How do we help kids succeed in school?

It’s a question that plenty of college administrators have been asking themselves lately.

For all of the rejiggering of admissions policies to admit more poor and minority kids, a good portion of them don’t seem to graduate.

The black college graduation rate, for instance, is 42%, 20 points lower than the white one.

No doubt some underprivileged kids are simply underqualified. But what if it is not just their academic bona fides that make a difference?

For several years now, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, an engineering school in Indiana, has been administering a test to its freshman that measures how much these students feel they are in control of their futures.

It asks them to what extent they agree with statements like: “Grades most often reflect the effort you put into classes.”

Or “I have largely determined my own career goals.”

Or, on the other hand, do they believe “There are some subjects in which I could never do well” and “I sometimes feel that there is nothing I can do to improve my situation”?

The school tracked grades and retention rates, and found a clear correlation between higher locus of control attitudes and successful academic performance, Jim Goecker, vice president for enrollment management and strategic communications, told the website Inside Higher Ed.

Which makes you wonder — what messages make young people feel as if they are in control of their future?

Well here’s what doesn’t: The constant chatter about institutional racism and sexism that pervade our educational institutions and media outlets.

If you want to give a kid the sense that he has some modicum of control over his destiny, that his efforts will be rewarded with success, it’s probably best not to tell him the decks are stacked against him.

We don’t have to pretend racism doesn’t exist, but race is not destiny.

But that’s exactly what we do.

Ebony Magazine recently published an article by a white man married to a black woman called “I Hope My Son Stays White.” In it, the author lays out the bleak future for his 3-year-old son if his skin gets darker.

“I want my son’s skin color not to matter, but the truth is that it does…There will be consequences for him. People will fear him. Not everyone, but plenty of people, and he’ll never know who until it’s too late. It will only be worse if he wears a hoodie and sags his jeans…”

The author imagines cops harassing his son for jaywalking, convenience store owners following him around, women watching him in fear.

It’s hard to think of anyone but a 19th century slave-holder believing that race is destiny as much as this guy does.

But of course he’s not alone. Take Jennifer Cramblett, the Ohio woman suing a sperm bank for accidentally giving her the sperm of a black man instead of the white one should had picked out.

She and her lesbian partner want the sperm bank to pay millions of dollars for her to move to a new town, one she believes will be more hospitable to her mixed-race child.

Mind you, Cramblett has offered no evidence of any difficulties she has experienced so far, but she believes that her daughter will suffer all sorts of undefined abuse from strangers and even her own extended family as a result of her skin color. Racism is going to doom her child’s chances for a happy life.

“This isn’t LA or New York. We’re not on the coasts. We’re in farm country,” Cramblett said.

Oh, well, in that case the girl’s obviously in for a lifetime of bullying.

Cramblett’s case is no doubt more about money than anything else. (And it’s odd to think that these farm country folks would be fine with lesbians have a baby, but draw the line at them having a mixed race baby).

But ultimately she is offering her child the message that her family and community will never accept her, that they have to leave town to get away from the racism embedded in the culture.

This is not about viewing the world with rose-colored glasses. But this is not 1950. We don’t have to pretend racism doesn’t exist, but race is not destiny.

Telling kids that it is, though, may be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Summary: How do we help kids succeed in school? It’s a question that plenty of college administrators have been asking themselves lately. For all of the rejiggering of admissions policies to admit more poor…


When the U.S. Marine Corps deployed the unmanned K-MAX helicopter to Afghanistan in 2011, the cargo-hauling aircraft was only scheduled to stick around for a six-month trial. But, the Marines loved it so much they kept two K-MAX choppers in service for nearly three years, moving roughly 4.5 million pounds of gear, in dangerous or low-visibility conditions.

While the Marines’ K-MAX helos is now in storage awaiting its next mission, a commercial version of the helicopter could soon hit the market. K-MAX maker Kaman Aerospace KAMAN has announced it is reopening its K-MAX production line more than ten years after producing the last aircraft. The company’s first aircraft to roll off the line will be a single-seat version piloted by humans. Although, a commercial offering of the unmanned, drone version isn’t likely too far behind, a Kaman representative says.

The company’s first customers—which could emerge as soon as early 2016—will likely be contractors that help battle wildfires like the ones ravaging the U.S. West Coast.

In 2015, Kaman conducted an aerial firefighting demonstration for the Department of the Interior in upstate New York. Later this year, the company plans to host another demo near Boise, Idaho, to prove the platform’s effectiveness in a different set of terrain conditions. If that goes well, the first commercial sales of unmanned K-MAX helicopters likely won’t be far behind.

The popular aircraft has been around since 1999, but the unmanned variation of the cargo-hauler didn’t really come into its own until Kaman partnered with defense contractor Lockheed Martin LMT in 2007. Kaman provided the vehicle while Lockheed contributed its deep expertise in avionics and autonomous systems to produce a full-sized drone helicopter. The high-performing aircraft is capable of carrying up to 6,000 pounds via sling loads suspended from the aircraft’s belly.

During the time K-MAX was developed, U.S. supply convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq had become regular and vulnerable targets for insurgent ambushes. As a result, the Marine Corps took an interest in military-grade helicopters, like the K-MAX, that could bypass roads altogether. Once in Afghanistan, the helicopter proved a reliable platform, completing its mission 94% of the time, says Terry Fogarty, general manager of the UAS product group at Kaman Aerospace. Unhindered by the need for visibility, the autonomous K-MAX could operate all night long and in weather conditions that would ground most human pilots.

The Marines loved it so much they didn’t want to let it go when its six-month demonstration was complete, and instead kept two helos in service until the Marine Corps mission wound down in 2014. “Really the only reason those aircraft came home is because the Marine Corps. came home,” Fogarty says.

Meanwhile, demand for the conventional K-MAX has been building in the market for a few years, Fogarty says. Kaman originally decided to close the K-MAX production line more than a decade prior for purely economic reasons when orders from its primary customers in the forestry industry slowed. But over the past two years demand for a cargo hauler with a low operating cost has reemerged, convincing the firm to reboot production. The company already has deposits in hand from two customers, Rotex Helicopter AG based in Liechtenstein and Atlanta-based Helicopter Express, for manned versions of aircraft.

However, the company’s unmanned K-MAX helicopter hasn’t gone unnoticed. either At last year’s AUVSI convention—one of the robotics industry’s biggest global trade shows—the Department of the Interior approached KAMAN about turning the K-MAX platform into an unmanned aerial firefighter.

For firefighting operations—as in war zone logistics—the K-MAX’s appeal is obvious, Fogarty says. Manned aerial firefighting operations can only operate for roughly 8 hours a day, when daylight visibility is at its greatest. A robotic K-MAX could operate around the clock in the most dangerous areas without putting human pilots at risk.

It could also open the door to further commercial sales of the unmanned K-MAX to customers in other tough industries. For instance, logging, oil and gas industries—or any other enterprise that requires moving equipment in austere environments where manned aviation is either too dangerous or expensive—could find great use for the aircraft.

Kaman has yet to ink a commercial contract for an unmanned version of K-MAX, but interest in the robotic platform continues to grow. At the Paris Air Show last month several firefighting authorities from around the globe approached Kaman about the prospect of a commercially available K-MAX, Fogarty says. Moreover, those currently buying manned versions of K-MAX also retain the option of upgrading to the unmanned platform down the road.

“Really what reopened production was the demand for the commercial manned version, but we can take a manned K-MAX, put a kit in it, and make it unmanned,” Fogarty says. “So it’s appealing to these guys as they’re looking to the future.”

That’s a strong selling point for customers unsure about investing in large unmanned platforms like K-MAX, while the Federal Aviation Administration decide on regulations governing those type of vehicles.

“The FAA has spent a lot of time on unmanned aircraft that are 55 pounds and under, but at some point they’ll address unmanned aircraft that are the size of a K-MAX,” Fogarty says. When that happens, the ongoing transition of sophisticated, autonomous drone technology from realm of national defense to the world of commercial operations won’t just apply to small camera-equipped drones but to full-sized utility aircraft as well.

The market for unmanned aircraft that can do more than simply collect data is potentially vast, Fogarty says, and a stamp of approval from the U.S. Marine Corps certainly doesn’t hurt K-MAX’s marketability. “The Marine Corps has deployed this technology to actually do things,” he says. “And we’re going to build off their example whether it’s carrying water or cargo or anything else.”

Summary: Battle-tested in Afghanistan, the Marines’ robotic cargo hauler could soon take the fight to wildfires across the U.S.


Before you go, we thought you'd like these...

Whenever I think of my fifth-grade teacher, I think of learning to love reading -- a love that led me to want to write. Mr. Spathe always read us stories at the end of the school day. He kept us mesmerized, illustrating every detail and movement with his voice and his gestures, helping the story come alive. I then became an avid reader. Reading books brought the pages to life for me as I traveled the world or visited other centuries.

When I was in the sixth grade I wrote my first book; The Little People. It was never published, but I wrote it with feeling and enthusiasm. As I got older I realized that writers love to read, so I continued to read everything I could find because it helped me learn to write how people felt, talked or acted.

When I think back on that time and how my teacher inspired me on the road to writing, I've always wished I could thank him. Teachers have a great influence on children whether they realize it or not; but when they inspire that child to do something they love, that student never forgets the teacher's inspiration.

Since my own children have grown, I've written many books -- some rejected and some still in the works. I write because I love words. (Without Mr. Spathe instilling in me the love for words, reading would be just another chore.) Now I read to my grandchildren all the time. It forms a bond that they'll never forget, and hopefully they too will have a love for the written word.

-- See the average salary for a writer.

I've heard it said that you can travel the world just by reading books that make your imagination grow. So I thank my teacher for inspiring me to be the person I am today: a lover of books and of writing.

Want to be a teacher? Find teaching jobs.


Dyson is known for blowing a lot of hot air — in the best possible sense — so it stands to reason that the British tech firm has now unveiled its first hairdryer, the Supersonic.

The Supersonic , which will cost a cool $400, uses a tiny air pump in its handle and, from the front, looks rather like Dyson’s “air multiplier” desk fan. From the side, if it doesn’t have any of its three magnetic attachments attached, it looks like a mallet.

The company, which also makes heaters and hand-dryers among other things, is stressing how quiet its first personal-care product is, thanks to a miniaturized motor. It also claims the Supersonic does not damage hair in the way that other hairdryers can.

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Dyson says the Supersonic contains sensors that measure the air temperature 20 times each second, in order to stop it overheating. The attachments also have air vents to keep them cool.

James Dyson, the firm’s founder, told the BBC it was natural for Dyson to do more things with its high-speed motor technology: “It’s rather obvious that we would carry on and use that in everything involved in airflow.”

The Supersonic will go on sale in Japan first, before becoming more widely available later in the year (September in the U.S.) It’s certainly a pricey piece of equipment, coming in more expensive than most salon-grade hairdryers from other manufacturers.

For more on Dyson, watch:.

Dyson says it has 40 more products in development, according to the BBC. One of those is rumored to be an electric car.

Summary: The Supersonic is quieter than ordinary hairdryers and avoids hair damage through clever heat-regulation techniques, Dyson claims.


West Virginia is the only state that experienced a statistically significant decrease in employment in the year ending July 2015, according to a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The state lost about 19,100 jobs over the course of the year, while 34 states and D.C. reported statistically significant increases. California, the year’s biggest winner, gained 494,300 jobs.

West Virginia, which also boasts the country’s highest jobless rate of 7.5%, has suffered from a downturn in the coal industry. Low coal prices have led to diminished production and major layoffs, according to the Wall Street Journal. According to one May report from West Virginia University, the state’s annual coal output has declined from nearly 158 million short tons in 2008 to 115 million in 2014.

Summary: Blame coal.


The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday—a day prior to a scheduled courtroom hearing with Apple—that it had learned of a possible alternate means of breaking into the iPhone once used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. Talk about being down to the last minute.

The best rundown I’ve seen of how the method might work was written by Jonathan Zdziarski, a computer forensics expert who specializes in Apple products, on his personal blog. He proposes a number of possibilities and reaches a conclusion. The likeliest method involves removing one of the handset’s memory chips, making a copy of it, and then testing out possible passcodes on it. Should the chip wipe itself after 10 failed unlock attempts—an optional feature in Apple’s system—then the Feds can simply rewrite the chip, restoring it to its previous state, and start over. (Sorry—no lasers, no acid in this approach.)

Zdziarski has a beautiful analogy to describe the process that the gamers among us will appreciate. “This technique is kind of like cheating at Super Mario Bros. with a save-game, allowing you to play the same level over and over after you keep dying,” he writes. “Only instead of playing a game, they’re trying different pin combinations.” Consider it an inexhaustible 1-Up.

The same day that news broke of the surprise hacking technique, the world learned that Andy Grove, former CEO and effective cofounder of Intel, the Silicon Valley veteran that built its business on memory chips, had passed away. You can read my colleagues’ tender remembrances here, here, here, here, and here. I would also urge you to read this piece, drummed up from Fortune’s annals, that describes Grove’s distinctive management style. As he put it, pithily: “Only the paranoid survive.”

Nothing could be truer in the world of cybersecurity.

Welcome to the Cyber Saturday edition of Data Sheet, Fortune‘s daily tech newsletter. Fortune reporter Robert Hackett here. You may reach me via Twitter, Cryptocat, Jabber, PGP encrypted email, Wickr, Signal, or however you (securely) prefer. Feedback welcome.

Summary: In memoriam


John Patterson, a television director whose frequent work on crime shows included every season finale of "The Sopranos" on HBO, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 64.

The cause was prostate cancer, HBO announced.

Mr. Patterson was long drawn to cop programs, murder mysteries and courtroom dramas. He directed episodes of "CHiPs" and "Knots Landing" in the 1970's, "Hill Street Blues" and "Magnum, P.I." in the 1980's, "The Practice" and "Providence" in the 1990's and "CSI" and "Six Feet Under" in the current decade.

He also directed the pilot episode of "Law & Order" in 1988.

His work on "The Sopranos," where he was one of a core group of directors, earned him two Emmy Award nominations, in 2000 for the episode with Pussy's death and in 2003 for the show where Tony and Carmela split. Mr. Patterson directed 13 of the show's 65 episodes.

John Tiffin Patterson was born on April 4, 1940, and raised in Buffalo, where he graduated from the University of Buffalo. After serving in the Air Force, he received a master's degree from Stanford.

He directed more than a dozen television movies, including "Seduced by Madness" (1996) and "A Deadly Silence" (1989).

He is survived by his companion, Andrea Makshanof; a daughter, Mary, of Brooklyn; a son, Charlie, of Topanga, Calif.; two brothers, Charles, of Jamestown, N.Y., and James, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio; and two sisters, Mary Jo, of West Orange, N.J., and Temple Weste of Kula, Hawaii. His marriage to Casey Kelley ended in divorce.

Summary: John Patterson, television director whose frequent work on crime shows included every season finale of The Sopranos on HBO, dies at age 64 (S)


Hugo Weaving as V, the avenging hero of the screen adaptation of the comic book and graphic novel "V for Vendetta."

Alan Moore created V, the avenging hero of the comic book and graphic novel "V for Vendetta" (drawn by David Lloyd), which has been adapted into a movie.

Alan Moore's series "V for Vandetta" depicts a totalitarian British dystopia.

THE most vivid characters in Alan Moore's graphic novels are antiheroes of ambiguous morality and identity: costumed avengers like Rorschach, the disturbed street vigilante of "Watchmen," or the crusader known only by the letter V, who commits catastrophic acts of terrorism in the dystopian tale "V for Vendetta."

With inventions like these, and a body of writing that spans nearly three decades, Mr. Moore, a 52-year-old native of Northampton, England, distinguished himself as a darkly philosophical voice in the medium of comic books  a rare talent whose work can sell solely on the strength of his name. But if Mr. Moore had his way today, his name would no longer appear on almost any of the graphic novels with which he is most closely associated. "I don't want anything more to do with these works," he said in a recent telephone interview, "because they were stolen from me  knowingly stolen from me."

In Mr. Moore's account of his career, the villains are clearly defined: they are the mainstream comics industry  particularly DC Comics, the American publisher of "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta"  which he believes has hijacked the properties he created, and the American film business, which has distorted his writing beyond recognition. To him, the movie adaptation of "V for Vendetta," which opens on Friday, is not the biggest platform yet for his ideas: it is further proof that Hollywood should be avoided at all costs. "I've read the screenplay," Mr. Moore said. "It's rubbish."

Mr. Moore has never been shy about expressing himself. With "Watchmen," a multilayered epic from 1986-87 (illustrated by Dave Gibbons) about a team of superheroes in an era of rampant crime and nuclear paranoia  and again with "V for Vendetta" (illustrated by David Lloyd), published in America in 1988-89, about an enigmatic freedom fighter opposing a totalitarian British regime  Mr. Moore helped prove that graphic novels could be a vehicle for sophisticated storytelling. "Alan was one of the first writers of our generation, of great courage and great literary skill," said Paul Levitz, the president and publisher of DC Comics. "You could watch him stretching the boundaries of the medium."

But by 1989, Mr. Moore had severed his ties with DC. The publisher says he objected to its decision to label its adult-themed comics (including some of his own) as "Suggested for Mature Readers." Mr. Moore says he was objecting to language in his contracts that would give him back the rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" when they went out of print  language that he says turned out to be meaningless, because DC never intended to stop reprinting either book. "I said, 'Fair enough,' " he recalls. " 'You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again.' "

Mr. Levitz said that such so-called reversion clauses routinely appear in comic book contracts, and that DC has honored all of its obligations to Mr. Moore. "I don't think Alan was dissatisfied at the time," Mr. Levitz said. "I think he was dissatisfied several years later."

Mr. Lloyd, the illustrator of "V for Vendetta," also found it difficult to sympathize with Mr. Moore's protests. When he and Mr. Moore sold their film rights to the graphic novel, Mr. Lloyd said: "We didn't do it innocently. Neither myself nor Alan thought we were signing it over to a board of trustees who would look after it like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls."

Mr. Moore recognizes that his senses of justice and proportion may seem overdeveloped. "It is important to me that I should be able to do whatever I want," he said. "I was kind of a selfish child, who always wanted things his way, and I've kind of taken that over into my relationship with the world."

Today, he resides in the sort of home that every gothic adolescent dreams of, one furnished with a library of rare books, antique gold-adorned wands and a painting of the mystical Enochian tables used by Dr. John Dee, the court astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I. He shuns comic-book conventions, never travels outside England and is a firm believer in magic as a "science of consciousness." "I am what Harry Potter grew up into," he said, "and it's not a pretty sight."

Actually, he more closely resembles the boy-wizard's half-giant friend Hagrid, with his bushy, feral beard and intense gaze, but those closest to Mr. Moore say his intimidating exterior is deceptive. "Because he looks like a wild man, people assume that he must be one," said the artist Melinda Gebbie, Mr. Moore's fiancée and longtime collaborator. "He's frightening to people because he doesn't seem to take the carrot, and he's fighting to maintain an integrity that they don't understand."

After he left DC Comics, he spent the 1990's working his way from one independent publisher to the next, ultimately arriving at Wildstorm Studios, owned by the comics artist Jim Lee. There, Mr. Moore was given his own imprint, called America's Best Comics, where he continued to write such pioneering and popular titles as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," about a proto-superhero team of Victorian literary characters including Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man.

DC Comics purchased Wildstorm, in 1998, expecting that Mr. Moore would not tolerate the arrangement. "We did the deal on the assumption that Alan would be gone the day it was signed," said Mr. Levitz. But Mr. Moore's loyalty to his artists trumped his aversion to his former employers, and he stayed put. "It seemed easier to bite the bullet meself," he said.

In 2001, the first film adaptation of one of Mr. Moore's graphic novels arrived in theaters. "From Hell," distributed by 20th Century Fox, was based on his extensively researched account of the Jack the Ripper murders, a 572-page black-and-white title illustrated by Eddie Campbell. Mr. Moore had no creative participation in the film, and happily so. "There was no way that I would be able to be fair to it," he said. "I did not wish to be connected with it, and regarded it as something separate to my work. In retrospect, this was kind of a naïve attitude."

Two years later, when 20th Century Fox released a movie version of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," the screenwriter Larry Cohen and the producer Martin Poll sued the studio, charging that elements of the film had been plagiarized from their work. Though the film, which was one of the year's costliest flops, differed drastically from the graphic novel, the lawsuit nonetheless claimed that the "Extraordinary Gentlemen" comics had been created as a "smokescreen" to cover up the theft.

Mr. Moore found the accusations deeply insulting, and the 10 hours of testimony he was compelled to give, via video link, even more so. "If I had raped and murdered a schoolbus full of retarded children after selling them heroin," he said, "I doubt that I would have been cross-examined for 10 hours." When the case was settled out of court, Mr. Moore took it as an especially bitter blow, believing that he had been denied the chance to exonerate himself.

Since then, he has refused to allow any more movies to be made from work he controls. In the case of work whose rights he does not control, he has refused credits on any film adaptations, and has given his share of option money and royalties to the artists who illustrated the original comic books. That position is so radical that though his colleagues say they respect his position, few in the film industry can understand it.

"It's very simple, but they don't seem to hear it," said John O'Neill, the illustrator of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." "They just gravitate towards offering more money."

Last year, when Mr. Moore received a phone call from Larry Wachowski  who, with his brother, Andy, had written and directed the "Matrix" movies  to discuss the "V for Vendetta" film that the Wachowskis were writing and producing for Warner Brothers, Mr. Moore felt he had made it clear that he did not want to be involved in the project.

"I explained to him that I'd had some bad experiences in Hollywood," Mr. Moore said. "I didn't want any input in it, didn't want to see it and didn't want to meet him to have coffee and talk about ideas for the film."

But at a press conference on March 4, 2005, to announce the start of production on the "V for Vendetta" film, the producer Joel Silver said Mr. Moore was "very excited about what Larry had to say and Larry sent the script, so we hope to see him sometime before we're in the U.K." This, Mr. Moore said, "was a flat lie."

"Given that I'd already published statements saying I wasn't interested in the film, it actually made me look duplicitous," he said.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Silver said he had misconstrued a meeting he had with Mr. Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 20 years ago, when Mr. Silver first acquired the film rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta." (Mr. Silver no longer owns the rights to "Watchmen," though Warner Brothers is still planning an adaptation.) "I had a nice little lunch with them," he said, "and Alan was odd, but he was enthusiastic and encouraging us to do this. I had foolishly thought that he would continue feeling that way today, not realizing that he wouldn't."

Mr. Silver said he called Mr. Moore to apologize for his statement at the press conference, but that Mr. Moore was unmoved. "He said to me, 'I'm going to hang up on you if you don't stop talking to me,' " Mr. Silver recalled. "It was like a conversation with a tape recording."

Through his editors at DC Comics (like Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of Time Warner), Mr. Moore insisted that the studio publicly retract Mr. Silver's remarks. When no retraction was made, Mr. Moore once again quit his association with DC (and Wildstorm along with it), and demanded that his name be removed from the "V for Vendetta" film, as well as from any of his work that DC might reprint in the future.

The producers of "V for Vendetta" reluctantly agreed to strip Mr. Moore's name from the film's credits, a move that saddened Mr. Lloyd, who still endorses the film. "Alan and I were like Laurel and Hardy when we worked on that," Mr. Lloyd said. "We clicked. I felt bad about not seeing a credit for that team preserved, but there you go."

DC, however, said it would be inappropriate to take Mr. Moore's name off of any of his works. "This isn't an adaptation of the work, it's not a derivative work, it's not a work that's been changed in any fashion from how he was happy with it a minute ago," said Mr. Levitz.

Still, some DC editors hope that Mr. Moore might return. "He remains a good friend, and I would work with him again in a heartbeat," said Karen Berger, the executive editor of the DC imprint Vertigo, in an e-mail statement.

But Mr. Moore does not seem likely to change his mind this time. For one thing, his schedule is almost entirely consumed with other comics projects, including a new volume of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," to be released in late 2006 or early 2007 by the American publisher Top Shelf Productions. This summer, Mr. Moore said, Top Shelf will also be publishing "Lost Girls," his 16-years-in-the-making collaboration with Ms. Gebbie, a series of unrepentantly pornographic adventures told by the grown-up incarnations of Wendy Darling of "Peter Pan," Alice of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and Dorothy Gale of "The Wizard of Oz." "I refuse to call it erotica, because that just sounds like pornography for people who've got more money," Mr. Moore said. "It would seem to be possible to come up with a kind of pornography that was meaningful and beautiful, not ugly."

Ms. Gebbie said she was more excited to see Mr. Moore finish his novel "Jerusalem," another years-long project that he estimates will total 750 pages when complete. "It's his story, his heritage, his blood ties and his amazing, wonderful system of beliefs," Ms. Gebbie said. "This book for him is an unfolding of his real, deep self."

But Mr. Moore suggested that his comic-book writing has already defined his identity. He recalled an encounter with a fan who asked him to sign a horrific issue of his 1980's comic "The Saga of the Swamp Thing"; the admirer then disclosed that he was a special effects designer for the television series "CSI: NY." "Every time you've got an ice pick going into someone's brain, and the close-ups of the little spurting ruptured blood vessels, and that horrible squishing sound, that's him," Mr. Moore said. "So that's something I can be proud of. This is my legacy."

Correction: Mar. 19, 2006, Sunday: An article last Sunday about the graphic novelist Alan Moore misstated the given name of the illustrator of Mr. Moore's book "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." The illustrator is Kevin O'Neill, not John.

Correction: Mar. 19, 2006, Sunday: An article last Sunday about the graphic novelist Alan Moore misstated the given name of the illustrator of Mr. Moore's book "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." The illustrator is Kevin O'Neill, not John.

Summary: To Alan Moore, the god of comic writers, the movie adaptation of "V for Vendetta" is further proof that Hollywood should be avoided at all costs.


As a technology reporter in San Francisco, I listen to executives pitch their startups all the time, and only rarely do I hear one that really scares me. But hearing about HomeSuite set off my alarm bell.

The young startup, which revealed last week that it had raised $2.3 million in funding and has been operating around San Francisco for several months, made me nervous as a San Francisco resident who has neither deep pockets nor an appetite to move into a new furnished apartment every few months. These are arguably the two requisites for using the service, which bills itself as making short-term, furnished apartment rentals more efficient.

While both serve short-term guests, HomeSuite is different from home-sharing service Airbnb. HomeSuite is a licensed real estate broker that works directly — and only — with landlords. It connects them with tenants who would otherwise turn to other services like Craigslist and Zillow, for a cut of up to 10% of the monthly rent.

Airbnb, in contrast, claims it simply connects hosts with guests. It has no broker license that would let it represent a party or facilitate a real estate transaction. Airbnb also happens to be facing strong backlash in San Francisco because it reduces the number of long-term rentals available. Pressure grew so strong that San Francisco passed an ordinance last year that limits hosts to renting homes for no more than 90 days annually (unless they live there while renting out rooms), along with requiring them to register with the city and pay occupancy taxes.

I’ll be honest: the idea behind HomeSuite sent shivers down my spine when I first read the pitch. San Francisco is in a housing crisis that has raised rents into the stratosphere. An apartment shortage and big tech salaries are partly to blame. People with more modest paychecks are being priced out.

At first glance, I’m not sure that sites like HomeSuite are making it easier for well-heeled San Francisco residents to apartment hop and for landlords to get premium rents will help the situation. In fact, it sounds like the service could make it worse.

Imagine if units used for long-term rentals were converted to short-term, furnished apartments that only cater to wealthy residents. This is an extreme scenario, but it’s not unreasonable to think it will happen. Even without HomeSuite, apartment evictions have been on the rise since 2010, according to city data. Long-time residents are being displaced by high rents and transient tenants who have more money. And yes, regulatory obstacles are blocking landlords from building enough new units to keep up with the demand.

But HomeSuite co-founder and CEO David Adams doesn’t think his service could exacerbate the problem.

“This market isn’t for everyone,” Adams said of the kind of landlords working with his service. In fact, only about 2% to 5% of housing falls into the short-term rental category, he said. Currently, around 2,000 units spread across 900 properties are listed on HomeSuite, said Adams, who declined to share any details about the company’s revenue.

Adams said he founded the company because he wanted a better way to find and rent fully furnished apartments for a few months at a time. HomeSuite, he insists, will make that part of the market better organized and help renters like him who don’t want traditional long-term rentals.

With HomeSuite, short-term renters will have an easier way to find landlords who are expressly catering to them. That’s why Adams believes his service could actually help the housing crunch as it would lead to some units intended for long-term housing being freed up because short term tenants have alternatives. The short-term rental market does about $60 billion in business globally, according to Adams. That’s more than big enough to create a successful business, he says.

“My motivation isn’t to take over the world, my motivation is to solve my problem,” Adams said.

I’m just hoping Adams’ version of the future is the one we end up with, not the potentially catastrophic one I fear could emerge.

Next up, HomeSuite wants to expand to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, among other tough real estate markets. The company’s new funding comes from Battery Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners, among others.

Summary: A short-term rental site could have unintended consequences on the city's crazy housing market.


Actor Paul Walker suffered horrific burns and multiple injuries in the 100-mph Porsche crash that killed him and a pal, autopsy reports released Friday show.

Neither Walker, nor the man behind the wheel — his business partner Roger Rodas — had drugs or alcohol in their systems, according to reports obtained by the Daily News.

Nearly all of Walker’s body was charred through the skin, and his hair color and eye color could not be determined upon visual examination, the gruesome report stated.

Officials said the 40-year-old actor was found in a “pugilistic stance” with right wrist and left arm fractures, indicating he had braced for impact.

The report also said Walker sustained jaw, collarbone, rib and pelvic fractures and had “scant soot” in his trachea, suggesting he at least partially inhaled some of the smoke.

The beloved “Fast & Furious” actor died Nov. 30 as he was riding in Rodas’ 2005 Porsche Carrera GT near a charity toy drive at their Valencia, Calif., sports car dealership.

The autopsy report said Rodas also suffered burns over his entire body, but he died from blunt head, neck and chest trauma — not the fire.

The married father of two suffered massive head trauma, with his skull "opened widely" due to fractures and his brain exposed.

He did not have soot in his airway, the report said.

Both men died almost instantly.

According to the reports, police at the crash scene believed Rodas, 38, was driving approximately 100 mph or faster when he lost control for unknown reasons. He was driving eastbound on a clean, well-lit and deserted street.

A sheriff’s deputy told investigators the Porsche partially spun and began traveling in a southeast direction until it struck a curb and drove onto an embankment.

The driver’s side hit a tree and a light post before spinning 180 degrees, hitting another tree on the passenger side and bursting into flames, the report said.

There were “curved skid marks” that led from one eastbound lane into another eastbound lane and onto the south side embankment, the report said. The Porsche was found with all four of its wheels almost split in half.

There was a slight curve in the road west of the incident, but the stretch where the collision occurred was relatively straight, law enforcement officials said.

The report was released on the same day two men pleaded not guilty to stealing a roof panel off the wrecked Porsche.

Jameson Witty, 18, and Anthony Janow, 25, appeared in a Los Angeles County courtroom Friday and agreed to return Feb. 25 to set a date for their preliminary hearing.

They declined to speak with reporters outside court and face up to four years and six months behind bars if convicted on all counts.

The men were charged last month with felony grand theft and two misdemeanor counts each of destroying evidence and resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer.

Summary: Paul Walker suffered horrific burn injuries in the tragic crash that claimed his life, and his driver had no alcohol or drugs in his system, autopsy reports released Friday and obtained by the Daily News reveal.


Seems like these days travelers have no qualms about stuffing their luggage with a few souvenirs from their hotel room. And it's not just the towels: If it's not bolted down, it will walk. Scratch that: Even if it

bolted down, it will still walk. Hotel managers report seeing flat screen televisions and even large pieces of art leave the premises, freshly unscrewed from walls by determined guests. Not to mention door hinges, showerheads, and even luggage stands.So what's the big deal? It all adds up to $100 millions worth of items every year. While hotels don't expect you to clean them out, there are plenty of goodies you can take home guilt-free. Here is our list of what to take -- and what to leave behind lest you incur the wrath of a replacement charge.

Hotels Heists There have been plenty of strange items liberated over the years. Here are some true tales, including confessions from some sticky-fingered travelers. •Emily McFarlane of San Jose recounts being pursued around The Fairmont in San Francisco after relieving the coat check sign of its initial letter "C." "We ran all over the hotel while being pursued by men in blazers shouting, "Madam, the 'c!' Give us the 'c!'" •A Geneva lawyer admits being caught by the receptionist of a Hamburg hotel having trouble pressing the elevator buttons while attempting to make off with "an entire display of apples in a rather large fruit bowl from the hotel lobby." •"I was in a private suite for a party and after a few drinks I decided I couldn't part with the softness of the terrycloth robe," David Wallace of Toronto confesses. "I exited the hotel wearing the robe in full view of my hosts and hotel staff. The doorman merely smiled as he held the front door open for me." •"Once a ping pong table by the pool went missing for three days," reports Nicola Amos of L.A.'s Chateau Marmont. "They finally found it in the back yard of Bungalow 3." •"A huge piece of blown glass by Dale Chihuly was once stolen from a table in the lobby," laments Jenne Neptune of The Alexis in Seattle. •According to Bill Babis of 70 Park Avenue, the most outrageous things stolen from the chic hotel were the thermostats. •"Somebody actually bothered to tear out Michigan, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York from a rather expensive and comprehensive driving atlas we had available for all guests to consult," says Richard Maloney from Rundles-Morris House in Stratford, Ontario. •"I have seen both a bed from an exterior corridor hotel and a TV go missing!" says Mark Shouger, G.M. of Chicago's The Wit. •London's May Fair Hotel was once the victim of a catnapping when an ornamental cat went missing from the Amba Bar. "A brief investigation ensued and within 12 hours of leaving the hotel the guest received a telephone call," says Mara Begley. "Twenty-four hours later, the cat was returned by courier."

Stationery? That's all yours -- especially if it is branded with the hotel's name, website, and phone number. It's basically free publicity for the hotel every time you whip out their pen. They also really want you to send those postcards. The Alexis Hotel in Seattle even lets you paint your own as extra incentive to let those at home know that you wish they were there.

Towels are the number one item to make their way into travelers' luggage. Holiday Inn alone estimated that they lost 560,000 towels in one year -- and that's just one chain. Duvets, pillows, sheets, and pillowcases also disappear at an alarming rate. But seriously, how big must your suitcase be to fit an entire bed's worth of linens?

Perfectly sized to meet the 3-ounce rule, these are yours for the taking whether you've opened them or not. Some hotels even go an extra step to make it easy to bring those toiletries home. Rundles Morris House in Stratford, Ontario, provides decorative plastic covers for packing their full-size bars of Roger & Gallet soap.

Who hasn't snagged the plastic laundry bag out of the closet to pack still-wet bathing suits or cushion a duty-free bottle of rum? That's fine, but if the hotel uses cloth or canvas bags, beware the charge. Some hotels now attach tags to them to warn travelers the price in case they go missing. Basically if the hotel can reuse it, they don't want you to take it.

Forget pillow mints. Chicago's Wit Hotel leaves mini Rubik's cubes, light bulb-shaped stress balls, or old school paddle ball games at turndown, and you should feel no guilt taking them to play with on the plane ride home. And a welcome basket of treats is usually fair game if it comes with a note from the staff. Still scared that in-room gift will lead to a surprise on the final bill? When in doubt, call the front desk and check before popping the cork.

It's safe to assume that the room's iHome sounds system should not be checking out with you. "The most outrageous thing to disappear from one of our rooms was a stereo," says Michael Green of Palm Spring's Triangle Inn. "And because it was in a closed cabinet we did not realize it immediately." Linda Chin, G.M. of Boston's Onyx Hotel, takes a Zen approach. "You can take anything you want from the room," she says, "but we'll charge your credit card for replacement."

It can be confusing, but while most hotels automatically bill you if the robe goes missing, some of the most luxurious hotels won't charge for the robe, slippers, or even that laundry bag if you decide to slip them in your suitcase (they prefer keeping your business rather than trifling over a hundred dollars). New York's Hotel Gansevoort even includes items such as monogrammed robes, branded eco-totes, books, and bottles of premium liquor as part of packages. But you better really want that robe, since those "complimentary" extras come at a price: Package rates are often twice as much as regular room rates.

So you're headed out for a day of sightseeing and realize that the AAs in your camera are dying. Which is just the kind in the back of the remote.... Stop right there and find the closest drugstore instead. Sure, they're "disposables," but they're supposed to run out at the hotel, not in your Wii controls. Light bulbs have also become a tempting snag as hotels start to upgrade to energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs that cost a little more upfront.

Bibles have long been an expected amenity in hotel bedside tables. Even though they are slowly being edged out, Gideon International still places more than ten million copies of the good book in hotel rooms annually to replace those that have disappeared or are worn out. Needless to say the society is thrilled when you break the eighth commandment and take one home with you.

As awesome as the story would be if you could boast about staging a Bond-esque operation to relieve a hotel of some art, not everyone will be as charmed. But sometimes the story has a happy ending for all involved. The inebriated guest who helped himself to a boar's head at Hotel Du Vin in Birmingham, England, didn't have to pay for the pig, his friends did. After the sheepish former guest returned the item, friends went back and bought the boar as a wedding present.

Summary: House of Sims, flickr   Seems like these days travelers have no qualms about stuffing their luggage with a few souvenirs from their hotel room. And it's not just the towels: If it'


Twenty-five years after Anita Hill testified before Congress that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, HBO’s new film, “Confirmation” has reopened old wounds over Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination hearings: Was Hill telling the truth when she claimed that Thomas, while her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, talked to her about his penis size and favorite porn and badgered her for dates? Or was Thomas the victim of a “high tech lynching,” as he memorably claimed?

“Confirmation’s” creative team—including Kerry Washington, who plays Anita Hill and also served as executive producer—contends they weren’t taking sides in the HBO film, which debuted on Saturday. But many conservatives who rallied around Thomas’ nomination see the film as unfair, leaving out all of the contradictions that, they say, raised questions about Hill’s credibility. Indeed, one of the top trending articles on The Wall Street Journal’s website Monday is an op-ed entitled, “The Hollywood Hit-Job on Justice Clarence Thomas.”

Fortune reached out to Jill Abramson, who quite literally wrote the book on the subject, or at least co-wrote it. Abramson and Jane Mayer, both then-fellow Wall Street Journal reporters, spent three years pouring over records and interviewing hundreds for their 1994 book, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, which concluded “the truth in this matter favors her much more than was apparent at the time of the hearings.”

Abramson and Mayer were attacked by Thomas’ supporters when the book came out, but Strange Justice was nominated for a National Book Award, as it revealed evidence that corroborated pieces of Hill’s account.

So what does Abramson, a former executive editor of the New York Times who now teaches at Harvard University, think of the film and the legacy of the hearings?

What’s your reaction to “Confirmation”?

I reviewed the script for accuracy and did so without pay. I think the film is accurate. It portrays what I thought was the most memorable, and in some ways, awful parts of the hearing. Republicans set out to destroy this citizen and her credibility. There is something that always strikes me as awful when the full power of the U.S. government is turned on a private citizen, in this case, a law professor from Oklahoma.

The movie remains studiously neutral of who was telling truth. But Jane Mayer and I, in three years of reporting, found the weight of it proving Hill to be the truth teller. The reason we wrote the book was because we weren’t satisfied with the fact that all of the leaders at the time were saying that it was ‘he-said, she-said’, that you could never get to the truth. We found that wasn’t the case.

Vice President Joe Biden, then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is portrayed in the film as pliant and weak. Was he?

He was cowed by the Republicans. The decision not to hear from other witnesses (who were prepared to corroborate some of what Hill said) in some ways left Anita Hill very isolated. And the fact that Biden allowed Clarence Thomas to testify first and again that night gave him an advantage.

Does this episode of history really have any relevance today?

Yes, it has a lot of relevance. The legacy of the election was more women were voted into office—28 to Congress in 1992 and six to Senate. They called themselves the ‘Anita Hill’ class. Many of them are still in office. In some ways, those hearings were a national education on sexual harassment. A lot of people were not familiar with the term or what constituted sexual harassment. Lawmakers thought there had to be touching in order for it to be harassment, which is not the case. It’s unfortunate that sexual harassment continues to be a problem in this country.

Unfortunately with the polarization of the Congress, the attack machine is still employed in a strategic way by Republicans and Democrats. One of the unfortunate legacies is that Congressional hearings are even less of a fact-finding exercise. They’re political show trials much of time, used to try to destroy anyone hostile to their agenda.

The Benghazi hearing. There was so much grandstanding, their purpose…was to drive down Hillary’s polls. I think in both cases, it was an abuse of the power of the lawmakers..[an attempt] to make villains out of the female witnesses.

In your column for the Guardian, you wrote that Washington “has rarely been a place that respected women’s words, or their authority.” Do you think these partisan attacks only happen to women?

Oh no. These hearings are supposed to be fact-finding efforts but they’ve become opposition wars. It happens to both genders because it’s become a partisan tool.

The interview was edited for clarity and space.

Summary: Jill Abramson, who co-authored a book on the subject, weighs in.


ROME, Feb. 16 (AP)—Princess Stanislas Radziwill, sister of Mrs. John F. Kennedy, has received an annulment by the Roman Catholic Church of a previous marriage, and has been rewed to her present husband in a Catholic service, sources connected with the Vatican Sacred Rota said today.

A prelate connected with the church's high tribunal disclosed that the annulment of the Princess' previous marriage to Michael Canfield had been granted by the Rota more than a month ago. The prelate declined to be quoted by name, but Prof. Fernando Della Rocca, Roman lay advocate in the Rota, confirmed reports of the annulment, and said:

“The Princess thus was free to marry Prince Stanislas Radziwill in a Catholic service. This wedding took place in London more than a month ago.”

Mrs. Kennedy's sister was married in 1953 to Mr. Canfield, a former United States diplomat, who is now a publisher. That marriage ended in divorce, which the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize. She married Prince Radziwill of London later in a civil service.

The annulment of the previous marriage had been requested to make it possible for the Princess to marry Prince Radziwill in the church.

The 30‐year‐old Princess Radziwill is the mother of two children.

Rulings of the vatican's Sa

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Summary: Her '53 marriage to M Canfield formally annulled, permitting her to rewed Prince Radziwill in Cath ch ceremony; couple illus; Prince's previous marriages noted


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Summary: Mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold sat down for an exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer in a special edition of "20/20" Friday.


Two years and a day after a pair of teenage girls sneaked through a basement window in this farmland crossroads to party with a group of high school boys—older but apparently no wiser—the instigator pleaded guilty on Thursday to endangering the welfare of a child in a case that lit up social media and divided a community.

Matthew Barnett, 19, wore a dark blue shirt, a pale necktie, and a solemn expression as he acknowledged that he supplied Daisy Coleman, then 14, with vodka in the early hours of Jan. 8, 2012, then left her in her shirtsleeves outside her home in sub-freezing temperatures when she “was incapable of protecting or caring for herself,” in the words of the prosecution.

Left unmentioned during the 19-minute hearing was anything that transpired between the drinking of the vodka and the dumping of the drunken girl. Special prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who was appointed to pursue the case after allegations of political favoritism were lodged against the local prosecutor, explained afterward that she filed “no sex charges” because “in this case there was insufficient evidence to go forward with a sex charge.”

Coleman and her mother Melinda Coleman expressed their satisfaction with outcome in statements released by their Kansas City attorney. “Today, I am grateful that the defendant took responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges. I am ready to move forward,” said Coleman, now 16. “To all those who supported me, I promise that what happened on January 8, 2012, will not define me forever.”

Though the Coleman family has been open about the victim’s identity—maintaining Facebook and Twitter accounts while giving numerous interviews with media outlets around the world—prosecutor Baker declined to name her in charging documents and asked a throng of reporters outside the Nodaway County Courthouse to treat her as though she were anonymous.

“I implore the media: give this young victim an opportunity to heal, to start a new narrative for herself,” Baker said.

According to a written statement by Sergeant Roger Philips of the Missouri Highway Patrol, the old narrative started with Coleman and a 13-year-old friend drinking at home while texting Barnett, who soon arranged to meet the girls and take them to a little party in his basement. After creeping through the window to avoid waking Barnett’s parents upstairs, the girls joined four older boys. “After drinking the vodka,” Philips wrote, Coleman “did not recall any subsequent events. … The next thing she remembered was waking up in her yard.”

One of the boys had sex with the younger girl and was ultimately prosecuted in juvenile court. But Nodaway County Prosecutor Robert Rice declined to bring charges of any kind against Barnett or another boy, who allegedly used a smartphone to record a sexual encounter between Barnett and Coleman.

When radio and newspaper reporters in Kansas City dug into the case, they noted that Barnett is the grandson of former Missouri state representative Rex Barnett, an influential Republican. This hint of political favoritism—and certain parallels in the case to an earlier controversy in Steubenville, Ohio—led the internet hactivist network known as Anonymous to launch a campaign in October to reopen the matter.

Baker, a Democrat from Kansas City, said Thursday that she had gone through all the evidence in the case and discussed the facts extensively with the both the victim and the accused. Although she lacked sufficient evidence to sustain sexual assault charges, Baker said, she did use the threat of felony endangerment charges to persuade the defense to accept a plea bargain.

Under terms imposed by Missouri Circuit Judge Glen Dietrich, Barnett was sentenced to four months in jail—but the sentence was suspended in favor of two years probation. During that time, Barnett must avoid alcohol, undergo substance abuse counseling and routing drug testing, and have no contact with Coleman or her family. He must perform 100 hours of community service and pay restitution of $1,800 to provide counseling services for the victim.

Barnett also delivered an apology to his victim via the prosecution team. Baker judged the young man’s statement to be “genuine,” and said she would convey his words to the Colemans “at the appropriate time.”

“Matthew Barnett accepts full responsibility and he truly regrets his actions,” defense attorney J.R. Hobbs said after the hearing. He added that “two skilled prosecutors” have now concluded that felony sex charges “are not appropriate in this matter. Further, there is absolutely no evidence that political favoritism played a role in the decision of either prosecutor.”

The Kansas City Star reported earlier this week that Daisy Coleman had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt that her mother linked to continuing harassment on social media. Prosecutor Baker declined to comment on that, and nothing in the girl’s written statement—or her mother’s—alluded to a recent crisis. Both women instead spoke hopefully of fresh beginnings.

As prosecutor Baker ended her press conference on the snow-covered steps of the red-brick Victorian courthouse, a nearby bank sign registered a temperature of 23 degrees. Though warmer than the lows spread earlier in the week by the polar vortex, this was a biting, bitter cold on the windswept hilltops of Maryville. Two years and a day ago was equally cold: a low of 21 on the night a helpless girl was dumped in shirtsleeves by a heedless boy. The case is now closed, but the thought of it merits a shiver.

Summary: No rape charges in case of suspected sexual assault that lit up social media and divided a community


As the president of a university, I would like to take strong exception to the suggested revisions in the teaching of history being considered by a committee of the New York State Education Department (news story April 18).

Many things are said against the quality of education in American secondary schools, and they are often true. Many students can't write, do not know any foreign language and are lacking in even elementary quantitative skills.

However, the single biggest deficiency we find in otherwise very good high school students coming to very good colleges is that they have no sense of history, no understanding of events and ideas as connected in time or place.

Without a student's knowledge of the facts and chronology of historical events - world, regional and national - it is almost impossible to teach in any meaningful fashion not just specific periods in history but any other subject: literature, philosophy, music and art, let alone the history of mathematics and natural and social science. It is like trying to teach physiology without first teaching anatomy: There is no conceptual skeleton on which to hang the information.

If dates and facts are not taught in secondary school, the deficiency is not made up in college. Students can meet the general requirement for history courses, for example, by taking ''The Development of Property Law in Tudor England,'' ''The Russian Revolution, Part 2,'' ''Chinese Nationalism from the Boxer

Rebellion to Mao'' or ''The Status of Women in Africa during the Imperialist Period.'' All this leaves them with no concept of how periods relate to each other in time and place; they can leave college with no idea of whether Joan of Arc came before or after Queen Elizabeth I, or how the Industrial Revolution correlated with changes in the social order.

I am heartily in favor of putting greater emphasis on the history of other civilizations, but not by de-emphasizing our own. We are unlikely to be able to continue to live in this small world without blowing it up unless East and West, North and South understand each other better. But whatever the ethnic background of our students, as inheritors of Western culture they also urgently need a better understanding of our civilization.

The history of Asia, Africa and Latin America should be integrated into world history and taught in conjunction with the history of the Western world, not instead of it.

What students really need to be well prepared for college is four years of American and world history in high school. It should be taught chronologically, so that they can tell what was happening at least in the Western world in each century during the last three thousand years.

As Winston Churchill once noted, if we do not know where we come from, we are unlikely to have a sense of where we are going. JEAN MAYER, President, Tufts University, Medford, Mass., April 20, 1983

Summary: To the Editor:    As the president of a university, I would like to take strong exception to the suggested revisions in the teaching of history being considered by a committee of the New York State Education Department (news story April 18).   Many things are said against the quality of education in American secondary schools, and they are often true. Many students can't write, do not know any foreign language and are lacking in even elementary quantitative skills.


Uber is partnering with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to open a research center in Pittsburgh called the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, with a view to eventually building driverless cars.

The robotics research facility will allow CMU researchers and Uber designers to develop new technology, including for improved mapping, safety and self-driving vehicles.

“We are excited to join the community of Pittsburgh and partner with the experts at CMU, whose breadth and depth of technical expertise, particularly in robotics, are unmatched,” said Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden in a press release.

This development comes on the heels of news that one of Uber’s financial backers, Google, may be invading the ride-sharing app’s turf. Although Google invested $258 million in Uber back in 2013, it is rumored to be developing a similar service using the company’s famed driverless cars, according to Bloomberg News. If this happens, it may directly compete for customer fares.

Summary: And Google is also developing similar technology.


But Western leaders' tough talk of wider asset freezes and threats of broader economic sanctions are complicated by Europe's dependence on Russia for roughly 30 percent of its natural gas demand supplies, half of which flows through Ukraine.

Putin played that trump card again Thursday, warning European leaders that the Kremlin would cut natural gas supplies to Ukraine if it did not pay up on a $2.2 billion gas debt to its former Soviet master. In a letter to the leaders of 18 countries, Putin demanded payment after Kiev failed to meet a Monday deadline for its March gas bill.

Read More Putin: Ukraine debt threatens Europe gas supplies

The gas shut-off notice was not an idle threat: State-controlled Gazprom stopped pumping gas to Ukraine during disputes in the winters of 2005-2006 and 2008-2009, crimping the flow to Europe.

Still, the Russian economy is already feeling the pain from Ukraine—even without economic sanctions.

Earlier this week, Russia's Economy Ministry predicted that GDP growth could slow to around 0.5 percent—from 1.3 percent last year. In February, Russia's gross domestic product eked out growth of just 0.3 percent year over year, up from a revised 0.1 percent in January, the ministry's Andrei Klepach told reporters.

If it continues, the Ukraine crisis could send Russia's economy into reverse, according to a report last month by the World Bank, which forecast a 1.8 percent contraction in its worst-case scenario. Russian officials have disputed that assessment.

"There won't be a recession, but there is a problem of stagnation: it's length and depth," Klepach said. "Unfortunately the investment slump is continuing. I'm not ready to say how long it will continue."

To add to the pain of the slowdown, the Ukrainian crisis has battered the value of the ruble, as foreigners scramble to get out of investments based in the currency. That's raised import prices, fueling a surge in inflation. The Economy Ministry predicted annual price inflation of 7.0 percent in March, up from 6.2 percent in February.

Read More Russia will be at G20, Ukraine to be discussed - Australian treasurer

To defend the ruble, Russia's central bank recently boosted interest rates by 1.5 percentage points, further tightening credit at a time when the local economy can ill afford it.

With roughly half a billion in gold and foreign reserves, the central bank still has some leeway in defending the ruble. But a deeper currency crisis can't be ruled out if the country continues to bleed capital.

Last month, citing the Ukraine crisis, falling investment and "persistent" capital outflows, Fitch Ratings cut the outlook on Russia's triple-B credit rating to negative and reduced its growth forecast to less than 1 percent for 2014.

Summary: Russia's central bank has confirmed that some $64 billion in assets held by Russians headed for the exits in the first quarter.


She kissed a girl and she liked it.

“Orange is the New Black” star Jackie Cruz says girls just want to have fun when it comes to lip locking with ladies on the small screen.

“Who hasn’t kissed a girl!” Cruz tells The News at an Uberliss beauty event at the Paramount Hotel.

Cruz is known for smooching Kourtney Kardashian five years ago at a Miami nightclub after some friendly dancing during the Bravo reality show “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami.”

“That was 2009, I’m so over it,” insists the Netflix star who reprises her lady makeout session this season, only in a khaki prison jump suit sans makeup.

Cruz, who plays Flaca Gonzales, gets hot and heavy with her prison bestie Maritza, (Diane Guerrero ) who she works closely within the kitchen along with the rest of the Latina inmates she calls “family.”

Jackie Cruz from “Orange is the New Black” gets hot and heavy with her co-star Diane Guerrero this season.

“That moment just felt so real to me because Flaca has a boyfriend that doesn’t visit her, she was very vulnerable,” she says.

This season, Cruz’s character develops deeper than in Season One when Flaca is convinced that “black people can’t float because their bone density ain’t right for it." Flaca shows a more emotional side that Cruz can relate to.

“It was nice to see Flaca’s different emotions,” says Cruz.

Whether she’s kissing girls or boys off screen she won’t be caught dead with bare lips.

“I can’t live without my lipstick.”

Summary: She kissed a girl and she liked it.'Orange is the New Black' star Jackie Cruz says girls just want to have fun when it comes to lip locking with ladies on the small screen.


Who’s the new John Hughes? The question has been bobbing around since the mid-2000s, when Mean Girls reminded us, following the rise of the American Pie films and their imitators, that the teen-movie genre had more to offer than nostalgia, bad behaviour and moderate nudity.

Since then, a handful of great films have emerged about what it means to be beached on the bank between childhood and adulthood – Jason Reitman’s Juno, Greg Mottola’s Superbad and Adventureland, Will Gluck’s Easy A, and Drew Barrymore’s Whip It foremost among them. But they’re all the work of people dipping a toe into the genre before moving on – whereas Hughes committed himself, over a four-year period in the mid-Eighties, to articulating what it meant to be teenage more acutely than any single writer or director had done before or has since.

Which is why it’s tempting to say our John Hughes is nobody else than John Hughes: still is; always will be. Between 1984 and 1987, Hughes wrote six teen movies: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. The first four of those he also directed; the other two were by Howard Deutch, although behind-the-scenes tales from Pretty in Pink suggest Hughes was still the primary guiding influence on set.

Together, these six films make up just a fraction of his life’s work. Between his first screenplay, for 1982’s National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, and his death in 2009, Hughes directed eight features and had writing credits on 25 more, plus a handful of other projects that went direct to video or were made for television, and countless more that were left unmade. But those half-dozen high-school films are his legacy.

Though they’re unmistakably set in the suburban, Midwestern America of the Eighties, with its deeply specific set of hormone-addled social anxieties, they feel as brightly relevant now as ever.

That’s partly because, unlike many teen movies, their scripts aren’t filled with references to contemporary TV shows and trends. (A John Hughes film doesn’t have time to look sideways at pop culture: it’s too busy being it.) Instead, the humour is rooted in Hughes’s characters’ sarcasm-tipped speech patterns, which didn’t come from the playground but right out of their creator’s head.

The only real school children who ever sounded like they were in a John Hughes film were trying to. And of course, thousands upon thousands did

What sounded like slang in context was a language of Hughes’s own creation. “This is a really volcanic ensemble you’re wearing,” says Duckie, the lovelorn best friend of Andie Walsh in Pretty in Pink – perhaps the first recorded usage of the word “volcanic” as a compliment. The only real schoolchildren who ever sounded like they were in a John Hughes film were trying to. And of course, thousands upon thousands did.

Even the plaintive, synth-laden songs, which now seem completely inseparable from the Eighties high-school experience – Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me), Spandau Ballet’s True, OMD’s If You Leave – crept into teenage culture via John Hughes films. American kids in the Eighties were listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and hair metal. But Hughes, a devotee of British New Wave pop, conspired to give their lives a richer, more finely shaded soundtrack.

More than all of the above, though, Hughes’s teen films haven’t dated for the same reason films by F W Murnau and Buster Keaton and Billy Wilder haven’t either: the astonishing quality of the work. Hughes’s entire output is explored in detail in an excellent new book by Kirk Honeycutt, John Hughes: a Life in Film – and what strikes you more than anything is how much the film-maker’s own high-school experiences fed into his work.

He spent his childhood in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, but his family moved to Northbrook, a well-to-do suburb of Chicago, when he was 12 years old. He entered his teenage years with a blank social slate, and had trouble filling it. The Hugheses were less well-off than many of the families in Northbrook, and John was sharply aware of the difference. He saw himself as an outsider, and took an interest in art, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. He grew his hair until it touched his collar.

Teachers antagonised him – it may have been a two-way thing, of course – and he fostered deep-hewn grudges against a handful of them that would later surface in his scripts. A PE teacher who failed him in his senior year turned into Richard Vernon, the tyrannical vice-principal in The Breakfast Club. His own vice-principal, in turn, became the inspiration for Principal Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Before filming began, Hughes took the actor Jeffrey Jones on a tour of his high school and made a point of introducing him to his old VP, who welcomed the men into his office in a sharp suit and with a holstered pistol fastened to his belt.

That’s why you’re unlikely to find a Dead Poets Society, or a Mr Holland, beetling away behind the classroom doors in a John Hughes film. Hughesian teachers can be many things – petty, sadistic, ineffectual – but they’re never inspirational. Instead, the teenagers have to come to terms with growing older on their own.

There’s no better way of summing it up than the quote from David Bowie’s Changes that opens The Breakfast Club. On a black screen, we see the following words in white type: “…And these children that you spit on / as they try to change their worlds / are immune to your consultations. / They’re quite aware / of what they’re going through…” Then the screen itself shatters, revealing the grey exterior of Shermer High School, where the film’s all-day detention is about to take place.

Hughes never patronised his characters; he treated teenage trauma with gravity

“You see us as you want to see us,” runs the opening monologue – which we later discover is part of the essay written by the five students from different backgrounds, played by Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall, who learn that they have more in common than they first thought. “In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal.”

Before Hughes, teen movies had almost exclusively trafficked in stereotypes – the jock, the geek, the virgin, the stoner, the slut and so on – and The Breakfast Club was his wholesale rejection of those worn-out tropes. Hughes establishes the differences between these five characters so nimbly you barely notice it happening: in their clothes; their parents’ parting words to them at the school gates; the different cars in which four of the five arrive; even where in the library they choose to sit.

But as the detention runs its course, our easy assumptions about them are turned on their head. None of them fits the role into which they’ve been forced by high-school life. “What we’ve found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess and a criminal,” runs the film’s closing monologue, which is shared by all five of the leads. This realisation is treated, rightly, as life-changing. Hughes never patronised his characters, and treated teenage traumas with far more gravity than those his adult characters suffered through.

Even today, that feels revolutionary – and shows Hughes’s commitment to treating his young audience with the utmost respect, however outlandish the on-screen action got. (Honeycutt writes that Hughes suspected most teen films, with their booze and drugs and shower-room nudity, were actually aimed at adult men.)

It’s also the common feature of the great recent teen films listed above. Drew Barrymore told an interviewer that, while she was making Whip It, she was determined it would be “a teen movie, but… like John Hughes’s movies, where it stars teens, and is about teen issues, but takes them seriously”. Will Gluck, when he was promoting Easy A, said he had tried to make “a movie that [Hughes] wouldn’t be embarrassed to watch”.

It would be fascinating to know what Hughes would make of today’s teen-movie landscape, with young-adult fantasy and science fiction in the ascendancy, and straightforward high-school movies thin on the ground. One of the great strengths of a series such as The Hunger Games, and the reason it’s connected with millions of young cinemagoers around the world, is that it finds a way to turn the tribulations of modern teenage life into life-and-death drama. But the genius of Hughes is that he was able to do exactly the same thing in an overcast, present-day American suburb on a sub-$5 million budget.

So perhaps to find today’s John Hughes we need to look elsewhere. The only recently successful young-adult film that doesn’t fit the sci-fi template is Josh Boone’s The Fault in Our Stars, starring Shailene Woodley as a high-school pupil with thyroid cancer and Ansel Elgort as the charismatic young hunk of boyfriend material she meets at a patients’ support group.

The characters talk about novels and dream of visiting Europe – and Elgort’s character has the Hughesian tic of keeping an unlit cigarette clamped between his teeth. “They don’t kill you unless you light them,” he says, “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see? You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.”

That dialogue came directly from the pen of John Green, who wrote the book on which the film’s script was (very closely) based. Just as Hughes did in the Eighties, Green credits his young characters with enough intelligence to play with ideas like this, and an appetite for unpicking life’s mysteries.

He has an abiding sympathy and respect for them, which Green has found reflected back at him by his young readership. Green’s original novel of The Fault in Our Stars has sold 10.7 million copies since it was published in 2012. Along with his three other novels plus various side projects, it’s helped him amass a passionate fan base known as “nerdfighters” – a term Hughes himself might have coined.

If Hughes were around today, would we find him on YouTube, laughing and joking with the young cinemagoers who’d found encouragement and hope in his work? Or would this self-styled outsider remain off the grid with his wife and two sons in a quiet Chicagoan suburb? There’s no way to know – and, of course, no need to either. His films speak for him, articulately and at length, whenever your inner teenager might want to hear a friendly voice.

John Hughes: a Life in Film by Kirk Honeycutt is published by Race Point, priced £24.99

Summary: No film-maker has ever spoken to teenagers with more compassion than the late John Hughes. What would he say to the youth of today?


The longtime treasurer of Unite Here Local 26, a Boston-based union that represents hotel and restaurant workers, has resigned after the union’s president found he had falsified at least $88,000 in expenses during the last 18 months.

Local president Brian Lang said he has started distributing letters to the union’s approximately 9,000 members, informing them that Henry Green Sr. was caught falsifying $88,662 in expenses and had resigned from his position as financial secretary treasurer as a result.

Lang said an outside auditor noticed serious irregularities with expense reimbursements that were paid to Green during the last year and a half, primarily involving falsified invoices for printing expenses. Green had held that job since 1999 and was a union employee since the early 1980s. Lang said the union’s executive board appointed organizing director Carlos Aramayo to replace Green earlier this week.

Lang said Unite Here leaders will refer Green’s conduct to an independent panel empowered to discipline Unite Here officers involved with corruption cases. Lang said it would be up to that panel, known as the public review board, to decide whether to refer Green’s case to law enforcement officials.

Green agreed to resign the day he was confronted, on July 14, Lang said, and he also pledged to eventually pay back all the money in question. The union also essentially had an insurance policy that will ensure the union is made whole, Lang said.

Green could not be reached for comment.

Summary: The longtime treasurer of hotel workers union Unite Here Local 26 has resigned after the union found he had falsified at least $88,000 in expenses during the last 18 months.


Mr Brown, who was arriving in Brussels for a two-day summit to discuss the economic crisis and climate change, was informed of the raids as Belgian police officers went into action.

Glen Audenaert, head of the Belgian judicial police, said officers carried out 16 raids in Brussels and one in the eastern city of Liege in the biggest anti-terrorism operation in the country's history.

Four Belgian nationals had been in Pakistan and Afghanistan since late 2007 and two of them were placed under surveillance when they returned some months ago.

A third, the suicide attack suspect, returned only last week.

The other detainees, both men and women, were suspected of offering "logistic and material support" to the mission, providing accommodation, clothing and communication assistance.

Mr Delmulle said: "We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place.

"It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target."

The investigation began in December last year when investigators made 14 arrests in connection with an alleged attempt to spring the Tunisian, Niza Trabelsi from jail in Belgium, although no one was charged.

Trabelsi, a former professional footballer, was the handler for British shoe bombers Richard Reid and Saajid Badat and was arrested with the ingredients to make the explosive TATP.

He was also part of a network planning an attack on the US Embassy in Paris which was connected to Finsbury Park Mosque in North London.

Paul Cruickshank, a fellow at New York University’s Center on Law and Security, said many Belgian radicals take their queues from preachers in Britain such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.

“Belgium has a less severe problem than the UK when it comes to violent extremism,” he added, “but it faces as large a challenge as any country on the European continent. Al-Qaeda affiliated groups have taken advantage of the fact that a small but significant number of the country’s North African immigrant population has become radicalised, to recruit individuals for global Jihad.”

Among those arrested was a woman referred to as "MEA" described as "playing an important role in the group" and thought to be Malika el-Aroud, 48, the widow of the assassin of the anti-Taliban leader Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Her husband is a hero in al-Qaeda circles after smuggling himself into Massoud's inner circle with the pretence of conducting a TV interview before blowing up the Northern Alliance leader.

Mrs el-Aroud, who also uses the name Oum-Obeyda, runs a French language website and said earlier this year: "It's not my role to set off bombs. I have a weapon. It's to write, it's to speak out. That's my jihad [holy war]."

Belgium has a history of Islamic extremism and two years ago three men were found guilty of belonging to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, the terrorist cell behind the Madrid bombings.

Summary: An al-Qaeda suicide bomb attack on Gordon Brown and other European leaders in Brussels has been foiled by police.


Purvi Patel was bleeding through her layers of clothing when she arrived, alone, at the emergency room in Mishawaka, Indiana on the night of July 13, 2013. “I was feeling very disoriented, weak,” she later testified. “Physically, I was in pain.” She told medical staff she had passed “clots.” She said she thought she was 10 to 12 weeks pregnant.

For weeks, Patel, who lived with her religious, Indian immigrant parents and disabled grandparents, had been texting her friend Fay about cramps and missed periods. Maybe it was just stress, she said. Patel had been keeping her relationship with a coworker secret from her family. Her friend knew. She convinced Patel to take a pregnancy test, which came out positive. “My Fam would kill me n him,” Patel texted her friend, according to court filings. “I’m just not ready for it.”

At the hospital that night, she kept texting her friend, which the medical staff found strange for a woman in distress. They later described her as having a “flat affect.” Examining her, the obstetrician-gynecologists became alarmed: they saw signs of a far more developed pregnancy. Where was the baby? Had it been moving when it was born? Patel said it had not. She had placed the remains in a dumpster.

By then, Patel had lost about 20 percent of her blood, and needed surgery for the placenta that she had not yet passed. Shortly before rushing out of the hospital to search for what he believed could be a live baby, one of the doctors called the police.

When Patel woke up from sedation, there was a police officer stationed by her bed. Now, as the first woman in the United States to be convicted of feticide for having an illegal abortion, she faces 20 years in prison. Judges will hear her appeal Monday.

Last March, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told MSNBC that if abortion is banned, “there has to be some form of punishment” for the woman. Anti-abortion groups protested that they had no intention of prosecuting women for having abortions under their desired ban — only doctors who allegedly victimize them. Trump eventually released a prepared statement to the same effect: “The doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.”

Patel’s case shows that the lines are not so clear. In the contemporary reality of illegal abortion, the woman and the provider are often one and the same. According to public health experts, a hundred thousand women have covertly tried to ended their pregnancies themselves in Texas alone, and legal abortion clinics closing across the country may make matters worse.

RELATED: Women are already being prosecuted for having abortions

What happened before Patel got to the hospital remains fiercely disputed, including how far along her pregnancy was and whether she delivered a stillbirth or a live baby. But both sides concede that Patel ordered pills from InternationalDrugMart.com, similar to ones doctors administer for early abortions, and took them alone in her room. There was no back-alley butcher or a doctor defying criminal sanction. When she showed up at the hospital bleeding, she and no one else was charged.

Or as one of the prosecutors in Patel’s case succinctly put it in a hearing, “When she does the act, she is the performer.”

Abortion is legal in Indiana. But in 2009, after the shooting of a pregnant bank teller, Indiana legislators decided to stiffen the penalties for causing the death of a gestating fetus. The bill’s sponsor touted support from both Planned Parenthood and Right to Life. It is that law that Indiana prosecutors now say gives them the right to charge Patel.

Patel’s attorneys argue in her appeal that the law was intended to punish people who harm pregnant women, not the women themselves; attorneys for Indiana counter that there’s nothing in the law to stop them from prosecuting women.

That’s what worries women’s health advocates and supporters of abortion rights, who have rallied to Patel’s side. “These laws were meant to protect women,” said Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, which filed a brief in Patel’s appeal. “And now they’ve turned around and sent Purvi Patel to jail.”

At the trial in St. Joseph County — home of the University of Notre Dame — prosecutors told jurors a story of a cold and unfeeling woman who put herself first, lacking any maternal instinct. “The defendant took care of herself while her baby laid dying,” prosecutor Aimee Herring told the jury in her opening statement.

“On July 13, a little boy was born on a cold, hard bathroom floor,” prosecutor Mark Roule said in his closing statement. “The only touch he got from his mother was to move him from the bathroom floor to a garbage can.”

Patel, Roule declared, “decided to do what was easiest and most comfortable for her, even if it was not legal.” She waited until after a business trip to Chicago to take the pills she ordered, Roule said, because “it’s just not convenient so she decides to wait even longer to let the baby develop even more.” Roule even speculated Patel had avoided seeing a doctor because she feared being told she had passed Indiana’s 20-week limit and telling her parents she was pregnant.

“There is no do it yourself abortion,” Roule told jurors. “Not what is legal.” There were many mentions of all the dumpsters that had been searched until the body was found.

The prosecution’s experts testified that Patel had likely given birth to a live baby who took a breath, who was at least 25 weeks and thus could have survived with prompt medical attention. The defense’s witness testified that the key expert had relied on a discredited test of whether the baby had breathed, and saw no evidence of a live birth.

To Yeung, the portrayal of Patel in the trial and the media smacks of stereotype. “There is a false narrative about Asian American women that we don’t care about our babies,” Yeung said. Even the repeated emphasis by prosecutors on Patel’s demeanor, Yeung contended, has “a racist context. Another stereotype of Asian Americans is that we’re inscrutable.” Her group’s brief notes that immigrant women in particular mistrust the medical system in part because of a history of abuses here or at home.

Indiana previously prosecuted a Chinese immigrant, Bei Bei Shuai, for feticide. (Shuai pled guilty to a lesser charge and is now free.) Patel was born in the United States, but Yeung argued, “Seeing both Bei Bei and Purvi as un-American contributes to harsher sentencing."

In countries where abortion is fully illegal, women have found other ways that don’t involve the proverbial coat hanger. One half of the pill regimen that doctors administer to end pregnancy, known as Misoprostol, is likely to induce miscarriage. (Patel stands accused of taking both halves of the regimen.) In Mexico, all it takes to get the pill is walking into a pharmacy, where it is sold as ulcer medication. An online network of guerrilla abortion-rights activists, Women on Web, mails misoprostol to women in countries where it is banned, along with instructions about how to end a pregnancy safely – or at least, more safely than even more desperate means. Brazilian authorities recently seized almost all packages of abortion pills meant for pregnant women fearing the Zika virus there, who have no access to legal abortion.

Still, Women on Web does not work in the United States, and its site exhorts that “women who live in a country where they have the possibility to have a safe and legal abortion, should go to a doctor.”

Getting a legal abortion in Indiana means a required ultrasound and two separate visits to a clinic, possibly one surrounded by protesters. This year, after 30 years in business, the abortion clinic in South Bend, in the county where Patel lived, permanently closed. The same month, Governor Mike Pence, who made his name in Congress investigating Planned Parenthood, signed a host of new restrictions into law. They include regulations on abortion providers similar to the Texas law currently being considered by the Supreme Court, which could lead to the closure of more clinics.

According to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, since 1973 – the year the Supreme Court struck down state abortion bans in Roe v. Wade – law enforcement and the courts have still arrested and prosecuted hundreds of women for pregnancy losses or poor pregnancy outcomes. Some cases involve drug use and the perceived harm to fetuses; others involve allegations of trying to end a pregnancy illegally. “These measures create a ‘Jane Crow’ system of law, establishing a second class status for all pregnant women and disproportionately punishing African American and low-income women,” the study’s authors, Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin, argued.

Paltrow’s group, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, also filed a brief in Patel’s appeal. “Stillbirths, miscarriages, abortions (including those that are self-induced and do not conform to abortion regulations), and women’s mental health during pregnancy are health issues, not matters for the criminal justice system,” they wrote. To involve the criminal justice system, according to the brief, would result in the “perpetuation of second-class status for women, and the likelihood that such prosecutions will target poor women and women of color, who are already disproportionately subject to law enforcement surveillance, arrest, and punishment.”

Patel comes to her appeal with a new legal team, including Stanford professor Lawrence Marshall, who founded Northwestern’s famous Center on Wrongful Conviction. In their appeal brief, they argue that the state failed to bring evidence that Patel knew how far along she was. They also say that the charges make no sense: How could the state argue that Patel committed feticide – causing the death of a fetus -- when they also say she had a live birth whom she neglected? And even if the baby had been born alive, Patel’s attorneys argue, the state didn’t show that her seeking immediate medical attention would have made a difference.

At the heart of the appeal is whether, indeed, the state can prosecute a pregnant woman herself under a feticide law, when the abortion statute currently says a woman can’t be prosecuted for having an abortion.

RELATED: How Indiana's pregnancy law targets women

Indiana prosecutors say Patel simply causing the end of her pregnancy amounted to feticide, even if there was no actual fetal demise. As for whether she herself could be put on trial, “the legislature has never included an exception in the feticide statute to prevent it from being applied to the pregnant woman herself,” the state wrote in its appeal.

In fact, the state’s attorneys added, before Roe v. Wade, Indiana, among other states, had a history of prosecuting women themselves for illegal abortion: “Enacted in 1881 and continuing in effect for almost 100 years, Indiana had a statute making it a criminal offense for a pregnant woman to solicit an abortion,” they wrote.

The state’s message was clear. Women once could be prosecuted for abortion. So why not again?

Summary: Opponents of abortion rights say women won't be prosecuted under an abortion ban. So why is this woman facing 20 years in prison?


From: Trevilla, near Feock, Cornwall

My wife, Liz. She is currently training for the European Long Distance Triathlon Championships in Poland on 24 July. She’s in the GB Age-Group team for the race.

I’m not a club rider. My wife and I ride with various groups of friends. I work in the cycling industry training everyone from children on balance bikes to adults. Getting them good to ride, coaching them on playgrounds, roads and leading tours for the more confident riders.

The beautiful scenery, riding with the sea to the left and moorland and granite outcrops on the inland side.

For recreational cyclists, it offers undulating riding with several places to stop for refreshment. Enthusiasts and experts can enjoy good riding on quiet roads with fast flats and some testing climbing. Riding at a slow pace today, it was three out of 10 difficulty, but if we’d been riding at a racing pace it would be an eight. For the average rider I’d say it’s a seven or eight.

It’s suitable for all types of rider.

I didn’t but there are hills to puff up if you’re riding at pace.

The breathtaking scenery of west Cornwall.

The disused mine buildings, granite outcrops (carns), and small hamlets with granite cottages and slate roofs.

At the start, in Pendeen, there’s the Geevor Tin Mine café, with views out over the Atlantic, and Heather’s Coffee Shop on the main road through Pendeen. En route there’s the Morvah Schoolhouse café, the Gurnard’s Head pub, cream teas at Rosemergy Farm and the Tinners Arms pub in Zennor.

The narrow roads are quiet but beware of holiday traffic and coaches on sightseeing tours...

Yes. It’s a favourite route with the locals who cycle the north and south coast-road loops on 20-50 mile rides.

It’s a great idea, with bite-sized rides around the country suitable for the new cyclist as well as experienced riders. And the Tour is as popular as ever, certainly this year with so many British riders doing well.

At five. Living in the country, as a child it was our only means of transport. We’d cycle to the local creek to play in the stream and then go the beach as we grew older.

Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish. Both are superb cyclists and great adverts for GB cycling, having achieved great success but always being first to praise their respective team members for helping them.

The Cornish roads, with short steep climbs and lovely views in the sunshine, are superb, but the Spanish Pyrenees, Tenerife and Lanzarote, with larger climbs and first-class asphalt and warmth, take a lot of beating.

Mark Trebilcock says: “If anyone’s interested in riding this Little Bit of the Tour then we’d be happy to lead them, if they contact us through cycleacademycornwall@gmail.com

Ride a little bit of the Tour de France in Britain this summer with ŠKODA – find your cycling route here

Summary: What better way to spend your weekend than riding along the Cornish cliffs on a route that replicate part of Stage-7 of the Tour de France