The primary calendar, the delegate count, and their remaining challengers would agree that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have work left to do before they can start tearing into each other in what promises to be a vicious general election.

Neither frontrunner got that memo Tuesday night after piling up impressive wins in contests across the Northeast. Trump swept the five events against his two Republican rivals, winning at least 55% of the vote everywhere. Clinton’s performance was more of a mixed bag, winning four primaries by a range of margins while losing Rhode Island to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both interpreted those results as the starting gun for their long-brewing head-to-head — and both used speeches to their supporters to preview some early attack lines.

Clinton delivered her zings in the practiced cadence of her stump speech. After talking up shared Democratic priorities like expanded healthcare access and an “urgent” response to climate change — an olive branch to Sanders supporters — the former Secretary of State called out Republican candidates, generically, for wanting to curtail voting and reproductive rights, deport illegal immigrants, marginalize Muslim Americans, and deny the existence of climate change. Then she called on Trump by name. “The other day, Mr. Trump accused me of playing the ‘woman card,’” she said. “Well, if fighting for women’s healthcare, and paid family leave, and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!”

Later, in her closing remarks, she made a less direct, though unmistakable, reference to him: “We’re going to imagine a tomorrow where hard work is honored, families are supported, streets are safe, and communities are strong, and where love trumps hate.”

Her entire speech had the polish of a carefully crafted address with its attack lines measured out in teaspoons. And it telegraphed her demographic strategy: Consolidate the party by recruiting Sanders supporters back into her fold, then run up the score with minority groups and women.

Trump’s speech was similarly revealing. He winged some opening remarks, exhibiting the same restraint he displayed after his victory in New York last week. But in a question-and-answer session that followed, he let it rip, making plain that he’s relishing the opportunity to savage Clinton — and that he plans to do so with a populist critique.

Asked to respond to her “love trumps hate” line, Trump poured it on. “I call her Crooked Hillary. She’s crooked. She’ll be a horrible president. She knows nothing about job creation. Her husband signed NAFTA, which destroyed this country economically, I will tell you. You look at New York state, you look all over New England, you look at Pennsylvania, NAFTA was a disaster, her husband signed it. And it was a disaster for this country. Hillary will be horrible, absolutely horrible, on economic development. She will be terrible on jobs. She knows nothing about jobs, except for jobs for herself. And when it came to answering the phone at 3 o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping, with Benghazi and all of the other problems…. She will not be a good president. She doesn’t have the strength, she doesn’t have the stamina.”

And that was just his warm-up. He went on to strafe her with lines that he could have borrowed from a Sanders rally, criticizing her vote to authorize the Iraq war, her allegiance to freer trade, and her ties to Wall Street. Indeed, Trump suggested, twice, that Sanders should keep his campaign alive by launching an independent bid. (Any benefit that would accrue to Trump from the Democratic vote-splitting that would result would presumably be just a happy coincidence.)

Trump — who also declared himself the “presumptive nominee” after his wins on Tuesday and called for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to drop out of the race — wrapped up his rambling press conference by returning to Clinton, doubling-down on his charge that her only advantage is the “woman card.”

“She’s got nothing else going,” he said. “And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card. And the beautiful thing is women don’t like her, okay? And look how well I did with women tonight.”

A recent Reuters poll found Clinton leading Trump by 14 points among women, while a Washington Post/ ABC survey placed that margin at 21 points. And Gallup has found that Trump’s favorability is underwater among Republican women. As the main event draws nearer, he’ll likely find that the kind of language he used on Tuesday isn’t helping.

Summary: The two frontrunners are ready for their general election head-to-head.


This week, Uber uber is giving New Yorkers cheap rides and a free slice of pizza to mark an important milestone.

As of this week, the ridesharing app has officially been in New York City for five years. To celebrate the momentous occasion, each day this week will be dedicated to one of the five boroughs. People in that borough will be offered UberPOOL rides for a flat rate of $5, as long as the ride begins and ends within that borough. The company will also be partnering up with a pizza place in each location where riders can claim a free slice as long as they show their Uber app.

The week starts off on May 2 with $5 rides in Staten Island and pizza at Joe and Pat’s between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Uber will be updating its blog post throughout the week to let New Yorkers know where to collect their free food.

A separate blog post outlines each of Uber’s milestones in New York City these past five years, starting with its launch in May 2011. By August it had 1,000 active riders. That number grew tenfold in less than a year, and reached 1 million this past September.

Summary: For five days


Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

307 pp. New York: Harcourt. $25.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO'S latest novel takes its title from one of the most admired passages in Plato's ''Republic,'' when Socrates compares human beings, whether educated or ignorant, to dwellers in a subterranean cavern. They live as prisoners, immobilized by chains and unable to see anything save occasional shadows cast on the wall by figures passing in front of a fire burning above them. Truth, for them, is formed solely from such phantasmagoria. When one of them escapes to the upper world, its light faintly visible at the end of a tunnel, to encounter palpable reality, he has difficulty adjusting to the darkness on his return and is ridiculed by his associates. ''And do you not think,'' Socrates grimly adds, ''that they would kill him who tried to release them, if they could lay hands on him?''

Another of the philosopher's comments on his parable -- that however distant the cave dwellers' predicament may seem from our own, they are in fact just like us -- becomes an epigraph for ''The Cave,'' pointing the way to the book's allegorical core. This is further heightened by the pared-down ordinariness of Saramago's three central characters and his careful erasure of anything that might threaten to localize the narrative too distinctively. Even their Portuguese surnames, the writer is concerned to point out, are unusual, implying a wish to distance the story from a specific culture or topography.

Brooding over an anonymous city stands the Center, an immense complex fusing the functions of an office tower, a shopping mall and a condominium, reached by a journey across a menacing industrial tract in which the evidence of productivity is sinisterly unrelated to any signs of human life. Only on a vacant lot here and there does a scattering of rags, rusty cans and rotten planks suggest some kind of individualizing occupational layer. Through this stifling emptiness a potter, Cipriano Algor, drives in his battered truck, making a fresh delivery of kitchenware he has been regularly supplying for sale at the Center for several years.

This, it turns out, will be Cipriano's last consignment. Sales have fallen off, plastic imitations are lighter and cheaper, the purity of earthenware is no longer necessarily an asset, and the warehouse, for lack of demand, will be forced to unload its remaining stock. After consoling himself by presenting some redundant crockery to dwellers in a shantytown outside the city and smashing to pieces what remains in the kiln, Cipriano is persuaded by his daughter, Marta, and her husband, Marçal, to embark on a new line, producing ceramic dolls based on illustrations in an encyclopedia the family owns.

''Encyclopedias,'' the author comments in a flourish of sententiousness typical of his style throughout, ''are like immutable cycloramas, prodigious projectors whose reels have gotten stuck and which show, with a kind of maniacal fixity, a landscape which, because it is condemned to be only and for all eternity what it was, will at the same time grow older, more decrepit and more unnecessary.'' This image of gradual irrelevance and uselessness is not simply a harbinger of Cipriano's possible fate; it points toward the broader dilemma of a society whose ethical system has been sacrificed to short-term solutions and the caprices of market economics.

As the first batch of clay dolls is modeled, fired and painted, the family adopts a stray dog, whom Cipriano, half joking at first, names Found. To the animal belong the dedication and endurance increasingly denied to human beings. His role in the narrative, though never anthropomorphized, becomes that of an additional character, providing what amounts to a moral yardstick by which the others can be assessed.

When Marta and Marçal are offered the chance to move into an apartment at the Center, taking Cipriano with them, a no-pets regulation seems about to send Found wandering once more. This is not the Center's only dehumanizing feature. Though the building, along with its stores and restaurants, incorporates a church, a casino, a beach, a zoo and a racetrack, these all preserve a curious silence. The single identifiable noise is the throb of concealed excavators beneath the high-rise apartment complexes, in one of which the family prepares to settle. Most apartments here are arranged ''like cells in a storage battery,'' their windows looking onto the Center's minimally lighted interior space. Even if Marçal, employed as a security guard, has been allotted a unit with a daylight view, this is considered, within the skewed value system prevailing throughout the complex, an indicator of his comparatively low status.

Predictably, the doll-making project is a disaster, its doom ultimately sealed by the negative findings of the Center's market researchers. Cipriano appears destined to an aimless retirement on the 34th floor, paying daily visits to the ''natural sensations'' zone, which offers a simulated experience of everything from dinosaur skeletons through palm trees, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China to a firing squad, an electric chair and an angel trumpeting the millennium. At length the unseen diggers complete their task, but Marçal is sworn to secrecy about the true identity of the cave they have uncovered. It is Cipriano, resolved to probe the Center to its heart, who enters the darkness and stumbles across bound bodies of its long-dead prisoners. At the novel's close, Plato's cave has become just another novelty exhibit in the Center, from which Marta and Marçal, taking Cipriano and Found with them, have escaped to the freedom of an unscripted scenario beyond the city limits.

Saramago's satirical intention in ''The Cave'' is obvious from the outset. His target is not simply the apparent aim of global capitalism to shape communities into homogenized, malleable demographic units deprived of any significant power to choose or modify individual destinies. The book turns its heat equally on our willingness to collude with this reductive tyranny, since the Center's existence depends on its denizens' ready acceptance of commercial bromides and panaceas the place seeks so enticingly to purvey. Beneath superficial abundance and diversity lurks a draconian authoritarianism, intolerant of failure, dissent or even the briefest amused disengagement from its goals. To authenticate his vision, Saramago, who received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, presents Cipriano's initial failure to satisfy the Center's demands as a typical case of the small independent producer being brought low by the dictates of the overweening conglomerate in a fluctuating marketplace.

As a further warning against the urge to seek safety on common ground -- moving to the center, as it were -- the writer highlights the menaces of cliché by parodying the worldly-wise narrative interventions of an earlier era. ''Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not anymore, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.'' Solemn intrusions of this kind shimmer with an irony pinpointing the danger inherent in the most seemingly innocent banality.

Such deft manipulations in Saramago's style are brilliantly rendered in Margaret Jull Costa's agile English version of his Portuguese. He has never courted accessibility, and remains as unbending as ever in his apparent hostility to paragraphing and the traditional layout of dialogue. The heart may sink somewhat as we confront the now customary dizzying stack of cyclopean text blocks continuing for many pages, and the usual absence of quotation marks and separate lineation for direct speech. Undoubtedly, such devices are mannered, but a continuous vein of understated humor, especially in the treatment of Found's relationship with his adoptive family, saves them from becoming vehicles of portentousness. Within these impacted word-masses lies a celebration as well as a jeremiad.

However belatedly, at the close of ''The Cave'' the quiet humanity that asserts its triumph over greed, bullying and lies belongs as much to Saramago as to his four refugees. We acknowledge our similarity to Plato's ''strange prisoners,'' but Saramago shows us how to break free.

Summary: THE CAVE  By JosÃ© Saramago.  Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.  307 pp. New York: Harcourt. $25.


Many of Miami’s art deco gems are subject to stringent historic preservation restrictions — which is wonderful for design history buffs. Hotels and motels are constantly getting revamped, which means they’re not just retro-chic but up-to-date, too; here are seven worth a stay. (Bonus: they’re all relatively inexpensive, too!)

Built: 1940; reopened: November 2015; from $139.

Coolest original detail: The original Haddon Hall sign from the property’s old days, plus a pair of vertical neon racing stripes. Unlike many other hotels with newer aquatic additions, this pool is original — and it’s one of the biggest in South Beach.

Best new amenity: “Top Chef” alum Spike Mendelsohn’s restaurant and juice bar, Sunny’s, as well as poolside parties spiffed up with live music and oversized animal-shaped rafts. Then there’s newly opened beer garden Campton Yard, which has craft cocktails, colorful lawn furniture and a ping-pong table.

Built: 1941; reopened: December 2012; from $199.

Coolest original detail: Architect L. Murray Dixon’s asymmetrical facade with one rounded corner and a vertical racing stripe. Look for the pink stone border over the Collins Avenue entrance, and geometric, jutting-out “eyebrows” over windows.

Best new amenity: A $35 million makeover added a pool and bar on the rooftop as well as new-yet-retro additions like the black-and-white photographs of Miami in the ’40s and ’50s that line the 112 guest rooms, hallways and social spaces.

Built: 1960s; reopened: May 2015; from $151.

Coolest original detail: Formerly the Motel Ankara, the 235-room hotel maintains the vintage sign from that era, protected by South Beach’s stringent historic preservation codes.

Best new amenity: A new eight-story tower — which matches the motel’s white-and-orange color scheme and rises behind the old motel — is the most obvious sign of modernity, but contemporary touches abound. There’s a cavernous industrial lobby, bright pink foosball tables by the pool and street art-style works.

Built: 1950s; reopened: December 2015; from $195.

Coolest original detail: “Miami Modern” architect Morris Lapidus, known for the massive Fontainebleau hotel to the north, built a “stairway to nowhere” in the lobby. A landmarked feature, it used to lead to a hidden powder room and coat check, as well as offer a place for guests and celebs to make a grand entrance. Now, it just winds into the wall — but it sure is cool to look at.

Best new amenity: A saltwater heated pool with an underwater surround sound system, plus the adjacent cabana club.

Built: 1948; reopened: January 2016; from $139.

Coolest original detail: The blue trim on the undulating facade and a matching blue sign with the hotel’s name — which references Puerto Rico’s capital — and glows red at night. (The hotel, which was designed by Henry Hohauser, is technically in a postwar modern style.)

Best new amenity: One hundred round brass light fixtures dangle over a long, brand-new lobby bar.

Built: 1940; to reopen: September 2016; from $250 (subject to change).

Coolest original detail: Outside, a distinctive, angular slender pylon, which houses an elevator shaft on the inside, towers above the low-rise. Inside, two jewel-toned murals in the tropical modernist style by artist Roman Chatov, whose works graced the 1939 World’s Fair and the Russian Tea Room, light up the rounded lobby.

Best new amenity: The original street-level terrace is being revived with swinging benches and potted palms. Meanwhile, the folks behind sushi hot spot Blue Ribbon will run a restaurant, offer all-day lobby dining and serve bites at the pool.

Built: 1940; to reopen: late 2016; rates to be determined.

Coolest original detail: Architect Albert Anis’ glorious facade will lose its funky colors but be restored to its former state: a gleaming white. It will retain its funky sculptural quality.

Best new amenity: Behind the short 76-year-old structure, a new 10-story tower with a rooftop garden, pool and restaurant is rising, which will increase the hotel’s capacity to 96 guest rooms. The new additions, as the photo shows, will be glassy.

Summary: Many of Miami’s art deco gems are subject to stringent historic preservation restrictions — which is wonderful for design history buffs. Hotels and motels are constantly getting revamped, whi…


Pfizer is in advanced talks to purchase Allergan in what would be the biggest pharmaceutical acquisition in history, according to reports Thursday. But while the deal would make Pfizer a lot larger, it also suggests that the drug giant may, in fact, be trying to make itself smaller.

Yes, getting bigger just to break up sounds counterintuitive. But after dropping hints for years that it is mulling a split, Pfizer PFE has recently said that it will decide whether to break up by the fourth quarter of 2016. (In our 2016 Fortune Crystal Ball, we predicted that Pfizer would indeed cut the cord that is tying its various businesses together.)

Pfizer’s pursuit of Allergan AGN increases the odds that it’s engaging in a nuclear-like process of fusing only to break apart. This particular strategy has been making its way through the pharma industry, as Allergan itself recently demonstrated.

During Pfizer’s latest earnings call on Oct. 27, CEO Ian Read was asked whether there were any arguments against splitting up. But Read didn’t come up with any, adding that doing a major acquisition would only change the timing of a split. “It wouldn’t necessarily change the logic of it to the extent that that logic proves out,” he said. “It would certainly, it may even strengthen the logic for it.”

Pfizer may face regulatory hurdles with its proposed merger, amid news on Wednesday that the Treasury Department is looking to stem the tide of companies exiting the U.S. through tax inversions, which is one of Pfizer’s motivations for doing a deal with Dublin-based Allergan. But the government’s threat only seems to have made Pfizer more eager to buy Allergan as soon as possible. The acquisition would allow Pfizer to move its official headquarters overseas, substantially lowering its tax bill in an inversion transaction.

Read hasn’t minced words about his interest in pursuing an inversion long before Allergan entered the picture. He has also said that he’d prefer to invert before splitting up the company.

Allergan would also bolster Pfizer’s “innovative” (i.e. brand-name) drug business, which it internally separated from its slower-growing “established” (i.e. generic and non-patented) drug division in 2014, further signaling that it may be planning to split into two different companies altogether. Building out each business is important before Pfizer jettisons either one, as it would make the individual parts more valuable; value that could be “released via split,” Read said on the latest earnings call (perhaps envisioning a spinoff transaction). “Strengthening the innovative part of the company will give a more balanced business between both established and innovative, especially in a potential split scenario if we were to split the company.”

In some ways, Pfizer is actually taking a page from Allergan. After generic drug maker Actavis bought Allergan last year, it took the name of the specialty pharmaceutical company; the reinvented Allergan then turned around and sold its legacy generic business to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries TEVA in July. Pfizer could do something very similar—combining the companies’ drug portfolios only to split them apart again later. Next year, don’t be surprised if Pfizer and Allergan are still two separate companies even after doing the deal—they’ll just both be located in Ireland.

This article is part of the 2016 Fortune Crystal Ball, a package of 33 predictions about business, politics and the economy by the writers and editors of Fortune. To see the entire package, click here.

Summary: The drug firm may be growing to shrink.


Millions of jellyfish are washing up on the shores of beaches in Washington and Oregon, CNN reports.

It is not unusual for the bluish-purple species called Velella velalla to turn up in the spring, but a sail fin on their body usually keeps them away from the shore. This spring, though, their sails were no match for the wind.

The species, also known as “purple sailor,” has stinging cells that are not seriously harmful to humans, but the Oregon State website warns it’s best to avoid rubbing your eyes after touching them or walking barefoot through them on the beach.

Summary: They're washing up in Oregon and Washington


Motion and control tech giant Parker Hannifin ph has won regulators’ blessings to hawk its Indego robotic exoskeleton product directly to consumers as well for use in clinical settings.

The device, which is meant to assist patients with spinal cord injuries or other mobility-limiting conditions walk, was cleared for sale in the European market towards the end of 2015. It resembles a pair of standalone robotic legs which users can attach with a strap above their waists and helps manipulate joint and lower limb movements.

“In a relatively short amount of time, we have taken what was a prototype device and readied it for full commercial launch,” said Parker Hannifin CEO Tom Williams in a statement. The company said that it is looking towards a U.S. launch “in the coming months.”

There were between 240,000 and 337,000 Americans living with spinal cord injuries in 2014, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, and about 12,500 new cases every year. The broader mobility market numbers in the millions.

But as the Wall Street Journal points out, the Indego’s $80,000 per-unit price tag could cause some major sticker shock for insurers and prevent the device from achieving the type of market penetration Parker Hannifin might eventually hope to see.

That’s why company execs are staying realistic about short-term sales outlooks and pressing on with further studies which aim to demonstrate additional “economic and health benefits of exoskeleton technology” to woo insurers.

Parker Hannifin already has a four-year agreement in place with the Department of Defense and major U.S. rehabilitation centers.

Summary: But the tech's high price could be a problem.


Ubwongereza bwabaye buhagaritse guha Mozambique amafaranga y'imfashanyo bwageneye icyo gihugu nyuma yaho kiyemereye ko cyananiwe gutangaza ku mugaragaro ko gifite imyenda irenga miliyari imwe y'amadolari.

Ubwongereza buvuga ko ibingibi bibanbamiye cyane ikizere bufitiye Mozambique.

Ibi Ubwongereza bubikoze nyuma yaho Banki y'isi n'Ikigega mpuzamahanga k'imali - IMF- nabyo byabaye bihagaritse imfashanyo biha Mozambique.

Mu murwa mukuru Maputo ubu umutekano uracunzwe cyane mbere yuko haba imyigaragambyo yagamana leta kubera ko yananiwe kutangaza ko yafashe imyenda.

Summary: Ubwongereza bwabaye buhagarikiye Mozambique amafaranga y'imfashanyo kubera kudatangaza ku mugaragaro imyenda irenga miliyari imwe y'amadolari.


CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama accused Sen. Hillary Clinton of stoking anger in Florida and Michigan over the Democratic Party's decision not to recognize the states' primary votes.

"They weren't stirring it up when they didn't need the delegates," he said. "Let's not sort of pretend that we don't know what's going on. This is, from their perspective, their last slender hope to make arguments about how they can win."

Obama, speaking to reporters on his campaign plane late Saturday, also took on Sen. John McCain's suggestion that Obama's lack of military service makes him unqualified to criticize him on veterans issues.

"I will cede to no one the ability to talk about veterans issues," Obama said. "My grandfather was a veteran. Those veterans benefits helped my grandparents to raise my mother. I have veterans throughout the state of Illinois that I've been fighting for since I came into the United States Senate." Watch Obama make comments aboard plane »

Obama returned to his home base of Chicago, Illinois, Saturday night after a campaign swing through in Puerto Rico, which holds its primary June 1, and spending three days in Florida.

Obama said he wants a resolution of the controversy over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations so that they "feel that they've been treated fairly and they're seated."

"I want to be looking at them when I'm standing on the stage in Denver in August," Obama said.

He said the "anger will go away once it's resolved" and it will not be a deciding factor in the November general election.

"I think the Democrats are going to be focused on who's going to stop the war, who's going to be making Supreme Court appointments, who's going to have a serious energy policy, who's going to bring good jobs and good wages, who's going to continue the Bush tax cuts and who's going to give a middle class tax cut," Obama said.

"The notion that the folks in Florida, who are trying to struggle with $4 gas and not being able to get property insurance for their house during hurricane season, are going to be making a decision based on a political tempest that occurred during a primary, I don't see it," he said.

Obama said he predicted a "substantive debate" with McCain during the general election over veterans issues, especially if McCain continues to oppose the expansion of the GI Bill. Watch Obama pledge support to veterans issues »

"John McCain will have to decide whether he thinks that the current level of benefits or the current performance of the VA is sufficient," Obama said.

After Obama took to the Senate floor last Thursday to criticize McCain's opposition to legislation, which passed by a 75-22 vote margin, McCain quickly responded that Obama was taking "cheap shots" on an issue that "he has less than zero understanding of."

"I will not accept from Sen. Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did," McCain said in a written statement.

Asked to respond Saturday, Obama said "the notion that somehow I can't speak out on behalf of veterans because of the fact that I didn't serve makes no sense whatsoever."

Obama said that he, and many others his age, did not serve in the military because the Vietnam War -- and the draft -- ended before he was of draft age.

"Obviously, I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are treated with honor and respect," he said. "I think the GI Bill is one way to do that. I hope that John McCain and George Bush decide they believe the same thing."

The updated version of the GI Bill, which has now passed the Senate and House, proposes to essentially provide a full scholarship to in-state public universities for members of the military who have served for at least three years.

McCain supports enacting legislation to expand education benefits for veterans, but he, as well as President Bush and much of the military brass, oppose this specific measure because they worry it will deplete retention rates among those currently serving in the military at a time when recruitment efforts are already struggling.

All About Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • John McCain


06/16/2016 AT 03:25 PM EDT

has expressed interest in the past of having

as his running mate, but it looks like he's barking – or should we say "

"? – up the wrong tree.

whether Trump had contacted her about the prospect, the 62-year-old TV icon said she had "not gotten the call." But if she did?

"I would say, 'Donald, I'm with her,' " Winfrey said, referencing the campaign slogan for presumptive Democratic nominee

and drawing applause from the crowd.

Winfrey also voiced her support for Clinton in an interview with

, saying she "really believes" the U.S. will elect its first female president.

"It's about time that we make that decision," Winfrey said. "Regardless of your politics, it's a seminal moment for women. What this says is, there is no ceiling, that ceiling just went boom! It says anything is possible when you can be leader of the free world."

"I'm with her," Winfrey stated again.

Summary: "Regardless of your politics, it's a seminal moment for women," Oprah Winfrey said


Nothing evokes the good ol’ Republican days like the mighty Reagan era.

Throughout this primary season, GOP presidential hopefuls have often tripped over themselves to name-drop the 40th president of the United States, indicating that a vote for them will mean a return to the conservative glory of the “Great Communicator.”

And, in less bombastic fashion, their wives — and their wives’ choices of clothing — are conjuring the powerful image of Nancy Reagan.

The former first lady’s passing on Sunday at the age of 94 reminds us that Reagan’s carefully calculated sense of style not only impacted and elevated the role of president’s wife, but changed it for generations to come.

“She had a signature look, because of her background in Hollywood. And she knew what looked good on her,” argues Patsy Cisneros, CEO of Corporate Icon, a California-based image-consultancy firm advising high-level politicians.

While Republican successors Barbara and Laura Bush opted for a preppy aesthetic — think matching twin sets — that could be purchased at the mall, Reagan radiated strength through fashion.

“Wearing powerful colors and suits really did indicate the type of woman she was at the White House,” says Cisneros. “She was the person who looked adoringly at her husband, but she never looked shy or retiring. She looked like power. She had impeccable taste and wanted the White House to have the same feeling it had with Jackie Kennedy.

“She set the tone for first ladies to have significant input into the White House,” she adds.

And the current crop of GOP spouses — Melania Trump, Heidi Cruz, Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio and Karen Waldbillig Kasich — are all taking a page out of Nancy’s style playbook with their own modern updates.

“Any indication of what they will be like in the White House, they are going to tell us through what they choose to wear,” says Cisneros.

Hillary Clinton, for instance, often seemed indifferent to the pressures of image, while Michelle Obama set a completely different style agenda — championing American designers such as Jason Wu and Tracy Reese, wearing budget brands such as Target’s, and often experimenting with edgy silhouettes and hairstyles.

The radiant and dynamic Reagan, on the other hand, used fashion to her advantage by relying on one very simple color.

“Red — particularly shades of red described as ‘Nancy Reagan red’ — was her longest legacy,” says Christina Logothetis, a DC-based image consultant and Style of Politics blogger.

“The idea of wearing bright red has persisted for far longer than I would have predicted. It became a patriotic look and closely associated with politics for such an extended period of time,” she adds.

All of the candidates’ wives have hit the campaign trail in the striking hue — often paired with eye-catching but classic pearls.

“There are little touches here and there going back to the red with a string of pearls that we see echoing across later generations,” says Logothetis of the newest crop of wannabes.

Beyond her trademark color, Reagan was known for her stylish, conservative stable of beautifully cut suits and jackets — from nubby Chanel to trench-inspired toppers.

“Nancy wore colorful business looks. And rarely did she not have a jacket over her nonformal wear. That was a beautiful look on her,” says Cisneros.

Similarly, Cruz — an executive at Goldman Sachs — favors bold pastel suits, while Trump is now seen at campaign events with a red or pink overcoat draped over her shoulders.

According to Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT, former actress Reagan brought Hollywood glamour to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But there was restraint. While her choices were high-fashion, they weren’t too noisy or trend-focused.

“It wasn’t ‘Dynasty.’ I think she straddled the line,” says Steele.

“She did do the one-shouldered thing, and that was daring. She liked the [designer James] Galanos look [which she wore to the 1981 Inaugural Ball]. It was a beautiful dress and she was slim, so she could wear that.”

But otherwise, she opted for a more covered-up approach.

The same can now be said for Melania Trump, a model who used to appear at events with her heaving bosom on full display.

Since her husband became a viable candidate, her looks have softened. And her necklines are much less revealing.

Reagan’s look was deliberate, all the way down to her perfectly layered and teased ’do, which she never changed.

“She never had an off day,” says Cisneros. “You wouldn’t catch her saying, ‘Today I will wear a head band or ponytail.’ She didn’t do that. She knew her signature look, and that included grooming. She knew it was also going to work on-camera.”

Likewise, the latest offering of GOP wives are always photographed with their hair blown out perfectly straight — sometimes with a flip or added volume at the top.

Still, there is one major area of departure: These fitness-obsessed gals tend to show more skin — particularly their arms.

Rubio is a former cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, while Kasich is a marathon runner with guns like Michelle Obama’s — and she’s not afraid to show them off in classic shift dresses.

Reagan, meanwhile, rarely showed off her biceps.

As Steele puts it: “She came from a generation when we didn’t have to have Madonna-muscular arms.”

Photo: Brendan Hoffman/Getty ImagesAge: 43 Career: Managing director, Goldman Sachs Married for: 15 years Children: 2 Fun fact: She is a vegetarian. Her look: Nancy 2.0: polished, feminine, with a penchant for bold colors

“Heidi Cruz has a few things in common with Nancy Reagan,” says Christina Logothetis, a Washington, DC-based image consultant. “First [there] is the overall femininity of her look, both in the colors she chooses — reds and pinks at key appearances — and with styles that sometimes include ruffles or rosettes. The other thing is the projection of wealth.”

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesAge: 42 Career: Stay-at-home mom Married for: 17 years Children: 4 Fun fact: She was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. Her look: Unfussy glamour: Loose hair, fitted shifts, bold colors

“Only a young woman can pull off a long hairstyle like that,” says Logothetis. “She balances that out with sleeves and cardigans to add gravitas, but it’s definitely a young, carefree look overall.”

Photo: AP Photo/Jae C. HongAge: 45 Career: Model, jewelry designer and cosmetics entrepreneur Married for: 11 years Children: 1; 4 stepchildren Fun fact: She speaks four languages Her look: America’s Carla Bruni: high-fashion labels, dramatic outerwear and bold colors, with a dash of flash and sex appeal

“Melania Trump was a model and has a natural bent toward the glamorous — no matter what she wears,” says Logothetis. But, “she is definitely trying to channel Nancy Reagan as much as she can get away with.”

Photo: AP Photo/Carlos OsorioAge: 52 Career: Public relations; former vice president of a healthcare ad agency Married for: 19 years Children: 2 Fun fact: She is an avid runner. Her look: Classic but without the polish of the other women: sporty, neutral shifts that show off her toned arms

“Karen Kasich looks much more like a governor’s wife or perhaps a House member than she does a first lady at this point,” says Logothetis. “Her style is simply professional, but not very distinctive, like she probably put the whole thing together herself in one afternoon at the mall. She looks totally appropriate, but it’s almost a nonstyle style.”

Summary: Nothing evokes the good ol’ Republican days like the mighty Reagan era. Throughout this primary season, GOP presidential hopefuls have often tripped over themselves to name-drop the 40th president …


NEW YORK — A walk along the East River in Brooklyn is like no other stroll along the waterfront. Sure, there are the obligatory benches and paved paths that open up to breathtaking vistas of the Manhattan skyline.

But for 1.3 miles along the river’s edge, visitors experience playgrounds, soccer fields, basketball courts, an outdoor roller rink, a pop-up swimming pool, cafes, barbecue pits, beaches, and performance spaces. And just when you think it can’t get any better, you spy a hand-painted carousel that spins under the Brooklyn Bridge.

Now this is how you develop a waterfront.

Brooklyn Bridge Park is a six-year-old public space that Jim Canales, president of the Barr Foundation in Boston, has hailed as a model. Turns out a bunch of Bostonians who are shaping our own harbor’s edge have also checked out the 85-acre park.

After visiting the space last week, I couldn’t help but think about our own Seaport District, with its ho-hum towers, and ask: Did we just blow it?

New Yorkers made a decision long ago that this part of Brooklyn would not go to the highest bidder but be set aside as a waterfront for all. Not just passive patches of grass, but spaces teeming with recreation. Initiated as a joint city-state project, the $400 million park is built on old Port Authority land and is operated and maintained by a not-for-profit owned by the city of New York.

Boston’s leaders made a different decision. They left it up to the private sector to drive development and offer public amenities such as parks, walkways, and cultural space.

The result: The Seaport District may be one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, but it is also one of the most soulless parts of our city. Instead of another Esplanade, we got another Financial District.

As if sensing another inferiority complex in the making, Boston Redevelopment Authority waterfront planner Rich McGuinness, who has visited the Brooklyn park, tried to assure me: “We didn’t blow it.”

McGuinness explained that when Boston started planning the Seaport District in earnest back in the 1980s, the city was losing population, and developers weren’t lining up to build here. To make the South Boston Waterfront desirable, billions of dollars of public investment went into the area: the Big Dig, the Moakley Courthouse, the convention center, the Silver Line. The intention all along was to get a return on our investment, even if it meant public spaces would feel like an afterthought.

My takeaway: Fuggedaboutit. We’ll never get a grand waterfront park in the Seaport.

“It would have been a lot easier to do it 10 years ago,” acknowledged Tom Glynn, who runs the Massachusetts Port Authority and toured the Brooklyn park with McGuinness last year.

Neither man is giving up hope that elements of Brooklyn Bridge Park can happen here. Boston’s waterfront is a lot smaller than New York’s, but as parks get built or are redone, both see a trend toward more engaging experiences.

Already, the A Street park by State Street’s building along Fort Point Channel includes a basketball court, a playground, and a dog park.

Jennifer Taylor for The Boston Globe

People walk and jog along the waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City.

In East Boston, the newly renovated LoPresti Park features an artificial turf soccer field and basketball courts with postcard views of the North End and downtown Boston.

Glynn and McGuinness also think that Eastie may be our best shot at creating an imaginative public space on the water, where development is not yet fully formed.

City Councilor Sal LaMattina thinks so, too, and during his own pilgrimage to Brooklyn Bridge Park last year he focused on how its ferry system could be vital to creating a vibrant waterfront.

“We don’t want every developer to do the same community benefit,” said LaMattina, who lives in East Boston but also represents Charlestown and the North End. He points to one developer in East Boston who wants to provide water transportation to Charlestown, while another might build a kayak launch.

Massport, a major waterfront landowner, also plays a role. The authority owns four acres of empty waterfront land in East Boston that is designated for public use — the so-called second phase of Piers Park.

What’s up in the air is who will pay for the next phase.

McGuinness also sees opportunity for more open space as the city deals with climate change. Boston may need to fill in some shoreline as a buffer to rising sea levels.

“We can create land,” he said. “Those are some of the fun things we are looking at.”

Feeling a little better about the future of our waterfront, I circled back to Canales, of the Barr Foundation. He was the one who holds up the Brooklyn park as aspirational after the foundation pledged last month to get involved in shaping the waterfront.

“There is an opportunity here, and we have multiple actors who can come together and make something exciting,” Canales said.

His favorite part of the Brooklyn park also happens to be mine: the sense that everyone belongs there, from locals to tourists, whether rich or poor, the kind of place where a construction worker would feel as comfortable as a Wall Street banker.

Regina Myer, the president of Brooklyn Bridge Park, summed up best the park’s most compelling attribute: “It’s a place that’s deeply democratic.”

We don’t have enough of those types of spaces in Boston, especially along the downtown harborfront. We may have lost our opportunity to create something on the scale of a Brooklyn Bridge Park, but we shouldn’t give up pushing developers and government to reimagine public use on the harbor.

In other words, we still have time to make it right.

Jennifer Taylor for The Boston Globe

A family enjoyed a barbecue at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City.

Summary: It’s not too late for us to improve our waterfront. Brooklyn Bridge Park is a model for success.


Facebook Live, the social network’s popular live-streaming video feature, has become a home for a wide range of content, including the famous video of a Star Wars fan enjoying her new purchase of a talking Chewbacca mask.

But the feature has a darker side as well. On Wednesday, a Chicago man was shot and killed while filming himself on Facebook Live.

According to Chicago police, 28-year-old Antonio Perkins was shot at about 8:45 p.m. while streaming video of himself and a number of friends who had gathered on South Drake Street.

Perkins can be seen talking to the camera while walking, and then multiple shots are heard, and he falls to the ground. The screen goes dark, but bystanders can be heard screaming in the background. The video had been watched more than 550,000 times by mid-afternoon on Friday.

Perkins was a father of three young children and worked at McDonald’s, according to a local radio station that reported on the incident. Police said Perkins had ties to a local gang, but his family told the station he was no longer involved in gang-related activity.

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A Facebook spokesperson told CNN that the video hasn’t been removed because it doesn’t violate the company’s community standards. Videos that incite violence are taken down, but Facebook said the Perkins video doesn’t fall into that category. The video does have a warning telling viewers it is graphic.

The incident is the second time this week that Facebook Live has been used during a violent crime. On Tuesday, an ISIS sympathizer in France stabbed a police office and his partner and took the couple’s 3-year-old son hostage.

While in the couple’s house, the attacker broadcast a message live on Facebook with the boy in the background. (He was later rescued by a SWAT team.) The video has been removed.

In March, a second man in Chicago was shot at while filming himself on Facebook Live, although he survived the attack. Brian “Sugar Ray” Fields was recording video while outside a store when a gunman walked up and fired 16 shots, five of which struck Fields. As he is streaming, the phone falls to the ground and the shooter can be seen briefly in the video stream. Fields is still in hospital.

Although he didn’t film the shooting on Facebook Live, the gunman in the recent attack in Orlando—in which 49 people were shot and killed at a gay nightclub—posted to Facebook and searched for mentions of his crime while he was still inside the club, according to a letter released by the Senate committee on homeland security.

As the popularity and availability of live streaming video increases, so does the potential for violent crimes to be broadcast live by bystanders, or even those involved. In April, an 18-year-old woman from Ohio broadcast the rape of a 17-year-old on Periscope, the live-streaming service operated by Twitter.

The woman claimed she was filming the incident in order to document the crime, but the prosecutor on the case said that she “got caught up in the likes.”

Summary: Facebook's live-streaming video brings violence and death closer than ever


The daughter of rocker Bob Geldof suffered the same demise that killed her mother — a heroin overdose, according to a report Wednesday.

News that Peaches Geldof, 25, the mother of two young children, died of a drug overdose came a day before British authorities were to begin an inquest into her death, The Times of London reported.

Geldof, a British fashion model and TV personality, suffered the fatal overdose April 7 while caring for her 11-month-old son in her home in Kent, England, sources told the Times.

Her mother, Paula Yates, died in 2000 from a heroin overdose, and friends said Peaches grew up haunted by the death. A day before police found her dead in her home, Peaches posted an Instagram photo of her as a baby posing with her mother.

Her son, Phaedra, was reportedly found by her side when police went to her house after a friend called them to check on her.

While Geldof had admitted to her own bouts with drugs, she claimed to be sober in recent interviews.

Geldof leaves behind another child, 23-month-old Astala, and husband, Tom Cohen, lead singer of the British punk-rock group S.C.U.M.

Upon her death, Bob Geldof, the 62-year-old Boomtown Rats rocker and founder of the Live Aid anti-famine campaign, said, “We are beyond pain.”

Summary: Peaches Geldof, found unresponsive at her suburban London home on April 7, died of a heroin overdose, an inquest Thursday is expected to show.


Seeking to refocus his presidential campaign, Donald Trump will lambaste Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a failed secretary of state who is out of step with Americans on trade and immigration.

Trump’s address Wednesday morning at his hotel in New York’s SoHo neighborhood marks his official opening salvo against Clinton, the prospective Democratic presidential nominee, in the general election. It comes as Trump faces growing questions about his readiness not just for the presidency, but for the campaign he will need to run to get there.

The Trump campaign is hoping the speech can quiet those concerns and rally Republicans around their shared opposition to Clinton. The billionaire businessman plans to focus in particular on Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, arguing that her foreign policy is in part responsible for the creation of the Islamic State militant group.

“Hillary Clinton had a four-year tryout for the presidency as secretary of state,” said Stephen Miller, a Trump policy adviser. “She ran the State Department and the world went up in flames. Everything took a nosedive, except for Hillary Clinton’s bank account — which swelled to new highs.”

Trump is also expected to cite Clinton’s past support for trade deals and her willingness, along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to accept speaking fees and contributions to their foundation from countries with poor human rights records. However, Trump is not expected to target the former president’s personal infidelities, as he did earlier in the campaign.

Clinton has been harshly critical of Trump, particularly since she wrapped up her lengthy Democratic primary battle. On Monday, she warned that the businessman would send the U.S. economy back into recession and said his “reckless” approach would hurt workers still trying to recover from the 2008 economic turbulence.

“Every day we see how reckless and careless Trump is. He’s proud of it,” Clinton said. “Well, that’s his choice. Except when he’s asking to be our president. Then it’s our choice.”

Trump had planned to deliver his address on Clinton last week, but he postponed the event because of the nightclub shootings in Orlando, Florida.

The Republican’s response to the attack was panned by many in his own party, who bristled as he took credit for “being right” about terrorism and suggested that President Barack Obama was sympathetic to militant groups. The Orlando gunman identified himself as an Islamic soldier in calls with authorities during his rampage.

On Monday, Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, hours before a new fundraising report showed that the billionaire’s campaign had just $1.3 million in the bank at the start of June.

Trump allies cast Lewandowski’s firing this week as the start of a new phase for the campaign. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman and Lewandowski’s internal rival, signaled on a conference call with aides that a rapid staffing expansion would be coming soon.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who has been seen as a potential vice presidential pick, said he was “pretty excited” to learn of the changes.

“I think that what appears to be occurring over the last 24 hours is a movement in a direction that I think could be very, very positive,” Corker said.

While Manafort, a longtime Republican operative, is believed to be in charge now, the campaign has not fully clarified who is running the operation.

“It’s not been written down anywhere, but you have to assume,” Ed Brookover, the campaign’s liaison to the Republican National Committee, said of Manafort.

As with everything involving Trump, the billionaire appears to be the only one truly in charge.

“I think I want to be who I am. I don’t want to be a phony like Hillary Clinton,” he told NBC’s “Today.” He added: “I want to be what I am.”

Summary: In an address Wednesday morning at his hotel in New York's SoHo neighborhood.


Ever since it was first floated a year ago, the idea of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable—two giant Internet and cable TV providers—combining in an $78 billion merger sparked concern in a number of areas. Some of the most vocal criticism came from “over the top” streaming services like SlingTV, who were afraid the behemoth would squeeze them out or use its market size to penalize them.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department approved the merger in principle on Monday, along with a separate deal that will fold in the smaller cable provider Bright House Networks. But in doing so, they tried to impose conditions that are designed to help streaming services like SlingTV—which Dish Network launched last year—and Netflix NFLX .

Will these restrictions actually prevent the newly combined company from somehow penalizing smaller streaming players or alternative services? Not everyone is convinced. But the FCC seems to be trying to impose conditions that will make it difficult, according to comments made by chairman Tom Wheeler. An order is expected to be circulated for the commission to approve later this week.

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The bottom line is that the merged company has to agree to an almost unprecedented seven-year package of restrictions on its corporate behavior. One specific restriction is that the new entity is forbidden from asking companies like Netflix to pay interconnection fees for what are called “peering agreements, “in other words, the right to distribute their content through the new Charter/Time Warner cable network.

Netflix was forced to pay exactly these kinds of fees to Comcast in 2014, after protracted negotiations with the cable provider over the streaming quality Netflix customers were getting via Comcast. Although the company said that it was just trying to recover its costs, the FCC later suggested that it was planning to investigate whether peering charges were a breach of net neutrality rules.

So the new Charter/Time Warner won’t be allowed to charge those kinds of fees. And that agreement was enough protection that Netflix signed a letter giving its blessing to the merger, saying Charter’s no-fee peering policy was “a significant departure from the efforts of some ISPs to collect access tolls on the Internet.”

Charter lands deal with Time Warner Cable

In addition, the regulators have forbidden the cable giant from entering into agreements with program suppliers—for example, TV networks—that restrict those suppliers from providing their content to online or streaming services. In theory, this prevents Charter/Time Warner from cutting a deal with CBS to get access to some of its shows, and including a clause that prevents it from licensing those shows to Netflix.

Charter has also agreed that the new company won’t implement “data caps,” which are restrictions on the amount of data customers can use in a month, and hefty fees for going over the limit.

Do smaller streaming services like SlingTV believe that the current deal protects them? The company hasn’t commented yet, nor has its parent Dish Network. The Stop Mega Cable coalition—of which the Dish Network is a member—released a statement saying the agreement is “an important first step,” but fails to deal with some of the group’s criticisms.

Do Millennials Really Prefer Their News in 30-Second Bites?

For example, the coalition said, “the conditions proposed in the draft order do not fully prevent Charter from using its dominant position in the marketplace to thwart competition from streaming services and to stifle competitors in underserved, rural communities.” The group believes that Charter/Time Warner should be forced to offer a stand-alone broadband service for those who just want to watch Netflix and other streaming services.

Summary: New cable behemoth will be restricted from penalizing services like SlingTV and Netflix.


CAMP SAYLIYA, Qatar, April 1— The world knows with some precision how many American and British soldiers have been killed so far in the war in Iraq: 73 as of late today. The names of the dead and the cause of their deaths are scrupulously reported by Washington and London, with some delay to notify their families.

But how many Iraqi soldiers have died?

It could be scores, hundreds, even thousands. No one outside Iraq -- and probably no one there, either -- knows. As in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and in Afghanistan, the American military is not counting.

American officials say numbering the enemy dead in the midst of battle is dangerous and ultimately fruitless. They say it is not a statistic that interests them. They speak in lifeless terms of ''degrading'' or ''attriting'' enemy military formations, so they can assess the strength of the force opposing them. They count destroyed tanks and artillery pieces and missile launchers. They count captured weapons. They do not count people, civilian or military.

''You know, we don't do body counts,'' Gen. Tommy R. Franks said a year ago in response to reports that American bombing killed 1,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Afghanistan campaign of 2001-02.

Even if allied commanders were curious about the number of enemy dead, the Iraq conflict presents a host of challenges. The Iraqi fighting force takes numerous forms -- regular Republican Guard units in uniform, fedayeen paramilitary forces, Al Quds volunteer brigades and a variety of irregular fighters who carry weapons but do not wear uniforms. Coalition forces also consider members of the Baath Party to be enemy combatants, even if they have not taken up arms.

American and British forces can sometimes estimate the number of enemy casualties in close encounters, like a battle today near Diwaniya, where a Marine officer reported that his unit had killed 90 Iraqi troops. British troops said last week that they had bombed a Baath Party gathering in Basra, killing an estimated 200 people.

But how many Iraqi soldiers have been killed by the relentless bombing campaign waged against Republican Guard units along the approaches to Baghdad?

Every day, briefers at Central Command here show high-tech images of buildings in and around Baghdad being blown to bits by America's advanced precision weaponry. Were there people inside? No one can say.

''Body counts'' got a bad name in Vietnam, where officers inflated casualty figures to win promotions and make their units look good. Often, the bodies were of innocent villagers.

American officers have learned that no figures are vastly better than bad figures.

After the first gulf war, estimates of Iraqi dead ran as high as 100,000, although the United States military never produced official or unofficial figures. Two years after the war, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst concluded that as few as 1,500 Iraqis had died, based on a high desertion rate before the fighting began and the small number of bodies found after American troops overran Iraqi positions in Kuwait.

''Ultimately, the numbers are not knowable,'' said Capt. Frank Thorp of the Navy, who is Central Command's chief spokesman. ''And besides, that number may not be an indication of anything.''

The British have adopted the American approach.

''We don't do head counts,'' said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a British military spokesman here, ''and we certainly don't publicize them.''

Iraqi officials do not release estimates of their troops killed, although every day they produce figures on civilian deaths and injuries from allied bombing and other military action.

Estimates of the number Iraqi civilians killed range around 500, based on reports from hospitals, witness accounts and rumors. On Monday, that number grew by between 7 and 10 after soldiers from the Third Infantry Division opened fire on a van carrying civilians that failed to stop at a checkpoint.

A group of professors and peace activists in England and the United States is trying to compile credible accounts of civilian deaths and keep an updated estimate of the total at a web site called iraqbodycount.net.

The group's current figure, based chiefly on media reports, is between 493 and 652.

''These are only reported deaths, not necessarily actual deaths,'' said John Sloboda, a co-founder of the project and a professor of psychology at the University of Keele in England. He said the point of counting civilian casualties was to gauge whether the war was being waged justly.


Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday likened refugees fleeing violence in Syria to “rabid dogs,” and said that allowing them into the United States would put Americans at risk.

“If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson, a front-runner in some opinion polls, said Thursday at a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama.

“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” the retired neurosurgeon said, criticizing President Barack Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees within a year.

Obama administration officials have emphasized the refugee vetting process, which can take as long as two years.

But Republican presidential candidates and dozens of Republican governors have come out strongly against the refugee plan this week following the deadly Islamic State attacks in Paris on Friday.

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives, defying a veto threat by Obama, overwhelmingly passed Republican-backed legislation to intensify security screenings of Syrian refugees and suspend the program to admit 10,000.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic relations, denounced Carson’s comments as “unconscionable,” saying they point to Carson’s “complete disregard” for American Muslims.

“It really is unconscionable that he would stoop to such levels in smearing people who are fleeing violence and oppression, seeking a better life. Something he, himself, would do if put in the same circumstances,” he said.

Carson said, “Who are the people who want to come in here and hurt us and want to destroy us? … It is foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening.”

Carson has called for Congress to cut off funding to programs used to bring refugees into the country.

Summary: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday likened refugees fleeing violence in Syria to “rabid dogs,” and said that allowing them into the United States would put America…


Grisham says sorry for child porn remarks

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 20: Author John Grisham attends the Broadway opening night of 'A Time To Kill' at The Golden Theatre on October 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by J. Countess/WireImage)

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 20: Author John Grisham attends the Broadway opening night of 'A Time To Kill' at The Golden Theatre on October 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by J. Countess/WireImage)

NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 26: Actor Sebastian Arcelus and author John Grisham pose as Grisham visits the cast of the broadway play based on his book 'A Time to Kill' at The Golden Theater on September 26, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic)

UNITED STATES - DECEMBER 7: John Grisham, author, member of the Innocence Project's Board of Directors and chairman of the Mississippi Innocence Project, appears before a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee hearing on 'Turning the Investigation on the Science of Forensics.' The hearing is focusing on the science of forensic disciplines, the need for scientific research and enforceable national standards, and other challenges faced by the forensic science community. (Photo By Chris Maddaloni/CQ-Roll Call)

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 20: Author John Grisham, wife Renee Grisham and family attend the Broadway opening night of 'A Time To Kill' at The Golden Theatre on October 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

Author John Grisham speaks during a television interview in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, April 10, 2012. Grisham's latest work is a baseball novella, 'Calico Joe.' Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

TODAY -- Pictured: John Grisham appears on NBC News' 'Today' show -- Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire

TODAY -- Pictured: (l-r) Matt Lauer and John Grisham appear on NBC News' 'Today' show -- Photo by: Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire

NEW YORK - JANUARY 27: Author John Grisham signs copies of 'The Associate' at Barnes & Noble Union Square on January 27, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)

NEW ORLEANS - OCTOBER 21: Author John Grisham attends the Innocence Project fundraiser at the Armstrong Ballroom in the Sheraton New Orleans on October 21, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Wolf/FilmMagic)

TODAY -- Pictured: (l-r) Al Roker and John Grisham appear on NBC News' 'Today' show (Photo by Peter Kramer/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 09: Author John Grisham at the Washington National Cathedral Centennial Gala on November 9, 2007 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage)

400557 10: Author John Grisham attends a benefit reading for Frank Muller at Town Hall February 2, 2002 in New York City. Actor and audiobook narrator Frank Muller sustained debilitating injuries in a motorcycle accident in November 2001. The event was sponsored in part by The Wavedancer Foundation, Inc. and the Audio Publishers Association and raised funds to assist in meeting the immediate needs of Muller and his family. (Photo by Jeffrey Vock/Getty Images)

NEW YORK CITY - MAY 15: Author John Grisham autographs copies of his new book 'The Runaway Jury' on May 15, 1996 at Barnes and Noble in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage)

Stephen King Presents an Evening with Pat Conroy, John Grisham, Stephen King and Peter Straub: A Benefit for Frank Muller and Family 'A Benefit for Frank Muller and Family' at Town Hall in New York City. Pictured L-R: Stephen King, John Grisham, Peter Str

Two John Grisham books - The Appeal and The Assassin

Book By John Grisham "a Painted House" Picture 2516

The Client by John Grisham

LONDON (AP) - Novelist John Grisham apologized Thursday for saying in an interview that many men imprisoned for child pornography offenses in the U.S. probably just had too much to drink and "pushed the wrong buttons."

Grisham told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that U.S. prisons were "filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who have never harmed anybody, would never touch a child."

He said many of those jailed "got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."

Grisham made a distinction between "real pedophiles" and those he said were being punished too harshly. He said offenders did deserve punishment, but "we've gone nuts with this incarceration."

Child welfare advocates criticized the comments, made during an interview to promote Grisham's latest legal thriller, "Gray Mountain."

Jon Brown of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children told the BBC that "every image is a real child who has suffered and every time these images are clicked on or downloaded it creates demand that ultimately fuels more child abuse."

In a statement issued Thursday through his publisher, Random House, Grisham said his comments "were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children."

"I can think of nothing more despicable," he said. "I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all."

He said that anyone who participated in child pornography "should be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

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Summary: %Slideshow-233230% LONDON (AP) - Novelist John Grisham apologized Thursday for saying in an interview that many men imprisoned for child pornography offenses in the U.S. probably ju


The climate change debate may seem mostly to be about science, but it's really driven by dollars and cents — what will it take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and how much will that cost? Of all U.S. states, California has taken the most direct approach to settling those questions through a pioneering cap-and-trade program.

More than two years into the program — which aims to reduce the state's overall greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — it's working very well, but it may not be doing as much as its biggest fans say.

"We think we do have a good story to tell," says Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, which administers cap-and-trade.

The program's quarterly auctions of emissions allowances have gone on largely without a hitch. The program has fit in, as was expected, with other emissions reduction programs implemented under AB 32, the state's landmark greenhouse gas legislation, including mandates for renewable fuels sources for electrical utilities and emissions standards for new cars and trucks.

It has done so without a measurable drag on economic growth. The program generated $969 million in revenue for the state through the end of 2014, and is expected to generate $2 billion a year or more in the future. The money must be spent on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

"What we've learned is that a cap-and-trade system will not kill the California economy," says Stanford economist Lawrence H. Goulder, who advised the ARB on the program's design. "The economy has continued to flourish."

The state's greenhouse gas emissions have declined since cap-and-trade was introduced in 2013, but "the jury's really out on whether we've seen a lot of reductions caused by cap-and-trade," says James Bushnell, an energy economist at UC Davis who follows the program closely.

That's important, because finding the right incentives for industries and consumers to reduce their carbon footprint may be the key to fighting climate change. All the options, including cap-and-trade, direct caps, and a carbon tax, are controversial, though some are more politically palatable than others.

California's cap-and-trade experiment is being widely watched because it covers the broadest range of industries of any such program in North America in the largest state economy in the region. It's also, as the Legislative Analyst's Office declared in 2012, "one of the most wide-ranging and complex regulatory efforts in the history of the state." If cap-and-trade can work here, it could work anywhere.

"California has provided a very good signal to other states and the federal government that significant reductions can be achieved through a market-based system," Goulder says. One positive aspect of the state's lengthening experience is that it has "drained away some of the fear-mongering" about cap-and-trade, says Severin Borenstein, an energy expert at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. For example, the state's oil and gas industry, which last year unsuccessfully lobbied to defer the Jan. 1, 2015, deadline for imposing cap-and-trade rules on gasoline suppliers, predicted that the regulation would drive up gas prices by 16 to 76 cents per gallon.

Borenstein and other experts accurately put the increase at closer to nine to 10 cents, and argued that cap-and-trade would be meaningless if the largest source of greenhouse gases, transportation fuel, was left out of the program.

To meet 1990 level goals, emissions must be cut by almost 16% — from 507 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 427 million. Every year, ARB hands out or auctions allowances covering that year's emission cap, which is reduced year by year as 2020 draws near. Factories and other sources of greenhouse gases can buy the allowances they need or sell any they don't need. ARB forbids speculators to hoard allowances — to avoid the sort of manipulation that fouled the state's electricity market during the deregulation era of 2000-01 — and sets a floor price, which will rise slightly every year, to signal that emissions have some real cost.

The goal is to prompt emitters to become more efficient users of energy. But the pressure is more of a nudge than a cudgel because of fears of imposing emissions limits so tight or costs so high that businesses would flee the state. "Although we were moving forward ahead of others, we weren't moving so far ahead that it became destabilizing to current businesses in California," Nichols observes.

Energy experts expect the auction price of allowances to stay close to the minimum through 2020, largely because the emission caps have turned out to be higher than what the state's covered industries are actually producing.

The state's other emissions mandates already have done much to bring emissions down. Another big factor was the recession: The state's greenhouse gas emissions fell 4.4% from 2008 to 2009, tracking the slowdown in economic activity, and didn't return to pre-crash levels until 2012, ARB statistics show.

"Current emissions are below what we would have seen even without the program," Bushnell says. "When we came out of the recession, everybody was a bit more efficient, and those efficiencies have persisted." Auction prices may begin to rise, however, if the state enacts more stringent targets for 2020-30, as Gov. Brown advocates.

A larger question, Borenstein says, is whether emissions regulations such as cap-and-trade do enough to drive technological change. "California produces 1% of world greenhouse gases," he says, "so it's not going to solve the problem on its own. Making a difference means developing new technologies that can be used in the developing world. If California meets our greenhouse gas goals by taking expensive measures no one else is willing to do, that's not doing it in a way that drives technology forward."

ARB's Nichols maintains that cap-and-trade is achieving that goal merely by establishing a predictable benchmark price for carbon emissions. Even at a modest $12 per ton, she says, "that's enough of a signal for industries to make dramatic investments in clean energy."

But it's also just one piece of a broad strategy to fight climate change. By itself, cap-and-trade doesn't answer the one most important question on climate change: Just how much are we willing to do to win the fight?


07/13/2016 AT 12:30 PM EDT

had fans applauding on Tuesday for the

addressing false pregnancy rumors. Not only did she explain that we wasn't pregnant, but the

alum expressed her dismay at how women are judged for their marital and maternal status.

"We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child," Aniston, 47, wrote. "We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone."

This isn't the first time Aniston has spoken out about empowerment and standing up for one's self. Check out some of her most insightful words on the issue below.

 "I think once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kind of falls into place."

 "The women that inspire me are the ones who have careers and children; why would I want to limit myself? I've always wanted to have children, and I would never give up that experience for a career. I want to have it all."

 "Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don't have to settle with a man just to have that child. Times have changed and that is also what is amazing is that we do have so many options these days, as opposed to our parents' days when you can't have children because you have waited too long."

 "I think people honestly just want to see me as a mom and married and barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. And I just want to say, 'Everybody relax!' "

 "You can undo a lot of things. If you're not happy, you can become happy. Happiness is a choice. That's the thing I really feel. Like with friends who refuse to get happy, who refuse to rise above the place where they're at."

 "I don't like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women – that you've failed yourself as a female because you haven't procreated. I don't think it's fair. You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn't mean you aren't mothering –dogs, friends, friends' children."

 "Inner confidence. Peace. Kindness. Honesty. A life well-lived. Taking on challenges and not feeling shame for things that haven't gone the way you felt they should have. And not feeling like a failure or allowing people to critique your life and make you feel like you've failed at something. That's just toxic noise."

– on her definition of beauty, to

 "As women, we do feel that we have to live up to an expectation whether it is on camera or going to the market or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is that that is not always the way it is. We don't always have our high heels on. We don't always have our hair and makeup on."

 "I think it's always important to reflect anyway, no matter what age you're approaching or what milestone is in front of you. Reflection should be almost a daily thing if possible. Because I was never a 'where do you see yourself in five years' person. I had no idea, and I didn't have a checklist, which really creates a lot less stress in your life."

 "When I was younger, I think I took a lot for granted and would beat myself up over things that were unnecessary. Now it's like, whatever state I'm in, whatever shape my body's in [works for me]. I think you just have to really appreciate that this is what's beautiful, this is you!"

Summary: Jennifer Aniston has penned a passionate essay on women being judged for their marital and maternal status – but it's not the first time she's spoken about empowerment


07/19/2016 AT 09:15 AM EDT

Before she was bombarded with accusations that she

speech herself "with as little help as possible."

"I read over it, and that's all," she told

on Monday before her speech. "Because I wrote it â¦ with as little help as possible."

But after Trump, 46, came under fire when it was revealed several passages of her

's 2008 address at the Democratic National Convention,

's campaign released a statement that Melania had a "team of writers" working with her.

"In writing her beautiful speech, Melania's team of writers took notes on her life's inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking," the statement read. "Melania's immigrant experience and love for America shone through in her speech, which made it such a success," the statement read.

Donald's campaign chairman Paul Manafort called claims that Trump plagiarized the speech "absurd."

"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," he said, adding that Trump did not copy Obama's speech.

"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values," Manafort said. "She cares about her family. To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."

In her speech, Melania spoke of her childhood, saying, "From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect."

Many accused Trump of lifting a chunk of her speech from Obama's which reads: "Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect."

Her husband, Donald Trump, 70, applauded his wife's speech on

, "It was truly an honor to introduce my wife, Melania Trump last night. Her speech and demeanor were absolutely incredible. Very proud!"

RNC chairman Reince Priebus defended Trump's speech, calling it "inspirational" and a "great immigrant story," but said he'd "probably" fire the woman's speech writer.

"I don't blame her," he told

. "Some of these things are pretty common types of themes."

Trump worked with a speechwriter for five to six weeks to perfect her speech, according to

. She reportedly did not use a teleprompter and hardly strayed from the script.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended MElania Trump during a Tuesday appearance on the Today show. "Ninety-three percent of the speech is completely different than Michelle Obama's speech," he said. "They expressed some common thoughts. The worst day of the convention is the first day â¦ the delegates and the media want something to cover, a controversy to talk about."

Summary: Melania Trump has come under fire after critics accused her of plagiarizing her Republican National Convention speech


It is closely related to the logical fallacy “reductio ad Hitlerum”, which says “Hitler (or the Nazis) liked X, so X is bad”, frequently used to denigrate vegetarians and atheists.

Common Godwin's Law appearances include describing women's rights campaigners as “feminazis”, comparing the former US President George W Bush to Hitler, or saying Barack Obama's proposed healthcare reforms are the new Holocaust.

In its broader sense it can be used to describe any situation where a poster loses all sense of proportion, for example describing New Labour as “Zanu-Labour” after Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean political party Zanu-PF.

As well as the descriptive form, it can be used prescriptively: so if any poster does mention the Nazis in a discussion thread, Godwin’s Law can be invoked, they instantly lose the argument and the thread can be ended.

If this is done deliberately to end the argument, however, it does not apply. This codicil is known as “Quirk’s Exception”.

2. Poe’s Law Not to be confused with the law of poetry enshrined by Edgar Allan Poe, the internet Poe’s Law states: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”

It was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in 2005 during a debate on christianforums.com about evolution, and referred to creationism rather than all fundamentalism, but has since been expanded.

Poe’s Law also has an inverse meaning, stating that non-fundamentalists will often mistake sincere expressions of fundamentalist beliefs for parody.

Examples abound – one particularly difficult-to-judge site claims that “Heliocentrism [the belief that the Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around] is an Atheist Doctrine”.

One that must, surely, be a parody is sexinchrist.com (WARNING: link contains adult material), a site that offers Christians advice on the rights and wrongs of such activities as threesomes and pubic shaving, among much more.

However, it is hard to be entirely certain, given the existence of christiannymphos.org (WARNING: link contains adult material), an apparently entirely serious site.

Here is an example of a parody site that embodies both Godwin's and Poe's Laws.

States: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” See also Rule 35: “If no such porn exists, it will be made.” Generally held to refer to fictional characters and cartoons, although some formulations insist there are "no exceptions" even for abstract ideas like non-Euclidean geometry, or puzzlement.

For obvious reasons it is not appropriate for lengthy discussion in a family newspaper, but the recent appearance of Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy, pictured above, was a (very mild) example of the law in action, and going mainstream.

The spread of fanfic, slash fiction and hentai around the internet, as well as the rise of furries, are making this law more and more accurate every day.

The other 33 rules change frequently, except one and two, which are “Do not talk about /b/” and “Do NOT talk about /b/”, respectively, referring to a message board on the 4chan.org website.

4. Skitt’s Law Expressed as "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself" or "the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."

It is an online version of the proofreading truism Muphry’s Law, also known as Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: "any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror".

Language Log quotes the following example, from Paul Ordoveza’s How Now, Brownpau? blog:

"For too long, we linguistic pedants have cringed, watching this phrase used, misused, and abused, again, and again, and again. 'This begs the question...' [we hear], and we must brace ourselves as the ignoramii of modern society literally ask a question after the phrase."

While Mr Ordoveza’s point is entirely valid (“begging the question” is a logical fallacy, meaning to "beggar the question", or assume your conclusion in your premise – not to raise the question), the plural of ignoramus is ignoramuses.

It was apparently first stated by G Bryan Lord, referring to a user named Skitt, on Usenet in 1998.

5. Scopie’s Law States: “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses the argument immediately, and gets you laughed out of the room.” First formulated by Rich Scopie on the badscience.net forum.

This law makes little sense without a background knowledge of Whale.to, a conspiracy theory site which includes such items as the complete text of the anti-Semitic hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as claims that Aids is caused by vaccination programmes, and that Auschwitz never happened.

It has been expanded by posters on rationalwiki.com to include any use of Answers in Genesis in an argument about creationism and evolution.

6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law) States: “If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.” Named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net.

Danth’s Law was most famously declared in “The Lenski Affair”, between microbiologist Richard Lenski and the editor of Conservapedia.com, Andrew Schlafly, who cast doubt upon Prof Lenski’s elegant experimental demonstration of evolution.

After what is widely held to be one of the greatest and most comprehensive put-downs in scientific argument from Prof Lenski, Mr Schlafly declared himself the winner.

7. Pommer’s Law Proposed by Rob Pommer on rationalwiki.com in 2007, this states: “A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

8. DeMyer's Laws Named for Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com. There are four: the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws.

The Second Law states: “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

The Zeroth, First and Third Laws cannot be very generally applied and will be glossed over here.

9. Cohen’s Law Proposed by Brian Cohen in 2007, states that: “Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that... …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.”

Has also been stated in the much longer version, "Whoever resorts to the argument that 'whoever resorts to the argument that... 'whoever resorts to the argument that... 'whoever resorts to the argument that... 'whoever resorts to the argument that ... 'whoever resorts to the argument that... ...has automatically lost the debate' ...has automatically lost the debate' ...has automatically lost the debate' ...has automatically lost the debate' ...has automatically lost the debate' has automatically lost the debate."

10. The Law of Exclamation First recorded in an article by Lori Robertson at FactCheck.org in 2008, this states: "The more exclamation points used in an email (or other posting), the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters."

It is reminiscent of the claim in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels that the more exclamation marks someone uses in writing, the more likely they are to be mentally unbalanced.

According to Pratchett, five exclamation marks is an indicator of "someone who wears their underwear on the outside".

Summary: The internet has matured into a world of its own, and like the real world, it   obeys certain immutable laws. Here are 10 of the most important.


Markets don’t always have a sense of proportion.

After doubling from their February low, oil prices gave up around one-tenth of their value in the six sessions through last Thursday. Since then, they have surged by nearly 8% with many people believing that the reason was the shifting odds of a “Brexit” vote.

The sharp swings would suggest that a nation with 2.3% of global gross domestic product was voting on whether to return...

Summary: Oil prices slumped and then rebounded on Brexit, but the market’s near-term fundamentals look poor once the dust settles.


France’s top court has ruled that International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde must stand trial in France over a 2008 arbitration ruling that handed 400 million euros to a politically-connected business magnate.

Lagarde, who was French finance minister at the time of the deal in favor of tycoon Bernard Tapie, is accused of negligence in the case. She has denied wrongdoing.

A special court ruled in December that Lagarde should stand trial, but she appealed. France’s Court of Cassation on Friday rejected the appeal.

Lagarde’s lawyers did not immediately respond to the decision. Lagarde, who was in China on Friday at a Group of 20 summit, has said she had acted “in the best interest of the French state and in full compliance with the law.”

The unusually generous 2008 arbitration deal, paid from public funds, prompted years of legal disputes that remain unresolved.

The investigation began in 2011, soon before Lagarde was named to head the IMF in the wake of sexual assault allegations against her predecessor, French economist Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The executive board of the IMF has expressed confidence in Lagarde despite the investigation.

The decision last year to send her to trial had come as a surprise because a prosecutor had earlier argued that the case against her should be dropped.

“Negligence” by a person invested with public authority carries a risk of up to a year in prison and a 15,000 euro ($16,500) fine.

She will be tried at the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special body that tries government ministers for alleged wrongdoing while in office. A date has not been set for the trial.

The case is part of a larger legal saga centering on Tapie, a flamboyant magnate and TV star who had sued French bank Credit Lyonnais for its handling of the sale of his majority stake in sportswear company Adidas in the mid-1990s. With Lagarde’s approval, a private arbitration panel ruled that he should get 400 million euros in compensation, including interest.

The deal was seen by critics as a sign of a too-close relationship between magnates and the French political elite. Tapie was close to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, Lagarde’s boss.

Summary: Accused of negligence in a 2008 arbitration ruling that handed 400 million euros to a politically-connected business magnate


One notes that during the period in which the Russian authorities were aiding and abetting their drug-cheat sportspeople, the nation hardly swept all before it in athletics.

To the outsider, it’s hard not to think either the Russians were so mediocre at cheating that they could not beat all their straight rivals, or lots of others were at it, too. As a largely unlovable member of the international community be it on the environment, energy, security, human rights or their punishing Eurovision entries, Russia makes an excellent bête noire for the Olympic “movement”.

Like laws and sausages, it is sometimes better not to see how sporting success is made. I am not saying that our British heroes are cheating but, if their rivals are, then it is a challenge not to be cynical about the sports as a whole. A bit like cycling and certain cricket teams, you either have to not watch or you have to keep telling yourself that it is hunky-dory. Do not think too much about it, just cheer!

Summary: Eleven days to go until the Olympics and there is a veritable battery of preview programmes available on television as broadcasters adapt the famous motto of faster, higher, stronger to include simply:


President Barack Obama outlined several points of Middle East policy goals before the United Nations Tuesday. Twenty-six years ago, America’s 40th president brought science fiction to the same podium.

During a speech before the United Nations in 1987, President Ronald Reagan spoke longingly for the world unity that would happen if aliens invaded Earth.

“Ronald Reagan, wishing an alien invasion on Earth because of the kumbaya effect it would have on relations among nations,” said Rachel Maddow on her show Monday night. “One of the truly weirdest things he ever said in public.”

Watch the full clip in the video player above.


With Yahoo Inc.’s deal to sell its core assets for a mere $4.8 billion, it is easy to forget that it once was more than an internet-industry curiosity.

There was a time when Yahoo made perfect sense. At Yahoo’s founding in 1994, no one blinked at the idea of re-creating on the web the “internet portals” that had preceded Yahoo—AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe.

As a single website that offered users everything they might want,...

Summary: Google and Facebook could learn the importance of focus from Yahoo, AOL and their ilk: Don’t try to be everything to everyone by copying, buying or mimicking the latest rival for users’ attention.