Michaela Myers said she was first groped by her supervisor after a crew pizza party last summer, shortly after starting a new job as a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service. She was 22 and excited about the job. She had worked out diligently to prepare for the season, running and hiking with a heavy pack. She is from the Pacific Northwest, and had always loved the outdoors and a challenge.

 She remembers her supervisor, a Forest Service veteran, offering her beers at a crew member’s house after dinner. He told her he was glad she was on the crew because she was “sexy” and had “a nice ass,” she said. According to her account, he led her to a couch, rubbed her butt as she sat down, and slid his hand between her legs. Myers was shocked and upset, but didn’t stop him. She had heard from other crew members that this manager could fly off the handle, and didn’t want to make a scene.

 “You don’t feel like you can say ‘no’ loudly to your supervisor,” she said. “I keep looking back on it and wishing I could have just punched him or something.”

 “I keep looking back on it and wishing I could have just punched him or something.”

 According to Myers, the harassment and groping continued for the rest of the summer. When she confided in a fellow crew member, he told her this was an unfortunate reality for a female firefighter. She had a choice, she recalls him saying: report it and face retaliation, or do nothing and stay in fire.

 But in September, after the end of her three-month season in Oregon, Myers had enough. She reported the harassment to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency. In October, she provided a sworn statement to a USDA investigator detailing all the allegations. At first, Myers found the Human Resource department’s response encouraging. She was optimistic action would be taken. But two months later, the Forest Service sent her a letter that said the investigation was complete, no misconduct had been found, and the case was closed.

 Myers was furious.

 “This means they don’t believe me that I was sexually harassed,” she said. “Or they don’t care.”

 When reached by phone, the manager, who still works for the Forest Service, said he was made aware of the allegations. “I was cleared of all wrongdoing,” he said.

 ‘We all live in this fear’

 Harassment of women in the Forest Service has been a problem for years. As far back as 1972, women have joined together to file class action complaints and lawsuits about gender discrimination and sexual harassment. More recently, in 2016, a congressional hearing was held to address the problem within the Forest Service’s California workforce, which had also been the focus of previous complaints. The PBS NewsHour investigated what’s happened since then, and found the problem goes much deeper.

 Firefighter Darla Bush said her career “spiraled downhill” after she notified her supervisor that she was pregnant with twins in 2011. Video by Joshua Barajas

 In interviews with 34 current and former U.S. Forest Service women, spanning 13 states, the women described a workplace that remains hostile to female employees. They complained of a pattern of gender discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment and assault by crew members and supervisors. Three women said they were raped after-hours by co-workers or interagency firefighters while working for the Forest Service. Many women alleged retaliation after reporting these incidents.

 The retaliation they described took different forms: verbal threats, bullying notes, duties stripped, negative performance reviews, and demotions. Myers applied to work another season with the Forest Service and said she received interest from several states, but not Oregon, where she reported the abuse. ‘It’s like I’m on some Oregon blacklist, the Oregon #MeToo blacklist,” she said.

 Watch our complete series on harassment and retaliation in the U.S. Forest Service. Video by Lorna Baldwin, Emily Carpeaux and William Brangham

 Some women interviewed said they never reported the harassment for fear of retaliation. In a survey of nearly 2,000 Forest Service employees in California, conducted by the USDA Office of Inspector General last summer, the majority of respondents said they knew of the agency’s “zero tolerance” policy for harassment. But the survey, released in February 2018, also showed that most who experienced harassment did not report it, either because they didn’t trust the reporting process, didn’t believe that the process would be confidential, or feared a negative impact on their job.

 “We all live in this fear … So if I have to speak up I will. But it’s frustrating because there’s so many more out there who are not talking.”

 Seven of the 34 women interviewed asked to remain anonymous for fear of further retaliation. Fear was a common theme in the interviews. One woman said she went to the hospital multiple times for “her nerves” after reporting harassment. Another asked the NewsHour to destroy her interview transcript, because she became too afraid of the consequences. A third, a firefighter who resigned from her position in 2016 after she reported to police that she was raped on assignment in Montana, said: “We all live in this fear … So if I have to speak up I will. But it’s frustrating because there’s so many more out there who are not talking.”

 Reporting harassment

 In interviews, Forest Service employees, union representatives, lawyers, and congressional investigators said the agency struggles with a long-standing “boys’ club” culture, not just in California, but all over the country. Women are often assigned to remote forests, where they may work in close quarters with male-dominated crews in high-risk scenarios. Socializing after hours can involve heavy drinking. Many women described the worst offenses in the agency’s wildland firefighting division, where the gender disparity is even greater: 6,633 fire employees are male, while just 890, or 13 percent, are female.

 Debra D’Agostino, a federal employment lawyer who has represented at least five Forest Service women with gender discrimination complaints, said: “The stories I hear from female firefighters really sound like they are from the 1970s. It’s really old-fashioned sexist conduct that you just don’t expect to see these days.”

 U.S. Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Lenise Lago said the agency is “on the right track.” In November 2017, she said, it created a harassment reporting center with a toll-free hotline. And later this year, the agency will for the first time require every employee to undergo identical sexual harassment training.

 The Forest Service declined to comment on specific cases due to privacy, but said it takes “all reports of sexual harassment very seriously.”

 “There are more numerous people doing the right thing than not,” Lago said.

 In the private sector, employees can file discrimination complaints directly with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, an independent agency tasked with investigating workplace discrimination. But federal employees, including those in the Forest Service, must first contact their agency’s EEO counselor, who starts an investigation and then makes a decision with the agency on how to handle the complaint. Federal employees dissatisfied with the results can appeal that decision to the EEOC or pursue a case in federal district court.

 Many of the women interviewed described the reporting process as long, complicated, and never ending in a satisfying conclusion. Investigations can take years and stretch into hundreds of pages, especially if there is more than one allegation.

 The EEOC said the average processing time for all complaints in fiscal year 2016 was 464 days, and that it’s exploring ways to shorten the process. The Forest Service’s new hotline, which is staffed by contractors specifically trained to handle sexual harassment, aims to more efficiently respond to these claims.

 Joe Duran, a union leader in California who has been with the Forest Service for more than 40 years, said: “I take an awful lot of phone calls with individuals … All I can do is give them counsel and advice. I’ll say, ‘you have to go through this or move on. And if you go the EEO route that could be years.’ That really tears them apart … People want to know why.”

 But Duran said an even bigger issue is the retaliation people face after reporting bad behavior. “The ones that do [report] are harassed or reprised or stuck away someplace,” he said. And management does sometimes investigate this reprisal, he said, but “you’ll never hear the outcomes.”

 ‘You are a prime example of why women don’t belong in fire’

 Last summer, one woman in the South was startled from the start of her season by the behavior of the men on her hotshot crew, an elite team that fights wildfires. The woman, who is 27 and asked for anonymity because she continues to work for the Forest Service, said they made disparaging sexual comments about a former female worker and implied that an EEO complaint had no consequences. “The only thing that EEO taught us is that we can get away with anything,” she recalled one man saying.

 Melissa Moore “To be a chick in fire, you have to be excellent” Engine captain

 Fremont-Winema National Forest

 Oregon Moore, 35, says that while on assignment at the National Wildland Firefighter Apprentice Program in 2015, a student at the academy groped her buttocks and vagina at an after-hours gathering at a local bar. She said she submitted a statement about the incident to the Forest Service. In a statement to Congress, Moore said she was told her allegations had been substantiated, but it wasn’t clear whether action was taken against the perpetrator. “It’s less a culture of harassment than just blatant misogyny. … A lot of men … [aren’t] used to seeing the types of women that would fight fire … To be a chick in fire, you have to be excellent to be good. And if you’re not that, then you just kind of get eaten alive.”

 One day in mid-August, according to her records, a senior crew member directed an “emotional outburst” at her after she had trouble keeping up on a hike: “She shouldn’t be here — this is a hotshot crew. She needs to go the f**k home.”

 Two weeks later, while fighting a fire in Montana, the woman was struck in the back by a falling fir tree cut down by a fellow crew member. She said he failed to call out a warning as it fell. “I don’t know about if he dropped it intentionally, but he definitely knew I was there and didn’t care. He didn’t care if he hurt me,” she said.

 The tree weighed 100 pounds and sprained the ligaments of her lumbar spine, according to medical records. Her supervisor did not initially sign the necessary paperwork required for her medical treatment, according to a Forest Service police report. Patti Adkinson, a workers’ compensation representative who handled the woman’s case, found this disturbing. “My personal opinion is that happened because they were were trying to prove to her that she wasn’t a fit candidate to be a hotshot, so they were trying to make her suffer,” Adkinson said. “Absolutely they were intimidated by her being able to do what they could do.”

 In California, firefighter Darla Bush had over the years grown accustomed to bullying, such as men putting lizards on her back or rocks in her pack. For the most part, it didn’t bother her. She put her head down, worked hard, and eventually advanced to the position of engine captain. But everything changed in 2011 when she told her supervisor she was pregnant with twins. According to Bush, who is now 40, he repeatedly told her she was “useless” because her doctor had ordered her to be on light duty. In the years that followed, she said, her duties were stripped away, trainings were denied, and she was ultimately demoted from her engine captain position. “I had a lot to contribute to the district,” she said. “[But] after I got there and reported that I was pregnant, is when my career spiraled downhill. And it’s been nonstop ever since.” Bush said she now sits in an office with almost no duties to perform. She is the lead complainant in a 2014 class action complaint alleging harassment and retaliation in the Forest Service.

 Battalion chief Abby Bolt, 39, was raped while on assignment in 2012 in Colorado, by another firefighter who was not with the Forest Service. While she reported the rape to police, she did not report it to the Forest Service because she feared retaliation. “I had previously tried to report some bad behavior that’s not near as bad as sexual assault. So I can’t even imagine if I had reported the rape,” she said. “The Forest Service would have made it so hard on me.” Because she felt she could not trust the formal reporting channel, she confided instead in a fellow firefighter who she saw as a kind of protector. A year later, that friend died while fighting a fire. “And then that piece of security was gone too,” she said.

 In the years since, Bolt said she has faced bullying and harassment from her male supervisors, which intensified after she contacted the Forest Service about filing a gender discrimination complaint in 2014. In January 2015, she filed a formal EEO complaint. Her case has been winding its way through that process ever since.

 This past fall, Bolt said she received anonymous notes in her mailbox. “You are a prime example of why women don’t belong in fire, especially single mothers,” one of the notes read. “Let it go.” After she reported the notes, she received a letter from management saying the investigation was closed because “there was no accused person to interview.” And then in October, she found “QUIT” scrawled on the back of her dusty vehicle. After getting the notes, she said, “I have sat in my truck, in the parking lot, for hours and hours and actually, days. Like, there’s been days … after the notes that were left, that I couldn’t get out of my truck. I would pull up to the office and I just couldn’t get out.”

 Jim Lopez, a union representative who has taken up Bolt’s gender discrimination case, said she is “the epitome of a bullying target — they tend to be high performers, good communicators and they tend to make the supervisors look bad.”

 Fire, he said, remains “one of the last strongholds in the Forest Service of male domination,” and of men who don’t want women in their ranks.

 Decades of disparity, and efforts to close the gap

 The Forest Service was created in 1905 as an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, though in many ways its mission echoed the goals of the National Parks Service, that of protecting and managing the public lands. Among those duties were firefighting and other responsibilities often seen as grueling tasks, work that a 1971 pamphlet describes as “men who don’t mind roughing it.”

 In its early days, the Forest Service did employ women, but they were not expected to do field work. Hallie M. Daggett, the first woman to be employed in fire in the agency, joined in 1913 “after considerable exertion,” according to American Forestry magazine. “Few women would care for such a job, fewer still would seek it,” the magazine wrote.

 Janine McFarland “I still love the Forest Service.” Archaeologist

 Deschutes National Forest

 Oregon

 McFarland, 55, said she has filed two dozen harassment and discrimination complaints over the years while working for the Forest Service. In 2002, she reported pornographic photos of women were plastered across work vehicles on the Los Padres National Forest. Afterward, she said, she faced retaliation, including death threats against her and her son. “What the Forest Service is allowing to happen is all this retaliation and reprisal, and then it never gets resolved. Women quit or retire or leave … I still love the Forest Service. Think it’s one of the best agencies in the world. I still believe all that stuff.”

 Deanne Shulman, the first female smokejumper in the Forest Service, didn’t gain entry into the agency until 1981, nearly 70 years after Daggett took a post as fire lookout. Smokejumpers are part of an elite crew that jumps out of airplanes and parachutes down to fight fires below. Shulman passed the physical tests, but was initially denied the job because she was told she hadn’t met weight requirements; she was five pounds under the 130-pound minimum. It wasn’t until Shulman filed a formal EEO complaint did the agency open the work to women.

 Today, a third of the Forest Service’s nearly 30,000 employees are women, according to the most recent agency figures, updated in January of this year.

 Efforts to fix this gender disparity began decades ago. In 1973, Gene Bernardi, a research sociologist with the Forest Service, filed a class action lawsuit against the agency for gender discrimination in California. The suit led the Forest Service to later agree to a “consent decree” that required it to increase the number of women among its California staff to 43 percent, roughly the same percentage of women in the civilian workforce at the time.

 The decree bred resentment among male Forest Service employees. In 1991, a bitter male fire captain wrote to The Hartford Courant newspaper, saying that the decree’s requirements were “tearing the agency apart, creating animosity and mistrust between men and women … and lowering the agency’s ability to do its job.” A group of male employees attempted to challenge the decree, but it was dismissed in court a year earlier.

 Jonel Wagoner, one of the “Bernardi women” hired after the 1981 decree, said she retired last year after 37 seasons due to the mistreatment she endured.

 “This agency, they just detest women, do not want women in their ranks. They hate educated strong women,” said the former firefighter, who is 57, and who also represented harassed women as a union representative. “If you’re not going to be one of the good old boys, you’re going to fail.”

 A second class action lawsuit came in 1995 when two female former Forest Service employees alleged sexual harassment and reprisal on behalf of 6,000 women, also in California. The lawsuit led to another decree, requiring that the agency re-evaluate how it processed complaints. That decree expired in 2006.

 And in 2014, a class action complaint was filed with the EEOC, claiming — again — sexual harassment of and retaliation against women in the Forest Service in California. That same year, California Rep. Jackie Speier recalls sending one of her staffers to a meeting with Forest Service officials. Media reports at the time pointed to continued problems with sexual misconduct within the agency. After the meeting, Speier said the staffer returned to the D.C. office “demonstrably shocked” and in disbelief.

 When the staffer asked Forest Service officials about the sexual misconduct, she recalled to the NewsHour, they responded with the sentiment of “Boys will be boys.”

 Two years later, the National Parks Service was flagged by the Interior Department for similar problems. At the time, then-Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell told employees in an agency-wide email that stories of sexual abuse within the Forest Service were mostly “older allegations.”

 Darlene Hall, who is 53, and one of three named complainants in the 2014 case, said that isn’t true. To her, the misbehavior today is as bad or worse, just more covert than in the past. The message remains clear, she said: “You’re female, you don’t belong here. Speak up, and you get hammered.”

 Lack of follow-up

 In December 2016, the congressional hearing was held to publicly address the concerns of rampant sexual misconduct, assault and discrimination within Region 5 — the California arm — of the Forest Service.

 At the hearing, Lesa Donnelly, an early class action complainant and a whistleblower who has advised many California-based Forest Service women, shared story after story of misconduct she’d heard. Forest Service firefighter Denice Rice also testified about her own experience, detailing that her supervisor had asked for sex, stalked her, and poked her breasts with a letter opener. “The instant I filed” a complaint, she said, “everything changed.” Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle grilled the agency about their poor record of responding to these issues.

 In her opening statement, Lago, then-deputy chief of business operations at the Forest Service, defended the agency, saying: “We investigate all allegations. We hold people accountable.”

 Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, vowed that members would “use every power we possibly can from this pulpit” to ensure that women “never have to go through that again in any way shape or form.”

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 A “Thank you, firefighters” sign seen on the way into the Los Padres National Forest in southern California. Video by Joshua Barajas

 But more than a year later, there’s been little follow-up from the Hill. The Office of the Inspector General is expected to release an audit in April that will evaluate how well the Forest Service has addressed complaints of workplace misconduct.

 The Forest Service, for its part, said it updated its anti-harassment policy ahead of the hearing, in September 2016, and launched the national hotline the following November. Since the new anti-harassment policy was put in place, the agency said, it has received 1,013 reports of harassment, and completed inquiries or investigations in 632 of those cases. Of those, the agency said it found misconduct in 150 cases.

 For every misconduct finding, the agency said it delivered a corrective action that ranged from a warning letter to termination, “depending on the severity and facts gathered in each case,” Babete Anderson, an agency spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

 Darla Bush “Once you say something....you get a target on your back” Fire operations specialist

 Sequoia National Forest

 California Bush, 40, is the lead complainant in a 2014 class action complaint with the EEOC that alleges a culture of harassment and retaliation in the Forest Service. She fears speaking up will jeopardize her retirement, which is seven years away. “Once you say something, there’s no shutting that door and you get a target on your back. It’s been my experience [that] if you open your mouth and you speak up in regards to your standards or what should be right or wrong, there’s no going back.”

 But nearly every female Forest Service employee the NewsHour spoke with said they did not believe the hotline was fixing anything. Wagoner, who remembers a previous Forest Service hotline in California that later went away, said she had seen women retaliated against for calling. Bolt, the battalion chief in California who received the harassing notes, said she submitted more than one complaint to the new hotline and never received any follow up.

 Frustrated, Bolt sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the USDA to try to figure out what happened to her hotline complaints. She received a letter back from the USDA that said the FOIA office had a backlog, and said she hasn’t received any correspondence since.

 The ones who leave

 Nearly all of the women interviewed said they loved the Forest Service. They loved the mission of protecting forests. The time outside. The adrenaline of fighting fires. The dirty work. The camaraderie. And the skill required. For these reasons, despite the harassment they faced, many of them chose to stay.

 But there were also the women who quit or were pushed out, and never returned.

 At first, Erinn Whitmer loved her job as a seasonal firefighter. She was an adrenaline junkie who always wanted to be outdoors. And she grew up in Northern California, in wildfire country, where her home was twice evacuated for fires. “I grew up near fire crews,” she said, and admired them. “But I didn’t realize how naive I was to the culture.”

 Whitmer worked eight seasons in fire for public land agencies: first the Park Service, then the Bureau of Land Management, and then the Forest Service in California. She soon saw what she called a “womanizing” culture in all three — but the Forest Service was the worst, she said. There, crew members constantly talked about sex and pressured women for it. Hard-drinking seemed part of being on the crew. One night in November 2011, according to a police report at the time and later sworn testimony to a Forest Service investigator, Whitmer and her coworkers drank for several hours at a local bar. Things started to get fuzzy from there. She remembers hanging out with several people back at the barracks, and one crew member talking his way up to her room. Her next memory is waking up in her bed and realizing he was having sex with her.

 “I just want these guys to stop getting these women drunk and using them for sex…”

 “I heard stories … I never thought these terrible things would happen to me,” she scrawled in the margins of her typed testimony in September 2013, which she sent back to the investigator. “I just want these guys to stop getting these women drunk and using them for sex…” and: “I’m not the only female who has gone through this hell.”

 Whitmer, who is now 37, did not ever press charges, telling police she didn’t want to ruin his life. But she was was shocked in 2013 when she was assigned to the same fire as the crew member.

 “This was my first contact with [him] since the incident,” she wrote in a December 2013 letter she said she shared as part of an EEO complaint. “I did not know until we were in route [sic] to the fire that [he] would be there … I did not know I would have such a strong reaction to seeing him.” At the fire, she told her squad leader, “I can’t do this,” before she began crying and walked off the fire line. A few weeks after that, she received a letter placing her on administrative leave for “disruptive behavior.”

 She ultimately left the Forest Service in late 2013.

 Speaking up

 A common thread in conversations with all 34 Forest Service women was that the time had come to speak up. Some formed new communities on social media where they talked about how to deal with the harassment. Others filed complaints or spoke to supervisors about harassment for the first time. They said the #MeToo movement factored into why they wanted to talk to the media.

 “There’s little girls coming up, and there’s teenagers coming up … that want to be in these jobs,” said Bolt, who in February was suspended, according to her, in part for failure to follow instructions for not drug testing a new mother. “If I lose my job now, but it helps it get a little bit better,” it will have been worth it, she said.

 Meanwhile the hotshot crew member who was hit by a falling tree said she was gathering documentation to file her first ever report of misconduct, to the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General. She said she’d frame it as a safety issue, instead of gender discrimination, because she thought that would be more likely to get a response.

 Out West, Michaela Myers was offered another firefighting job in the Forest Service, not in Oregon, but with a crew in Washington. She said she’d heard from a network of agency women — and hoped — that it was a better forest in which to work.

 And Darla Bush, who said she was told she was useless after getting pregnant, continues to pursue her class action complaint. Today, she has three girls. Two of them want to become firefighters, she said, and then started to cry. “I won’t say it out loud to them, but I would never wish for them to become firefighters. Not in this agency.”

 Lorna Baldwin, Emily Carpeaux and William Brangham contributed to this reporting.

 Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. The name of the Forest Service supervisor in Oregon has been removed. We stand by our reporting and thank the multiple women who went public for this story.

 Tip line: If you are in the U.S. Forest Service and you have experienced gender discrimination or sexual misconduct — and/or retaliation for reporting it — email us at tipline@newshour.org. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Photo

 WASHINGTON — The head of the United States Forest Service stepped down Wednesday amid an investigation into sexual harassment accusations against him, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department said.

 The resignation of the agency’s chief, Tony Tooke, comes days after “PBS NewsHour” reported that the Agriculture Department was investigating sexual misconduct complaints against him, including that Mr. Tooke had relationships with subordinates before his appointment to the top role.

 According to the department’s spokesman, Mr. Tooke said in an email to his employees that he had been cooperating with the investigation but wanted to “make way for a new leader.”

 “I have been forthright during the review, but I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media,” Mr. Tooke wrote. “What I can control, however, are decisions I make today and the choice of a path for the future that is best for our employees.”

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 The Agriculture Department investigation was announced immediately after reports of a broad culture of harassment and retaliation at the Forest Service. According to “NewsHour,” interviews with 34 women who have worked for the service revealed widespread misconduct, including several reports of rape.

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 The nature of the accusations against Mr. Tooke were not clear on Wednesday night.

 “In my experience, in order to effectively lead any organization, you must have the moral authority to inspire its members to work toward the goal of continuous improvement,” Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement. “Chief Tooke has determined that it is best for the Forest Service, its future and its employees that he step aside.”

 Mr. Perdue appointed Mr. Tooke over the summer; he had been at the agency for several decades. Mr. Tooke wrote in the email to Forest Service staff that his retirement would be effective immediately, the department spokesman said. ||||| The U.S. Forest Service has confirmed that the United States Department of Agriculture, its parent agency, has “engaged an independent investigator” to look into complaints against Chief Tony Tooke.

 News of this investigation comes as the Forest Service is dealing with allegations of a broader culture of harassment and retaliation within its ranks, as detailed in an investigation published by the PBS NewsHour this week.

 In the course of reporting its investigation, the PBS NewsHour discovered allegations of sexual misconduct against Tooke, specifically relationships with his subordinates, before he became chief.

 In a statement, Forest Service press officer Babete Anderson said the investigation would “undertake a thorough review of [Tooke’s] conduct. We take very seriously the responsibility to promote a safe, respectful and rewarding work environment for all employees.”

 When asked about the allegations, Tooke said in an email: “I’m in support of this investigation, and I have fully cooperated from the start. I expect to be held to the same standards as every other Forest Service employee.”

 In an email to employees responding to the NewsHour’s original report, a spokesman from Tooke’s office said: “The stories the Forest Service employees shared during the PBS NewsHour piece are important to hear, difficult and heart-wrenching as they may be. Stories like these, which have come to light over the past few years, have underscored that there are elements of sexual harassment in the Forest Service that have existed and continue today.”

 It continues: “While we have taken significant actions over the past several years to address sexual harassment in the Forest Service, we acknowledge that we have more work to do. These are critical issues that the Forest Service must continue to take on to increase our efforts to protect our fellow employees so they know they can speak up and speak out, without any fear of retaliation or reprisal. We continue to consult with outside experts and focus internal resources to help us better support victims of harassment during investigations. Victims must know that there will be accountability for persons who engage in sexual harassment and reprisal. We are committed to our duty to create a workplace that is respectful, rewarding, and above all, a safe place for all employees. The Forest Service is committed to permanently changing our culture to create the workplace we all deserve”

 The statement, from Dan Jiron, acting deputy undersecretary for natural resources and the environment, did not mention Tooke.

 After the NewsHour team reported on those allegations this week, more than 45 women and men also came forward with their own stories about the agency. If you are in the U.S. Forest Service and want to share your experience, email us at tipline@newshour.org. ||||| The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is stepping down amid allegations of sexual misconduct and an investigation commissioned by the United States Department of Agriculture into his own behavior.

 Tony Tooke, who became chief in September after nearly four decades with the agency, wrote in an email to staff Wednesday that his retirement was effective immediately.

 “I have decided that what is needed right now is for me to step down as Forest Service Chief and make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency.”

 The news comes days after a PBS NewsHour investigation revealed a widespread culture of sexual harassment and assault within the agency, and retaliation against those who reported it.

 That investigation also revealed claims of sexual misconduct against Tooke, including relationships with his subordinates before he became chief.

 The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed last week it had “engaged an independent investigator” to look into claims about Tooke’s behavior.

 In his email Wednesday, Tooke wrote: “I have been forthright during the review, but I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media. What I can control, however, are decisions I make today and the choice of a path for the future that is best for our employees, the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I must also think about what is best for my family. Therefore, I have decided that what is needed right now is for me to step down as Forest Service Chief and make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency.”

 “We are in a moment at the Forest Service when we have a tremendous opportunity to mold a bright and successful future in delivering our mission. To seize this moment, however, the right leadership must be in place to create an atmosphere in which employees can perform their very best work. Each employee deserves a leader who can maintain the proper moral authority to steer the Forest Service along this important and challenging course,” he also wrote.

 A spokeswoman for the Forest Service would not answer questions about Tooke’s departure. Tooke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said in a statement he accepted Tooke’s resignation today.

 “The Forest Service is filled with dedicated employees from across this nation who devote their lives to promoting healthy and productive forests for the benefit of taxpayers and our environment. In my experience, in order to effectively lead any organization, you must have the moral authority to inspire its members to work toward the goal of continuous improvement. Chief Tooke has determined that it is best for the Forest Service, its future, and its employees that he step aside. I thank him for his decades of service to this nation and to the conservation of its natural resources,” the statement read.

 If you are in the U.S. Forest Service and want to share your experience, email us at tipline@newshour.org.

 MORE: |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– After just six months on the job, the head of the US Forest Service is stepping down after a PBS probe revealed not only claims of sexual harassment and assault throughout the agency in general, but also accusations of misconduct against Tony Tooke himself, PBS reports. Tooke's retirement, which is effective immediately, comes just a few days after a PBS NewsHour investigation into both the Forest Service and Tooke, who informed his staff he'd be leaving in a Wednesday email obtained by Politico and BuzzFeed. While Tooke didn't confirm or deny the allegations against him—allegations that the New York Times says haven't yet been spelled out—he says, "I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media," and therefore feels it's best to "make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency." PBS talked to 34 current and former Forest Service female workers, who described a hostile work environment that included everything from bullying and sexual harassment to groping and rape. Many women also allege retaliation after they reported these incidents. The Forest Service says its parent agency, the Department of Agriculture, has "engaged an independent investigator" to look into specific allegations against Tooke, who has been with the Forest Service since he was 18. Tooke wrote in his email that "I admire the courage" of the women who've come forward about the Forest Service and that "each employee deserves a leader who can maintain the proper moral authority to steer the Forest Service along this important and challenging course." Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue thanked Tooke in a statement for "his decades of service to this nation and to the conservation of its natural resources."


Here is a news article: Marco Rubio gave a 2,600-odd-word response to President Obama's State of the Union address. Unfortunately for him, the Internet didn't hear a single one of them because it was too busy GIF-ifying this clip of him having to pause to grab a quick drink of water: ||||| Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivered his party's response to President Obama's State of the Union Address. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP) Story Highlights The Florida senator drank from a bottle of water near end of his State of the Union response

 Twitter says there were 9,200 tweets per minute regarding Rubio's water

 Rubio gets in on the joke by tweeting picture of the water bottle

 WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio's sip of water near the end of his response to President Obama's State of the Union was the thirst quencher that sent people flocking to Twitter.

 The social media site blew up when the Florida Republican reached for a bottle of Poland Spring water as he was outlining the GOP's vision to help the middle class. His speech text ran for five pages, about half the length of Obama's remarks.

 Abby Huntsman, the daughter of former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman tweeted: "That water bottle shouldn't have been so far for him to grab. Too much awkwardness in one speech! #Rubio #SOTU."

 Another from Ana Marie Cox, a blogger and the founding editor of Wonkette: "Speech with which Rubio stepped to the side to grab a drink inversely proportional to how long he wanted it. POOR GUY."

 Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who helped elect President Bill Cllinton, tweeted, "Marco Rubio, the man you want to have a desperate gulp of water with."

 In recognition of his social-media moment, Rubio took to Twitter as well and posted a photo of the small bottle of water. It appeared to be drained of its contents.

 Twitter said there were about 9,200 tweets per minute at about 10:43 p.m. ET, after Rubio's sip of water. For a short time, #watergate and Poland Spring were trending on the micro-blogging site.

 Some Republicans sympathized with Rubio's plight. GOP strategist Mike Murphy said on Twitter that the incident detracted from the content of the senator's remarks. "Strong material but the trivial water bit will get endless attention. #LifeUnfair."

 Garrett Jackson, who was GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's "body man" during the 2012 campaign, blamed the incident on poor staff work. "I would have had that water bottle closer, had it been the Gov," Jackson said on Twitter. "Haha. Marco needs an aide."

 Contributing: Susan Davis

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/UcAqqG ||||| Your Reaction?

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A summary of this is?

– It's not unusual for the peanut gallery to ask if a politician was drinking after a speech—or if that drink was Kool-Aid—but it's Marco Rubio's swig of water last night that's getting more attention than his words. While giving his party's response to the State of the Union, he was forced to dive far to the side to reach a bottle of water, Slate reports, thus creating a distraction from the speech and fueling extensive Twitter commentary. There were 9,200 tweets per minute just after the sip, Twitter says, and #watergate and Poland Spring became trending topics, USA Today reports. "Strong material but the trivial water bit will get endless attention. #LifeUnfair," tweeted a GOP strategist. Rubio himself has reacted to the snafu with good humor. Late last night he tweeted this photo of the Poland Spring bottle. "This tweet came straight from the boss. #staffisnotthisfunny," Rubio's research director added in a follow up tweet spotted by BuzzFeed. This morning, Rubio took a swig during an interview with George Stephanopoulos. "I needed water, what am I going to do, you know?" he said. "God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human."


Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Domnica Cemortan testified at Francesco Schettino's trial, as Alan Johnston reports

 A Moldovan dancer who was on the bridge of the Costa Concordia with Captain Francesco Schettino has admitted she was his lover at his trial.

 Domnica Cemortan testified that she was in a romantic relationship with the captain and was with him when the cruise ship ran aground off the north-west Italian coast.

 Capt Schettino faces multiple charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

 The January 2012 tragedy killed 32 people.

 The captain faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

 Ms Cemortan has been the subject of intense media interest, says the BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome. On the night the Costa Concordia ran aground, she had dinner with the captain before he invited her to join him on the bridge as he oversaw what was meant to be a close sail-past of the little Tuscan island of Giglio.

 Local press have speculated the captain may have been distracted by her presence, or even showing off.

 In court, Ms Cemortan acknowledged after being pressed that they had been romantically involved. She had boarded the ship as a non-paying passenger hours before the crash, she said, adding: "When you are someone's lover, no-one asks you for a ticket." She subsequently dismissed the remark as a joke to her translator.

 She said she had worked for the company that operated the Costa Concordia for about three weeks in December 2011, and had met Capt Schettino on a previous cruise.

 Image caption Capt Francesco Schettino blamed his Indonesian helmsman for steering the ship onto rocks

 After the ship hit the rocks, Ms Cemortan said the captain urged her to "save herself".

 She told court that she helped other passengers to abandon ship before getting into a lifeboat herself.

 Trial to take weeks

 The court is expected to hear evidence from about 1,000 surviving passengers and crew during Capt Schettino's trial.

 In testimony earlier in the day, ship maitre d' Antonello Tievoli told the court in Grossetto, Tuscany, that he had asked the captain if he could sail close to the island of Giglio because he has family there, the news agency AP reported.

 The captain obliged on 6 January, but was apparently disappointed with the result, and ordered the ship's helmsman to plot a closer route for next time.

 A week later, the ship ran aground on rocks after veering too close to the island, with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew aboard.

 The captain has acknowledged fault in the tragedy, but his defence team is arguing the ship sank in part because watertight doors did not function on the ship.

 He also told the court in late September that his Indonesian helmsman was to blame for steering the ship onto rocks and ignoring orders to slow down.

 Image caption The route of the Costa Concordia

 However, an Italian naval expert told the trial these were not crucial factors and the crash would have happened anyway.

 The helmsman, Jacob Rusli Bin, is one of five employees who were granted plea bargains in return for mild sentences in a separate proceeding. He was given a sentence of one year and eight months.

 The 290m-long vessel was righted last month in one of the largest, most complex salvage operations ever that took 18 hours and followed months of stabilisation and preparation work by a team of 500 engineers and divers.

 That operation allowed divers to retrieve the remains of one of the two people still missing in the disaster, believed to be an Italian passenger, Maria Grazia Trecarichi. An Indian waiter, Russel Rebello, is still unaccounted for.

 Plans are now being made to attempt to remove the wreckage of the ship next year.

 Image caption The Costa Concordia was righted in September

 Correction 30 October 2013: We initially reported that the remains of Russel Rebello, not Maria Grazia Trecharichi, had been found, based on out-of-date information. ||||| A Moldovan dancer who had been on the bridge of the Costa Concordia cruise ship when it crashed into a reef off Italy electrified the captain's manslaughter trial Tuesday by testifying reluctantly that the two were lovers.

 Domnica Cemortan, from Moldova, leaves the converted Teatro Moderno theater after testifying in a hearing in the trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, in Grosseto, Italy, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013. The Moldovan... (Associated Press)

 Captain Francesco Schettino leaves after an audience of his trial at the converted Teatro Moderno theater, in Grosseto, Italy, Monday, Oct. 28, 2013. The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia is charged... (Associated Press)

 Domnica Cemortan, from Moldavia, leaves the converted Teatro Moderno theater after testifying in a hearing in the trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, in Grosseto, Italy, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013. The... (Associated Press)

 Domnica Cemortan, from Moldavia, left, arrives at the converted Teatro Moderno theater to testify in a hearing in the trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, in Grosseto, Italy, Monday, Oct. 28, 2013. The... (Associated Press)

 Domnica Cemortan, 26, only made the admission after being warned by the judge that she risked criminal charges if she didn't answer the question.

 The ship's former captain, Francesco Schettino, is the sole defendant on trial in the Tuscan town of Grosseto. He is charged with manslaughter for the 32 people who died in the crash, with causing the shipwreck on the night of Jan. 13, 2012, and with abandoning ship while many passengers and crew were still aboard. He risks 20 years in jail if convicted.

 Earlier in the day, ship ma??tre d' Antonello Tievoli testified that 10 days before the crash, he had asked Schettino for a favor: Would the captain sail close to the island of Giglio during the Mediterranean cruise because the crewman's family lived there?

 Heads in the courtroom turned Tuesday when Cemortan strode in wearing high-heeled pumps and a figure-hugging black top and skirt. She was questioned both by prosecutors and lawyers for the survivors who have attached civil suits to the manslaughter trial.

 Testifying through a translator, Cemortan said she had worked on the Concordia for three weeks in December 2011. She then re-boarded the ship in January 2012 as a non-paying passenger several hours before the crash near Giglio.

 "When you are someone's lover no one asks you for any explanations" about not having a ticket, she told the court.

 Some in the courtroom gasped at the bold remark. Cemortan insisted her comment was a joke, but the judge made it part of the trial record.

 As she testified, Schettino, who is married, sat at the defense table making a series of classic Italian hand gestures indicating incredulity.

 Cemortan repeatedly declined to answer whether she is or had been romantically involved with Schettino, relenting only after Judge Giovanni Puliatti warned her that she risked criminal charges.

 Tievoli, the maitre'd, said on Jan. 6, 2012, exactly a week before the collision, the cruise ship sailed closer than usual to Giglio and he thanked Schettino for the courtesy. Still, Tievoli recalled that Schettino was disappointed with that route and ordered his No. 2 officer to devise an even closer approach to the tiny island the following fateful week.

 When the Concordia rammed into the reef the night of Jan. 13, gashing its hull and quickly taking on water, many of the passengers were enjoying a gala supper. Cemortan said she had dined at the captain's table with him, and he told crew to slow down the ship so he could have dessert before taking the helm near Giglio.

 They both were on the bridge at the time of the crash. After it, Cemortan testified that she dashed into Schettino's private cabin to change out of her dinner outfit into more practical clothes. She noticed his laptop in the room and took it because she thought it was important. She said she gave it to him when she saw him on Giglio before dawn, after they both had taken separate lifeboats to the island.

 Cemortan told the court Schettino told her immediately after the crash to take good care of a high-ranking crew member who is the brother of the former director-general of Costa Crociere SpA, the Italian cruise line.

 She testified that the crew member, Ciro Onorato, pushed her onto a lifeboat. Because of the confusion and the darkness on the moonless night, she said she couldn't say if any passengers were still aboard the ship when she left the Concordia.

 Hours after Schettino left aboard a lifeboat and was spotted on Giglio, Italian rescue helicopters plucked many survivors from the capsized ship. Many other passengers jumped into the sea to try to swim to Giglio and some drowned.

 Cemortan said she and others aboard her lifeboat pulled several people out of the water.

 Cemortan is among those seeking damages from the captain.

 `'Today I died a second time," she told reporters outside the court, contending that she had suffered psychological trauma due to the shipwreck.

 Last month, a spectacular maritime salvage operation righted the Concordia after 20 months of lying half-submerged on its side off the port of Giglio. The ship will eventually be towed away and broken up for scrap. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– The trial of the captain who ran the Costa Concordia aground is under way, and the early testimony suggests that 32 people died because Francesco Schettino wanted to make good on a favor to a crew member and perhaps impress his lover at the same time. The two big developments: Crew member: Ship maitre'd Antonello Tievoli told the court that he asked the captain to sail close to the Tuscan island of Giglio because Tievoli had family there, reports AP. Schettino did so on Jan. 6 but didn't think he got close enough. He ordered his crew to make a closer pass the following week, and that's when the ship hit the rocks and sank. Lover testifies: Domnica Cemortan, a 26-year-old Moldovan dancer, confirmed to the court, reluctantly, that she was indeed Schettino's lover, reports the BBC. The two dined together before the crash, and she said the captain asked the crew to slow down so he could have dessert before taking the helm for the pass-by of Giglio. Cemortan accompanied him to the bridge and was with him when the ship crashed. She had two memorable quotes today: "When you are someone's lover, no one asks you for a ticket," and, outside court, "Today, I died a second time."


Article:

The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Dec 3, 2013 10:48 PM

 Two skydivers were killed and one was injured following a mid-air collision late Tuesday afternoon in Eloy, officials said.

 The collision occurred about 200 feet from the ground and caused the skydivers’ parachutes to collapse as they fell, according to Eloy Police Sgt. Brian Jerome.

 One person died at the scene and another died at a nearby hospital. A third was flown to Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix for treatment.

 Jerome said the deceased were not American, but he declined to name their countries of origin.

 Investigators are still trying to determine how the collision occurred and plan to interview witnesses throughout the night, Jerome added.

 Officials said the skydivers had been part of a 200-member group participating in a week-long event at Skydive Arizona, which operates near Eloy Municipal Airport.

 The group had been working to create “as many new ‘official’ world sequential records as we can” by Friday, according to a website promoting Square1 World Sequential Series ‘13.

 Eloy is about 15 miles southeast of Casa Grande. ||||| ELOY, AZ - Two skydivers were killed Tuesday night after colliding in the air over Eloy.

 Eloy police Sgt. Brian Jerome said the accident happened around 4:51 p.m.at Skydive Arizona.

 Jerome said one person was dead when authorities arrived on scene and a second died at a local hospital.

 According to Jerome, witnesses told investigators that both skydivers had open canopies when they ran into each other about 200 to 300 feet above the ground. After they collided, their canopies collapsed and they fell to the ground.

 A third skydiver was injured but police say that skydiver was not involved in the collision and the injuries are not believed to be serious.

 The cause of the collision is under investigation. Police have not yet released names of any of the people involved.

 The collision occurred at Skydive Arizona, a training facility that operates out of the Eloy Municipal Airport, about 60 miles south of Phoenix. Its website says it's the largest drop zone in the world, for skydivers of all skill levels.

 Dozens of women gathered at the site Saturday to break the world record for an all-female mass-formation jump.

 Stay with ABC15 for updates. |||||
What is a summary?

– Two skydivers were killed and another injured last night in a midair collision involving members of a group trying to smash formation skydiving records in Arizona. Witnesses say the skydivers were 200 to 300 feet above the ground when they collided, causing them to fall to the ground as their canopies collapsed, a police spokesman tells ABC15. Officials say the two people killed were not American but they have not disclosed their nationalities. The skydivers were part of a 200- to 250-member group taking part in a week-long effort to break as many records as possible, reports the Arizona Republic. The collision happened at the Skydive Arizona facility where the world record for an all-female mass-formation jump was broken just a few days ago.


Article:

Image caption Zoe Averianov threw the letter into the sea when she was a schoolgirl

 A woman who threw a message in a bottle into the North Sea more than 20 years ago has received a reply after it was discovered in the Netherlands.

 Zoe Averianov, from Hebden Bridge, was 10 when she threw the note as she went on holiday on a ferry from Hull to Belgium on 12 September 1990.

 Over Christmas she was given a letter sent from Europe which had been posted to her parents' address.

 Ms Averianov said she was surprised at how far the message had travelled.

 The envelope, addressed to Ms Averianov's maiden name, contained her original letter and a reply from a couple in the Netherlands.

 Her letter had read: "Dear finder, my name is Zoe Lemon. Please would you write to me, I would like it a lot.

 "I am 10 years old and I like ballet, playing the flute and the piano. I have a hamster called Sparkle and fish called Speckle."

 The reply read: "Dear Zoe, yesterday on one of my many walks with my wife along the dikes of Oosterschelde looking among the debris thrown by the sea of embankment I found a little plastic bottle containing your message." ||||| When schoolgirl Zoe Lemon threw a bottle with a message inside into the sea she soon forgot about it.

 But 23 years later she has been stunned to receive a reply – after the bottle was discovered more than 350 miles away in the Netherlands.

 Zoe, who has since married and lives in Salford, tossed the letter into the sea as she left Hull on a ferry for a family holiday to Germany when she was just 10.

 The mum – whose surname is now Averianov – was flabbergasted when her parents called for Christmas and said they had post from Europe.

 It turned out to be a reply to her letter from Piet and Jacqueline Lateur from near Rotterdam.

 MEN Zoe Lemon as a schoolgirl, with her letter

 Piet was walking his dog in the Oosterschelde dykes, near where he and his wife Jacqueline live in Serooskerke, when he found the bottle with Zoe’s letter inside.

 Zoe, 33, who works in a jewellery shop and lives in Pendleton, said: “It’s been a bit crazy really.

 "My parents came to visit on Christmas day and they had this letter from Europe addressed to my maiden name, Lemon.

 “The first thing I saw was my handwriting as a child and my little letter saying who I was and about my pets and my hobbies. It made me a bit emotional.”

 Since receiving the letter, Zoe has been in contact with Piet via email and asked to see photographs of where the bottle was found.

 He told her: “I am keeping your little letter on my piano. I know you are no longer a little girl but you asked me to write you so I have.” |||||
What is a summary?

– A UK woman got a pretty unexpected Christmas card this holiday season—a response to a 23-year-old message in a bottle she'd dropped in the North Sea as a child. While on a ferry from England to Belgium in 1990, Zoe Lemon—now Zoe Averianov—wrote a note explaining, "Dear finder, my name is Zoe Lemon. Please would you write to me, I would like it a lot." She added, "I am 10 years old and I like ballet, playing the flute and the piano. I have a hamster called Sparkle and fish called Speckle," and dropped it from the boat in a plastic bottle, the BBC reports. Fast forward to today, and Averianov, 33, says she's surprised just how far the message traveled—more than 350 miles. "My parents came to visit on Christmas Day and they had this letter from Europe addressed to my maiden name," she says. It turns out, the note washed ashore in the Netherlands, where Piet and Jacqueline Lateur found it, then returned it with a message of their own. "I know you are no longer a little girl but you asked me to write you so I have," the response read in part, per the Mirror. Piet and Averianov have kept up the communication, though this time, email is their method of choice. (But her note just isn't quite as old as what may be the oldest message found in a bottle.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– A money manager who catered to high-profile celebrities and wealthy New Yorkers has been charged with running a $30 million Ponzi scheme. The client list of Kenneth Starr (no, not that Kenneth Starr) includes Uma Thurman and Martin Scorsese, reports Reuters. No details on exactly who lost what, but Starr made enough to afford a $7.5 million Manhattan apartment. The indictment doesn't name names of possible victims, but it recounts "an actress" storming into Starr's office to demand to know where $1 million of her money went. Jacob Bernstein of the Daily Beast identifies her as Thurman. She reportedly did get her money back, though it came not from Starr but, in classic Ponzi fashion, another client. That unlucky guy was Jim Wiatt, the former head of William Morris, writes Bernstein.

A general view of the building where Kenneth Starr resides in New York May 27, 2010.

 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kenneth Starr, an investment adviser to celebrities and other wealthy New Yorkers, was coaxed from a darkened suit closet by U.S. agents at his apartment on Thursday to face charges of running a fraud of at least $30 million, prosecutors said.

 Starr ran a complex set of schemes involving his son, his wife, prominent New York City Democratic Party politician Andrew Stein, "a former national official of a major political party," and "a partner at a prominent national law firm," an affidavit by an Internal Revenue Service agent said.

 The criminal complaint charging Starr with wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering, alludes to a number of wealthy New Yorkers as his clients or associates -- "an actress," "an elderly heiress," a "retired prominent basketball player" and "a jeweler."

 Starr, 66, was detained without bail by U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman, who agreed with prosecutors that there was a risk of flight. An earlier court document gave his age as 65.

 A U.S. prosecutor, William Harrington, told the judge that when agents arrived at Starr's luxury apartment building early on Thursday morning to arrest him, Starr told the doorman: "tell them I'm not here, only my wife is here."

 The court heard that an hour later, when agents said they would use a master key to open the door, Starr's wife let them in and whispered "he's upstairs." The agents found him in a dark closet, his shoes protruding from under suits.

 The judge released co-defendant Stein, who was charged with lying to the IRS, on $250,000 bail after their joint appearance in Manhattan federal court. Starr's lawyer, Joshua Klein, said he would appeal the denial of bail.

 None of the clients were identified in court documents, but a lawyer said one was 99-year-old heiress Rachel Mellon.

 "She is shocked to hear of this alleged criminal activity of Ken Starr, whom she has known for many, many years and in whom she had the utmost trust and confidence," Mellon's lawyer, Alexander Forger, said in a statement.

 Another client purportedly duped by Starr was jeweler Jacob Arabov, whose wife recorded many of her conversations with Starr when she became suspicious of him.

 "It is now clear that they were defrauded," their lawyer, Ben Brafman, said in a statement. He said they "intend to pursue all legal remedies to recover their investments."

 STAR CLIENT LIST

 An April 2008 civil lawsuit against Starr alleged he stole millions from aging widow Joan Stanton, an actress who voiced Lois Lane in a 1940s radio show "The Adventures of Superman." Stanton has since died.

 That lawsuit said Starr also managed money for film director Mike Nichols, writer Neil Simon, journalist Diane Sawyer, Broadway director Hal Prince and actor Wesley Snipes.

 NBC News in New York reported that other clients include film director Martin Scorsese, Hollywood star Uma Thurman and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

 The court document refers to "an actress" identified as Client-2 who, accompanied by her lawyers, went to the office of Starr & Co on April 26 to ask him why $1 million was wired to one of his associates from her account without her knowledge. The money was eventually returned.

 Starr's son was neither identified by name in the complaint nor charged with any crime. Lawyers for Starr's son and wife, Diane Passage, could not immediately be found. Passage was named in a civil complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It said Passage produces films and plays.

 Stein, a former president of the New York City Council, owes more than $2 million in back taxes, the complaint said. His lawyer, Andy Maloney, said in court that Stein "has been talking, cooperating for the last six months as much as any defendant as I've ever seen."

 Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a news conference that some of Starr's clients "were actually pawns in a Ponzi scheme" since January 2008 through last month.

 A Ponzi scheme is one in which corrupt money managers use funds from some clients to pay other clients. The scheme collapses when they are eventually unable to meet redemptions.

 Many such frauds have unraveled in the financial crisis, the most infamous of which was financier Bernard Madoff's decades-long multibillion-dollar fraud. Madoff, 72, is serving a 150-year prison sentence.

 Authorities accused Starr of misappropriating millions of dollars of client money for his personal use, including the purchase in April of a new luxury Manhattan apartment worth $7.5 million. The SEC said it had five bedrooms, 6 1/2 bathrooms, a 32-foot granite lap pool and a 1,500-square-foot garden.

 Stein was accused of failing to disclose the existence of Wind River LLC, a shell company established in 2008 by an unidentified lawyer. Starr stated that funds going to Wind River were loans to Stein for his work as a "placement agent" for investments, according to the affidavit.

 Starr is not the same Ken Starr who led the investigation of former President Bill Clinton in the affair over White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

 The cases are USA v Kenneth Starr and Andrew Stein, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and SEC v Starr et al No. 10-04270.

 (Reporting by Grant McCool and Basil Katz; Editing by Maureen Bavdek, Phil Berlowitz) ||||| Peter Kramer /AP Photo The Daily Beast has learned the identity of two of the anonymous A-listers described as among the defrauded in the criminal complaint of financial adviser Kenneth Starr.

 Today’s criminal complaint against financial adviser-to-the-stars Kenneth Starr contains several anonymous clients who were allegedly defrauded by him and his firm. The identity of clients and victims alike has become an instant guessing game in New York and Hollywood.

 As reporters scramble around the Manhattan courthouse trying to piece together this fast-moving story, sources familiar with Starr and his clients have filled in some of the blanks: “client number two” in the criminal complaint is an “actress" who marched into Starr’s offices on April 26 demanding to know where $1 million of her money had gone. Within a day, the money had been returned to her, but the feds allege that it was not her money being paid back to her. Rather, it was the money of “client number three”—a former talent agent executive and his wife.”

 The actress is none other than Uma Thurman, according to several sources close to her. The talent agent is strongly believed to be Jim Wiatt, the former head of William Morris—and another client of Starr’s firm—according to other entertainment industry insiders, though the Daily Beast could not confirm this.

 For months, "the actress" had been suspicious, the newly filed complaint against Starr said. She’d viewed financial statements that she found “confusing.” She’d shown them to a friend with “financial expertise” and the person noticed that that her assets had dropped significantly, but that “no one had notified her.”

 • Peter Lauria: The Pole Dancer & the Ponzi Scheme

 • Allan Dodds Frank: Madoff vs. Starr—Who’s the Real Ponzi King? According to the complaint, when the actress (i.e. Thurman) questioned Starr, he hemmed and hawed. Starr told her he couldn’t reach “associate 4,” the man who he said held the money.

 “Starr was asked to contact Associate 4 to have the money returned. Starr returned to the room several times to say that Associate 4 was unreachable.”

 Eventually, Thurman was taken to a private conference room, where she called Associate 4’s number. “She was put right through," the complaint says. “She informed Associate 4 that she had a problem because a large portion of her savings was in his account.”

 “[Associate 4] replied that he did not know the money belonged to her and that he thought it belonged to Starr. He further said that he got really mad at Starr and told him ‘you bungled me up on this.' He promised to get the money back to her.”

 Within hours, he did.

 Except that, the money transferred came from client number 3, according to the complaint, a “former executive of a talent agency, and his wife.”

 Such stories are likely to begin bubbling up, as the Hollywood community reels from the news that a mini-Madoff was allegedly in their midst. Rumors have been percolating throughout the entertainment industry for months that all was not right with Starr and his firm—the director Mike Nichols pulled out all his money. So had the photographer Annie Leibovitz, who was having money problems and was introduced to a lending firm called Art Capital, via Starr. When her relationship went south, amid critical reports about Art Capital, her relationship with Starr busted up as well.

 On Thursday, Leibovitz said, "News of Ken Starr's arrest does not come as a complete surprise to me, and I will follow this story with great interest. Ken Starr no longer represents me and has not for some time."

 Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.

 Get a head start with the Morning Scoop email. It's your Cheat Sheet with must reads from across the Web. Get it. For more entertainment and fashion coverage follow Sexy Beast on Twitter.

 For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. |||||


News article:

When Ottawa researchers publish a paper about a protein that can used to treat heart disease on Tuesday, fellow scientists in California will probably be saying, “Doh!” like Homer Simpson.

 The naturally-occurring protein, called cardiotrophin 1, also known as CT-1, can trick the heart into repairing damage and improving blood flow. Therapy using the protein, which the Ottawa researchers have already proved in animal models, will likely be ready for clinical trials in patients with right heart failure and myocardial infarction — heart attack — in two or three years.

 With luck, therapy will be available to the general population in about a decade. It might even reduce the need for heart transplants.

 About 20 years ago, the California scientists were investigating CT-1 and benefits for heart patients, but they gave up after they learned that CT-1 was also linked to disease. Around 2005, the Ottawa researchers decided to tease out how the mechanisms behind how the protein worked, both positive and negative. They believed the negative effects were compensating for something else.

 The Ottawa researchers, including scientists from The Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Carleton University and private industry, have worked to understand the signalling pathways, genes and cellular processes associated with CT-1. It was a long road, and along the way there were a lot of blind alleys, said Lynn Megeney, the senior author on a paper published Tuesday in the journal Cell Research.

 When part of the heart dies, its remaining muscles try to adapt by getting bigger. But this happens in a dysfunctional way, and it doesn’t actually help the heart pump more blood. CT-1 helps the muscles to grow in a more healthy way and stimulates blood vessel growth around the heart, improving its ability to pump blood.

 This process happens naturally during pregnancy and when athletes exercise. After the baby is born or the athlete stops exercising, the heart returns to its original state, said Megeney, a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.

 The researchers have tested CT-1 on animal models with right heart failure. In humans, more than 40 per cent of the total heart failure population has right heart failure, said Megeney. It’s a growing epidemic in North America and one of the leading causes of death and disability in high-income nations.

 “The medical world has become quite proficient at treating heart failure. It’s good at helping people with classic congestive heart failure. But the problem is that these medications don’t work on right heart failure.”

 For some patients, the only option is a heart transplant.

 CT-1 can “beneficially remodel” the right side of the heart, he said. While exercise could theoretically have the same benefits, people with heart failure usually can’t exercise. “Treatment with CT-1 might get them to that point.”

 In the research with mice and rats, CT-1 was delivered with a mini-pump about the size of a tablet inserted under the skin. A similar gadget would likely work with people.

 Treatment is not a permanent solution. So far, about two weeks of treatment have proven to be beneficial for about two months after treatment stops. The researchers still need to figure out the minimum dose to get the maximum effect, but CT-1 treatment could replace a cocktail of drugs, said Megeney.

 Dr. Duncan Stewart, a cardiologist, co-senior author of the paper and executive vice-president of research at The Ottawa Hospital, called the experimental therapy “very exciting”, especially since it shows promise for both right and left heart failure. Megeney and Stewart have patents pending for the use of CT-1 to treat heart conditions.

 “Currently, the only treatment for right heart failure is a transplant,” said Stewart. “And although we have drugs that can reduce the symptoms of left heart failure, we can’t fix the problem, and left heart failure often leads to right heart failure over time.”

 Score one for basic science.

 “This derives from simple, basic research on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that make heart muscle grow,” said Megeney, who has already presented the findings at international meetings. “People hadn’t pushed to understand the process. It was under the radar for a long time.” ||||| A protein called cardiotrophin 1 might be an effective treatment for heart failure, according to researchers who found that it tricks the heart into growing in a healthy way. This growth is reversible, similar to that which occurs in response to endurance exercise or pregnancy.

 Researchers from Canada have shown that it may be possible to trick the heart into growing healthily, without having to exercise. Researchers from Canada have shown that it may be possible to trick the heart into growing healthily, without having to exercise.

 The team, including members from the Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada, reports the finding in the journal Cell Research.

 The study paper also describes how, in animal models of heart failure, cardiotrophin 1 (CT1) promotes heart repair and improves blood flow.

 Heart failure is a serious condition in which the heart cannot pump enough oxygen-rich blood to meet the needs of the body and its organs. The condition commonly results from heart muscle damage following a heart attack, the main cause of which is coronary artery disease.

 There are around 26 million people living with heart failure worldwide, and numbers are rising.

 Step forward in regenerative medicine

 The outlook for patients diagnosed with heart failure are poor; their survival rates are worse than those of patients with breast, prostate, and bowel cancer.

 In the United States - where around 5.7 million adults are living with heart failure - around half of patients die within 5 years of being diagnosed.

 If heart failure is diagnosed and treated early, it is possible to improve survival and quality of life. Treatment usually consists of drug therapy, reducing dietary sodium, and exercising regularly.

 The new study represents a step forward in a regenerative medicine approach to the treatment of heart failure, where the aim is to treat or even cure the disease by regrowing damaged tissue or restoring function.

 Co-senior study author Lynn Megeney, a professor at the University of Ottawa, explains that when part of the heart dies - as it does in heart failure - "the remaining muscles try to adapt by getting bigger, but this happens in a dysfunctional way and it doesn't actually help the heart pump more blood."

 But he says that, in animals with heart failure, they found that CT1 caused the heart muscles to "grow in a more healthy way," and it also stimulated the heart to grow new blood vessels. "This actually increases the heart's ability to pump blood, just like what you would see with exercise and pregnancy," he adds.

 CT1 investigated in several models

 Prof. Megeney and team investigated the effects of CT1 in laboratory-grown heart muscle cells, rats, and mice. They also compared the effects of CT1 with those of phenylephrine (PE), which is a drug that stimulates the "bad kind of heart growth," such as the harmful, irreversible enlargement that occurs in heart failure.

 The researchers found that, when treated with CT1, heart muscle cells grow into longer, healthier fibers, whereas treatment with PE just results in wider growth. Also, with CT1, the new heart muscle tissue formed with new blood vessels alongside, which helps the heart to pump better. PE did not have this effect.

 Furthermore, the heart growth that occurs with CT1 is reversible; when treatment stops, the organ returns to its original size, as it does when exercise stops or after pregnancy. The unhealthy heart growth that results from PE, on the other hand, is irreversible; when treatment stops, the heart remains dysfunctionally enlarged.

 In two animal models of heart failure - one caused by heart attack, which damages the left side of the heart, and the other caused by pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs, which damages the right side - CT1 treatment led to "dramatic improvements" in heart function.

 Finally, although both CT1 and PE use the "cell suicide," or apotosis, molecular pathway to trigger heart muscle growth, CT1 showed superior ability to control the pathway.

 The team is excited by these findings because, if they translate to humans, they could vastly improve the prognosis for patients with heart failure.

 Promising for both types of heart failure

 Co-senior author Prof. Duncan Stewart - cardiologist, senior scientist, and executive vice president of research at the Ottawa Hospital - explains that, at present, the "only treatment for right heart failure is a transplant."

 "And although we have drugs that can reduce the symptoms of left heart failure," he adds, "we can't fix the problem, and left heart failure often leads to right heart failure over time."

 The researchers are hopeful that CT1 will work in humans with heart failure because it did so in several animal models of the condition.

 They also point out that, while in theory, exercise is an obvious way to reap the benefits that CT1 appears to offer, this route is not open to people with heart failure, who can only exercise in a limited way.

 Profs. Megeney and Stewart already have patents pending for using CT1 to treat heart problems, and they hope to partner with others to test the protein in human patients.

 Nevertheless, they say that it will be several years, even if the tests are successful, before the treatment is ready for widespread clinical use. ||||| Researchers have discovered that a protein called cardiotrophin 1 (CT1) can trick the heart into growing in a healthy way and pumping more blood, just as it does in response to exercise and pregnancy. They show that this good kind of heart growth is very different from the harmful enlargement of the heart that occurs during heart failure. They also show that CT1 can repair heart damage and improve blood flow in animal models of heart failure. The results are published in Cell Research. The research team is from The Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Carleton University.

 Heart failure is a leading cause of death and disability in high-income countries and a growing problem around the world. It occurs when the heart can't pump enough blood through the body, often because a heart attack has damaged the heart muscle tissue.

 "When part of the heart dies, the remaining muscles try to adapt by getting bigger, but this happens in a dysfunctional way and it doesn't actually help the heart pump more blood," said Dr. Lynn Megeney, senior author of the study and a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa. "We found that CT1 causes heart muscles to grow in a more healthy way and it also stimulates blood vessel growth in the heart. This actually increases the heart's ability to pump blood, just like what you would see with exercise and pregnancy."

 Dr. Megeney and his colleagues conducted a variety of studies in mice, rats and cells growing in the lab. In addition to CT-1, some of the studies involved a drug called phenylephrine (PE), which is known to cause the bad kind of heart growth. They found:

 Heart muscle cells treated with CT-1 become longer, healthier fibres, while those treated with PE just grow wider.

 CT-1 causes blood vessels to grow alongside the new heart muscle tissue and increases the heart's ability to pump blood, while PE does neither.

 When CT-1 treatment stops, the heart goes back to its original condition, just like it does when exercise or pregnancy end. However, the dysfunctional heart growth caused by PE is irreversible.

 CT-1 dramatically improves heart function in two animal models of heart failure - one caused by a heart attack (affecting the left side of the heart) and one caused by high blood pressure in the lungs (pulmonary hypertension, affecting the right side of the heart).

 Both CT-1 and PE stimulate heart muscle growth through a molecular pathway that has traditionally been associated with promoting cell suicide (apoptosis), but CT-1 has a better ability to control this pathway.

 "This experimental therapy is very exciting, particularly because it shows promise in treating both left and right heart failure," said Dr. Duncan Stewart, a cardiologist, senior scientist and co-senior author on the paper who is also Executive Vice-President of Research at The Ottawa Hospital and a professor at the University of Ottawa. "Currently, the only treatment for right heart failure is a transplant. And although we have drugs that can reduce the symptoms of left heart failure, we can't fix the problem, and left heart failure often leads to right heart failure over time."

 "An intriguing aspect of this research was how human CT1 was able to promote a healthy growth response in multiple animal models," said co-author Dr. Patrick Burgon, scientist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. "This suggests the action of CT1 is universally conserved and puts us much closer to therapy."

 The researchers also note that while exercise could theoretically have the same benefits as CT-1, people with heart failure are usually limited in their ability to exercise.

 Dr. Megeney and Dr. Stewart have patents pending for the use of CT-1 to treat heart conditions and they hope to develop partnerships to test this protein in patients. If this testing is successful it will take a number of years for the treatment to become widely available.

 ###

 Full reference: Cardiotrophin 1 Stimulates Beneficial Myogenic and Vascular Remodeling of the Heart. Cell Research advance online publication 8 August 2017; doi:10.1038/cr.2017.87 Mohammad Abdul-Ghani, Colin Suen, Baohua Jiang, Yupu Deng, Jonathan J. Weldrick, Charis Putinski, Steve Brunette, Pasan Fernando, Thomas T. Lee, Peter Flynn, Frans H. H. Leenen, Patrick G. Burgon, Duncan J. Stewart, and Lynn A. Megeney http://www. nature. com/ cr/ index. html

 Funding and other acknowledgements: Dr. Megeney and Dr. Stewart are part of The Ottawa Hospital's Regenerative Medicine Program, which includes the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research and the Sinclair Centre for Regenerative Medicine. This research was possible because of generous support from the community for Regenerative Medicine Research. This study was also supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Ontario Research Fund, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and Fate Therapeutics. Fate also contributed scientifically to this research.

 Media contact: Amelia Buchanan; ambuchanan@ohri.ca; Office: 613-798-5555 x 73687; Cell: 613-297-8315

 About the partner institutions: The Ottawa Hospital is one of Canada's largest learning and research hospitals with over 1,100 beds, approximately 12,000 staff, over one million patient visits per year and an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. Along with the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, we are proudly affiliated with the University of Ottawa, one of Canada's top 10 research universities. The Hospital and Heart Institute were awarded exemplary status from Accreditation Canada and together with the University, have developed a roadmap for cardiovascular research excellence in the region. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Scientists in Canada say they've found a way to trick the heart, making it behave as if it were the beneficiary of exercise even if no exercise was able to be done. According to a study in Cell Research, the Ottawa researchers discovered that protein cardiotrophin 1 (CT1) can fuel healthy heart growth, repair heart damage, and cause the heart to pump more blood in cases of left heart failure, as a result of heart attack, and right heart failure, as a result of high blood pressure in the lungs, reports Medical News Today. It's a big deal since medications used to treat left heart failure don't work on right heart failure, which usually requires a heart transplant, per a release. Exercise can be beneficial because it boosts the heart's ability to pump blood, but "people with heart failure usually can't exercise," researcher Lynn Megeney tells the Ottawa Citizen. The heart usually responds by expanding, irreversibly, in an unhealthy way. But that's why CT1 is "very exciting," Megeney says. It "causes heart muscles to grow in a more healthy way and it also stimulates blood vessel growth in the heart," increasing blood flow just like with exercise. And just like with exercise, the heart returns to its original size afterward. Megeney says the discovery could lead to fewer heart transplants, but he says it could be two or three years before researchers begin clinical trials on humans and, assuming they go well, a decade before treatment is available to the public. (To avoid heart issues, avoid beer?)