George W. Bush has quipped several times during his political career that it would be so much easier to govern in a dictatorship. Apparently he never told his vice president that this was a joke.

Virtually from the time he chose himself to be Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000, Dick Cheney has spearheaded an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency -- from writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives to abrogating longstanding treaties and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and spy on American citizens.

It was a chance Mr. Cheney seems to have been dreaming about for decades. Most Americans looked at wrenching events like the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iran-contra debacle and worried that the presidency had become too powerful, secretive and dismissive. Mr. Cheney looked at the same events and fretted that the presidency was not powerful enough, and too vulnerable to inspection and calls for accountability.

The president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," Mr. Cheney said this week as he tried to stifle the outcry over a domestic spying program that Mr. Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks.

Before 9/11, Mr. Cheney was trying to undermine the institutional and legal structure of multilateral foreign policy: he championed the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in order to build an antimissile shield that doesn't work but makes military contactors rich. Early in his tenure, Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications. Mr. Cheney offered the usual excuses about the need to get candid advice on important matters, and the courts, sadly, bought it. But the task force was not an exercise in diverse views. Mr. Cheney gathered people who agreed with him, and allowed them to write national policy for an industry in which he had recently amassed a fortune.

The effort to expand presidential power accelerated after 9/11, taking advantage of a national consensus that the president should have additional powers to use judiciously against terrorists.

Mr. Cheney started agitating for an attack on Iraq immediately, pushing the intelligence community to come up with evidence about a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that never existed. His team was central to writing the legal briefs justifying the abuse and torture of prisoners, the idea that the president can designate people to be "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely, and a secret program allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. And when Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons.

There are finally signs that the democratic system is trying to rein in the imperial presidency. Republicans in the Senate and House forced Mr. Bush to back the McCain amendment, and Mr. Cheney's plan to legalize torture by intelligence agents was rebuffed. Congress also agreed to extend the Patriot Act for five weeks rather than doing the administration's bidding and rushing to make it permanent.

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court refused to allow the administration to transfer Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been held by the military for more than three years on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks, from military to civilian custody. After winning the same court's approval in September to hold Mr. Padilla as an unlawful combatant, the administration abruptly reversed course in November and charged him with civil crimes unrelated to his arrest. That decision was an obvious attempt to avoid having the Supreme Court review the legality of the detention powers that Mr. Bush gave himself, and the appeals judges refused to go along.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have insisted that the secret eavesdropping program is legal, but The Washington Post reported yesterday that the court created to supervise this sort of activity is not so sure. It said that the presiding judge was arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges and that several judges on the court wanted to know why the administration believed eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants was legal when the law specifically required such warrants.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are tenacious. They still control both houses of Congress and are determined to pack the judiciary with like-minded ideologues. Still, the recent developments are encouraging, especially since the court ruling on Mr. Padilla was written by a staunch conservative considered by President Bush for the Supreme Court.

Summary: Editorial on Vice Pres Dick Cheney's efforts to expand presidential powers since he and Pres Bush came into office; cites using 9/11 attacks as pretext to invade Iraq, scrap Geneva Conventions, spy on American citizens and other issues; praises signs that Congress is finally taking independent stance, thwarting efforts to legalize torture by intelligence agents and forcing Bush to back McCain anti-torture amendment; also notes federal court decision rebuking administration for trying to transfer Jose Padilla from military to civilian custody; warns that Bush and Cheney still control Congress and are determined to pack judiciary with like-minded ideologues


Invisible speakers. Detergent-strength tap water. Landmine-sniffing rats. Instant whiteboards.

Last January, Forbes launched its BreakOut! video series to profile the entrepreneurs, inventors and thinkers behind the very kinds of disruptive technologies that could change the world–or at least make you think: “Now that’s pretty cool!”

Some ideas were born in garages, others in high-tech university laboratories. A few of these products have come to market, while others are still in prototype stage. Many of the companies behind them have attracted millions of dollars in venture funding, and nearly all have hired at least one employee in 2009.

Not all will make the grade as sustainable businesses: Plenty of fascinating ideas don’t translate into heaping profit piles. But for raw, eye-popping innovation, these are a compelling crop.

Video: Best Of BreakOut! 2009

In Pictures: 10 Breakout Business Ideas Of 2009

In Pictures: Six Questions To Determine If Your New Idea Is A Real Business

In Pictures: A Start-Up’s Demise In Eight Steps

Here are five of the best ideas, with links to each video segment featuring the entrepreneur and his or her groundbreaking concept. For the full list of 10, see our slideshow. And for the entire inventory of Forbes BreakOut! videos, click here.

Moobella, Taunton, Mass. Skip the ice cream parlor with 31 flavors. Moobella’s vending machine pumps out scoops, in 96 flavors, on-demand, in about 45 seconds. This patented technique for churning and freezing ice cream from a room-temperature dairy mix has been 17 years–and nearly $50 million in R&D–in the making. Two prototypes are running at Northeastern University in Boston and Worcester Polytechnic University. Pinnacle Food Services will market the machines mainly to cafeterias in universities, parks and zoos. Cost: $400 per month, plus ingredients. Moobella raised another $18 million in venture funding in September.

See the Moobella video here.

Emo Labs, Waltham, Mass. Emo figured out a way to embed .02-inch-thick-speakers into the edges of televisions and computer screens. Instead of the cones, magnets and voice coils that move sound through traditional speakers, the speakers create sound using small movements and a voltage. The company is still securing partnerships with manufacturers. Target date in stores: end of 2010.

See the Emo Labs video here.

Activeion, Rogers, Minn. Faced with the holiday-party aftermath and out of cleaning fluids? Just fill up a bottle with plain old tap water and spray it on the stain. When you press the trigger, Activeions bottles move tap water through a small electrical charge that separates the molecules into positive and negative charges and creates bubbles. This bubbly water lifts dirt and bacteria from any surface like a magnet, making it easy to wipe away dirt and grease. Originally aimed at professional cleaning companies, Activeion recently released a home version, retailing for $169 for a 12-oz. bottle.

See the Activeion video here.

IdeaPaint, Cambridge, Mass. Want to spur innovation? Turn every wall, no matter the surface, into a whiteboard. Three recent Babson College graduates created a paint that dries to create a surface that does just that, and any dry-erase marker wipes it completely clean. The paint sells for $3.50 to $4.00 per square foot of coating. After closing a $5 million venture round in December 2009 (following a $5 million round in November 2008), the founders plan to have it in at least one big-box store in early 2010.

See the IdeaPaint video here.

APOPO, Antwerp, Belgium/ Morogoro, Tanzania. Bart Weetjens spent 10 years learning how to train giant African rats (three feet in length) to detect landmines. His regimen includes clicking noises and food rewards over an eight-month period. While huge by rat standards, the animals are too light to set off the charges and can cover 1,200 square feet in 20 minutes, double the area swept via a metal detector in a day. He’s also figured out how to teach rats to sniff tuberculosis in blood samples. APOPO works with governments in Colombia and Thailand, and with mining companies in Mozambique.

See the APOPO video here.

Video: Best Of BreakOut! 2009

In Pictures: 10 Breakout Business Ideas Of 2009

In Pictures: Six Questions To Determine If Your New Idea Is A Real Business

In Pictures: A Start-Up’s Demise In Eight Steps

Comments are turned off for this post.

Summary: Meet the entrepreneurs behind tomorrow's most disruptive technologies.


Q. My teen son has been playing soccer since he was 6, and he’s become pretty good, making the high school team. But he wasn’t a starter last fall, and now he’s talking about quitting. Meanwhile, his little sister is deep into gymnastics and swimming, and she’s talking about giving up piano. I feel like if I let them walk away, they’ll regret it later. What do you think?

JEFF: It sure can bring out the despot in a parent when a kid wants to quit, right? The only time I feel justified in my authoritarian tendencies, though, is when my children try to weasel out of their household duties. (“No, Rebecca, you can’t quit setting the table when it’s your night . . . if you want to eat dinner!”) But when we’re talking extracurricular activities, not chores, I try to resist putting my foot down. I’ll feel better about myself afterward if I take a step back and look at the big picture. And breathe.

How much is going on in the child’s life? Is homework eating up her free time? Is the activity he wants to quit the only one of its kind in his weekly routine? I’d be less bothered if the questioner’s daughter wanted to drop either gymnastics or swimming, because they’re both physical activities. My wife and I like our kids to maintain some balance of exercise and arts. So if the girl no longer wants to play piano, might she prefer picking up another instrument rather than letting the music die?

When my son tired of classical violin, for instance, we got another year out of him by switching to fiddle lessons. Eventually he went, “Hey, wait a second,” but even then we just persuaded him to move on to a different section of the orchestra. Now he’s a trumpeter, he’s loving it, and my wife and I are thrilled he still has music in his life. (The neighbors? They’re adjusting.)

KATHY: Oh, how I’ve fiddled around on the subject of quitting! At first, when my kids quit something, it made me uncomfortable, because am I not supposed to teach them perseverance? My daughter really had quite the quits for a while — short stints with basketball, softball, piano, and dance, which made my husband and I fret she had an inherent lack of stick-to-it-tivenesss.

We had firm rules here: We never let her quit before the season was over (since that was letting down her teammates) and we insisted she had to do an after-school activity. We also considered the big picture? She wasn’t a “quitter” by nature; she’s a stickler on grades and homework, for instance.

Finally, when she turned 11, she found her passion — acting and improv — and I realized that “quitting” hadn’t been the right lens. It was more like she was trying on clothing until she found the right fit. I’ll get to the questioner’s son (hey, we all gotta ride the bench). But as to the daughter, might she be telling you she’s tried on something and would like to put it back on the rack?

JEFF: Yeah, well, in the Life Lesson Boutique, our job is to be the salesperson helping our kid button the garment all the way. I mean, there’s trying on and there’s trying on. Activities don’t always seem like a perfect fit right away. Some need to be lived in for a while. Some require stretching — but our kids usually can use a good stretch.

The parental sweet spot, I think, is somewhere between insisting that our kids take on an activity more stimulating than texting their friends, and insisting our kids take on an activity that stimulates us. I played soccer in college, and for years I pushed my kids into that sport over others. My wife the classical musician wasn’t too keen on folk guitar lessons. But gradually, reluctantly, we’ve let go of the puppet strings, and by some miracle these young humans we carved out of wood are standing on their own.

And doing stuff they love. And they don’t want to quit.

KATHY: Aren’t we such good therapists Jeff? Such eager empathizers, such vital validaters. But no more Mr. Nice Guy: I’m hard-core that the questioner’s son should not quit the soccer team. It’s a matter of nearing adulthood, really. Once you get to high school, it’s an honor to be chosen for the team, because so many kids don’t make it. You make it — then you make the best of it.

Maybe the obstacle is a lack of imagination, so I’d spell out all the potential scenarios here. He works hard and becomes a starter. Or he shines when he’s subbed in. Or a spot opens up if another player has a slump, gets injured, or graduates.

But quit now, and you quit these opportunities. Brett Favre threw all of four passes in his first season in the NFL. Lou Gehrig batted only 42 times his first two years. In short, the world is full of great athletes who warmed the bench before they heated up the game. And so, young soccer player, I say that the only thing you should quit (and I mean this in the nicest way) is your whining.

Summary: Parenting advice from Katharine Whittemore and Jeff Wagenheim.


Given the famous footprint that Milan will occupy, you wonder whether thought was given to naming the place after the site's previous occupant. As it turns out, that idea briefly crossed the mind of Victor Elmaleh, chairman of World Wide Holdings, the company that is developing Milan. "We considered it," said Mr. Elmaleh, who by coincidence is of Moroccan but not Arab birth. "But remember the climate when we started two years ago. We did not want any connection to terrorism, and Morocco was constantly mentioned in connection with 9/11."

The name may be gone, and perhaps soon the zebra stripes on the pavement, but one artifact that will help keep alive the memory of El Morocco is an extraordinary book, a rare, privately published album of vintage photographs. The book, "El Morocco Family Album," was published by Mr. Perona as a gift for El Morocco regulars. It was acquired by Lisa Linden, chief executive officer of Linden, Alschuler & Kaplan, the public relations firm that until recently represented Milan. Ms. Linden bought the album this year from David Cohen, a rare books dealer in Greenwich Village. She paid $1,000; other copies have been sold for thousands more.

The outsized, 62-page album, covered with now fading blue fabric, contained some 340 images by the great photographer Jerome Zerbe, who produced the signature images of the club. They are introduced by an ornate foreword by Lucius Beebe, the New York Herald Tribune columnist who documented cafe society in This New York and whose words have a witchy effect that can propel a susceptible reader back to the year of the book's private publication.

"Given the entire antecedent social background of New York," Beebe wrote, "it would still have been impossible to foresee the usurpation of the glitter scene of the most glittering city in the land by a single, and in itself, not overly resplendent hideaway in an entirely anonymous side street.

"Ten years ago, no seer or prophet could have read in the conjunctions of the spheres the sudden and deafening explosion of Morocco. The New York scene was suddenly and in its social entirety taken over by people whose names made news.

"Pictures of attractive people doing things like eating, drinking and giving each other a good goose supplanted the accustomed cabinet shots of debutantes who had either forgotten to put in their teeth or else were definitely giving the photographer the bird. Editors screamed in relief when there became available shots of young and fascinating people lapping up carboys of Champagne and dressed in the after dark attire of gentle-folk, and it at once became apparent that one way to become a professional celebrity was to be snapped by Mr. Zerbe. This book is a parade of People Who Count."

Beebe ends with an almost Thucydides-like conclusion: "They are true martyrs to magnums, the children of the night, and leaner and hungrier generations will look at their likeness in these pages with unthinkable envy."

Zerbe, who is thanked for not printing snapshots of beauties with "your eyes closed, your mouth open, and flies going in and out," pointed out in an interview with Studs Terkel that he was one of the people who helped create the concept of celebrity; thanks to him, people began to go to El Morocco to be photographed.

And so we see stars like Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell and Loretta Young, but also the leading socialites, with quaint captions that would be sexist if they were not so antiquated: "Gary Cooper with his wife, who was socialite Barbara Balfe," past tense being the proper form for a woman who had married.

Divorced couples were described as those who have "agreed to disagree," and the album is captioned with unintentional howlers: The star of "Tarzan," for example is identified as Johnny ("Ape-Man") Weissmuller; a veiled woman with a terrier is "The Ranee of Sarawak, wife of the only white Rajah in India"; Mrs. Wanamaker Munn is shown with "her pet monkey, Chula, whose presence always caused considerable excitement."

A manic energy glows on the blue duotone pages, in part because El Morocco was more than a club; it was a motif for life. Regulars are shown sporting zebra scarves, zebra pins, toy stuffed zebras. One photo shows a zebra-striped banner announcing "Gone, Dammit!" unfurled from a cruise ship porthole, as a guest sailed away. Those who departed El Morocco are said to have "deserted"; how could they bear to go to India or Hollywood, and miss hearing Ethel Merman sing "Pennies From Heaven."

One More 'Touch of Venus'

A single fragile connection links the old El Morocco and the new Milan. Sono Osato, the wife of Mr. Elmaleh, is rumored to have dined at the club in its heyday, when she was a teenage star.

Ms. Osato, 85, who is half Japanese, was one of the baby ballerinas who toured with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1930's; she describes those days in her 1980 memoir, "Distant Dances." In the couple's apartment a few blocks from the new building, photographs and news clippings on the walls are reminders that she later performed on Broadway in "One Touch of Venus" and starred as the first Miss Turnstiles in the Comden and Green musical "On the Town."

Ms. Osato has aged into adorable no-nonsense. She is still petite, has a pixie haircut, and in her black leggings and T-shirt she is every tiny inch the dancer she once was. Her husband calls her "sweets."

The other day, flipping through the pages of the blue album, she remembered the night she was there. Once. On the arm of an older man. "Everyone looked fantastic against that zebra background," she recalled. "The lighting was gorgeous."

She recalled another detail: "Brenda Frazier, the debutante of the year, was there that night, and she was wearing the largest aquamarine I have ever seen."

Her eye is drawn to photographs she is seeing for the first time. "Oh, there is Tamara," one of the Russian ballerinas. And David Lichine, the half-Jewish, half-Cossack dancer. Her husband, too, is noting acquaintances. "Oh, Kitty Carlisle, she's 94 now, and dating." Told that she and other divas of her generation had uttered a collective "Oh, dear!" at the news of the club's final demise, Mr. Elmaleh pointed out: "But, you know, the club was dead when we acquired it. It was already gutted."

The zebra banquettes and much of the memorabilia were purchased by the former tennis star Frank Hunter, a devotee of the club who recreated it in the basement of his Victorian mansion in Southampton on Long Island. The mansion's present owner, the designer Lisa Jackson, reported that "without dehumidifiers, the zebra rotted." But, she added: "I saved what I could -- menus, pictures -- and have what remained in a shrine in my upstairs powder room."

Ms. Jackson also resolved the old debate as to whether the zebra stripes were black or dark blue. "Blue," she confirmed, pointing out that the mansion is called Blue Haven. "They just photographed black."

And what of those last zebra swirls in the pavement? Will they be jackhammered into oblivion?

At V Studio, the Greenwich Village headquarters of Jay Valgora, who is designing Milan's lobby and residences, there are rumors of a stay of execution for remnants of the old club. According to Mr. Valgora, Mr. Elmaleh had a change of heart and now favors some salvage of El Morocco. The photos from the album have worked their witchy magic; Mr. Valgora now plans to mount the dreamy interior shot of patrons under the white palms as a backdrop mural for the lobby and display a montage of celebrities, "a parade from the past," he calls it, on the hand-rubbed Venetian plaster wall.

And the zebra tiles? Mr. Valgora plans to transplant them to the garden.

The ghosts of El Morocco are not banished; the "animalique" power of the past drew one visitor to stand for a final moment on those famous tiles before they were uprooted. In the mind of this visitor, the music still plays, and Gershwin's lyrics echo in the shimmer of the city night.

"The way we danced till three.

"The way you changed my life,

"No, no, they can't take that away from me."

Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of the memoirs "Sleeping Arrangements" and "A Place in the Country" and the novels "Beautiful Bodies" and "Dreams of Rescue."

Summary: Laura Shaine Cunningham article recalls El Morocco, chic New York City nightclub whose heyday began in 1930's, which is being demolished to make way for high-rise luxury condominium; some artifacts remain--zebra striped pavement outside club that condo designer Jay Valgora plans to transplant to garden, photos of patrons that will be mounted in lobby and El Morocco Family Album, rare, privately published album of vintage photos published by club owner John Perona as gift for El Morocco regulars; photos (L)


A federal appeals court on Thursday threw out a $7.25 billion antitrust settlement among Visa Inc,MasterCard Inc and millions of retailers over credit card fees.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said some of the retailers were inadequately represented in the litigation, which began in 2005. It also decertified the case as a class action.

A Visa spokeswoman said the company is reviewing the decision. MasterCard had no immediate comment.

Thursday’s decision upends an accord resolving claims that the card networks overcharged merchants on interchange fees, or swipe fees, when shoppers used credit or debit cards, and banned them from nudging customers toward cheaper means of payment.

The settlement had been the largest all-cash antitrust accord in U.S. history.

One class of merchants that accepted Visa or MasterCard from January 2004 to November 2012 was to share in up to $7.25 billion, while a second class accepting the cards from then on was to get injunctive relief in the form of rule changes.

But many retailers, including Amazon.com Inc and Target, objected, saying the accord, among other things, forced members of the second class to give up their right to sue over various policies and practices.

Writing for the appeals court, Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs said the two classes should not have been represented by the same lawyers, who were awarded $544.8 million of fees.

He said the lawyers suffered from a “fundamental conflict,” having been in position to negotiate terms that could simultaneously benefit one class and harm the other.

“We have reason to think that that occurred here,” and in the end “sapped class counsel of the incentive to zealously represent” the class obtaining injunctive relief, Jacobs said.

U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, who has since left the bench, had approved the settlement in 2013.

Summary: Transaction declined.


The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has begun to shrink, signaling good news for the environment several decades after an international accord to phase out certain pollutants, researchers has said.

The study found that the September ozone hole has shrunk by 1.5 million square miles (four million square kilometers) since 2000 -- an area about the size of India.

"It's a big surprise," said lead author Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview with Science magazine.

"I didn't think it would be this early."

The ozone hole was first discovered in the 1950s.

It reached record size in October 2015, but Solomon and colleagues determined that this was due to the eruption of the Chilean volcano Calbuco.

The overall trend toward recovery became apparent when scientists studied measurements from satellites, ground-based instruments and weather balloons in the month of September, not October when the ozone hole typically peaks in size.

"I think people, myself included, had been too focused on October, because that's when the ozone hole is enormous," Solomon said.

"But October is also subject to the slings and arrows of other things that vary, like slight changes in meteorology."

The study attributed the ozone's recovery to the "continuing decline of atmospheric chlorine originating from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)," or chemicals that were once emitted by dry cleaning, refrigerators, hairspray and other aerosols.

Most of the world signed on to the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which banned the use of CFCs.

"We can now be confident that the things we've done have put the planet on a path to heal," Solomon said.

Summary: The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has begun to shrink, signaling good news for the environment several decades after an international accord to phase out certain pollutants, researchers have said.


died Tuesday -- one day after he was shot multiple times ... but the details surrounding the shooting are sketchy at best.

No one seems to be disputing the fact that Ricardo -- a 24-year-old rising star in the sport -- was shot and died as a result of his injuries.

But there seems to be conflicting reports about who fired the shots and why.

There are some reports that say Ricardo saw two men using drugs on the beach and asked them to stop -- when one of the men suddenly began to open fire.

Another report says Ricardo was doing home repairs with his grandfather when he got into it with some other men over a pipe that was being used in the project ... and the men shot him.

Tributes have been pouring in from all over the surf community -- with Kelly Slater dedicating a surf session to his late friend.

There are reports that a man was taken into custody in connection with the shooting. We're working on confirming the details.

Summary: Brazilian pro surfer Ricardo Dos Santos died Tuesday -- one day after he was shot multiple times ... but the details surrounding the shooting are…


If you’re planning to stay in an Airbnb rental during a trip to Disneyland, tough luck.

On Wednesday, the city council of Disneyland’s hometown, Anaheim, Calif. voted to phase out and eventually ban short-term rentals. Residents operating short-term rentals will have 18 months to shut down their businesses or apply for a license to operate longer if they can prove shutting down will cause a significant hardship, according to a city council spokesman.

Like opponents in many other cities, those in Anaheim argue that short-term rentals turn residential neighborhoods into tourist areas.

“It is now time to restore our neighborhoods… [they] are not an extension of the resort area,” one resident said, according to NBC’s Southern California news outlet. “It is time to take care of the residents.”

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.

Anaheim’s city council will vote a second time on the ordinance on July 12, something a spokesman says is “fairly routine,” though it’s unlikely that the decision will be reversed. After that vote, the ban would go into effect 30 days later.

“In the past year, our community of 300 Anaheim hosts welcomed travelers from all over the world with affordable and unique accommodations. Many cities in California are reviewing proposals to enable hosts to share their homes,” an Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement. “We are continuing to highlight the importance of fair rules with leaders throughout Southern California.”

Anaheim is only the latest city to ban or severely restrict short-term rentals. A German court recently upheld Berlin’s rules only allow a homeowner to rent out individual rooms as long as they occupy at least half of the apartment themselves. New York’s state officials recently passed a bill to impose steep fines on advertisements of illegal short-term rentals, while San Francisco recently passed new rules to fine websites like Airbnb unless they display host registration numbers.

Although Anaheim may want to ban Airbnb-like services, other surrounding cities like Garden Grove and Orange have no such aversion. Disneyland visitors who don’t mind traveling a little farther could always book short term rentals there.

Summary: Residents would no longer be able to rent their homes for less than 30 days.


It’s all over for Google’s self-driving cars, the ill-considered experiment that literally crashed to a halt on Valentine’s Day when one of its robo-vehicles smashed into the side of a bus filled with dozens of innocent citizens.

It’s only a matter of time till someone gets killed in one of these highway HAL 9000s.

Except the car in question, a Lexus SUV, was traveling 2 mph when it put-putted into the city bus, in Mountain View, Calif. The love tap resulted in no injuries, except to the reputation of the self-driving car. And that was the first crash caused by a Google self-driving car in more than one million miles of driving.

Self-driving cars used to be the future. But are they now? They could save us all huge amounts of time — you could do your nails or read a book while your car chauffeurs you to work — and increase safety. And yet people are afraid of them.

Three-quarters of Americans say they wouldn’t feel safe in a self-driving car despite being more secure than they would be ordinarily. It’s the same principle that drives fear of flying: Even though commercial flight is practically the safest activity you can undertake in America today — you are far more likely to die from falling down the stairs — some 20 million Americans suffer from severe fear of flying, while many more have mild fear.

If America became a land of self-driving cars, the reduction in automobile fatalities would be so large that something like 30,000 lives a year would be spared. Notable losers in this scenario include every government agency that collects revenue for traffic violations. Google cars don’t speed or drive recklessly, and unlike human drivers, the electronic kind never pour any Budweiser or Jack Daniel’s into themselves.

But because journalism, like the human mind, is most engaged by anecdotes rather than data, the first fatal crash caused by a self-driving car is going to be one of the most sensational stories of the era. The face of the victim — picture an adorable little blond girl named Polly — will lead the news for days.

That’s when lawmakers will pounce. Proclaiming “these things kill people,” they’ll rush to enact “Polly’s Law” in one city or state after another. Perhaps there will even be a push for a nationwide ban. Some presidential candidate or other will realize that “Polly’s Law” may be just the way to distract the public from his or her otherwise lackluster platform.

Sure, driverless cars could save 300,000 lives a decade and $190 billion in crash-related annual health-care costs while freeing up billions of commuter hours to do things other than glaring over the steering wheel in traffic.

But when it comes to emotion vs. reason, reason is usually a bad bet.

Summary: It’s all over for Google’s self-driving cars, the ill-considered experiment that literally crashed to a halt on Valentine’s Day when one of its robo-vehicles smashed into the side of a bus filled w…


Scales 925, the Atlanta restaurant owned by rapper T.I., is at the center of a legal dispute.

Clifford Harris, T.I.’s legal name, and his business partner Charles Hughes have just been named in a lawsuit filed by 12 of their employees claiming that the two restaurateurs have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, WSBTV reports. The plaintiffs have accused Hughes specifically of nefarious pay practices but, since they share joint authority in the restaurant, Harris is equally liable.

The lawsuit claims that Hughes deposited money from the restaurant’s payroll bank account into his own personal account. Subsequently when employees attempted to cash their payroll checks, they would bounce. Additionally the workers claim that they were “coerced to work off the clock for three hours before they were allowed to go home,” and they would regularly work more than 40 hours every week, but they weren’t paid overtime. When they would complain, Hughes allegedly ignored them.

The 12 plaintiffs are seeking back pay in varying amounts.

Summary: The lawsuit says he's in violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.


Here’s an interesting measure of how effectively Apple AAPL can whip the tech world into a frenzy — even without Steve Jobs there to stir things up.

According to a report issued Monday by Nielsen Online, “anticipatory buzz” in May drew more than 55.7 million unique visitors to Apple’s website — more than double that of Hewlett Packard HPQ and 25 times the site for Microsoft’s MSFT Xbox.

The buzz got even louder in June with the unveiling of the iPhone 3GS. At one point between June 8 and June 9, nearly 0.6% of the nearly 100 million blogs, groups, boards, social networks and other consumer generated media that Nielsen tracks were talking about the new device. According to the report:

“the new iPhone 3G S sent blog mentions up 1,226 percent week-over-week on June 8, the day of the announcement. After the initial announcement, buzz dipped but again picked up after the phone became available to consumers on June 19, with blog mentions more than doubling compared to the week prior.”

You can actually see Apple’s buzz machine in action in the accompanying “BlogPulse” fever chart:

Nielsen Online is a division of the research company that has been measuring — and indirectly shaping — media content since it began tracking radio audiences in the 1930s and TV shares in the 1950s.

In the promotional material on its website, Nielsen offers the schematic drawing at right to suggest how its “BuzzMetrics” data mining service extracts nuggets of intelligence by harvesting raw data from sites like this one, cleaning it up, and giving it a good polishing with its relevance and analytics algorithms.

Summary: Here's an interesting measure of how effectively Apple can whip the tech world into a frenzy -- even without Steve Jobs there to stir things up. According to a report issued Monday by Nielsen Online, "anticipatory buzz" in May drew more than 55.7 million unique visitors to Apple's website -- more than double that of…


A Southern California man faces kidnapping charges after being seen on surveillance video allegedly attempting to kidnap a 4-year-old girl from a cellphone store, PEOPLE confirms.

In the footage, from July 1, the girl plays with the candy machines near the entrance of Macias Cellular & Computers while her mother, holding a baby, stands a few feet away. Suddenly, a man outside the store appears to grab the girl's arm and pull her through the door. The mother, who is not being identified by police, and another customer quickly chase after him.

, the girl was able to break free from the alleged suspect before he could flee with her.

The girl was upset but unharmed by the incident, police say.

Miguel Macias, the owner of the store, said the mother had noticed the man in the parking lot.

"She had said that the guy was looking at her from when she got out of her car, but she didn't think he would follow her," he told

Police identified the suspect as 24-year-old Terry Ransom of Hesperia. He was located near the scene and detained without incident, police say. Ransom was booked and is being held at the High Desert Detention Center on charges of kidnapping and child cruelty, police say.

Mara Rodriguez, Media Relations Officer of the Victorville Police Department, tells PEOPLE Ransom appeared in court Wednesday and the judge entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. He is being held on $250,000 bail.

Summary: Terry Ransom is being held on charges of kidnapping and child cruelty


Shortly after the movie Jaws was released 40 years ago this weekend, TIME declared in a cover story that it was “a case study in the recklessness, stubbornness, blindness and bravado that go into a Hollywood superproduction.”

The making of the Steven Spielberg classic involved five separate scripts, the final one of which continued to be written even as filming got underway, skeptical residents of Martha’s Vineyard wary of the film crew shooting there, and the stink of rotting shark carcasses permeating the set.

And yet, as the story made clear, the whole thing worked:

What sets Jaws apart from most of the other ceiling busters and makes it a special case, like The Godfather, is that it is quite a good movie. For one thing, it is mercifully free of the padding—cosmic, comic, cultural—that so often mars “big” pictures. In that sense, the movie is very like its subject. If the great white shark that terrorizes the beaches of an island summer colony is one of nature’s most efficient killing machines, Jaws is an efficient entertainment machine.

Partly this is due to a shrewd adaptation. Peter Benchley’s novel spent too much time on dry land, plodding around Irving Wallace country, reinvestigating such tired phenomena as the uneasy marriage, the adulterous wife, the snaky seducer. In the movie, most of this lallygagging is eliminated. Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) must still fight the town’s mayor, who is fearful that closing the beaches after the first shark attacks will ruin his resort’s economy. He still joins forces with Quint, the professional shark killer (Robert Shaw, employing an ornate accent of indeterminate origin), and a youthful ichthyologist named Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), all theory and wisecracks. Scheider is occasionally too recessive for his own good, while Shaw is too excessive for the good of the film. Dreyfuss, however, is perfect. With a cheeky charm he manages to humanize the picture while stealing it.

Read the full story here in the TIME Vault: Summer of the Shark

Summary: The movie was released on June 20, 1975


Scientists at the research centre are now working on developing new breeds of tea with higher levels of these compounds, which are known as polyphenols, while also looking for ways of making them less susceptible to being neutralised by milk.

Their research has shown that low doses of ordinary tea extracts reduced the cholesterol levels in rats while also reducing the levels of fatty acids in the animal's blood stream.

A study by scientists in Japan, which is published this month in the journal of Nutrition, reveals that extracts from tea leaves inhibits the absorption of fat in the gut of rats being fed high fat diets.

These rats also had less fat tissue on their bodies and lower fat content in their livers.

Dr Hiroaki Yajima, a scientist with the Kirin Beverage Company in Japan who carried out the Japanese research, said: “Black tea extracts may prevent diet-induced obesity by inhibiting intestinal lipid absorption.”

The fermentation process used to make "black" tea leaves, the most commonly drunk type of tea in the UK, has also been found to boost levels of these fat-fighting compounds compared to green tea, which is unfermented.

The research suggests that despite more attention being paid to the health benefits of green tea, black tea may have greater health-boosting properties which are masked by the tendency to drink it with milk.

British researchers have also found that the type of milk used in a cup of tea can impact on the level of the "healthy" compounds.

Dr Lisa Ryan, a senior lecturer in human nutrition at the Functional Food Centre at Oxford Brookes University, has discovered that skimmed milk decreases the levels of these active compounds far more than whole or semi-skimmed milk.

Her team looked at five different brands of black tea sold in the UK, measuring the activity of antioxidant and polyphenol compounds after adding different types of milk.

She said: "The fat content of milk seems to be buffering the antioxidants and polyphenols. Molecules called caseins bind to the polyphenols and lead to a decrease in their availability for the body and in skimmed milk this happens more.

"Although adding milk does impact on the availability of polyphenols, tea is still a significant source of them."

Summary: Drinking tea could help you lose weight, new research has found – but the effects are cancelled out if you add milk.


Tennis’ Grand Slam summer begins on May 22, as the 2016 French Open gets underway. The start will be a little awkward: for the first time since 1999, Roger Federer won’t be playing in a major. The 18-time Grand Slam champ had played in a record 65 consecutive Slams, but a back injury will force him to miss this year’s French. Even without the éminence grise of the game at Roland Garros, there are plenty of storylines worth following. Here are five you need to know:

1. Serena Slam For the second time this year, Serena Williams will be trying to tie Steffi Graf’s record for most career Grand Slams, at 22. (Williams lost to Angelique Kerber in the finals of the Australian Open). Williams has played in only four events in 2016: at the Italian Open last week, she secured her first tournament win in nine months by ousting fellow American Madison Keys in the final. Last year, a nasty flu almost kept Williams out of the French final: playing sick, she won her third French Open. Roland Garros, however, is the only Grand Slam event Williams has failed to win in back-to-back years. Can she pull it off at 34?

Read More: The Grand Slam is Dead, But Serena Will Still Live Loud

2. No Djoke. Novak Djokovic is enjoying one of most dominate stretches in tennis history. Since the start of 2015, the Serbian owns a 119-9 match record. A French Open victory would give Djokovic a career Grand Slam, and his fourth straight major victory, dating back to last year’s Wimbledon. The last men’s player to win four straight was Rod Laver, who swept the Grand Slams in 1969. A Roland Garros victory would also give Djokovic a shot at Laver’s calendar-year Slam. The French has long eluded Djokovic — he’d be the first player to ever win a title on his 12th try. Last year, he beat nine-time champ Rafael Nadal in the quarters, only to fall to Stan Wawrinka in a finals upset. Djokovic, who grew up playing on clay courts, has had mixed-results during French Open tuneups: massive underdog Jiri Vesely knocked him out of Monte Carlo in Djokovic’s opening match, and he fell to Andy Murray in the finals of the Italian Open. But he also beat Murray to win Madrid. So why not Roland Garros?

3. Dandy Andy? It’s been nearly three years since Andy Murray won a major; at Wimbledon in 2013, he ended Great Britain’s infamous 77-year title drought on that hallowed grass. Is the Scotsman due? He rounded into form at the Italian Open, beating Djokovic in the final. In early May, Murray and his coach, former world number-one Amélie Mauresmo, announced a mutual split: with Mauresmo’s family obligations, and duties as France’s Fed Cup captain, she couldn’t spend sufficient time with her student. Their two-year partnership broke new ground: Murray was the first high-profile men’s player to hire a woman as coach. Murray has hinted at a possible reunion with Ivan Lendl, who coached Murray during his two Grand Slam wins, Wimbledon and the 2012 U.S. Open. But there’s plenty of time for Murray to sort out the coaching drama. His most urgent task: crash continental Europe’s 12-year stranglehold on the men’s title (courtesy, for the most part, of Rafael Nadal, who’s won nine of them).

4. Keys To Success. After reaching last year’s Aussie Open semis, Madison Keys, 21, became America’s next great hope for the post-Serena era, whenever that arrives. She’s never gotten past the third round of the French, the tournament that traditionally gives Americans, who mostly grow up competing on hard courts, the most trouble. But expectations will soar this year because Keys made a surprise run to the Italian Open finals, where she lost to Williams. It was the first time two American women made a clay-court final since Serena beat sister Venus at the 2002 French Open.

In the Italian semis, Keys took out a French Open title threat, Garbing Muguruza of Spain, who’s ranked fourth in the world (Keys in now 17th). “I mean, I can play on clay? Yes!” the New York Times quoted Keys as saying after she beat Muguruza “It’s something I’m really proud of myself for, and hopefully I can take the experience and use it in the next couple of weeks. It’s definitely going to be something that I remind myself of going into every clay-court season: ‘Yeah, I made the final of a red-clay tournament. I can do this thing.’”

5. Remember Rafa. It’s almost sinful to preview the French Open without mentioning Rafael Nadal, despite mixed results in recent Slams. The 14-time Grand Slam champ is going for a tenth title at Roland Garros. In the open era, no player — man or woman — has ever won double digit trophies at a single Grand Slam event (Martina Navratalova has nine Wimbledon titles).

Nadal’s the greatest clay court player ever. His almost desperate slides and charges on the Roland Garros dirt have defined the French for more than a decade. In April, Nadal won clay tuneups in Monte Carlo and Barcelona back-to-back, beating names like Murray, Wawrinka and Kei Nishikori along the way. In May, he lost to Murray and Djokovic in Madrid and Rome, respectively; it was Djokovic who handed Nadal just his second loss ever at Roland Garros, when he knocked Nadal out of the quarterfinals a year ago. Tennis fans are pining for a rematch. Let the fun at the French begin.

Summary: From Rafa to Novak to America's surprising hope, your guide to get smart fast


Rahat, Al-Hazeel -Â SodaStream, the Israeli company that has drawn criticism for operating in the occupied West Bank, will be ending its operations there and is opening a new factory in southern Israel.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS)Â - which uses economic pressure in its pursuit to end the Israeli occupation - has targeted SodaStream, which produces home soda-making machines, for its factory's location in Mishor Adumim, an illegal Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Standing in a plush meeting room in the new SodaStream factory, CEO Daniel Birnbaum refuted criticism of the company. "There's no scandal," Birnbaum told members of the media. "It's a legitimate factory [in the West Bank]. We're not breaking any international law, but in the meantime we decided to build a new factory here in the Negev."

He said the company had moved to the new factory as it was "cost effective", but admitted BDS had played some role in the move, though he claims it was "minimal".

OPINION:Â Game changer: 10 years of BDS

BirnbaumÂ added that SodaStream's presence should have been encouraged in the occupied West Bank.Â He has referred to the West Bank factory as "an island of peace" where Israelis and Palestinians worked "in harmony".

The West Bank factory officially closed last week, resulting in 470 Palestinian workers losing their jobs. The BDS movement claims the decision is a direct result of its pressure.

"This closure is a clear-cut BDS victory against an odiously complicit Israeli company," said Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the BDS movement. Barghouti added that the movement had succeeded in pressuring major retailers across North America and Europe, including Macy's in the US and John Lewis in the UK, to stop stocking SodaStream products. He said SodaStream also closed its flagship store in Brighton in the UK as a result of regular protests. Soros Fund Management, an investment management firm founded by billionaire investor George Soros, sold its stake in the company last year.

"After pressure from Soros' partners in the region and the world, they dropped SodaStream and promised, in private letters so far, to issue guidelines similar to those adopted by the EU to prevent any investment into companies that sustain the Israeli occupation and settlements in particular," Barghouti told the media last year.Â

Soros Fund Management did not respond to Al Jazeera's requests for comment.

UpFront - Debating the Israel boycott

But this new factory, too, is proving to be controversial. BDS activists say it is located on land that the Israeli government confiscated from Bedouins in the 1950s. The factory is surrounded by 34 Bedouin villages, which are unrecognised by the Israeli government and are threatened with eviction, but no final date of eviction has been set as the Israeli government's plans have been put on hold.

SodaStream sought to transfer all Palestinian workers to the new Israeli plant, but most were unable to do so because of the very long commute from the occupied West Bank and the difficulty obtaining work permits from the Israeli government, which regularly prevents Palestinians in the West Bank free movement across its checkpoints.

Israel granted the company 130 work permits, but only 37 of the Palestinian staff from the West Bank factory were able to meet the security requirements, which exclude single people and those aged 22 and younger.

Those 37 staff travel up to four hours each day to work in the new factory. Tahsin Hanadi, 38, is the only woman among the group: "I leave home at 4:30am each day and I am home at 8:30pm," she said, detailing a 16-hour ordeal that involves crossing an Israeli checkpoint and going through security checks. She was not angry about the factory's move, but admitted it was harder for her to travel so far each day for work.

The Israeli argument that boycotting the colonies [Jewish settlements] will hurt poor Palestinian workers is disingenuous and intended to divert attention from the illegality of all Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Omar Barghouti, BDS movement leader

Palestinian Taqsim Mohsin, 27, said he travelled to the factory each day from Abu Dis, a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem that was separated from the city when Israel built its illegal separation wall. He travels three-and-a-half hours a day and works 12 hours.

"BDS is hurting us; many of us can't get work in the West Bank and wages are so low. We need this work," Mohsin told Al Jazeera.

But Barghouti disagreed that BDS is to blame, and said high unemployment in the occupied West Bank was a direct result of settlement activity and the separation wall: "Israel's occupation has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in dire conditions of poverty. After losing their agricultural lands to settlements, thousands of Palestinians were compelled to work in Israeli projects, including in settlements to subsist," Barghouti told Al Jazeera. "The Israeli argument that boycotting the colonies [Jewish settlements] will hurt poor Palestinian workers is disingenuous and intended to divert attention from the illegality of all Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories."

SodaStream's new $90m factory near Rahat, of which the Israeli government contributed $20m according to Birnbaum, was built in a new industrial zone touted by the Israeli government as a solution to sky-high unemployment rates among the Bedouin in the Negev. Forty-seven percent of Bedouin men are unemployed, and 87 percent of women are also unemployed, according to official Israeli government figures.

Human rights lawyer and PhD student Rawia abu Rabia said the origins of high levels of unemployment among Bedouin women began when Israel forced people off their lands: "Forcing women off their lands deprived them of their traditional roles ... and left them with no options - no training and often no education."

She said many Bedouin women simply had not attended school until recently.

Rahat was established by the Israeli government in 1971 as a planned urban township for Bedouins. This came after the government seized the territory, originally known as al-Hazeel, by evicting Bedouins, who previously led a nomadic lifestyle, from their homes. Many of the Bedouins were forced by the Israelis out of the Negev and became refugees inside what is today the occupied West Bank.

Rahat, like the Bedouin villages surrounding it, has some of the poorest living conditions in Israel.

Atiyeh al-A'sam, head of the regional council for the unrecognised Bedouin villages, said that while industrial zones providing employment were important, so was ensuring that Bedouins maintain and develop their agricultural skills.

He said Israel had been discouraging this, by restricting grazing and forcing Bedouins to keep livestock on tiny pockets of land. Industrial parks, like Idan Hanegev, where SodaStream is now located, were not the solution, A'sam told Al Jazeera.

Lawyer and Bedouin community leader Atwa al-Hag Abou Anzeh told a group of journalists that he was critical of the industrial zone, because of the Bedouins' forced removal from their homes to a more urban centre in Rahat: "It was clear when Rahat was established [that] the state wanted to concentrate us in one place and take our land.

Their attempts to help with employment are insults to our intelligence, and you cannot create a partnership like the industrial zone between rich and poor. You must provide the poor with the right conditions to leave the circle of poverty," he argued.

OPINION:Â I support the Israeli boycott - but which one?

Meanwhile, Barghouti said moving the factory inside Israel would not alleviate pressure from the BDS movement: "The BDS campaign against SodaStream will continue, as the company is moving to a location where it is directly colluding in the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab [Negev]. SodaStream's move is part of the Israeli government's plans to steal the traditional lands of Bedouin Palestinian communities in the Naqab, forcibly displacing them and concentrating them in 'urban' areas."

But Birnbaum defended the new factory's location. "There was nothing here when we laid the cornerstone a few years ago," he said. "This was just desert. No one lived here, there was no water - nothing."

But historian and director of the Negev office of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Thabet Abu Rass confirmed to Al Jazeera that the land on which the industrial park had been built had been confiscated from the Bedouin by Israel in the 1950s. According to Abu Rass, 70,000 Bedouin citizens were living in 34 villages that predated the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948: "The state of Israel considers the villages unrecognised and the inhabitants trespassers on state land."

"Bedouin [Palestinians] are the most vulnerable community in Israel, and for over 60 years the indigenous Bedouins have faced a state policy of displacement, home demolitions and dispossession of ancestral land."

Summary: The BDS movement will continue its campaign against the Israeli company as it opens a new factory in Bedouin area.


Over three quarters (78.7pc) said that a lack of boundaries at home was the reason for challenging, disruptive and abusive behaviour by pupils.

ATL general secretary Dr Mary Bousted said: ''Regrettably teachers and support staff are suffering the backlash from deteriorating standards of behaviour. They are frequently on the receiving end of children's frustration and unhappiness, and have to deal with the fallout from parents failing to set boundaries and family breakdowns. And the huge funding cuts to local services mean that schools often have to deal with children's problems without any help.

''Schools with firm, clear and consistently enforced behaviour policies create safe learning environments for children and staff, but problems occur when schools fail to enforce good discipline policies and when children know there are weak or non-existent sanctions.''

Overall, the vast majority of school and college staff (88.7pc) said they had dealt with challenging or disruptive behaviour this academic year.

Of these, more than two thirds (68.4pc) said they had dealt with bad behaviour directed at them.

More than half (55pc) of school staff said they had been forced to deal with verbally aggressive pupils, and 21pc had dealt with a child that was physically aggressive.

One primary teacher in West Sussex told researchers: ''I have a five-year old boy in the reception class who has recently been taken into care. His behaviour ranges from being very caring and wanting a lot of attention to swearing at staff, punching, kicking, hitting staff and other children, smashing up furniture and equipment.''

And a primary teacher from Salford said: ''I faced challenging behaviour from a three-year-old child in the first weeks of him entering the school. Being in our nursery has changed this child completely; he knows what is expected of him and where the limits are.''

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Disruptive or violent behaviour has no place whatsoever in the classroom. That is why we have strengthened teachers' powers to put them back in charge.

"Teachers can now issue no notice detentions, search a pupil without consent when they suspect they may be in possession of a prohibited item and changes to the system mean a school's decision to exclude a pupil cannot be reversed by an appeals panel.

"Our guidance also makes clear that teachers can use force to remove disruptive pupils from the classroom when necessary.

"Making sure teachers are fully trained to deal with any sort of challenging or violent behaviour is a core part of teacher standards – and teachers cannot qualify unless they can demonstrate that they can manage children's behaviour."

Summary: A lack of boundaries at home is fuelling naughty behaviour in the classroom,   teachers have warned.


1979 Rubstic, Maurice Barnes, John Leadbetter, John Douglas 25/1

1978 Lucius, Bob Davies, Gordon Richards, Fiona Whitaker 14/1

1977 Red Rum, Tommy Stack, Donald McCain, Noel Le Mare 9/1

1976 Rag Trade, John Burke, Fred Rimell, Pierre Raymond 14/1

1975 L'Escargot, Tommy Carberry, Dan Moore IRE, Raymond Guest 13/2

1974 Red Rum, Brian Fletcher, Donald McCain, Noel Le Mare 11/1

1973 Red Rum, Brian Fletche,r Donald McCain, Noel Le Mare 9/1 Jt F

1972 Well To Do, Graham Thorner, Tim Forster, Tim Forster 14/1

1971 Specify, John Cook, John Sutcliffe, Fred Pontin 28/1

1970 Gay Trip, Pat Taaffe, Fred Rimell, A J Chambers 15/1

1969 Highland Wedding, Eddie Harty, Toby Balding, Thomas McCoy Jnr 100/9

1968 Red Alligator, Brian Fletcher, Denys Smith, John Manners 100/7

1967 Foinavon, John Buckingham, John Kempton, Cyril Watkins 100/1

1966 Anglo, Tim Norman, Fred Winter, Stuart Levy 50/1

1965 Jay Trump, Mr Tommy Smith, Fred Winter, Mary Stephenson 100/6

1964 Team Spirit, George Robinson, Fulke Walwyn, John Goodman 18/1

1963 Ayala, Pat Buckley, Keith Piggott, Pierre Raymond 66/1

1962 Kilmore, Fred Winter, Ryan Price, Nat Cohen 28/1

1961 Nicolaus Silver, Bobby Beasley, Fred Rimel,l Charles Vaughan 28/1

1960 Merryman II, Gerry Scott, Neville Crump, Winifred Wallace 13/2 F

1959 Oxo, Michael Scudamore, Willie Stephenson, John Bigg 8/1

1958 Mr What, Arthur Freeman, Tom Taaffe IRE, D J Coughlan 18/1

1957 Sundew, Fred Winter, Frank Hudson, Mrs Geoffrey Kohn 20/1

1956 ESB, Dave Dick, Fred Rimell, Mrs Leonard Carver 100/7

1955 Quare Times, Pat Taaffe, Vincent O'Brien IRE, Mrs W Welman 100/9

1954 Royal Tan, Bryan Marshall, Vincent O'Brien IRE, Joe Griffin 8/1

1953 Early Mist, Bryan Marshall, Vincent O'Brien IRE, Joe Griffin 20/1

1952 Teal, Arthur Thompson, Neville Crump, Harry Lane 100/7

1951 Nickel Coin, John Bullock, Jack O'Donoghue, Jeffrey Royle 40/1

1950 Freebooter, Jimmy Powe,r Bobby Renton, Lurline Brotherton 10/1

1949 Russian Hero, Leo McMorrow, George Owen, Fernie Williamson 66/1

1948 Sheila's Cottage, Arthur Thompson, Neville Crump, John Procter 50/1

1947 Caughoo, Eddie Dempsey, Herbert McDowell IRE, John McDowell 100/1

1946 Lovely Cottage, Capt Bobby Petre, Tommy Rayson, John Morant 25/1

Summary: Rule The World showed his battling qualities when ploughing through the rain-softened conditions to land the Crabbie's Grand National at Aintree.


With Rio being the centre of the world’s equestrian focus for the next fortnight and beyond, at the Paralympics, it is not quite like football coming home every time Britain hosts an international tournament of note or even, for that matter, the return to Brazil’s second city of Blu, the Spix’s macaw, in the film Rio. But Brazil actually has a rich heritage in competitive equestrianism in a way that other recent hosts China and Greece have not.

That is mainly due to one man who was way ahead of his time: Nelson Pessoa. When I was growing up and was given special dispensation to watch the late night action from Wembley or Olympia on terrestrial television because we were a horsey family, Nelson was a standing dishat every show.

Pessoa, who was known to all as ‘Neco’, is now 80. Even in a sport known for the longevity of its competitors he proved an almost unique durability, winning the British Jumping Derby at Hickstead in 1963 and 1965 and then, for a third time, 31 years later aged 60 in 1996.

Summary: The British team horses have arrived safely in Rio ahead of the Olympics and I have a strong feeling that this will be the year that they finally have to paint the postbox gold –


Syrian opposition groups are planning to escalate an offensive against government forces in Aleppo, the strategic city divided between rebels and troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, fighters have told Al Jazeera.

Syria's civil war: Rebels launch operation to break Aleppo siege

Raed Al Halabi, a fighter in the local Halab al-Shahba Brigades, said on Tuesday a coalition of armed groups will launch shells and car bomb attacks against Aleppo's government-held neighbourhoods with the hope of advancing and opening the government-besieged supply route into the city.

The coalition - Fateh Halab, or Aleppo Conquest - includes most armed rebel groups fighting in the city, including Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and several factions aligned with the Free Syrian Army.Â

"The shelling on regime military sites has already started and we will begin the advance soon," he told Al Jazeera by telephone from the battle frontline in Aleppo.

SANA, the Syrian government's official news agency, reported that at least seven civilians were killed by rebel-launched shells in Aleppo on Tuesday afternoon.Â

Fighting has intensified in Aleppo in recent days as government forces target residential areas in the eastern, rebel-held parts of the city with air strikes.Â Rebel groups, meanwhile, have killed at least 30 civilians since Monday in shell attacks on Aleppo's government-held areas.

In recent weeks, government forces have closed off a key supply route in Aleppo, prompting concerns about the lack of food, water, medicines and fuel in the northern city.

Government and Russian air strikes on Tuesday also targeted areas across the outskirts of the city and in the Aleppo countryside, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In eastern Aleppo, locals burned tyres en masse to create an impromptu no-fly zone, with the hope of preventing government air strikes from successfully hitting their intended targets.

Middle East analyst Firas Maksad said that while "Aleppo is key" for government efforts to keep supply lines open, for the opposition, "this is really their last stand.

"If they lose Aleppo, which they've held a major portion of now for about four odd years, they might as well have lost all the battle for Syria," the Washington DC-based analyst told Al Jazeera.

Ahmad Jalal, a fighter in Jaish al-Islam, confirmed the escalation of the efforts to drive back government forces, saying that rebels have attacked al-Ramosa neighbourhood, a stronghold of government forces and militias loyal to Assad.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, he claimed that rebel fighters, including those from the Ahrar al-Sham armed group, took control of several buildings throughout Ramosa.

Khalil Hajjar, a media activist at the Aleppo Media Centre, said opposition fighters were advancing in the western Aleppo countryside. "The battles are ongoing and the regime is losing ground," he told Al Jazeera.

Rebels have intensified their efforts to break a government-imposed siege in parts of Aleppo [Zouhir Al Shimale/Al Jazeera]

In Aleppo's Hamdania neighbourhood, a government-held area, Fatah Halab also launched shells and bomb attacks. "Smoke and fire has filled the whole area," Hajjar said.Â

Earlier on Tuesday, the Syrian Civil Defence said helicoptersÂ had dropped containers of chlorine gasÂ overnight on the rebel-controlled Saraqeb town in the Idlib province. The group said several people were hospitalised due to the effects of the gas.Â

A day earlier, the Russian defence ministry said five Russian soldiers were killed near Saraqeb when their helicopter was shot down.Â

Sharif Nashashibi, a London-based Middle East analyst and writer, described the opposition fighters' campaign as "their last-ditch attempt to keep Aleppo" as government forces attempt to further besiege rebel-held neighbourhoods.

"But the effectiveness of the rebels' counteroffensive depends on the level of support their backers are willing to supply," Nashashibi told Al Jazeera.

The Syrian conflict started as a largely unarmed uprising against Assad's government in March 2011, but it quickly escalated into a full-on civil war that has left at least 280,000 people dead, according to the Observatory.Â

Efforts to mediate a ceasefire have collapsed time and again.Â

Additional reporting from Aleppo by Zouhir Al Shimale: @ZouhirAlShimale

Inside Story - What's behind Russian humanitarian corridors in Aleppo?

Summary: Rebels claim advances in the strategic city of Aleppo as fighting intensifies and the death toll rises.


The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday stripped the Chinese women’s gymnastics team of a bronze medal it won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The move came two months after one of China’s athletes, Dong Fangxiao, was found to be under-age at those Summer Games.

The I.O.C. will award the bronze medal to the United States , which had finished fourth in the team event and had left the 2000 Olympics empty-handed. The team members were Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Dominique Dawes, Kristen Maloney, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert.

“I could have never imagined getting another Olympic medal at 33 years old, so it’s great to hear the news and that justice prevailed,” said Dawes, who will now have one gold and three bronze Olympic medals, from the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Games. “I’m thrilled that my teammates and I, 10 years later, will finally be able to enjoy the medal we deserved.”

The issue of age falsification has been a lingering problem in gymnastics and was a major issue at the 2008 Beijing Games, where questions arose about the age of at least two of China’s female gymnasts. Internet sports registries and other sources showed that those gymnasts were under-age. To compete at the Games, gymnasts must be at least 16 in an Olympic year.

In the end, the International Gymnastics Federation did not find any proof of wrongdoing. But in Dong’s case, the federation did have evidence.

The federation had been investigating Dong for possible age falsification since she filed paperwork to work as an official at the Beijing Games. The age on those documents would have made her 14 at the Sydney Olympics.

In February, after a lengthy investigation, the federation revoked Dong’s results from those Games, as well as from several other major competitions. It also asked the I.O.C. to strip the Chinese team of its medal. All of Dong’s results from the Sydney Games, including a sixth-place finish in the floor exercise and a seventh-place finish on the vault, were wiped from the record books.

A version of this article appears in print on April 29, 2010, on page B18 of the New York edition with the headline: Sports Briefing | Olympics; China Stripped of 2000 Bronze. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: The U.S. will be awarded the bronze medal after a female gymnast was found to be under-age at the 2000 Games.


Darbe girişimi sonrası ilan edilen olağanüstü hâl kapsamında, 31 Temmuz'da Kanun Hükmünde Kararname (KHK) ile harp okulları, askeri liseler ve astsubay hazırlama okulları kapatıldı.

15 Temmuz darbe girişimiyle ilgili haberler ve analizler

Kararnameyle, harp okulları ve astsubay hazırlama okullarının yeni kurulacak Milli Savunma Üniversitesi'nin çatısı altında birleştirileceği açıklandı.

Kapatılan okulların öğrencileri ise ortaöğretim ve üniversite yerleştirme puanları dikkate alınarak uygun okullara kaydedilecek.

Bu yıl mezun olan öğrenciler subay ve astsubay olamayacak. Kendilerine Yükseköğretim Kurumu (YÖK) tarafından uygun görülen fakülte ve yüksekokulların diploması verilecek.

Öğrenciler arasında, askeri liselerden harp okullarına direkt geçiş yapıp, geçmişte üniversite sınavına girmeleri gerekmediği için YGS ve LYS puanları olmayanlar var. Öğrenciler, bu duruma nasıl bir çözüm bulunacağını merak ediyor.

Askeri okulların kapatılması kararının gerekçelerini, öğrencilerin durumunu ve sürecin nasıl ilerleyeceğini; Harbiyeli öğrencilere, Milli Savunma Bakanlığı'na, YÖK'e ve bazı TBMM Milli Savunma Komisyonu üyelerine sorduk.

Konuştuğumuz Hava Harp Okulu öğrencileri, cezaevindeki arkadaşları ile ilgili hukuki süreci olumsuz etkilememek için isimlerini vermek istemedi.

BBC Türkçe'ye konuşan öğrencilerden biri, kendilerini her zaman subaylık ve pilotluk için hazırladıklarını söyledi.

Bir günde okuldan ilişiklerinin kesildiğini belirten aynı öğrenci, "Bir anda 'Mühendis olun hayatınızı kurun' dediler. Senelerimizi biz bu meslek için verdik, vatan ve millet için uğraştık." diye konuştu.

Peki öğrencilerin gelecek kaygılar var mı?

Bu soruyu yönelttiğimiz öğrencilerin hemen hepsi, önceliklerinin Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri'nin (TSK) geleceği olduğunu, sonra kendi geleceklerini düşündüklerini vurguladı.

İçlerinden biri, "Biz kendi geleceğimizden çok vatanın, TSK'nın geleceğini düşündüğümüz için bu okullarda okuyorduk." dedi.

Eski Genelkurmay Başkanı İlker Başbuğ Pazartesi günü CNN Türk televizyonunda yayımlanan Tarafsız Bölge programında askeri okulların kapatılması ile ilgili olarak "Türk ordusunun damarını kesiyorsunuz" yorumunda bulunmuştu.

Görüşlerini aldığımız öğrencilerden biri Başbuğ'un sözlerini hatırlatarak, "Askeri okulların kapatılması tüm birikimi yok edecektir. Ordu içinde yüz yıllardır süre gelen dengeyi ve kültürü bozacaktır. Bu ülkemiz için çok büyük kayıp olacak." dedi.

Öğrenciler, Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı'nın (MİT) ve Emniyet'in, Fethullah Gülen Cemaati ile ilişkileri olup olmadığına dair haklarında araştırma yapmasını da istedi. İçlerinden birinin yorumu ise şöyle oldu:

"Yöneticiler kolay olanı, 'Herkesi tasfiye edelim' yolunu seçtiler. Suçlu suçsuz demeden tasfiye edilen Harbiyeliler olarak devlet büyüklerimize soruyoruz: Neden bize açık kapı bırakmıyorsunuz?"

Öğrenciler, darbe girişiminden dört gün önce (11 Temmuz) Ankara-Etimesgut'a paraşüt eğitimine götürülen bazı arkadaşlarının, eğitim veren subayların darbeci olduğu gerekçesiyle şu an Sincan Cezaevi'nde olduklarını ve hiçbir şeyden haberleri olmadığını söyledi.

Dikkat çektikleri bir diğer nokta ise bazı öğrencilerin, 15 Temmuz gecesi "tatbikat" yapılacağı söylenerek birlikten çıkarılıp İstanbul'da Boğaziçi Köprüsü'ne götürülmesi.

"Bizim emir komuta zincirine bağlı olduğumuz aşikâr. Bu darbe girişiminden hiçbir şekilde haberimiz yoktu" diyen öğrenciler şu soruların yanıtlanmasını istedi:

"Bu yapı okullara sızarken, bu kadar yerleşmişken MİT neredeydi?"

"MİT ve diğer istihbarat birimleri bu kadar güçsüz olduğu için çözüm bütün okulları kapatmak mı oluyor?"

"Eğer bu yapıyı çözmeyecek kadar güçsüz bir istihbaratımız varsa, neden sorumlular hala görevde?"

Öğrencilerin şikayetleri ile ilgili görüşlerini aldığımız ve sorularını yönelttiğimiz Milli Savunma Bakanlığı Basın Müşaviri Ertan Ömeroğlu ise "Bunlar MİT'in cevaplayacağı sorular" dedi.

Kimseyi mağdur etmediklerini vurgulayan Ömeroğlu, Milli Savunma Bakanı Fikri Işık'ın sözlerini hatırlatarak, "Öğrencilerin yüzde 95'i paralel devlet yapısıyla ilişkili" dedi.

Ömeroğlu, yeni kurulan Milli Savunma Üniversitesi hakkında ise şu yorumu yaptı:

"Asker yetiştirdiğimiz mevcut sistemde 6 tane darbe oldu. Öğrencilerin yetişme sistemi demokratik değildi. Milli Savunma Üniversitesi'nde demokrasi yanlısı askerler yetiştireceğiz." dedi.

Ömeroğlu, YGS-LYS puanı olmayan öğrencilerin diğer üniversitelere yerleştirilmeleri ile ilgili olarak ise "Öğrenciler YGS-LYS puanı olmasa bile İstanbul'daki üniversitelerde kendi bölümü olan bir tanesine yerleştirilebilir. Bunlar hala üzerine çalışılan konular. Süreci YÖK ile işbirliği içinde yürütüyoruz." diye konuştu.

YÖK'ten bu konuda BBC Türkçe'ye yapılan açıklama ise şöyle:

"Kapatılan vakıf üniversitelerinde olduğu gibi, askeri okullarla ilgili kurulan bir komisyon bu konudaki çalışmalarına devam ediyor. Çalışma bitince alınan kararlar kamuoyu ile paylaşılacaktır."

'Sistem 10 yılda bir darbe üretiyor'

TBMM Milli Savunma Komisyonu üyeleri arasında ise askeri okulların kapatılması ile ilgili görüş birliği yok.

Komisyon üyesi ve AKP Muğla Milletvekili Nihat Öztürk, Türkiye'deki tüm darbelerin ordu sisteminden kaynaklandığını düşündüklerini söyledi, askeri okulların kapatılması kararının bir "gereklilik" olduğunu belirtti:

"Bir daha Cumhurbaşkanını öldürmeye çalışan, kendi halkına kurşun sıkan askerler istemiyoruz. Benim için Harbiye'den önce vatanım, bayrağım ve milletim gelir."

"200 yıllık askeri okulların durduk yere kapatılmalarını kim ister? Terörist yapılanması olduğunu fark ettiğimiz bu okullardaki sistem, benim ülkemde her 10 yılda bir darbe üretiyor'' görüşünü dile getiren Öztürk, okullarını kaybeden öğrencilerin tamamının cemaat üyesi olduğunu varsaymadıklarını söyledi:

"Bu öğrencilerin arasında masum ve mazlum olan, vatanını ve milletini seven Harbiyeli gençler de var. Ama ayıklayamıyoruz. Öyle bir takiye yapıyorlar, kendilerini öyle gizliyorlar ki ayıklayabilme şansınız yok."

Nihat Öztürk'ün vurguladığı bir diğer nokta ise ordu içindeki cemaat yapılanması konusunda sadece hükümetin ve partisinin değil, eski hükümetler ve her siyasi partinin sorumluluğu olması:

"Biz 14 yıldır iktidardayız. Bizim zamanımızda askeri okullara girmiş öğrenciler şu an ancak üsteğmen olabildi. Bu nedenle bu mesele sadece AK Parti'nin meselesi değil."

TBMM Milli Savunma Komisyonu üyelerinden CHP İstanbul Milletvekili Dursun Çiçek, "AKP ve Gülen cemaatine yönelik komplo ve yıpratma planları" içerdiği belirtilen ve kendisi tarafından hazırlandığı iddia edilen bir andıcın Nisan 2008'de Taraf gazetesinde yayımlanması sonrası, Ergenekon davasında ağırlaştırılmış müebbet hapis cezasına çarptırılmıştı.

Balyoz davasında da 16 yıl hapis cezası alan Çiçek, Anayasa Mahkemesi'nin "hak ihlali" kararı sonrası yeniden görülmeye başlanan dava sonucunda 31 Mart 2015'te diğer sanıklarla birlikte beraat etmişti.

Görüşlerini aldığımız Dursun Çiçek, askeri okulların kapatılmasını "acele verilmiş bir karar" olarak görüyor. Çiçek'e göre, süreçte büyük bir boşluk ve yönetim zafiyeti var:

"Esas olarak darbeye teşebbüs eden örgütün sınav sorularını çalmalarına veya kendi mensubu olmayan öğrencilere baskı yapmalarına karşı tedbir almak gerekiyordu. Okulları kapatmakla Milli Eğitim'in sorunları çözülemeyeceği gibi, askeri okulları kapatmakla da bu tür yapılanmaların askeri sisteme sızması engellenemez."

Çiçek, 15 Temmuz darbe girişimine engel olabilecek binlerce kişinin Ergenekon ve Balyoz davalarında sistemin dışına atıldığının da altını çizdi:

"Atatürkçü ve Cumhuriyetçi binlerce insanımız kumpas davalarıyla sistemin dışına atıldı, istifa etmek zorunda bırakıldı. Bunlar yaşanırken yöneticiler bu kumpas davalarının savcısı oldu. Şimdi mağduru oynuyorlar."

Kendisi gibi Ergenekon ve Balyoz davaları mağdurlarının örgütlenerek hukuk mücadelesi yürüttüğünü hatırlatan Çiçek, son tasfiyelerde mağdur olanların da haklarını hukuk önünde aramaları gerektiğini söyledi ve onlara destek verdi:

"Suç örgütü üyesi olanlar o karanlık gecenin hukuken cezasını çekmelidir. Fakat mağdur öğrenciler örgütlü bir hukuk mücadelesine girişirlerse, biz de siyaseten destek vereceğiz."

TBMM Milli Savunma Komisyonu'nun HDP'li üyelerinden Ağrı Milletvekili Berdan Öztürk ise KHK'larla getirilen düzenlemelerin "kişiye göre değişen ölçütlerle" uygulandığı görüşünde.

Berdan Öztürk'e göre düzenlemeler, yüz binlerce insanın mağduriyetine neden olan bir "cadı avı"na dönüştü.

Öztürk, "Bu zamana kadar askeri okullar belli bir ideolojik ve siyasi bir yapıya göre asker yetiştiriyordu" dedi ve ekledi:

"Alınan kararlarla bu okullar bu sefer bir diğer siyasi anlayışa göre şekillendirilecek. Mesele demokratik bir ordu kurmak değil."

Türk Silahlıl Kuvvetleri'nin geleceği ve yeni yapısının ne olacağına ilişkin tartışmalar sürerken, askeri okulların eski öğrencilerinin geleceğinin nasıl şekilleneceği ise bu aşamada belirsiz görünüyor.

Summary: Kapatılan harp okulları, askeri liseler ve astsubay hazırlama okullarının öğrencileri kaygılı. Kararın gerekçelerini ve öğrencilerin durumunu Milli Savunma Bakanlığı'na ve TBMM Milli Savunma Komisyonu üyelerine sorduk.


It’s hard to exaggerate the alchemy of distortions that are turning ObamaCare into such a pending disaster that big insurers like Aetna, Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, once supporters, can’t cut back their participation fast enough.

ObamaCare was always going to be a questionable deal for taxpayers if the only people who signed up were poorer people whose premiums were largely paid by taxpayers. That was fine as far as...

Summary: Business World columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., writes that increasingly, the only customers for ObamaCare policies are those who are already sick.


The thousands who fled north from the Canadian city of Fort McMurray to escape the raging wildfires were on the move again Friday after the winds changed direction and began pushing the blazes in their direction.

A long convoy of cars and trucks carrying more 15,000 people and escorted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police snaked through the outskirts of the remote city to get away from an inferno that has now charred 390 square miles of territory and devoured more than 1,600 structures.

PHOTOS: Monster forest fire ravaging western Canada

“As of this morning, the downtown is largely standing, the hospital is still standing, the telephone center is intact, the water treatment center is back up and running,” said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. “We’ve been able to hold the line, for the most part, in the residential areas.”

But in other parts of town, said Notley, “damage is extensive and will take many months to repair.”

“Firefighters are struggling to contain this fire and save as much of the city as possible,” she said.

Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake was among those who had to evacuate for a second time. She

Photos from the monster forest fire ravaging western Canada

Canadian officials cautiously hailed a turning point in the battle to contain a raging wildfire.

said so far every resident of the city (pop. 61,374) had been accounted for.

“Everybody has been out, safe and sound,” she said. “I was worried that people would panic …that didn’t happen.”

Chad Morrison, the province’s wildfire management specialist, said the fires were continuing grow, fueled by tinder-dry conditions.

“Right now we do need some rain, no doubt about it,” he said.

So far, investigators have not figured out what sparked the wildfires that erupted on Sunday and have so far forced 88,000 people to flee.

Notley warned anyone thinking of trying to return to Fort McMurray to reconsider.

“The city of Fort McMurray is not safe to return to,” she said. “The town site will be secured by the RCMP.”

More than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters and 22 air tankers have been fighting the fires for five days.

As of Thursday night, a 49 wildfires were burning with seven considered out of control.

The province of Alberta, meanwhile, announced a fire ban in order an attempt to prevent another blaze.

“We will do everything to keep people safe,” Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil John Carlier told a press conference. “We cannot control Mother Nature. We can minimize fires.”

The Canadian Red Cross said it had raised $11 million for those affected — and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has pledged to match individual donations.

This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

Summary: Investigators have not yet figured out what sparked the fires that have forced 88,000 people to evacuate and charred 390 square miles of territory.


The Bible is full of admonishments to take special care of "the fatherless," and in recent years, evangelical Christians in particular have taken this commandment to heart. On Sunday, thousands of churches across the country will take part in the fifth annual "Orphan Sunday" to bring attention to the cause of adoption. It's not just a matter of advocacy: Financial support for orphan-related matters has surged in recent years, becoming one of the top targets of evangelical giving, according to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

In 2012, the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University reports, charitable giving by Americans rose about 3.5% from the previous year. Meanwhile, Christians donating to adoption causes rose by 9.5% and to groups focused on orphan care by 17%.

Megan Hill, who lives with her husband in Jackson, Miss., is one of many evangelicals who have been drawn to the cause. When Ms. Hill and her husband adopted their son, Caleb, five years ago, the only other evangelical families she knew that had considered adoption were those who struggled with infertility. The Hills already had a biological son. But without maternity insurance and after listening to an appeal from a Bethany Christian Services representative at their church, they adopted locally.

Within three years of their first adoption, the Hills decided to adopt another son—this time from Ethiopia. Ms. Hill says she knows about 50 evangelical families with biological children in the Jackson area who have started the adoption process in the past few years. "There was an attitude of 'However many millions of orphans, we're going to solve this crisis,' " Ms. Hill says.

Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, notes that caring for orphans has been a hallmark of the religion for centuries. But he acknowledges a recent wave of interest and says it accompanied Christians' focus on the global AIDS crisis, encouraged by Rick Warren and other pastors.

Well-known members of the evangelical community have also played a role: Former Indianapolis Colts football coach Tony Dungy, retired megachurch Pastor John Piper and musician Steven Curtis Chapman are all adoptive parents. Then there's the fact that adoption is a natural extension of the pro-life movement.

But in the midst of its rapid growth, the evangelical adoption movement has experienced some growing pains. "Early on, there was adoption cheerleading: 'It's beautiful, we need this,' " Mr. Medefind says. "Now Christians are talking about ethical questions, like guarding against corruption."

International adoption is full of ethical and financial challenges, largely because adoptive children are coming from poor countries with opaque bureaucracies, and agencies stand to gain thousands of dollars per child. "The movement has ignored and minimized those challenges," says David Smolin, director for the Center for Children, Law, and Ethics, at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Ala.

Mr. Smolin, who describes himself as an evangelical, is the father of six biological children and two girls adopted from India. Fifteen years ago, he and his wife discovered that their adopted daughters had been stolen from their birth parents. "We went through a horrible learning experience," Mr. Smolin says. "It's very frustrating to me that the movement arose while these problems still existed." He thinks evangelical groups need to "emphasize other kinds of interventions," including finding extended family to care for the child in his or her home country.

Some evangelical groups, in their fervor for adoption, have inflated the numbers of orphans globally to create the idea that there is an "orphan crisis," according to journalist Kathryn Joyce, author of the recent book, "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption."

To illustrate the complications of international adoption, Ms. Joyce points to the surge in American parents adopting children from Ethiopia. In 1997, 82 Ethiopian children were adopted. By 2010, there were 2,511. On the surface, this sounds like great news, but a Unicef study found that 75% of children in Ethiopian orphanages had parents or extended families. Some children in the orphanages had been stolen. In other cases, a parent couldn't afford to care for the child anymore. "Adoption efforts seemed incredibly well intentioned but complicated and easy to do wrong," Ms. Joyce told me.

In Megan Hill's Mississippi community, she says, families who have traveled to the countries where their adoptive children were born begin thinking differently about adoption. Some families became more selective about the agencies they use, and others considered hiring private investigators to prevent possible trafficking.

"Now the things that are discussed are not as much about solving the orphan crisis as it is about how we can help these countries," Ms. Hill says. "It becomes a little more holistic than just 'Let's adopt children.' "

Ms. Bailey is a national correspondent for Religion News Service.

Summary: In The Wall Street Journal, Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes that evangelical Christians' laudable desire to rescue orphans should include concern about corruption.


A version of this story on Donald Trump at the Emmys also appears in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap's Emmy magazine.

Donald Trump thinks the Emmys are a joke.

He's 0-for-2 with Television Academy voters.

These facts are not unrelated.

In fact, as the bellicose orange-hued bloviator goes after a much bigger prize, his Emmy history might provide a small clue as to what could happen if he doesn't actually end up in the Oval Office. Just as he's upended traditional campaign etiquette, he trashed awards-show decorum when the show he hosted and executive produced, "The Apprentice," lost to "The Amazing Race" in 2004 and 2005.

Also Read: Wall Street Journal Rips Donald Trump: 'Behave' Like You Want to Be President

Making matters worse, it wasn't even nominated for Outstanding Reality Competition Program for the next 10 years when it and its successor, "The Celebrity Apprentice," were on the air.

"The Amazing Race," said Trump at one point, is "irrelevant." It's "a piece of crap," he added later. The CBS show's 10 wins over 13 years are "a total joke," he tweeted.

And on Twitter in 2012, he summed up the whole mess like this: "The Emmys have no credibility — no wonder the ratings are at record lows ... " [Note: They weren't.] "The Emmys are all politics, that's why, despite nominations, 'The Apprentice' never won — even though it should have many times over."

Also Read: Donald Trump Goes on Twitter Rampage Against 'Corrupt, 'Dishonest' Media

As entertaining as it would have been to see Kevin Spacey call Jon Hamm a pathetic, boring lightweight after Hamm took home the Emmy last year, that's not the way it usually works at awards shows. But that's how it works with Trump, who even shared this sparkling anecdote on "The Celebrity Apprentice" in 2014, yet another year in which his show wasn't nominated for anything:

"I got screwed out of an Emmy," he said, thinking back to his first time as a nominee. "Everybody thought I was gonna win it. In fact, when they announced the winner, I stood up before the winner was announced, and I started walking for the Emmy. And then they announced the most boring show on television, 'The Amazing Race.'"

Still, you have to give The Donald this: The man provided us with one of the most deliciously jaw-dropping moments in recent Emmy history. It came in 2006, when he and "Will and Grace" star Megan Mullally took the stage to "sing," if that's the right word — and no, it really isn't — the theme from "Green Acres."

Also Read: Emmys Hot List: 50 Shows, Actors and Trends to Watch (Photos)

If it wasn't much of a song before he got hold of it, it was a quivering wreck when he was finished.

Trump, by the way, is a member of the Television Academy, and has been since the first season of "The Apprentice."

So really, there's no reason he couldn't come back and make the Emmys great again.

See more of TheWrap Down to the Wire Emmys Issue:

Summary: Trump's Emmy history might provide a small clue as to what could happen if he doesn’t actually end up in the Oval Office.