TUCSON, Ariz. — Jose Guerena Ortiz was sleeping after an exhausting 12-hour night shift at a copper mine. His wife, Vanessa, had begun breakfast. Their 4-year-old son, Joel, asked to watch cartoons.

An ordinary morning was unfolding in the middle-class Tucson neighborhood – until an armored vehicle pulled into the family's driveway and men wearing heavy body armor and helmets climbed out, weapons ready.

They were a sheriff's department SWAT team who had come to execute a search warrant. But Vanessa Guerena insisted she had no idea, when she heard a "boom" and saw a dark-suited man pass by a window, that it was police outside her home. She shook her husband awake and told him someone was firing a gun outside.

A U.S. Marine veteran of the Iraq war, he was only trying to defend his family, she said, when he grabbed his own gun – an AR-15 assault rifle.

What happened next was captured on video after a member of the SWAT team activated a helmet-mounted camera.

The officers – four of whom carried .40-caliber handguns while another had an AR-15 – moved to the door, briefly sounding a siren, then shouting "Police!" in English and Spanish. With a thrust of a battering ram, they broke the door open. Eight seconds passed before they opened fire into the house.

And 10 seconds later, Guerena lay dying in a hallway 20-feet from the front door. The SWAT team fired 71 rounds, riddling his body 22 times, while his wife and child cowered in a closet.

"Hurry up, he's bleeding," Vanessa Guerena pleaded with a 911 operator. "I don't know why they shoot him. They open the door and shoot him. Please get me an ambulance."

When she emerged from the home minutes later, officers hustled her to a police van, even as she cried that her husband was unresponsive and bleeding, and that her young son was still inside. She begged them to get Joel out of the house before he saw his father in a puddle of blood on the floor.

But soon afterward, the boy appeared in the front doorway in Spider-Man pajamas, crying.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department said its SWAT team was at the home because Guerena was suspected of being involved in a drug-trafficking organization and that the shooting happened because he arrived at the door brandishing a gun. The county prosecutor's office says the shooting was justified.

But six months after the May 5 police gunfire shattered a peaceful morning and a family's life, investigators have made no arrests in the case that led to the raid. Outraged friends, co-workers and fellow Marines have called the shooting an injustice and demanded further investigation. A family lawyer has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the sheriff's office. And amid the outcry in online forums and social media outlets, the sheriff's 54-second video, which found its way to YouTube, has drawn more than 275,000 views.

The many questions swirling around the incident all boil down to one, repeated by Vanessa Guerena, as quoted in the 1,000-page police report on the case:

"Why, why, why was he killed?"

Outside the family's stucco home, a giant framed photo of Guerena in his Marine uniform sat placed in the front bay window, American flags waved in the yard and signs condemning his death were taped to the garage door.

The 27-year-old Guerena had completed two tours in Iraq, and a former superior there was among those who couldn't make sense of his death.

Leo Verdugo said Guerena stood out among other Marines for his maturity and sense of responsibility. Verdugo, who retired as a master sergeant last year after 25 years in the Marines, placed Guerena in charge of an important helicopter refueling mission in the remote west desert of Iraq.

"He had a lot of integrity and he was a man of his word," Verdugo said.

Verdugo, who also lives in Tucson, said Guerena came to him for advice in 2006 about whether to retire from the Marines and apply to the Border Patrol.

When Verdugo ran into Guerena and his wife at a Motor Vehicle Department office about a month before Guerena was killed, Verdugo said that Guerena told him that the Border Patrol had turned him down because of problems with his vision and that he had instead taken a mining job.

Those who worked with Guerena at ASARCO'S Mission Mine said the man they knew would never be a part of drug smuggling.

"I don't care what the cops say. I don't believe for one moment Jose was involved in anything illegal," said Sharon Hargrave, a co-worker, adding through tears: "They were judge, jury and executioner, and there was no excuse."

Guerena worked as a "helper" at two crushers in the mine, shoveling piles of rocks that fall from conveyor belts and wheel-barrowing heavy debris. "No one in their right mind" would choose this work, which paid about $41,000 a year, if they were bringing in drug smuggling money, Hargrave said.

"He was a hell of a worker," she said. "He's got good judgment and I could trust him."

She said Guerena talked constantly about his wife and two sons, Joel and Jose Jr., 5, who'd gone to school the morning of the shooting. "I know he was definitely in love with his wife and in love with his kids," she said.

Kevin Stephens, a chief steward at Mission mine and head of the miners' union there, said bluntly: "Personally, I think he was murdered, and that is the feeling that is out here."

But the sheriff's office said just because Guerena was a Marine and worked at a mine doesn't mean he couldn't be involved in drug trafficking.

"We know from our experiences that good people turn their lives around and do bad things, and this guy was bad irrespective of his honorable discharge as a Marine," said sheriff's chief of investigations Rick Kastigar.

He said Guerena was suspected of involvement in a drug operation that specialized in ripping off other smugglers. One tip held that Guerena was "the muscle" of the organization, or in Kastigar's words, "the individual that was directed to exact revenge."

An affidavit supporting the search warrant that precipitated the raid describes the department's suspicions about Guerena in a drug investigation that appeared more focused on his brother, and his brother's father-in-law. Guerena's brother does not have a listed number and other family members have ignored written requests from the AP for comment.

Sheriff's Capt. Chris Nanos, who heads the criminal investigations division and oversaw the Guerena case, said that high-powered rifles and bulletproof vests that were found in Guerena's home after the shooting back up investigators' belief that Guerena was involved in drug trafficking. A shotgun found in the home was reported stolen in Tucson in 2008.

In the affidavit, sheriff's Detective Alex Tisch laid out the case against Guerena's family. It details two instances of drug seizures, one in April 2009 in which Jose Guerena was found in a home with other people who had just dropped off 1,000 pounds of marijuana at a separate residence, and another in October 2009 in which a man who had met with Guerena's brother was found with drugs and weapons.

Neither Guerena nor his brother was charged.

The affidavit also cites two traffic stops of Jose Guerena.

The first was on Jan. 28, 2009, when an officer pulled Guerena and two other men over north of Tucson. The officer seized a gun from Guerena, a marijuana pipe from Guerena's cousin and marijuana hidden in canisters of lemonade and hot cocoa that were under the feet of Guerena's friend.

The officer arrested Guerena on charges of weapons misconduct, marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. But prosecutors filed no charges against him.

The other stop came Sept. 15, 2009, when the sheriff's office pulled over a truck leaving the home of Guerena's brother. Jose Guerena was in the passenger seat and another man was driving. Officers searched the truck and found commercial-sized rolls of plastic wrap that they say are commonly used to package marijuana. No arrests were made.

Tisch wrote in the affidavit that the past arrests of Guerena and members of his family, combined with observations during months of surveillance led detectives to believe that the family was operating a mid-level drug-trafficking organization in the Tucson area.

The investigation is ongoing, the sheriff's office says.

After the SWAT video circulated, people who didn't know Guerena traveled from as far as California to march in protest of his shooting, and an Alaska woman began an online petition calling for a federal investigation of the SWAT team. Hundreds of people across the country have written on several Facebook pages dedicated to Guerena with messages that include, "He fought for our country, now we must fight for him."

The Guereno family's lawyer, Christopher Scileppi, filed a lawsuit on their behalf seeking damages from the sheriff's office, the officers involved in the shooting and other officials. The lawsuit didn't specify how much money the family was seeking, but a notice of claim filed Aug. 9 put the amount at $20 million.

"During this investigation, extremely little evidence, if any, was found to raise even a suspicion that Jose Guerena was involved in any possible drug trafficking ring," the notice says.

Scileppi said the fact that Guerena had been fired at 71 times and hit 22 times was "grotesque," and "almost a caricature of an overly excited group of poorly trained law enforcement agents."

Kastigar sharply disputed that, calling the Pima County SWAT team one of the best of its kind in the nation. "We're not a bunch of country bumpkins in southern Arizona with big bellies and cowboy hats," he said.

The shooting was justified, he said, because Guerena pointed his AR-15 at the SWAT officers and said, "I've got something for you," before they opened fire.

The five SWAT team members who shot Guerena believed that he had fired his weapon first, he said. Subsequent investigation revealed that the gun's safety was on and hadn't been fired. Ultimately, that is not an issue, Kastigar said.

"What reasonable person comes to the front door and points a rifle at people?" he said. "It takes several milliseconds to flip the switch from safety to fire and take out a couple of SWAT officers. I'm firmly of the opinion that he was attempting to shoot at us."

The officers laid down "suppressive" fire because one had tripped and fallen and the others thought he'd been shot.

"You point a gun at police, you're going to get shot," Kastigar said.

The five officers who shot Guerena declined to speak to the AP through Mike Storie, a police union lawyer who represents them and defends their actions.

"Anytime that they are faced with a serious, imminent and deadly threat, they are entitled and justified to use deadly force," he said. "And when Guerena came around the corner and lifted an AR-15 and pointed it at them, that provided the justification."

An independent expert, Chuck Drago, a former longtime SWAT officer for Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police who now does consulting on use of force and other law enforcement issues, said that the shooting itself appeared justified.

"It's a horrible, horrible tragedy, but if they walked in the door and somebody came at them with an assault rifle, that would be a justifiable response," said Drago. "It doesn't matter whether he's innocent or not."

But after examining elements of the search affidavit, Drago questioned whether the sheriff's office truly had probable cause.

"When you back up and look at why they're there in the first place and whether the search warrant was proper, my mind starts struggling," Drago said. "There are a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense."


NEW YORK | Wed Dec 1, 2010 6:11pm EST

NEW YORK Dec 1 (Reuters) - News trumped celebrities in 2010 as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and World Cup soccer in South Africa topped the list of most-searched items of 2010, according to Yahoo!

It is the first time that news came up first since the technology company began publishing its yearly review a decade ago.

Vera Chan, the company's senior editor and web trend analyst, said the BP oil spill was the most searched topic for term for a variety of reasons.

"It became an issue about so many things, such as the environment, energy, workplace disasters and the role of big government. It became a lightning rod for peoples' anxieties," she explained.

The World Cup, on the other hand, was searched for as both a sporting event and a cultural experience.

"People didn't just search for the players and the teams. It was a cultural learning experience. It was the first World Cup in Africa, and people wanted to learn about post-Apartheid South Africa," she said. "People also wanted to find out what that noise was -- the vuvuzelas."

The list, released on Wednesday, identified the top trends, searches and news items from several categories.

All but one of the other top 10 categories reflected public fascination with celebrities. Teen pop sensation Miley Cyrus was in third place in the search rankings and television personality Kim Kardashian was not far behind at fourth place. They were followed by Lady Gaga at No. 5, actress Megan Fox in seventh place, with Justin Bieber, American Idol and Britney Spears completing the top 10.

The iPhone stood out as the exception, coming in sixth.

Britney Spears continued her fall in the standings, after being knocked down from number 1 to number 5 in 2009, only to land at number 10 in 2010 as rising stars such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber become more prominent.

"How to tie a tie" was the No. 1 question in 2010, followed by "how to lose weight", "how to kiss" and "how to write a resume."

Unemployment was the most searched for financial item, followed by "Wall Street companies" and "recalls".

Yahoo! also released a list of top obsessions, defined which it defined as "a person, a pop-culture phenomenon, a political party, a gadget, or a pesty plague that spurred constant online monitoring and obsessive tangential searches."

Chan said often these are guilty pleasures and fan favorites not covered in the news.

The top obsession of 2010 was the much-anticipated iPhone, followed by actress Lindsay Lohan, the iPad, and the television shows "Glee" and "Jersey Shore".

"All of these lists together speak a lot about 2010, and the revolutions in politics and technology of the year," Chan said.

(Reporting by Bernd Debusmann Jr., editing by Patricia Reaney)

Summary: NEW YORK, Dec 1 (Reuters) - News trumped celebrities in 2010 as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and World Cup soccer in South Africa topped the list of most-searched items of 2010, according to


(CBS) Are silicone breast implants safe? After a two-day meeting that aimed to make sure implant safety studies were legitimate, the FDA has a verdict:

"Women should feel assured that the F.D.A. continues to believe that currently marketed silicone breast implants are safe," Dr. William Maisel, chief scientist for the FDA's Center for Devices, told the New York Times. "We felt that way before the meeting, and we continue to feel that way after the presentations and discussions over the past two days."

Consumer groups, including the National Organization for Women Foundation and the National Research Center for Women and Families, had asked the FDA to take Johnson and Johnson's silicone implants - manufactured by its subsidiary Mentor - off the market. They contend the company hadn't provided enough long-term safety data, collecting only 21 percent of three year follow-up data on 40,000 women. Another manufacturer, Allergan, only collected two-year data on its implants from 60 percent of participants. Silicone implants were previously banned for 14 years until 2006, when the FDA approved these two implants.

"It's unacceptable that many patients Mentor and Allergan were supposed to track were lost," Jan Erickson, spokesperson for the National Organization for Women Foundation, told Reuters. "Mentor's approval should be rescinded right away. And Allergan should be required to conduct further studies."

The FDA agreed the drug company studies didn't track as many patients as it had hoped, and will work with Mentor and Allergan to complete their studies.

Silicone implants are not risk-free. Women may experience ruptures, hardening in the area surrounding the implants, scarring, pain, and infections - some of which may warrant removal.

An FDA report in June said as many as one in five women with silicone implants will likely need them removed within 10 years, CBS News reported.

Worldwide, five to 10 million women have breast implants.

The FDA has more on breast implant safety.

Summary: Two-day FDA meeting set out to determine if long-term breast implant safety studies were effective


On this Veterans Day, President Obama participated in ceremonies honoring all Americans who have donned a military uniform, touted the end of two wars and promised benefits for service members once they return.

"This is the first Veterans Day in a decade in which there are no American troops fighting and dying in Iraq," Mr. Obama said after laying a wreath at the Cemetery. "Thirty-three thousand of our troops have now returned from Afghanistan, and the transition there is underway."

Mr. Obama acknowledged that more than a million service members will have served in the two wars and will be transitioning away from the military and into civilian life. He recounted a promise he made on the campaign trail and during his first term: to provide benefits and help for veterans.

"I promised your generation that when your tour comes to an end, when you see our flag, when you touch our soil, you'll be welcomed home to an America that will forever fight for you, just as hard as you've fought for us," he said.

"[N]o one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they have earned when they come home," Mr. Obama added. He promoted a program led by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden where 125,000 veterans have been hired by private businesses. He also touted the post-9/11 G.I. bill that provides financial assistance for veterans' higher education.

He said his administration is working to clear the backlog of disability benefits and treatments. "No veteran should have to wait months or years for the benefits that you've earned, so we will continue to attack the claims backlog. We won't let up. We will not let up," he said.

Mr. Obama offered his praise of current and past service members and their families. "I've often said the most humbling part of my job is serving as Commander-in-Chief," he said.

After the official ceremony ended, Mr. and Mrs. Obama stopped at the section of the cemetery, section 60, where service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been laid to rest. 20 Photos Obama pays tribute on Veterans Day

Summary: The president lays a wreath honoring veterans at Arlington National Cemetery


From the Green Room to Green Bay, Aaron Rodgers is happy that the sequence of events at the 2005 NFL draft conspired to make him a Packer. Alex Smith is still looking for that kind of happiness with the 49ers.

Linked by events beyond their control from that draft, Smith and Rodgers share a bond that goes beyond their position of quarterback.

If the wind had blown differently on April 23, 2005, Rodgers might be the starting quarterback for the 49ers, set to oppose the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.

After enjoying two successful years at Cal, Rodgers was expecting to go in the first round. Many people in the Bay Area were hoping the 49ers, with the No. 1 overall pick, would take him.

"I'm not going to speak on hypotheticals," Rodgers said. "I firmly believe things happen for a reason. I still follow the team. I have a special place in my heart for the San Francisco 49ers. I'm glad I'm in Green Bay and the way my career has gone. I think I was supposed to get picked by Green Bay and go through the experience I did."

Instead of Rodgers getting picked first overall by the 49ers, it was Smith, a spread-offense quarterback from Utah. It has taken the 49ers only five years to get back to a style of offense that suits Smith's talents now that he is starting again.

Rodgers, meanwhile, sat in the draft's green room in New York for hours, watching such players as Ronnie Brown, Braylon Edwards, Adam "Pacman" Jones, DeMarcus Ware and Shawne Merriman fly off the board before him. Finally, at 24, the Packers tabbed Rodgers as their quarterback of the future.

"That's a long process," Smith said. "First round takes forever. To be back there in the green room, it's uncomfortable, cameras sitting on you for every pick."

Instead of being thrown onto the field as a rookie starter for a team bereft of talent, as Smith was, Rodgers had the luxury of watching and learning from one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history in Brett Favre.

"Who knows what could have happened?" Smith said. "I don't think about that. There's a million different scenarios that could play out. Here we are meeting up five years later. I'll be interested to talk to him about it. We've both taken different routes to be where we are."

Smith played in nine games as a rookie and started seven for an eventual 4-12 team. His one touchdown against 11 interceptions serves as a dubious monument to his, and his team's, futility.

Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy was San Francisco's offensive coordinator in 2005, the year before the Packers hired him. In a conference call Wednesday, McCarthy said he's against sending out a rookie as a starter if the team is not strong enough to support him.

"You clearly benefit from sitting back" and learning, McCarthy said. "If you're going to play your quarterback early, the most important variable is if your team is ready for that, whether it has a strong running game, a strong defense. ... It's not a matter of is your young quarterback ready, is the team ready?"

Neither Smith nor his team was ready in 2005 and only now, in 2009, is he getting a second chance to prove he's San Francisco's quarterback of the future. Contrast Smith's situation with that of Rodgers, who sat for three years until Favre moved on to the Jets.

Rodgers was Favre's backup from 2005 through '07 before becoming the Packers' starter last season. He showed the benefit of watching and learning by passing for 4,038 yards and 23 touchdowns while 49ers fans were left to ponder what might have been.

"When you grow up a fan of the team, it never goes away," said Rodgers, a 49ers fan growing up in Chico. "I always pay attention to what they're doing. I have a lot of fond memories growing up watching them on TV."

Although they were perceived in '05 as rivals competing for draft position, the two quarterbacks are friends and wish each other well.

"Alex and I are buddies," Rodgers said. "The media was trying to pit us against each other like we weren't friends. We're buddies. I pull for him. I'm glad he's getting an opportunity and is doing a good job."

It just took a while, for both men.

Summary: From the Green Room to Green Bay, Aaron Rodgers is happy that the sequence of events at the 2005 NFL draft conspired to make him a Packer.  Linked by events beyond their control from that draft, Smith and Rodgers share a bond that goes beyond their position of quarterback.  If the wind had blown differently on April 23, 2005, Rodgers might be the starting quarterback for the 49ers, set to oppose the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.  [...] at 24, the Packers tabbed Rodgers as their quarterback of the future.  First round takes forever.  Instead of being thrown onto the field as a rookie starter for a team bereft of talent, as Smith was, Rodgers had the luxury of watching and learning from one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history in Brett Favre.  Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy was San Francisco's offensive coordinator in 2005, the year before the Packers hired him.  If you're going to play your quarterback early, the most important variable is if your team is ready for that, whether it has a strong running game, a strong defense. ...


During the offseason, Smith is focusing on staying in shape and spending time with his new baby girl. He's also spending a little time with his iPhone -- the quarterback, wide receiver, and return specialist keeps his Chapel app, which streams Sunday messages, and his Bible Study app front and center, but when his mind is in the game, he turns to the Hudl app to watch team videos. We also dig the Harmony Link app, which lets you control your home theater via Logitech’s remote control system, and the DocuSign Ink app, which is helpful for signing football contracts. Smith, a University of Missouri alum, was a Jet first, then started with the Bills in 2011 (then a MH Style intern ... not sure if that's an upgrade or not!).

Smith's award: Most advanced smartphone user

Summary:
We rounded up the home screens
of our favorite athletes to see what their digital sidearms say about them.

  ...


There is no nice way of putting this, but the skyline of London is being screwed. There are now, built and in the pipeline, at least 30 towers, typically in a height range of 150-200 metres (or 490-650 feet. The BT tower is 177 metres high and more slender than anything now proposed). They are the fulfilment of the desires of investors and of the policies of Ken Livingstone, pursued with equal vigour by Boris Johnson, even though he once promised to take a tougher line on height.

With minimum discussion, proposals are being waved through the planning system – and while both the mayor of London and the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, have the power to intervene in major decisions, neither has done so. A decade ago, plans for buildings such as the Shard and the Gherkin were widely publicised, provoked debate and were the subject of public inquiries. Now, developers and architects hold modest public exhibitions in the immediate neighbourhood of their proposals and are not overanxious that they should be more widely known about.

Developers have long represented their projects with flattering, shiny visualisations that greatly over-estimate the seductive power of their cladding systems, which are bathed in an eternally golden glow. Now some of them have a new strategy, which is to act is if they are not there at all: sometimes, on their websites, you get views of plazas strewn with café tables, and pastel-coloured ground plans, and little clue of the large objects that will rise over their heads. If many of the proposals shown on these pages are new to you, that could be because their makers are so reticent about designs which, when built, will be anything but.

Last month, another clutch was approved. Almost all forms of resistance, such as the statutory bodies that are supposed to guide the planning system, have been neutralised, leaving only little-heard neighbourhood groups to voice their protests. All of which, if these tall buildings were making the capital into a great metropolis of the 21st century, might be a cause for celebration. Towers can be beautiful, and part of the genius of London is its ability to change, but what we are getting now are mostly units of speculation stacked high, garnished with developers' ego. They are invitations to tax evaders to park their cash in Britain.

What is happening now is the culmination of 15 years or more of gathering pressure to build high. In the 1990s, plans were first unveiled for what would eventually be the Gherkin, controversially built on the site of the Baltic Exchange, a building that was listed but also damaged by an IRA bomb. It was eventually decided that, if this building were designed by a celebrated architect, such as Lord Foster, and were an exceptional work of architecture, other planning issues could be overridden.

When Livingstone was elected mayor in 2000, he enthusiastically supported tall buildings. He dined with developers in private, at a huge property junket in Cannes called Mipim, and publicly announced his grand bargain with capital: they should be allowed to build as big as they wanted, as long as he could take a tithe of the proceeds to spend on such things as affordable housing.

He produced a London plan, which encouraged, among other things, building high around major transport interchanges, so as to encourage the users of these buildings to use public transport. It was all part of Livingstone's then vision that the future of London lay in the never-ending boom in financial services, with which a socialist mayor could cut a deal.

It was repeatedly said that, following the precedent of the Gherkin, tall buildings should be of the highest architectural quality and also in "the right place", two principles that would turn out to have flexible meanings. The Shard was proposed, and being by the celebrated Renzo Piano and having a certain classiness in its form, was approved following a public inquiry. It has a substantial impact on St Paul's Cathedral, when seen from Hampstead Heath, a view recognised by planning policy as significant, but not seen as reason enough to stop it. In 2005, Lord Rogers, once a business partner of both Piano and Foster, won permission for the 225-metre Leadenhall Building, or Cheesegrater, in the City of London.

Encouraged by these precedents, further proposals popped up, with increasingly tenuous claims to be of the highest architectural quality or in the right place. They were not just in the City of London, but also south of the river in Southwark, Waterloo and Vauxhall. The 180-metre Vauxhall Tower (the St George Wharf tower to its developers) was proposed, smack in the middle of a view from Westminster Bridge, officially deemed to be important and requiring special care.

There was not much evidence of special care in the design. It went to a public inquiry, in which the inquiry's inspector concluded that it should not be built. John Prescott, however, who was then the minister responsible for such things, used his powers to overrule this advice. This tower is now being built, its exterior nearly complete.

In the City of London, planning officer Peter Rees long treasured the idea that tall buildings should be in a "cluster", collectively forming a roughly conical shape that would rise to its peak close to the Bank of England. But then came the "Walkie Talkie", officially called 20 Fenchurch Street, an office block designed by Rafael Viñoly, whose brilliant concept perfectly captured the money-worshipping zeitgeist of the pre-crash years: it gets fatter as it rises, to reflect the fact that floor area becomes more valuable the higher you go. The Walkie Talkie, whose frame is now rising, is by no stretch of the imagination inside this cluster, but Rees somehow persuaded himself that it is in the "right" place.

On the South Bank, the 140-metre Doon Street tower was proposed. Another public inquiry was held and refusal recommended. Hazel Blears, who by then had inherited Prescott's mantle, like him decided she knew better and approved it. Construction is under way.

In Elephant and Castle, the 148-metre Strata SE1 was built, which would be the winner of the 2010 Carbuncle Cup, awarded by Building Design magazine to the worst building of the year. Another view considered worthy of protection by planning policy is of the Houses of Parliament seen from the Serpentine Bridge in Hyde Park, its gothic spires framed by trees and water. Here, Strata waddles into the background from stage left, like SpongeBob SquarePants in a production of Hamlet. It is not in the "right place" either.

There was a pause following the crash and the election of Johnson in 2008, whose mayoral campaign had included promises to be less tower-friendly than Livingstone. However, although he has the power to refuse significant planning applications, he has not once done so. Rather, he chose to approve the 237-metre Columbus Tower in Canary Wharf, reversing the decision by the London borough of Tower Hamlets to reject it.

A new wave of proposals has come forward. An application will be submitted shortly for new towers next to the Shell Centre, near Waterloo station, with every expectation of being successful, and two more are planned at Elephant and Castle. Several have been approved near to the Vauxhall Tower, which a few years ago was considered impactful enough to require the inquiry in which the inspector found against it. Some of its new neighbours will be higher and not obviously more beautiful, while their collective effect will be much bulkier, but neither Johnson nor Pickles is using his authority to give pause to the process: at least half of the developments we picture in our gallery have been approved in the Boris era.

And so it goes on. Policies are framed that, generous to start with, are then stretched far beyond any reasonable interpretation of what they might mean. Rules are made, then broken. It is doubtful, for example, whether Vauxhall is a major transport interchange of the kind that the London plan thinks is right for tall buildings, but it is becoming a mini Dubai nonetheless. Developments in the same area are supposed to follow a masterplan drawn up by Sir Terry Farrell, but when he pointed out that two proposed towers by Michael Squire broke its principles, they got permission anyway.

Notions such as "the highest architectural quality", to quote Johnson's version of the London plan, are rapidly debased. At one point, tower proposals felt the need to proclaim their sustainability, with ostentatious wind turbines included in the designs for the Vauxhall Tower and Strata (where, to be sure, they are almost never seen to turn). Now, developers don't even bother with these.

Older applications, including the Walkie Talkie, proposed viewing galleries that, although they would actually be privately controlled, were called "public spaces". Again, these are no longer on offer. Recently, the developers of the 163-metre One Blackfriars successfully applied to have their once-promised viewing gallery omitted.

London has a multilayered planning system, in which borough councils make decisions and the mayor and minister can then overrule them. Bodies such as English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) advise and public inquiries can be held. Yet these layers, while retaining the ability to complicate and slow things down, no longer do their job of revision and review. Willingly or not, they have been disempowered.

English Heritage has opposed several tower proposals, but after many losing battles (which, due to the cost of planning lawyers, were also expensive) its objections are now reduced to demoralised bat-squeaks. Although, for example, it thinks that proposals in Vauxhall will cause "substantial harm to the setting of the Westminster world heritage site", it did not even issue a press release on the subject.

Cabe, a watchdog ever fond of nuzzling the developers it was supposed to be watching, has been shrunk and further enfeebled. Even when it summons up the courage to state the bleeding obvious, such as the fact that the Quill, a risible block of student housing next to the Shard, is poorly designed, Cabe is ignored. At the relevant meeting of Southwark council's planning committee, an officer reported that Cabe supported it, even though it had said it did not. This provoked guffaws from the public gallery.

It doesn't help that boroughs such as Southwark and Lambeth are unlikely to be tough on new towers, as they can order developers to contribute "planning gain", which is money to be spent on affordable housing elsewhere in their territory. Livingstone liked them for similar reasons, as well us for the special delight that skyscrapers seem to have for mayors. Johnson is likely to be influenced by the community infrastructure levy raised on new developments, which helps pay for the Crossrail project. Of course, affordable housing and public transport are good things to have, but thoughtless plunder of the city's airspace is not the way to pay for them; by the same argument, we could build on parks or on the river.

The results of these shoddy processes will be visible all over the capital, in the background of famous buildings, from hills and parks, down the ends of streets. They will change the Thames, bringing a completely different scale to its banks. None of which need be a problem, if they conformed to the official planning line that tall buildings should be well designed and in the right place. Or, to quote Johnson's policy, that they should form "cohesive building groups", "contribute positively to the image and built environment of London" and be "resisted in areas that will be particularly sensitive to their impacts." What is a world heritage site if not the latter?

On the question of being "well designed", the supporters of these towers will produce the well-worn arguments that design is subjective, that St Paul's was derided in its day and so on. One could, however, look for what might be thought qualities of good design and usually they will be hard to find.

Do they, for example, show consideration of scale or proportion or try to make a meaningful relationship with their surroundings? Is there anything special about their detail? Is there consistency or integrity in their overall concept? Do they create handsome new public spaces at their base? Does their internal planning produce the best possible living or working spaces, which are well laid out and make good use of daylight?

Failing all the above, do they have any worth in the rapidly debasing currency of iconicity? Are they, in other words, exhilarating to contemplate or innovative – do they transmit some sort of buzzy excitement about London being a dynamic world city? I would suggest that, if that's what you want, Shanghai and Dubai do it better.

The Shard and the Gherkin, conceived early in the current tower boom, are impressive, going on magnificent, albeit with major defects – I defy you to stand at the base of either and say that you are in a world-class public space. But it turns out that they were as good is it gets.

To take the Vauxhall Tower as an example, it makes no apparent effort to form any kind of relationship with its surroundings, neither a Georgian house behind it, nor even St George Wharf, an existing development by the same architects as the tower, Broadway Malyan, and the same developers, St George. It does not relate to the river in any particular way or, in longer views, to the Palace of Westminster. It is just there, sullenly uncommunicative.

It seemingly wants to be a slender cylinder, but contradicts itself with a sawtooth plan. At the top, it changes its mind again and adopts a stepped, zigguraty form. At the bottom, it is something else again and there is little attempt to reconcile the various elements. Its cladding is an ordinary-looking glazing package. Around its foot is precisely the sort of shapeless, windswept, nothing place that we were supposed to have learned not to do in the 1970s.

There are some honourable exceptions, with purveyors of rectilinear dignity doing better than those attempting artistic flourishes. Allies and Morrison's 100 Bishopsgate is an example or David Chipperfield's Elizabeth House at Waterloo station, the result of a rare occasion on which the developers were pushed to improve their initial ideas. They would have every right to be furious, having made an expensive effort with this project, at the easy ride given to other proposals. Others – Strata, the future towers at Vauxhall and Nine Elms – tend to follow their own, similar patterns. They offer a paltry "public realm" of Chinese granite and Costa coffee, standard glazing, a few loops and convulsions, like a dad at a disco, suggesting that they are bit on wild side. They don't bother at all to work with their neighbours to make a three-dimensional entity.

There is no vision, concept or thought as to what their total effect might be on London, except that it will be great. In planning a kitchen, it is usual to envisage the totality before you start, but a great city has not been granted this courtesy. The onus should be on those who want to make such large changes, and to profit from them, to demonstrate their quality - the more conspicuous a building the more important it is that it is well-designed. As it is, they would rather we didn't notice them until it's too late.

Summary: Successive London mayors have allowed skyscrapers to spring up all over the capital. But most towers now being built are poorly designed and badly located, writes Rowan Moore


Streetscape: examples of Melbourne graffiti.

Melbourne is the proud capital of street painting with stencils. Its large, colonial-era walls and labyrinth of back alleys drip with graffiti that is more diverse and original than any other city in the world. Well, that was until a few weeks ago, when preparations for the Commonwealth games brought a tidal wave of grey paint, obliterating years of unique and vibrant culture overnight.

This may seem like no great tragedy to readers of the Daily Mail, but Melbourne's graffiti scene is a key factor in its status as the continent's hothouse of creativity and wilful individualism.

Melbourne became a hub of stencilling for reasons no one seems particularly able to explain. Its laid-back atmosphere and sense of isolation most probably have something to do with it. Painters there have never been as shackled to the New York school of large letters on subway trains that took a stranglehold everywhere else. Rather than scrawling their name across a window, most preferred to paint something a little different: a dog chasing a butterfly on a mailbox, for instance, or a couple kissing in the space left where an old poster has been ripped away.

Witty, playful, often angry, the free rein taken by Melbourne's street artists became about much more than just daubing on a wall. It has drawn in generations of artists, thinkers and tourists to explore and experiment in the city. It gave fresh life to the worlds of fashion and music and is arguably Australia's most significant contribution to the arts since they stole all the Aborigines' pencils.

"The Melbourne scene is incredibly diverse," says Alison Young, head of the department of criminology at Melbourne University. "The range of artists includes people in their 40s, in their teens and a relatively large number of women." Young was commissioned by the city council to draw up a draft graffiti strategy last March in which she recommended tolerance zones be set up where street art and graffiti be allowed a small space within the city, where writers and artists would be at a lower risk of being arrested. "This was rejected by the city council, despite it generating lots of public support and despite evidence being presented that zero tolerance, for lots of reasons, wouldn't work."

Instead, the council doubled its anti-graffiti budget. "The clean-up is an imposition of a supposedly mainstream, or dominant, cultural view," says Young, "in denial of the diversity of cultural styles that actually exist within a city space."

What is disappointing about the authority's attitude is that Australia is probably still the only country in the world to have elevated a graffiti writer to the status of national public hero. Arthur Stace was an alcoholic from the slums of Sydney who found God while listening to a Baptist preacher in a hostel in the 1940s and took to writing the word "eternity" on the ground in chalk. He rendered it in meticulous copperplate script more than half a million times across Sydney over the next three decades, becoming an urban legend before his death in 1967 at the age of 83. He has since been honoured by a plaque, a range of council-approved merchandise and was the centrepiece of celebrations when the word "eternity" in his trademark hand was lit up in 100ft-high letters on Sydney harbour bridge to mark the new millennium.

Then came the Commonwealth games and a redoubling of the city's efforts to rid itself of the evil graffiti menace. "Cleaning crews have been at work all along the main railway line that runs from the centre of the city to the main sporting venue for the games, destroying miles of continuous artwork," says Jake Smallman, who has edited a recent book called Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, compiling some of the city's more inventive street art. In February, police were rumoured to have infiltrated an exhibition showcasing photographs from the book as part of an intelligence-gathering exercise. "Graffiti's not art," said the police minister Tim Holding, in response to the book. "It's vandalism and it's something we all deplore."

Melbourne's innovative painting scene has been a key player in the global development of street art in recent years. Rather bizarrely for an art form that requires a casual interpretation of the law, graffiti has been steeped in rules and conservatism ever since Taki 183 picked up a can of Krylon spray paint in New York in the 1970s. A strict code was soon established that decreed what a piece should consist of and how many you needed to paint to achieve a certain status. It is only since the omnipresence of tags (graffiti signatures) has turned them into a kind of forgettable urban wallpaper that the art form has started to evolve again. Modern street art is the product of a generation tired of growing up with a relentless barrage of logos and images being thrown at their head every day, and much of it is an attempt to pick up these visual rocks and throw them back.

The street art destroyed in Melbourne will survive on graffiti's new best friend - the internet. The web has done wonders for graffiti; it perfectly reflects its transient nature, and graffiti is ludicrously overrepresented on its pages. The ability to photograph a street piece that may last for only a few days and bounce it round the world to an audience of millions has dramatically improved its currency. On the other hand, the internet is turning graffiti into an increasingly virtual pastime. It is now possible to achieve notoriety by painting elaborate pieces in secluded locations, without the associated risk of arrest that is usually attached. By posting photographs online you can become a significant graffiti writer from a town where none of your work is actually visible.

The precedent set by Melbourne does not bode well for London in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. The games will be set in east London, where Hackney is one of the few remaining parts of the city where affordable studio space for artists still exists. After the warehouses have been flattened by compulsory purchase orders, the pots of grey paint will be opened and an area rich in street culture and frontier spirit will disappear. Factory doors whose flaked layers of Hammerite reveal history like the rings in a tree stump will be thrown on the fire. Disused cranes perched on top of foundries like skeletal crows will be torn down. Everything will be replaced by a cardboard-partitioned village perched on a pile of cheap laminate flooring. And if you think the graffiti will be removed so it can be replaced by vistas of clean urban space, think again. Every meaningful spot will be clogged with giant billboards by the likes of McDonald's encouraging you to get fit by staying at home and watching the games on TV.

This is not to say that every city should aim to look like the south Bronx, or that regeneration cannot be a good thing, but society's headlong march into bland conformity should not necessarily be welcomed with such open arms. In the 1990s, large sections of football grounds were demolished to make way for executive boxes - only then did people start to complain about the lack of atmosphere.

Melbourne and London are genuine epicentres of the skewed human touch that can bring a little sparkle into the drudgery of public space. A feat that is of immense value, despite its apparent worthlessness. And a feat that is not so easily achieved by trying to run around a track in under four minutes.

Summary: The biggest loser of the Commonwealth games, says graffiti artist Banksy, is Melbourne's street art scene - and London could be next for the whitewash.


Instead, he quickly received the blessing — and financial backing — of his peers through a new “corporate crowdfunding” system in IBM’s internal IT organisation.

Henriquez’s idea was pitted against other proposed projects seeking funding from employees in the IT group. Each of the more than 300 participants — from entry-level workers to vice presidents — received $2,000 to invest over an eight-week period. Then, through the crowdfunding system, Henriquez managed to raise a total of $20,000, and after a few months of development and testing, project managers started using his app.

The experience was empowering for Henriquez, who is based in Bratislava, Slovakia. “I don’t feel like I work for IBM; I feel like this is my company,” he said.

That’s music to the ears of IBM executives who hope the iFundIT project will engage employees and spark more innovation from the bottom up.

Employee engagement is a pressing issue for most companies these days. In a study of 142 countries, Gallup found that only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged in their work. The percentages vary widely by nation, with 30% of workers in America saying they are engaged; 24% in Australia; 17% in the UK; 15% in Germany; 9% in India; and just 6% in China.

One possible solution to this problem: more egalitarian workplaces where employees feel they have more control over decisions, such as IBM’s iFundIT program.

“Companies need to be more compatible with this democratic age of the Internet and social media that we live in now,” said Traci Fenton, chief executive officer of St. Louis and London-based WorldBlu, which provides consulting services for creating “freedom-centred” workplaces. “Organisational democracy means decentralizing power and recognising that good ideas are everywhere in the workplace.”

Seeking employee input may slow some types of decision-making, but Fenton believes it could speed up the execution process because workers would feel more invested after having their say. “Of course, companies only want to do this if they’re sure they’re going to act on a group decision,” she said. “If they don’t follow through, they’ve done more harm than good.”

WorldBlu compiles an annual list of the world’s “most democratic workplaces” based on such factors as being transparent and accountable, sharing power, and giving employees meaningful choices. The biggest obstacles to workplace democracy are executive ego and ignorance, Fenton said.

“Some people simply don’t want to give up control; others fear what they don’t understand,” she said.

A democratic workplace has cross-generational appeal, although IBM believes its crowdfunding project will especially resonate with millennials, who are used to airing their views in blogs and social media and believe they deserve to be heard at work, too. Millennials is a term used to describe the generation of people born between about 1980 and 2000.

Some companies with a small workforce are going even further and giving employees a voice in some very major decisions. When DreamHost’s founders decided in 2011 to recruit the first CEO for the Los Angeles-based Web hosting firm, they let employees vote on the finalists. More recently, its 165 workers voted on the company’s health benefits plan.

“We feel that by letting our employees make the decision after they know how much different benefit packages will cost, we’re empowering them and encouraging them to stay with the company,” said Ed Wesley, director of organisational development and learning. “It takes guts to be democratic and give employees more control, but the payoff is happiness and engagement.”

Companies like DreamHost and Menlo Innovations, a software company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, also are opening the financial books to their employees to guide their decision-making. “Our goal is for the staff to make decisions about where we spend money, but they need to understand the big financial picture of the company first,” said Rich Sheridan, the CEO at Menlo, which has about 50 full-time and temporary workers.

Already, Menlo gets 15 to 25 workers involved in assessing a job candidate as he or she goes through interviews and tryouts. “We work in pairs so we want to see evidence of kindergarten skills, whether they can play well with our employees,” Sheridan said.

Of course, it’s easier to democratise small businesses than multinationals with thousands of workers scattered around the globe. But IBM shows that even a company with more than 430,000 employees in 170 countries can give at least some of them more decision-making authority.

“We need to flatten the organisation; not every investment decision has to be made by a director or vice president,” said Francoise LeGoues, the head of IBM’s CIOLab and creator of iFundIT. “We want collaborative innovation. How do we ensure that young people’s ideas get attention and that someone in Bangalore connects with someone in New York?”

Eligible projects must be related to internal information technology, although they could also be applied to products, such as IBM’s social software platform for businesses. “It has to be a small project,” LeGoues said. “These won’t be large, multi-year projects like a redesign of the entire HR system, for example.”

About 160 projects were submitted during the first two crowdfunding rounds this year, with 20 reaching their funding target of between $10,000 and $30,000. Funded projects included Influence of Communities from China (search results based on influence, not popularity) and reMap from the UK (a collaborative outlining tool to organise and share information across teams of all sizes).

“The level of excitement and participation has surprised me,” LeGoues said. “People have even begun running internal campaigns to try to get others to spend money on their projects. This is really a game changer in the way people think about what it means to be an IBMer.”

Follow BBC Capital on Twitter @BBC_Capital or join the conversation about this or any other Capital story on Facebook: BBC Capital on Facebook.

Summary: a chance on the little guy: What happens when big companies like IBM let employees have a real role in decision-making?


I opened Twitter this morning to find two things trending: "Comic Sans", and "Higgs boson" – the former a much-hated font, and the latter something to do with science. As unlikely as it sounds, the two things were linked. Scientists announcing the discovery of this Higgs boson thing had written up their complex findings in the childish font everyone loves to hate.

At first, I thought Twitter had misdiagnosed the font. There are lots of scripts out there that look a bit like Comic Sans; I hubristically like to think I can tell them apart, and at first glance this one looked more like Chalkboard, or Captain Comic. But after blowing up a screengrab on Photoshop, 10 minutes of close analysis revealed that, yes, this was Comic Sans after all. The awkward serif on the capital "c" was a dead giveaway.

Predictably, Twitter was outraged. "Dear @CERN," wrote one science buff with a taste for typography. "Every time you use Comic Sans on a powerpoint, God kills the Schrödinger's cat. Please think of the cat." Another groaned: "They used Comic Sans on the Higgs boson powerpoint presentation … Nope there is no hope for mankind."

This kind of reaction is nothing new. While researching a feature about Comic Sans two years ago, I spoke to many people with a visceral hatred for the font. According to Holly Combs, a designer who founded the Ban Comic Sans movement, using it in most contexts is a bit like turning up to a black-tie event in a clown costume. "On a purely aesthetic level," says typographer Paul Barnes, who co-designed the Guardian's font library, "Comic Sans is not a particularly well-crafted letterform."

In one sense, you can see where its critics are coming from, particularly in the context of atomic physics. You could argue that it's bizarre to juxtapose inscrutable words like "maximum deviation from background-only expectation observed for m ~126 GeV" with a font originally designed for a children's computer program.

But I wouldn't make that argument. If ever there was an announcement that needed to be made in Comic Sans, I think it's this one. Comic Sans may be over-used, it may look silly, and it may have been designed in a hurry. But it's also very legible, and tests have shown that it makes complex information easier to understand. There's a reason it's used by dyslexia coaches: it facilitates reading.

We joke about how inscrutable the research at Cern is, so why make it seem even more austere? Yes, the Higgs boson is a serious business – but that's all the more reason to communicate it in as friendly and accessible a way as possible.

Graphic design doesn't have to be elaborate; at its best it communicates information quickly and simply. And the chaps at Cern have understood that better than most of the font snobs out there.

Summary: There is outrage on Twitter over Cern's use of Comic Sans on presentation slides. But if ever there was an announcement that needed to be made in an easy-to-read font, it's this one


Test Text1 underline It's the high school he said/she said that rocked a small town about a night of partying, drinking and sex that made national headlines. We have heard her version of what went on....

Test Text1 underline It's the high school he said/she said that rocked a small town about a night of partying, drinking and sex that made national headlines. We have heard her version of what went on. But tonight, for the very first time, his version. That senior high school football player on interrogation tapes, just obtained by "20/20." Will hearing his words change what you think about the story? Or outrage you even more? Here's Matt Gutman. You have the right to remain silent. Reporter: This is 17-year-old Matt Barnett sitting in a police interrogation room. Did you understand these rights as I've explained them to you? Yes, sir. Reporter: And this is daisy Coleman, whose life changed forever because of what happened between them. Two teens facing tough repercussions for a night of mistakes. You had a lot of young people that made a lot of bad decisions, and they ended up getting caught. Reporter: 14-year-old daisy Coleman. Sexual assault charges. A high-school sexual assault case is making headlines once again. Reporter: The pair were at the center of an alcohol-fueled teenage sex scandal that gripped the nation and divided a community. Bad judgment calls. For everyone. Reporter: Daisy is the face you almost never see, the teenage victim shedding anonymity to speak out. I really wish more girls would tell their story. Reporter: It all began in maryville, Missouri, an all-american town full of cows and cornfields, where football is king and it's players royalty. And perhaps none more popular than Matt Barnett, a tall broad-shouldered defensive end for the maryville spoofhounds. Cheering him on, a beaming and bubbly 14-year-old daisy. The two began exchanging texts. She's a freshman, Matt a senior in the cool crowd of athletes, along with daisy's oldest brother Charlie. Here they are together at prom. But Charlie was concerned with all that flirty texting. I told him, I was like, "Quit texting my sister." Reporter: He didn't stop texting your sister? No. And I told her stop. And I was like, "Listen, he's a senior. You're a freshman. You're my little sister. You can't be talking' to him." Well she didn't listen. Reporter: No daisy didn't. Something she would later regret. One frigid January evening daisy was having a sleepover with her friend, a 13-year-old girl named Paige. She just came over, we started watching scary movies. Reporter: They say they also started drinking, sneaking alcohol from daisy's mother's closet. I was in high school and everyone was already doing it. So I was like, "Oh, I might as well try this." Reporter: That night daisy was also texting Matt. Here for the first time are some of those messages the pair arranging to meet. Lol. U wanna come drink wit me and chill. Omg. He asked to hang out. So we snuck out of my house around one, and he drove us to his house, and he had to sneak us through his basement window. Reporter: And into Matt's bedroom seen here. Also at the house were four other popular boys. Among them, some of Charlie's best friends. Those were the guys I was with every single day. Reporter: You could've trusted them like a brother and you'd hope that you could've trusted them with your sister. Yeah, I hoped. They kind of egged me on to drink from this really tall shot glass. Reporter: These are photos of the aftermath of the party obtained by ABC news. Trash, empty plastic cups, and a bottle of bacardi. The boys at the party at night estimate that daisy drank 5 to 10 shots in a 15-minute span. Everything after that was just black. And that's all I remember. Reporter: She might not remember, but Matt does. This video, Matt's police interrogation, is the first time ever we get to hear from Matt Barnett himself. Did she ever say she didn't want to have sex with you? No. Reporter: His words providing new key clues in what could have happened that night between him and daisy. So you and daisy had sex in your room? Yes. This is before she started drinking at my house. Reporter: Central to case, the timing of when exactly daisy downed all those drinks. Was she drunk out of her mind? When I was with her, when we were having sex, no. Reporter: Matt Barnett tells police their sex was consensual and that daisy only drank to excess afterwards. When you picked her up at her house, was she drunk? I wouldn't say drunk, I'd say she was -- Buzzed? Yeah, buzzed. Then you took her home, you and her talked, you had sex. Then she came out after having sex, wanted to have another shot. Yeah. Reporter: Critical point in the investigation that followed because in Missouri, a 14-year-old girl can't consent to sex if she's incaps tated. And tonight, never before heard accounts from the other boys present that night. Like Jordan Zech. And then they went back into the bedroom and had sex again? No, Matt said he didn't have sex with her the 2nd time because he couldn't get a . Reporter: Paige, who was waiting in another room, describes her friend daisy as completely wasted and couldn't even walk. And they just started panicking a lot, saying "How are we going to get her dropped off, without her brothers waking up, without them hearing us." So they brought us back to the house and dropped her off. And then just put her in the yard, and they told me to go back inside and that she'd be fine, she just had to sober up. Reporter: All the while, Melinda Coleman thought her daughter was safely asleep in bed all night long. It was 5:00 A.M. When daisy was discovered. The dogs started barking which woke mom up and my youngest brother. And she had just sweat pants and a t-shirt on. Her hair was wet and frozen. And then I was woken up to, "Charlie, wake up. Wake up, Charlie. There's something wrong." Reporter: Daisy had been abandoned on the lawn for almost three hours wearing no shoes or socks. It was terrifying. I couldn't understand why she was outside. Reporter: Melinda says she thought maybe daisy had been sleep walking. But when she put daisy in the bathtub to warm her up, she noticed marks on her body. I asked her if she was hurting and she kind of said yes, and started crying. So my brother and I went in the yard and found a phone, started Reading these messages from Matty. Reporter: Did you instantly know what happened? I instantly knew there was something going on. The last message on there was, "I'll be there in a minute." And I was -- I was so mad. And then I took her in to the emergency room. The doctor said that she had been raped. And it was definitely my worst fears. I, as a mom I just -- it just hurt so much and you want to take the pain away. And I think I knew what she was going to go through. Reporter: Barnett was arrested for sexual assault. And to Melinda's dismay the charges were quickly dropped. And daisy's life began to completely unravel. She was suspended from cheerleading after admitting to drinking and was bullied at school. People would generally just yell stuff. Like, they would yell "Liar" or the "S" word, or they would call me the "W" word. Reporter: Things got so bad, the colemans say they were forced to move. But that didn't stop the digital onslaught. The stuff on Facebook and Twitter was just unbelievable, so horrible. Saying stuff like, "Why don't you slit your wrists." I began self-harming, and I was very suicidal, and I really started to hate myself. Reporter: Daisy was down, but her mom Melinda wouldn't let her be silenced. They embarked on a national media campaign. And I think they need to let him pay at least some price and some punishment, so he can learn. Justice for daisy! Reporter: And Melinda ignited a firestorm back home, trying to get justice for daisy and for other girls afraid to speak out. Supporters held daisies and lit candles to represent the alleged victim. Reporter: A special prosecutor was brought in to take a fresh look at the case and those previously sealed interrogation tapes. How long do you think you and her were in the bedroom together? Like 15 minutes to 20 minutes. Reporter: After a ten-week investigation, this past January, the final word. Today Mr. Barnett pleads guilty to endangering a child in the second degree. Reporter: That was for leaving daisy on her lawn. But as for rain charges -- There was insufficient evidence to go forward on a sexual assault. Reporter: Vindication for Matt Barnett, cleared by two independent investigations. Proof he says that he did not sexual assault daisy. Did the girl you had sex with ever say she didn't want to? No. Ever say she did? Yeah, she did. Reporter: As for daisy, she tells us she's happy. Now, a junior at a new high school and looking to put the whole ordeal behind her. When something bad happens in life, no one stops. Life keeps going. And I think that's something I just had to learn. New tapes you just heard about were all about the timing of the drinking. Are you persuaded by the tapes? Do you think that that football player is telling the truth? Let us know on Twitter. We'll be right back. Coming up next -- getting

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Summary: Act 4: In Maryville, Mo., Daisy Coleman and her friend claim they were sexually assaulted.


05/24/2014 at 09:50 AM EDT

Kanye West arriving in Florence

A day after their Parisian wedding party at Versailles,

have brought the celebration to the city of Florence.

Departing from a private jet, West, who carried his own black bag off the plane, arrived in jeans, a white shirt and boots.

His bride-to-be and her family – daughter North, Kris Jenner,

– are staying at Villa San Michele and were seen walking the grounds. As for lady of the hour, she was spotted wearing a long off-white silk dress with a V-neck and slit sleeves.

And where the Kardashians go, so do a lot of luggage. While entering their private villa on the picturesque property, Kris told a helper carrying her essentials, "Don't ruin my bag!"

Another guest at the Villa? Family friend Jaden Smith.

Kim's close friends and other family members, including Jonathan Cheban, Lala Anthony, and Fonzworth Bentley, are staying at the Westin Excelsior, along with Brandon and Leah Jenner, who arrived wearing casual clothes (no fancy wedding attire yet!).

With hours to go before the magical affair, guests are stretching their legs around the city – and indulging in the delicious delicacies. Cheban and Anthony left their hotel in search of food. "Good Italian, something not too touristy," he was overheard telling the St. Regis concierge.

Summary: Kardashian and her family are seen walking the grounds at Villa San Michele


As the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Square” proved, it’s the people with a stake in political and social upheaval who can most effectively tell their own stories. Boston documentary filmmaker Michael Sheridan believes that, too, which is why in 2010 he founded Community Supported Film to train grass-roots documentary filmmakers across the globe.

CSF’s first effort was the “Afghan Project,” resulting in 10 short films that were compiled into “The Fruit of Our Labor: Afghan Perspectives in Film.” It was shown to political leaders, students, and communities across the United States and in Afghanistan.

Now, Sheridan and CSF have launched “Haitian Perspectives in Film,” which will train and mentor 10 Haitian directors who hope to influence the way their country is portrayed in documentaries.

Sheridan, a Boston native who cofounded Oxfam America’s documentary production unit in the 1990s and who has taught documentary filmmaking at Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the former Boston Film and Video Foundation, says he’s been “frustrated by the tenor of the conversation” in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Aware that January 2015 will be the fifth anniversary and anticipating intense media coverage, he wants Haitians to be able to present films that offer their own perspective “from the inside,” he says.

CSF has partnered with award-winning Haitian journalist Ralph Thomassaint Joseph, who will oversee local training of young filmmakers who will produce 10 short films. These films will focus on the economic and social development challenges Haitians have faced since the 2010 earthquake, says Sheridan, who recently returned from a trip to Haiti and plans to go back in the fall.

For more information about CSF projects, go to csfilm.org.

The Museum of Fine Arts will present two documentaries that shine a spotlight on artists working in Cuba. Bruce Donnelly’s documentary “Alumbrones” (screening June 14 at 3 p.m.) takes the viewer on a journey to Cuba through the life and work of 12 contemporary artists. This screening will be followed by a discussion with the director and two of the film’s featured artists, Edel Bordon and Yamille Pardo, as well as a reception at the Galeria Cubana in Boston’s South End art district at 460 Harrison Ave.

In her documentary “Secundaria” (June 18 at 7:30 p.m), director Mary Jane Doherty follows one high school class on its journey through Cuba’s world famous National Ballet School. A discussion with Doherty follows the screening.

For more information, go to www.mfa.org/film

“Musical Chairs,” a romantic film from director Susan Seidelman (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) about the phenomenon of wheelchair ballroom dancing in contemporary New York, will be screened at the Dance on Film Festival on June 15 at the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre in Cambridge. The festival runs from 1 to 6 p.m. and admission is free.

For more information, go to www.danceforworldcommunity.org.

The Mendon Twin Drive-In has been around since 1954, but June 19 will mark the first time it’s looked anything like Margaritaville. Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band are scheduled to perform a live concert at the Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth that will be streamed in real time on the screens of more than 100 drive-ins across the country, including the Mendon Twin. Massachusetts’ own BaHa Brothers will perform onsite. Participating drive-ins will donate a portion of the proceeds to a foundation working to preserve the great American tradition of drive-in theaters. The gates open at 4 p.m. in Mendon; show starts at 8 p.m.

For more information, go to www.mendondrivein.com.

Summary: “Haitian Perspectives in Film” will train and mentor 10 Haitian directors who hope to influence the way their country is portrayed in documentaries.


Or Disney, Yahoo, Adobe, Tivo, Netflix, EA or any of the big names tossed out last week

The $51 billion in cash and marketable securities that Apple AAPL reported last Monday — double its holdings two years ago (see chart) — has been burning a hole ever since in everybody’s pocket but Steve Jobs’.

The next day, the business press was full of stories quoting Jobs’ answer about why Apple doesn’t pay dividends — “we like to keep our powder dry” for those “one or more very strategic opportunities [that] may come along” — and suggesting what headline-grabbing purchases he might make with all that money.

The New York Times had a list that included Netflix NFLX , Electronic Arts ERTS and Facebook (privately held). Readers of Barrons’ Tech Trader Daily weighed in with Adobe ADBE , Yahoo YHOO , Sirius XM SIRI , TiVo TIVO , SanDisk SNDK and Disney DIS .

[The latest rumor, which drove shares of Sony SNE up nearly 3% in Asian markets Tuesday, is that Apple is thinking about buying the company that invented the Walkman. Jobs may have once admired Sony but, as Asymco‘s Horace Dediu points out, “the company today contains nothing of value to Apple.”]

First, by “strategic opportunities,” Jobs does not necessarily mean mergers and acquisitions. He might be talking about building something, say another giant server farm like the one set to open in North Carolina.

Second, if he were to buy a company, it would not be Facebook — a name that came up again over the weekend before Facebook PR felt obliged to shoot down rumors that it was about receive a giant infusion of cash from Apple.

Social network companies that know nothing about building products and have not yet figured out how to monetize what they do have are not the kind of enterprise that Apple buys.

What kind of enterprise does Apple buy? The list below, taken from Wikipedia, is instructive. As the entry succinctly puts it, paraphrasing BusinessWeek‘s Arik Hesseldahl: “Apple’s business philosophy is to acquire small companies that can be easily integrated into existing company projects.”

See? Not a Facebook, Disney or Sony among them. And the largest acquisition — by far — was the 1997 purchase of NeXT that brought Steve Jobs back to Apple.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Summary: Or Disney, Yahoo, Adobe, Tivo, Netflix, EA or any of the big names tossed out last week The $51 billion in cash and marketable securities that Apple reported last Monday -- double its holdings two years ago (see chart)  -- has been burning a hole ever since in everybody's pocket but Steve Jobs'. The next…


A lot of companies–including Coca-Cola , Walt Disney , Intel , and a parade of automakers–have a vested interest in a lot of people watching this Sunday’s Super Bowl. A record-breaking 100 million viewers is the target audience advertisers dream about.

One entrepreneur I talked with this week doesn’t have the big bucks (close to $3 million) to buy a 30-second spot on Super Bowl XLIV. But Randy Hetrick, the founder of a hot little company called Fitness Anywhere, has a vested interest in the New Orleans Saints beating the Indianapolis Colts. That’s because Saints quarterback Drew Brees is an investor in Fitness Anywhere. And the company’s product, a suspension-strap strength-training system called TRX, had something to do with Brees’ stunning comeback from serious injury a few years ago.

First, a bit about TRX’s odd origin. Hetrick, who is now 44, was a Navy SEAL–one of those elite special-ops military agents who conducts clandestine warfare. A lifetime super-jock, he got really frustrated inside ships and submarines and other tight quarters where he was unable to exercise. So he concocted a harness system—initially out of parachute webbing stitched together by boat repair tools–so he could use his own body weight as resistance against gravity.

Hetrick’s fellow SEALs took to using the harness system, and they invented a dozen exercises for it. But it wasn’t until Hetrick quit the SEALs, after 14 years, and went on to Stanford Business School that it dawned on him that his training gizmo could lead to his next career. Working out at the gym at Stanford, he realized that the exercise system was a hit with the strength trainers and other fitness fanatics too. “That’s when I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s a business in this,” he says.

Hetrick left Stanford, MBA in tow, in 2003 and spent the next couple of years lining up investors (he’s raised $6 million in debt and equity) and manufacturers and customers for the product he called TRX–for total resistance exercise. His biggest misstep early on, he says, was trying to sell mainly into specialty retail stores. “The retail channel is brutal on the little guy,” he explains. “They’re not interested in untested product. And they’re utterly savage in terms of margin.”

So he scratched that strategy and decided to target what he calls “pro-sumers.” These are coaches and pro athletes and other influential folks in athletic world who will spread the word about his product and help get TRX distributed in colleges and pro teams and health clubs.

Enter Drew Brees in 2006. Brees started using the TRX trainer after he had surgery to repair a torn labrum and partially torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder, his throwing arm. “I’m addicted,” Brees told Sports Illustrated about the TRX trainer. To Hetrick and Fitness Anywhere, that endorsement was as valuable as any ad on the Super Bowl.

Since then, a slew of pro teams have adopted the TRX system for training: the San Francisco 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers in football, the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics in basketball, and the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies in baseball. Golfer Phil Mickelson and swimmers Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin are TRX users, according to Fitness Anywhere. And TRX is big in mixed martial arts, used by the champs of the UFC, Ultimate Fighting.

Another user is Bob Damon, the North American president of search firm Korn Ferry International , who introduced me to Hetrick. Damon is what Hetrick calls a “fitnatic”–a lifetime super-jock who takes on fitness as a sport and seriously competes against himself. Damon, who travels plenty, packs the TRX Suspension Training Pro Pack, weighing 1.5 pounds, in his suitcase and attaches it to hotel-room doors to work out on the road. Damon invested in Fitness Anywhere two years ago.

Brees invested last year. Hetrick says that Brees, is the unusual sports superstar who takes executive education classes in the off-season. Last summer, Hetrick ran into Brees at Stanford and Brees asked him, “Is it too late? Can I invest?”

Hetrick accepted Brees’ money, gladly, and says that’s the end of fund-raising for Firness Anywhere for the foreseeable future. The San Francisco-based company did about $15 million in revenues last year, and CEO Hetrick expects to more than double that in 2010. Right now, he’s awaiting some big orders from the Department of Defense, already a major customer. “Profitability is liberating,” Hetrick says, noting that his start-up made a profit for the first time last year. He’s feeling a lot less body-resistance, business-wise at least, than he used to.

Summary: by Patricia Sellers A lot of companies--including Coca-Cola , Walt Disney , Intel , and a parade of automakers--have a vested interest in a lot of people watching this Sunday's Super Bowl. A record-breaking 100 million viewers is the target audience advertisers dream about. One entrepreneur I talked with this week doesn't have the big…


First published in 1821, the Guardian is a national newspaper with a rich and colourful history. The Manchester Guardian was highly influential during the great reform movements of the nineteenth century and today the Guardian continues to offer an independent and crucial forum for debate in this country. Its unique ownership has provided a level of continuity that no other national daily newspaper can equal.

Passionately committed to quality journalism, photography and design, the Guardian is the most modern and vibrant newspaper in the country. The Guardian's vision is to offer independent, agenda-setting content that positions us as the modern, progressive, exciting challenger to the status-quo. The Guardian is consistently innovative, actively encouraging debate and exerting influence. The Guardian's brand stands fundamentally for taking a fresh approach: we are modern, individual and sometimes unconventional. Healthily sceptical, but not cynical, the Guardian is confident, intelligent and investigative.

- The Guardian has a 17% share of total daily quality press circulation- As a proportion of total sales The Guardian circulation is made up of 100% sold copy.- 72% are sold at full rate

Compared to all other quality dailies (excl. The FT), the Guardian boasts a higher proportion of AB adults, ABC1 women 25-44, ABC1 men 25-44 and ABC1 adults with a terminal education age of 21+.

(source: NRS April 2012 - March 2013)

All figures are based on Monday-Saturday average issue readership.C.I.E. = chief income earner

Download the Guardian/Observer reader profile

Download key audience stats for the Guardian and Observer

Summary: Guardian readership and circulation figures


Bind Therapeutics Inc., a Cambridge-based nanomedicine company that is developing programmable drugs to certain types of cancer, said it has completed its research program with Amgen Inc., a large California-based biopharmaceutical company with a research center in Cambridge.

The two companies entered into the collaboration in January 2013, Bind said in a press release.

In a statement, Bind chief executive Scott Minick said: “The goal of this research collaboration was to optimize a specific therapeutic payload from Amgen. Despite achieving the objective of high tumor concentrations, the results were not sufficiently compelling to proceed forward, and both collaborators have agreed that the program will not be continued.”

A nanomedicine company, Bind specializes in developing programmable drugs to treat certain types of cancer and other diseases.

To that end, it is working on something called Accurins. In simple terms, Accurins are precise delivery platforms designed to target specific cells or tissues and concentrate a drug payload at the site of disease while minimizing adverse effects on healthy tissues.

Bind has entered into several collaborations with large drug companies. The goal of these partnerships is to fashion Accurins that can deliver a payload of a large drug company’s drug to a precise target.

Last month, for example, Bind said it has entered into a research agreement with Swiss drug giant Roche to discover novel treatment of diseases in therapeutic areas outside of oncology.

In his statement on Amgen, Minick noted that Bind also has collaborations with AstraZeneca AB and Pfizer Inc.

Meanwhile, Bind Therapeutics is working on a drug candidate that is being tested as a potential treatment for non-small cell lung cancer and metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer.

Bind’s platform originated from the nanotechnology research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School by the company’s scientific founders and directors Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Omid Farokhzad.

Bind was one of many local life sciences companies to go public last year.

Shares of Bind had a Thursday closing price of $12.88, down 46 cents.

Summary: Bind Therapeutics has completed its research program with Amgen Inc., a large California-based biopharmaceutical company.


The studio that created the popular Halo video game franchise is leaving Microsoft (MSFT) to gain creative freedom, potentially delivering a blow to the software giant’s image among gamers.

Halo is the most popular software franchise for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, and it achieved $300 million in sales in the week after Halo 3 was released on September 25. Because the game is exclusive to the Xbox platform, it helped boost hardware sales for Microsoft; the Xbox 360 also beat the Nintendo Wii in sales last week for the first time this year.

Microsoft confirmed the split in a press release this morning .

Rumors of a split between Microsoft and game studio Bungie had been circulating on gaming enthusiast sites for several days, after 8BitJoystick broke the story on a Seattle Post Intelligencer blog . The blog writer said he got this e-mail tip:

So heres my big secret. You should google Bungie + Microsoft + separation this week.

You know that big ol BILLION dollar franchise Bungie has created for Microsoft, to show their appreciate Microsoft is letting Bungie leave. Of course Microsoft gets to keep all rights to the Halo franchise, but as today Bungie no longer part of Microsoft. Ask anyone who works there to search the global address book, they’re no longer in there. Microsoft was supposed to release the press release today but if they wait till the 10/6 the impact wont effect the quarterly results. However today is the actual official date and the day the NDAs expire, however you still didn’t hear this from me.

Apparently MS just wants Bungie to make Halo for the rest of their natural days, and Bungie doesn’t like how MS is constantly trying to “handle” everything they do; the way they market their games, the way they interact with their fans (basically the fact that they do appreciate their fans), and how stingie they are with the profits (comparable to the rest of the industry). So as of today they are their own independent entity. They’ll probably make Halo 4 for Microsoft, however hey are also free to create new intellectual properties for whatever system they want. (Even though they prefer the xbox platform)

What a way to say thank you.

In one example that might illustrate the reason for tension between Microsoft and Bungie, screen shots surfaced on the Internet this week showing what appears to be an unreleased version of Halo developed for Nintendo’s popular DS handheld gaming system.

Some in the gaming community have speculated that Microsoft was unwilling to release the game and risk giving ammunition to a rival’s gaming platform.

With Bungie as a separate entity, it would have more power to decide how its future games are marketed and on what platforms, including those from Nintendo and Sony (SNE). Bungie was an independent studio until Microsoft bought it seven years ago for about $40 million. Before it was acquired by Microsoft, Bungie was known for creating games for several platforms; its Marathon game, a precursor to Halo, was popular on Apple’s Macintosh computers. For more details on the Bungie/Microsoft split, see this Kotaku interview .

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 5, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a plan for Bungie Studios, the developers of the “Halo®” franchise, to embark on a path to become an independent company. Microsoft will retain an equity interest in Bungie, at the same time continuing its long-standing publishing agreement between Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie for the Microsoft-owned “Halo” intellectual property as well as other future properties developed by Bungie.

The critically acclaimed Xbox 360®-exclusive “Halo 3″ achieved $300 million in global sales in its first week. Released on Tuesday, Sept. 25, “Halo 3″ is the fastest-selling video game ever and already one of the most successful entertainment properties in history.

“Our collaboration with Bungie has resulted in ‘Halo’ becoming an enduring mainstream hit,” said Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. “While we are supporting Bungie’s desire to return to its independent roots, we will continue to invest in our ‘Halo’ entertainment property with Bungie and other partners, such as Peter Jackson, on a new interactive series set in the ‘Halo’ universe. We look forward to great success with Bungie as our long-term relationship continues to evolve through ‘Halo’-related titles and new IP created by Bungie.”

“This exciting evolution of our relationship with Microsoft will enable us to expand both creatively and organizationally in our mission to create world-class games,” said Harold Ryan, studio head for Bungie. “We will continue to develop with our primary focus on Microsoft® platforms; we greatly value our mutually prosperous relationship with our publisher, Microsoft Game Studios; and we look forward to continuing that affiliation through ‘Halo’ and beyond.”

Bungie Studios will remain in its current location in Kirkland, Wash.

Summary: The studio that created the popular Halo video game franchise is leaving Microsoft (MSFT) to gain creative freedom, potentially delivering a blow to the software giant’s image among gamers. Halo is the most popular software franchise for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and it achieved $300 million in sales in the week after Halo 3 was…


Chris Martin and Jennifer Lawrence

Kevin Kane/WireImage; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

09/16/2014 AT 05:15 PM EDT

has continued putting family first.

now in his life, the Coldplay frontman has made fitting in quality time

look as easy as his conscious uncoupling from Paltrow, 41.

"Jen has made a few visits to his Malibu house," says a source. "Chris seems very respectful of Gwyneth and feels more comfortable spending time with Jen away from his family."

Lawrence, 24, and Martin, 37, also stepped out for a romantic

at Beverly Hills eatery La Dolce Vita on Sept. 8, where an onlooker says the new couple "were super cute together and laughed a lot."

On weekends, though, the singer has been all about his kids Apple, 10, and Moses, 8.

"Gwyneth and Chris take the kids for brunch or dinner together every weekend," says the source. "He and Gwyneth still share responsibilities when it comes to their two kids."

At the Hungry Cat restaurant in Santa Monica on Sept. 13, "they were very friendly to each other," an onlooker tells PEOPLE about the pair, who did not wear their wedding rings. "They looked like a happy family."

Summary: "Chris seems very respectful of Gwyneth," a source tells PEOPLE


SINOP, Turkey— Turkish and American flags now fly over the strategic outpost on the Black Sea here that is expected to play an important role in monitoring Soviet compliance with any future treaty limiting strategic arms.

A defense agreement between Turkey and the United States, signed in March, has placed this key intelligence base, as well as other American military facilities in Turkey, under joint operation.

''When this base was closed, there was a big gap in NATO's functions; NATO lost a lot,'' said the Turkish Army commander at the base, Col. Vedat Ozsecen. ''We still don't understand the United States arms embargo, but as time went by both sides understood the mistake.''

Colonel Ozsecen referred to the period between July 27, 1975, and Oct. 9, 1978, when the Turkish Army cut off all operations at Sinop and other American facilities in response to the United States arms embargo after Turkey's military intervention in Cyprus. 'Observation and Control'

The colonel described Sinop's functions as ''observation and control of the opposite bloc'' and stressed that the observation was directed to technical and economic as well as military developments.

In the office next to Colonel Ozsecen, the United States commander here, Col. Franklin Parker of the Army, spoke in broad terms about Sinop's mission, which he said was ''to conduct communications activities.'' He refused to answer questions about the nature of the activities or to give any details on the operations or the equipment.

Sinop station is a 300-acre facility situated on a bleak 700-foot hill at the end of a peninsula, and the huge white radar domes and microwave antennas are clearly visible from the sea and air.

Authoritative published reports provide greater detail about the operations than the Sinop commanders would give. Sinop's intelligence base monitors Soviet activities in the Black Sea area and Soviet missile tests, providing tactical and strategic intelligence on Soviet operations, according to a staff report prepared last spring for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Provides Early Warning

Lieut. Cmdr. Edward Mark Ozehoski of the United States Navy's detachment at Sinop said the base was also valuable for its additional early-warning ability.

Commander Ozehoski emphasized that the joint operations with the Turks, which began Nov. 3, would increase the usefulness of the operations. He pointed out that considerable time is wasted in training the American personnel, who generally come for one year, and that the Turkish personnel who remain for longer periods provide continuity.

The Sinop installation is also called Diogenes Station, named after the philosopher who was born in ancient Sinope, as it was called then. Sinop today is a quiet fishing port and farm center with a population of just over 18,000, and few reminders of its illustrious past are visible.

With its broad natural harbor, Sinop is believed to have been settled as early as 1200 B.C. According to historians, Sinope was an important port under the Hittites, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines. Under the Ottoman Empire, Sinop was an important naval base and the site of a major battle. On Nov. 30, 1853, the Russian Navy attacked what was almost the entire Ottoman Navy anchored in Sinop harbor, destroying the fleet and much of the town. In later years, because of its isolation and poor roads, Sinop served mainly as a penal colony.

There are about 450 American and 125 Turkish military personnel at the base. There are also 340 Turkish civilian employees. Self-Contained Installation

Both Turkish and American sources say there have been no real security problems here. For one thing, Sinop is built on an isthmus and is easy to control with only one access road. Also, the hilltop installation is a self-contained unit, with its own dining and recreational facilities, dispensary, chapel, theater, library, post exchange and postal service.

''We have the best facilities in Turkey and really only one problem, separation from our families,'' Capt. John Napier said as he guided a visitor around the installation. The absence of dependents was the main complaint, but most Americans felt that the hardship was bearable since the tour was for only one year. There were some complaints about the isolation - a bus ride to Ankara takes 10 hours - about the weather - hail as big as golfballs and wind gusts up to 60 miles an hour - and above all about the ban on automobiles for military personnel.

But most people showed a positive outlook, such as First Sgt. Anthony Gagliardi from Brooklyn, who has spent 26 years in the Army and has a wife and child in Oceanport, N.J.

''We have everything here and more time to enjoy people and get to know each other,'' he said at the base club. ''Back in the States when you finish work, you go home, but here we're more closely knit -on duty and off.''


Investors avoided another roller coaster day on Wall Street Friday.

What they got instead was a steady, moderate decline that left the market with its worst weekly performance since May 2012.

Technology shares were especially hard hit. Semiconductor makers slumped after Microchip Technology cut its sales forecast for the quarter and warned investors to expect bad news from others in the sector.

That sent shares lower for Avago Technologies, Intel and Texas Instruments, among others. Microchip Technology declined the most, shedding $5.59, or 12.3 percent, to $39.96.

The decline capped a week of turbulence in the market brought on by renewed fears that economic growth in Europe could be slowing.

The Dow Jones industrial average recorded its biggest gain of the year on Wednesday. The next day, it plunged 334 points, its steepest decline this year.

‘‘A lot of investors are trying to come to grips with the pickup in volatility we've suddenly seen during this week,’’ said David Kelly, chief global strategist for JPMorgan Funds.

The major stock indexes were down in premarket trading Friday.

The slide in semiconductor stocks dragged down the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index, keeping it in the red all day.

The other indexes flirted with small gains throughout the day, but the course didn’t hold. They ended lower for the fourth time in five days.

All told, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 115.15, or 0.7 percent, to 16,544.10. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index shed 22.08, or 1.2 percent, to 1,906.13.

The Nasdaq slid 102.10 points, or 2.3 percent, to 4,276.24.

All three indexes ended lower for the week. For the S&P 500, this was the worst weekly decline since May 18, 2012, when it fell 4.3 percent.

Negative economic news and a slide in oil prices contributed to the uneasiness on Wall Street this week, market watchers said.

Germany, which has been the economic powerhouse for Europe, reported on Thursday its biggest monthly drop in exports in five years. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its outlook for global economic growth.

In addition, some traders are interpreting the decline in oil prices as further indication that growth is slowing.

‘‘You put those three factors together and it has investors nervous at the health of the world economy,’’ said Jeff Kravetz, regional investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

The volatility in the market this week also came at a time of relatively light corporate news in the U.S. That changes next week, when major companies begin to report their latest quarterly results.

‘‘Third-quarter earnings season should be pretty reassuring, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see money go back into various stocks as companies surprise to the upside, which is what I expect them to do,’’ said Kelly.

Investors did not appear to be overly optimistic on Friday.

Eight of the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 fell, led by technology stocks. Utilities and consumer staples bucked the trend.

Shares in electric car maker Tesla slumped after investors looked over the company’s late-Thursday announcement of a new all-wheel drive car. The stock lost $20.10, or 7.8 percent, to $236.91.

Despite the overall slide, some stocks posted strong gains.

L-3 Communications Holdings led the risers in the S&P 500, adding $7.04, or 6.5 percent, to $115.15.

Exact Sciences surged 35.8 percent after the company said its new colon cancer test will be covered by Medicare. Shares in the medical diagnostic test maker added $6.48 to $24.60.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped to 2.29 percent from 2.31 percent late Thursday.

The price of oil steadied but remained down 4 percent for the week on plentiful global supplies and weak demand. U.S. crude rose 5 cents to close at $85.82 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, rose 16 cents to close at $90.21 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

In other energy futures trading on the NYMEX, wholesale gasoline fell 1.7 cents to close at $2.258 a gallon, heating oil rose 2.3 cents to close at $2.560 a gallon and natural gas rose 1.4 cents to close at $3.859 per 1,000 cubic feet

In metals trading, the price of gold fell $3.60 to $1,221.70 an ounce, silver fell 12 cents to $17.30 an ounce and copper was flat at $3.03 a pound.

Summary: All three indexes ended lower for the week, with the S&P 500 suffering its worst decline since in more than two years.