Joshua Yehl fondly remembers what he had most in common with his friend Drew Leinonen.

"We both loved 'Star Wars'," he told NBC OUT. "It was really just a part of our lives. We'd watch reviews and talk about it. We would listen to the sound track in the car."

Their love for "Star Wars" movies was a bond that kept them inseparable for six years, even after Yehl moved from Orlando to Los Angeles. And it was a bond that suddenly ended when Leinonen was killed alongside 48 others in the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando.

RELATED: Orlando Massacre: These Are the People Who Were Killed at Pulse Nightclub

Yehl said Leinonen, who was 32 years old, was beloved in the Orlando LGBT community.

"A lot of people who knew Drew, their story with him begins with how he helped them come out of the closet and tell their friends and families that they were gay."

Drew Leinonen (left) and Joshua Yehl Joshua Yehl

It was Leinonen's love for "Star Wars" and his dedication to the LGBT community that gave Yehl the idea to start an online petition. It asks "all those behind the 'Star Wars' film" to use his friend as inspiration for a first-ever LGBT character in a "Star Wars" film.

Yehl said this character would serve as a Hollywood role model for LGBT youth and would continue Leinonen's legacy of helping others.

"When kids are growing up and they're young, they realize they're gay and they don't know what to do. It always helps to have a role model and a lot of times we do look to movies," he added.

"I feel like if Drew could [become] the inspiration for [a] new 'Star Wars' character, then that would mean the world. He would [have] loved that."

He pointed out that while LGBT characters have appeared in "Star Wars" novels and comics, one has yet to appear in a movie.

LGBT characters are often missing from major studio films like "Star Wars," according to a recent report from GLAAD. The report found just 22 film releases from major studios in 2015 contained characters that identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

"Hollywood's films lag far behind any other form of media when it comes to portrayals of LGBT characters. Too often, the few LGBT characters that make it to the big screen are the target of a punchline or token characters. The film industry must embrace new and inclusive stories if it wants to remain competitive and relevant," said Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD President & CEO, in a press release.

Drew Leinonen (left) and Joshua Yehl (right) Joshua Yehl

But some experts speculate that decisions about whether to include LGBT characters in a film are driven by how it will affect revenue, even if there is a strong desire to include them.

"From a studio's perspective, I think many of them tend to be just looking at the bottom line and if it's going to keep people from the box office, they're not going to do it," said Lori Pearson, Communications Director for Kids-in-Mind. The organization hosts a nonpartisan, nonreligious movie review website that evaluates films based on potentially objectionable content.

She said that even if a film is rumored to have an LGBT character, especially if it's popular with underage audiences, it can set off a storm of protests on social media. That happened recently when talkshow host Ellen DeGeneres made a joke about a stingray character being transgender in the children's animated movie Finding Dory, according to Pearson.

"It blew up everywhere. People were panicking even before going to see the film. They [were] telling friends not to go see it," Pearson added.

Even if the protests come from a minority of people, Pearson said it could affect whether studios decide to include LGBT characters "if they determine it will ultimately affect their bottom line."

"It's all about whatever happens at the box office," she said.

Yehl believes including an LGBT character in a "Star Wars" film would help make people more comfortable embracing the community.

"I believe that being inclusive in such a big worldwide beloved franchise like 'Star Wars' is the way to sort of dispel the hate and fear and ignorance about LGBT people. When you see people you aren't familiar with or don't understand in something you do love and understand, it's sort of a bridge to help people [relate]," he explained.

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Summary: A petition to has been started to have the "first LGBT 'Star Wars' movie character" based on Orlando victim Drew Leinonen, who was a big fan of the franchise.


FOR Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, it was an exquisite moment of triumph and redemption.

As she sat in the front row of Fashion Week’s Ralph Lauren show, all eyes were on her and the man at her side: Britain’s Prince Andrew.

As necks craned to see, as cameras flashed and motor drives whirred, the favorite child of the former New York Daily News owner smiled regally and quietly savored the attention.

Just a short time ago people spat the name Maxwell — if they spoke it at all.

Now, the public gesture of friendship by Britain’s most eligible royal was a signal to the world that the once reviled Maxwells were back. And beautiful. And 39-year-old Ghislaine is their public face.

“Ghislaine couldn’t have done in Britain what she has achieved here. Every step would have been scrutinized and criticized,” said a family friend.

“She has kept just the right profile. Being out with Prince Andrew was a startling social coup. It made everyone stand up and take notice.”

IT IS nine years since Robert Maxwell disappeared from the deck of his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, into the inhospitable waters of the Atlantic.

He left behind a media empire in ruins, crushed by debt and pillaged by his own avarice. He had looted $600 million from the pension funds of his employees in a vain attempt to keep the empire afloat, and thousands of families would suffer as a result.

It is widely assumed that Maxwell committed suicide rather than face the inevitable consequences. An inquest called it an accident. Either way, he left his seven children to shoulder a heavy burden of ignominy and shame.

Incredibly, they have rebuilt another fortune on the smoking ruins of the first.

Robert Maxwell saw himself as Britain’s Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of a dynasty that would wield financial and political power on a global scale. Like Kennedy, he expected much of his children and pushed them hard.

“He would interrogate them at the dinner table about history or geopolitics,” said a once-regular guest in at the sprawling Maxwell estate in southern England.

“He could reduce them to tears if they didn’t know an answer. He could be a cold man and the temperature in the house dropped noticeably when he was there.”

The colder he was, the more his youngest daughter tried to please him.

Maxwell even dreamed that he might one day forge an alliance with the Kennedys by marrying Ghislaine to JFK Jr. The two became close friends and remained so until Kennedy’s tragic death last year. Ghislaine has also been a guest at a number of Kennedy weddings and family events.

GHISLAINE was sent to Marlborough, one of England’s top private schools, and to Oxford. Maxwell made her director of a British soccer club and set her up with her own fiefdom, a company that supplies corporate gifts.

When in January 1991 he bought the tottering Daily News and rescued it from oblivion, she was sent to Manhattan to be the advance guard for his foray into New York society.

A few months later he was dead. Of all his children, she took his death the hardest. She was unable to accept her father’s guilt and likely suicide and insists to this day that a dark conspiracy of Mossad renegades and Sicilian contract killers took his life.

Ghislaine was already suffering emotionally. A long, passionate affair with Count Gianfranco Cicogna, the dashing scion of the aristocratic clan that owns the Ciga Hotels chain, ended painfully. She had hoped to one day be his Contessa.

In a short space of time she had lost her lover, her prospects, her share of the family fortunes and her beloved father.

“There’s a story that the Maxwell name was so detested in London that she had to walk around in a blond wig so people wouldn’t recognize her,” said a prominent New York socialite who has known Ghislaine for several years.

“She was being treated like Marie Antoinette there. She wisely realized she had to make her life in New York where her father was less well-known and people care more about what you can do than who you used to be. She was like one of those European princes who have been deposed. But she had no title — and no money!

“The most obvious way out of a jam like that is, ‘Find a rich husband, darling, and quick.'”

Ghislaine wasn’t entirely penniless. She lived off an inviolable trust immune from the family’s financial difficulties and this yielded an income of about $100,000 a year — enough to ensure that she would never starve.

After her father’s disgrace, even that caused resentment. When she was spotted flying on the supersonic Concorde to New York there were critical editorials in the British press about her lifestyle.

Ghislaine took a $2,000-a-month apartment on the Upper East Side and began working selling real estate. One thing the collapse of her father’s empire couldn’t take away from her was the rich network of wealthy and influential friends she had made in a lifetime of privilege.

Within a year of her father’s death she was dating immensely wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. He provided a platform for her return to public prominence and filled the emotional vacuum in her life left by the death of her father.

EPSTEIN is an enigmatic figure. Rumors abound — including wild ones about a career in the Mossad and, contrarily, the CIA.

Some have said he was once a concert pianist. He seems to deny nothing and admits even less.

“He told me he was a spy hired by corporations to find major amounts of money which had been embezzled,” said one of Epstein’s former girlfriends, diet guru and former TV personality Nicki Haskell. “He made it sound very glamorous.”

Epstein made his fortune as a righthand man of Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited, the retailing giant that owns Intimate Brands, Victoria’s Secret, and Bath & Body Shop.

He now runs an investment company, J. Epstein & Co., and the walls of his Madison Avenue office drip with six-figure works of art.

He is fond of expensive toys — of which Ghislaine might be termed both his favorite and most expensive.

Among his other trinkets: a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud in which he sometimes parades around Manhattan.

As well as owning one of the largest and the last great mansions of the Upper East Side, Epstein has built a $3million, 26,700-square-foot hilltop mansion in New Mexico, one of the largest homes in the entire state. For a yard, he purchased the 10,000-acre Zorro ranch once owned by the state’s former governor, Bruce King.

He shocked other New Mexicans — even the rich ones — by having supplies of New York rye and authentic bagels flown in to the private airstrip on his hacienda and by covering his bed with designer sheets that cost a reputed $600 each.

“Jeffrey is a fun-loving character, but he can be demanding and critical and sometimes eccentric,” said a friend of the couple. “He can be impatient one moment and solicitous the next.

“He’s very charismatic. I wouldn’t say Svengali, but he does get what he wants, usually. He and Leslie Wexner are very, very close.

“He is very, very rich and as much as he enjoys making it, he seems to have no problem spending it, either. He has provided Ghislaine a lot of the security and confidence she was missing when her father died and she has provided him with a lot of prestige.”

GHISLAINE’S siblings have also been busy rebuilding the family’s financial fortunes.

The source of much of their new wealth is The McKinley Group, a California company founded by Maxwell’s twin daughters, Isabel and Christine.

Named after North America’s highest mountain, the company developed a high-tech Internet search engine called Magellan. It was profitable but inevitably, after a while, started to lose customers to Yahoo.

The Maxwell sisters sold out to a another Internet search-engine company, Excite, for about $18 million. When Excite was sold last year, the value of those shares had risen 1,000 percent.

An Israeli e-mail company, CommTouch, hired Isabel as president while Christine launched another Web business, an Internet publisher named Chiliad.

Meanwhile, Maxwell’s sons, Kevin and Ian, rounded up private investors in the United States to create Telemonde, a company involved in the complex business of buying and leasing telecommunications bandwidth. The company went public last year but has suffered setbacks in its efforts to make an impression on the Nasdaq stock market.

Even so, this was not enough to prevent a social comeback — at least in Britain. The whole posse is profiled in the April Tatler; the cover line reads, “The Maxwells Are Back … and making another fortune.”

Robert Maxwell was fond of warning his children: “Confidence is like virginity. You can only lose it once.” His children, however, appear to have recovered theirs.

Summary: FOR Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, it was an exquisite moment of triumph and redemption. As she sat in the front row of Fashion Week’s Ralph Lauren show…


Last Updated Sep 12, 2011 10:27 AM EDT

It's not just contraceptives, prescription drugs and antibiotics that are the problem: Nicotine-laced urine from smokers and antibiotics in the urine of farm animals also make their way into the drinking water supply. Chickens, cattle, and pigs are treated with pharmaceuticals, which enter the environment from waste storage, from accidents or through manure and liquid waste spread on crops.

The "good" news: concentrations for any one pharmaceutical are measured most frequently in parts per trillion (click to enlarge):

© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

Summary: Very little attention is likely to be paid to a report by the General Accountability Office that says most drinking water in the U.S. is contaminated with pharmaceuticals.


(CBS News) When it comes to living with a child who has autism, educational experts, pediatricians and scientists all have their advice for parents. But who better to bounce ideas off of than other parents of children on the autism spectrum?

Complete coverage: Latest Developments in Autism

MyAutismTeam is a social network for parents of children with autism that has more than 20,000 members. Described as a "Facebook-Meets Yelp- network," the site utilizes local reviews of doctors and services and connects members to fellow parents they can ask for advice. MyAutismTeam also connects parents with 30,000 providers, from babysitters to dentists to Taekwondo instructors, who all have experience working with children with autism.

"Parents of kids with autism constantly worry whether they are doing enough, or are doing the right things to help their children thrive," Eric Peacock, CEO and founder of MyAutismTeam, said. "We focus on making it easy for parents to learn from others who have been in their shoes, so they don't have to start from scratch when looking for providers that are highly recommended."

Children with autism, much like most children, gravitate to toys and activities for their entertainment, and parents have noticed their kids prefer certain games more than others. To find out the top gift and toy ideas for children with autism, MyAutismTeam recently surveyed 1000 of its members. For World Autism Awareness Month, here's what the community voted as their top 10 gifts:

Summary: MyAutismTeam social network has 20,000 members; here's what parents of children with autism had to say about their favorite play activities


The MBTA raised $337 million in two bond sales Tuesday, borrowing at the lowest rates in the transit agency’s history, officials said.

The borrowings marked the first time the MBTA has put bond sales out for competitive bids in 21 years, according to Brian Shortsleeve, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s acting general manager. The money will be used to refinance existing debts that have interest rates more than twice as high.

Online auctions held in the morning drew more than 15 large banks and Wall Street firms. New York-based J.P. Morgan Securities won the first bond deal, with rates averaging 2.4 percent. Morgan Stanley & Co., also of New York, was the low bidder on the second bond offering, with an average ratejust under 1.8 percent, according to the MBTA.

“All the big players in the market showed up to bid,’’ Shortsleeve said. “When you open up the process, a lot of players come in and participate.”

Over the past two decades, the T has generally done directly negotiated bond deals with particular banks, rather than putting the issues out to a broader bidding group.

With interest rates at historic lows, the financially-troubled T will save tens of millions of dollars as a result of the bond refinancings Tuesday, Shortsleeve said.

He and the Baker administration have been working to lower the cost of the T’s $5.2 billion in outstanding debt. In recent months they have eliminated a series of costly swaps that were hedges against interest rates rising.

Summary: The MBTA on Tuesday completed its first competitively bid bond deals in 21 years, reaping historically low rates.


Republican presidential candidate John Kasich on Friday delivered a lengthy response to a young woman asking about sexual assaults on college campuses that included the advice “don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol.”

During a town hall in Watertown, NY, GOP candidate John Kasich responds to a young woman’s question about sexual assaults on college campuses.

The remark was criticized by Planned Parenthood and a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee as blaming victims.

Kasich denied that, and said alcohol “obscures the ability of people to seek justice” after an attack. “That has nothing to do with saying that somebody who has been a victim is somehow responsible,” Kasich said.

The Ohio governor’s initial response to the St. Lawrence University student included talking about the importance of access to rape kits and a clear reporting process, adding, “I have two 16-year-old daughters, and I don’t even like to think about it.”

When the she said, “it’s something that I have to worry about,” Kasich responded: “Well I would give you, I’d also give you one bit of advice, don’t go to parties where there’s a lot of alcohol. OK? Don’t do that,” Kasich said. The crowd applauded.

Dawn Laguens, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement: “John Kasich’s plan for combatting [sic] sexual assault as president is to blame women who go to parties.”

RELATED: Kasich is sometimes his own worst enemy

Kasich told reporters in Utica Friday that was not his intent. His official Twitter account also reaffirmed that the only person responsible for a sexual assault is the assailant.

“I just said be careful where there’s alcohol, and the reason why I worry about that is, it obscures the ability of people to seek justice,” Kasich said. “Because then it gets to be about he said, she said, and there’s alcohol and it creates an inability to find the truth.”

“That has nothing to do with saying that somebody who has been a victim is somehow responsible,” Kasich said. “I just want there to be justice, and I want to make sure that people are held accountable for the actions that they have when they prey on women.”

Kasich held the town hall ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary. He has picked up endorsements from former New York Gov. George Pataki and the New York Daily News in recent days.

A new NBC 4 New York/ Wall Street Journal/ Marist poll found Kasich in second place in New York, with 25 percent support compared to 54 percent supporting Donald Trump.

This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com.

Summary: The Ohio governor said his remark "has nothing to do with saying that somebody who has been a victim is somehow responsible."


It is official. The inmates are running the asylum. As the summer draws to an end, all hell has broken loose in my world. My children have turned mad, and have turned on me. I cannot get the sand out of their ears, the green out of their hair or the frenzied exhaustion out of their eyes. Some interesting dialect changes have also taken place. While the word No used to mean No, it now means, "Please keep trying to convince me – oh, and make sure you use a really high, really annoying voice to do so." By the obvious sugar-highs and random extra kids at my breakfast table, I can only surmise that, "Go outside and play!" means "Yes, of course you can have another ice cream and another sleepover." And, I am starting to suspect that "Clean your room," has lost all meaning whatsoever.

I love summer chill mode as much as the next Chardonnay drinker, so all this would be fine – dirty kids, dirty house, etc. -- if it were not for the looming and impassable BACK TO SCHOOL in the near future. It is time to put the wheels back on the wagon and better sleep is at the top of my To Do list.

1. How important is sleep? The short answer is, very important. While scientists are not sure why we are hard-wired to need sleep, common sense says we simply need to rest our systems, decompress and prepare to face another day. We do know what happens without sleep. After one full day of no sleep, you will be irritable and clumsy. After two days, you will have a difficult time thinking and completing tasks. After five days of no sleep, you will start to hallucinate. After a few more days, your brain will not be able to send signals to the rest of your body, which would ultimately be fatal. Not getting enough sleep every night will cause similar, albeit more mild, symptom including problems concentrating, irritability, a general feeling of unwell, and lack of coordination.

2. How much sleep do kids need? While all people are different, researchers have a decent grasp on how much sleep people need to function effectively. Children aged 3-6 require about 10-12 hours of sleep. 7-12 year olds need 10-11 hours. This means if they get up for school at 7, they need to be in bed by 9 at the latest. This is easier said than done.

3. How much sleep do teenagers need? Adolescents need about 8-9 hours of sleep a night to function at their best. But, their circadian rhythms are messed up compared to adults and children. They usually don't feel tired before 11pm, will have a hard time falling asleep and consequently, will be impossible in the morning.

4. How much sleep do adults need? Most experts agree adults need at least 7-8 hours of sleep. Less than this can result in immediate consequences such as car accidents, and longer term medical side effects like depression and heart disease.

5. How much sleep is everyone getting? Studies show that practically none of us are getting enough sleep. Children and teens typically have terrible sleep patterns. During the summer months, even if everyone in your family is getting enough sleep, they are probably sleeping at the wrong hours. My kids are in bed at about 10-11 o'clock and up after 8am every morning. Come September, this is not going to cut it.

6. How you can get them back on track. – Start tightening the reins now. Cruise slowly out of summer as opposed to coming to a screeching halt – this will prevent everyone from crashing through the windshield. Little by little start establishing the routines that worked for your children before, whether it be baths, books or stories. Have dinner ready earlier in the evening, get them into their PJs and start the movie earlier. Try to do this in increments. I am not suggesting a strict schedule, but rather that you start being conscious that the summer finish line is in sight. If your kids sleep late in the summer, consider getting them up a little earlier each day – even if it means promising something fun in the morning. Getting up at a more respectable time will help them get to bed in the evening as well.

The first few weeks of school are important ones – not only academically, but socially. It is the time when your child's new teacher will get to know him or her. It will set the stage for how he or she is perceived as a student. It is also an important time to establish friendships. I speak only for myself when I say my children will never be perfect. Still, I want them to be present back at school as their best selves, as opposed to the little creatures who are, at this moment, destroying my house. I gotta go. This has gotten out of control ...

, and check out our

for the chance to win the ultimate back-to-school prize pack!

Summary: By DR. KAREN LATIMER  It is official. The inmates are running the asylum. As the summer draws to an end, all hell has broken loo


Residents of Hugo, Colorado have been told not to drink running water after the sheriff’s office found THC, the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana, running through the city pipes.

On Friday morning, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s office will hand out water to the fewer than 800 residents of Hugo on the plains of east central Colorado. An advisement against drinking the water began Thursday after tests confirmed THC in the water. The tests were triggered by “complaints,” though no one has reported any symptoms.

#HugosWater Tests began after complaints, no level of concentration, water well #1 is still being investigation, no symptoms to anyone

— Lincoln County S.O. (@LincolnCountySO) July 21, 2016

The state issued a statement telling residents they may experience increased anxiety, hallucination or impaired coordination. The sheriff’s office had no new information Friday morning when contacted by TIME.

According to the Denver Post, high school football practice in Hugo was canceled on Thursday because players could not shower. A former mayor told the Post, “I might have to go drink some water.”

As of last night, authorities were continuing to test the water to ensure it is safe.

Summary: A former mayor said, "I might have to go drink some water."


Queensland paramedics should be allowed to wear body cameras as long as they are used in the same manner as police-issued devices, according to civil libertarians.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties executive member Andrew Sinclair doubted body cameras would prevent violence but there was a sound argument for their introduction.

The Queensland Ambulance Union will later this week ask paramedics if they want to wear body cameras after a woman, who was demanding drugs, stabbed a paramedic on Fraser Island.

Meanwhile, Queensland police are rolling out body cameras to officers across the state.

The body cameras are switched on but not recording during a shift although when activated they will also capture the 30 seconds prior to recording starting.

At the completion of each shift they are placed in a docking station and immediately downloaded.

"If it's subject to the same caveat and safety issues (as the police body camera regulations) it can't hurt," Mr Sinclair told AAP.

"The possible harm it can do is very minimal against the risks it is going to guard against.

"Having said that, I don't think it's going to stop anyone.

"If they aren't paying any attention to the advertising campaign and they're high on drugs they are not thinking straight."

Summary: The increase in attacks on paramedics has the Queensland Ambulance Union again asking their members if the want body cameras.


A woman has been killed in a collision between a truck and a car on the New England Highway at Stanthorpe in southeast Queensland.

Police say the B-Double truck hit the rear side of the car as it entered the highway at Wallangarra Road around 3.30pm on Saturday, killing a 45-year-old woman who was a passenger in the back seat.

The 23-year-old driver of the car, another female passenger and the 63-year-old truck driver were taken to Stanthorpe Hospital for observation.

Summary: A 23-year-old man has died after a collision with a truck in Gladstone.


A facial reconstruction has been made of a young woman who died more than 3,700 years ago.

The woman's bones, including a skull and teeth, were discovered at Achavanich in Caithness in 1987.

Known as "Ava", an abbreviation of Achavanich, she is the subject of a long-term research project managed by archaeologist Maya Hoole.

Forensic artist Hew Morrison, a graduate of the University of Dundee, created the reconstruction.

Ava's remains, along with other artefacts found with her, are held in the care of Caithness Horizons museum in Thurso.

Unusually, the Bronze Age woman was buried in a pit dug into solid rock and her skull is an abnormal shape which some suggest was the result of deliberate binding.

It is believed Ava was part of a much wider European group known as the Beaker people.

Short and round skull shapes were common amongst this group, but Ms Hoole said the Achavanich specimen is exaggerated and of an abnormal, uneven shape.

Mr Morrison, a graduate of Dundee's Forensic Art MSc programme, specialises in creating facial reconstructions.

He used an anthropological formula to calculate the shape of Ava's missing lower jaw, and also the depth of her skin.

Mr Morrison also used a chart of modern average tissue depths for reference.

A specialist examination at the time of the discovery in the 1980s suggested that the skeletal remains were that of a young Caucasian woman aged 18-22.

He said: "The size of the lips can be determined by measuring the enamel of the teeth and the width of the mouth from the position of the teeth."

Mr Morrison created the reconstruction by rebuilding the layers of muscle and tissue over the face.

He drew on a large database of high resolution images of faces to recreate the facial features.

The individual features were then adjusted to fit with the anatomy of the skull based on the underlying facial muscles. The features were then "morphed together", using computer software to create the reconstructed face.

Mr Morrison said: "Normally, when working on a live, unidentified person's case not so much detail would be given to skin tone, eye or hair colour and hair style as none of these elements can be determined from the anatomy of the skull.

"So, creating a facial reconstruction based on archaeological remains is somewhat different in that a greater amount of artistic license can be allowed."

He added: "I have really appreciated the chance to recreate the face of someone from ancient Britain.

"Being able to look at the faces of individuals from the past can give us a great opportunity to identify with our own ancient ancestors."

Ms Hoole said: "When I started this project I had no idea what path it would take, but I have been approached by so many enthusiastic and talented individuals - like Hew - who are making the research a reality.

"I'm very grateful to everyone who has invested in the project and I hope we can continue to reveal more about her life."

Summary: A facial reconstruction is made of a young woman who died more than 3,700 years ago.


Wheelchair or guide dog users are a common enough sight in the workplace today, but what about 200 years ago?

Research by Swansea University and the Wellcome Trust has discovered disabled people were playing equally as big a role in the coal mines of the industrial revolution in Wales.

A blind lift operator and a collier with a wooden leg are just two of the examples found by Daniel Blackie and Mike Mantin during a five-year study into disability and industrial society between 1780 and 1948.

From 20 June they will be exhibiting documents, photographs and artefacts at Swansea's Waterfront museum.

But Dr Blackie, whose research focused on the first half of the period up to 1880, said that did not necessarily mean it was a time of equal opportunities.

He said: "There's a perception that people with disabilities faced enormous social and economic exclusion during the 19th Century, but what we've found is that isn't strictly true.

"We have numerous examples of people who've experienced disabling injuries and illness playing a full part in the mines, and coming up with ingenious ways of helping themselves to adjust.

"But what you quickly realise is that these aren't all people who are choosing to work. Some are, but many had little option but to return to work because of the financial pressure being off work put them and their families under."

Dr Blackie added that part of the reason the history of disability in the mines had not been told before was because it was "hiding in plain view".

During the 19th Century there were about 100 non-fatal accidents in Britain's mines for every fatal one, each resulting in an average loss of around 30 working days, and many leading to permanent disabilities.

"Far from being uncommon, the reason it's difficult to find written records of miners with disabilities is that it's so ubiquitous," he said.

"If you'd have pensioned off everyone who had a respiratory condition or who'd received a crush injury then there simply wouldn't have been enough workers. And because it's so common people seem to have been far less shocked, and were more used to providing support networks through friends and family."

Dr Mantin said the dawning of the 20th Century brought mixed fortunes for injured and sick men, which seem to have fluctuated with the state of the economy.

He said: "Legislation towards the end of the 19th Century made mine owners liable for accidents and entitled workers to compensation, and that seems to have made bosses less inclined to rehire men with disabilities because of the perceived risk they posed.

"But a bigger factor was the demand for coal. During the depression fewer men were required and those with disabilities were let go first, but either side of the two wars there's a sense that every man is a valuable economic commodity and is therefore worth rehabilitating."

The Miners' Welfare Commission of 1920 helped establish convalescence homes such as The Rest near Porthcawl, Bridgend county.

One in Talygarn even featured a model coalface to re-acclimatise injured men - something which Dr Mantin said was telling.

"By the end of our period there's no doubt that workers' welfare has improved immensely, but there's still a sense that what's important in rehabilitation are the needs of industry rather than the needs of the individual," he said.

"A Second World War information film called Live Again insinuates in its title that life for injured workers was not worth living without treatment and the value of work.

"Its final shot is a triumphant scene of a patient holding a safety lamp and going back into the mines as a 'useful and normal citizen', so in many ways the challenges of stigma and perception which faced disabled workers were the same then as they are now."

Summary: Research examines the roles of disabled people in the coal mines during industrial revolution.


YAMHILL, Ore. — ONE delusion common among America’s successful people is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence.

In fact, their big break came when they were conceived in middle-class American families who loved them, read them stories, and nurtured them with Little League sports, library cards and music lessons. They were programmed for success by the time they were zygotes.

Yet many are oblivious of their own advantages, and of other people’s disadvantages. The result is a meanspiritedness in the political world or, at best, a lack of empathy toward those struggling — partly explaining the hostility to state expansion of Medicaid, to long-term unemployment benefits, or to raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation.

This has been on my mind because I’ve been visiting my hometown of Yamhill, Ore., a farming community that’s a window into the national crisis facing working-class men.

I love this little town, but the news is somber — and so different from the world I now inhabit in a middle-class suburb. A neighbor here just died of a heroin overdose; a friend was beaten up last night by her boyfriend; another friend got into a fistfight with his dad; a few more young men have disappeared into the maw of prison.

One of my friends here, Rick Goff, 64, lean with a lined and weathered face and a short pigtail (maybe looking a bit like Willie Nelson), is representative of the travails of working-class America. Rick is immensely bright, and I suspect he could have been a lawyer, artist or university professor if his life had gotten off to a different start. But he grew up in a ramshackle home in a mire of disadvantage, and when he was 5 years old, his mom choked on a piece of bacon, staggered out to the yard and dropped dead.

“My dad just started walking down the driveway and kept walking,” Rick remembers.

His three siblings and he were raised by a grandmother, but money was tight. The children held jobs, churned the family cow’s milk into butter, and survived on what they could hunt and fish, without much regard for laws against poaching.

Despite having a first-class mind, Rick was fidgety and bored in school. “They said I was an overactive child,” he recalls. “Now they have name for it, A.D.H.D.”

A teacher or mentor could have made a positive difference with the right effort. Instead, when Rick was in the eighth grade, the principal decided to teach him that truancy was unacceptable — by suspending him from school for six months.

“I was thinking I get to go fishing, hang out in the woods,” he says. “That’s when I kind of figured out the system didn’t work.”

In the 10th grade, Rick dropped out of school and began working in lumber mills and auto shops to make ends meet. He said his girlfriend skipped town and left him with a 2-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son to raise on his own.

Rick acknowledges his vices and accepts responsibility for plenty of mistakes: He smoked, drank too much for a time and abused drugs. He sometimes hung out with shady people, and he says he has been arrested about 30 times but never convicted of a felony. Some of his arrests were for trying to help other people, especially to protect women, by using his fists against bullies.

In that respect, Rick can actually be quite endearing. For instance, he vows that if anyone messes with my mother, he’ll kill that person.

A generation or two ago, Rick might have ended up with a stable family and in a well-paid union job, creating incentives for prudent behavior. Those jobs have evaporated, sometimes creating a vortex of hopelessness that leads to poor choices and becomes self-fulfilling.

There has been considerable progress in material standards over the decades. When I was a kid, there were still occasional neighbors living in shacks without electricity or plumbing, and that’s no longer the case. But the drug, incarceration, job and family instability problems seem worse.

Rick survives on disability (his hand was mashed in an accident) and odd jobs (some for my family). His health is frail, for he has had heart problems and kidney cancer that almost killed him two years ago.

Millions of poorly educated working-class men like him are today facing educational failure, difficulty finding good jobs, self-medication with meth or heroin, prison records that make employment more difficult, hurdles forming stable families and, finally, early death.

Obviously, some people born into poverty manage to escape, and bravo to them. That tends to be easier when the constraint is just a low income, as opposed to other pathologies such as alcoholic, drug-addicted or indifferent parents or a neighborhood dominated by gangs (I would argue that the better index of disadvantage for a child is not family income, but how often the child is read to).

Too often wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to hit home runs. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness, rather than as a marker of civilization.

In effect, we have a class divide on top of a racial divide, creating a vastly uneven playing field, and one of its metrics is educational failure. High school dropouts are five times as likely as college graduates to earn the minimum wage or less, and 16.5 million workers would benefit directly from a raise in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Yes, these men sometimes make bad choices. But just as wealthy Americans inherit opportunity, working-class men inherit adversity. As a result, they often miss out on three pillars of middle-class life: a job, marriage and a stable family, and seeing their children succeed.

ONE of Rick’s biggest regrets is that his son is in prison on drug-related offenses, while a daughter is in a halfway house recovering from heroin addiction.

The son just had a daughter who was born to a woman who has three other children, fathered by three other men. The odds are already stacked against that baby girl, just as they were against Rick himself.

This crisis in working-class America doesn’t get the attention it deserves, perhaps because most of us in the chattering class aren’t a part of it.

There are steps that could help, including a higher minimum wage, early childhood programs, and a focus on education as an escalator to opportunity. But the essential starting point is empathy.

Summary: Meet Rick Goff of Yamhill, Ore. His life story is a study in the national crisis facing working-class men.


The WA Nationals are set for a possible leadership spill, with former leader Brendon Grylls believed to want a return to the top job.

A special party room meeting called for the Nationals' 12 WA MPs could decide whether or not Mr Grylls challenges leader Terry Redman.

Mr Grylls, aged 43, stepped aside in 2013 and was replaced by Mr Redman, the Minister for Regional Development and Lands.

Mr Grylls was leader when the Liberal-National coalition formed government under Premier Colin Barnett in 2008, ending nearly eight years under Labor.

Summary: Former WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls is believed to want to return to the top job and could challenge Terry Redman.


You soundly defeated Joe Walsh, a Tea Party Republican, in November. He was known for yelling on cable news, even at his own constituents. Did you feel lucky to be running against him? Oh, no, not at all. Joe Walsh had two sides to him. There was the media side, but he also can be very charming in person. He tapped into a strand of fear that was present throughout the country with the economy.

He accused you of being a Washington bureaucrat handpicked by Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod to defeat him. I was encouraged by Senator Durbin to run in 2006. You know what caused me to run this last time? Joe Walsh. We couldn’t get a budget-continuing resolution passed, and then I read Joe Walsh boasting about how he was willing to shut the government down.

After the Blackhawk helicopter you were piloting was shot down in Iraq in 2004, you described the scene at Walter Reed hospital, where you recovered, as the “amputee petting zoo.” Did you ever feel used by the politicians who stopped by? Yes and no. There were people who you knew cared. Senator Dole would sit on the mat next to you and talk about his sergeant who pulled him to safety and saved his life. Max Cleland would come through and talk about the struggles he had with post-traumatic stress. As a Democrat, I get a lot of heat for this, but Paul Wolfowitz was there for us. He would come there on nights and weekends.

But a lot of people saw Wolfowitz as one of the group of neoconservatives who had never served and . . . was the reason I got sent to Iraq and got blown up. But he cared.

By some estimates, one in five veterans have received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Have you? I do not have PTSD, but if I watch part of a movie like “The Hurt Locker” or when I spend time around Blackhawk helicopters, I will close my eyes that night and live an entire day in Iraq, flying my missions. I remember the smell and the feel and the heat and everything about it. Then I wake up in Illinois, and I’m exhausted.

When you wake up do you feel a sense of loss when you realize what happened to your legs? Of course. But I have a different perspective for what my legs are now. Now they’re just tools, you know? If I still had my legs, I would be in line for a battalion command, and instead I’m flying a desk.

The Times’s Marcus Mabry speaks to Representative Tammy Duckworth and a naval officer candidate at Columbia University about what the lifting of a ban on serving in combat means for military women.

There has been a good deal of hand-wringing about the recent ruling opening up combat positions to women. Some argue that since there are a limited number of frontline combat jobs, women shouldn’t replace men there. It doesn’t make any sense at all. All this ruling does is give everyone the chance to do these jobs. You want to be infantry? Here, carry this 80-pound rucksack and march 20 miles. Can you drag a 200-pound dead weight 200 yards like you may have to? If you can do it, and if you’re willing to lay your life down for this nation, then I don’t care if you’re gay, straight, black, white, yellow, male or female, good for you, thank you for serving. Go do the job.

Do you believe that the act of killing affects men and women differently? No. The act of killing is an unnatural act for everyone.

The retired four-star general Volney Warner, who helped integrate women into the Army division he commanded in the ’70s and has since lost a granddaughter in Afghanistan, said recently that “women are better at giving life than taking it.” I think it’s sexist. It’s insulting to men. Men view life to be as precious as women do, and to say that men have a more violent nature is insulting to men.

You were not particularly happy when pilots you flew with called you Mommy Platoon Leader. Did you consider this sexual harassment? Oh, please. No, it’s not. They were just giving me a hard time, because I served hot cocoa. Do you know what? That hot cocoa got my pilots and crew chiefs warm faster, my crews took off faster and they were more deadly. If marshmallows and blowing kisses on the hot cocoa made my men more deadly, I would have done that too.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

A version of this interview appears in print on February 17, 2013, on page MM10 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: All Quiet on the Washington Front. Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: The congresswoman and Iraq vet on her political battles and women in combat.


A new law is expected to be passed by the German legislature Thursday to expand the definition of rape and to make it easier to deport foreign sex offenders.

The new statute — widely dubbed “no means no”— reforms present laws that require anyone making an allegation of rape to show that they physically resisted their assailant, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Under the new provisions, it will be sufficient to show that consent had been verbally refused.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet signed off on the proposal back in March, prompted by the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, where more than 1,000 women reported being molested by throngs of young men, in attacks largely blamed on North Africans.

The reforms will now classify groping as a sexual offense, and in turn allows such offenses — without additional proofs of violence — to be cited against an applicant in asylum and immigration hearings.

A stipulation will also make it illegal to be part of a group that commits assaults in a crowd, AFP reports.

Compared to other developed nations, Germany has been lagging behind on rape legislation. It was only in 1997 that the nation declared marital rape a criminal offense.

Every year 8,000 rapes are reported in Germany but only 1 in 10 leads to a conviction.

Summary: The move is widely seen as a response to the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne


In a stark illustration of the potential for augmented reality to shape how we experience the world, Belt Magazine reports that the gazebo where 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot by police in 2014 is now a “Pokéstop” in Pokémon Go. And the text describing the site, known as the Cudell Gazebo, contradicts what is now the official version of that event.

“Community memorial for Tamir Rice, shot and killed by CPD officers who shot him in under 2s after breaking department policy regarding escalation of force,” reads the Pokéstop description.

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That was not the perspective of Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, who in 2015 urged a grand jury to decline to bring charges against Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Rice. McGinty said Loehmann had reason to fear for his life and acted appropriately. That interpretation ultimately prevailed, and Loehmann faced no charges. Rice’s family accused McGinty of “abusing and manipulating the grand jury process.”

Soon after, demonstrators gathered at the Cudell Gazebo, and in the following months, the site became a makeshift memorial for Rice. There is currently no official acknowledgment of the event at the site. But during last week’s RNC in Cleveland, Belt reporters counted five visitors to the site in a 30 minute window, all “engrossed in their phones.”

For more on Pokémon Go, watch our video.

Pokémon Go maker Niantic Labs gathered data for what are now Pokéstops through a mix of crowdsourcing methods, starting during the creation of the studio’s previous Augmented Reality game, Ingress. Ingress thus shares a lot of content with Pokémon Go, including, apparently, the Cudell Gazebo text. A commenter on Belt’s story with the username “Jamie” claims to have written the entry for Ingress, motivated in part by a desire to preserve history.

“The community has been repeatedly lied to about what happened,” they write. “Memorials are built in the hope people will remember. The events that ended Tamir Rice’s life are something that I worry will be forgotten.”

Summary: The site of the tragedy is now a Pokéstop, and a reminder.


The most explosive race in track cycling sees riders cross the finish line at speeds approaching 50 miles per hour. For one lap, the Olympic sprint is one of the purest displays of power and technique at the Summer Games.

But here’s the thing: It’s actually a three-lap event.

For the first two trips around the banked wooden track at the Rio Olympic Velodrome, the riders will cruise around so slowly they might as well be checking their emails. That’s because the first two laps of a track cycling sprint race aren’t really for racing.

Rather, they’re devoted to the most fundamental part of any two-person sport. Trying to psych out the other guy.

“It’s not only the legs who are working,” said Germany’s Joachim Eilers, a double world champion in the time trial and the keirin. “It’s the head also.”

The effort required in a sprint race is so monumental that it’s impossible to maintain top speed for more than a lap or so. Riders mash down on their pedals so violently that they routinely break them.

So the first two-thirds of all track races are all about timing. When should you start your maximum effort? How long should you drag out the phony war? Leave it too late and your opponent might get the two-yard advantage he needs to leave you in the dust. Go too soon and he can sit in your slipstream and power past on the home stretch.

With such fine margins, sprinters will do anything to gain a psychological edge. Which is why, from the moment they enter the track, they carry themselves with a prize fighter’s swagger.

“You have to show that you’re strong. That you’re here. That you didn’t come to play,” said France’s Gregory Baugé, who won silver in the sprint at the London Games. “You can win races by just intimidating your opponent.”

Track sprinters will read into any lapse in concentration and pounce on any sign of weakness. Don’t waggle your foot at the start. Don’t look around at the crowd. If your skinsuit is uncomfortable or your helmet feels too tight, don’t even think about adjusting it. “All the time I am nervous,” Eilers said, but his face must stay “like a mask.”

In recent years, riders have adopted mirrored visors for their aerodynamic helmets to preserve their poker faces.

Once the race starts, the main technique for rattling your opposite number is hanging back while weaving up and down the banked track, waiting for your opponent to blink. At the steepest point of this Olympic velodrome, the track leans around 42 degrees. The cyclists move up and down it like two spiders on a wall.

“If you ride up and down and he’s in the middle of the track, he has to move his head left and right,” Eilers. “He doesn’t see me.”

Granted, track sprinters are difficult to miss. These are some of the largest athletes you will ever see on a bike. Unlike the lightweight climbers who dance through the Alps in the Tour de France or sinewy mountain bikers, track sprinters are angry balls of muscle with thighs and biceps busting out of their skinsuits.

But even by those standards, Baugé stands out. At 6 feet and around 190 pounds, he is built like an NFL safety and walks with the shoulder-roll of a boxer. That’s what makes him king of the cycling intimidators.

“He’s a massive man. He looks really strong,” Eilers said. “And he has this focus. He’s in his tunnel.”

Baugé’s pre-race routine, what he calls his “ritual,” is all about putting on a show. If the other guy stands up first, then Baugé jumps up and cut in front of him. He brushes past close enough to touch elbows. He puffs out his chest. He flexes his biceps.

“I’m here. I’m here. I’m here,” he says, in French.

Baugé isn’t always sure whether his opponent is looking his way. “But,” he added, “I’m definitely looking at him.”

The contact continues into the race. Sprinters need to cultivate their upper bodies because of how often they go shoulder to shoulder, leaning on each other while furiously pumping the pedals. The jostling exists in events like the keirin too, where riders spend most of the race jockeying for position behind a motorbike until the motorbike veers off the track with 2.5 laps to go.

Baugé is slightly saddened by the fact that fewer riders seem to be playing the game these days. The studs from New Zealand, he said, are still up for some gamesmanship. The champions rolling off the German conveyor belt are too. Unfortunately, he said, “the English aren’t into it.”

That’s not to say riders from Great Britain don’t carry themselves like aplha males every time they roll onto the track. The British team has plenty to be cocky about. It won seven out of 10 gold medals in the velodrome during the London Olympics and is returning sprinter Jason Kenny, who won the men’s individual and team sprints.

Baugé, despite his scare tactics, finished right behind him in the individual race and had to settle for silver. But that hasn’t discouraged him from taking his usual approach. Besides, at 31, it’s too late for him to change.

“Whether I do something or not, there’s going to be a little fear, a little intimidation,” Baugé said. “You can’t forget me on the track.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com

Summary: The Olympic sprint, the most explosive race in track cycling, is as much about psyching out your opponent as pedaling as fast as you can


A fourth indigenous community is threatening legal action against the Northern Territory government over the poor state of remote housing.

Dozens of homes in the indigenous community of Yuendumu are in need of emergency repair, with some residents waiting up to six months for less urgent repairs.

Lawyers for the residents served legal notices to the housing department 10 days ago, demanding they carry out emergency repairs by Monday.

If they're not done, the tenants will file claims in the NT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Australian Lawyers for Remote Aboriginal Rights have detailed hundreds of maintenance requests for leaking roofs, electrical faults and other problems in papers to the department.

The group says about 70 per cent of the 42 houses inspected require emergency work.

Lawyer Daniel Kelly said the department, as the landlord, was legally bound to deal with maintenance requests within the timeframe, which for emergency repairs was 14 days.

"One of the problems in Yuendumu is that they've been told that they only have 18 months of water left for the community," he told AAP on Thursday.

"One of the problems is leaking taps, when everyone has been told to conserve water."

More than half of the homes had problems with their stoves, 46 per cent had some sort of electrical fault and about 37 per cent had issues with their showers, the lawyers' survey found.

Two days out from the NT election, Mr Kelly said the action highlighted the lack of accountability of the government, which had consistently failed to provide safe housing.

"This is public knowledge, everyone is aware of what is going on," he said.

The move follows legal action launched by communities Larapinta, Santa Teresa and Papunya.

Mr Kelly said the department had contacted him about the legal notices, advising via voicemail the requests had been actioned.

"But I spoke to a few people in the community today and they said there was really no evidence of work being done," he said.

If Labor wins government from the CLP on Saturday as the polls predict, Mr Kelly says it's an opportunity for a rethink of remote housing management.

"The chance this new government has is that they have a clean slate," he said.

Summary: The Northern Territory government is facing legal action from a fourth remote indigenous community over the poor state of housing.


The quake happened off New Zealand's east coast. (GeoNet)

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake has been recorded off New Zealand's east coast.

The quake, which was rated as severe by GeoNet, happened about 10.04am local time about 100km north-east of Te Aroroa on the north island.

The quake occurred at a depth of 25km and was felt in Whakatane, Gisborne and on the south island, GeoNet reported.

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

This is a breaking news story. More detail will be added shortly.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


09/07/2016 AT 12:00 PM EDT

The season may be over, but the

stars aren't staying off the small screen for long.

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal that

season finale, are set to make an appearance on another

Grant Kemp and Lace Morris

, which concluded in March. She

during week 3, and Higgins, 28, ended up proposing to Bushnell, 26, on the

And Morris and Kemp aren't the only familiar faces set to star in the new reality show: In addition to infamous villain

, former Bachelorette – and Higgins' ex-girlfriend –

will also star in one episode alongside her fiancé

is premieres Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. ET on Freeform.

Summary: Grant Kemp and Lace Morris got engaged on the Paradise season finale Tuesday


It's been 25 years since the historic signing of an agreement banning mining in Antarctica.

On October 4, 1991 then-prime minister Bob Hawke signed the Madrid Protocol on behalf of Australia along with other world leaders who had been locked in years of negotiations about the potential mineral exploitation of the frozen continent.

The 50-year agreement which came into play from 1998 outlined general overall environmental protection for Antarctica with specific consideration for mining.

The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources - an environmental group whose principles were adopted by the protocol - will hold its annual meeting in Hobart in mid-October, attended by all 24 member countries.

Summary: A mining ban across Antarctica was a headline achievement of the Madrid Protocol, signed by Australia and other countries 25 year ago.


Prominent indigenous leader Warren Mundine has called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to treat domestic violence in the Top End with the same urgency as he did youth incarceration.

Shocking footage of boys being teargassed, hooded and shackled at Darwin's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre was aired on national television in August, triggering a royal commission into the Northern Territory's youth detention system.

But Mr Mundine says indigenous women are dying at the hands of their partners every week in the NT while their children are being sexually abused at a shocking rate.

"Police have responded to 75,000 domestic violence cases in the past three years; every day one child is subjected to domestic violence while three witness it," he wrote in an opinion piece published in The Australian.

Mr Mundine said the scourge is the same across the country.

"Aboriginal mothers in Western Australia are 17-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered. Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be admitted to hospital from domestic violence."

He told ABC Radio on Tuesday that nobody in political power at a state, territory or federal level is doing anything about it.

"There's a record number of Indigenous people in the parliament, they've been ranting and raving now for ages in regard to incarceration rates, which I support," he said.

"But where is their ranting and raving in regard to the deaths of indigenous women?"

It comes as the Northern Territory government announces it will establish a specialist domestic violence court.

NT Families Minister Dale Wakefield said the government will trial a special court in Alice Springs and push Canberra for a volumetric tax on alcohol.

She told Sky News that Central Australia had "some of the highest domestic violence rates in the world."

National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.

Summary: Indigenous advocate Warren Mundine is demanding Australia's political leaders take action on domestic violence in the NT like they did on youth incarceration.


My first conscious memory is a flickering image of a man clambering down the ladder of an insect-like spaceship and planting his oversized boots on the moon. The grainy shapes on the television screen were pixelated and ethereal: Deep black background of the universe, muted grey of the lunar surface, bright white spacesuit.

Though 500 million people across the globe -- one-sixth of humanity -- watched that event on television, I'm likely rare in having that as my foundational memory. I sometimes wonder how many of us know the moment that shapes the arc of a life in obvious and subtle ways.

A few hours before Neil Armstong's one small step that was a giant leap, America stood still for the news that humans had landed on the moon. Even the national pastime paused to take notice.

On July 20, 1969, at 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time, in the second game of a doubleheader, the players and coaches from the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies, along with the umpire crew, lined the baselines. The crowd stood. All bowed their heads in silence to recognize humanity's most ambitious accomplishment. The ceremony concluded with the song "God Bless America" echoing in the stands.

Just as human space flight has always given Americans a glimpse of a possible future, baseball has provided a steadying influence of tradition.

For five exciting months in 1969, it appeared as if the Cubs were going to have a year as ascendant and transformative as NASA and its moon-faring trio of astronauts. At that point, it'd been almost six decades since the Cubs had a trio of baseball-throwing players worth mentioning in newspapers. In 1910, "Tinker to Evers to Chance" appeared as refrain in the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon." By 1969, it'd been 25 years since the Cubs had appeared in a World Series and 61 since they'd claimed baseball's ultimate prize. I was a toddler then, when the Cubs collapsed.

I was introduced to the Cubs when I began playing pee-wee league a few years later. Baseball's language and rhythms started working their way into my summers. As a 6-year-old, an uncle sold me on becoming a catcher and a Cubs fan. His sales pitch about life as a Cubs fan included no mention of their history.

In his book A Nice Little Place on the North Side, pundit George Will describes becoming a Cubs fan at roughly the same age. He describes a fairly standard losing streak of three games that took place the summer that Will turned 7. "Had I been paying attention then, this book might not have been written," he says. "In 1948, when I was still not as discerning as one should be when making life-shaping decisions, I became a Cub fan."

Like many young boys in the 1970s, my fascination with baseball was reinforced by endless hours playing pick-up games on the local diamond, and my interests in space were reinforced by the television culture. Star Trek was already in heavy syndication; I could catch an episode every evening after school. The spring of 1973 launched the Six Million Dollar Man made-for-TV movies, featuring astronaut-turned-bionic-spy, Col. Steve Austin. That fall, Star Trek expanded in the form of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Gritty crime novelist Robert B. Parker once wrote, "Baseball is the most important thing that doesn't matter." William Wagner, a friend and author of Wrigley Blues, an in-depth look at the Cubs 2004 season, once said to me at a party, "The Apollo program is the best thing our country has ever done." Space faring and baseball have become linked for me, each representative of the best we can do as human beings.

The visionary force behind the Apollo missions was rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. For him, the Moon was merely a weigh station on a summer's journey to the Red Planet. He first codified his Mars mission plans in 1948. The planned launch date 1965, the year before I was born, three years before the first manned Apollo mission.

Von Braun's modeled his technical description of a massive scientific expedition to Mars on various Antarctic expeditions. Published in English in 1953 as The Mars Project, the plan described the Mars spacecraft as objects assembled in orbit around Earth. The necessary raw materials would be transported to low-Earth orbit by a fleet of imagined space shuttles.

Roughly thirty years later, from 1981 to 2011, America's fleet of space shuttles investigated low-Earth orbit. Along the way, they hauled materials out of our planet's gravitational well to assemble the International Space Station. But there exists no fleet of Mars-bound spaceships. Not yet.

During the 30 years the space shuttle flew, Mars plan after Mars plan emerged from NASA, university researchers and independent groups like the Planetary Society. These plans enjoyed varying degrees of political support. President George W. Bush put forward a plan that would have NASA establish a moon base before going to Mars. President Obama stopped plans for a moon return and put forward a more Mars-focused set of goals for NASA.

Like the Cubs team forever in rebuilding mode during those same years, like the team always five years of player development and free-agent acquisitions away from the postseason, the timeframe for human exploration of Mars has always been 20-30 years from the given moment. Current NASA plans call for sending astronauts to Mars in the mid-2030s.

Just this week in an op-ed piece for CNN, Obama recounted his "sense of wonder" about space exploration, so much like my own. He reminisced about his childhood memories of sitting on his grandfather's shoulders as astronauts returned from Hawaii even before they'd been to the moon. Like me, Obama belongs to Generation Space, and he sees, as I do, the college students I now teach as Generation Mars.

The rise and fall of each new Mars plan and the repeated pushing back into the future of the Mars launch date echoes the refrain recognizable to any Cubs fan: Wait till next year.

Hope returns each spring with a new federal budget, a new season. Hope rises this postseason for the Cubs and, with Obama's new, strong declaration, for sending humans to Mars and returning them safely to Earth.

My one-paragraph writing exercise for my college Spanish class stated, "Quiero ser astronauta." I want to be an astronaut. After I read the paragraph aloud in class, a woman wafting patchouli oil blurted, "That's a conservative thing to do."

Becoming an astronaut, to my mind, was a science thing to do. Linking politics and the space program hadn't occurred to my technology-focused young mind. Of course, this link has been there from the moment of President Kennedy's challenge to the nation: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." We also chose to go to the moon to beat our Cold War enemies in the space race.

Presidents have often thrown out the ceremonial first pitch on opening day of baseball season. President William Howard Taft was the first to do so in 1910. In 1989, Bush the elder sailed one, high and outside, to open an Orioles game. The Bush family ties to baseball run deep. The elder played baseball at Yale University, and the son was a part-owner of the Texas Rangers. In 2001, the son, the one who wanted to take us back to the moon before Mars, walked onto the mound at Yankee Stadium in New York before Game 3 of the World Series. The nation was reeling from the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He flashed thumbs-up and threw a strike. It was arguably the finest moment of his presidency.

In 2007, Oregon State University's Darwin Barney was drafted by the Cubs and made his debut with the Chicago Cubs three years later. In 2012, Barney was, using modern statistics, the best player on a very bad team. The Cubs lost 101 games that year. Darwin Barney stands 5-10 and weighs 180 pounds. Physically, he was a reminder that baseball could be played by guys like me.

In that terrible season of 2012, the Cubs still managed to draw almost 2.9 million fans to the Friendly Confines that are Wrigley Field. The Washington Nationals and the Cincinnati Reds each won nearly 100 games that year, but the attendance average of each of those winning clubs trailed the miserable Cubs by more than 6,000 fans per game.

Built in 1914 as Weeghman Park, Wrigley stands as the second oldest venue in professional baseball behind Fenway Park, which was built two years earlier. When I visited the Friendly Confines in 2004, green plastic netting was strung overhead, put in place over some seating sections to catch falling concrete. Even after recent renovations, the park shows aging.

The space shuttles were aging too. In 2004, the year after the fatal Columbia accident, Bush the younger announced an end date for the space shuttle program. I'd never seen a spacecraft launch in person. I travelled to Florida's Space Coast for each of the final three shuttle missions and managed to see the last two launches. The physical dimensions of the launch of a rocket -- sound, heat -- are forever embedded in my consciousness. In July 2011, after almost three decades of flying to space, the shuttle program ended.

The following year, in August 2012, as the Cubs floundered through their 101-loss season, NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars. During the Planetary Society's day-long symposium, science-fiction novelist David Brin opined that we went to the moon 30 years to soon.

I've thought about that statement in the ensuing years. Maybe our ambition allowed us to succeed in the moon landing when our technology should have failed us. The Apollo astronauts with whom I've talked expected to see humans on Mars by now. It hasn't happened yet, and those men are dying off. Only seven of 12 humans to walk on the moon are still among us. The youngest to walk on the moon, Charlie Duke, is now 81 years old.

This year, the Cubs opened the season in Anaheim, less than two miles from my front door. I was there in person. The Cubs won. The Cubs finished the first week of the season with a stellar 5-1 record.

The Cubs finished the season with the best record in baseball. They have won their National League Division Series. Among experts even before the end of the season, they were the odds-on favorite to win the World Series, with a 23 percent chance. Their record has regularly been compared to the 1907 Cubs, the second-to-last group of Cubs to win the World Series.

I'll turn 50 during this year's World Series. Already, my high school and college reunions have thinned. Cancer, heart attacks, car accidents, the immutable statistics of life and death have already claimed friends and family of my generation. It's likely that no one alive has seen a Cubs championship team from the stands. Cubs fans have always talked of it as a few years off in the distance, and I can't quite bring myself to believe that this may be the year.

The promise of Mars, mirage-like off in a distance that never seems to arrive, hasn't diminished my love for all things space. The lack of a Cubs World Series has never dissuaded me from donning my favorite Cubs cap and cramming myself into a Red Line 'L' car with hundreds of other boozy, sweaty fans. I'm happy to make my way to Wrigley Field for a 1:05 p.m. start time wearing my NASA T-shirt. Space and baseball are a way of living.

Earlier this year, Elon Musk -- builder of rockets and electric cars -- announced plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the surface of Mars in 2018. It isn't people, and it isn't NASA. But it's a step in the right direction. Now Obama asserts that humans will not only travel to Mars within a couple of decades but that some of us will live there.

Will I live long enough to see a Cubs World Series or humans launched toward Mars? At least for the Cubs, maybe this is the year. I hope so, but I don't know. That's OK. The things that I get to do and the manner in which I do them have come to outstrip the potential of what I cannot predict.

The Cubs and space exploration have given me two pastimes as well as a career as a scientist, librarian and writer. These pastimes have created moments I share with the important people in my life. What more do I need? Still, I hope.

Douglas R. Dechow is the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story, forthcoming in April 2017, and is currently a visiting fellow at The American Library in Paris. Follow him on Twitter @dougdechow.

Baseball, Chicago Cubs, MLB, Moon, NASA, space, World Series

Summary: How Cubs' quest for World Series is like sending man to Mars.


Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has promised local businesses along the Great Ocean Road will re-open 'as soon as possible'. (AAP)

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has reassured local businesses The Great Ocean Road will re-open as soon as possible despite landslides.

"We'll do everything we can to get the road open as quickly as possible," Mr Andrews told reporters today.

He also promised support to local towns as the tourism season ramps up for what is usually the busiest time of the year along Victoria's south coast.

"This has definitely impacted upon a number of businesses. We're looking at ways we can provide some personal support and other support to affected businesses," Mr Andrews said.

Geotechnical experts examined the road near Wye River yesterday and traffic has been allowed through with restrictions.

"The landslide will continue to be monitored and may require the Great Ocean Road to be closed if triggers are met," Emergency Management Victoria said.

Closures were already disrupting the visitor economy and operators are nervous that more will follow heading into the peak season, Great Ocean Road Tourism general manager Liz Price said.

"All towns are accessible and we're trying to focus on the positive of that - you can get to all towns," Ms Price told ABC News yesterday.

"We need to make sure any solution (to landslides at Paddy's Path) is long-term and sustainable for the economy."

More than 100 homes in Wye River and Separation Creek were destroyed on Christmas Day 2015 as bushfires swept through the town, and heavy rain has caused landslides in the scarred hillsides.

Summary: The Great Ocean Road will be open as soon as possible after landslides, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says.


Republican Senator Marco Rubio. (AAP)

Marco Rubio, who made an unsuccessful bid to be the Republican nominee for president this year, has been reelected as a senator for Florida.

Mr Rubio, a Cuban-American conservative, had previously vowed not to run for re-election to the Senate.

“I have only said like 10,000 times I will be a private citizen in January,” he tweeted in May, after dropping out of the presidential race.

The 45-year-old ended his presidential run after he failed to win the Republican primary in Florida, coming in second to Donald Trump.

Mr Rubio’s re-election is a win for the Republican party, as it awaits the results of the US election.

Florida is a key swing-state in the election, with both Hillary Clinton and Mr Trump campaigning there multiple times in the past week.

The state saw record numbers swarm to the polls early, with nearly 6.5 million votes cast before the polls opened today.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Senator Marco Rubio, who made an unsuccessful bid to be the Republican nominee for president this year, has held onto his seat in the Florida senate.


Sluggish internet speeds are driving more complaints from Australians than those about patchy mobile services.

Internet-related complaints to the industry ombudsman have hit a five-year high, surging by more than a fifth between July 2015 and June 2016.

More than 112,000 new complaints were lodged with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman during the year about landline, mobile and internet services.

Complaints about mobile services fell by more than a quarter to their lowest level in nine years, but it was a different story for internet services with complaints up 22 per cent.

"Consumers told us that slow data speed was the biggest problem with internet services," Ombudsman Judi Jones said on Thursday.

"New complaints about internet data speed increased by 48 per cent."

Complaints about the NBN more than doubled during the year and made up 12 per cent of the total complaints lodged with the ombudsman.

"Delays in connections to the network, faults including unusable services, and dropout of services were regularly reported, which is of concern," Ms Jones said.

But she said the number of complaints were not growing at the same rate NBN was adding customers.

Despite the jump in internet-related complaints, most issues raised with the ombudsman still concerned mobile services, which accounted for more than a third of all complaints.

"Complaints about mobile services have reduced due to better product offerings from telcos including higher data allowances and increased investment in mobile infrastructure," said Ms Jones.

Across landlines, mobiles and internet services the main reasons for complaints were billing, customer service, faults, complaint handling and contracts.

TOP COMPLAINTS FOR TELCO CUSTOMERS:

(Source: Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's 2015-16 Annual Report)

Summary: Australians are finding less to complain about with their mobile services but lodging more about internet speeds, according to the industry ombudsman.


In the annals of Boston rock ’n’ roll, there are few artists as enigmatic or enduring as Natick native Jonathan Richman, who begins a four-night stand at the Middle East Upstairs this Wednesday. A contemporary of Aerosmith and the J Geils Band, Richman never attained their commercial success. But his legacy has been an outsize influence on the development of punk and indie rock.

With his first band, the Modern Lovers, Richman turned teenage solitude and affection for the Velvet Underground into a primal throb, democratizing rock ’n’ roll just when the genre was at its most rococo. The group’s lone album, “The Modern Lovers,” assembled from demos in 1976 two years after their dissolution and containing now-classics like “Roadrunner” and “Pablo Picasso,” would lay the foundation for innovators like Talking Heads and the Sex Pistols.

Richman’s second artistic epoch, which began with his 1976 debut, Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, would find the artist dispensing with the fuzz and thump of his early efforts. In its place Richman installed humor, hope, and emotional insight while connecting to the sounds of pre-psychedelia America. In the 40 years since, Richman has explored flamenco. country, and alt-rock with equal aplomb.

On “Ishkode! Ishkode!,” his 23rd and latest full-length released in February, Richman’s artistic vision is as restless as ever. Intimate and conversational, “Ishkode! Ishkode!” — meaning “Fire! Fire!” in the Ojibwe language indigenous to southeastern Canada — is a melange of worldly sounds and themes. You can hear Richman’s maturity amid the youthful spirit of rock ’n’ roll.

Part of what has made Richman a cult figure is his refusal to participate in many music industry practices and rituals: For one thing, he does not do phone interviews for publications. He and the Globe conducted this conversation in writing, facilitated by Richman’s current record label Blue Arrow Records and the US Postal Service.

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Q. Your new album, “Ishkode! Ishkode!,” features some of the richest arrangements you’ve used in years. What inspired you to add more elements beyond the guitar and drum formula?

A. I think sometimes, on a record, that instruments playing sort of “against” the guitar can help set off the guitar by contrast.

Q. When did you get your first guitar? When did you realize that playing guitar was an important part of your life?

A. I was 15. My dad had one lying around and he asked if I wanted it. I played guitar a lot from right then up through right now.

Q. Over the years you’ve interpolated a number of foreign languages into your lyrics, including songs on “Ishkode! Ishkode!” When do you know that English won’t do a song justice?

A. Great question! It’s not exactly justice — it’s more cadence and where the verb falls in the sentence. The rhymes change too because of these placements. English has lots of great one-syllable words! You can make up lines like these:

“I want to hold your hand”

“If I ruled the world”

“I get no kicks from (champagne)”

“She loves you yeah yeah yeah”

“I can’t get no satisfaction”

“All day and all of the night” etc.

Q. When you were growing up in Boston, what radio stations did you listen to? What drew you to those stations? What songs inspired you in those early days?

A. Radio stations: WMEX with Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg and WBZ with Bruce Bradley and Dick Summer. Songs: “Do You Believe in Magic?,” “The Watusi,” “The Locomotion,” “You’re Pushin’ Too Hard,” “The Wiggle Wobble.”

Q. Do you remember the first time you played in Cambridge? What was the scene like then?

A. They had free shows every Sunday on Cambridge Common. They let me, this skinny 16-year-old, play even if I couldn’t tune my guitar. I thought this was great. The audience wasn’t so sure.

Q. You grew up in the suburbs. How did you find out where the music was happening in Boston? Were there magazines or newspapers that you read that covered local music?

A. Hit Parader magazine mentioned The Boston Tea Party, the famous Boston rock ballroom at that time, in an article by their Boston correspondent. When I was 15 when I read that and started looking around for it and found it!

Q. This four-night stand at the Middle East is just the latest in a long history of Cambridge gigs. What makes Cambridge so special?

A. Boston’s great too. Cambridge can feel very intimate, especially if it’s 1965 or 1971 with the Elite Spa and Cardullo’s and the S.S. Tasty. You perhaps remember the smells of the old Faneuil Hall Market, yes?

Q. Much of your music has been about travel and the movement from one place to another. What do you think travel has taught you about creating art?

A. Going to places where the atmosphere is different changes us, wouldn’t you say?

Q. What helps you maintain your creativity after all these years?

A. If I indeed have, well, that’s a good thing! Thank you. If this stops being fun I’ll stop doing it. Very quickly.

Q. What does the future hold for your music?

A. Two tours next spring, around the US and Canada, and a fair amount of shows in New England, I hope.

At the Middle East, Cambridge, Nov. 23-26at 8 p.m. Tickets: $20. 617-864-3278, www.mideastclub.com

Summary: Natick’s own Jonathan Richman conducted an interview by mail in advance of returning to hold court at the Middle East next week.


We all love autumn don’t we? It’s that special time of year when the weather begins to get discernibly cooler and the nights noticeably longer.

Autumn heralds the transition into the cold, dark and desolate winter months, and the natural world puts on a final flurry of amazing activity before slowing down until the warmer sunshine of spring returns.

And the UK is no exception, boasting some world-class wildlife spectacles.

So if you're not too hot on autumn, here are ten fantastic reasons why you should be.

After the warmth of summer and dampness of autumn there is an explosion of mushrooms and toadstools happening right across the country, from woodland floors to decaying logs and meadows. What we see on our fungal forays are the fruiting bodies preparing to release their spores that give rise to the next generation of ecological recyclers.

Fungi are quite different to both plants and animals and have their own kingdom. Here in the UK there could be as many as 15,000 species, with a great diversity in size, colour and shape. However, many of these are extremely poisonous and should only be identified with a reliable guide, or better still, an expert guided walk which will help you get the most from this seasonal highlight. Find a fungal foray with the Wildlife Trusts.

One of the perks of the cooling temperatures, longer nights and increased moisture in the air is a walk in the countryside on a misty autumnal morning. The UK has some stunning fields, parks and open spaces just ripe for an early morning excursion. So there’s no excuse for not heading out before the sun has had time to burn off all the lovely mist! Visit one of the UK’s 15 National Parks early one morning – your early rise will be worth it.

The pulsating clouds of hundreds of thousands of starlings all swirling and turning in jaw-dropping unison can only be described as an ‘awesome wildlife spectacle’. These murmurations happen during autumn and winter over fields, woodlands and reedbeds as they seek out their communal roosting site for the night and so are best viewed just before dusk.

Why do they put on this magnificent display? It’s certainly not just for our delight; it’s thought that starlings gather together for protection from predators, as it is harder to pick out individuals from within an amorphous, hypnotising cloud. They may also congregate to keep warm at night and pass information about good feeding sites. There are great places for spectacular views throughout the country, including Brighton Pier of all places. Find out where to experience a starling murmuration near you with the RSPB.

Autumn could be described as the time of plenty with fruits, nuts and seeds everywhere. There is a dazzling array of colours, shapes and methods that plants employ for spreading the next generation for the following year. These delights are gratefully harvested by many species looking to build up their fat reserves for migration or hibernation – and they’re also popular with us!

But don’t worry as there’s usually enough to go round. Many animals and birds love fruits such as blackberries, rose-hips, sloes, crab apples, elderberries and haws, while acorns are a firm favourite of jays and squirrels, which they store, or 'cache', for the winter. Don’t forget the school yard classic, the conker. The rich brown coloured seed of the horse chestnut tree provides hours of childhood fun. Discover the top nuts, seeds and berries to forage for in September from the BBC Countryfile magazine.

Like the weather, this time of year can also be quite violent because it’s the deer rutting season. Rival males fight each other with wicked-looking antlers in order to attract a harem of females. The top stag then gets to mate with as many of them as possible. The most impressive antlers belong to either the large red deer or the slightly smaller fallow.

Woodlands, parks and country estates are good places to catch a glimpse of these majestic battles. But with the stakes so high there can be some very serious injuries among the combatants, so when observing keep a safe distance. The best times are at dawn and dusk, so listen out for those bellows and grunts before the contest begins. Find out more about the British deer rut from the BBC Wildlife magazine.

There is no doubt that the reds, golden-yellows and browns in British woodland at this time of year are simply stunning and one of the highlights of the season. Simply put the shorter days and cooler temperatures trigger the leaves' green photosynthetic pigment (called chlorophyll) to break down, allowing other yellow and orange pigments to show through, before the leaves are finally lost in preparation for winter.

You’ll find these beautiful colours in most UK woodlands that have deciduous trees such as chestnut, oak and beech. Follow autumn’s blaze of colour across the country with the Forestry Commission.

We are familiar with birds such as swallows, swifts and cuckoos leaving the country in autumn for warmer climates and escape our winter. As these are departing, however, tens of millions of birds are arriving from places such as Scandinavia, the Arctic and northern Europe, where winters are far harsher than ours. The UK offers milder weather for them and food is easier to find.

Our overwintering birds include colourful thrushes such as fieldfares and redwings, swans, many kinds of duck, geese and wading birds, and water birds that spend winter on the sea around the UK coast. Look out for mass congregations on fields and estuaries, which are our most nutritious habitats. Find out why Britain is a wildlife migration hotspot with BBC iWonder.

Take a look round any meadow, hedgerow, garden or car on a cold autumn morning and be rewarded by the sight of delicate spiders’ webs outlined in dew. This time of year really highlights just how many spiders we have; with favourable breeding conditions that number could be in excess of 750 million from approximately 600 different species. Here are some of the many reasons why we should all love spiders from BBC iWonder.

Autumn is not a time usually associated with flowering plants, but for ivy it is its time to bloom! The clusters of inconspicuous yellow-green flowers are a valuable source of nectar for bees and butterflies before they hibernate. While the black berries in winter and spring are important food sources for birds when most other fruits have disappeared.

Because ivy is such an important food source for wildlife, recording the timing of flowering and fruiting need to be monitored to help assess the effects of any changes in climate. Find out more about ivy recording and how you can take part with Nature’s Calendar.

Some of the most extraordinary sights and sounds of autumn come from a grey seal colony because this is when thousands come ashore to give birth to pups. Baby seals can be incredibly cute and very noisy when calling for mum, but please observe them from a safe distance so as not to disturb them. The bond between mother and baby is very fragile and the pup is dependent on its mother’s milk to survive.

Once pups have been weaned it’s time to mate again and leads to another of nature’s great spectacles: bull seals fighting. Males take part in vicious and bloody fights for territory and access to harems of females. Find out more about where to watch marine wildlife.

Recording seasonal signs with Nature’s Calendar can help scientists assess the impact of climate change on our wildlife and track how the seasons are developing across the country.

You can follow Jeremy Coles and BBC Earth on Twitter.

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Summary: Autumn is a very special time of year as the temperature cools and the days get shorter. Here’s a preview of what the natural world has to offer this season


Stop by Net Impact Boston’s last sustainability breakfast of the year. Sustainability professionals are invited to come for networking, moral support, and discussion. Wednesday, 7:30 to 8:30 a.m., Pret A Manger, 101 Arch St., Boston. Free.

Newbies and experienced hackers alike are invited to come play with electronics at Circuit Hacking Night. Attendees can participate in free soldering lessons, chat with other hackers and engineers, and bring their own projects to work on. All donations will go to to the maintenance of the electronics and robotics lab at Artisan’s Asylum. Wednesday, 6 to 8 p.m., Artisan’s Asylum Inc., 10 Tyler St., Somerville. Free.

Massachusetts Real Estate Networking Group is hosting a networking event for real estate professionals from around Greater Boston. Attendees are encouraged to bring business cards and dress in business casual. Complimentary appetizers will be served. Wednesday, 6 to 9 p.m., 99 Restaurant & Pub, 50 Southwest Cutoff, Worcester. Free.

Learn how to write e-mails people actually respond to in this class. Students will learn about e-mail formats, formulas for business and networking e-mails, and tools to measure progress and effectiveness. Attendees will have the chance to receive feedback on their writing from others in the group. Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m., CIC Boston, 50 Milk St., Boston. $15.

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Come to this workshop to learn the legal steps to launching a startup and building a business. A startup attorney and a patent attorney will speak to the group about intellectual property rights, fund-raising, and investments. Attendees will hear about lessons learned and success stories from a startup founder. Friday, 3:30 to 4:45 p.m., CSB Business Center, 626 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington. Free.

Summary: Breakfast, networking, and more notable events and things to know.