. Gupta said.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from Washington, and Jess Bidgood from Boston.

Follow Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylstolberg and @jessbidgood on Twitter.

For breaking news and in-depth reporting, follow @NYTNational on Twitter.

A version of this article appears in print on August 12, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Baltimore Police Fostered a Bias Against Women. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: The Justice Department found that Baltimore officers humiliated women who reported sexual assault, failed to gather basic evidence and disregarded prostitutes’ complaints.


Train passengers in NSW are being warned to take care after more than 1800 slips, trips and falls were recorded on the state's rail network in the past year.

Transport Minister Andrew Constance said police charged more than 80 people and issued more than 240 infringements over the same period.

"All too often we see people slipping and falling as they rush around station platforms, or not pay attention and fall through the gap," Mr Constance said.

"We also have idiots putting their lives at risk by running across level crossings for a cheap thrill, and narrowly avoiding oncoming trains."

The warning, as part of Rail Safety Week, came as Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink released CCTV footage showing a number of lucky escapes.

In one clip a pedestrian narrowly avoids being struck by a train after an illegal rail crossing, while other footage shows passengers falling over dangerously close to tracks, or getting their legs stuck in the gap between the platform and train.

NSW TrainLink chief executive Rob Mason said drivers had little warning to stop.

"Some passenger trains and often freight trains come through platforms and level crossings at speeds that can take hundreds of metres to stop," Mr Mason said.

"If you're crossing against the signals, you're risking your own life and endangering those on the train."

Summary: Rail commuters in NSW have been urged to be careful after more than 1800 slips and falls were recorded by Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink in the past year.


It was not until their Aunt Edna died that her niece and nephew discovered they were not getting a NSW property each as she had always promised, but just $10,000.

Instead of the 1978 will which bequeathed everything to them, they discovered a version dated 1999 which left Edna Pearson's multi-million dollar estate, including four properties, to her cleaner Victoria Anne Adams.

Ms Adams, 45, is standing trial charged with conspiring with others to cheat and defraud the estate of Ms Pearson, who had dementia and died aged 82 in 2008.

"There's nothing more sensational than a story of wills containing millions and little old ladies and competing interests," defence barrister Julia Hickleton told the jury as the District Court trial began on Thursday.

Adams was not the "sun at the centre of a solar system of cheats" as the crown suggested, but merely a "pawn" in a conspiracy orchestrated by others, she said.

Ms Pearson never married or had any children.

Suzanne Rae Corney and Thomas Sidney Pearson testified their aunt had always been passionate about the family name and made it clear she wanted her wealth to remain in the family.

She researched the Pearson family tree and even travelled to England and Ireland to explore her heritage, they said.

Mr Pearson said his aunt had more than once voiced her concern about his stepchildren because they were no blood relations of hers and was relieved when he and his wife had a son together - the only offspring to continue the Pearson name.

A friend from Ms Pearson's Seventh Day Adventist church gave evidence Ms Pearson believed she was related to "some princess in England".

None of the five witnesses before the court on Thursday had any memory of Ms Pearson saying her estate would go to anyone other than Suzanne and Thomas.

She was a qualified accountant who was very particular, the court heard.

Witnesses only remembered Adams by her first name as the cleaner provided by a hospital charged with Ms Pearson's care before she died.

Ms Adams' alleged co-conspirators include her daughter Alex Johan, niece Louise Johan, as well as associates Antony Michael DeSousa and Lorna Elliot.

Crown prosecutor Trevor Bailey told the jury a 1999 will bequeathing everything to Adams was a fake created in 2006.

The jury trial continues before judge Robert Sutherland.

Summary: A woman who befriended an elderly woman and got her large inheritance when she died is standing trial in Sydney charged with conspiring to defraud her estate.


08/26/2016 AT 12:55 PM EDT

featured a young man named Spencer who believed he'd been talking to

– yes, the âTeenage Dreamâ singer – online for six years and had fallen in love with her. Obviously, it wasn't her. But it turns out the pop star has heard about this sad tale.

"Yeah, someone sent me a link and I didn't actually read through it because I just think it's really unfortunate and very sad," said Perry in a recent interview on SiriusXM's

The "Rise" singer added that she feels badly for anyone's who has been fooled like this. "My heart goes out to him," she said. "People have dreams and people live in different parts of the world where not everything is so accessible. We live on the coasts and we get stuff in a way that some other people don't get, and I feel bad for him. So I didn't really like to indulge in that because my heart would die."

episode, the show's hosts discovered that Spencer had actually been talking to a woman named Heather who lives in England. They travelled to the U.K. to confront her and Spencer eventually realized that he'd been fooled.

Summary: A man mistakenly believed he'd been speaking to Katy Perry for six years


The sign read OneSteel Reinforcing.

It was the name of the business which hosted a visit by Bill Shorten and Kim Carr on Thursday.

But it could well have been the motto of the factional alliance which is holding the federal Labor party together.

The exit of Victorian Right powerbroker Stephen Conroy after two decades in parliament has put ALP unity in the spotlight.

The alliance between Conroy and Shorten (known as the "ShortCons") and Carr's Left sub-faction has largely kept the peace in Victoria, and in many ways nationally, but there is no guarantee it will last with Conroy outside the parliamentary caucus.

Evidence of the alliance's continuing strength, and the authority held by Shorten, will be how the Victorian branch resolves who fills Conroy's casual vacancy.

How Conroy's position of deputy opposition leader in the Senate is filled - potentially by South Australian Right powerbroker Don Farrell or veteran Victorian Right senator Jacinta Collins - will also shed light on the ebbs and flows within the party.

The Left maintains a strong position within the party, with Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong, Mark Butler and Anthony Albanese holding high profiles and spearheading the progressive agenda.

However, there remain some differences with the Right on issues such as asylum-seeker policy, and brutally factional preselection decisions such as relegating Lisa Singh on the Tasmanian Senate ticket.

Former Labor staffer and strategist Simon Banks, from consultants Hawker Britton, says the party's unity is built on much more than factions, even though they are significant.

Having to rely on arrangements between a broad range of sub-factional groupings, built around geography and personalities, would not be enough to keep a party like Labor stable and unified, he argues.

Banks says the key has been the ALP putting in a lot of work on policy and direction over the past three years, uniting members in a common cause.

"A phrase we've heard much of, but will hear much more in the future, is 'inclusive growth'," he told AAP.

"It's one that brings together the two strands of what Labor likes to focus on - growth, but in a way that is fair."

Overlaying that is Shorten's leadership style, which is very consultative, and the party's recent election performance which fell a fraction short of defeating the coalition, says Banks.

It doesn't hurt, either, that the Liberal party under Malcolm Turnbull has conservative and moderate streams at war with each other over a range of issues and pointing fingers over the near-fatal electoral disaster on July 2.

Banks believes Labor has more to do to broaden its constituencies but having internal cohesion and a central message gives the party a "good philosophical core to what they are doing".

Getting some state and local government wins under its belt will also be motivating for federal Labor.

NSW Labor achieved a strong result across western Sydney in the recent local government elections.

Shoring up support in these areas will be key to Labor's hopes of toppling the Baird government in 2019 and unseating Liberals in federal marginal seats.

The leadership turmoil within the West Australian Liberals this week, which left Colin Barnett wounded but still alive, has bolstered Labor leader Mark McGowan's chances of taking office in March 2017.

Labor could be in for a shock if Andrew Barr loses power in the ACT, which goes to the polls on October 15.

However, betting agencies give Labor a 65 per cent of holding onto the expanded 25-seat assembly after 12 years in charge.

A change of leadership within the party organisation, with the retirement of national secretary George Wright and likely replacement by Victorian branch secretary Noah Carroll, will inevitably see some changes.

Carroll, who hails from the Right faction, directed the strongly grassroots-oriented 2014 state campaign which unseated a one-term coalition government and propelled Daniel Andrews into the premiership.

Despite being in opposition, there's no doubting Shorten's steely resolve.

Summary: Factions and policy making have helped Bill Shorten build a unified Labor party machine, but there are some risks ahead.


A teenage gunman who injured three people at a South Carolina primary school before being arrested carried out the attack after killing his father, according to local officials.

The teen, whom the authorities did not identify, shot two boys - one in the leg, and the other in the foot - as well as a teacher in the shoulder at Townville Elementary in the west of the US state, officals said.

The attack was carried out mid-afternoon Wednesday local time and appeared to have occurred on the playground.

Police at Townville Elementary School. (WYFF News 4)

"The investigation is in initial stages... it's going to be a very slow, methodical and meticulous investigation," Captain Garland Major of the Anderson County Sheriff's Office said.

An active homicide investigation is under way into the death of Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, 47, the father of the alleged shooter who was found dead near his home about 3km from the school, the Anderson County coroner's office said.

The authorities received a call from the victim's family reporting his death shortly after the school shooting, it said.

Authorities and other people at the Townville Elementary School. (WYFF News 4)

The teenage assailant was arrested without incident and has no apparent racial motivation or connections to terrorism, Capt. Major said, adding that it was still unclear whether he suffers from mental illness.

A firefighter who was one of the first responders on scene contained the teenager, who was "apprehended within a matter of minutes," Joanne Avery, the Anderson County District Four Superintendent told the news conference.

"At approximately 1.45 this afternoon, an individual with a gun entered the premises of Townville Elementary School and injured two of our students and one of our teachers," she said.

One of the students was airlifted to a local hospital and was undergoing surgery late Wednesday, local media reported, while an ambulance took the other boy and teacher for medical treatment.

One of the boys has since been released from hospital, officials said.

Live images from the school immediately after the shooting showed a large number of police officers and members of the Anderson County Sheriff's Office heavily armed, some wearing helmets and flak jackets.

Students were evacuated on school buses to a nearby church, local media reported.

"The quick response by teachers and staff has kept this from being much worse," Avery said.

"We are heartbroken about the senseless act of violence."

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott tweeted that his heart was "sick for Anderson and South Carolina. Praying initial reports of no loss of life remain true and for those injured and their families".

The school has almost 300 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, local media reported.

School shootings have become a disturbing reality of American life and many facilities have reinforced security in recent years, especially in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, when 26 people - including 20 young children - were killed in Newtown, Connecticut.

Get breaking news alerts when a major story happens near you by downloading the 9NEWS Alerts app, available on iPhone and Android.

Summary: At least two children and a teacher have reportedly been injured during a shooting at a South Carolina elementary school, according to local media.


"Singapore has a natural strength in trade, a very trusted and reliable business environment and a talented pool of finance and banking professionals - all of this leads to an overall ease of doing business," Michael Moon, director of payments markets, APAC, SWIFT wrote in the official press release.

The process of 'clearing' is a procedure by which an organization acts as an intermediary between the buyer and seller to smooth banking and trading transactions.

Kwon also expects securities traffic to ramp up in Singapore as well.

Read MoreDays of one-way yuan bet may be over for good

"In April, the Monetary Authority of Singapore indicated in a speech that they are now looking to expand from a strong base in trade financing to developing a broader range of renminbi investment offerings, particularly in capital markets and asset management," he added.

In March, Yuan payments rose 29 percent on month in value to a record high. The yuan accounted for 1.62 percent of global payments, up from 1.42 percent in February.

The renminbi is gaining on the Canadian dollar, which has a 1.83 percent share, and the Australian dollar with a 1.84 percent share.

However, the Chinese currency is still far behind the U.S. dollar and the euro. Ranked first and second, respectively, they account for 40.19 percent and 31.78 percent of payments globally.

The SWIFT provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions.

Read MoreGive China credit on yuan liberalization: Australian Treasurer

Summary: Singapore has overtaken London as the largest clearing center for China's domestic currency outside of China and Hong Kong, according to SWIFT.


INQUEST INTO PHILLIP HUGHES' DEATH - WHAT WE KNOW:

* NSW Coroner Michael Barnes is looking at whether the nature of play contributed to risk, the response to Hughes' injury, and whether different equipment could make players safer

* At the November 25, 2014 Sheffield Shield game between NSW and South Australia at the SCG, NSW bowler Sean Abbott delivered nine consecutive short balls at Hughes. The inquest heard 23 bouncers were bowled in total on that day, 20 of them at Hughes

* Three separate triple zero calls were made

* The ambulance carrying Hughes left the SCG at 3.17pm, 54 minutes after he was hit.

WHAT HAPPENED ON DAY FIVE

* Counsel assisting the coroner Kristina Stern SC, Greg Melick SC (for Hughes' family) and Bruce Hodgkinson SC (Cricket Australia) were among those to make closing submissions

* Ms Stern made a series of recommendations, including training for umpires in first aid and emergency management.

* Mr Melick reiterated his belief that "there was sledging and short balls were bowled at Phillip Hughes that increased the risk of an injury such as this occurring".

* Mr Hodgkinson defended Brad Haddin and Tom Cooper's accounts, especially their belief there was no sledging during Hughes' final innings

* Hughes' father, mother, sister and brother all left the courtroom at various points, struggling to hide their fury at Mr Hodgkinson's words

* Cricket Australia's high-performance boss Pat Howard spoke to the press after proceedings, saying "we're very proud of the conduct of the players, officials and staff throughout" and that his organisation was "open to any suggestions of further improvements we might make".

Mr Barnes will release his findings on November 4.

Summary: A clear divide between the family of Phillip Hughes and Cricket Australia has been laid bare during the five days of an inquest into the batsman's death.


A stoush over water reform could sink the government's hopes of getting its backpacker tax through parliament.

Malcolm Turnbull is hoping to get the modified version of the tax through parliament, having agreed to cut the rate from 32.5 per cent to 19 per cent.

However his closest ally in the battle, South Australian crossbencher Nick Xenophon, said on Friday he was concerned about the federal government backtracking on a deal to return water to the Murray Darling river system.

Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, who met with state water ministers in Adelaide on Friday, said it was clear the promised 450 gigalitres in extra environmental flows could not be provided under the legislation which required there be no detrimental social or economic impacts.

Senator Xenophon said government MPs and senators needed to stand up for South Australia and for "sound policy based on science, not a whim or the sectional interest of cotton or rice growers upstream".

He said talks had been progressing with Mr Joyce on the backpacker tax, another issue in the minister's portfolio.

"Barnaby Joyce and I are locked in discussions over the backpacker tax and we've been an ally of the government in relation to that, subject to some conditions," Senator Xenophon told reporters in Adelaide.

"Barnaby knows I'm pretty reasonable, what he has done is unreasonable."

One Nation, which holds four Senate seats, has joined with Labor and independent Jacqui Lambie in calling for a 10.5 per cent rate.

The government has just two sitting weeks left in 2016 to get it through parliament.

Summary: The government's hopes of getting the so-called backpacker tax through parliament could be dashed by a battle over the Murray Darling river system.


A Perth woman is on a long road to recovery after an ethanol burner exploded and engulfed her in flames, leaving her in an induced coma for 17 days.

The three-cup burner was lit for about five seconds before it exploded, sending a fireball 1.5m into the woman's upper body and face, her father told 6PR radio on Thursday.

He said she underwent her third skin graft surgery on Wednesday and was being hailed by doctors as a model patient.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has received 35 reports of serious injuries from ethanol burners since October 2010, with most victims requiring hospitalisation.

Consumer Protection acting commissioner David Hillyard expressed concerns over the heaters, which were decorative, rather than functional.

"There are no documented mandatory standards for these things or where they are used," he said.

"The risks of what can happen has really been amplified."

The ACCC and Consumer Protection are investigating the product and advised people to be cautious when using them.

Summary: An exploding ethanol burner engulfed a Perth woman in flames, leaving her in an induced coma for 17 days and prompting warnings against the products.


London's main share index rose on Wednesday, lifted by shares in miners and banks.

The FTSE 100 index closed 1.8% higher at 6,902.2 points, with miners Rio Tinto and Anglo American the top gainers.

Banks were boosted by hopes that a rescue package for Italy's Monte Dei Paschi may emerge.

Reuters reported that Italy was preparing to take a €2bn stake in the country's oldest bank.

"There is general Christmas cheer in the markets after the Dow Jones struck another record high on Tuesday," said Kathleen Brooks from City Index.

"This is helping to boost risk sentiment overall. The markets are still banking on a big US [growth] upswing under Trump, and also more stimulus from the ECB, which leaves equity markets in a sweet spot as we head into the end of the year," she added.

Shire was the biggest faller, down 4.5%, with WPP shedding 2.8%.

On the currency markets, the pound fell 0.55% against the dollar to $1.2608, and dropped 0.9% against the euro to €1.1723.

That followed a surprise fall in UK manufacturing, which analysts said could dent fourth quarter growth figures.

Summary: London's main share index closes 1.8% higher, boosted by mining stocks.


Once upon a time a young, black man left the South American colony of British Guiana to go to England to read physics at Cambridge. While he was there, Hitler marched into Poland and our hero temporarily abandoned his studies to join the Royal Air Force and fight for the mother country.

By E. R. Braithwaite. 184 pp. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company. $6.95.

After five years of service and with England victorious, he returned to his university. His teachers in the hot and humid colony of his birth had always told him that he had been marked for greatness, and so was no surprise when he ended up among the first five in his graduating class. Certain of his talent and blessed with enviable naivetè, he began to look for a job. He met, however, a wall of resistance to his talent and the first of many pro forma statements that said: “We are impressed with your obvious ability but we cannot hire you because our other em ployes would object. You are, un fortunately, black.”

Our hero reeled. Could this be England? What was to become of his years of toil, his sacrifice, his hopes, his future? He pressed on. He went through scores of interviews with no success, for he remained what he always was in most English eyes: a freak with a master's degree from the country's top university who must now learn that the British landscape was not ready for him.

One would, at this point, excuse our hero his bitterness and his rage, for he saw his dreams whittled away “bit by bit, day by day, into weeks and months, until the only place on the whole arid horizon was a mangy schoolhouse beside a bomb‐racked, rotting graveyard, and a smelly class room with forty‐six foul‐mouthed youngsters.” But because he is a hero, our young man rose quickly from his slough of dejection. He awakened in the slum‐hardened white students a spark of creativity, and he left them with a modicum of learning. He wrote about his experience in “To Sir, With Love” and his book was translated into 25 languages. Sidney Poitier starred in the movie, millions saw it and everyone began to know our hero's name.

“Reluctant Neighbors” is E. R. Braithwaite's fifth book and his least successful. It is really an autobio graphical essay about an author‐ diplomat‐educator who wants the world to know that his talent has not put him at a safe distance from the arrogance of white people. So what else is new? He serves up his life to us through a feast of flash backs while sitting near a public‐ relations man who shares a train from New Canaan to New York. The device does not work, for the white man — your prototype 40‐year‐old‐ smiling‐liberal‐child wallows in banal ities and props himself up with such vapid assumptions that I found myself crying out: “Why don't you tell this honky to shove it?” Later the author asks himself the same question: “Why the hell [am] I even bothering to talk to him?” But by then we are bored with the per fumed litany of his achievements and anticipating the raw stench of a man abused.

The author has had a full life, and he wants us to peek at this life while observing his objectivity, his tempered wrath. He lets us meet a Ghanaian porter who tells him: “If you want to know about Ghana, ask me. I am Ghana.” And he wonders what will happen to those American blacks who insist upon saying: “I am not American,” for he realizes that no matter where they go, they carry their Americanness like a torch. And so he notes that “the time must come when they will have to feel the same way about America as that Ghanaian felt about Ghana. They must feel that their blood is involved with the soil.” I know very few American blacks who do not think that their blood—shed wantonly and without reward—has clogged the top soil of this country. It is not they who must feel at one with this country or seek its approbation, but rather it is this country that must prove itself worthy of its blacks.

“Reluctant Neighbors” disappoints me because I cannot feel the author feeling. He tells us nothing about the price he must continue to pay as long as he concerns himself with seeing his humanity through the mist of white assumptions. He casts a cold eye on the torment he must feel when he must estab lish—one more time, to one more white person—just who he is and what his accomplish ments are. And for what rea son? To be treated as an aber ration? To continue to be the freak he was two decades ago?

Braithwaite is, as always, a lucid writer, but it is his rea soned sweetness that now in furiates me. It means some thing, I suppose, to be a super black within the Western am bit, to continue to hold on to one's sanity, to bridle one's rage and to be able to smile at the blue eyes of white chil dren. It means something, I suppose, but I don't quite know what.

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

A version of this archives appears in print on September 17, 1972, on page BR4 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Righteousness. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Braithwaite, E R: Book Reluctant Neighbors by E R Braithwaite revd by O Coombs


A couple share a moment of domestic complicity, smiling over something the man is reading in a newspaper. It can’t be today’s paper, or they’d both be screaming. Inexplicably, a white china jug is perched on the woman’s greying hairdo. It is a lovely jug, perfectly rendered, perhaps placed there by a poltergeist. Hang on. Hubby also has a bunch of grapes, an apple and an old boot on his balding pate, but hasn’t yet noticed, and never will. Something weird is going on among the reflections behind the lenses of his spectacles. A fly rests on the woman’s hand, draped over the man’s shoulder. Is the painting meant as a sort of essay on mortality? The idea is easier to brush off than the fly itself.

The same white jug also reappears on top of another woman’s head in another painting. It is balanced there, offering us its dark and empty interior, by a fresh baguette. This, I think, is a reference to a Picasso still life. But this mad millinery, with its phallic and vaginal forms, is nothing to the woman herself, whose fresh-faced smile is belied by her out-of-kilter eyes, her discombobulated countenance. The more you look, the more skewed and out of proportion she is. Maybe that’s why she needs a walking stick. Is her belly distended by pregnancy? Could it be wind, or dropsy? A bird perches on her knee. Or it would if it weren’t so ghostly. I don’t like the look of its beak. I think it flew in from some medieval phantasmagoria and settled there.

Currin's painting are hard to take seriously – in fact, hard to take at all, and certainly not at surface value

There many things askew with the five paintings in John Currin’s show at Sadie Coles. Another ageing couple tenderly embrace. An upturned ice-cream cone is planted on the side of the man’s head, dribbling pistachio-coloured drool down his cheek. He leans into his partner’s shoulder. Her hand grasps his man-boob through his jacket and shirt. A ridiculous still life: Chardinesque playing cards, a glass of white wine, an orange, a shiny metal paint-can, a pair of fish (black bream, I surmise) and a high-heeled slipper teeters on her head, a draped silk stocking completing the impossible Dutch still-life ensemble. A snail climbs the woman’s back. It does not belong in this painting, but then what does?

Filled with visual jokes, art historical pastiche and unlovable people, Currin’s paintings are hard to take seriously – in fact, hard to take at all, and certainly not at surface value, although surface is all they are. As absurd and decadent as their high prices, and the art world in which they circulate, Currin’s canvases stop you in your tracks. He knows that paintings are a kind of high-end luxury object, conversation pieces and vanities for their owners. He knows we know it too. Like his contemporary Lisa Yuskavage (they studied together at Yale in the mid-80s), whose lurid, sickly paintings depict hippies, impossibly pneumatic fairy chicks and gross dudes, Currin paints pictures that defy taste. They have a painterly erudition that trips you up and makes you feel bad about both hating their work and liking it a lot. Both positions feel untenable. But then painting is untenable too, which is a good enough reason to be doing it.

Currin runs the full gamut of painterly effects, degrees of completion and different registers of paintedness, from trompe-l’oeil realism to the cartoonish, from high finish to cursory knocked-in grisaille and underpainting, from high-finish virtuosity to fuzzy, 18th-century rococo frivolity. Currin is extremely good at being excessively bad. There are jokes about genres and manners, and jokes about paint itself, jokes that mostly only other painters will get.

The wall to the rear of the Happy House Painters looks like scuffed-up old plaster, ready for a slap of emulsion and a sensitive sort of close-valued abstraction. I think of the space in Goya’s enigmatic Dog painting, with all its ghostly pentimenti. In the foreground of Currin’s picture, paint dribbles down a can of yellow household paint. The dribble isn’t just a dribble, but a painted dribble. There is a splotch of paint on the brush held by one of the two female decorators taking a breather. A smear of that yellow has got on to the second woman’s blue shirt. The yellow blob is both a real splotch of colour and a depiction of itself. It stays where Currin put it, on the surface of his painting and in its rightful place on the shirt, in the fictive painted space. This is very hard to get right. Currin nails it.

Things happen to the people in Currin’s paintings and things happen in the paint. He paints people and scenes that are really hard to take. Misanthropic, misogynistic, cruel, absurd, silly – all these criticisms could be – and have been – thrown at him. His art is about flesh, manners, types, relationships and, most of all, the question of representation. Isn’t that always the big question for painters, the what and how and why to paint? This group of new paintings is more than a laugh, a recoil and a grimace – though it is all these things. Once you get over the initial knowing wince, there is an awful lot to unravel. I don’t think I could live with a Currin; I certainly wouldn’t want to live inside one. But perhaps I already do.

Summary: Art history collides with horrible people in Currin’s disquieting canvases – and questions are asked about the reasons for painting itself


A lost little penguin has been rescued after becoming stuck in a stormwater drain in the inner western Sydney suburb of Haberfield. RSPCA inspectors managed to flush the blocked penguin out with a gush of water and it was taken to Taronga zoo to be given food and fluids. Haberfield is at least 25km by road from the colony of little penguins at Manly. It was expected the penguin would be released into the wild once it had recovered from its ordeal, the RSPCA said.

Summary: A lost little penguin has been rescued by RSPCA NSW after becoming stuck in a stormwater drain in the inner western Sydney suburb of Haberfield


Lost cats and dogs in South Australia will be reunited with their owners more easily when a new registration system is rolled out, the state government says.

Environment Minister Ian Hunter says from mid-2018, pet owners will be able to register their animals online and store other data on an SA-wide database.

At the moment, each of the state's 68 councils has its own pet registration database, and private companies hold microchip, breeder and vet information.

Mr Hunter says all councils, police and other service providers will be able to access the new Dogs and Cats Online database, making it easier to get lost animals back to their owners and for authorities to nab dodgy breeders.

"It will become an important tool for the RSPCA to investigate and prosecute animal cruelty cases," he said in a statement on Friday.

"Registration of breeders through DACO will help weed out puppy farms and other cruel and unethical breeding businesses."

The online database is part of a broader effort to improve how SA's cats and dogs are managed.

From mid-2018, legislative changes making it mandatory for cats and dogs to be desexed and microchipped, so fewer need to be euthanised, will take effect.

Summary: South Australian cat and dog owners will soon be able to register their animals online through a new statewide system.


November 30, 2010 | 6:19 PM PST

Senate Republicans Circulate Letter Outlining Strategy Of Blocking Most Bills In Lame Duck

November 30, 2010 | 1:59 PM PST

Documents Released By Ethics Committee Show How Charles Rangel's Legal Fees Grew

November 30, 2010 | 12:00 PM PST

Top Democrat Says He'll Set A Test-vote On Bill Legalizing Young Undocumented Immigrants

November 30, 2010 | 12:05 PM PST

House Approves $4.6 Billion Settlement For American Indians, Black Farmers

November 30, 2010 | 11:39 AM PST

Republican Senators Indicate Some Progress On US-Russia Nuclear Treaty

November 30, 2010 | 10:25 AM PST

Lost Re-election? No More Office: Midterm Casualties Vacate Suites But Still Must Vote

November 30, 2010 | 9:49 AM PST

Conservatives Push For Amendment To Constitution To Give States Repeal Power Over Washington

November 30, 2010 | 7:25 AM PST

Senate Roll Vote: Senate Rejects GOP Bid To Ban Earmarks

November 29, 2010 | 6:20 PM PST

Former 9-term NY Congressman Stephen Solarz Dies; Revealed Info On Imelda Marcos' Extravagance

November 30, 2010 | 12:29 AM PST

Foreign Affairs Expert Was Strong Voice in Congress on Behalf of Human Rights

November 29, 2010 | 2:14 PM PST

Rep. Mark Kirk Sworn In, Raising Number Of Senate Republicans To 42, With More To Come In Jan.

November 29, 2010 | 12:23 PM PST

Wary First Meeting For Capital's New Order: Obama, GOP Leaders Seek To Resolve Tax Differences

November 29, 2010 | 10:40 AM PST

Congress Agrees To Short-term Postponement To Doctor Medicare Payments

November 29, 2010 | 8:07 AM PST

Congressional GOP Leaders To Meet With Republican Governors Wednesday

November 29, 2010 | 3:19 AM PST

Leading House Intelligence Panel Republican Calls Release Of Documents Harmful To US Interests

November 28, 2010 | 7:12 AM PST

Senator In Discussions Of Terrorism Trials Doubts 9/11 Suspects Will Be Put In Civilian Courts

November 28, 2010 | 6:35 AM PST

McCain Says Ending 'don't Ask, Don't Tell' Would Reflect Politics, Not Problems In Military

November 28, 2010 | 5:33 AM PST

Graham Downplays Chances Of Lame-duck Congress Ending 'don't Ask, Don't Tell' Policy

November 28, 2010 | 5:34 AM PST

Key Republican Senator Says Arms Control Treaty Can Wait, Other Matters More Urgent

November 28, 2010 | 5:37 AM PST

McCain Calls For Discussing 'regime Change' In NKorea, Offers No Ideas For How To Do It

November 28, 2010 | 4:49 AM PST

Rangel Says Censure Too Severe, Wants House Censure Downgraded To Reprimand In Ethics Case

November 28, 2010 | 4:18 AM PST

Tax Cuts, Money For The Government Are Among The Leftovers When Congress Returns To Capitol

November 27, 2010 | 11:55 AM PST

How Congress' Decision On Whether And How To Extend Bush-era Tax Cuts Could Affect Economy

November 25, 2010 | 7:48 AM PST

Evidence In Waters Case: No Link Yet To Allegations She Tried To Protect Husband's Bank Stock

November 23, 2010 | 1:44 PM PST

PROMISES, PROMISES: GOP Leader Reaps $200 Million For Arizona Tribe After Ban On Earmarks

Summary: Read the latest AP - Congress headlines on CBS News, covering news stories, videos and pictures of world and US news, as well as news in politics, health, sports and business.


By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. -- David "Joey" Pedersen spent nearly half his life in prison, building a lengthy rap sheet that includes a conviction for repeatedly hitting a prison guard in the face with a hot iron. He also threatened to kill a federal judge and committed a litany of other crimes including robbery and assault.

But his crimes were never deemed serious enough to warrant a sentence longer than a few years, and Pedersen walked out of prison on May 24 a free man. He was actually let out three months early for good behavior, despite the fact that he was in prison in the first place for attacking a guard.

And his bad behavior while behind bars - 68 incidents in 14 years - landed him in solitary confinement for most of his stay. While being locked down and kept away from other prisoners, he accrued time for early release

The quirks in the justice system that let Pedersen get out when he did allowed the 31-year-old white supremacist to begin a new life on the outside, taking up cage-fighting and meeting a female companion who had done time herself. Prosecutors said they soon began killing people, starting with Pedersen's father and stepmother. They then killed an Oregon teenager, stole his car and killed a fourth person in California before being caught, prosecutors said.

Pedersen was unrepentant when questioned about the assault on the prison guard.

"I would have killed him if that other guy hadn't stopped me," Pedersen told an investigator looking into the 2001 assault in documents obtained by The Associated Press. "I'm just not putting up with their bull---- anymore. I ain't got nothing else to say to you."

At the time of the assault, he had been in prison for one day. Prosecutors sought to bring attempted aggravated murder charges against Pedersen, but a grand jury decided the incident merited a first-degree assault charge. It was later dropped to second-degree assault.

Pedersen and Grigsby have admitted in separate interviews to a California newspaper that they committed the crimes. Pedersen said he did it because he said his father molested his sister. Grigsby, also a white supremacist, said she was trying to preserve the white race.

"I'm hoping the sacrifice we have made will open some people's eyes and they will wake up and hear the call. It's not as hard as they think," Grigsby told the Appeal-Democrat newspaper. "This is what I was born to do."

With an image of Adolph Hitler on his stomach and the tattoo of a swastika just above his heart, Pedersen's long rap sheet includes 68 offenses in 14 years of incarceration.

But for most of his prison sentence, he was segregated from the prison population. In the last 20 months of his latest sentence, it was an opportunity to accumulate "earned time" to the tune of one day off his sentence for every five days in prison.

The 122 days taken off his sentence changed his release date to May 24. His scheduled date of release without earned time credits would have been Sept. 23. Three days later, on Sept. 26, authorities believe he and Grigsby killed Pedersen's father and stepmother.

Pedersen took up cage fighting after his release in May. Sometime after, he met Grigsby through a mutual friend.

Even though Grigsby had a husband and a 2-year-old, she started hanging around Pedersen at cage matches, jogging with him in the mornings and eventually weaning herself from a drug habit into which she had relapsed after being clean for nearly a year.

Grigsby and Pedersen had much in common. Grigsby had served time in prison as well. She gave birth to her son there. She showed the same white-supremacy tendencies as Pedersen, posting on her Facebook page: "every Jewish lie and every Jewish slander is a scar of honor on the chest of a warrior."

Alone, Grigsby and Pedersen had managed to isolate their families, accept white supremacy as a guiding ideology and commit offenses that landed them behind bars. Together, authorities suspect, their union proved deadly.

Despite the neo-Nazi tattoos covering Pedersen's body and his 14 years in prison, people who know him say he was not an outwardly aggressive person. After getting tapped out in a September cage fight - his first of three losses - Pedersen shook the hand of his opponent and told him "good job."

Scott Baker, Pedersen's opponent in an Aug. 27 cage match, said he spoke to him after the bout, in which he forced Pedersen to tap out in less than one minute by getting him in a choke hold.

"I tried to give him a comfort, told him you're gonna lose sometimes but you can't give up," Baker said. "It was weird. Knowing how it is now, I wish I would have choked him out longer."

Pedersen also let his tattoos speak for him. The most prominent are the blue initials "SWP" that sprout from his neck, spreading higher than any shirt collar could cover. They stand for "Supreme White Power."

Sean Baker, Scott's Baker's brother, said the pair had a "perfectly normal" talk with Pedersen after the bout.

"Whenever you see anybody that's all tatted up, it's a little intimidating," Sean Baker said. "We were intimidated at first. Then we ended up talking to him afterward and he seemed like the nicest guy."

The reasons for Pedersen's incarceration include fairly unspectacular offenses - robbery and second-degree assault. A smiling, bespectacled 14-year-old freshman at North Salem High School in 1994 emerged two years later with a robbery conviction that landed him first in juvenile detention, then in an adult prison at the age of 16 in March 1997.

Three months later, he committed his first infraction, an assault that landed him in the prison's "Intensive Management Unit," where he would spend the next six months isolated from other inmates for 23 hours each day.

It's unclear whether the initial assault was race related, but during Pedersen's two long stints in prison, he certainly rang up incidents related to race and religion. Five times in his first three years in prison, he was disciplined for harassment based on another inmate or guard's race, religion or sexual orientation. He was also disciplined for assault six times in the same period.

The Associated Press filed information requests seeking the details of the assaults and harassment incidents, which are public record. The Oregon Department of Corrections told the AP it needed time to redact the files of sensitive information, a process that took more than six business days.

Pedersen would go on to spend more than four calendar years, a total of 1,555 days straight, segregated from his fellow inmates between October 1998 and January 2003, emerging only to attend court.

His second sentence began soon after, four years of it spent at a federal prison in Colorado and another three-plus years in Oregon. Most of that was spent segregated from other inmates, and in the last 20 months of his sentence, he began to earn time off of it.

Oregon's formula is to remove one day from a sentence for every five days spent in prison. Pedersen drew no infractions during that period, stripping the equivalent of about four months from his original release date.

Pedersen's litany of offenses should have been a reason to keep him in prison longer than his original sentence called for, said Harriet Salarno, chair of the California-based Crime Victims United, which presses the Legislature for stiffer sentences.

"There should be some enhancements that if you don't behave, you stay longer," Salarno said. "If they can't conform in prison, they certainly can't conform in the outside world."

Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report


LOS ANGELES – "Dancing with the Stars" viewers didn't give Metta World Peace a chance.

The basketball star formerly known as Ron Artest was the first celebrity ejected Tuesday from the 13th edition of the ABC dancing competition. The show's judges gave World Peace the lowest score on Monday's premiere: 14 out of a possible 30.

The outgoing Los Angeles Lakers forward was locked out after viewer votes were combined with the judges' scores.

"All I want to know is who's coming with me?" he joyfully shouted after his dismissal.

Len Goodman, the show's head judge, said World Peace's cha-cha with professional partner Peta Murgatroyd was "all sizzle and no sausage" and his footwork in the ballroom was "atrocious."

For his debut performance, the over-the-top athlete bared his chest in a shimmering gold vest and shaved the Hebrew words for "world peace" into the side of his head.

The 11 celebrities remaining in the competition are World Cup soccer player Hope Solo; reality stars Robert Kardashian and Kristin Cavallari; TV personalities Nancy Grace, Carson Kressley and Ricki Lake; actors David Arquette and J.R. Martinez; Italian actress Elisabetta Canalis; singer Chynna Phillips; and author and activist Chaz Bono.

Summary: Viewers vote for one celeb to hang up dancing shoes after Week 1 of Dancing With the Stars.


Minka Kelly and Derek Jeter in 2010

is in the air – again.

, Derek Jeter and Minka Kelly appear to have rekindled their romance with a vacation in Paris, PEOPLE has learned.

Over the holiday weekend, the Yankee slugger, 37, and

actress, 31, who were staying with friends in a boutique hotel on the Left Bank, took in some of the city's hottest tourist attractions, including Musée D'Orsay on Thursday.

On Saturday, they visited the Montmartre district, where they checked out Paris' Sacré-Coeur church. And Kelly didn't let the rainy day dampen her spirits, taking pictures of Jeter on her cell phone while sightseeing.

"They looked much in love," an observer tells PEOPLE. "They were always very, very close [and] very playful as a couple with each other."

The notoriously private couple announced their split in August after dating for three years.

Summary: The couple looked "playful" and "in love" while in Paris, an observer tells PEOPLE


Compensation varies tremendously, based on career path, for many of the 30 degrees we looked at. An actuary with a master's in mathematics can hit a median midcareer pay of $157,000. But a high school teacher with the same degree may pull in a sight less robust $57,800.

Concentration within the degree makes a difference as well. M.B.A.s who focused on finance had median salaries of $124,000, while those in accounting took home only $72,500. "Not all M.B.A.s are created equal," says Payscale's Lee.

By our count, computer science is the second-best advanced degree, including for those who become IT consultants and senior software engineers. Median pay for these grads is $111,000, fourth best out of the 30 degrees in our survey. Employment opportunities for computer science degree-holders are expected to expand 27% over the next decade, fourth best among all disciplines.

Full List: Worst Master's Degrees For Jobs

For more about graduate education, including a ranking of Best Business Schools, visit our Education section.

The worst master's degrees pit career satisfaction against financial rewards. Getting a master's in education or social work (both rank near the bottom) can be gratifying, but costly. If you are still determined to take that route--and saddle yourself with $60,000 or more in debt at a private university--don't quit your day job. Median midcareer pay for both degrees is under $60,000, and employment growth is expected to be limited.

Jean Morse, associate dean of the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies, makes the case for an advanced degree, whether in English literature or computer science. "A master's improves general analytical skills and improves knowledge within the field," she says. "It also improves contacts within a field, as there is a networking element."

In Pictures: Best Master's Degrees For Jobs

In Pictures: Worst Master's Degrees For Jobs

Summary: These programs offer the best salaries and employment prospects over the next decade. Page 2 of 2


The Patrick administration is pressing Amazon.com Inc. to begin collecting sales taxes from Massachusetts customers as early as next year, arguing it is no longer exempt under federal law from charging the tax.

Under federal law, online retailers do not have to collect sales taxes from Massachusetts buyers unless the company has a physical presence, such as an office or store, in the state. But officials in the administration of Governor Deval Patrick contend that Amazon’s purchase of a North Reading technology firm, Kiva Systems, earlier this year, as well as its ongoing efforts to recruit engineers for a new office in Cambridge, establish the kind of physical presence necessary to collect the 6.25 percent sales tax.

The state government lost out on an estimated $387 million in 2011 from Massachusetts residents buying products tax-free from online retailers, according to the Massachusetts Main Street Fairness Coalition, an association of retailers, unions and local officials.

The group has been pressuring the Patrick administration to compel Amazon to collect and remit state taxes.

Patrick officials said they have meet with Amazon executives at least a half dozen times over the past six months to discuss how the retailer would undertake the complex process of programming its system to charge the Massachusetts tax on qualified purchases.

Patrick said he was encouraged by the progress.

“The conversation with Amazon here is different than the conversation Amazon had in other states,” the governor said recently. “They have had and reached agreements in states where they actually have a presence, where they have a distribution facility . . . they don’t have that here.”

Even if Amazon and the state do come to terms on tax collections, Patrick said, “I’m just not sure that we’re going to have an agreement in place in time for the holidays.”

Amazon would not comment on its talks with Massachusetts.

Amazon now collects taxes in eight states, and six others have set deadlines for the retailing giant to begin collecting their local levies because the company now has a facility of some kind in their jurisdictions.

Much of the progress states have made in capturing those taxes has come from Amazon’s success, as the firm rapidly expands its brick-and-mortar facilities.

In New Jersey, for example, Amazon agreed to begin collecting that state’s 7 percent sales tax on local buyers, beginning July 2013, after deciding to build two 1 million-square-feet shipping centers there. The company is building out its network of these massive fulfillment centers in order to increase its already fast delivery services.

Patrick officials said they would like Massachusetts to get in on Amazon’s expansion plans, such as having the company add a distribution facility here, too.

In October, the company announced it would open 19 new facilities around the world to handle the expected holiday shopping rush — but declined to name the locations.

In recent months, Amazon has started construction on sprawling warehouses in California, where it already collects local taxes, and in Indiana, where it soon will.

“The additions are made to support the growth we are seeing and to support our selection and in-stock goals,” said Kelly Cheeseman, an Amazon spokeswoman.

In total, it operates 40 such warehouse and shipping facilities in the United States and employs more than 20,000 people at the centers.

The tax status of Amazon and other Web retailers has ballooned into a major debate at the federal level, as financially pressed states, backed by local retailers and other businesses, push Congress to allow them to tax online sales regardless of the seller’s location.

“This is not simply a revenue issue . . . it is a matter of fairness and equity to Main Street businesses,” Massachusetts Treasurer Steven Grossman wrote in a letter to US Senator Max Baucus, head of the Senate’s Finance Committee, pushing for online tax legislation.

“Local retailers and other merchants should not have to compete with online sales giants that do not have to collect state and local sales taxes,” he said. “It is simply contrary to sound public policy to penalize companies that actually invest in a brick-and-mortar presence in a community.”

Summary: The Patrick administration is pressing Amazon.com Inc. to begin collecting sales taxes from Massachusetts customers as early as next year due to the online retailing giant’s recent acquisition of the North Reading robotics company Kiva Systems Inc. Under federal law, online retailers do not have to collect sales taxes from Massachusetts buyers unless the company has a physical presence in the state. But its purchase of Kiva Systems may establish enough of a physical presence to require Amazon to charge the 6.25 percent sales tax on purchases made by Bay State shoppers.


Firecracker supports female photographers 'by showcasing their work in a series of monthly online gallery features'

Firecracker, an online platform for European women photographers, is one year old this month. On its already rich and varied archive, you can view work by the likes of Polly Braden, Leonie Hampton, Dana Popa, Laura Hynd and Chloe Dewe Mathews.

Firecracker is the brainchild of Fiona Rogers, who works as cultural and education manager at the Magnum photo agency in London. "Despite many fantastic women working with photographic media," writes Rogers in Firecracker's mission statement, "the industry continues to be dominated by male counterparts".

Firecracker's response is to help in "the promotion of women photographers by showcasing their work in a series of monthly online gallery features". The photographers chosen are selected from nominations made by, what Rogers calls, a "network of industry professionals" and the site will also feature work recommended by regular high-profile guest curators. This summer, too, will see the launch of the Firecracker photographic grant, which will support a female photographer on a documentary photographic project. Any female photographer born or living in Europe is eligible and judges include Francesca Sears from the Panos agency, and Diane Smyth, deputy editor of the British Journal of Photography.

Anyone interested in helping raise funds for the Firecracker photographic grant can buy an illustrated Firecracker 2012 diary, designed by Dutch design hipsters, Kummer & Herman, which showcases the work of the photographers featured on the site throughout the past year.

Summary: Sean O'Hagan: In an industry still dominated by men, Firecracker promotes and supports women working in photography


MARGARET IOANNOU'S slip is showing. A peek through her window stops traffic. Smack in the middle of Bell Blvd. in Bayside, Queens, one of the more conservative neighborhoods in the city, sits her racy little lingerie store called Azure. The boutique has been open for business for a year and a half now, the front window an alluring tease of lacy barely-there undies, see-through bras, sexy teddies, fancy garters, shocking thongs, outlandish Halloween getups, come-hither nighties. All that stuff that women love. And that drives men nuts. This is the stuff that love and romance and babies are made of. "I also designed the store in neutral colors so that it would not intimidate men," says Ioannou. "Unlike Victoria's Secret, which is a chick store, I tried not to make the place too pink or girlie. "A lot of men come in to shop for their girlfriends or their wives, buying stuff they want to see them wear. And when they're in the store, they see that we also sell men's stuff, including sexy boxer shorts, cool robes, lounge pants. Guys like to feel sexy, too.

" But women flock to the store from around the city and Long Island to shop for sexy shower gifts, honeymoon suite outfits, and anything to do with wedding gifts in this store that has spiced up this popular commercial strip. "Right now is a very busy time for us because of Halloween," says Ioannou. "We're selling sexy 'Alice in Wonderland' costumes like crazy. But also sexy costumes of nurses, cops, pirates, pilots, Wonder Woman and all sorts of fairy-tale-themed costumes.

" Any time of year, Azure is a good place to go to jumpstart a relationship that has lost its heartbeat. A perfect place to grab a birthday or anniversary gift. And an easy stop to shop early for the holidays. A tastefully risqué place that will help you stuff yourself into a pair of Christmas stockings. "I came to Bayside because I thought my store would break up the monotony of all those restaurants," says Ioannou. "I loved the neighborhood. Knew people had some disposable income. I also knew how far I could push the envelope. "My window displays are head-turning but fun. Not vulgar. I made sure the store was classy, elegant. I've gotten nothing but compliments and support from the neighborhood.

" Opening a small business in this economy is scary. But for a young woman like Margaret Ioannou, it was a lifelong dream. She grew up in a traditional Greek family in Astoria, attended St. Demetrious and graduated from Bayside High and Berkeley College. Through her school years, she learned the lingerie business working in her mother's store on Steinway St. "I learned all there was to learn working for my mother," she says. "But I had a dream to one day open my own place and take it to another level. But first I went to work in J. Walter Thompson advertising agency for almost seven years. I saved my money and kept thinking about my dream. I wanted to be my own boss, create my own business, be an entrepreneur. "One day a year and a half ago when I was driving along Bell Blvd., I saw the For Rent sign on this store right near 39th Ave. I knew this was it. I was ready to gamble, ready to take a risk. What's life without a little risk?

" She quit her job, rented the store and reached for her dream. Margaret's father, a building contractor, built the store to her specifications. She flew off to Las Vegas - the universal capital of risk-takers, where twice a year the lingerie industry holds its conventions - and decided what happens in Vegas should also happen in Bayside. "I chose a sexy but tasteful line," she says. When she opened for business, her eye-popping window displays stopped foot traffic on staid Bell Blvd. Motorists did double-takes at the sizzling outfits on the mannequins. An "I Love My Shoes" store opened a few doors away, in the same building as a Curves fitness center. Women suddenly found it easy to shop for two passions - shoes and undies - on a single block without the crush of a mall. "I think my store is unique," she says. "I sell quality stuff at reasonable prices, things you won't find in chain stores. Valentine's Day, Halloween and Christmas are my biggest holidays. But business is brisk all year now. For New Year's, we have dresses and gowns.

" You have to root for anyone willing to roll the dice on a dream. And while many people literally lose their drawers on small businesses, this native Queens girl doesn't sound like someone with her knickers in a financial twist. "So far my gamble has paid off," she says. "I think this holiday season might push us into a true success.


It has been said that in the automotive world, there is no replacement for displacement.

At Acura’s stand at the New York auto show, however, the 2015 TLX sedan displaced two models in one fell swoop. Gone is the midsize TL, and with it the diluted legacy of the iconic Legend, as well as the smaller, sporty TSX, which had taken up the mantle as the enthusiast driver’s car in the lineup.

The TLX, then, falls into the same valley of undefined class as the Infiniti Q50, which stubbornly fails to conform to either the midsize or compact-but-not-quite entry-level luxury categories. That sedan, as we learned, is something of a “performance bargain”. The TLX, for its lack of competitive horses in the stable, may struggle to compete in that regard.

The design and shape of the production TLX, including its LED headlamps and large pentagonal grille, strays little from the TLX Prototype concept shown at the Detroit auto show in January.

There are no great surprises inside, either; the TLX adheres to a design and ergonomic formula that seems almost too familiar for a brand-new model expected to capture sales from two distinct pools of buyers.

And, inasmuch as Acura is trying to pursue a one-sedan strategy, Acura engineer Mat Hargett, who was heavily involved in the TLX’s development, described the resulting car as “actually three sedans”.

The base TLX will feature a 2.4-litre direct-injection gasoline four-cylinder engine producing 206 horsepower. Despite its similarity to a Honda engine, Acura claims the 2.4 is exclusive the TLX. It is matched to an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission.

A 3.5-litre V-6 is optional, producing a stout 290hp. The six connects to a traditional nine-speed automatic, sending its power to the front wheels or, optionally, all four, via Acura’s acronym-friendly Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive and Precision All-Wheel Steering system. Both powertrains will be more frugal than those in the TSX and TL, thanks to triple-digit weight savings.

The 2015 TLX goes on sale late in 2014. Pricing is forthcoming.

Summary: The sedan, which stubbornly straddles the compact and mid-size sport sedan segments, nevertheless benefits from strong transmissions and a diet.


UPDATED 05/17/2014 at 12:00 PM EDT • Originally published 05/08/2014 at 05:00 PM EDT

The actor, best known for playing

patriarch Danny Tanner, turns 58 on Saturday. Because we're committed to bringing you the finest nostalgia Photoshop can make possible, PEOPLE proudly presents: The

gang with their younger selves.

Bob Saget in 2014 and 1990

Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard; Photos Provided Getty and REX USA

In a weird universe where every TV and film character coexist, we love the idea of Bob Saget from

crossing paths. Maybe in rehab.

Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen in 1992 and 2013

Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman; Photos Provided by Getty

. Paris, Brazil, Rome ...

Candace Cameron Bure, 2013 and 1989

Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman; Photos Provided by Getty

her favorite of Uncle Jesse's catchphrases was "Have mercy," which is how we got the title for this piece.

Jodie Sweetin in 1991 and 2012

Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman; Photos Provided by Getty

Hopefully, Sweetin's okay with this. We'd hate to have her

Andrea Barber in 1991 and 2013

Photo Illustration by Linzi Silverman; Photos Provided by Getty

, we would totally watch a

spin-off that catches up with Kimmy Gibbler.

Lori Loughlin, 1985 and 2014

Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard; Photos Provided by Getty

Oh, Lori Loughlin. Look at that smile. That smile

John Stamos in 2014 and 1986

Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard; Photos Provided by Getty

Rippers reunion tour! The people demand it.

Dave Coulier in 2014 and 1987

Photo Illustration by Tiffany Hagler-Geard; Photos Provided Getty and REX USA

"You oughta know ... you might one day inspire a

Summary: Crank up the Rippers and get ready to cut. It. Out


This post is in partnership with Inc., which offers useful advice, resources and insights toentrepreneurs and business owners. The article below was originally published at Inc.com.

Are you as confident as you’d like to be? Few people would answer “yes” to that question. But, according to Becky Blalock, author and former Fortune 500 executive, anyone can learn to be more confident. And it’s a skill we can teach ourselves.

Begin by forgetting the notion that confidence, leadership, and public speaking are abilities people are born with. In fact, research shows that being shy and cautious is the natural human state. “That’s how people in early times lived to pass on their genes, so it’s in our gene pool,” she says. “You had to be cautious to survive. But the things they needed to worry about then are not the things we need to worry about today.”

How do you teach yourself to be more confident? Here’s Blalock’s advice:

The average human has 65,000 thoughts every day, Blalock says, and 85 to 90 percent of them are negative–things to worry about or fear. “They’re warnings to yourself,” Blalock says, and left over from our cave-dwelling past. It makes sense–if we stick our hand in a flame our brain wants to make sure we don’t ever do that again. But this survival mechanism works against us because it causes us to focus on fears rather than hopes or dreams.

The point is to be aware that your brain works this way, and keep that negativity in proportion. “What you have to realize is your thoughts are just thoughts,” Blalock says. They don’t necessarily represent objective reality.

“There are so many people that I’ve asked, ‘What do you want to do? What do you want to be?’ and they would say, ‘I don’t know,’” Blalock says. “Knowing what you want is the key. Everything else you do should be leading you where you want to go.”

Begin the day by thinking about some of the things you have to be grateful for, Blalock advises. “Most of the 7 billion people in the world won’t have the opportunities you do,” she says. “If you start out with that perspective, you’ll be in the right frame of mind for the rest of the day.”

There’s a funny thing about comfort zones. If we step outside them on a regular basis, they expand. If we stay within them, they shrink. Avoid getting trapped inside a shrinking comfort zone by pushing yourself to do things that are outside it.

We’ve all had experiences where we’ve done something that terrified us, and then discovered it wasn’t so bad. In Blalock’s case, she was visiting a military base and had gotten to the top of the parachute-training tower for a practice jump. “They had me all hooked up, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this, I have a small child at home,’” she recalls. “The guy took his foot and pushed me off the tower. When I got out there I realized it wasn’t that bad.”

We won’t always have someone standing by to kick us out of our comfort zones, so we have to do it for ourselves. “Just act!” Blalock says.

If you’re running into opposition, questions, and doubts, there’s probably a good reason–you’re going somewhere. That doesn’t mean you should ignore warning signs, but it does mean you should put those negatives in perspective. If you don’t make changes, and challenge the status quo, no one will ever object to anything you do.

“It’s not failure that destroys our confidence, it’s not getting back up,” Blalock says. “Once we get back up, we’ve learned what doesn’t work and we can give it another try.” Blalock points out that the baseball players with the biggest home run records also have the biggest strikeout records. Taking more swings gets you where you want to go.

Whatever you’ve set out to do, there are likely others who’ve done it first and can offer you useful advice or at least serve as role models. Find those people and learn as much from them as you can.

“Your outlook–negative or positive–will be the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” Blalock says. “So be careful who you hang out with. Make sure you’re hanging out with people who encourage you and lift you up.”

When she quit her C-suite job to write books, she adds, some people were aghast and predicted that no one would read them while others were quite encouraging. It didn’t take her long to figure out that the encouraging friends were the ones she should gravitate toward.

In almost any situation, preparation can help boost your confidence. Have to give a speech? Practice it several times, record yourself, and listen. Meeting people for the first time? Check them and their organizations out on the Web, and check their social media profiles as well. “If you’re prepared you will be more confident,” Blalock says. “The Internet makes it so easy.”

There’s ample evidence by now that getting enough sleep, exercise, and good nutrition profoundly affects both your mood and your effectiveness. “Just moderate exercise three times a week for 20 minutes does so much for the hippocampus and is more effective than anything else for warding off Alzheimer’s and depression,” Blalock says. “Yet it always falls of the list when we’re prioritizing. While there are many things we can delegate, exercise isn’t one of them. If there were a way to do that, I would have figured it out by now.”

“This one is so simple,” Blalock says. “If you breathe heavily, it saturates your brain with oxygen and makes you more awake and aware. It’s very important in a tense situation because it will make you realize that you control your body, and not your unconscious mind. If you’re not practicing breathing, you should be.”

No, you shouldn’t pretend to have qualifications or experience that you don’t. But if you have most of the skills you need and can likely figure out the rest, don’t hang back. One company did a study to discover why fewer of its female employees were getting promotions than men. It turned out not to be so much a matter of bias as of confidence: If a man had about half the qualifications for a posted job he’d be likely to apply for it, while a woman would be likelier to wait till she had most or all of them. Don’t hold yourself back by assuming you need to have vast experience for a job or a piece of business before you go after it.

“Don’t assume people know what you want,” Blalock says. “You have to figure out what that is, and then educate them.”

Once people know what you want, and that you want their help, you may be surprised at how forthcoming they are. “People are really flattered when you ask for advice and support,” she says. “If someone says no you can always ask someone else. But in my experience, they rarely say no.”

Read more from Inc.com:How 4 Entrepreneurs Started Up (Really) YoungFiring an Employee–Even a Bad One–Is Hard to Do

Summary: Few are born confident, research shows. The self-assured learn to be that way, and you can too


The abysmal gender gap (and lack of diversity in general) within tech companies has been a hot topic, especially in recent months. Square and Twitter, the two companies co-founded by entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, have at times been at the center of those discussions, though not necessarily as models of what works.

Dorsey is determined to change that. At Square, he has hired on an executive team that consists of several women in key roles, including a female CFO and head of engineering. Over the last couple of years, his payments company also initiated and hosted several “code camps”—immersion programs that teach computer science skills to college and high school girls—in an effort to broaden the future pool of female candidates. (Square says it has since hired on several of the program’s graduates.)

Recently, both Square and Twitter also partnered with an organization called Girls Who Code, which matches high school students with software companies. As a result, about 40 girls in total are now participating in an eight-week-long course, hosted at both companies’ headquarters.

Earlier this week, Dorsey sat down with the eager high school students to talk about his entrepreneurial journey and answer their questions—which ranged from what the Square CEO does to unwind (jump rope and punching a heavy bag) to why he thinks it’s important to close the gender gap (“we need to look like our customers,” Dorsey says). Before his conversation with the Girls Who Code class, Dorsey sat down with Fortune to discuss his companies’ role in facilitating a more diverse employee base in technology.

Fortune: What is your role—and the role of Square and Twitter—in facilitating increased diversity in the workforce?

Dorsey: Ultimately a workforce diverse in perspective is going to make us more creative, and we don’t see a lot of that in technology, and we don’t see a lot of that in programming, certainly. I grew up seeing a lot of this. My favorite authors were Virginia Woolf and Gloria Steinem and Margaret Atwood and all those folks. It was a unique perspective to read before I got into technology, but actually to see it here was even more damning.

Only 20% of the workforce is female, and we think it’s our responsibility not only to encourage a change and to balance it more but also to bring a diverse perspective throughout everything we do because we always get better from it. Anytime you have a monotone culture, nothing shifts and nothing changes. You end up building for an audience that can risk being detached from the rest of the world and how the world is moving. So we make sure that we get a lot of diverse perspectives, and have a lot of youth because of generational shifts as well.

The generation today coming into the workforce demands access to information and transparency wherever they work. They demand to be part of the decisions-making process. They demand to be a leader as quickly as possible. That’s very different from when I was entering the workforce. But all the kids coming into our office today and the interns we hire and the college kids we hire, there’s just a very, very different approach to what a company means and what they expect out of it. In order to remain relevant and build a company that lasts beyond our lifetime, the best thing you can do is constantly bring in people with those new and fresh perspectives.

In programming and engineering the ratio of diversity is so low. So we started with a little bit older, more the college age, but quickly realized that it’s really an issue that starts much younger.

Other than this program, what are you doing at Square and Twitter to help close this divide? You’ve gotten some criticism for Twitter’s lack of women on the board and at Square for a recent intern group that was all male. What are you doing to make sure you’re hiring a good balance?

Well, hiring a good balance is the action. I’ll speak for this company [Square]. We want to hire for a balanced perspective throughout. At this company we’ve had a very diverse board [of directors] from day one. Today on my management team Alyssa Henry runs all of our engineering. Françoise [Brougher] runs all our business operations, international partnerships, sales and support—she ran an organization of 3,000 at Google. Sarah Friar is our CFO. So we’re hiring to make sure we have diversity within those ranks and then there’s instruction for looking for diversity as my team hires into the company.

It’s not necessarily the most easy thing to do but it’s important to us. So we’re still always looking for the best people and that’s critical but we have to go above and beyond to make sure that we’re ceding more opportunities and more changes so we have more people to pick from. Because right now we just don’t. A lot of them are already gainfully employed and happy with their jobs. So the spirit of this program is to enable more to be in the field.

Google and Facebook recently released their diversity numbers. Do you think that’s a step in the right direction and is it something that you would consider here or at Twitter?

We have a core value which is “show don’t tell,” so I’d rather just do it. We don’t do a lot of surveys. I think it’s more important to actually act and show your board has diversity and show your team has diversity and show the company has diversity throughout everything not just one survey at one point in time. So it’s always been important to us, and hasn’t felt as important to just do a survey and then broadcast it somewhere, because what is the actual affect of that? If they change in five years, that’s great. But we’ll have to see.

Summary: Fortune sits down with the Twitter and Square founder to discuss his companies' role in facilitating a more diverse employee base in technology.


Samsung’s countersuits were “swift and strong” says an expert

On Thursday, Samsung filed its fourth response to Apple’s charge of “slavish” imitation: A suit in a California federal court alleging infringement by Apple AAPL of 10 Samsung communications patents.

“Samsung has mounted a swift and strong response to Apple’s initiative,” writes Foss Patent’s Florian Mueller. “The speed with which Samsung responded to Apple’s lawsuit in four different jurisdictions (in three of them within a week, and in the fourth one in less than two weeks) suggests that Samsung expected and, consequently, prepared for this.”

Apple’s complaint focused on elements of the patented look and feel of the iPhone and iPad that ended up in Samsung devices running Google’s GOOG Android OS. Samsung, which has a deep intellectual property portfolio of its own, has accused Apple of infringing on patents covering the underlying technology of cellular telephony, such as a particular method for “channel coding and multiplexing in CDMA communication system.”

The diagram above is from a Mueller PDF that lays out the legal battlelines step by step as they unfolded. His list of the Samsung patents (with links) is copied below the fold.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Summary: Samsung's countersuits were "swift and strong" says an expert On Thursday, Samsung filed its fourth response to Apple's charge of "slavish" imitation: A suit in a California federal court alleging infringement by Apple of 10 Samsung communications patents. "Samsung has mounted a swift and strong response to Apple's initiative," writes Foss Patent's Florian Mueller. "The…


That is all Wesley Chan will say about his new project, which is causing him to step down as a general partner with Google Ventures. Any vague, buzzwordy description? “Stay tuned.” Are you doing this independently or within Google? “Stay tuned.”

My best guess is that Chan is being coy, and is working on something in the digital television or radio realm. But, again, I’ve only got two words to go on.

Here’s what we do know: Chan originally joined Google GOOG as an associate project manager in 2002, after stints at both Hewlett-Packard HPQ and Microsoft MSFT . He is credited with helping found both Google Analytics and Google Voice, and would eventually receive a coveted Google Founders Award.

In late 2009 he joined Google Ventures, the company’s quasi-independent venture capital arm, as a general partner. He has led more than 40 investments, and was responsible for the firm’s seed-stage investing program.

With today’s move, Chan will transition into an entrepreneur-in-residence role at Google Ventures (which may, or may not, have already provided funding for Chan’s new venture). He is expected to step down from his two portfolio company board seats, with Andy Wheeler taking his spot at Transphorm (power modules) and Rich Miner joining the Crittercism (mobile app infrastructure) board. Partners Kevin Rose and MG Siegler will lead the seed investment program going forward.

“If you look at my time at Google, every four or five years or so I start something new,” Chan says. “That’s what I’m doing again.”

Sign up for Dan Primack’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Wesley Chan is stepping down from an investing role with Google Ventures, in order to work on something new.