– Now we know why Apple canned iOS guru Scott Forstall: He refused to sign a letter apologizing for iOS 6's much-maligned map app, sources tell the Wall Street Journal—a letter that CEO Tim Cook wound up signing himself. Forstall was close with Steve Jobs, and indeed was once considered a potential successor, but he had a contentious relationship with other Apple executives. Forstall had recently been heard complaining that Apple had no "decider" without Jobs. Chief designer Jonathan Ive reportedly refused to sit in on meetings with Forstall unless Cook was there to referee, according to ComputerWorld. Ive, interestingly enough, will be taking over Forstall's responsibilities—which, Harry McCracken at Time writes, could make him "the most important person at Apple." Yesterday's other departure, retail chief John Browett, was asked to leave as well, sources say, though in his case it was simply because he hadn't fit in at the company, and had botched the implementation of a new staffing formula.

Expand this summary.

Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ||||| “Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.” -- Tim Cook

 Disaster recovery is on everyone’s minds this week as Hurricane Sandy spends itself upon the US East Coast -- seems it was on Apple's [AAPL] mind too as CEO Tim Cook engaged in a management reshuffle designed, presumably, to sharpen the company’s focus on products not politics as it puts its best design mind in charge of the future evolution of the user interface.

 [ABOVE: Forstall out as Apple CEO takes control.]

 Apple is a software company

 Apple is a software company. It’s hardware may be good, but it is the software that defines the user experience.

 At best Apple is all about focus: focus on the customer; focus on the products; focus on the company. Traditionally it operates in a series of silos, independent self-regulating units concentrating on one aspect of a software or hardware system, not necessarily in full knowledge of the final outcome.

 This is the kind of volatile yet mission critical environment that needs team players, not mandarins. I suspect that’s why Cook’s tossed Apple’s powerful iOS chief, Scott Forstall, out the frying pan, reportedly because Jobs’ golden child was too proud to sign the company’s apology over the Maps affair.

 Apple may be working away at its pride problem, after all.

 In a sense, Forstall couldn’t sign the document. He was responsible for Apple’s Maps, and in his presentation of the system he seemed to insist it to be the best in the world, which it wasn’t.

 That’s not to say Maps is all bad -- technically its pretty good. Turn-by-turn driving instructions are impressive, and the software’s choice of vector graphics make it smooth to use.

 What the technically-minded Forstall neglected to ensure was that the system was populated with enough geographical data to be useful. He also failed to warn Apple users or (presumably) the executive team that the software wasn’t quite ready.

 Signing Cook’s apology would have been an admission of error, which Forstall would inevitably have felt unable to do, as it would cast doubt on his credibility when delivering future iOS projects. He’d called Maps “fantastic”, after all.

 Focus on products, not politics

 This might have been acceptable while Jobs, who championed Forstall, was still around, but given rumors that the iOS chief was a political animal it’s unlikely he had enough support left from those he had been competing with to ask for their support. For example, designer Jony Ive reputedly refused to sit in meetings with Forstall unless Tim Cook was around to mediate.

 The Wall Street Journal notes:

 “Mr. Forstall's departure came after mounting tension with members of Apple's executive ranks. For years, senior executives had complained that he wasn't cooperative and showed off his close relationship with Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs. Without Mr. Jobs to mediate, tensions between Mr. Forstall and other executives built, according to the people familiar with the matter. The 43-year-old Mr. Forstall recently told people that there is no "decider" now that Mr. Jobs is gone, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Mr. Forstall also recently sent some members of Apple's iOS software team an email saying he felt the group wasn't working on enough big ideas in mobile software, according to a person briefed on the email.”

 Forstall’s clearly been acting up, and has found his success to be far from rubber-clad. For all these reasons, he got canned. Not that Apple puts it as overtly as that, saying just, “Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.”

 User experiences on steroids

 What’s interesting is that Jony Ive will be taking over responsibility for Human Interfaces across the company while Craig Federighi will lead both the OS X and iOS teams.

 (I’ve also heard one rumor this morning claiming Bertrand Serlet may return to the team, a not unlikely outcome given the increasing importance of cloud-based services to Apple’s device future.)

 While the future unity between iOS and OS X could yield fascinating results, I’m more interested in Jony Ive’s move to take control of the user interface on Apple products.

 Ive is one of the two-man team (Steve Jobs, Jony Ive) behind the iMac, a single product which helped resurrect the company in the late ’90’s. The award-winning designer’s deeply connected to the company, and his product designs are all about focus.

 You could argue that giving Ive responsibility for the user experience as well as product design gives him the opportunity to deliver incredibly refined, incredibly simple solutions -- products in which the design and the software interoperate at an incredibly subtle level, sucking users into viscerally pleasing experiences.

 Ive is probably one of the most respected members of the company, and given Forstall’s many years of work to develop loyalty within his team in order to support his growing corporate political muscle, Apple needed to field this business to an executive likely to command the respect of a developer group that might have felt unhappy at the departure of their team leader.

 Future focused

 While it’s likely Apple’s announced changes have been expressed in such a way as to put a positive spin on what is likely to have been one of the biggest moments in the company’s internal politics for a decade, the release also suggests other big moves ahead.

 “Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future,” the release explains.

 Mansfield announced his retirement from the company earlier this year. He’s now been persuaded back to lead Apple’s mobile mission, which will include development of new “ambitious” semiconductors and very likely also includes development of new product families.

 I continue to believe one sector in which Mansfield, Ive and the increasingly powerful Eddy Cue can stake some claim will be in solutions for the smart home.

 The departure of iPod father Tony Fadell to launch a company dedicated to such products shows the team must at least be pondering such plans. Interesting also is Apple’s decision to begin selling Wi-Fi equipped, iOS-controlled light bulbs in its retail stores -- a good example of the kind of thing you can do with slightly intelligent domestic devices.

 Add a dose of Ive’s minimalist design and the kind of power and security you get with the Unix-based iOS and OS X, and you could see the company transform once again, becoming the consumer electronics powerhouse it has inevitably been transforming itself into.

 There’s been some concerns in recent weeks that Apple has no ideas to follow up the iPad and iPhone: that once these products become mature the company has no hot new product sector by which to boost its future business.

 Seeking alpha

 I don’t believe that’s true for one solitary second.

 Merely because some Wall Street analyst hasn’t got a clue as to what the next technological imperative will be isn’t so surprising -- these people work for banks who’ll lose money blithely while still taking bonuses, and then approach the public they’ve been profiting off for years to get a bail-out when they get it wrong. Bean counters they might be, but innovators they ain’t.

 The new Technology group will be looking across the board at what kind of products Apple can deliver which exploit its existing technologies while opening up new business opportunities for the firm.

 Goods and services for the digital home would seem an inevitable progression for a company which has already prepared a chain of high profile, beautifully-designed retail stores by which to bring its future products to an enthusiastic public.

 Those stores are also products. They exist to entice customers into Apple’s world view. They are profit centers, true, but they are also gateways into the company’s vision of the world.

 That former Dixon’s chief, John Browett, didn’t understand the importance of the retail segment to company identity is possibly why he got fired. He thought he was running a shop when in fact he was presiding over a tangible expression of Apple’s focus on the customer experience.

 The vision

 Apple is among the first firms in the 21st Century to truly understand that a customer’s experience of a product doesn’t start when they get the thing home, it starts when they think of visiting the store to take a look at what they might buy.

 What Cook appears to have done is cut out the people who don’t share the vision he has for the company moving forward.

 He doesn’t want the executive team to collapse from the inside under the weight of political infighting; he’s quite prepared to wait until things are ready to ship, but demands his fellow executives are prepared to tell him if they aren’t. There’s not space for a one-man army in his team.

 This executive reshuffle is an expression of one year’s work by the CEO to identify those who can help the company move forward, to ensure focus isn’t on individual career progression, but on the main mission of the company:

 “Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world.”

 Through a few executive sacrifices, Apple should now be in position to focus on that mission and dance lightly to where the puck is going, not where it has been.

 Got a story? Drop me a line via Twitter or in comments below and let me know. I'd like it if you chose to follow me on Twitter so I can let you knowwhen these items are published here first on Computerworld. |||||


Summarize this article:

The world’s hottest couple, Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello, are engaged, Page Six has confirmed.

 “True Blood” star Manganiello popped the question to the sultry actress at Christmas while on vacation in Hawaii, sources tell us.

 “Modern Family” star Vergara, 42, has been spotted showing off a huge diamond ring on her left hand as she sunbathed and kissed Manganiello at a luxury resort.

 The couple has been enjoying a whirlwind romance, after only going public together in June. They were introduced at the White House Correspondents Dinner in May. A source told us of their engagement, “They are very happy and very much in love.”

 The pair also celebrated Manganiello’s 38th birthday on Saturday, when she tweeted that he was her “love” and her “best friend.” She wrote, “Happy happy bday to my love and best friend to the one who makes me laugh like crazy!” She also posted a picture of a birthday cake set on a table in a hotel room overlooking the sea.

 Happy happy bday to my love and best friend ❤❤to the one that makes me laugh like crazy!have a healthy wonderfull year babe!!!@joemanganiello A photo posted by Sofia Vergara (@sofiavergara) on Dec 28, 2014 at 9:51am PST

 Manganiello had previously said Vergara was his “dream girl.”

 He told People, “She’s got the butt, she’s got the curves, she’s got a beautiful face, beautiful hair, just gorgeous. And she’s feisty.” ||||| Sofia Vergara's ex-fiance Nick Loeb says she deserves happiness following engagement news Credit: Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

 No jealousy here! Sofia Vergara’s ex-fiance Nick Loeb couldn’t be happier for Vergara and Joe Manganiello. After Us Weekly revealed the couple of six months are engaged on Monday, Dec. 29, Loeb told Us exclusively the Modern Family star “deserves happiness.”

 PHOTOS: Sofia and Joe's romance

 “She is beautiful and majestic and therefore to be loved,” the Onion Crunch entrepreneur told Us. “Beyond all else in life she deserves happiness, the kind that only true love can bring.”

 Loeb and Vergara called off their engagement this past May, after dating on and off since 2010. Just two months later, Us exclusively revealed that the Colombian beauty, 42, was dating the True Blood hunk.

 PHOTOS: Joe and other shirtless hunks

 Fast-foward to Christmas day and Manganiello was popping the question to Vergara, who, along with their families, were in Hawaii celebrating the holiday and Manganiello’s 38th birthday.

 “He wanted to do it in front of her family,” a source told Us of the Magic Mike actor's Dec. 25 proposal.

 According to an eyewitness, after accepting her massive new bling, “Sofia was staring at her hand at the pool and couldn’t stop smiling. The ring is giant and very sparkly. It stands out from a mile away and is hard to miss. She and Joe are crazy about each other!”

 PHOTOS: Quick celeb engagements

 The now-engaged couple spent the past week celebrating their engagement at the luxurious St. Regis Princeville Resort in Kauai. “It was one celebration after the next and they had family around to make it even more special,” the insider adds. “They told the staff at the hotel it was a trip of a lifetime and one they will never forget.” |||||

– Sofia Vergara is engaged again, and let's hope this one goes a little better than the last one. After calling off her engagement with entrepreneur Nick Loeb—whom she'd been dating since 2010—in May, Vergara is now planning to marry True Blood star Joe Manganiello, whom she's dated for six months. Manganiello proposed while the couple was on vacation in Hawaii on Christmas, sources tell Page Six, and Vergara, 42, has been spotted around the resort wearing a telltale ring. "Sofia was staring at her hand at the pool and couldn't stop smiling," says one witness. "The ring is giant and very sparkly. It stands out from a mile away and is hard to miss." The couple met in May at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and started being spotted in public together in June. As for Loeb, he tells Us he's happy for his ex. "She is beautiful and majestic and therefore to be loved," he says. "Beyond all else in life she deserves happiness, the kind that only true love can bring."


News article:

Man, 54, Jailed For Trying To Forcibly Exorcise Devil Out Of His 80-Year-Old Girlfriend Share

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 A 54-year-old Florida man who allegedly sought to perform an exorcism to “get the devil out” of his 80-year-old girlfriend is facing criminal charges for physically restraining his live-in companion against her will, police report.

 According to a complaint affidavit, the victim told Pasco County Sheriff’s Office deputies that David Benes “held her down” late Monday evening in the home they share outside Tampa (the couple has been in a relationship for three years).

 The woman told investigators that Benes was trying to “exorcise her and get the devil out of her” against her will. The affidavit does not describe why Benes believed an exorcism was warranted. The woman called 911 yesterday after Benes allegedly resumed his “exorcising” attempts.

 Officers noted that the octogenarian had bruises and scratches on her arms, injuries that occurred during the confrontation with Benes. The woman also told deputies that Benes had removed batteries from the home's phones so that she could not call police or her daughter. He also allegedly took her car keys and “dismantled” the garage door.

 Benes, who appeared intoxicated, was passed out on a couch when first contacted by deputies. He subsequently stated that he was too drunk to recall what had transpired, though he did claim to have been “beat up” on the back and shoulders by the elderly woman.

 Seen in the above mug shot, Benes was arrested yesterday on several charges, including battery on a person 65 years or older and false imprisonment. He is currently locked up in the county jail. ||||| HOLIDAY — A 54-year-old man was arrested Tuesday after, deputies say, he held down his 80-year-old girlfriend and tried to perform an exorcism.

 The alleged exorcism started Monday. David Edward Benes and his live-in girlfriend of three years got into a fight, a Pasco Sheriff's report states. He grabbed her, held her down and told her he was trying to "exorcise her and get the devil out of her."

 At some point, Benes took batteries out of the house phones to keep her from calling for help, the report states. He confiscated her car keys and rigged the garage door to keep it from opening. Eventually she fell asleep, according to the report, and on Tuesday the exorcism began again.

 It was unclear who contacted authorities, but deputies found Benes' girlfriend sitting outside the home crying. She had bruised and scratched arms. Benes was on the couch too drunk to remember what happened, the report states. He told deputies his girlfriend started the fight "because she is crazy."

 Benes, of 2633 Albion St., was arrested on charges of domestic battery on a person 65 or older, tampering with a witness and false imprisonment. He remained in the Land O'Lakes jail Wednesday without bail. Records show he's been convicted of battery twice in Pasco County and once of violating a domestic violence injunction.

 Contact Alex Orlando at aorlando@tampabay.com or (727) 869-6247. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– A 54-year-old man in, of course, Florida is accused of trying to perform an exorcism on his 80-year-old girlfriend, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Police say David Edward Benes held down his live-in sweetie of three years while trying to "exorcise her and get the devil out of her." He also removed the batteries from the house phone, took her car keys, and monkeyed with the garage door so it wouldn't open. The woman is OK, save for some bruises and scratches on her arms, and Benes faces a slew of charges, including battery on a person 65 or older and false imprisonment. The Smoking Gun has a copy of the complaint affidavit, though it doesn't explain why Benes thought an exorcism was necessary. One clue might be that police found him passed out and drunk on the couch.


News article:

We ask if the 2012 rape and murder of a New Delhi student changed attitudes in a land that has long favoured its sons.

 The first anniversary of a fatal gang rape in India has been stirring fresh debate on women's rights.

 The savage sexual assault in December 2012 shook the nation, and the world, setting in motion nationwide protests and much soul-searching about attitudes towards women.

 The 23-year-old victim suffered appalling injuries at the hands of six men, after being attacked on a bus while travelling home with a friend.

 I do not feel so unsafe in travelling in busses, or walking, anymore. I have developed confidence in the people around, not much in the security forces but in the people around me … I would say [that] what has happened is that people have come out to the streets … there has been an expression that this cannot go on, and I think that is now contributing to women like me, even younger women, to start to feel a little more confident that they can protest against harassment, and they expect that people will understand and will support. Sehjo Singh, the director of programmes and policy at ActionAid India

 She died 13 days after her terrifying ordeal in India's capital, New Delhi. Prosecutors said it was an assault that shocked India's collective conscience. Women's groups spoke out about what they called a rape epidemic, and a widespread sense of impunity, in the country.

 Four of those convicted were later sentenced to death by hanging.

 The government has since passed tough new laws, carrying a minimum 20-year sentence for rape, and making stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime.

 Twelve months on, it has also introduced fast-track courts for rape cases, and vigils have been held across the capital. Campaigners, rights activists and supporters prayed and lit candles. But there have been mixed emotions.

 "I don't think things have changed. It's just that women are less fearful of saying what's happening. I still feel scared to go out beyond 11 at night." one woman told Al Jazeera.

 Another protester said: "I am here today because I have a mother, a sister, a sister-in-law, a girlfriend, who are not safe. In the days to come, my wife-to-be will not be safe and neither will my [future] daughter. Because in this country, where a rape occurs every 20 minutes, no woman can be safe."

 But commenting on the new laws, Naresh Agrawal, a leader of India's regional Samajwadi Party, said: "We are not in the favour of this bill. We talk about the safety and security of women, but the way the bill has included stalking, staring and other small crimes to be punishable as non-bailable offences, it seems that the society is being divided by them."

 And Farooq Abdullah, India's new and renewable energy minister, added: "Today we feel scared to even talk to a girl; such is the condition right now. Now I feel none of us is going to employ a female secretary, because god forbids, if such a complaint is lodged against us, we would be imprisoned."

 One of the hopes is that the publicity generated by the 2012 attack will embolden women to speak out. As such, the police say they expect to see a rise in the number of reported cases.

 The National Crime Records Bureau says the number of reported rapes almost doubled from 706 in 2012 to 1,330 in the first nine months of this year, and cases of sexual assault quadrupled in the same period, to 2,844.

 Looking further back, reported cases of rape rose by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2012, but the conviction rate dropped from 41 percent to just 24 percent.

 So, one year on, has the shocking rape and murder of a young woman helped change attitudes in a land that has long favoured its sons? Can perceptions casting women as the weaker sex be successfully challenged? And in a land of 1.2 billion people, is real progress being made?

 To discuss this, Inside Story, with presenter Sohail Rahman, is joined by guests: Sehjo Singh, the director of programmes and policy at ActionAid India; Srila Roy, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Nottingham, and author of books on gender violence; and Rajeev Awasthi, a lawyer in India's supreme and high courts.

 "I think after the Delhi rape case there was a tendency ... to talk of it as a specifically Indian problem … media seem to present it as a uniquely Indian problem, or a problem of Indian culture, and then question why are Indian men raping Indian women, and obviously that is a very dangerous discourse, because we all know that violence against women is a global phenomenon … What I would say [is] it isn’t exceptional to the Indian context but in every context." - Srila Roy, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Nottingham

 Source: Al Jazeera ||||| Students, Bollywood actresses and women's groups held rallies and candlelight vigils across India on Monday in memory of a young woman whose fatal gang rape on a moving bus one year ago shook the nation's conscience.

 Flowers and candles are placed near a placard reading: “Damini”, a symbolic name given to a gang-raped victim, in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013. The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student,... (Associated Press)

 An Indian woman adjusts her head scarf in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013 during a protest to pay tribute to a victim who was gang-raped on a bus on Dec. 16 last year which led to the woman’s... (Associated Press)

 An Indian girl places candles to commemorate last year’s gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Public anger against crimes against women exploded after a fatal... (Associated Press)

 A young Indian woman holds a candle as she joins others in commemorating last year’s gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Public anger against crimes against... (Associated Press)

 An Indian woman places flowers on the floor reading "Condolence to Damini," a symbolic name given to a gang rape victim, in New Delhi, India, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013. The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy... (Associated Press)

 Indians light candles as they commemorate last year’s gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Public anger against crimes against women exploded after a fatal... (Associated Press)

 The victim, a 23-year-old student, was heading home with a male friend after watching the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus. They beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries.

 The two were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

 Protesters and politicians at a public meeting in New Delhi spoke of changes in social attitudes, tough new laws and police reform adopted after the massive street protests that followed the gang rape.

 In New Delhi, Bollywood actress Swara Bhaskar led a group of musicians on a bus that performed street plays at several places along the same route taken by the rape victim's bus.

 In central Delhi, a candlelight vigil was held by dozens of students in memory of Nirbhaya, or "fearless," the name given by the Indian media to the woman because rape victims cannot be identified under Indian law. Prayers were held in a temple in a southern suburb.

 The attack sparked protests across the country. Tens of thousands of people held daily rallies, and newspapers gave intense coverage. The outrage spurred the government to adopt more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape and criminalized voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women. Fast-track courts were created for rape cases.

 Rape, rarely talked about in India's deeply conservative society, became front-page news, with demands that police do more to protect women and that courts treat sexual violence seriously.

 Nirbhaya's assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years.

 Four of the defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison, though his family insists he was killed. An 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

 There has been a surge in the number of rapes being reported: Between January and October this year, 1,330 rapes were reported in Delhi and its suburbs, compared with 706 for all of 2012, according to government figures.

 But the victim's father said that although laws on crimes against women have changed, Indians need to change social attitudes toward women.

 "Social mindsets have to change. Only then can we say a difference has been made. Only then can I say my daughter did not die in vain," he told the public meeting. ||||| NEW DELHI—An Indian court on Tuesday convicted three men for gang-raping an American tourist in June, an attack that prompted the U.S. to issue an advisory warning its citizens of the dangers involved in traveling to the South Asian nation.

 The men were sentenced to 20-year prison terms, said Vinod Kumar Dhawan, who headed the police team investigating the assault at a popular destination for backpackers in north India.

 ... |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– India today convicted three Nepalese men in the gang rape of an American tourist in a small Himalayan town, reports the Wall Street Journal, with each of the men drawing a 20-year prison term. The woman, then 30, now 31, was assaulted after accepting a ride back to her guesthouse from a truck driver, who, along with two other men, allegedly assaulted her and left her by the side of the road. The verdict comes down one day after the anniversary of the fatal gang rape aboard a New Delhi bus that catapulted rape into a major issue in India—and imposed a 20-year minimum sentence for it. There were protest rallies and candlelight vigils in memory of the event around the country yesterday, the AP reports. One Bollywood actress led a troupe of street performers and performed plays all along the fateful bus route. "I don't think things have changed," one protester told al-Jazeera. "It's just that women are less fearful of saying what's happening."


– A disturbing video getting attention on social media shows a row of eight Chinese bank employees on a stage being told to "get their butts ready" then spanked—hard—in front of their colleagues for "not exceeding themselves." The employees had been in a "Breakthrough in Performance" training class, and a man with a microphone asked them each to explain why they ranked lowest in the class, the South China Morning Post reports. After they all gave reasons like "failing to make a personal breakthrough," he whacked each of them on the behind with a thick stick four times. (After the third time, when one woman tried to cover herself with her hands, he yelled, "Take off your hand!") After the 75-second video, taken by someone in the audience, appeared online Monday and went viral, the president and another executive from the bank were suspended. Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union confirmed the video was taken during Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank's training on Saturday. NPR, citing People's Daily, says at least 200 people were in the audience. An anonymous staff member says that another punishment involved 16 employees whose heads were forcibly shaved. The man doing the spanking was a trainer, not a bank executive, and reportedly charges more than $15,000 per day for his classes. He has publicly apologized, though he insists spanking is "one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness."

Expand this summary.

Video Of Chinese Bank Employees Being Spanked Prompts Suspensions

 The president of a regional bank in China has been suspended after a video was circulated in which an official at a special training session went down a row of eight employees to deliver a hard spanking as punishment for poor performance. A second executive has also reportedly been suspended.

 In theory, the incident might sound like a parody of a corporate motivational session. But as the video shows, the reality was severe: a man wielding a section of wood repeatedly went up and down a row of male and female bank employees, striking them across their backsides for "not exceeding themselves," as China's People's Daily wrote in its translation.

 As the South China Morning Post reports, many people have "criticized the bank executives for the brutal punishment, which they said had violated the rights of employees."

 The punishment was carried out on an auditorium stage Saturday, in full view of around 200 fellow employees of the Rural Commercial Bank in Shanxi province. A video that seems to have been recorded by an audience member soon went viral, depicting the trainer making at least four trips up and down the row of employees and drawing clearly pained reactions from the participants.

 People's Daily provides these details about the bank's explanation:

 "The announcement made by the Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives said that this was a 'Breakthrough in Performance' training session for their employees. The trainers were hired from 'Hongfeng Leadership Academy' in Shanghai. One of the trainers graded their performance on June 18, and punished those who ranked bottom by spanking and cutting hair. "The bank said it has stopped the training session, asked the Leadership Academy and its trainer to openly apologize, and suspended several managing personnels from the branch. Economic compensation is in discussion for the spanked employees, said the announcement."

 According to the South China Morning Post, the man identified as the wood-wielding trainer has apologized for his actions.

 Citing the Beijing Times, the Morning Post adds that the trainer, Jiang Yang, explained that he sees spanking as "one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness" — and that he acknowledges that not everyone would agree. ||||| Two executives from a bank in northwestern China have been suspended from work after a video was circulated on the internet showing staff getting publicly spanked for performing poorly in a training class.

 The video, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed eight employees in yellow uniforms standing on a platform when a man with microphone asked why they had ranked last in the day’s training.

 The eight, including four women, listed reasons such as “failing to make a personal breakthrough” and “inadequate team cohesiveness”.

 With a thick stick in his hand, the man said “get your butts ready” and began to spank each of the eight in turn in front of other trainees.

 Outcry after film shows motorist in Beijing repeatedly slapping tricycle delivery man for scratching his car

 After three rounds, a woman on the far right tried to cover her hip and the man berated her, saying, “take off your hand!”

 The 75-second video emerged online on Monday and quickly triggered heated discussion online.

 Many criticised the bank executives for the brutal punishment, which they said had violated the rights of employees.

 Officials from Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union later confirmed to the news website Chinanews.com that the video was taken on Saturday when the Zhangze Rural Commercial Bank carried out performance training for its 216 staff.

 An unnamed member of staff told the Beijing Times that the spanking was only a part of the training that day and as another punishment 16 employees were forced to have their heads shaved.

 The newspaper quoted another unnamed female employee as saying that the spanking was a part of the training and the man with the stick was a trainer rather than a bank executive as some internet users claimed.

 Jiang Yang, the trainer from the Shanghai Hongfeng Leadership Academy who was filmed in the video, later issued a public apology online for his behaviour.

 He said physical spanking was “one of the most effective ways to raise consciousness”, although he admitted his training methods may not be acceptable to everybody.

 Jiang later told the Beijing Times the aim of the training was to improve students’ way of thinking and to encourage them to be more competitive.

 Pope says it’s OK to spank your children

 Unnamed sources told the newspaper Jiang charges 100,000 yuan (HK$120,000) a day to carry out training classes.

 The Shanxi Rural Credit Cooperatives Union, which oversees the rural commercial bank, said the two executives, including the president of the Zhangze bank, were suspended for failing to assess the training and a special task force had been set up to investigate, the newspaper said.

 The bank would also help employees seek compensation from the trainer, it said. |||||


Article:
When President Donald Trump took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday morning, he clearly wanted to have some fun.

 “You don’t mind if I go off script a little bit?” he asked the rowdy audience in Maryland. His prepared CPAC speech, after all, was “a little boring,” he said.

 For more than an hour, Trump held court, largely eschewing a teleprompter filled with prepared remarks on North Korea sanctions and remembrances for Billy Graham and the victims of the Parkland, Fla. shooting, instead choosing to ramble enthusiastically about familiar themes in his typical campaign style. (In fact, new sanctions on North Korea were supposed to be a major part of his CPAC speech, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin scheduled to give a briefing on the news Friday morning. But Trump barely mentioned them, giving them just a brief nod at the tail end of nearly one hour and 15 minutes onstage.)

 Early in his CPAC speech, Trump caught a glimpse of himself in a TV monitor and joked, “I try like hell to hide the bald spot,” turning around to show the audience the back of his head. He said his “administration has had the most successful first year in the history of the presidency,” touting the passage of the tax bill, confirmation of a record-number of circuit court judges and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as some primary accomplishments.

 And he returned to his election victory in 2016, criticizing the media and saying winning the electoral college is “much tougher” than winning the popular vote. (He did not win the popular vote.) The CPAC crowd started a robust chant of “lock her up!” when Trump mentioned Democrat Hillary Clinton, to which Trump responded that the Clintons have “committed a lot of atrocities.”

 In another callback to his time on the campaign trail, Trump read the lyrics to Johnny Rivers’ “The Snake,” a song from the 1960s that tells of a woman taking in an injured snake, who then bites her, chiding her, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.” He would often read it at campaign events talking about crimes committed by immigrants.

 As Trump pulled the printed lyrics out of his pocket Friday morning, he instructed his audience explicitly, “You have to think of this in terms of immigration.”

 During the off-script portion of his hour on the CPAC stage, Trump also tried to motivate the crowd for the November midterm elections – saying that if Democrats win, “they’ll take away your Second Amendment.” He asked the crowd to cheer for whether they’d rather have the Second Amendment right to bear arms or the tax cuts he passed last year, and the applause signaled a win for the Second Amendment. He didn’t mention the shooting in Florida that took the lives of 17 people until later in his CPAC speech, when he temporarily returned to prepared remarks.

 Friday morning gave Trump the opportunity to flex his freewheeling campaign rhetoric in front of a supportive live audience. It’s what he seems to enjoy the most about his late-in-life career switch to politics, and it’s what he gets far less of as Commander-in-Chief than he did as an outsider candidate.

 He seemed excited to talk about upcoming midterm elections, asking Republicans not to get “complacent” during the midterms. And looking ahead to winning a second term in 2020, Trump said, “Hopefully we’re going to do that very easily.” ||||| Midterm campaign Trump debuts at CPAC The president abandoned his talking points in his speech to conservative activists in favor of reviving greatest-hits lines from his campaign.

 President Donald Trump abandoned a scripted speech to conservatives on Friday to launch into a greatest hits roster of lines from his 2016 campaign, marking a return to candidate mode as he begins campaigning for Republicans in the midterm elections.

 The speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference was supposed to highlight tax cuts and sanctions targeting North Korea, but veered instead to familiar tropes, including his victory over “crooked” Hillary Clinton and a spirited reading of “The Snake,” an allegorical song that candidate Trump used frequently to illustrate dangers posed by undocumented immigrants.

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 It was a departure from the slightly more controlled, presidential Trump — who was back in evidence at the White House later in the day speaking alongside Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — and a sign that the president plans to lean heavily on what’s worked for him in the past as he tries to boost Republicans in the November elections.

 “It’s now his party. It’s now his conservative movement and there are no challengers. This was like a victory speech,” said Ed Rollins, lead strategist for the pro-Trump Great America super PAC. “It was the kickoff to the 2018 campaign — and the 2020.”

 Calling his first 365 days “the most successful first year in the history of the presidency”, Trump went off script to rattle through a list of superlative achievements — the “biggest” tax cuts, “heaviest” sanctions and record firearms prosecutions.

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 “I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative, right?” Trump told the crowd, as he ran over his allotted time. “We have put more great conservative ideas into use than perhaps ever before in American history.”

 Trump warned that complacency in November’s elections could lead to Democratic gains in Congress and, in turn, gun control and higher taxes.

 His revival of familiar themes — including not just “crooked” Hillary but also the “very, very crooked” media — prompted chants of “USA” and “Lock her up!” from the crowd at the National Harbor convention center just south of Washington.

 Republicans, who control the House and Senate, have advanced their agenda sometimes in spite of the president. Going into this year’s midterms, it’s far from certain that Trump, or the party, can translate those accomplishments into congressional gains.

 Democrats are defending 25 Senate seats, including 10 in states that supported Trump over Clinton in 2016, compared with Republicans’ eight. Still, Democrats hope to capitalize on Trump’s low approval ratings, scandals and an investigation into Russian campaign meddling to pare or eliminate Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

 As Trump basked in CPAC’s friendly glow, a former campaign aide, Rick Gates, was pleading guilty to charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller in a deal that requires Gates to cooperate with Mueller's prosecution of Paul Manafort, Gates' former business partner and Trump’s onetime chairman.

 “He made it very clear he’s going to campaign very aggressively in 2018,” Rollins said. “Whether that’s good or bad we’ll find out.”

 Trump urged the audience — about 1,000 people — not to get complacent.

 “We have a problem: We need more Republicans,” Trump said. “We have to worry — right now, we have a big race coming up in '18. You have to get out. You have to just get that enthusiasm. Keep it going.”

 “If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn't believe, they'll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen,” Trump said.

 Excerpts of the speech released before Trump took the stage suggested he would spotlight his administration’s announcement of sanctions on North Korea, advertised as the “LARGEST EVER.” But Trump mentioned the sanctions only as he wound up his remarks, and only, he said, “because people have asked” — without including details.

 Trump’s Friday address marked the second consecutive year he spoke at the CPAC summit. With the president’s conservative bona fides now cemented, the venue this year became an important event for rallying his base.

 CPAC is organized by American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp, whose wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is a White House adviser for strategic communications.

 Trump had a lukewarm welcome at CPAC last year. This year the president owned the crowd, but the gathering prompted furious debate among conservatives for its Trump-friendly list of speakers, which included Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide and alt-right hero, and Marion Le Pen, the niece of French National Front Party chief Marine Le Pen.

 Yesterday, Trump stuck to his conservative message. A week after a deadly school shooting that killed 17 in Parkland, Florida, he gave little ground on gun control. He called for an end to gun-free school zones and said teachers should be armed.

 “Well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches should be able to carry concealed firearms,” Trump said. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.”

 The president touted his deregulatory agenda and claimed that “Obamacare is just being wiped out” after Congress repealed a requirement that individuals carry health insurance.

 The president also paid homage to Billy Graham, the prominent American pastor and longtime presidential adviser who passed away this week at 99.

 “We will never forget the historic crowds, the voice, the energy, and the profound faith of a preacher named Billy Graham,” Trump said. ||||| President Trump Donald John TrumpWhite House revises statement saying Iran 'has' secret nuclear weapons program DOJ files charges against 11 suspected 'caravan' members for illegal border crossing Mueller planned to ask Trump about Manafort's campaign outreach to Moscow: report MORE told the Conservative Political Action Committee on Friday that if Democrats come into power, they will “take away your Second Amendment.”

 “They'll take away your Second Amendment,” Trump said. “Remember that.”

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 Speaking a little more than a week after the shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead one day after he offered support for modest gun control proposals, Trump offered some red meat for the conservative crowd and vowed to protect gun rights.

 Cheered on by the crowd, Trump told the audience that they must come out in force to beat history and prevent the GOP from losing congressional seats in this fall's midterms to Democrats. The president's party typically loses seats in a midterm election.

 "Don't be complacent,” Trump said. “If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn't believe, they'll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen.”

 Trump broke from the script to ask the crowd which one they would prefer to keep: tax cuts or gun rights. The crowd exploded with cheers about protecting their gun rights.

 Trump is walking a fine line with conservatives and the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of his biggest backers during his presidential campaign.

 The president is advocating for several new policies that put him at odds with the NRA, including expanded background checks, higher age restrictions on gun purchases and banning a device, known as a bump stock, that enables semi-automatic rifles to fire more rapidly.

 But the president said he’s been in contact with the NRA and that they’ll get on board with some of his proposals.

 “I can speak for all of the senators and congressmen and congresswomen, all the people in this room that are involved in this decision, that we will act, we will do something,” Trump said. “We will act.”

 Democrats are eager to achieve broader gun control measures and say Trump’s proposals do not go far enough.

 The president is also proposing arming some school officials so they can fight back against active shooters, which many gun control activists oppose.

 “Why do we protect our airports and our banks, our government buildings, but not our schools?,” Trump said. “It is time to make our schools a much harder target for attackers. We don't want them in our schools. We don't want them. When we declare our schools to be gun free zones, it just puts our students in far more danger.”

 The national debate over gun control has exploded over the last week following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

 Students across the nation have staged walkouts, participated in town hall events and organized protests to demand action be taken on gun control.

 The president met with families of victims and survivors of the shooting at the White House this week and has said the emotional testimony he heard from them has moved him to act.

 “There are not enough tears in the world to express our sadness and anguish for her family, and for every family that has lost a precious loved one,” Trump said. “No family should ever save and ever have to go in and suffer the way these families have suffered. They have suffered beyond anything that I have ever witnessed.” |||||Summary:

– “You don’t mind if I go off script a little bit?” President Trump asked the audience Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Time reports the president, admitting his prepared remarks were "a little boring," mostly ignored the teleprompter (including a segment on new North Korean sanctions) during his nearly 75-minute speech. For Trump, going off script mostly meant getting back to some of his favorite rally topics: the size of his election victory, having "the most successful first year in the history of the presidency," and "atrocities" committed by the Clintons (complete with chants of "lock her up"). The president warned of the danger and treachery of immigrants, reciting The Snake by Al Wilson. Trump regularly recited lyrics from the 1960s song during his campaign. It culminates with the line, "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in." Trump also addressed the topic of the moment: guns. "When we declare our schools to be gun-free zones it just puts our students in more danger, far more danger—well-trained gun-adept teachers and coaches should be able to carry concealed firearms," Politico quotes Trump as saying. Repeating his call to arm teachers, he added: “A teacher would have shot the hell out of [the Parkland shooter] before he knew what happened." Trump tried to fire up the audience for the 2018 midterms, warning them not to get complacent and allow Democrats to take control of Congress, the Hill reports. “If they get in, they will repeal your tax cuts, they will put judges in that you wouldn't believe, they'll take away your Second Amendment, which we will never allow to happen.”


The Beck-Massa affair was a case of two political extremists who have gone so far in opposite directions that these strange bedfellows have wound up on the same mattress: They are both avowed foes of the Obama administration and its efforts to enact health-care reform.

 Massa, who at first had said he was quitting for medical reasons but then admitted there were ethics problems, finally decided that he had been "set up" by the White House and Democratic leaders because of his opposition to health-care legislation. Democratic leaders, he ranted over the weekend on WKPQ, in Hornell, N.Y., "are going to ram this down the throats of the American people, and anyone who stands in the way of doing that is going to be smeared and they're going to be kicked out of Congress."

 Twice on the show, he urged listeners to "call Fox News" to get him booked on the conservative news network. Sure enough, Beck came calling. But there was a problem with this arrangement. Massa opposed the reform bill because he thinks it isn't enough of a government takeover. He wants a government-run single-payer system -- what Beck would call socialism.

 At the top of the show, there was a little flirtation.

 "I have hundreds of friends who in the past 48 hours think I'm Beelzebub, think I'm the devil, because I'm going on this show," Massa said.

 "I have several friends who think I'm the devil for having you on," Beck returned.

 Massa tried to be ingratiating to his host. "By the way, we actually agree on some things," he said. He urged Beck's viewers to tell lawmakers to oppose the health-care bill -- as though that may not have occurred to them.

 But Beck was unimpressed. He didn't understand why Massa, if he had truly been wronged by the White House and Democratic leaders, would resign rather than stay and fight. "Bull crap, sir," Beck said of Massa's explanation.

 It deteriorated from there. Massa suggested that Beck "stop calling fellow Americans names . . . socialist, communist, whatever the case may be." He also told the conservative audience: "You can't show up at a 'tea party' rally and claim that the entire budget deficit happened this year."

 And Massa, though he brought a chest X-ray to document his illness, had nothing to support his hints that Democratic leaders had made corrupt bargains and used thuggish tactics. "Name names," Beck pleaded. "Show us where to throw the dirt."

 But no matter how many times he was asked -- Anything new? Actionable stuff? Anything specific? -- Massa came up empty. "I don't know how to be specific," he said.

 In the show's waning minutes, Beck surrendered. "America, I've got to shoot straight with you," he said, looking into the camera. "I think I've wasted your time. I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time, and I apologize for that."

 Seems Massa's dalliance with the right was to be a one-night stand. ||||| Senate Forecast, 7/18: Republican Outlook Improves with Focus on Likely Voter Polls Our latest Senate simulation has the chamber convening in 2011 with an average of 53.4 Democrats (counting Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders...

 Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Appears to Shift at Accelerated Pace In April, 2009, when we last took a survey of gay marriage polls , we found that support for it had converged somewhere into the area of 41 ...

 Why Aren't Businesses Hiring? Friday's employment report was the second disappointing employment report in a row. It stated the private sector only create 83,000 job...

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 Status Update: Building FiveThirtyEight We're continuing to build our team of journalists at FiveThirtyEight as we prepare for re-launch with our partners at ESPN and ABC News... |||||

Write a summary.

– Eric Massa's disastrous interview with Glenn Beck yesterday has brought his brief flirtation with the right to an end, writes Dana Milbank. Tickle fights? Beck himself told viewers, "I think I've wasted your time," after Massa refused again and again to be specific about the promised Democratic dirt. And he called "bull crap" on Massa's attempt to explain why he quit instead of staying to fight. Turns out "Massa's dalliance with the right was to be a one-night stand," writes Milbank at the Washington Post. Tom Schaller called Beck's apology to viewers "one of the most honest moments" he's ever seen on TV. " It's hard to out-crazy Glenn Beck, whose show is sponsored by the Yoshi Knife, and gold brokers running ads featuring Gordon Liddy and the dude Matt Damon chumped down in the famous bar scene from Good Will Hunting. But this afternoon, Massa did just that," he writes at FiveThirtyEight.


Article:
A controversial email sent by a Georgia Tech fraternity member offers pledges advice for how to seduce women with the help of alcohol.

 The university is investigating the email, which went out last month. It outlines how to succeed with girls, encouraging the pledges of Phi Kappa Tau to give women alcohol and also referencing rape.

 “If anything ever fails, go get more alcohol,” the email says.

 If pledges succeed in taking a girl home, the email tells them to “Expunge. (Send them out of your room and on their way out when you are finished.)”

 Women on the campus told Channel 2’s Amy Napier Viteri the email is troubling.

 “If they’re not into it, to just give them more alcohol and just keep feeding them more alcohol until you get them drunk enough into your bed,” student Mai Dinh said.

 Another female student said she disagreed with some students who found the email funny.

 “So it’s offensive to every single girl. I don’t think any girl would be OK with that," the student said.

 Most offensive to Dinh was the sign off, “in luring rape bait.”

 “As in us girls are the rape for them to bait, that just makes me sick to my stomach,” Dinh said.

 Someone at the Phi Kappa Tau house told Viteri, “No comment.”

 The fraternity CEO issued a statement saying, “The referenced email is extremely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. The written expression of this thinking by a member is disturbing to everyone associated with Alpha Rho chapter and the fraternity.”

 Fraternity leadership said the chapter has suspended the member who sent the email and placed itself on suspension as the fraternity and Georgia Tech investigate. The university sent a statement saying they do not condone this type of behavior and are working to determine the facts. ||||| UPDATE: The AJC is reporting the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity placed itself on probation and suspended the member accused of sending an email with instructions for “hooking up” with females. This censure happened prior to the release of the email on Internet sites:

 “The referenced email is extremely inappropriate and does not reflect the values of the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity, Alpha Rho chapter or Georgia Institute of Technology,” the Phi Kappa Tau national office said in a statement released Tuesday to The AJC. “Currently, Phi Kappa Tau Executive Offices staff, Institute officials, local board of alumni advisors and the regional director are working with chapter leadership to bring this matter to a swift resolution.”

 I have never quite understood the appeal of fraternities and sororities – I prefer to pick my friends one at a time rather than by the dozen. I also hate theme parties.

 Nor do I get how fraternity and sorority members keep getting themselves in hot water by patently insane actions. With all those new best friends, couldn’t someone warn them that they were about to make a mistake they’d never live down?

 And doesn't anyone ever suggest that sending out a vile email in a mass mailing is akin to taking out a full-page ad in the newspaper?

 Here are two vivid examples of bad, bad choices, one at Georgia Tech where you would think students might know better.

 A fraternity member emailed a sexist advisory to his brothers on “luring rapebait” at parties with the help of alcohol. I attempted to share a line of the email, but there's little that's printable.

 In a statement to the AJC, Tech said:

 “Georgia Tech is aware of this incident, and its Office of Student Integrity is currently engaged in an investigation to determine the facts. Phi Kappa Tau’s national office, as well as Tech’s student-led Interfraternity Council, are also reviewing the matter to determine whether to take any independent action. The Institute does not condone this type of behavior and continues to provide resources and education designed to create a supportive campus environment for all students, even those who exercise extremely poor judgment.”

 The Tech frat email is getting attention in the blogosphere where it's being described as the male match to a crazed dispatch sent earlier this year by a University of Maryland sorority member to her sisters. That email – which I warn you is chockfull of expletives – led to the writer’s ouster from the sorority.

 Let me advise that both emails are raunchy, so read at your own peril. ||||| ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====

 Our news tip line just exploded. Apparently, an active member of Phi Kappa Tau at Georgia Tech sent an email to his chapter that is beginning to spread around like wildfire. In almost every one of the tips we received, the words “rape” and “creepy” were included. Upon further inspection, the email was, in fact, decidedly rapey and creepy.

 The alleged emailer is ΦKT’s social chair and rapey wordsmith. The subject of his email is “Luring your Rapebait,” and it reads as a “How-to” guide on talking to girls at parties, getting them drunk, aggressively dancing with them, then finally, closing the deal. And although he urges his brothers, “NO RAPING,” this is the rapiest tangent I’ve ever seen.

 Here’s the email:

 “Alright chods, some of you could use some help on how to mack and succeed at parties. Mostly pledges do, but some bros could use a review. For anytime throughout the party… If you are standing by yourself at any point, YOU ARE OUTTA HERE!!! If you are talking to a brother of your pledge brothers when there are girls just standing around, YOU ARE OUTTA HERE!!!

 Ok, if it is before midnight… A group of girls is standing around, grab a bro or pledge bro and go talk to them. First, introduce yourself and get their name, ask if they are having a good time, and then ask if they want anything to drink. If they say yes, walk them to the bar and tell them what we have to drink. If they say no and they look like they are in a sorority, ask them if they are in a sorority (DUH). If not, choose one of the following: where are you living, where are you from, have you been here before, how are classes going, or where all have you been tonight. Then proceed to have a conversation. IF THEY ARE HAMMERED AT ANY POINT BEFORE MIDNIGHT, JUST SKIP THE CHIT CHAT AND GO DANCE.

 Midnight or after, if you have been talking for awhile and they’ve had a couple drinks, ask if they want to dance. If you see an untalked to group or a solo girl, go up to her and ask if she wants anything to drink. If she says yes, get her a drink and then ask if she wants to dance. If she says no, ask her to dance. DANCING IS FUN!!!!! Always try to dance. If she does not want to dance and is with friends, say “aw thats no fun” (or something like that) and then ask one of her friends.

 Here is how to dance: Grab them on the hips with your 2 hands and then let them grind against your dick. After that slowly alternate between just putting your hand across their stomach, but make sure don’t to go to high (keep it under the boob) or too low(dont try to finger her… yet). After a song, start putting your cheek on the side of her cheek. ALWAYS USE YOUR HANDS OR ARMS TO GUIDE THEIR DANCING in order to maximize your pleasure. If she starts putting her hair over her ear, THAT MEANS SHE WANTS A KISS. Therefore, try to give her a kiss on the cheek. They usually like that and nothing really should ebcome of it. In the case, go for the neck kiss. If for some reason they aren’t down for a cheek kiss, just dance through it or say you are going to get another drink and see if they want one. And then repeat from the beginning.

 If the party is going good (a.k.a. there are a lot of open girls) try to escalate cause it’s awesome. Here is how to escalate: Try to twist her hips around to face you and dance front to front. FROM THERE THE OPTIONS ARE UNLIMITED! You can make-out with her (tongue on tongue), you can stick your hand up her shirt (not right away though), you can go for a butt grab (outside or inside the shirts), or use your imagination. ALWAYS START WITH THE MAKING OUT!!!! NO RAPING.

 A short guide consist of the 7 E’s of HOOKING UP! 1. Encounter (spot a girl or group of girls) 2. Engage (go up and talk to them) 3. Escalate (ask them to dance, or ask them to go up to your room or find a couch, depending on what kind of party) 4. Erection (GET HARD) 5. Excavate (should be self-explanatory) 6. Ejaculate (should also be self explanatory) 7. Expunge (send them out of your room and on their way out when you are finished. IF ANYTHING EVER FAILS, GO GET MORE ALCOHOL. I want to see everyone succeed at the next couple parties.

 In luring rapebait,

 [name redacted].” |||||Summary:

– Georgia Tech says it's investigating an ill-advised mass email within a fraternity that explained how to treat women at parties: essentially, get them drunk and into bed, reports WSB-TV. What's caught the attention of most critics is the signoff by an unnamed member of Phi Kappa Tau: "In luring rapebait." And among its gems: "If anything ever fails, go get more alcohol." (You can read it in full at TotalFratMove, but be warned, it's as raunchy as you might expect.) The frat issued a statement calling the email "extremely inappropriate" and said its writer had been suspended. The campus chapter also placed itself on suspension pending the school investigation. Aren't frat brothers supposed to help each other out, wonders Maureen Downey at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? "With all those new best friends, couldn't someone warn them that they were about to make a mistake they'd never live down?"


– Three inmates who famously escaped from Alcatraz prison in 1962 may not be so dead after all. In fact, new evidence that they survived has spawned a History Channel special and inspired a retired US marshal to revive the investigation, the New York Post reports. "This is absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had," says the ex-marshal, Art Roderick. To recap, three Alcatraz inmates—Frank Morris along with brothers John and Clarence Anglin—escaped by chiseling a hole into a prison wall and jumping into the cold San Francisco Bay, with homemade paddles and a raft made from raincoats. Never found, they were presumed dead. But two nephews of the Anglins have produced evidence to the contrary: They have Christmas cards signed in the names of John and Clarence Anglin, and Roderick matched the handwriting. But the cards are neither stamped nor dated. A photo that will be seen on the show, Alcatraz: Search for the Truth, "proves the Anglins may have been alive in the 1970s," says the Post. And DNA from the dug-up remains of another Anglin brother, Alfred, does not genetically match a set of bones found on a shore near San Francisco in 1963. In a letter, former Boston mobster Whitey Bulger says he met the three men in Alcatraz and gave them advice about navigating currents in the bay. "He taught them that when you disappear, you have to cut all ties," says one of the nephews, Ken Widner. "He told me, 'These brothers undoubtedly had done exactly what I told them to do.'" Sadly, Variety didn't think much of the History Channel special, calling it "overproduced, from the pounding music to the dramatic recreations." (A study found that the inmates might have survived if they plunged into the water between 11pm and midnight.)

Expand this summary.

In June 1962, three inmates shimmied through a hole they’d chiseled into the walls of Alcatraz prison and climbed up to the roof. To mask their escape, they’d placed in their bunks realistic-looking dummy heads they’d made out of papier-mâché and human hair from the prison barber shop. The three men — brothers John and Clarence Anglin and fellow inmate Frank Morris — grabbed makeshift paddles and plunged an escape raft they made of stolen raincoats into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay.

 Alcatraz officials have long stated that the men drowned, maintaining the prison’s bragging rights of no escapees. But now, more than 50 years later, new leads are being presented by the Anglin family, who are cooperating with authorities for the first time.

 They claim that not only did the brothers survive the escape, they were alive and well up through at least the mid-1970s — and may still be alive today.

 The evidence is offered up by the Anglins’ nephews David, 48, and Ken Widner, 54, who are featured in “Alcatraz: Search for the Truth,” a History Channel special airing Monday.

 The evidence has pumped life into the cold case, and has investigators lining up new interviews and planning to search South America for signs of America’s most notorious escapees.

 “This is absolutely the best actionable lead we’ve had,” Art Roderick, the retired US marshal who was lead investigator on the case for 20 years, tells The Post.

 The Anglin family sat on those leads for years because, they say, they were spied on and harassed by the FBI for years. But a desire to see the case solved before Marie Anglin Widner — the Widners’ mother and the escapees’ sister — passed away, combined with the cockiness of Alcatraz officials, inspired them to come forward.

 “[Alcatraz officials] were not willing to . . . say, ‘Maybe [the escapees] did make it,’ ” David Widner says. “That gave me the motive to prove them wrong.”

 First there were the Christmas cards, signed with Clarence and John Anglin’s names, that were delivered to their mother during the three years after the escape. They arrived without postage.

 In the History Channel special, the nephews take the cards and other evidence to Roderick, who retired in 2008 but is still working on the case. Though the handwriting matched, the investigators were unable to pinpoint the exact date of the cards.

 But the nephews also came forward with a photo — which will be revealed on the show — that proves the Anglins may have been alive in the 1970s. That really caught Roderick’s attention.

 “When you work these types of cases, there’s a feeling you get when stuff starts to fall into place,” he says. “I’m getting this feeling now.”

 The next big piece of evidence was buried — about six feet in the ground. The family finally let investigators dig up the remains of the Anglins’ other brother, Alfred, who was electrocuted during his own escape attempt from an Alabama prison. They needed his DNA: Authorities had discovered a set of bones that washed ashore north of San Francisco in 1963, which they said may have belonged to one of the escapees.

 But the DNA proved to not be a match, bolstering the Anglin family’s claims that the two may indeed still be alive. (The bones could still belong to Morris, though; he has no living relatives to test.)

 David Widner says he’s working on a book that will contain more evidence not included in the TV show. That includes a surprise guest star: Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger, who met the future escapees in Alcatraz. Bulger, in a 2014 letter to Ken Widner, said he instructed John and Clarence on how to navigate bay currents, and dropped a key piece of advice about being a fugitive.

 “He taught them that when you disappear, you have to cut all ties,” Ken says. “He told me in a letter, ‘This is the mistake that I made.’ He told me, ‘These brothers undoubtedly had done exactly what I told them to do.’ ”

 The nephews hope the special rewrites the history of Alcatraz, and cements their uncles and Morris as the only people to successfully escape the island, out of the 36 who tried.

 Roderick has lined up 10 new interviews since seeing the evidence, and is talking to US marshals about investigating in Brazil, where the Anglins may have ended up. If they are still alive (both would be in their mid-80s by now), international laws may not even allow extradition to the US.

 Nonetheless, Roderick would want to sit down with them to figure out how they did it.

 If they died and their bodies can be found, however, Ken and David want to bring the Anglin brothers back to the family plot in Ruskin, Fla.

 Says David, “We should get ’em a place ready.” ||||| Those caught up in the romance surrounding Alcatraz might be tempted to watch “Alcatraz: Search For the Truth,” a History documentary devoted to the 1962 escape by Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin. The curious, however, would be well advised to tape this tedious production and fast-forward to the last six minutes, which contain everything they could hope to glean about whether the trio, never found, might have survived the treacherous waters surrounding the prison island. Even allowing for the genre’s carnival-barker qualities, the producers have spread about 25 minutes of content over two hours.

 Told entirely from the perspective of the Anglins (that is, the guys who Clint Eastwood didn’t play in the 1979 movie “Escape From Alcatraz”), the special is built around information provided by their nephews, Ken and David Widner, two emotional fellows who are convinced the government has been after the family and that their uncles have been abused by the media. So they enlist a retired U.S. Marshal, Art Roderick, to help lay out their case, which includes various shreds of evidence that they believe prove the Anglins not only navigated the frigid waters but also made it to South America.

 Graciously setting aside what the “Search” reveals – with the Widners having begun expressing their belief the Anglins survived a few years ago – there’s no nice way to say that the brothers are an irritating pair, carrying rather sizable chips on their shoulders. Claiming the FBI harassed them, and that their only motivation is to set the record straight, they’re prone to getting teary-eyed when speaking about these half-century-old events, including their conviction that the feds killed another uncle while seeking information about the escapees.

 Nor does it help that almost everything here feels overproduced, from the pounding music to the dramatic recreations. So when one of the Widners reminisces about his mom receiving a phone call when he was a child, voila, there’s a gauzy image of a woman holding a tyke as she answers.

 Morris, whose genius IQ was thought to have been instrumental in planning the dramatic escape, is shortchanged by this version of history, which focuses squarely on the Anglins. Yet while some of the new details certainly appear intriguing, wading through the padding feels like treading water, or maybe crawling down that sewage tunnel at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption.” All that, and there’s still relatively little presented about the rich lore of Alcatraz – which has inspired plenty of fiction – other than a rather mundane visit to the island.

 Granted, History’s pursuit of younger demos with programs like “Pawn Stars” deviates so often from actual history that it’s kind of nice when the two occasionally bump into each other. Yet watching “Alcatraz,” those prone to lament the channel’s drift will likely just remember why their search for quality historical fare increasingly leads elsewhere. |||||


Write an article based on this summary:

– Millions of people pay for the privilege of leaving their shoes and belts on and their laptops in their bags during airport security screenings. But a study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says by making the TSA's PreCheck program free—it's currently $85 for the regular background check and a five-year membership—lines will be made shorter, the TSA will save money, and everyone's life will be a whole lot easier at our congested airports, the Los Angeles Times reports. The problem is hitting the sweet spot of having enough travelers going through the expedited PreCheck lines to justify the cost expended on staffing those dedicated lines. The original goal by this point was to have 25 million signees in the program and others like it (such as Customs and Border Protection's $100 Global Entry program), but by May, per Bloomberg, not even half that number had come aboard. The study published in the Journal of Transportation Security checks out different scenarios to see which would end up paying off for both the TSA and consumers, per a release. Although getting rid of the five-year fee of $85 for 25 million travelers would result in losing $425 million a year, if every traveler who signed up went through PreCheck at least six times a year, the cost savings would amount to $459 million annually from decreased staff and equipment costs—a net savings of $34 million per year. "It will facilitate more people going through checkpoints more quickly, make the system more secure, and produce a cost savings for the TSA," Sheldon Jacobson, the study's lead author, says in the release. "It's a win-win-win situation." A noted drawback: If the fee were waived only for frequent fliers, occasional travelers might be miffed at having to pay, as would those already paid up.

Abstract

 TSA PreCheck is the primary vehicle used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to promulgate its risk-based security strategy. To enroll in PreCheck requires travelers to pay a fee of $85 (or more, through programs like Global Entry or Nexus), which may provide an obstacle for some travelers. The TSA has promoted TSA PreCheck since it makes the air system more secure, provides faster security screening throughput for all travelers, and reduces TSA screening costs (both in manpower and equipment). This third point has led critics of the program to suggest that PreCheck should be offered at no cost to travelers. This paper explores this suggestion and suggests that for certain high volume travelers, offering them TSA PreCheck at no cost is economically attractive to the TSA. The additional benefits of a more secure air system and faster security screening throughput makes the no-cost option a viable strategy for ramping up the number of high volume travelers enrolled in TSA PreCheck. ||||| By offering frequent travelers free membership to the Transportation Security Administration’s expedited screening program, the agency can save money and speed up the screening process at airports across the country.

 That is the conclusion of a study by professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who offered the idea as a solution to the TSA’s growing budget costs and long airport lines.

 The study tackles a vexing problem for the TSA: getting more fliers to pay $85 for a background check to use an expedited screening line that lets fliers keep their shoes, coats and belts on and keep laptops in their luggage. About 12 million people have signed up for the program, dubbed TSA PreCheck, and similar programs for international travelers.

 But the TSA had hoped to get 25 million travelers signed up for TSA PreCheck by now, a goal that the agency said would enable the TSA to reduce staff and speed up the screening lines at the nation’s airports.

 The study, lead by Sheldon H. Jacobson, a computer science professor, calculated that if the TSA waived the $85 enrollment fee for 25 million travelers, it would lose out on $425 million a year in fees. (The $85 fee is for a five-year membership.)

 But the study also found that if 25 million travelers taking at least six trips a year were to use the TSA PreCheck lines, the savings would total $459 million a year, thanks to lower staff expenses and equipment costs.

 The net result would be annual savings of $34 million, according to the study, which was published in November’s Journal of Transportation Security.

 “The analysis presented here suggests that the TSA can justify enrolling such high-value travelers in the program at no cost,” the study concludes.

 Still, the report noted that some bad feelings might arise among travelers who are not frequent fliers and are not offered the fee waiver. Also, frequent fliers who are now paying the $85 fee may be upset when TSA PreCheck is suddenly offered free to new passengers, the study noted.

 A TSA spokesman could not be reached for comment on the study but Jacobson, the lead author of the study, said the TSA asked for a copy of the study Monday.

 hugo.martin@latimes.com

 To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. ||||| CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- There is an easy way to reduce lines at the airport, increase security and save the Transportation Security Administration money, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers: waive the $85 fee for frequent fliers to enroll in the TSA PreCheck program, which allows pre-screened, verified travelers to go through expedited security at airports.

 The study by computer science professor Sheldon H. Jacobson and graduate students Arash Khatabi and Ge Yu calculated the cost of extensive screening compared with expedited screening in terms of workforce labor hours and equipment. They found that costs saved by frequent travelers using expedited security exceeded the cost of waiving their enrollment fees for PreCheck.

 "This is an easy case where spending some money will save the federal government more money," Jacobson said. "There is a transition period - the savings are realized over the first five years, and then in perpetuity. So if the federal government is looking for a way to save money, giving TSA PreCheck at no cost to high-volume, high-value fliers makes sense."

 The study, published in the Journal of Transportation Security, looks at multiple scenarios of how many people would have to enroll at different travel frequencies for the fee waiver to be cost-efficient. The researchers found that the average travel frequency of those enrolling would have to be six round trips, or 12 screenings a year.

 "We only look at the direct cost savings in labor and equipment. We don't even talk about the savings in time of the passengers who would no longer have to wait hours in line," Jacobson said. "That could add tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which would be a bonus to the economy. More people could decide to fly, because of the time and cost savings."

 The benefits would extend beyond the cost. According to Jacobson, an expert in aviation security, submitting every passenger to heightened security actually has the adverse affect of making air travel less safe by diluting resources that should be focused on high-risk, unknown passengers. TSA PreCheck reduces the number of unknowns by pre-screening passengers. A traveler who wishes to enroll in PreCheck pays an $85 fee to be subjected to a background check, and if nothing of concern is found, receives PreCheck certification for five years.

 "The strength of PreCheck is the background check. It's not the item that we're trying to stop, it's the person with ill intent who we're trying to stop," Jacobson said. "PreCheck vets people and says, 'These people are not likely to be a problem to the air system.' They make sure you are who you say you are, and that your background shows no evidence that you are going to cause a problem."

 Getting more travelers enrolled in PreCheck - particularly those who fly three or more round trips in a year - would produce the desired benefits, Jacobson said, yet enrollment has lagged far behind projected numbers. Waiving the fee might entice more travelers to enroll.

 "We are saying to TSA and to the decision-makers in Washington, 'It's worth it to invest that money because you're going to get it back. It will facilitate more people going through checkpoints more quickly, make the system more secure and produce a cost savings for the TSA. It's a win-win-win situation,'" he said.

 ###

 Editor's notes: To contact Sheldon H. Jacobson, call 217-244-7275; email: shj@illinois.edu.

 The paper "When should TSA PreCheck be offered at no cost to travelers?" is available online.

 DOI: 10.1007/s12198-016-0176-z ||||| As the U.S. expanded a program to streamline airport screening for passengers willing to undergo background checks several years ago, the then-chief of the Transportation Security Administration dubbed it the “happy lane.”

 For the small portion of travelers now in the program that provides access to short lines, it may fit John Pistole’s description. But for passengers who don’t participate, it has contributed to security screening delays and growing tensions at airports because far fewer people signed up than the agency projected.

 Enrollment in the program known as PreCheck, and other similar plans, is less than half of the government’s goal of 25 million. Travel and security specialists blame inadequate marketing, the sometimes cumbersome application process and the mixed messages sent when many non-PreCheck passengers were allowed into the faster lines for several years.

 “They just haven’t sold PreCheck. They’ve got to sell it as a benefit,” said Charles Leocha, a travel advocate who is supported by airlines and other related businesses.

 Shoes On

 Passengers in PreCheck -- who are allowed to get through security without taking off shoes and unpacking laptops after paying $85 and undergoing a background screening -- say it cuts time off their travel.

 “I can spend more time at the office instead of spending time waiting in security lines," said Wayne Broadfield, 38, a Washington-based architect. He said he applied for PreCheck because he usually travels alone for his job, and it works well. "I wouldn’t fly without it.”

 Hence the "happy lane" comment by Pistole at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado in 2013, when he expanded the program.

 For more on efforts to cut down on airport waits, click here.

 The idea was the agency would get a far more detailed look at the backgrounds of large numbers of travelers, allowing it to focus on a smaller number of people and improve efficiency, Pistole said Wednesday in an interview.

 Pistole said the goal should still be processing about half of U.S. flyers through an expedited screening program like PreCheck, because most travelers are low-risk and the agency reduced the number of screeners because it was emphasizing security measures outside the screening lines.

 “You would improve wait times dramatically,” said Pistole, who left the transportation security agency at the end of 2014. “It has the potential to be a game-changer, as I and others envisioned it five years ago, but people have to have confidence in the system that a true bad guy will be detected, hopefully, before he gets to the airport.”

 Lagging Enrollment

 But even Pistole said he’s surprised at the delays in getting the program to capacity. The lagging enrollment has been one of the reasons that thousands of passengers have missed flights this spring in long airport lines.

 If PreCheck were operating at projections, it would ease the burden on the TSA, which is facing an increase in the number of travelers this summer. The agency has lost more than 5,000 screeners since 2011 as its budget was trimmed and it had to conduct more time-consuming security measures after Homeland Security Department Inspector General reports criticized the agency for missing hidden weapons and explosives.

 But another factor in the long lines is PreCheck and how it was altered in the past year, according to TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger and Pistole.

 In its initial years, the TSA funneled regular passengers into PreCheck lanes -- where fliers don’t need to take off shoes, unpack laptops or remove liquids -- to ensure that there were enough people to justify the newly created lines.

 Unacceptable Risk

 That process was an “unacceptable risk to aviation security” because additional steps the agency was supposed to take to ensure people didn’t take advantage of the program often weren’t followed, Inspector General John Roth said in a report last year.

 Neffenger, who took over TSA in July, halted that portion of the program, forcing passengers back into regular screening lanes, adding another burden that has swelled lines.

 “One of my fundamental priorities is to dramatically expand the PreCheck population and to dramatically expand the capability to enroll people in PreCheck,” he told the House Homeland Security Committee at a hearing on Wednesday.

 Neffenger’s shift in the agency’s priorities last year after Pistole left took some of the wind out of PreCheck, said Jeff Price, an aviation security consultant and professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

 Trusted Traveler

 “John Pistole was really the one who finally brought a trusted traveler program that TSA liked,” Price said. “After Pistole left, they had the big blowup over the screening failures, and Neffenger walked right into that buzzsaw.”

 Responding to the screening failures became the focal point at Neffenger’s confirmation hearings, and the TSA’s priorities changed, according to Price. One of the first things they did was to slow down the lines and stopped worrying so much about PreCheck.

 “Problem is, all of their future passenger projections were based on having 25 million people in PreCheck by this year,” he said. The program includes 2.8 million people. “When you make that much of a mis-estimation, you’re going to see what you see today.”

 PreCheck is enrolling about 16,000 new members a day, up from 8,000 in April, TSA spokesman Michael England said. TSA grants PreCheck privileges to about 6.7 million other so-called trusted traveler programs, such as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry.

 Frequent Fliers

 In the early days of the program under Pistole, passengers who qualified for PreCheck were drawn from airline frequent flier lists. In 2013, he expanded it to people who applied, paid the fee and were checked against lists of criminals and suspected terrorists.

 As the fledgling program got off the ground, keeping PreCheck lines full by adding people from frequent flier programs and from regular lines was necessary. But it had the unintended consequence of leading people to think they didn’t need to actually apply, according to Stewart Verdery, a former assistant secretary at the Homeland Security Department who founded Monument Policy Group in Washington.

 “It gave a totally mixed message about what the program was. It was a huge misstep,” said Verdery, whose firm represents MorphoTrust USA, the company that processes PreCheck applications.

 Now that security lines are growing, the TSA has at times had to shut its PreCheck lanes to so screeners could focus on regular passengers, derailing the benefits of the program, Kerry Philipovitch, senior vice president for customer experience at American Airlines said at a congressional hearing Thursday.

 “It’s a service TSA is selling and people are paying for, and they are incredibly frustrated when those lines are closed,” she said.

 Offering Perks

 Syracuse, New York, Hancock International Airport has boosted its PreCheck membership to about 40 percent of travelers because it has an enrollment center and offers perks such as free parking for members, Christina Callahan, the airport’s executive director, told the hearing.

 Syracuse is in the district of Representative John Katko, the Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s transportation security subcommittee.

 One way to quickly expand the program would be to automatically add U.S. government workers who have already cleared a background check, according to Sharon Pinkerton, senior vice president for legislative and regulatory policy at the trade group Airlines for America. The TSA already automatically includes U.S. judges and members of Congress.

 Pistole said PreCheck enrollment could be expanded by adding locations where people can apply. Applicants must apply in person to verify their identity at one of about 300 locations. The government is proposing using outside contractors, who would receive a portion of the PreCheck fee, to expand the number of locations and improve marketing.

 Privacy and civil liberties questions have delayed that effort for years, Pistole said. The agency had to write rules and regulations and work out liability issues, he said.

 “I had hoped it would be done before I left and they’re still working on it,” Pistole said. |||||


[ video unavailable on this device ]

 16-year-old New Zealand singer Lorde is VH1’s You Oughta Know artist for September. Lorde (née Ella Yelich-O’Connor) might still be a teenaged school girl in New Zealand, but her single “Royals” has made her an international alternative music princess. “Royals” became the first song by a female artist to top the Billboard Alternative charts since Tracey Bonham cracked it 17 years ago with “Mother Mother,” and the song has also been called the fastest charting alternative song since Gotye‘s “Somebody That I Used To Know.” So what inspired the hit song that takes its own hit at the luxurious lifestyles of famous musicians? Apparently a National Geographic photo…

 “I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs,” Lorde told us when we sat down with her recently. “He was a baseball player and his shirt said, ‘Royals.'” Lorde was so taken by the image and the word that she penned the song around that idea. “It was just that word. It’s really cool.”

 It wasn’t just a photo of a baseball player, though. Lorde is also a massive history buff and her love of the real life royals of the past also played a part in creating the song.

 “Obviously I’ve had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life.” She adds, “Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago…they’re like rock stars. If there was a TMZ 500 years ago, it would be about like Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.”

 For more information on VH1’s latest You Oughta Know artist, be sure and check out Lorde.VH1.com all month long. ||||| × San Francisco radio station bans the song “Royals” from airwaves

 SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — A California radio station has banned a popular song until the conclusion of the World Series.

 According to a website belonging to a San Fransico radio station, 96.5 KOIT, employees there have received numerous requests via emails and social media asking the station to ban the song “Royals” by recording artist Lorde until the “San Francisco Giants win the World Series.”

 “Why are you playing Royals by Lorde still, are you a Royals supporter or Giants?” wrote one listener.

 “Go Giants! KOIT why are you still playing Royals by Lorde? #gottogo” wrote another.

 The program director of the station responded by saying: “Our listeners told us to do it, so we did it! As of 4pm today we’ve removed Lorde- Royals from the our playlist until the end of the World Series. Go Giants, beat the Royals!”

 The first pitch for Game One of the World Series, which will occur on Tuesday, October 21, is slated for 7:07 p.m. between the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants.

 CLICK HERE to hear Kansas City Royals’ own version of the song. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– From now until the end of the World Series, you probably won't be hearing Lorde's hit song, "Royals," playing in San Francisco. Locals have been asking the city's radio stations to ban the song until the series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals comes to a close, and at least two have obliged, Yahoo Sports reports. "No offense, Lorde, but for the duration of the World Series, KFOG Radio will be a 'Royals'-free zone. We're sure you understand," wrote one station on Facebook. And according to Fox 4, 96.5 KOIT has also decided to keep the song off-air for the duration of the series. Interestingly, the Kansas City Royals partially inspired the song, Lorde told VH1 last year. “I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs," she explained. "He was a baseball player and his shirt said, 'Royals.' ... It was just that word. It's really cool."


ANCHORAGE -

 Alaska State Troopers say two men skiing in the Rainbow Mountains were caught in an avalanche Saturday afternoon, with one killed and the other digging himself out from the snow to summon help.

 In a Sunday AST dispatch, troopers say the dead man is “tentatively identified” as 35-year-old Eric Peterson of Delta Junction. AST spokeswoman says Peterson's next of kin have been notified, but his body hasn’t been recovered.

 Black Rapids Lodge volunteer David Savage, about 20 miles down the road from the site of the avalanche, said Sunday that the lodge is owned by the man troopers named as the surviving skier -- 63-year-old Fairbanks resident Michael Hopper. According to Savage, Hopper has spent a lot of time in the mountains around Black Rapids, and the lodge holds a course in avalanche safety ever year.

 “Mike is very educated in those mountains,” Savage said. “Those mountains can be unpredictable.”

 Troopers say the avalanche occurred almost directly behind the two skiers.

 “It was reported that (Hopper) had been skiing with a man tentatively identified as (Peterson) when they heard a ‘whoomp’ from the snow about 20 feet above them,” troopers wrote. “Hopper reported it took him 2-3 hours to dig himself out. Once he was free he located Peterson’s glove and dug down and found Peterson deceased.”

 Kimberly McRoberts told Channel 2 she was driving at about Mile 205 on the Richardson Highway at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday when she saw a headlamp near the road. She drove on for about a mile, then turned around and spoke with Hopper, who said she was the second motorist to spot him; he had used the first driver's cellphone to call 911, and was seeking a ride north.

 In addition to AST, military members from Black Rapids as well as the Fort Greely Fire Department and Rural Delta Fire and Rescue responded to the scene.

 “The area Hopper was skiing in is widely unstable and continuing to deteriorate with the additional heavy snowfall,” troopers wrote. “AST will attempt to recover the body when the weather and conditions permit.”

 This is a developing story. Please check KTUU.com and the Channel 2 newscasts for updates.

 Channel 2’s Chris Klint contributed information to this story. ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– A backcountry skier in the upper reaches of Alaska died after he was buried in a surprise avalanche in the Rainbow Mountains on Saturday evening, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. Eric Peterson, 35, and his friend, 63-year-old Michael Hopper, had been enjoying their late-afternoon ski when the two heard a "whoomp" sound from about 20 feet above them, an Alaska State Troopers dispatch noted yesterday. The snow barreled down the mountain and covered the two men, but Hopper was able to extricate himself after two to three hours of strenuous digging. He found his friend's glove and started clawing through the snow until he got to Peterson's body, at which point he hightailed it to the Richardson Highway to find help. David Savage, a volunteer at the Lodge at Black Rapids about 20 miles away, says Hopper is the owner of the lodge and very familiar with weather conditions in that neck of the woods, spending plenty of time in the mountains there and even holding an avalanche safety course once a year at the lodge, KTUU reports. "Mike is very educated in those mountains," Savage says, adding, "Those mountains can be unpredictable." Indeed, the trooper dispatch noted that where Hopper and Peterson were skiing "is widely unstable and continuing to deteriorate with the additional heavy snowfall," which is holding up efforts to recover Peterson's body. His family has been notified of his death, KTUU notes. (Avalanches could possibly halt future Everest attempts.)