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Judge says he accepts intention of chef, who murdered four men, was to cause serious harm rather than death

 The serial killer Stephen Port has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of four young gay men he drugged and raped before dumping their bodies near his east London flat.

 The 41-year-old chef, who had a fetish for sex with unconscious boyish-looking men, was convicted on Wednesday of the murders of Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull, Gabriel Kovari, 22, originally from Slovakia, Daniel Whitworth, 21, a chef from Kent, and Jack Taylor, 25, a forklift driver from Dagenham.

 Sentencing Port to a whole-life order, Mr Justice Openshaw said: “I accept his intention was only to cause really serious harm rather than cause death but he must have known and foreseen there was a high risk of death, the more so after the death of Anthony Walgate, the first victim.”

 He said: “The murders were committed as part of a persistent course of conduct of the defendant surreptitiously drugging these young men so that he could penetrate them while they were unconscious.

 “A significant degree of planning went into obtaining the drugs in advance and in luring the victims to his flat. Having killed them by administering an overdose, he dragged them out into the street in one case, or took them to the churchyard in the other cases, and abandoned their bodies in a manner which robbed them of their dignity, and thereby greatly increased the distress of their loving families.”

 The judge said: “I have no doubt that the seriousness of the offending is so exceptionally high that the whole-life order is justified; indeed it is required. The sentence therefore upon the counts of murder is a sentence of life imprisonment. I decline to set a minimum term. The result is a whole-life sentence and the defendant will die in prison.”

 There were loud cheers and applause from family members in court, while someone in the public gallery shouted out: “I hope you die a long, slow death, you piece of shit.”

 DCI Tim Duffield, senior investigating officer from the Met’s homicide and major crime command, said: “These evil crimes have left entire families, a community and a nation in shock.”

 He said Port was one of the most dangerous individuals he had encountered in almost 28 years of policing and that a full-life term in prison was the only appropriate punishment in the circumstances.

 Outside court, Taylor’s sister Donna said: “We finally have justice for Jack and the other boys. A sick and twisted scumbag will never be able to hurt or destroy any other family’s life. Jack can finally rest in peace. We will always be completely heartbroken.”

 The judge highlighted Port’s attempt to cover up two of his murders with a fake suicide note as “wicked and monstrous”.

 All four men died after being given fatal overdoses of the date-rape drug GHB, also known as G or liquid ecstasy. Port was convicted of 22 offences against 11 men, including drugging and sex offences against seven men who survived their encounters with him.

 Despite striking similarities between the four murders, which were carried out over 15 months, the Metropolitan police failed to link them until the family of Taylor, his final victim, forced them to re-examine all the deaths.

 The Taylor family are planning to sue the force, and believe Port would not have been stopped if they had not fought for a full investigation.

 The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating the Met’s initial response to the murders, including whether “discrimination played any part in actions and decisions”.

 The judge referred to the police investigation in his sentencing remarks, saying: “It is not to me to say whether the seeming bizarre coincidence of these three gay young men being found dead so close together might have given rise to suspicions that these deaths were not the result of ordinary self-administered drug overdoses but that is how their deaths, including Jack Taylor’s death, were treated at the time; the competence and adequacy of the investigation will later be examined by others.”

 He said police had accepted the death of Port’s first victim, Walgate, “at face value”, adding: “Whether the police were right to do so, in the light of what they knew or ought to have found out, is for others to decide having thoroughly inquired into the matter, which it has not been appropriate for us to do in the course of the criminal trial.”

 The public gallery at the Old Bailey court was packed, and all the members of the jury had returned to court to hear the sentencing.

 Ahead of sentencing, Jonathan Rees QC, prosecuting, read aloud to the court from victim impact statements. Relatives of Walgate described their “devastation”. His mother said her son was clever, funny and talented and wanted to be a famous fashion designer. Port had not only destroyed their family, but had destroyed his own, she said.

 Kovari’s brother, Adam, said the impact on his family of the loss of his only brother could “hardly be described in words”, said Rees. His murder had “changed their lives for ever”.

 Adam Whitworth, father of Daniel Whitworth, described living two parallel lives, where grief tainted everyday life. Friends had told him that “the light had gone out of his eyes”, said Rees, and he had a “life sentence of grief”. His partner and Daniel’s stepmother, Amanda Pearson, said she had become “bitter and cynical”, that the “rich and fulfilling life ahead of us with Dan has been stolen from us”. It had been painful for the family when they had first wrongly been told he had taken his own life, Rees said.

 Taylor’s family said their lives had been destroyed, and they had had to suffer the “devastating effect” of his body being exhumed. They endured endless sleepless nights, and family members had taken time off work sick. The loss of the son, brother, uncle, brother-in-law had left “a black hole that will never be filled”.

 Port’s family later said they continued to believe he was innocent, ITV news reported. Speaking anonymously to the broadcaster, Port’s mother said: “I know he’s my son – he’s a kind boy.

 “He said all along, ‘I didn’t murder anyone mum,’ he said. Honest truth. ‘I didn’t murder anyone’ - that’s what he told me last Sunday on the telephone.”

 David Etheridge QC, for Port, said in mitigation that at that period in Port’s life, he had descended into a “vortex” of drug-taking, where “gratification of his sexual life was central”.

 Port’s fetish for sex with drugged young men had “graduated to fixation, and fixation to compulsion”.

 He added the prosecution had not alleged “any intent to kill these young men”. The premeditated planning “was to drug to unconsciousness and not to end someone’s life”, said Etheridge.

 As Port was convicted, Stuart Cundy, a police commander who leads the Met’s specialist crime and operations unit, offered personal letters of apology to the victims’ families for the missed opportunities to catch Port sooner.

 During the trial it emerged that Port, a bus depot canteen chef, had been arrested and charged for lying about how the body of his first victim, Walgate, came to be found dumped outside the communal entrance to his flat in Barking, east London, in June 2014.

 Port was bailed. He went on to murder his second and third victims, Kovari and Whitworth, in August and September 2014. Their bodies were found within three weeks, by the same dog walker, propped up in a sitting position in a graveyard near his flat.

 As part of an elaborate cover-up, Port faked and planted a suicide note purporting to have been written by Whitworth claiming he had taken his own life by overdosing on GHB in guilt over accidentally giving Kovari a fatal dose of the drug during sex. The note, which was taken at “face value” by investigating officers, included the line: “BTW, please do not blame the guy I was with last night, we only had sex, then I left. He knows nothing of what I have done.” Had police attempted to trace that “guy’, which they did not, it could have led them to Port.

 Port was briefly jailed in March 2015 for perverting the course of justice in lying to police about Walgate’s death. He was released in June 2015. Three months later, in September, he murdered Taylor.

 Seventeen police officers are facing investigation for possible misconduct over the catalogue of failures in catching Port. The Met is now re-examining 58 unexplained deaths involving the drug GHB from a four-year period, across London, in case signs of suspicious death were missed.

 Port used a string of fake online dating profiles and was very active on social media. He met his victims via apps such as Grindr, expressing a sexual preference for young, boyish-looking men he called “twinks”.

 Following his conviction, the force has appealed for any other victims who suffered at Port’s hands to come forward. ||||| London (CNN) A serial killer who drugged and murdered four men he met on gay dating sites has been jailed for life.

 Stephen Port, 41, from London, was convicted of killing Anthony Walgate, 23, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, 21, and Jack Taylor, 25, over a 15-month period between June 2014 and September 2015.

 He was also found guilty of drugging or sexually assaulting seven other victims, who survived.

 A judge at London's Old Bailey handed the killer a whole-life term, meaning he will never be released. "The defendant will die in prison," Mr. Justice Openshaw explained, as cheers broke out in the public gallery.

 In his summing up the judge said Port had committed the murders " in the course of satisfying his lust " for young men whom he had rendered unconscious with drugs.

 'Wicked and monstrous' cover-up

 Port's attempt to cover-up two of the murders with a fake suicide note was, he said, "wicked and monstrous."

 The judge said he accepted that Port intended to cause serious harm rather than death but said "he must have known and foreseen there was a high risk of death, the more so after the death of the first victim."

 Port, a chef and part-time male escort, lured his victims to his flat using online dating sites, before plying them with drinks laced with lethal doses of the sex-enhancing drug GHB in order to rape them while they were unconscious.

 He then dumped their bodies in or near a graveyard close to his home in Barking, east London, and proceeded to foil police with elaborate cover-ups, including deleting dating accounts and planting drugs on the bodies of his victims.

 Familes 'devastated and broken'

 Outside court, relatives of Port's final victim, who drove police to investigate the deaths, expressed their satisfaction with the verdict.

 Jack Taylor's sister Donna said: "We finally have justice for Jack and the other boys. A sick and twisted scumbag will never be able to hurt or destroy any other family's life. Jack can finally rest in peace."

 Stephen Port, 41, was found guilty of more than 20 offenses, including four murders.

 The family are planning to sue the police for failing to properly investigate the earlier deaths of Walgate, Kovari and Whitworth. They believe their son, who was a forklift truck driver, would still be alive if they had linked the deaths and caught Port earlier.

 Prior to the sentencing, in victim impact statements, Walgate's mother said her son's death had "devastated and broken the family," while Daniel Whitworth's father Adam said he had been given "a life sentence of grief."

 Kovari's brother Adam spoke of the difficulty in telling their mother of his death, saying: "There is no pain greater than losing a child," and the Taylor family said they had "truly fallen apart" as a result of Jack's murder.

 A sex attack victim, who cannot be identified, told the court he blamed himself for not reporting the assault sooner, saying that if he had spoke out, he might have been able to prevent Taylor's death.

 Port was given a second life sentence for the rape charges and another ten years for administering drugs.

 Cases dismissed as overdoses

 In mitigation, Port's counsel said he had "descended into a vortex ... he graduated from a fetish to a fixation from a fixation to a compulsion."

 The fall-out of the Port case is likely to continue: UK police are reviewing the chemsex-related deaths of 58 other men , previously dismissed as drug overdoses, amid fears some may be linked to Port.

 And the UK's independent police watchdog has launched an investigation into 17 police officers for misconduct in the case.

 Despite striking similarities in all four cases, police did not realize that a serial killer was at work.

 Murder victim Jack Taylor seen on CCTV with his killer Stephen Port.

 In the first case, Port left Walgate dead in his flat, and went to work. When he came home he proceeded to cover up his actions by dressing the body, putting a small bottle of GHB in Walgate's pocket, and dragging it outside. He then called an ambulance, claiming to have come across the corpse by chance.

 Interviewed by police a second time, he changed his story to suggest Walgate had visited his flat but had died by giving himself an overdose. He said dragged the body outside so that the police would not suspect him of murder. Officers took Port at his word, and charged him with trying to pervert the course of justice.

 "Whether the police were right to do so, in the light of what they knew or ought to have found out, is for others to decide, having thoroughly inquired into the matter," he said.

 Port was convicted and jailed for lying to the police, but was freed months later to kill again.

 He was eventually caught when police found CCTV footage of him with one of his victims at a local station, and his DNA was found on a bottle of GHB planted in Taylor's trouser pocket.

 "These evil crimes have left entire families, a community and a nation in shock," said Detective Chief Inspector Tim Duffield, the senior investigator in the case.

 "Port is one of the most dangerous individuals I've encountered in almost 28 years of policing and a full life-term in prison was the only appropriate punishment in the circumstances," he added. ||||| The police have admitted that they might have missed opportunities to catch Mr. Port sooner and have refocused attention on the use of GHB as a possible weapon. Investigators are now looking into 58 other unexplained deaths in London involving the drug.

 All of Mr. Port’s victims were found slumped against walls in identical positions with their cellphones missing — a woman walking her dog found two of the bodies, in the same spot in a churchyard near Mr. Port’s home, three weeks apart. None were from the area. But the police treated the deaths as unrelated cases of drug overdose and suicide, apparently taking at face value the fake suicide notes that Mr. Port, a 41-year-old canteen chef at a bus depot, had planted on two of the bodies.

 Even when a relative of one of Mr. Port’s victims pointed out the similarities in a string of local deaths after doing an online search, officers initially refused even to consider the possibility of murder.

 Photo

 The relative, Donna Taylor, the sister of 25-year-old Jack Taylor, Mr. Port’s last known victim, said she believed her brother’s sexuality had played a role in the police’s having overlooked important details.

 “It was seen as gay, drugged men in respect of they’ve just sat there, taken an overdose, and that’s that, as if it’s normal,” Ms. Taylor told the BBC on Thursday. “But all these bodies appearing is not normal, is it?”

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 “We were just told that Jack was found up against a church wall and that he died of taking a drug overdose,” she said. “We knew that wasn’t Jack. We knew instantly that that wasn’t Jack — we knew there was more to this.”

 The body of Anthony Walgate, a 23-year-old fashion student from Hull, Mr. Port’s first known victim, was discovered in June 2014 just outside the communal entrance to Mr. Port’s apartment building.

 The other three victims — Gabriel Kovari, a 22-year-old Slovak citizen; Daniel Whitworth, a 21-year-old chef; and Mr. Taylor, a forklift truck driver — were found in the churchyard near Mr. Port’s home.

 Members of Mr. Taylor’s family, who say they believe Mr. Port would still be at large had officers not been pressed to re-examine the evidence, said they planned to sue the police.

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 The Metropolitan Police Service of London has acknowledged that it might have missed opportunities to identify the killer sooner. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has begun a formal investigation into the actions of 17 officers, including whether “discrimination played any part in actions and decisions.”

 So far, the police have rejected the suggestion that the victims suffered discrimination because they were gay, saying in a statement that crimes against people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or L.G.B.T., are “taken extremely seriously.”

 “I hope Port’s conviction today offers reassurance to the L.G.B.T. community that if you have been a victim of crime, our officers will take you seriously, treat your situation with the utmost sensitivity and do their very best to bring offenders before the courts,” Cmdr. Stuart Cundy, of the specialist crime and operations command of the London police, said in a statement on Wednesday.

 Commander Cundy has offered personal letters of apology to the victims’ families for the missed opportunities to catch Mr. Port sooner.

 On Friday morning at the Old Bailey, as the Central Criminal Court is commonly known, Justice Peter Openshaw said that Mr. Port had committed murder to “satisfy his lust” for sex with young men in an unconscious state. He called Mr. Port’s attempts to cover up his crimes with forged suicide notes as “wicked and monstrous.”

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 Mr. Port had placed a fake suicide note in a plastic sheet in the hand of his third victim, Mr. Whitworth, in which Mr. Whitworth appeared to acknowledge his role in the “accidental” overdose of Mr. Kovari, in that way trying to frame one of his victims for the death of another.

 In the note, Mr. Port even made a reference to himself: “Please do not blame the guy I was with last night, we only had sex, then I left. He knows nothing of what I have done.”

 Peter Tatchell, a gay-rights campaigner, said in a statement that the police had let Mr. Port “slip through their fingers,” noting that they had failed to check the handwriting on the apparent suicide notes.

 “Appallingly, even after the third murder, the police were still maintaining that the deaths were ‘unusual’ but ‘not suspicious,’” Mr. Tatchell said. “They did not issue a public alert to the gay community that a serial killer could be on the loose.”

 Alarm bells might have gone off when Mr. Walgate’s body was found outside Mr. Port’s apartment block.

 Mr. Port himself called the police. He claimed he had not seen Mr. Walgate before, but the police quickly learned that Mr. Port had hired Mr. Walgate through an escort service. Mr. Port then said that Mr. Walgate had overdosed at his apartment, and that he had been too scared to report it.

 Mr. Port was eventually jailed for lying to the authorities, but by then he had killed two more men.

 In June 2015, the coroner at Mr. Whitworth’s inquest said that she was not convinced that Mr. Whitworth had overdosed and that she suspected foul play; even then, however, nothing happened. Three months later, Mr. Port killed Mr. Taylor. |||||

– A serial killer who raped and murdered at least four young gay men in London was sentenced to life in prison on Friday. Now it's the police who find themselves in the crosshairs, the New York Times reports. In 2014 and 2015, Stephen Port used dating apps to lure his victims to his apartment, where he drugged, raped, and killed them. According to the Guardian, Port "had a fetish for sex with unconscious boyish-looking men." Despite the bodies of all four victims turning up near Port's apartment—including three in the same churchyard—in a 15-month span and dying from the same drug, police chalked the deaths up to unconnected suicides and overdoses. Police only started looking into the possibility of connected murders after pressure from one of the victim's families. Police have now admitted they maybe could have caught Port sooner, and 17 officers are being investigated. Port left the first body outside his apartment building and called police. Despite changing his story and admitting the victim was in his apartment and he dragged the body outside, police didn't view him as a suspect, CNN reports. Port left a fake suicide note on one of the bodies that read "BTW, please do not blame the guy I was with last night." Police didn't bother trying to find the "guy." And there was more. The family of one of Port's victims is suing the police, accusing them of not looking into the deaths too hard because the victims were all gay. A formal investigation is attempting to determine if "discrimination played any part" in what happened. (He was an NFL draft pick—and a brazen serial killer.)


Article:

Stem cell therapy creates heart cells capable of partially repairing damage to the organ, although more work needed before human trials can take place

 Scientists have taken a step towards a radical new treatment for heart attacks with a stem cell therapy that can partially repair damage to the organ.

 The treatment uses heart cells which are created in the lab from the skin of a donor who is chosen to be a good genetic match for the recipient.

 Tests in monkeys showed that injections of freshly-made heart cells were quickly incorporated into damaged areas of the heart and helped the organ to pump more vigorously.

 Stem cell trial suggests damaged heart tissue could be regenerated Read more

 But monkeys that had the procedure also developed unusual heart rhythms, leading the researchers to concede that far more work is needed before the treatment can be considered safe enough for human trials.

 Heart attacks are one of the leading causes of death in the developed world. In the UK alone, hospitals deal with nearly 200,000 cases each year. While 70% of patients survive, many are left with tissue damage that stops their hearts from working properly.

 One idea scientists have had to treat heart attack survivors is to take skin cells from the patient and convert them into pumping heart cells. The hope is that, when injected into the heart, these cells take hold and help the heart pump more effectively. The advantage is that the heart cells will not be rejected by the immune system, but the procedure is time consuming and expensive to do for individual patients.

 In the latest work, researchers in Japan took a different tack. They induced heart attacks in five macaques and then treated the damage with heart cells created from the skin of a donor monkey. The donor was selected to be a close genetic match, but the recipients still need drugs to stop their bodies rejecting the cells.

 Yuji Shiba and others at Shinshu University injected the monkeys with 400m lab-made heart cells and found that they replaced about 16% of the damaged tissue. The new cells were wired up with healthy ones in the heart and over 12 weeks started to help the organ to pump more strongly. Tests revealed, however, that all of the monkeys developed unusual heart rhythms after the therapy. Details appear in the journal Nature.

 The scientists are now trying to understand the precise cause of the abnormal heart rhythms, but Shiba told the Guardian: “I think we can manage the post-transplant arrhythmia.”

 Sam Boateng, who studies the mechanisms of heart failure at Reading University, said the work was exciting because it was a step towards the possibility of repairing a damaged heart following a heart attack.

 Stem cell treatment repairs damaged hearts in monkeys Read more

 “Currently, the only long term option for these patients is heart transplantation, but there are not enough donors to meet the current demand,” he said.

 But he added that many challenges remain. “Ideally, immune rejection would be eliminated if the cells could be derived from the same patient, but this is costly and time consuming at a time when the patient requires immediate treatment. Another concern is that the incomplete integration of the transplanted cells could result in irregular heart beats which can be deadly,” he said.

 Sian Harding, director of the British Heart Foundation cardiovascular regenerative medicine centre at Imperial College London, said the Japanese team’s work was a significant step forward. “They strengthen the case that a bank of pre-prepared matched [cells] could be used to treat patients, without relying on the long process of reprogramming and differentiating the patient’s own cells.”

 “The arrhythmias were seen in a previous similar study, but in neither study did they prove fatal and both suggested that they would decrease with time. Clinical strategies for preventing sudden cardiac death from arrhythmia, such as implantable cardiodefibrillators, may therefore be necessary as adjunct therapy for some months after implantation,” she added. ||||| As plaque builds up in the arteries of a person with heart disease, the inside of the arteries begins to narrow, which lessens or blocks the flow of blood. Plaques can also rupture (break open) and when they do a blood clot can form on the plaque, blocking the flow of blood.

 Learn more about heart disease and its risk factors. It’s important for everyone to know the facts about heart disease Cdc-pdf [PDF-243K].

 Heart Disease in the United States

 About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths . 1

 die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s . Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. More than half of the deaths due to heart disease in 2009 were in men. 1

 of the deaths due to heart disease in 2009 were in men. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of heart disease, killing over 370,000 people annually. 1

 annually. Every year about 735,000 Americans have a heart attack. Of these, 525,000 are a first heart attack and 210,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack.2

 Heart Disease Deaths Vary by Race and Ethnicity

 Heart disease is the leading cause of death for people of most ethnicities in the United States, including African Americans, Hispanics, and whites. For American Indians or Alaska Natives and Asians or Pacific Islanders, heart disease is second only to cancer. Below are the percentages of all deaths caused by heart disease in 2008, listed by ethnicity.4

 Race of Ethnic Group % of Deaths American Indians or Alaska Natives 18.4 Asians or Pacific Islanders 22.2 Non-Hispanic Blacks 23.8 Non-Hispanic Whites 23.8 All 23.5

 Top of Page

 Early Action is Important for Heart Attack

 Know the warning signs and symptoms of a heart attack so that you can act fast if you or someone you know might be having a heart attack. The chances of survival are greater when emergency treatment begins quickly.

 In a 2005 survey, most respondents—92%—recognized chest pain as a symptom of a heart attack. Only 27% were aware of all major symptoms and knew to call 9-1-1 when someone was having a heart attack. 5

 were aware of all major symptoms and knew to call 9-1-1 when someone was having a heart attack. About 47% of sudden cardiac deaths occur outside a hospital. This suggests that many people with heart disease don’t act on early warning signs.6

 Heart attacks have several major warning signs and symptoms:

 Chest pain or discomfort.

 Upper body pain or discomfort in the arms, back, neck, jaw, or upper stomach.

 Shortness of breath.

 Nausea, lightheadedness, or cold sweats.

 Top of Page

 Americans at Risk for Heart Disease

 High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking are key risk factors for heart disease. About half of Americans (47%) have at least one of these three risk factors.7

 Several other medical conditions and lifestyle choices can also put people at a higher risk for heart disease, including:

 Diabetes

 Overweight and obesity

 Poor diet

 Physical inactivity

 Excessive alcohol use

 Top of Page

 CDC Fact Sheets Related to Heart Disease

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 References |||||
What is a summary?

– How do you mend a broken heart? Stem cells. Or at least that's the hope after scientists successfully used lab-created heart muscle cells to partially repair damaged hearts in monkeys, Live Science reports. The healthy stem cells were easily absorbed into the damaged hearts and allowed the organ to pump blood more easily. The procedure could lead to a new way to treat heart attacks and at least partially repair heart damage, the Guardian reports. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the US. Scientists are intrigued by the idea of treating damaged hearts by using a patient's own skin cells to create healthy heart cells, which are less likely to be rejected since they don't come from a donor. In the latest study in the journal Nature, the team at Shinshu University induced heart attacks in five macaques and then injected them with heart cells made from the skin of a healthy macaque who was a close genetic match. To avoid rejection, they ensured the donor monkey had a type of protein similar to the recipients' and they gave the sick monkeys anti-rejection drugs. After studying the macaques for three months, researchers found their immune systems tolerated the new cells, which replaced about 16% of the damaged heart tissue. In the end, the monkeys' heart muscles contracted better, pumping blood more efficiently. Human trials are not coming anytime soon, though, after the macaques developed irregular heartbeats. Still, doctors said the findings raise the possibility of treating damage caused by heart attacks. "Currently, the only long term option for these patients is heart transplantation, but there are not enough donors to meet the current demand," heart researcher Sam Boateng told the Guardian. (Monkeys on a strict low-calorie diet lived much longer.)


ABC News' Sheila Marikar ( @ SheilaYM ) reports:

 Perhaps this week's lesson in the annals of American history was necessary for Sarah Palin.

 In Boston yesterday, visiting Paul Revere's house, she offered her own account of the Revolutionairy War hero's midnight ride from Boston to Lexington, Mass.:

 "He who warned, uh, the ... the British that they weren't gonna be taking away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells and, um, by making sure that as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free ... and we were gonna be armed."

 Of course, Revere was in fact trying to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams about the approaching British army. And he didn't rely on bells. He was on a covert mission. Had he used bells, or had he warned the people with whom America was at war, Palin's tour bus might have chugged through the northeast on the left side of the road. ||||| america's sweetheart Sarah Palin Reveals Fascinating New Account of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride

 Many Americans think they have a solid understanding of the country's founding. No taxation without representation, tea party, Boston Massacre, George Washington, all that jazz. But, not surprisingly, Über-patriot Sarah Palin knows more than the average American. In fact, she may have more expertise on the subject than anybody else. For example, yesterday she revealed some heretofore unknown facts about Paul Revere's midnight ride. Did you know that he was actually warning the British, through the repeated ringin' of bells?

 The transcript:

 He who warned, uh, the the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and, um, by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free and we were gonna be armed. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Lately, it seems that the history of the American Revolution is not the strong suit of the two most well-known Republican women who could decide to run for president. Back in March, Michele Bachmann stated that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Lexington and Concord was fired in New Hampshire. Then yesterday Sarah Palin made a history error of her own: Stopping in Boston on her bus tour, she stated that Paul Revere warned the British about the American arms locations. ABC News has her comment: "He who warned, uh, the ... the British that they weren't gonna be taking away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells and, um, by making sure that as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free ... and we were gonna be armed." Click for more.


If recent reports are to be believed, the National Security Agency has broad powers to capture private information about Americans. They know who we're calling, they have access to our Gmail messages and AOL Instant Messenger chats, and it's a safe bet that they have other interception capabilities that haven't been publicly disclosed. Indeed, most mainstream communications technologies are vulnerable to government eavesdropping.

 But all is not lost! The NSA's spying powers are vast, but there are still ways to thwart the agency's snooping. Here are five of them.

 1. Browse anonymously with Tor

 NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been photographed with a Tor sticker on his laptop. Tor lets you use the Internet without revealing your IP address or other identifying information. The distributed network works by bouncing your traffic among several randomly selected proxy computers before sending it on to its real destination. Web sites will think you're coming from whichever node your traffic happens to bounce off of last, which might be on the other side of the world.

 Tor is easy to use. You can download the Tor Browser Bundle, a version of the Firefox browser that automatically connects to the Tor network for anonymous web browsing.

 2. Keep your chats private with OTR

 If you use a conventional instant messaging service like those offered by Google, AOL, Yahoo or Microsoft, logs of your chats may be accessible to the NSA through the PRISM program. But a chat extension called OTR (for "off the record") offers "end-to-end" encryption. The server only sees the encrypted version of your conversations, thwarting eavesdropping.

 To use OTR, both you and the person you're chatting with need to use instant messaging software that supports it. I use a Mac OS X client called Adium, which works with Google, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo's chat networks, among others. Windows and Linux users can use Pidgin. OTR works as an extension to conventional instant messaging networks, seamlessly adding privacy to the IM networks you already use. You can configure Adium or Pidgin so that if a person you're chatting with is also running an OTR-capable client, it will automatically encrypt the conversation.

 3. Make secure calls with Silent Circle

 The conventional telephone network is vulnerable to government wiretapping. And many Internet-based telephony applications, including Skype, are thought to be vulnerable to interception as well.

 But an Internet telephony application called Silent Circle is believed to be impervious to wiretapping, even by the NSA. Like OTR, it offers "end-to-end" encryption, meaning that the company running the service never has access to your unencrypted calls and can't turn them over to the feds. The client software is open source, and Chris Soghoian, the chief technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, says it has been independently audited to ensure that it doesn't contain any "back doors."

 4. Make secure calls with Redphone

 Redphone is another application that makes phone calls with end-to-end encryption. Interestingly, it was developed with financial support from U.S. taxpayers courtesy of the Open Technology Fund.

 The government hopes to support dissidents in repressive regimes overseas. But the only way to build a communications application that people will trust is to make it impervious to snooping by any government, including ours. So like Silent Circle, the Redphone client software is open source and has been independently audited to make sure there are no back doors.

 5. Remove your cellphone battery to thwart tracking

 The NSA phone records program revealed by the Guardian last week not only collects information about what phone numbers we call, it also collects data about the location of the nearest cellphone tower when we make calls. That gives the NSA the ability to determine your location every time you make a phone call — and maybe in between calls too.

 Unfortunately, Soghoian says there's no technical fix for this kind of surveillance. "The laws of physics will not let you hide your location from the phone company," he says. The phone company needs to know where you are in order to reach you when you receive a phone call.

 So if you don't want the NSA to know where you've been, you only have one option: You need to turn off your cell phone. Or if you're feeling extra paranoid, take out the battery or leave your phone at home.

 You probably can't hide metadata

 Soghoian says that a similar point applies to your phone calling records. Encryption technology can prevent the government from intercepting the contents of voice communications. But it's much harder to hide information about your calling patterns. And information about who you've called can be as revealing as the contents of the calls themselves.

 "If you're calling an abortion clinic or a phone sex hotline or a suicide counselor, what you say is basically the same as who you're saying it to," Soghoian argues.

 Unfortunately, there's no easy technological fix for this problem. Even obtaining a phone not specifically tied to your identity may not help, as it may be possible to identify you from your calling patterns.

 This problem tripped up Paula Broadwell, who was outed last year as having an extra-marital relationship with Gen. David Petraeus. She had been sending e-mails from an anonymous Gmail account, and she had even been smart enough to avoid logging in from home.

 But the FBI identified her anyway. Broadwell logged into the account from several different hotels. The FBI obtained lists of who had checked into those hotels on the relevant dates and looked for common names. Broadwell was the only one who had checked into all of the hotels.

 So it's fairly easy to protect the contents of your communications from government spying. But there's no easy technological fix to prevent the government from finding out who you're communicating with. ||||| Silent Circle’s products detect and prevent cyber threats aimed at mobile devices. We help enterprises prevent losses in privacy, intellectual property, reputation and social trust. We offer guaranteed privacy – there are no backdoors and you always hold the keys. ||||| Windows Instructions

 Download the file above, and save it somewhere, then double click on it. (1) Click "Run" then choose the installer's language and click OK (2). Make sure you have at least 80MB of free disk space in the location you select. If you want to leave the bundle on the computer, saving it to the Desktop is a good choice. If you want to move it to a different computer or limit the traces you leave behind, save it to a USB disk.

 Click Install (3) Wait until the installer finishes. This may take a few minutes to complete.

 Once the installation is complete, click Finish to launch Tor Browser's wizard.

 Once you see Tor Browser's wizard click Connect

 Alternatively, you can launch Tor Browser by going to the folder Tor Browser which can be found at the location you saved the bundle at (Default: Desktop) and double click on the Start Tor Browser application.

 Once Tor is ready, Tor Browser will automatically be opened. Only web pages visited through Tor Browser will be sent via Tor. Other web browsers such as Internet Explorer are not affected.

 Once you are finished browsing, close any open Tor Browser windows by clicking on the (6). For privacy reasons, the list of web pages you visited and any cookies will be deleted.

 To use Tor Browser again, double click on the "Start Tor Browser" application.

 Remember that Tor anonymizes the origin of your traffic, and it encrypts everything inside the Tor network, but it can't encrypt your traffic between the Tor network and its final destination. If you are communicating sensitive information, you should use as much care as you would on the normal scary Internet — use HTTPS or other end-to-end encryption and authentication. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Don't like the idea of the NSA spying on your phone calls and emails? In the Washington Post, Timothy B. Lee offers five ways for you to protect yourself: Tor: This Internet browser lets you remain anonymous, and does not reveal your IP address or other identifiers. One fan: NSA whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden. Silent Circle: This Internet phone app is thought to be "impervious to wiretapping, even by the NSA," Lee writes. OTR: Even your chat logs may be available to the NSA via PRISM, but if you use this chat extension (its name is short for "off the record"), the server will only see an encrypted version of your chat. One caveat: Both chatters need to be using software that supports OTR. Click for Lee's complete list. (Or, if you want to anonymously leak to the media, check out a how-to guide.)


Convicted murderer John Connolly’s prayers to the newly sainted John Paul II were apparently answered yesterday when two Florida judges ruled the disgraced FBI agent’s second-degree murder rap should be tossed.

 The lawyer for the former handler of notorious Southie mobster James “Whitey” Bulger told the Herald his client has been waiting for such a day. ||||| A Florida state appeals court overturned the murder conviction of corrupt FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. on Wednesday, ruling that jurors relied on a flawed charge against him in the 1982 killing of a Boston businessman.

 The decision raises the possibility that the 73-year-old Connolly, James “Whitey” Bulger’s longtime handler and a central figure in one of the most notorious chapters in Boston’s criminal history, could be freed.

 By a 2-to-1 decision, the Miami appeals court ruled that Connolly’s conviction of second-degree murder with a firearm in 2008 should be overturned because, among other reasons, he did not carry or discharge the gun that was used to kill John Callahan in South Florida.

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 The court appeared to fault prosecutors for overreaching. In their effort to win a conviction against Connolly, who had been 1,500 miles away in Boston when hit man John Martorano killed Callahan, prosecutors used a firearms charge that skirted the state’s statute of limitations.

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 “It was undisputed that Martorano used his own gun to shoot Callahan and that Connolly never carried, displayed, used, or threatened to use the murder weapon,” Judge Richard J. Suarez wrote for the majority.

 In 2009, Connolly was sentenced to 40 years in prison after jurors heard he had tipped off Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi that Callahan would probably tell the FBI that the Boston mobsters were involved in the 1981 murder of World Jai Alai executive Roger Wheeler in Oklahoma.

 Mary Callahan, the Florida victim’s widow, reacted sarcastically to the ruling.

 “It’s a good thing that somebody gets something good out of this, because we sure didn’t,” Callahan said.

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 “It’s interesting that he has a chance to be free and to be back with his family. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t have that chance, and, as his family, we don’t have that chance.”

 Callahan’s bullet-riddled body was discovered in the trunk of a parked car at Miami International Airport.

 Callahan had persuaded Bulger to have Wheeler killed because Callahan was skimming some of the World Jai Alai profits and wanted to keep the thefts secret and possibly take over the business, Martorano testified during Bulger’s federal trial in 2013.

 In Wednesday’s ruling, the appeals court judges sent Connolly’s conviction to a lower court, where it will stay “until any and all post-appeal motions are final,” according to the decision.

 Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, her spokeswoman said.

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 Public defender Manuel Alvarez, who is representing Connolly, said he filed an emergency request to release his client immediately, but the court denied the motion later Wednesday.

 “This conviction is a nullity,” Alvarez said. “He is now 73, and we are trying get him out.’’

 A spokesman for the FBI field office in Boston declined to comment on the ruling, since the case is still pending in state court in Florida.

 Manuel Casabielle, Connolly’s original defense lawyer in Florida, said he was always confident that the former agent would prevail on appeal.

 “In fact, I told John right after he was sentenced not to worry because we had already won the case,” Casabielle said. “I believe he was a scapegoat for the government’s use of the top-echelon informant program that was in place for the FBI back in the ’70s and early ’80s, when John was running Bulger and Flemmi. When the negatives of that program came to light, I believe John was hung out to dry.”

 That murder conviction was the second time Connolly had been found guilty of charges linked to the Bulger gang. In 2002, Connolly was sentenced to 10 years on federal racketeering charges for protecting Bulger and Flemmi, his longtime informants, while they continued a years-long criminal rampage that included dozens of murders.

 Pat Donahue, another woman widowed by Bulger’s mobsters, said the ruling made her “sick to my stomach.” Her husband, Michael, was an innocent bystander who was killed by the gang as he gave a friend a ride home.

 “I can’t understand the legal reasoning behind this,” Donahue said. “It was proven that John Connolly got people murdered. Now they are citing a technicality?”

 Michael Von Zamft, who prosecuted Connolly in Florida, pledged to continue the legal battle to keep him in prison.

 “We plan to file motions seeking a rehearing,” Von Zamft said. “Mr. Connolly presently is right where he belongs, and I guess we’ll do what we can to keep him there.”

 The appellate ruling turned on the prosecution’s decision to charge Connolly with second-degree murder with a firearm, a crime that does not have a statute of limitations in Florida. Without the firearm component, the four-year statute of limitations that existed in 1982 for second-degree murders would have expired by the time Connolly was charged in 2005.

 Brian Kelly, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Bulger’s corrupt relationship with the FBI and helped convict him last year, was blunt when asked what he thought of the appellate decision.

 “Not much,” said Kelly, who now works in private practice at Nixon Peabody LLP. He said he would be disappointed to see Connolly walking free.

 “It would be disheartening, because the evidence at Bulger’s trial, as well as at Connolly’s own trial, was found by different juries to establish that FBI corruption was one of the main reasons that the Bulger group flourished for so long with such devastating consequences to its victims.” Kelly said.

 In the ruling Wednesday, Judge Leslie B. Rothenberg broke from her colleagues and said the evidence supported Connolly’s conviction.

 “Contrary to the majority’s conclusions, the law does not require that the defendant be present or that he commit the last act that caused the defendant’s death,’’ she wrote.

 “It cannot be disputed that the jury found that the defendant carried a firearm during the acts giving rise to his conviction for second-degree murder,” said Rothenberg, a reference to evidence that Connolly wore his service weapon when he met with Bulger, Flemmi, and Martorano in the weeks before Callahan’s murder.

 “It makes no difference whether the defendant had hired . . . a hit man, turned to his mob friends to murder Callahan, or pulled the trigger himself. He is equally guilty,” Rothenberg wrote.

 Steve Davis, 56, of Milton, whose sister Debra was allegedly strangled by Bulger in 1981, assailed the ruling in a phone interview.

 “This whole thing’s been upsetting since the early ’80s when my sister went missing,” said Davis, who was enraged last summer when the Bulger jury returned a “no finding” ruling on his sister’s death.

 “You think it gets better, but it just keeps getting worse. You’re dealing with a government that just doesn’t care.”

 He added of Connolly’s sentence: “Forty years wasn’t enough. There are people getting more time in there for lesser crimes.”

 Peter Mullane, a Cambridge lawyer who represented Connolly in Massachusetts, hailed the appellate ruling.

 “It was a welcome decision, partly for the family and their prospect of finally getting reunited, as they should have been,” Mullane said. “And it was a refreshing decision to read where the court applied the facts to the law, and it was justice finally done.”

 In the seven-week trial, Flemmi testified that Connolly, a decorated FBI agent, took $235,000 in payoffs from him and Bulger and routinely provided them with information, including tips that prompted them to kill Callahan and two FBI informants.

 Related coverage

 Travis Andersen. Kevin Cullen, and Martin Finucane of the Globe staff contributed. MacQuarrie can be reached at brian.macquarrie@globe.com ; Ellement at john.ellement

 @globe.com |||||

Write a summary.

– Whitey Bulger's longtime FBI handler might be on the verge of freedom, after an appeals court threw out his murder conviction yesterday. In a 2-1 decision, the Miami judges ruled that because John Connolly Jr. hadn't actually pulled the trigger, he should never have been tried for the 1982 killing of businessman John Callahan, because the statute of limitations for second-degree murder without a firearm had run out by the time prosecutors charged him. Connolly had alerted Bulger that Callahan intended to inform on him to the FBI, prompting Bulger to hire a hit-man, the Boston Globe reports. "It’s interesting that he has a chance to be free," Callahan's widow said. "Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t have that chance." Connolly isn't free yet—the judges sent the case to a lower court "until any and all post-appeal motions are final," denying his lawyer's request for immediate release. Prosecutors do intend to seek a rehearing. "I'm just glad for him that he's finally going to be a free man," one Connolly lawyer tells the Boston Herald. "The only case against John has been out of the mouths of killers." The appeal had been predicted from the moment Connolly was convicted. (Click here for proof.)


Summarize this article:

Three happy marriages, beginning to crack; three dissatisfied blondes; and, crawling out from the cracks, the thought of violent crime. Such is the substance of three new films, all derived from works by popular authors. The longest is “Gone Girl,” adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own novel; the most nattily dressed is “The Two Faces of January,” taken from Patricia Highsmith; and last, courtesy of Georges Simenon, comes “The Blue Room,” the Frenchest of the three, so much so that the plot relies on confiture de prunes.

 “Gone Girl,” directed by David Fincher, starts with Nick (Ben Affleck)—in his own words, “a corn-fed, salt-of-the-earth Missouri boy.” He used to live in New York and write for magazines, but the work dried up and he returned home, to the uneventful town of North Carthage, with his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike). According to your point of view (and the film is all about viewpoints, and the urge to shuffle them around), Amy is one or more of the following: the inspiration for the “Amazing Amy” series of children’s books, written by her parents; a flat-out dazzler, too cool for the neighborhood; a rich kid, spawned by a snotty family; the original desperate housewife, becalmed and unadored; or a heap of trouble—the Clytemnestra of the Midwest. Oh, and another thing. She may be dead.

 Nick owns a bar with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon), and he stops there one morning for an early Scotch. He then drives home to find the front door open, a glass table smashed, and no sign of his wife. Their cat is a witness, but, if it knows anything, it’s not coughing up. The police arrive, and Detective Boney (Kim Dickens) declares a missing-persons case; before long, Nick is knee-deep in press conferences, candlelit vigils, and public appeals, flashing a polite, reluctant grin that is parsed, by tabloids and TV hosts, as proof of guilt. (You can’t blame them. The Affleck smile, from the dawn of his career, has looked more creepy than consolatory—softening that firm, all-American jaw but never quite reaching the eyes.) Suddenly, after an hour, we flip to Amy, and to her version of what happened—so different, and so close to wacko, that it seems like another story altogether. I would happily unveil the rest of it, but, in deference to the twenty-one people who have yet to read the novel, I will say nothing more without a lawyer present.

 At first blush, “Gone Girl” is natural Fincherland. Not geographically; he seems less absorbed in North Carthage, described by Amy as “the navel of the country,” than he was in the California of “Zodiac” or the Harvard of “The Social Network.” Those are his masterpieces: the two movies that I can’t not watch when they turn up on TV, and the two occasions on which his pedantry and his paranoia have fused together, engrossing us in a crazed aggregation of detail. Nothing could equip him better for the coiled and clustered goings on in the new film, and, for good measure, he has hired Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whom he last used for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” to compose the score. They don’t let him down. “Gone Girl” boasts one major act of savagery, drenched in a downpour of blood, and what we hear during it sounds like the wah-wah pedal of Satan. So why doesn’t the movie claw us as “The Social Network” did? Who could have predicted that a film about murder, betrayal, and deception would be less exciting than a film about a Web site?

 The glum fact is that “Gone Girl” lacks clout where it needs it most, at its core. We are accustomed to Fincher’s heroes being as obsessively smart as he is, if lacking his overarching patience, whereas Nick remains, to put it gently, a lunkhead. Amy has twice the brain, and ten times the cunning, but, despite the best efforts of Rosamund Pike, her character, onscreen as on the page, feels cooked up rather than lived in. That can work on film, as shown by another beauty, Gene Tierney, in “Laura” and “Leave Her to Heaven,” but the scheming of Tierney’s heroines was matched by a rare, ornate febrility in the movies themselves. Fincher’s method, on the other hand, is dogged and downbeat, so that Amy sticks out like a cartoon in a newsreel. (One expected the same of the title character in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” who was equally extreme, but somehow Rooney Mara gave her life—all drilled intensity where Pike offers elegant drift.) “Gone Girl” is meant to inspire debates about whether Amy is victimized or vengeful, and whether Nick deserves everything he gets, but, really, who cares? All I could think of was the verdict of Samuel Butler on Thomas Carlyle: “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four.” Or, in the words of Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), Nick’s unflappable attorney: “You two are the most fucked-up people I have ever met, and I specialize in fucked-up people.”

 Perry has a grand time. His wave to the press corps, camped out on Nick’s sidewalk, is a cool mixture of dismissal and salute. He knows that our attention is straying from the main couple toward the outlying figures: Tanner himself, Detective Boney, and, best of all, Margo—a fine performance, both grounded and wounded, from Carrie Coon. Against that, we have Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), a wealthy ex of Amy’s, wandering in as if from another film, and eating up the final slice of the action with a silly Gothic subplot. It comes straight from the novel, and you can picture the outcry if Fincher had chopped or changed it, but so what? A director’s task is not to suck up to readers, or to flatter his source, but to imagine it afresh, as film, while seizing on those aspects that matter to him most. What grabs Fincher about “Gone Girl,” I suspect, is not the mystery in Missouri but the sight of a media wolf pack in full cry. Hence the time that he devotes to two cable-TV hosts, played by Sela Ward and Missi Pyle, who rifle through Nick’s privacy, and his state of mind, in their lust for a story. Fincher is right: these days they are the story, and I wish that he would tell it again from their angle, through the eyes of bloggers, and via the phones of the people we see laughing outside Nick’s bar, taking selfies at a hot spot of fame. So, “Gone Girl Redux”: the campaign starts here. ||||| Even with the well-established praise for director David Fincher as a master filmmaker — his movies lushly drenched in shadow, his capacity for tough stuff matched only by his care in presentation — it’s easy to forget or overlook his sense of humor, the spoonful of sugar that helps the malevolence go down in his films.

 At his best, Fincher has a sense of humor that not only cuts through the darkness but actually contrasts it to significant effect. After the dour, sour, sadistic Scandanavian misfire of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” it’s a pleasure to note that Fincher’s latest adaptation, of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel of the same name, is both wicked and wickedly fun.

 Not only brutal but also brutally funny, “Gone Girl” mixes top-notch suspenseful storytelling with the kind of razor-edged wit that slashes so quick and clean you’re still watching the blade go past before you notice you’re bleeding.

 See video: New ‘Gone Girl’ Trailer Suggests That Ben Affleck Murdered His Wife (Video)

 Like some mix of “Scenes from a Marriage” and “Ace in The Hole” as shot by Michael Mann with a Hitchcock Blonde to kill (or die) for in the lead, “Gone Girl” tells the story of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). The film begins in New Carthage, Mo., on their fifth anniversary; Nick runs a few errands and blows off some steam, returning home to find an empty house, an upended coffee table shattered in the living room, and no sign of Amy.

 When the cops (played by the superb Kim Dickens and a mostly silent but excellent Patrick Fugit) arrive, it’s clear there’s been a struggle inside the Dunne’s house; as Nick and Amy narrate their marriage to us and the police investigate an ever-increasing number of clues, though, it’s clear there were signs of struggle inside the Dunne’s marriage as well.

 Made up of police inquiries and diary entries, love stories and other fake-outs, “Gone Girl” is, in no small part, a story about storytelling and the difference between perception and reality, with comforting tales interrupted by the low, ominous thud of the metaphorical other shoe dropping. Amy’s mom and dad are best-selling authors of children’s books, with their series “Amazing Amy” an improved version of their daughter’s life; Nick and Amy’s American dream marriage with the big house and the big love looks is utterly perfect until you shake it and the rot comes spilling out.

 Also read: Tyler Perry’s ‘For Better or Worse’ Fall Premiere Draws Best Ratings Since OWN Series Debut

 And when upsetting revelations come out in the case, celebrity defense attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry, a natural as a hearty, likable cynic with great media presence) smoothly states how “We’ll have to … realign the public’s perception …”

 Flynn’s script is loaded with nicely-tuned observations, not just about the rules and rituals of the modern American marriage but also about a media that shrieks speculation more than it speaks the truth and worries about slogans more than facts. The author’s clever, cruel and cool work also gives Pike the role of a lifetime in the shining, secretive Amy, while still making her human and comprehensible. Affleck, who’s personally had to endure a level of media scrutiny that makes a colonoscopy look dignified, brings much of that history to Nick’s affability and desire to please. When he needs to play the part, Nick does, but he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Both performers are brilliant.

 Also read: Ben Affleck Admits to Being Really Good at Counting Cards in Blackjack

 With its shifting perspectives and timelines, its constant conflict between what’s said and what’s truly seen, “Gone Girl” is clean, clear, and perfectly constructed. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and editor Jeff Baxter, both regular Fincher collaborators, deliver the kind of work that looks easy but, assuredly and on reflection, is decidedly not. The score, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is a more mixed proposition, effective in the places it works and distracting on several occasions where it doesn’t.

 The supporting cast is a thing of wonder — there are familiar faces like Dickens, Fugit, and Perry all pushed to greatness, with Missi Pyle perfect as the film’s version of harridan-for-justice Nancy Grace, Neil Patrick Harris elegantly worrisome as on old suitor of Amy’s, and Carrie Coon (“The Leftovers”) a revelation as Nick’s loving, tough sister Margot.

 Also read: 7 Breakout Movie Stars of Fall 2014 – From a ‘Gone Girl’ to a ‘Maze Runner’

 The best Hitchcock films struck a balance between elegance and violence, a peculiar mix of champagne fizz and spilled crimson blood; “Gone Girl,” with its giddy revelations and grim-grin reversals incorporating ugly facts and uglier fictions, fits perfectly into a modernized version of that superb tradition.

 “Gone Girl” portrays marriage not just as warfare by other means but as many different kinds of battle — class conflict, sexual gamesmanship, wrangling over money, fighting over the future — with plenty of blood spilled. That’s part of what makes it as damned good as it is; “Gone Girl” is that rare entertainment that rewards your intelligence instead of insulting it, that rare thriller interested in emotional wounds as much as physical ones.

 “Gone Girl” will earn plenty of loud shouts of applause, awed sounds of surprise, and shocked laughter, but what makes it worthy of them is all the hushed, uneasy conversations it’s guaranteed to inspire in the long, unsettled silence to come after. ||||| 'Gone Girl’ review: thrilling until it’s not

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 Photo: Merrick Morton / Associated Press Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Image 1 of 7 Ben Affleck stars as Nick, who beomes a suspect when his wife goes missing in “Gone Girl.” Ben Affleck stars as Nick, who beomes a suspect when his wife goes missing in “Gone Girl.” Photo: Merrick Morton / Associated Press Image 2 of 7 In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Rosamund Pike appears in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will release on Oct. 3. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Merrick Morton) In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Rosamund Pike appears in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will release on Oct. 3. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Merrick Morton) Photo: Merrick Morton / Associated Press Image 3 of 7 Nick (Ben Affleck, left) confers with his lawyer (Tyler Perry) about his missing wife in “Gone Girl,” based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn. Nick (Ben Affleck, left) confers with his lawyer (Tyler Perry) about his missing wife in “Gone Girl,” based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn. Photo: Merrick Morton / Associated Press Image 4 of 7 In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Patrick Fugit, left, and Kim Dickens appear in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will release on Oct. 3. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Merrick Morton) less In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Patrick Fugit, left, and Kim Dickens appear in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will release on Oct. 3. (AP Photo/20th Century ... more Photo: Merrick Morton, Associated Press Image 5 of 7 Image 6 of 7 This image released by 20th Century Fox shows, from left, Ben Affleck, Patrick Fugit, David Clennon, Lisa Barnes and Kim Dickens in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will release on Oct. 3. (AP Photo/20th Century Fox, Merrick Morton) less This image released by 20th Century Fox shows, from left, Ben Affleck, Patrick Fugit, David Clennon, Lisa Barnes and Kim Dickens in a scene from "Gone Girl." The film, based on the best-selling novel, will ... more Photo: Merrick Morton, Associated Press Image 7 of 7 'Gone Girl’ review: thrilling until it’s not 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

 “Gone Girl” is a great thriller until it stops being one, about 20 minutes before the finish. Until then it’s brilliant, not just a triumph of story but of strategy, a movie that keeps the audience grasping and reaching in all the wrong directions, while consistently delivering something a little better, a little crazier and a little more disturbing than expected.

 And then before it’s over, it all kind of goes ... not to hell — it’s not as bad as that — but to purgatory, or limbo. This most satisfying of films turns dissatisfying. This Swiss watch of storytelling turns into a bad digital clock circa 1986, flashing the wrong numbers. If only the dip in quality came in the middle, or even at the beginning, we might still be able to class “Gone Girl” as among the year's best. But when a movie, in its final minutes, forsakes its own logic and embraces false cleverness, that can’t be ignored.

 “Gone Girl” is based on Gillian Flynn’s enormously popular novel of the same name, and the novel’s very popularity might be the main problem here. There are things that can work in print that just can’t be made to work onscreen. Yet when it’s an acclaimed story that half the audience will know going in, no broad changes can be considered, even ones for the better.

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 Does this all sound vague? Alas, we’re going to have to hover in the Land of Vague in discussing “Gone Girl,” because this is just one of those movies: Give away too much of the story, and you’ve just killed about three-quarters of its appeal.

 Story of marriage

 So we’ll stay general. “Gone Girl” is the story of a marriage, as well as a pretty straight-faced satire — or is it an indictment? — of the way gossip is passed off as news on cable television. Ben Affleck plays Nick, a guy with a cloud of sadness around him, who goes home to find that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), is missing and that there are signs of a struggle. He calls the police, who, being cops, start suspecting him of murder. But who knows? This time they could be right.

 For the first hour, “Gone Girl” takes place on two tracks. It follows Nick in the present day, as he becomes the center of both the investigation and of the media’s piranha-like lust. And it goes back in time, telling the tale of Nick and Amy’s courtship and marriage as related (and narrated) by Amy in her diary.

 Juicy roles

 Affleck has had good roles before, but I don’t think he has ever had one that capitalizes on as much of what he can do onscreen. He is a big slab of a guy, but his aura is not of strength, but of uncertainty, perhaps moral weakness. He is instantly likable and then occasionally, upon reflection, dislikable. He has a blitheness that is either amusing or engaging or off-putting, depending on the viewer's angle. He can just as easily charm the world as irritate millions — he has literally done both, in real life — so anybody’s reaction to him is easy to believe, so long as it's extreme.

 Rosamund Pike will come as more of a surprise. Her previous roles have hinted at her intelligence and ability — she even made audiences believe she was in love with a cigar-chomping Paul Giamatti in “Barney’s Version” — but this is the juiciest role she has had to date, and she makes a meal of it. Everyone who sees “Gone Girl” will walk out raving about Rosamund Pike.

 Director David Fincher lands a tone for “Gone Girl” that’s broad and precise enough to encourage a series of witty performances within the thriller framework. The story may be the star here, but everyone is vivid within it, not just the principals, but Kim Dickens as a detective, Tyler Perry as a hotshot lawyer and Carrie Coon as Affleck's twin sister.

 And then it all sort of ... “implodes” would be too strong a word. Perhaps “frays?” “Becomes dented?” “Loses its glow?” But that’s all in the last 20 minutes. Try to put it out of your mind for those first two hours.

 Mick LaSalle is The Chronicle’s movie critic. E-mail: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @micklasalle

 Gone Girl

 Crime thriller. Starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Directed by David Fincher. (R. 148 minutes.) |||||

– "Chilling," "unsettling," and "manipulative" is what critics are saying about Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy, a husband and wife trying to make it in a small town in Missouri—just the type of descriptors you probably want for a mystery-thriller about what happens when Nick becomes a suspect in Amy's sudden disappearance. Here's what the critics have to say: For Mick LaSalle at the San Francisco Chronicle, the movie starts off "brilliant, not just a triumph of story but of strategy," and maintains that momentum throughout … until the last 20 minutes. That's when LaSalle says the movie "frays"—a "Swiss watch of storytelling [that] turns into a bad digital clock circa 1986, flashing the wrong numbers." He praises the acting, especially that of Pike, proclaiming that "everyone who sees Gone Girl will walk out raving about" her. Manohla Dargis is similarly thrown off by the shift midway through the film, writing for the New York Times that "by the movie's second half, you may wish that Amy would stay gone." Although Dargis concedes that David "Fincher's compositions, camera work, and cutting are, as always, superbly controlled," she adds that the film "plays like a queasily, at times gleefully, funny horror movie about a modern marriage." But evenutally, "dread descends like winter shadows, darkening the movie's tone and visuals until it's snuffed out all the light, air, and nuance." James Rocchi writes at The Wrap that Fincher's humor is "the spoonful of sugar that helps the malevolence go down in his films," and Gone Girl is no exception, with "top-notch suspenseful storytelling" and "razor-edged wit." He also lauds the supporting cast (including Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry) as "a thing of wonder" and praises the movie overall as "that rare entertainment that rewards your intelligence instead of insulting it, that rare thriller interested in emotional wounds as much as physical ones." But Gone Girl isn't as alluring as Fincher's The Social Network, laments Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, asking: "Who could have predicted that a film about murder, betrayal, and deception would be less exciting than a film about a website?" The film that Lane at first calls "natural Fincherland" soon devolves into a movie that "lacks clout." He also can't help but note that Gone Girl is "meant to inspire debates about whether Amy is victimized or vengeful, and whether Nick deserves everything he gets, but, really, who cares?"


Your Reaction?

 Sorry, but you can only react up to 3 times!

 Oops! It looks like you've already used that reaction on this post. ||||| There's a panda amongst them!

 Can you find it? |||||

Write a summary.

– There was the question of when Cheryl's birthday is. The dress that was either white and gold or blue and black. And now the Internet is going insane over a hidden panda, BuzzFeed reports. Illustrator Gergely Dudás, pen name Dudolf, shared an image on Facebook last Wednesday showing what appears to be a bunch of snowmen, along with the caption: "There's a panda amongst them! Can you find it?" Though some may spot the panda easily, many apparently have had trouble, with the more than 27,000 comments including ones like, "There is no panda but it was nice" and "Been looking for 15 mins still can't find it lol." The image has been shared nearly 153,000 times so far.


Article:
Vincent Van Gogh (Shutterstock)

 A sketchbook of drawings by post-Impressionist master Vincent Van Gogh has been discovered and will be published in November, the French publisher Seuil announced Thursday.

 “This sketchbook was known only to the owners, myself and the publisher,” Seuil official Bernard Comment told AFP, calling the discovery “stunning, dazzling”.

 The artwork will be released under the title “Vincent Van Gogh, Le Brouillard d’Arles” (The Fog of Arles), he said. ||||| Van Gogh’s study of hands. (Image: Vincent Van Gogh/Public domain)

 A publisher in Paris has announced that it will publish a set of Vincent Van Gogh’s sketches, only recently discovered and never before released to the public.

 The sketches will be published in November, under the title The Fog of Arles, according to Seuil, the publisher. A Seuil representative told AFP that the sketches are “stunning, dazzling.”

 Beyond that, the details of where the sketches came from or how they were found are…sketchy. From AFP:

 “No further information will be divulged until the world press conference to be held in Paris in mid-November 2016 on the eve of the book’s arrival in bookstores in the various countries,” Seuil said in a statement.

 Expectations, raised. Now that they’ve cast these drawings in a shroud of mystery and hype, those sketches better be pretty amazing.

 Every day, we highlight one newly found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to [email protected] |||||Summary:

– A "stunning, dazzling" find across the pond, per a French book publisher: a sketchbook that belonged to Dutch master painter Vincent Van Gogh, AFP reports. "This sketchbook was known only to the owners, myself, and the publisher," a Seuil official told the news agency Thursday, noting that the drawings will be published in November and called Vincent Van Gogh: Le Brouillard d’Arles (The Fog of Arles). And it's obvious they're hyping up the book's release by revealing very few details. "No further information will be divulged until the world press conference to be held in Paris in mid-November 2016 on the eve of the book's arrival in bookstores in the various countries," a Seuil statement says, per Atlas Obscura. (Read about the battle over a cherished Van Gogh work.)


Article:
Nickelodeon fires back at 'Dora the Explorer' teen Caitlin Sanchez suit: Pay fine, but her voice not

 Nickelodeon/AP Caitlin Sanchez, the voice for the animated character Dora, from "Dora The Explorer." "Dora The Explorer" Related News Articles

 I'm Dora the Exploited, says voice of cartoon

 As if puberty weren't tough enough, it also may have cost a New Jersey teen her gig as the voice of "Dora the Explorer."

 Nickelodeon, which Caitlin Sanchez contends in a lawsuit "swindled" her out of millions of dollars, fired back Thursday that the 14-year-old girl's pay was fine, but that her voice was not.

 "Unfortunately, Caitlin's voice changed and she was no longer able to portray the Dora character, as happened with the actress who originated the role," the kids cable network said in a statement.

 The Daily News early Thursday broke the story of Sanchez's stinging claims against Nickelodeon, which she says duped her into inking a "bizarre, impenetrable, unconscionable" contract that left her overworked and underpaid.

 The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, accuses Nickelodeon and corporate parents Viacom and MTV Networks, of stiffing the teen on residuals and merchandising in a 2007 contract that failed to "adequately" compensate the girl who gave voice to the adorable, Spanish-speaking Dora.

 In a 41-page complaint, Caitlin contends she worked more than 100 "Dora the Explorer" promotional events for free, and traveled around the country while getting a mere $40 per-diem.

 A Nickelodeon source countered that she and her parents were treated to first-class hotels on the road, had their air and ground transportation paid for by the cable network and that the $40 was for incidental expenses.

 "She was well-compensated for her work and for personal appearances," Nickelodeon said in a statement.

 Her lawyer, John Balestriere, countered that the teen's family often lost money on the trips because they had to spend more money on food and airline baggage charges than the "meager $40 stipend."

 "We are not suing because they claim her voice changed," Balestriere said. "She is not suing to stay on as Dora.

 "She is suing because they paid her nothing for residuals, a few thousand dollars for merchandising and ended up making her spend most of her time - uncompensated - promoting the $11 billion Dora brand rather than performing as a paid actress." ||||| 'Dora the Explorer' Says Nickelodeon Ripped Her Off

 Email This Has the voice of 'Dora the Explorer' been taken for a ride? The actress who became the voice of the adventurous cartoon character in 2007 filed a lawsuit on Wednesday claiming Nickelodeon and its parent companies exploited her with a dubious contract that made millions for the network, but little for her.

 Lawyers for 14-year-old Caitlin Sanchez told the Has the voice of 'Dora the Explorer' been taken for a ride? The actress who became the voice of the adventurous cartoon character in 2007 filed a lawsuit on Wednesday claiming Nickelodeon and its parent companies exploited her with a dubious contract that made millions for the network, but little for her.Lawyers for 14-year-old Caitlin Sanchez told the New York Daily News that the actress and her parents were pressured into signing a "convoluted and inscrutable contract" that cheated her out of "millions, perhaps tens of millions."

 The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, names Nickelodeon, MTV Networks and Viacom International as defendants. Sanchez and her parents believe the young star was not compensated properly for hundreds of hours of studio time, in addition to personal appearances and profits from the show's merchandising empire."Defendants used Caitlin, unjustly enriching themselves of millions of dollars in profits from the series and branded products, which Caitlin preformed and promoted," the suit claims.Sanchez became Dora, a Latina character, in 2007, and her contract promised $5,115 per episode and a cut from residuals and merchandising. The Sanchez's claim that their own agent, Jason Bercy, gave them only 22 minutes to review the contract and threatened that if they didn't sign immediately, Nick would "pass on Caitlin for the part of Dora."Bercy is not named in the suit and when contacted declined to comment. A legal representative for Viacom calls the suit "completely without merit."According to her IMDB page , Sanchez has also starred in four 'Dora' TV movies and had a guest role on the short-lived show 'Lipstick Jungle.' |||||Summary:

– Did Nickelodeon cheat Dora the Explorer? Caitlin Sanchez, the 14-year-old who voiced the Nickelodeon cartoon character, says it did. She's suing the network for exploiting her by way of a “bizarre, impenetrable, unconscionable” contract and for failing to adequately compensate her to the tune of millions, the New York Daily News reports. Sanchez claims she worked more than 100 events promoting the $11 million Dora brand for free, and had to spend her own money to cover her expenses while traveling across the country since she was only given a $40 per diem. Nickelodeon shot back with a statement that “unfortunately, Caitlin's voice changed and she was no longer able to portray the Dora character, as happened with the actress who originated the role,” but Sanchez’s lawyer points out, “We are not suing because they claim her voice changed. She is not suing to stay on as Dora.” Click here for more.


Article:
Remember the chimp at a Dutch zoo who emphatically swatted a TV crew's drone out of the sky with a tree branch? Researchers who dissected Tushi's actions have concluded she planned the attack, sort of like a human would.

 In a study recently published in the journal Primates, Jan van Hooff and Bas Lukkenaar re-examine the events of April 10, when a Dutch TV crew was using a camera-equipped drone to film a documentary of chimpanzees at a 1.7-acre enclosure at the Royal Burgers Zoo in Arnhem.

 Some of the chimps grabbed branches or twigs from willow trees and two females, Tushi and Raime, climbed up on scaffolding.

 As the drone got close, Tushi swatted at it twice with a 6-foot-long branch she brandished in her left hand. The second swipe made contact, knocking the drone to the ground. The camera continued to film, capturing the inquisitive faces of the chimps as they inspected and toyed with the perplexing gadget.

 Related: Chimps Might Have More Evolved Hands Than Humans

 The study's authors note that Tushi grimaces just before and during the act of striking. "The precise coincidence of the facial grimace with the strike suggests that it is a concomitant of an assertive and determined exertion of force, homologous to what humans do in comparable situations."

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 The researchers note that Tushi collected the stick before the drone approached, and carried it to a place where the drone might be swatted. The sequence of events, they say, suggests the attack was "planned" and "deliberate."

 "This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts," they write. ||||| Incident shows that chimps are able to plan ahead and use tools as weapons

 New York | Heidelberg, 3 September 2015

 Cool. Calm. And oh, so calculated. That’s how a chimpanzee living in the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands set out to swat an aerial drone that was filming her group. In an article in the journal Primates published by Springer, Jan van Hooff and Bas Lukkenaar explain it as yet another example of chimpanzees’ make-do attitude to using whatever is on hand as tools.

 The incident happened earlier this year, on 10 April, when a Dutch television crew was filming at the zoo in Arnhem. The idea was to use a drone to film the chimpanzees in their compound from different close-up angles. The drone already caught the chimpanzees’ attention during a practice run. Some grabbed willow twigs off the ground, while four animals took these along when they climbed up scaffolding where the drone was hovering. This behavior is not frequently observed among these chimps.

 Filming started when the next drone flew over. It zoomed in on two chimpanzees, the females Tushi and Raimee. They were still seated on the scaffolding holding on to twigs that were about 180 cm (ca. six feet) long. Tushi made two long sweeps with hers – the second was successful in downing the drone and ultimately broke it. Before and during the strike, she grimaced. Although her face was tense and her teeth were bared, she showed no signs of fear. This suggests that she quite deliberately and forcefully struck at the drone, rather than fearfully or reflexively.

 “The use of the stick as a weapon in this context was a unique action,” comments van Hooff. “It seemed deliberate, given the decision to collect it and carry it to a place where the drone might be attacked.”

 “This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts,” Lukkenaar says, explaining the broader significance of the filmed event. This incident also shows the apes cautiously inspecting the contraption and even throwing it around before they lose interest in it.

 According to van Hooff and Lukkenaar, the chimpanzees housed at the Royal Burgers Zoo have never explicitly been taught how to use different tools, but have had ample chance to watch humans handle all kinds of implements. Previous studies showed that the chimps at this Dutch zoo spontaneously and innovatively use up to 13 types of tools in a variety of ways, especially utilizing sticks of different sizes. The apes appear to choose the size, shape and weight of the tools with a particular use in mind. Sticks are, for instance, used to gather fresh leaves from overhead branches, while heavy pieces of wood and stones are chosen as throwing weapons.

 References:

 1. Van Hooff, J.A.R.A.M. & Lukkenaar, B. (2015). Captive chimpanzee takes down a drone: tool use toward a flying object, Primates. DOI 10.1007/s10329-015-0482-2

 2. Primates is the official journal of the Japan Monkey Centre.

 3. The article has been made freely available online for everyone under the Springer Open Choice program.

 Caption:

 A female chimpanzee named Tushi uses a stick to “attack” the drone. Behind her Raimee is sitting also with a long stick | © Royal Burger’s Zoo

 Further Information

 About the journal Primates

 About the Japan Monkey Centre

 Services for Journalists

 The full-text article, photos and a video are available to journalists on request.

 Contact

 Katrin Petermann | Springer | Corporate Communications

 tel +49-6221-487-8414 | katrin.petermann2@springer.com |||||Summary:

– A chimpanzee that famously knocked a flying drone out of the air with a stick earlier this year wasn't reacting out of fear or annoyance but rather executing a pre-planned and deliberate attack. That's according to a new study in Primates. "This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts," researcher Bas Lukkenaar says in a press release. The Christian Science Monitor reports a Dutch TV crew was using the drone to film a documentary on the chimps at the Royal Burgers' Zoo in April. After a test-run with the drone, the chimps started collecting sticks and climbing scaffolding. When the drone returned, a chimp named Tushi was ready, swiping it out of the air with a 6-foot branch. While studying footage from the busted drone, researchers focused on Tushi's facial expression during the attack, NBC News reports. They found the grimace she makes before and during the incident is similar to what humans do while carrying out a predetermined use of force. According to the press release, the lack of fear in Tushi's expression means she wasn't simply attacking out of reflex. The Monitor explains it's the difference between a calculated plan and swatting at a mosquito. This isn't unusual behavior for the chimps at Burgers' Zoo; they've taught themselves to use 13 different types of tools, the press release states. (Now find out how chimps are more advanced than humans.)


Article:
Published on May 2, 2018

 Reporter Katie Couric addresses the comment she made when she was on WWHL with Matt Lauer about him pinching her butt and tells Andy Cohen it was a joke that she now regrets making.

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 Katie Couric Clears Up Her Matt Lauer Comment | WWHL ||||| Katie Couric stopped by the Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen Clubhouse on May 1. During her appearance, the TV news anchor spoke about the allegations of sexual misconduct surrounding her former Today show colleague Matt Lauer. And she also clarified some of her own comments that resurfaced after news of the scandal broke.

 "You've already spoken about it ad nauseam, but I have to ask," Andy began. "The day the Matt Lauer thing broke, you started trending on Twitter immediately because a clip surfaced of you on [WWHL] from 2012. I played Plead the Fifth with you and I said to you, what's Matt Lauer's most annoying habit? And you said he used to pinch you on the ass. I laughed thinking you were joking. Were you joking?" Watch the clip above to hear Couric's response and watch the clip below to see the 2012 moment Andy referenced.

 Watch What Happens Live Matt Lauer's Most Annoying Habit Katie Couric dishes some dirt on Matt Lauer on 'Plead the Fifth.'

 Earlier in the day, the Today show alum also spoke about Lauer during her appearance on The Wendy Williams Show. "It’s been a very painful time for a lot of people who worked with Matt, knew him, and care about him, who never witnessed this behavior that is now obviously being talked about,” Couric shared. “I don’t know the full extent of all these things that happened. I can only talk about my personal experience and I was always treated respectfully and appropriately.” ||||| Katie Couric thinks some of the reports about her former colleague Matt Lauer aren’t entirely true, but also that the scope of the sexual harassment allegations against him may extend beyond what the public currently knows.

 “It’s been a very painful time for a lot of people who worked with Matt, knew him, really care about him, and who never witnessed or experienced any of this behavior that is now obviously being talked about,” Couric, 61, told Wendy Williams Tuesday. “I don’t know the full extent of all these things that happened. I can only talk about my personal experience and I was always treated respectfully and appropriately.”

 Couric added that a potential comeback for her former “Today” show co-anchor, who was fired in November 2017 for “inappropriate sexual behavior” at NBC, would be “challenging” at best.

 “The full extent of what has happened, I don’t think has been truly revealed,” she said. “A lot of stuff gets misreported and blown out of proportion.”

 The former Yahoo! anchor also took issue specifically with reports that Lauer had a button under his desk to lock his door, behind which a lot of inappropriate activity allegedly took place.

 “A lot of NBC executives make it sound like some den of inequity,” Couric said. “A lot of NBC executives have those buttons that open and close doors. It was really just a privacy thing … I think it was just an executive perk that some people opted to have, but I don’t think it was a nefarious thing, and I think that’s been misconstrued.”

 Couric also apologized for previously joking about Lauer’s alleged misconduct.

 In 2012, Couric said on “Watch What Happens Live” that when she and Lauer, 60, worked together, “He pinches me on the ass a lot.”

 “I was joking! It was a total joke,” she said on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” on Tuesday night. “In fact, when that started circulating, Andy, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I was on “Watch What Happens Live.”’ It was so antithetical to the nature of our relationship — I thought it would be funny because it was so weird,” she stammered. “It was totally a joke, but I was sorry I had made that joke because people misconstrued it.”

 It wasn’t the only time Couric joked about Lauer’s bad behavior at work, having previously spoken at a top-secret roast in 2008 that featured plenty of material about Lauer’s sexual proclivities in the workplace.

 Lauer himself has been largely silent on the allegations against him until last week, when he released a statement claiming that while he admitted to being a poor husband and behaving inappropriately at work, “any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive or abusive actions on my part, at any time, are absolutely false.” |||||Summary:

– That infamous privacy button that Matt Lauer had under his desk was an “executive perk” rather than a “nefarious thing” used to trap women in his office, Katie Couric told Wendy Williams on Williams' show Tuesday. “A lot of NBC executives have those buttons that open and close doors. It was really just a privacy thing,” Couric said, per Page Six. "A lot of stuff gets misreported and blown out of proportion." Lauer's former longtime colleague is struggling to reconcile her own experiences with the disgraced NBC host and what others have said about him. Couric said that Lauer always treated her "respectfully and appropriately," but added that it would likely be "challenging" for Lauer to experience a comeback. “I think it depends on ... how he decides to handle what has happened. And the full extent of what has happened, I don’t think has been truly revealed," she added. Later Tuesday, she went on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live and cleared up another misunderstanding related to Lauer. For the record, she was joking when she told the show in 2012 that Lauer "pinches me on the ass a lot." "I was joking! It was a total joke," she told host Andy Cohen.