News article:

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are backing Montana in its fight to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision from being used to strike down state laws restricting corporate campaign spending.

 The states led by New York are asking the high court to preserve Montana's state-level regulations on corporate political expenditures, according to a copy of a brief written by New York's attorney general's office and obtained by The Associated Press. The brief will be publicly released Monday.

 The Supreme Court is being asked to reverse a state court's decision to uphold the Montana law. Virginia-based American Tradition Partnership is asking the nation's high court to rule without a hearing because the group says the state law conflicts directly with the Citizens United decision that removed the federal ban on corporate campaign spending.

 The Supreme Court has blocked the Montana law until it can look at the case.

 The Montana case has prompted critics to hope the court will reverse itself on the controversial Citizens United ruling. The 22 states and D.C. say the Montana law is sharply different from the federal issues in the Citizens United case, so the ruling shouldn't apply to Montana's or other state laws regulating corporate campaign spending.

 But the states also said they would support a Supreme Court decision to reconsider portions of the Citizens United ruling either in a future case or in the Montana case, if the justices decide to take it on.

 Legal observers say don't count on the Supreme Court reconsidering its decision.

 "It is highly unlikely that the Court would reverse its decision in Citizens United," said law professor Richard L. Hasen of the University of California-Irvine.

 At best, the court would listen to arguments and might agree a clarification is needed to allow the Montana law to stand. But even that is a long shot, Hasen said.

 Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock argues that political corruption in the Copper King era led to the state ban on corporate campaign spending. A clarification of Citizens United is needed to make clear that states can block certain political spending in the interest of limiting corruption, he said.

 American Tradition Partnership argues that the state bans unfairly restrict the ability of corporations to engage in the political process that also affects them.

 Bullock wrote in a brief to be released Monday that the state does not "ban" corporate political speech, rather, it regulates that speech by requiring the formation of political action committees.

 The Democrat, who is running for governor, said the upstart political corporations hoping to take advantage of unfettered spending are merely "an anonymous conduit of unaccountable campaign spending."

 Montana and the other states are asking the court to either let the Montana Supreme Court decision stand or to hold a full hearing. They argue laws like the one in Montana that bans political spending straight from corporate treasuries are needed to prevent corruption.

 The other states, many with their own type of restrictions hanging in the balance, argue local restrictions are far different than the federal ban the court decided unconstitutionally restricted free speech. Further, state elections are at much greater risk than federal elections of being dominated by corporate money, requiring tailored regulation, the states' court filing says.

 "The federal law struck down in Citizens United applied only to elections for President and U.S. Congress," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote on behalf of the states. "By contrast, Montana's law applies to a wide range of state and local offices, including judgeships and law enforcement positions such as sheriff and county prosecutor."

 The joining states, unlike Montana, ask the court to go further and reconsider core findings in Citizens United. They argue, for instance, it was wrong for the court to say unlimited independent expenditures rarely cause corruption or the appearance of corruption.

 And other critics of the Citizens United decision who believe the court was wrong to grant corporations constitutional rights, have intervened and asked the court to reverse itself.

 "There is a growing bipartisan consensus that Citizens United needs to be overturned, and Montana is leading the way," said Peter Schurman, spokesman for a group called Free Speech For People. "The Supreme Court has an opportunity to revisit Citizens United here. That is important because there is evidence everywhere that unlimited spending in our elections creates both corruption and the appearance for corruption."

 On Friday, Montana's case was given a boost when U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., signed on in support. The senators argue evidence following the Citizens United decision, where millions in unregulated money has poured into presidential elections, shows that large independent expenditures can lead to corruption.

 The states who filed the brief in support of Montana are New York, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

 ___

 Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| Nearly half of US states have thrown their weight behind a legal defence of local laws restricting corporate money in politics by asking the supreme court to revisit its widely-criticised ban on similar national legislation.

 The states filed a brief with the supreme court on Monday in support of a century-old law in Montana – the Corrupt Practices Act – against companies pumping money into elections.

 The law was struck down by a Montana court following the US supreme court ruling two years ago in the Citizens United case, which lifted most restrictions on corporations spending money on political advertising. However, the Montana supreme court has since upheld the state law, putting it in conflict with the Citizens United ruling.

 If the supreme court agrees to take up the case, it is not likely to overturn Citizens United, but it could hand down a decision that would give state legislatures greater leeway in limiting corporate money in politics.

 The states argue that corporate money can have an even more corroding effect at a local level than on national politics.

 The Montana supreme court ruled that the ban was justified because of a history in the state of powerful corporate interests, copper mining companies, distorting politics with money. The ban was passed by a referendum in 1912.

 That position has been challenged by a conservative interest group, American Tradition Partnership, which has asked the US supreme court to overturn the Montana ruling. The court blocked its implementation in February and is now considering whether to hear arguments in the case or simply issue a ruling reversing the Montana judgement.

 In a submission to the supreme court on Monday, attorneys general from 22 states and Washington, DC representing both major parties called for the Montana law to be upheld.

 "The Montana law at issue here, like many other state laws regulating corporate campaign expenditures in state and local elections, is sharply different from the federal law struck down in Citizens United, and the Court need not revise its ruling in Citizens United in order to sustain the challenged Montana law," wrote New York's attorney-general, Eric Schneiderman, in the brief.

 The challenge over the Montana action has been backed by Senator John McCain, who authored the campaign finance law struck down by the US supreme court in Citizens United. In that ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion said that money does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption".

 In his brief in the Montana case, McCain argued that there is already evidence since the Citizens United ruling that large sums of money thrown into the political process is having a corrupting effect.

 "A problem does exist. Evidence from the 2010 and 2012 electoral cycles has demonstrated that so-called independent expenditures create a strong potential for corruption and the perception thereof. The news confirms, daily, that existing campaign finance rules purporting to provide for 'independence' and 'disclosure' in fact provide neither.

 "Regulatory filings show that much of the funding for independent expenditures comes from shell companies, pass-through entities, and non-profit organizations that conceal the true source of the individuals and companies supporting them," said McCain's brief.

 But ATP said in its petition to the supreme court said there is no evidence Citizens United has corrupted the political process and that Montana's history of past abuses has no bearing on the law today.

 "Citizens United has not proven unworkable, as evidenced by those who have exercised their liberty under it. Lower courts, except for the decision below, have uniformly followed this court's holding, and legislatures and government agencies, with few exceptions, have implemented the protections of Citizens United," it said.

 "Is this court going to limit the right of speakers to engage in core political speech because they spend huge sums in doing so? Or because the state they happen to be in had corruption problems, or a corporation employed a lot of people, over a century ago? Or because the same corporation owned a lot of newspapers in the state in the 1950s? Or because the state they happen to be in has few people, a tradition of low-cost elections, or considerable candidate-voter contact?"

 Two of the supreme court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have welcomed the opportunity to revisit the Citizens United case.

 "Montana's experience, and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in Citizens United … make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,'" Ginsburg wrote.

 She added that a further supreme court hearing "will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates' allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway". |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Montana's attorney general is fighting to preserve his state's ability to curb corporate political spending, and almost half of America's states are backing him. Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to use its Citizens United decision to strike down Montana's law limiting corporate money in politics, reports the Guardian. Montana's century-old Corrupt Practices Act, which was introduced to curb the power of copper barons, has been upheld by the state's highest court, putting it in conflict with Citizens United. The states, led by New York, argue that laws like Montana's are needed to prevent corruption at the state level. They say the court should reconsider some of its findings in the Citizens United case, arguing that the court was wrong when it claimed that unlimited independent political spending does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption," AP reports. Experts say that while it is highly unlikely that the court will reconsider Citizens United, it may clarify the ruling to allow Montana's law to stand—or simply issue a ruling reversing Montana's decision to uphold its law.


Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked Taylor Swift after the candidate the singer backed in the Tennessee Senate race lost.

 "Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff," Ingraham tweeted, referring to one of Swift's top hits.

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 Rep. Marsha Blackburn Marsha BlackburnTennessee New Members 2019 McConnell reelected as leader, Thune promoted to whip Rick Scott appears with GOP senators, ignores voter fraud question as recount continues MORE (R) beat out former Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) for Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerGOP senators open door to tougher response on Saudi Arabia New book about White House stirs controversy GOP senator calls book labeling him among Trump's enemies 'pretty warped' MORE's (R-Tenn.) seat, likely destroying Democrats' chances of taking the Senate.

 Swift posted Tuesday that she voted for Bredesen and endorsed him last month. It was a rare political stance for the singer.

 "As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn," Swift wrote.

 "I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper James (Jim) Hayes Shofner Cooper16 Dems sign letter opposing Pelosi as Speaker Divided Congress to clash over Space Force, nuclear arsenal Laura Ingraham mocks Taylor Swift after Blackburn victory: '#Shakeitoff' MORE for House of Representatives." ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– Taylor Swift came off the political bench last month to get behind the Democrat running for Senate in her home state of Tennessee, and with Phil Bredesen's loss Tuesday night to Marsha Blackburn there's no shortage of conservatives trolling Swift—and you'd be safe to cue a zillion references to bad blood. Chief among them was Fox commentator Laura Ingraham, reports the Hill, who tweeted "Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff." It was a popular theme, notes the Tennessean, as former congressman Joe Walsh can't stop, won't stop urging Swift to "Shake it off, shake it off." Bredesen didn't seem to mind the pop star's thumbs up, fruitless though it may have been, tagging her in a tweet earlier Tuesday urging Tennesseans to vote.


Summarize this article:

Advisers to Mitt Romney on Thursday defended his sharp criticism of President Obama and said that the deadly protests sweeping the Middle East would not have happened if the Republican nominee were president.

 “There’s a pretty compelling story that if you had a President Romney, you’d be in a different situation,” Richard Williamson, a top Romney foreign policy adviser, said in an interview. “For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we’ve had an American ambassador assassinated.”

 Williamson added, “In Egypt and Libya and Yemen, again demonstrations — the respect for America has gone down, there’s not a sense of American resolve and we can’t even protect sovereign American property.”

 The aggressive approach by Romney’s campaign thrust the issue of foreign policy to the forefront of the presidential campaign a day after the Republican candidate was widely criticized for blasting Obama while U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya were under attack.

 Criticism from Republicans over their nominee’s handling of the situation overseas quieted Thursday, with influential voices in the party’s foreign policy establishment rallying to Romney’s defense. And it was Obama who faced criticism for saying that he did not consider Egypt an ally — a comment that his administration struggled to explain.

 “The president can’t even keep track of who’s our ally or not. This is amateur hour — it’s amateur hour,” said Williamson, a former assistant secretary of state and ambassador. He was among those who counseled Romney to respond aggressively on Tuesday night and was offered by the campaign to speak about the candidate’s foreign policy.

 Williamson was referring to Obama’s interview Wednesday night with Telemundo in which the president said that the U.S. relationship with Egypt was a “work in progress.”

 “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy,” Obama told Telemundo. “They’re a new government that is trying to find its way.”

 Administration officials tried throughout the day to parse Obama’s statement on Egypt without appearing to contradict him.

 Obama was right in “diplomatic and legal terms,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, because “ ‘ally’ is a legal term of art” that refers to countries with which the United States has a mutual defense treaty such as the NATO alliance.

 But the United States tried to work around just that problem in 1989, creating the designation of “major non-NATO ally” for countries on which it wanted to bestow approval, weapons sales and defense cooperation prohibited to non-treaty nations. Egypt — along with Israel, Australia, Japan and South Korea — was among the first countries to be so designated that year.

 Pressed to explain why a “major non-NATO ally” is not an ally, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland repeated the treaty argument, then referred reporters to the White House. Later asked whether the United States still considers Egypt a “major non-NATO ally,” Nuland said “Yes.”

 At campaign stops in Nevada and Colorado, Obama avoided any mention of Romney as he paid tribute to those who lost their lives in Libya and again promised to track down their killers.

 But his campaign responded by noting that the protests this week were triggered by the video, not by U.S. policy, and that the video likely would still have been produced if Romney had been president. And they noted that there have been attacks on Americans under every president in recent history, including Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

 “It is astonishing that the Romney campaign continues to shamelessly politicize a sensitive international situation,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. “The fact is that any president of either party is going to be confronted by crises while in office, and Governor Romney continues to demonstrate that he is not at all prepared to manage them.”

 Romney himself struck a more measured tone and tried to refocus on his core economic argument on the campaign trail Thursday in Northern Virginia. He did not mention Obama by name, but suggested that the president was a weak commander in chief and unreliable guardian of American strength abroad.

 “As we watch the world today, sometimes it seems that we’re at the mercy of events instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events,” Romney said at a rally in Fairfax County.

 The approach on foreign policy by the Romney campaign is a signal that it feels it can gain some advantage in an area that has so far it has found problematic.

 In addition to the criticism Romney received on Wednesday, he came under fire two weeks ago for failing to mention the war in Afghanistan or acknowledge U.S. troops serving abroad in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. In July, his tour through Europe and the Middle East was marred by missteps. And he has been ridiculed for his assertion that Russia is, “without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

 “We were ready for a major debate on this,” Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official and foreign policy adviser to Romney, said in an interview. “It just happened to blow up now. It’s there, and it’s in some ways a clarifying moment.”

 In debating foreign policy with Obama, Romney is perceived to be at a disadvantage. The president consistently has outpolled Romney on the issue, and he earned high marks for the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

 Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief political strategist, rejected the suggestion that voters may question Romney’s temperament and commander-in-chief credentials because of his early and aggressive response to the attacks in Egypt and Libya.

 “It’s not an issue,” Stevens said in an interview. “It was an issue with Barack Obama four years ago, given the fact that he was younger and had little experience, and given his answers in the debates. He had stumble after stumble with foreign policy. Mitt Romney hasn’t. He’s run for president twice now and it’s not been his problem.”

 Romney’s policy advisers laid out steps that a President Romney would have taken in the Middle East that they said Obama has not done.

 “What would the governor do differently? It really starts with having a vision for the future of the Middle East, supporting those that have been shortchanged by the administration,” Mitchell Reiss, a top Romney policy adviser, said in an interview. “There are things that we can do in terms of what we say, the constancy of what our vision is — pluralism, respect for law, human dignity — these are things that you don’t hear from the administration, and the people in the region want to hear that.”

 Romney’s campaign hopes to force a broader debate about America’s role in the world and to argue that while Obama has been successful in fighting terrorism, his foreign policies have resulted in waning U.S. influence abroad.

 “We’ve got Barack Obama with a risk-adverse, lead-from-behind approach, and how’s that worked?” Williamson said. “We not only have the events in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen, but we have in Syria 20,000-plus people killed, many by means of various atrocities by a regime, and the Obama administration is missing in action.”

 Amy Gardner in Colorado and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| Over the past few days, he has stuck largely to accusations that Mr. Obama has “apologized” for America and projected weakness, suggesting that was the root cause of this week’s protests in Cairo and the lethal violence in Libya.

 Even on Thursday, as the turmoil in Egypt and Libya seemed to bleed into other areas of the region, Mr. Romney largely chose to bypass discussion of the challenges in dealing with the two countries, instead offering a more general critique of the president. “As we watch the world today, sometimes it seems that we’re at the mercy of events, instead of shaping events, and a strong America is essential to shape events,” Mr. Romney said, speaking to a modest-size crowd in Fairfax, Va., just outside Washington.

 And in an interview with ABC News, Mr. Romney declined to respond to Mr. Obama’s charge that he has a tendency to shoot first and aim later. “Well, this is politics,” he said. “I’m not going to worry about the campaign.”

 Video

 The sharpest foreign policy difference, described by Mr. Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior official in the State Department under President George W. Bush, came in response to questions about how Mr. Romney would handle Iran.

 President Obama has said he would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but has so far refused calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to set a “red line” sooner, one that would put Iran on notice that it would be subject to military attack if it continued to develop the capability to build such a weapon. Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu continued that debate in an hourlong phone call on Tuesday night, hours after the Israeli leader suggested the United States had no “moral authority” to restrain Israel from attacking Iran if it was unwilling to set clear limits for the Iranians.

 Mr. Cohen said that Mr. Romney “would not be content with an Iran one screwdriver’s turn away from a nuclear weapon.” But he stopped short of saying exactly where, in the development of nuclear capability, Mr. Romney would draw the line. It could be in a different place than Mr. Netanyahu draws it, he said.

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 That vagueness is crucial because by some definitions, Iran already has the capability to produce a nuclear weapon, though it might take several months or years to realize.

 “Once they get a weapon, or on the verge of getting it, it’s too late,” Mr. Cohen said.

 Mr. Romney has said he would never allow Iran to enrich uranium, suggesting he would enforce a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that Iran “suspend” its production of all nuclear fuel. But Iran was in violation of that demand through most of Mr. Bush’s second term, and suffered fewer economic consequences than it has under Mr. Obama, who has imposed the first sanctions against Iran’s oil revenues.

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 Both Mr. Cohen and Mr. Williamson said the president had been far too cautious in supporting opposition forces in Syria, describing him as too risk-averse in the Middle East. “It’s playing out in Syria,” said Mr. Williamson, a former ambassador who has served a series of Republican presidents. “We are not better off in letting things drift. We have 20,000 dead, and the more it goes on the fewer choices we have.”

 Mr. Cohen suggested that the only way to separate out “the good guys and the bad guys among the opposition” was to engage them. “If we don’t help, these guys they will turn to whoever can help.”

 But both men stopped short of saying that the United States should provide lethal arms. A senior Obama administration official said that “sounds a lot like they are endorsing our position.”

 On Egypt, Mr. Cohen suggested that the administration had failed to make clear that American aid was contingent on the protection of American interests. In fact, Mr. Obama’s aides, in trips to Cairo, have been careful not to threaten pulling that aid, but they have warned the Egyptian authorities that Congressional approval could be enormously difficult unless the country’s leaders reaffirmed the peace treaty with Israel.

 Mr. Williamson continued the Romney campaign’s attack on a statement issued by the American Embassy in Cairo hours before protests began there, saying “you don’t issue a conciliatory statement that says we don’t support freedom of speech.” The statement did condemn a virulent anti-Muslim video that set off the violence, but it also included references to both the importance of free speech and religious tolerance. |||||

– Mitt Romney's aides are using the crisis in the Middle East as a backdrop to flesh out their candidate's foreign policy, and it's a hawkish one, the New York Times reports. Aides said that if Mitt Romney had been president over the past four years… The US would have been actively involved in helping to form Libya's post-revolution government. He'd have set down the kind of "red line" against Iran that Israel is looking for, using military action if Iran crossed a certain point in nuclear development. They said Romney wouldn't have allowed Iran to enrich uranium, though the Times points out that it was doing that during much of George W. Bush's second term. The US would be "facilitating" the flow of arms to Syrian rebels, though not directly arming them. One Obama aide quips that it "sounds a lot like they are endorsing our position." All the positions are much more detailed than anything Romney himself has said on the campaign trail. The aides also attacked President Obama over the Libya crisis in especially harsh terms. "There is a pretty compelling store that if you had a President Romney, you'd be in a different situation," one adviser told the Washington Post. "For the first time since Jimmy Carter, we've had an American ambassador assassinated. … The respect for America has gone down, there's not a sense of American resolve."


KEARNEY, Nebraska (WKBN) – A man was arrested Wednesday for drunk driving with his kids in the car, and it was not the first time.

 Jason Behrens took his kids on vacation and drove through Kearney, Nebraska.

 The children became nervous when they noticed the car swerving and making a lot of close calls.

 After nearly getting into a head on collision, they started sending texts to 911.

 Kearney Police caught up with the family at a Burger King and arrested Behrens.

 The children have a message for the officers.

 “I just want to thank them,” 14-year-old Mackenzie Behrens said.

 “Because they, really, really, really saved our lives,” 12-year-old Ethan Behrens said.

 Jason Behrens blew three times the legal limit when arrested. He is charged with DUI and two counts of driving drunk with minors in the vehicle. ||||| Two kids sent text messages to police, turning in their own drunken father, Jason Behrens. Just before Easter weekend, Buffalo County dispatch received a 911 text alert about a suspected dad driving drunk while children sat in the back seat.

 The kids said it was the scariest moment of their lives.

 "When a car passed, you could hear how close it was, you could hear the metal," said 12-year-old Ethan Behrens.

 The two frightened kids were heading to Colorado for vacation with their dad behind the wheel.

 "We told him many times, we don't want to go anymore because you are really drunk and I don't want to die," said 14-year-old Mackenzie Behrens.

 Both kids said this wasn't the first time their dad was driving drunk while they were in the car.

 "I think this last time they were scared enough that they had no other choice," said Amy Brooks, the kids’ mother.

 "The next time he swerves, send the text,” Ethan said to Mackenzie. “And he swerved again so I pushed send," said Mackenzie.

 They sent Kearney Police on a hunt to find the rental car they were in before they would embark onto the interstate.

 "I was like, 'I can drive better than this,'” Mackenzie said. “He said, 'then fine, I can pull over and you can drive.' And I said, 'I'm not legal, if I was legal I would.'"

 The kids described almost hitting another car head on and said they continued to beg him to pull over.

 "He's like, 'I'm not drunk.' And then he kept on driving and that’s the point I got really, really scared and I just started praying a lot," Ethan said.

 The kids say it was their idea to pull over at Burger King to stop and get something to eat. That's when officers caught up with them.

 "He looked back at us and said, ‘you've been texting the cops?’ And I was like, 'yeah, I thought I was going to die,'" Ethan explained.

 "And he had something in his cup when the officers checked it," Mackenzie added.

 "I was very angry, but it was kind of a bittersweet moment to where the better part is that they are safe now that I came and picked them up, the other part is finally people will know and maybe listen to me," Brooks said.

 That day, Jason Behrens blew nearly three times the legal limit. The kids said if they could go back they would do the same.

 "It was hard, but he had pushed us to the point that we had to," Ethan said.

 "I lost trust in him," Mackenzie said.

 Now the kids want to send a message to the officers.

 "I just want to thank them,” Mackenzie said.

 “Because they really, really saved our lives," Ethan said.

 The children are in the care of their mom for the time being.

 "I'll forever keep them safe," Brooks said.

 A friend of Brooks has more information about the situation at https://www.gofundme.com/7cxqter8 .

 NTV News reached out to Jason Behrens, but he has yet to return the phone call.

 Buffalo County is one of just two counties in the state to have Text 911. It's been a little over a year since the program launched. ||||| Two Nebraska children texted 911 to stop their father from allegedly drunk driving after being scared for their lives during a road trip swerving down the road.

 Mackenzie and Ethan Behrens, 14 and 12, were riding along in Kearney toward a vacation in Colorado when they began sending fearful messages to police.

 Mackenzie and Ethan Behrens, 14 and 12, texted police in southern Nebraska after their father allegedly began driving drunk. (NTV Nebraska News/ABC)

 The kids also asked their dad, 44-year-old Jason Behrens, to pull over at a Burger King so officers could catch up to their rental car, according to NTV.

 Jason Behrens, 44, reportedly blew almost three times Nebraska's legal driving limit of 0.08%. (Kearney Police Department)

 They said that the most recent episode riding along with the impaired driver was not their first, but that near-scrapes with other cars led them to reach out for help.

 The suspect told his children that he was not drunk, though blew nearly three times the legal limit of 0.08% during a breathalyzer test after his arrest.

 Though the scare happened before Easter, the children recently opened up about their experience and thanked police officers for saving their lives.

 “It was hard, but he had pushed us to the point that we had to,” Ethan said.

 Texting 911 began last year in Buffalo County, Neb., and select municipalities and counties across the country have begun recently begun rolling it out as an option for reaching help for emergencies. |||||

Write a summary.

– Two Nebraska children may have saved their own lives and the lives of others when they texted 911 from inside their allegedly drunk father's car, WKBN reports. Fourteen-year-old Mackenzie and 12-year-old Ethan were driving through Nebraska with their 44-year-old dad, Jason Behrens, on the way to a vacation in Colorado. But they say Behrens was drunk, swerving all over the road and nearly crashing. "When a car passed, you could hear how close it was, you could hear the metal," Ethan tells NTV. "I got really, really scared, and I just started praying a lot." Mackenzie says they had told their father multiple times they didn't want to go with him because he was "really drunk" and they didn't "want to die." The children say they begged Behrens to pull over, but he ignored them. Then, after barely escaping a head-on collision, they started texting 911. Fortunately, they were in one of only two Nebraska counties that allow people to do that. They convinced Behrens to stop at a Burger King, and police caught up with them there. Police say Behrens was three times over the legal limit, and he was arrested. Ethan and Mackenzie say it was hard to call the police on their dad, but they had no choice, and this wasn't the first time he's driven drunk with them. The New York Daily News reports the incident happened last month, but the kids are speaking out now to thank police. "They, really, really, really saved our lives,” Ethan tells WKBN.


Here is a news article: VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican says Pope Francis was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by a murderous attack at a home for the elderly in southern Yemen that killed 16 people, including four nuns.

 The Vatican secretary of state said in a condolence message on Saturday that the pontiff "prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms."

 Officials and witnesses in Yemen said gunmen on Friday stormed a retirement home run by a charity established by Mother Teresa, moving room to room handcuffing the victims before shooting them in the head.

 The pope sent prayers for the dead and expressed his spiritual closeness to those affected by this "this act of senseless and diabolical violence." ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's David Campanale says the attack is being blamed on IS

 Pope Francis has condemned the killing of 16 people, including four Catholic nuns, at an old people's home in Yemen.

 He called Friday's gun attack in Aden an "act of senseless and diabolical violence".

 Reports said the attackers pretended they were visiting their mothers to gain access to the home.

 No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though Yemeni officials have blamed so-called Islamic State.

 In a statement, the Vatican said two of the nuns killed were Rwandan, one was Indian and one was from Kenya.

 'Pointless slaughter'

 They were working as nurses at the home and had been serving breakfast to its 80 residents when the attack occurred.

 All the victims were shot in the head and had been handcuffed, the Associated Press reported, citing the brother of a victim.

 The nuns were from the Missionaries of Charity congregation, which runs the home and was founded in Calcutta by Mother Teresa.

 Pope Francis "prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue", Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said.

 "He sends the assurance of his prayers for the dead and his spiritual closeness to their families and to all affected from this act of senseless and diabolical violence."

 Image copyright EPA Image caption The care home looks after some 80 elderly people

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Breakfast was being served when the attack occurred

 Missionaries of Charity spokeswoman Sunita Kumar said members were "absolutely stunned" by the killings.

 The nun in charge managed to hide and escaped unharmed.

 Yemen is engulfed in a brutal civil war between Iran-backed Zaidi Shia Houthi rebels in the north and the Saudi-Arabia backed government in the south.

 Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have both taken advantage of the war to gain ground in the country.

 More than 6,000 people have been killed and 2.4 million people displaced in Yemen's war, the UN says.

 Forces loyal to the government and southern militias regained control of Aden in July, aided by Saudi-led coalition air strikes and troops. ||||| 2016-03-05 Vatican Radio

 (Vatican Radio) Pope Francis was “shocked and profoundly saddened” by the murder of four Missionaries of Charity and twelve other people at a home for the elderly in Aden, Yemen.

 Gunmen entered the building on Friday and went room-to-room, handcuffing victims before shooting them in the head.

 A message signed by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said the Holy Father “sends the assurance of his prayers for the dead and his spiritual closeness to their families and to all affected from this act of senseless and diabolical violence.”

 The message said Pope Francis “prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue.”

 It concludes with a strong appeal for an end to the ongoing violence in Yemen.

 “In the name of God, he calls upon all parties in the present conflict to renounce violence, and to renew their commitment to the people of Yemen, particularly those most in need, whom the Sisters and their helpers sought to serve” – the message reads – “Upon everyone suffering from this violence, the Holy Father invokes God’s blessing, and in a special ways he extends to the Missionaries of Charity his prayerful sympathy and solidarity.”

 The full text of the message is below

 His Holiness Pope Francis was shocked and profoundly saddened to learn of the killing of four Missionaries of Charity and twelve others at a home for the elderly in Aden. He sends the assurance of his prayers for the dead and his spiritual closeness to their families and to all affected from this act of senseless and diabolical violence. He prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue. In the name of God, he calls upon all parties in the present conflict to renounce violence, and to renew their commitment to the people of Yemen, particularly those most in need, whom the Sisters and their helpers sought to serve. Upon everyone suffering from this violence, the Holy Father invokes God’s blessing, and in a special ways he extends to the Missionaries of Charity his prayerful sympathy and solidarity.

 Cardinal Pietro Parolin

 Secretary of State |||||
A summary of this is?

– Four Catholic nuns and 12 others were killed during an attack on a home for the elderly Friday in Yemen, in what the Vatican is condemning as an "act of senseless and diabolical violence," CNN reports. According to the AP, six gunmen got past the home's gate in the city of Aden by pretending they were visiting their mothers. Four then entered the building and went from room to room, handcuffing victims and shooting them in the head. The nuns, members of an organization founded by Mother Teresa, were acting as nurses in the home and serving breakfast when the gunmen entered, the BBC reports. One nun was able to escape death by hiding inside a fridge. Two of the killed nuns were from Rwanda, one was from India, and another was from Kenya. A Yemeni cook and Yemeni guards were among the other victims. Pope Francis was "shocked and profoundly saddened" by the violence, according to a Vatican press release. The Vatican's secretary of state says the Pope "prays that this pointless slaughter will awaken consciences, lead to a change of heart, and inspire all parties to lay down their arms and take up the path of dialogue." A spokesperson for the nuns' organization, the Missionaries of Charity, says the nuns decided to stay in Yemen longer than required in order to continue helping people. The identity of the gunmen is unclear, but Yemeni officials are blaming ISIS. Yemen is in the midst of a civil war, which is being used as cover by both ISIS and al-Qaeda. More than 6,000 civilians have been killed since the war started.


Article:

The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car, Chapter 2

 Chris Urmson Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 16, 2015

 Summer is one of the most dangerous times of the year on U.S. streets, as many of us spend more time behind the wheel, heading out for long road trips or local barbecues. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, for example, has declared the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day to be “The 100 Deadliest Days” for teenage drivers — and they’re not on the roads alone. Statistics like this keep my team and me working hard on a fully self-driving car that can get you from A to B safely, no matter how many beverages you have by the pool or how many texts you send to the new friend you met there.

 Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That’s a big motivator for us. The most recent collision, during the evening rush hour on July 1, is a perfect example. One of our Lexus vehicles was driving autonomously towards an intersection in Mountain View, CA. The light was green, but traffic was backed up on the far side, so three cars, including ours, braked and came to a stop so as not to get stuck in the middle of the intersection. After we’d stopped, a car slammed into the back of us at 17 mph — and it hadn’t braked at all.

 As you can see from the video above, our braking was normal and natural, and the vehicle behind us had plenty of stopping distance — but it never decelerated. This certainly seems like the driver was distracted and not watching the road ahead. Thankfully, everyone in both vehicles was okay, except for a bit of minor whiplash, and a few scrapes on our bumper. The other vehicle wasn’t so lucky; its entire front bumper fell off.

 Although we don’t like getting hit, there’s a silver lining here. We all want to know how self-driving cars are measuring up against their human counterparts, but the statistics we need to do this simply aren’t ordinarily gathered. National crashes-per-miles-driven rates are currently calculated on police-reported crashes. Yet there are millions of fender benders every year that go unreported and uncounted — potentially as many as 55% of all crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (None of the accidents in which people hit us resulted in a police report — not even the July 1 crash, even though the police were on site.) Furthermore, the numbers that are available don’t distinguish between miles-driven before causing a crash vs simply being involved in one. This all means no one knows the real crashes-per-miles-driven rates for typical American streets.

 But we’re now driving enough — and getting hit enough — that we can start to make some assumptions about that real crashes-per-miles-driven rate; it’s looking higher than we thought. (Our cars, with safety drivers aboard, are now self-driving about 10,000 miles per week, which is about what a typical American adult drives in a year.) It’s particularly telling that we’re getting hit more often now that the majority of our driving is on surface streets rather than freeways; this is exactly where you’d expect a lot of minor, usually-unreported collisions to happen. Other drivers have hit us 14 times since the start of our project in 2009 (including 11 rear-enders), and not once has the self-driving car been the cause of the collision. Instead, the clear theme is human error and inattention. We’ll take all this as a signal that we’re starting to compare favorably with human drivers.

 Our self-driving cars can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable or distracted. People, on the other hand, “drive as if the world is a television show viewed on TiVo that can be paused in real time — one can duck out for a moment, grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to right where they left off without missing a beat” — to quote Sheila Klauer of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. That’s certainly consistent with what we’re seeing. Please, as you get behind the wheel this summer, keep your eyes on the road. The fight to end distracted driving starts with each of us — at least until that day when you can summon a self-driving car and just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

 You can find chapter 1 here. ||||| Chris Urmson, far right, shows off his project's self-driving pod to Google chairman Eric Schmidt and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. (Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

 SAN FRANCISCO - Picture the sad sack who has a sign saying "Kick me" taped to his back. Google's self-driving cars can relate, only the sign seems to say "Hit me."

 Just weeks after reporting to the California Department of Motor Vehicles that its gadget-packed Lexus SUVs had been hit twice in the rear bumper while waiting at stop lights in Mountain View, Calif., Google reported Thursday that on July 1 a motorist smashed into its stationary autonomous vehicle at 17 mph, resulting in minor whiplash to passengers in both cars and causing the offending car's front bumper to fall off.

 "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," Google self-driving car project director Chris Urmson tells USA TODAY. "None of our accidents rise to the level of police reports. So what we are experiencing is what the road is really like."

 This marks the 14th time Google's fleet has been in an accident since the search company began trolling the streets of its headquarters in 2009. In every instance, other motorists have been at fault, Google says. These accidents may soon grow in number as Google recently began mapping the streets of Austin, Texas, and added its new pod-like two-person cars to Silicon Valley roads.

 To date, Google's autonomous vehicles have logged nearly 2 million miles, and add around 10,000 new miles of data each week. All of its cars are accompanied by law by safety drivers.

 The July 1 accident, which is the focus of Urmson's latest blog post and a video that shows a computer readout of the incident, would appear to be another example of humans making Google's point: That distracted driving in the age of smartphones and social media is a growing menace that might benefit from us turning much of that task over to robots.

 Skeptics, who include leaders of auto companies focused more on driver-assist technology, argue that fully autonomous cars come with regulatory, insurance and hacking liabilities.

 In his blog post, Urmson writes: "Our self-driving cars are being hit surprisingly often by other drivers who are distracted and not paying attention to the road. That's a big motivator for us."

 Urmson goes on to say that according to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration some 55% of minor accidents go unreported often despite police being on the scene. That was in fact the case for the July 1 crash, which was the result of Google's car stopping at an green-lit intersection - along with other motorists - because the traffic ahead was backed up.

 Writes Urmson: "Our self-driving cars can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable or distracted. People, on the other hand, 'drive as if the world is a television show viewed on TiVo that can be paused in real time – one can duck out for a moment, grab a beer from the fridge, and come back to right where they left off without missing a beat,' to quote Sheila Klauer of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. That's certainly consistent with what we're seeing."

 Also Thursday, Google beat Wall Street earnings expectations and saw its stock shoot up 3.5% in after hours trading to $579.

 Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter: @marcodellacava

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1J3kaRi ||||| LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google Inc. revealed Thursday that one of its self-driving car prototypes was involved in an injury accident for the first time.

 FILE - In this May 13, 2015, file photo, Google's self-driving Lexus car drives along street during a demonstration at Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. Google says that one of its self-driving cars... (Associated Press)

 In the collision, a Lexus SUV that the tech giant outfitted with sensors and cameras was rear-ended in Google's home city of Mountain View, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-maneuvering through traffic.

 The three Google employees on board complained of minor whiplash, were checked out at a hospital and cleared to go back to work following the July 1 collision, Google said. The driver of the other car also complained of neck and back pain.

 In California, a person must be behind the wheel of a self-driving car being tested on public roads to take control in an emergency. Google typically sends another employee in the front passenger seat to record details of the ride on a laptop. In this case, there was also a back seat passenger.

 Google has invested heavily as a pioneer of self-driving cars, technology it believes will be safer and more efficient than human drivers.

 This was the 14th accident in six years and about 1.9 million miles of testing, according to the company. Google has said that its cars have not caused any of the collisions — though in 2011 an employee who took a car to run an errand rear-ended another vehicle while the Google car was out of self-driving mode.

 In 11 of the 14, Google said its car was rear-ended.

 In a blog posted Thursday, the head of Google's self-driving car program, Chris Urmson, wrote that his SUVs "are being hit surprisingly often" by distracted drivers, perhaps people looking at their phones.

 "The clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson wrote. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers."

 In a telephone interview, Urmson said his team was exploring whether its cars could do something to alert distracted drivers before a collision. Honking would be one possibility, but Urmson said he worried that could start to annoy residents of Mountain View.

 According to an accident report that Google filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles about the July 1 crash:

 Google's SUV was going about 15 mph in self-driving mode behind two other cars as the group approached an intersection with a green light.

 The first car slowed to a stop so as not to block the intersection — traffic on the far side was not moving. The Google car and the other car in front of it also stopped.

 Within about a second, a fourth vehicle rear-ended the Google car at about 17 mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake.

 The driver of that car reported "minor neck and back pain." The SUV's rear bumper was slightly damaged, while the vehicle that struck it lost its front bumper.

 Mountain View police responded, but did not file an accident report.

 ___

 Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman . |||||
What is a summary?

– It sounds as if Google is getting a bit fed up with the way distracted, flawed humans keep crashing into its self-driving cars. In the latest accident, which the AP reports is the first involving a Google car to cause human injury, a car rear-ended a stationary self-driving car at 17mph, causing minor whiplash to people in both vehicles. This is the 14th accident involving the self-driving cars, and Google says they have all been minor and all been the fault of the driver of the other vehicle. "We're seeing first-hand the true measure of how distraction is impacting driving," self-driving car project chief Chris Urmson tells USA Today. In the accidents, which include 11 rear-enders, "the clear theme is human error and inattention," Urmson writes in a Medium blog post. "We'll take all this as a signal that we're starting to compare favorably with human drivers." Unlike humans, he notes, Google's cars "can pay attention to hundreds of objects at once, 360 degrees in all directions, and they never get tired, irritable, or distracted." He tells the AP that Google is looking into ways to alert distracted drivers when a collision with a self-driving car is imminent, although they suspect self-honking cars won't go down too well with the public.


Write an article based on this summary:

– President Trump's relationship with the media is very much front and center again, most notably after three CNN journalists resigned over a retracted story. Trump himself went after the network on Twitter—"What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!"—and a White House spokesperson on Tuesday pushed an anti-CNN video by right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe. Meanwhile, the president also is publicly feuding again with the New York Times. Here's the latest: CNN mess: The network yanked an online article alleging that Trump confidante Anthony Scaramucci had ties to a Russian investment firm, and the New York Times has more details on what happened and on how the network's respected "Triad" vetting system for sensitive stories failed. (Here is CNN's apology note, which does not specify what was incorrect.) Awful timing: It couldn't come at a worse time for CNN in the "fake news" wars, observes Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi. Despite Trump's suggestion to the contrary, Farhi writes that CNN is not looking at "big management changes." Interesting nugget: He notes that CNN investigations editor Lex Haris, one of the three to resign, was away at a conference when the story ran. O'Keefe video: In a press briefing, White House deputy press chief Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed an undercover video by O'Keefe showing a CNN producer seeming to question the network's Russia coverage, reports the Hill. "Whether it’s accurate or not I don’t know, but I would encourage everybody in this room, and frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it." You can see it here. Another coming: O'Keefe tells the AP that another video involving a second CNN employee is coming. Meanwhile, CNN stood by John Bonfield, the producer in the first video: "Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome it and embrace it." Times feud: After the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Trump was not hands-on during the Senate's health bill talks, he tweeted that it was another "false story" about him. "They don't even call to verify the facts of a story," he complained. To which reporter Glenn Thrush responded, "Call your office, sir. @nytimes spoke to many, many, many members of your staff yesterday - & ran everything by your team." 'Nice smile': Trump's relationship with the media isn't all adversarial. While on a call with Ireland's new leader on Tuesday, Trump called over Irish RTE reporter Caitriona Perry and complimented her "nice smile." The BBC has video, and it notes that Trump critics are calling out the move as sexist.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Donald Trump calls Irish reporter over for a chat

 When reporter Caitriona Perry attended a press briefing with US President Donald Trump she probably didn't expect it would spark a debate about workplace sexism.

 The RTE Washington Correspondent was at the Oval Office on Tuesday to cover a diplomatic phone call between the US leader and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

 But as the two leaders discussed Mr Varadkar's new position, and the number of Irish migrants in the US, Mr Trump interrupted the call to compliment Ms Perry's smile.

 The exchange on social media has been retweeted more than 8,000 times and has sparked a discussion between supporters and critics of the US president.

 Some described the US president as a "creeper" while others argued his comments were a compliment.

 Image copyright @CaitrionaPerry/Twitter Image caption Ms Perry tweeted a video of the encounter

 "It's a working environment & she should be treated as a professional journalist and not reduced to her smile," posted one Twitter user.

 Another remarked: "There are simply no words to describe how violated I feel for her."

 Another questioned whether a male reporter would be spoken to in the same way: "I'm sure there's a moment from the event where he called upon a male journalist to explain to 3rd party they're handsome & have a nice smile."

 'Can't women take compliments anymore?'

 In contrast, many also defended Mr Trump's remarks as complimentary: "Can't women take compliments anymore?" asked one Twitter user.

 Another posted: "So any man that says you're beautiful & you have a nice smile is a creep? I normally take that as a compliment."

 While one Twitter user asked: "Why can't men compliment females without being deplored? It's just being nice."

 Image copyright @CaitrionaPerry/Twitter

 'I must have caught his eye'

 Ms Perry has described the exchange as 'bizarre' in a 25-second clip posted by the reporter on Twitter. It begins with Mr Trump mentioning the number of Irish reporters present.

 "Well we have a lot of your Irish press watching us right now. "He says. "We have all of this beautiful Irish press here."

 The president then points to Ms Perry and beckons her over: "Come here, come here, where are you from?"

 "RTE news, Caitriona Perry." she replies.

 "She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well," the president tells Mr Varadkar on the phone, as Ms Perry laughs and returns to her seat.

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 In an article by RTE the reporter described what happened: "Usually we would shoot from outside the window of the White House and that's what we were expecting today but instead we were invited inside to witness the President's call to the Taoiseach. When we went in he was already on the phone but I must have caught his eye and he called me over."

 By the BBC's UGC and Social News team

 You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook. All our stories are at bbc.com/trending. ||||| FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2017 file photo, Anthony Scaramucci, a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, talks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. CNN isn't commenting Monday,... (Associated Press)

 NEW YORK (AP) — For a president seemingly at perpetual war with "fake news," the resignation of three CNN journalists over a retracted story about a Donald Trump Russian connection is a gift from the political gods when the struggling effort to pass a health bill dominates the headlines.

 The White House quickly took advantage Tuesday with blistering presidential tweets and a media scolding at the afternoon press briefing. Conservative provocateur James O'Keefe piled on by releasing a video with a CNN producer caught on camera talking about the network's Russia coverage being ratings-driven.

 CNN late Monday accepted the resignations of journalists Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris over last week's web story about Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci's pre-inaugural meeting with the head of a Russian investment fund. The network retracted the story on Friday and apologized to Scaramucci.

 Trump has been unhappy with CNN since he was a candidate, and has been particularly annoyed by its reporting on connections with Russia. The misstep on a relatively minor story — it was never mentioned on any of CNN's television networks — left some White House staff members jubilant, believing it handed them a new talking point to use as a cudgel against mainstream media organizations they feel are largely biased against them.

 That happened quickly Tuesday when Sarah Huckabee Sanders called on a Breitbart News reporter for the first question of the White House briefing. It was about CNN.

 She said the "constant barrage of fake news" at the president has frustrated Trump. She called stories about Russia and Trump "a hoax" that is distracting from other news. Sanders urged all Americans to watch a video posted by O'Keefe's Project Veritas featuring CNN producer John Bonifield — even though she couldn't vouch for its accuracy.

 "If it is accurate, I think it's a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism," Sanders said. "I think that if we have gone to a place where the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America. And I think if that is that place that certain outlets are going — particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that's coming directly from the top, I think that's even more scary."

 She was interrupted by reporter Brian Karem of the Sentinel newspapers, who accused Sanders of inflaming anti-media sentiment. "Everyone in this room is only trying to do their job," he said.

 Sanders ignored CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny's attempt to ask a question before ending her briefing.

 After Sanders left the stage, she was criticized on Fox News Channel, where Trump-friendly views usually dominate. Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey told Fox's Shepard Smith that "the White House could actually learn from CNN's example" about being forthright when caught saying something untrue.

 Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted that "they caught Fake News CNN cold." He lumped ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post together in the same "fake news" category. He said that "CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!"

 A spokeswoman for CNN chief Jeff Zucker didn't respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. CNN's public relations staff refuted Trump's notion that the network is hurting, saying it is completing the most-watched second quarter in its history.

 The president was livid at CNN's story but also felt vindicated because it seemed to confirm his belief that the cable network was trying to undermine his presidency, according to one staffer who demanded anonymity to discuss private conversations.

 The CNN issue enables the White House to change the subject for what has been a rough stretch for the presidency, with constant questions about the Russia probe and a vote on the Republican health care bill delayed. Aides also believe that highlighting media mistakes could be a useful way of questioning reporters' credibility and convincing supporters that Trump was the victim of a witch hunt.

 Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted a link to the Bonifield video. Besides talking about ratings, the Atlanta-based producer in CNN's medical unit said the network has no "smoking gun" showing wrongdoing by Trump and that "the president is probably right to say, look, you are witch-hunting me."

 CNN said in a statement that it is standing by Bonifield. "Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong," CNN said. "We welcome it and embrace it."

 O'Keefe told The Associated Press that Project Veritas got the video on Friday and that a portion, in an elevator, was recorded at CNN's headquarters. He said that Project Veritas plans to release another video involving another CNN employee, with the timing dependent on how CNN reacts to the Bonifield material.

 O'Keefe and Project Veritas have a track record of aiding Republican causes, often by using hidden cameras and hiding identities, and Trump's nonprofit foundation has made two $10,000 donations to the organization. His sting operation led to the downfall of ACORN, a community organizing group that O'Keefe portrayed as engaging in criminal activity via hidden camera.

 Before last November's election, Project Veritas released a series of heavily edited videos that included a Democratic activist appearing to brag about deploying troublemakers at Trump rallies. The fallout included the two people most prominently featured, Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, cutting ties with the Democratic National Committee. Creamer's firm recently sued Project Veritas alleging the sting violated federal wiretap law.

 O'Keefe declined to discuss how the Bonifield video came about. O'Keefe said his efforts are journalistic and, since they include video, he contends that it is more believable than media stories based on anonymous sources. The retracted CNN story was heavily dependent upon one anonymous source.

 One social media exchange about the CNN story indicated how feelings about the network were running strong among Trump supporters.

 John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist for The New York Post and editor of Commentary magazine tweeted that "CNN published a bad story, pulled it, apologized. 3 journalists quit. That's impressive and decisive action. Yelling 'fake news' is unfair."

 That drew a quick retort from Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, an ardent Trump backer. "John wtf has happened to you?" Hannity wondered online.

 Podhoretz declined to respond to Hannity online and denied an interview request.

 ____

 Associated Press correspondents Julie Bykowicz and Jill Colvin in Washington, and Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report. ||||| RTÉ's Washington Correspondent Caitríona Perry found herself involved in the first official phone call between US President Donald Trump and new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

 Caitríona was in the White House to report on the President’s phone call to congratulate Mr Varadkar on his new position, when the US leader beckoned her over and asked her to say hello to the Irish leader.

 "We have a lot of your Irish press watching us right now," President Trump told Mr Varadkar, before turning to Caitríona and saying, "We have all of this Irish beautiful Irish press here. Where are you from? Come here, come here . . .

 "She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well," the President told the Taoiseach on the phone in a packed Oval Office as Caitríona, who was shooting the scene on her phone, made her exit.

 "He thanks you for the newspapers, Caitríona," President Trump added.

 "We have all of this Irish beautiful Irish press here." Picture: Twitter/@markknoller

 "One minute we were outside the window and the next minute I'm meeting the President of the United States," Caitríona told RTÉ Entertainment after her encounter with the US Commander in Chief.

 "Usually we would shoot from outside the window of the White House and that's what we were expecting today but instead we were invited inside to witness the President's call to the Taoiseach. When we went in he was already on the phone but I caught his eye and he called me over." ||||| President Trump’s war with CNN took an even more personal turn on Tuesday after the White House used its press briefing to tout a hidden camera video calling the cable news network’s coverage of the Russia controversy “bullshit.”

 The undercover video from conservative sting artist James O’Keefe showed a CNN producer questioning the network’s coverage and suggesting important stories had been buried to keep the focus on Trump and Russia.

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 At Tuesday’s press briefing, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders encouraged viewers to watch the O’Keefe video, calling it “a disgrace to all of media, all of journalism.”

 She also took a dig at CNN President Jeff Zucker, saying the sensationalism and disregard for facts was “coming directly from the top.”

 CNN is standing by the producer, John Bonifield, who covers health and medicine from the network’s headquarters in Atlanta. In a statement, the network said “diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong.”

 “We welcome it and embrace it,” a spokesperson told The Hill.

 A CNN source told The Hill that the tempest over the video will pass, saying it was recorded after an undercover conservative operative approached Bonifield claiming to have had a history of personal hardships and asking to be taken in to a mentoring program.

 “It’s silly, it’s been spun up as something it’s not,” the CNN source said. “He’s a health unit producer in Atlanta. He has nothing to do with Washington politics or the investigative unit.”

 The video appeared at a difficult moment for CNN, however, which was just forced to retract a story alleging that one of Trump’s associates had improper dealings with a Kremlin-backed bank. The episode led three of CNN’s reporters to resign and reinforced the notion among many conservatives that the network is hell-bent on taking Trump down.

 On a Tuesday morning conference call with CNN officials, Zucker stressed that the network has to “play error-free ball” going forward, as all their mistakes will be magnified.

 “He’s been saying it for months, it’s just unfortunate because there is no more room for mess-ups,” a second source at CNN told The Hill.

 The feud between Trump and CNN, smoldering for years, had already intensified before the firings and O’Keefe video.

 It pits against one another two men with a long history: Zucker was the head of NBC when Trump hosted his hit reality show “The Apprentice.”

 Conservative media outlets such as Breitbart News are now agitating for Zucker’s removal, while Trump let the insults fly on Tuesday.

 “Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories,” Trump tweeted. “Ratings way down!”

 “CNN just posted it’s most-watched second quarter in history,” the network’s communications department shot back. “Those are the facts.”

 According to Nielsen’s second quarter ratings, released on Tuesday, CNN is up 10 percent year-over-year in prime time and 25 percent overall. It is running third overall in the cable wars, behind Fox News but also MSNBC, the openly liberal outlet that has seen a dramatic 86 percent spike in prime-time ratings.

 The new round of controversy has rekindled a briefly dormant cable news war between Fox News and CNN, with top talent from both outlets basking in the failings of the other.

 Last week, CNN anchor John King likened Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” to “state TV.”

 This week, Fox News anchors Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are flooding the airwaves with coverage of CNN’s controversies, returning the favor after CNN leaned into reporting of former Fox anchor Bill O’Reilly, who left the network amid a slew of sexual harassment allegations.

 “Hey CNN, when will you fire Zucker?” Hannity tweeted. “He has destroyed the network with lies and VERY FAKE NEWS.”

 CNN has been registering small acts of protest against the administration by focusing on Trump’s treatment of the press, with chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta leading the charge in demanding more on-camera briefings.

 The network sent a courtroom sketch artist to do a rendering of White House press secretary Sean Spicer at an off-camera briefing last week. Spicer has repeatedly ignored questions from Acosta and chided him in a tense off-camera exchange on Monday.

 “There’s no camera on, Jim,” Spicer said as Acosta shouted questions at him.

 CNN has displayed chyrons at the bottom of the screen accusing the president of lying and is airing a television ad with footage of anchors lecturing White House officials and musing about Trump being impeached. Earlier this year, CNN refused to run a Trump campaign ad because it cast the mainstream media as “fake news.”

 The network has absorbed withering criticism from the right for its relentless focus on Russia and overwhelmingly negative coverage of Trump. A Harvard study found that CNN’s coverage of Trump was negative 93 percent of the time over the course of his first 100 days in office.

 CNN has also taken a hit from other controversies; it cut ties with comedian Kathy Griffin for taking a photo with a fake severed head meant to look like Trump. CNN also canceled a series with documentary maker Reza Aslan after he cursed at the president over Twitter.

 CNN also recently had to walk back a report authored by its top network talent, including anchor Jake Tapper and political analyst Gloria Borger, stating that former FBI Director James Comey would refute Trump’s claims that he was not the target of an investigation.

 In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey confirmed that he told Trump three times that he was not the target of an investigation.

 “I think this is the day when the left rues ever coming up with the phrase ‘fake news,’ because now we have the evidence,” Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka said Tuesday on a Breitbart podcast. “We have the consequences of systematic generation of fake news happening at the epicenter of one of the places that was producing the most of it.”

 The CNN source responded: “They’ve made it fairly clear they view this as a war. We view it as determination to seek truth and hold the powerful accountable regardless of how difficult they try to make it.” ||||| 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. |||||


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Hawaii conservationists are concerned that cat feces from feral colonies are washing into the ocean and imperiling monk seals, one of the world's most endangered marine mammals.

 Cats are shown eating at a feral cat colony near Honolulu on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2016. Conservationists are concerned about the number of feral cats roaming Hawaii because cat feces washing into the ocean can be deadly for endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

 Hawaii's stray cat population lies at the center of a heated debate between two camps of animal lovers in the Aloha State. On one side are conservationists who are calling to euthanize some of the hundreds of thousands of feral cats whose feces are thought to be spreading a disease that is killing Hawaiian monk seals. These marine mammals are among the most endangered in the world.

 On the other side of the debate are cat lovers who take issue with killing one animal for the sake of another.

 "It's a very difficult, emotional issue," said state Sen. Mike Gabbard, chairman of a committee that earlier this year proposed a ban on feeding stray cats on state land. The proposal was abandoned after strong objections. "It struck a nerve in our community," Senator Gabbard said.

 Hawaii is facing an explosion of stray cats, as they have no predators in the state. By the 2015 estimates of the Hawaiian Humane Society, there are about 300,000 feral cats on the island of Oahu alone. The problem is that the cats carry a common bacterial parasite that, they say, threatens the seals. The same bacteria is thought to have killed California sea otters, and is largely responsible for the extinction of the Hawaiian crow, the ʻalalā, in the wild.

 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that these toxic cat feces have killed eight Hawaiian monk seals since 2001, five females and three males, who have ingested contaminated water or prey.

 "While eight seals may not sound like a lot of animals, it actually has pretty large ramifications for an endangered population where there's only about 1,300 seals in existence," said Michelle Barbieri, a veterinary medical officer for NOAA's Hawaiian monk seal research program.

 Since cats are not native to Hawaii – they were brought in – the NOAA program is pushing for a way to shrink their population, either through adoption or through what a NOAA coordinator describes as "humane euthanization."

 "As conservationists, what we really have to look at is this is what Hawaii's native ecosystem includes, and cats are unfortunately not part of that," said Angela Amlin, NOAA's acting Hawaiian monk seal recovery coordinator.

 That doesn’t mean Hawaii should kill cats, say animal welfare advocates. In a response to the state Senate bill, Hawaiian Humane Society President and chief executive Pamela Burns wrote that she opposes a "hierarchy in which the protection of certain animals comes at the suffering of others."

 She and other animal welfare advocates decry euthanasia for healthy felines. "What we ... don't advocate is the wholesale killing, the extermination, of one species" for another, said Alicia Maluafiti, the board president of animal welfare group Poi Dogs and Popoki.

 Trapping, neutering, and spaying to help control the cat population are reasonable solutions to the problem, say cat supporters.

 This report uses material from the Associated Press. ||||| Hoku endured some rough days before he died last spring. Three dogs chased him off one of his resting beaches, and he battled a minor tsunami that left him wedged between a pair of boulders in a lava field far from shore.

 Observers noticed him looking thin in the few months before fishermen found him dead on a beach near the east Kaua`i town of Kapa`a.

 In the end, disease took him.

 Nicknamed “Star” in Hawaiian for the small white spot on his forehead, Hoku was a large, 10-year-old Hawaiian monk seal, an endangered species.

 Hoku may likely have been the second Hawaiian monk seal to die this year from Toxoplasmosa gondii, a parasite transmitted primarily through cat feces and carried to the ocean in polluted runoff and sewage.

 The first suspected toxoplasmosis case of the year came in January. While conducting his weekly seal search along the coastline of Moloka`i’s Kalaupapa National Historical Park, marine ecologist Eric Brown discovered a stillborn pup in a tide pool. His mother, apparently in good health, lay nearby.

 David Schofield, marine mammal response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Islands Regional Office, believes the pup may have been the first Hawaiian monk seal to die from a toxoplasmosis infection transmitted in the womb.

 With only about 1,100 monk seals left in the wild, the deaths are “very concerning and put toxo as one of our primary concerns” for the species, says Charles Littnan, lead scientist for NOAA’s monk seal research program.

 The overall population of monk seals is declining at a rate of about 4.5 percent a year. The good news is that in recent years, their numbers have been growing in the main Hawaiian islands. Now resource managers worry that in the midst of so many humans, interactions will likely increase, as will the seals’ chances of encountering diseases and contaminants.

 No studies have been done in Hawai`i on how and where toxoplasmosis reaches the ocean and there are few efforts to control it. In California, however, researchers have found that it infects sea otters mainly though runoff from urban areas.

 Flushing cat litter down the toilet is one pathway, since sewage treatment does not always kill the parasite’s hardy eggs, called oocysts. Studies have found that oocysts can live for at least two years in sea water.

 Over the past ten years, the cat parasite has killed at least four monk seals in the main Hawaiian islands - two from Kaua`i, one from O`ahu, and one from Moloka`i - and perhaps six, experts estimate.

 Those deaths “should be considered an absolute minimum since there are dead seals we never know about and ones we sample but are unable to determine a cause of death for,” Littnan said.

 “We are only just beginning to understand the prevalence of the disease in the population and determine ways to mitigate the impact.”

 Hunted to near extinction in the late 19th century, the Hawaiian monk seal was federally listed as endangered in 1976, after populations plummeted during the 1960s and 1970s, largely due to military disturbance.

 Today, it is considered the most endangered pinniped in the United States. With a potential peak population of about 3,000 seals, NOAA predicts numbers will drop below 1,000 in the next few years.

 The population’s core has long been in the remote, largely uninhabited Northwest Hawaiian Islands, but more and more, conditions there are killing them. Low juvenile survival due to starvation is by far the biggest problem facing monk seals. Some researchers speculate that overfishing may have caused a shift in predator dominance that is now making it nearly impossible for young seals to compete for food.

 But diseased cats also are among the seals’ worst enemies, since their feces flow into the ocean via runoff and sewage.

 The state Division of Forestry and Wildlife estimates that 300,000 to 400,000 free-ranging cats live on Maui alone. That’s roughly two cats per resident.

 “Cats are all over the place in Hawai`i,” explains Thierry Work, a wildlife disease specialist with the Geological Survey’s Honolulu field station who studied toxoplasmosis in Hawaiian crows, known as `alala, about a decade ago. “Wherever there are cats, there’s the potential for toxoplasmosis.”

 Although domestic cats are considered the main source, feral cats in remote areas also transmit the disease. Nearly 40 percent of 67 cats captured from the slopes of Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawai`i, tested positive for toxoplasmosis, according to a 2007 article in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases.

 In the past decade or so, toxoplasmosis has been regularly found in a wide range of marine mammals, including whales, dolphins and sea lions. In Hawa`i, it also has killed seabirds and endangered Hawaiian crow and geese.

 Perhaps most famously, southern sea otters in California began dying off in alarming numbers in the 1990s. Toxoplasmosis was found in 52 percent of fresh, beach-cast otter carcasses and 38 percent of live otters sampled along the California coast, according to a 2005 International Journal of Parasitology article.

 In Hawa`i, it also has killed seabirds and endangered Hawaiian crow and geese.Whether the increased diagnoses indicate improved testing techniques or a rise in disease prevalence is difficult to determine.

 “Probably both things are at play and it’s going to be awfully hard to tease those out,” says Scott Wright of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center.

 Sometimes a pathogen is discovered in a species and it’s unclear what it means in terms of the disease moving through a population, he says. “In some cases, circumstances change and the disease takes hold and causes a problem and other times it doesn’t,” he says.

 For some seals, determining a cause of death is impossible since they are often highly decomposed when discovered.

 “If we’re not there within 24 to 48 hours, the insides of the seal are soup,” Littnan says.

 But even when his team confirms the presence of T. gondii, that doesn’t necessarily indicate an infection, let alone a fatal one. So, in addition to hunting for the pathogen, his team looks for signs, such as swelling of the brain, lymph nodes, or lungs, that are typical of toxoplasmosis.

 Hoku, an up-and-coming dominant male, died of “severe meningoencephalitis caused by a protozoan,” Littnan says. Although toxoplasmosis is suspected, it has not yet been confirmed as the culprit. He notes that only Hoku’s brain was inflamed but not other organs that toxoplasmosis has a predilection for. This suggests that the parasite was “inactive for a long period,” he says, “but some event, such as immune suppression, may have led to activation. At this point, the findings are speculative until all the results come back.”

 Hoku visited an area known as Salt Ponds four times in the six months before he died. There are well-known, and well-fed, feral cat populations there and at Kalaupapa National Historic Park. But Littnan says seals “move across a pretty large range. It’s hard to trace it back to where they were likely exposed.”

 Throughout most of Hawai`I, water quality in surface waters ranges from “slightly impaired to severely impaired” by pathogens and pollutants, according to a state assessment. In particular, runoff from densely populated watersheds on Maui and O`ahu likely contains pathogens, according to the state’s polluted runoff control implementation plan.

 Sewage is also a significant source of pathogens as tropical storms overwhelm aging transmission pipes and inadequate treatment systems. What’s more, injection wells on Maui have created giant wastewater plumes at some popular beaches.

 Cat feces also contaminate livestock. A study of pig farms on O`ahu found that nearly half of more than 500 pigs tested positive for toxoplasmosis. Most rivers that flow to the ocean traverse through an agricultural site, according to a 2006 EcoHealth article by Littnan and researchers from NOAA and the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.

 Although the state doesn’t test for toxoplasmosis, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Testing the Waters 2010 report provides some insight into the role runoff plays in pathogen transmission in Hawai`i. Storm water was responsible for 99 percent of beach closures/advisories in 2009. Sewage spills accounted for the remaining one percent. Kaua`i beaches exceeded daily maximum bacterial standards most often.

 According to the EcoHealth article, nearly 30 million gallons of sewage were spilled between 2000 and 2004. That number was exceeded in a matter of days in 2005, when a broken main caused the city of Honolulu to divert 48 million gallons of raw sewage into Waikiki’s Ala Wai canal.

 In addition to toxoplasmosis, other pathogens have infected monk seals.

 A few years ago, Littnan, NOAA contract veterinarian Robert Braun, and Brent Stewart and Pamela Yochem of the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute tested seals for pathogens while trying to assess the disease threat.Their results, published in EcoHealth, suggest that seals encounter a variety of pathogens, including Sarcocystis neurona and Neospora caninum, as well as T. gondii. S. neurona causes equine protozoal myeloencephalitis, which creates lesions on the spinal cord and brain stem. Neosporosis can cause abortions in cattle and neuromuscular degeneration in dogs.

 Leptospirosis is among the biggest concerns. Suspected in the death of two pups born near a stream mouth on the island of Hawai`I, it is mainly transmitted through contact with surface water contaminated with infected rodent or mongoose urine.

 Although there is limited data on leptospirosis prevalence in Hawai`i, it’s considered ubiquitous. The reported incidence rate among people in Hawai`i (1.29 cases per 100,000 persons) is about 30 times the national rate, with the highest rates on Kaua`i and Hawai`i islands.

 In another effort to gauge threats, Hawai`i Pacific University graduate student Jessica Lopez is evaluating 77 industrial chemicals and pesticides found in about 60 monk seals over the past decade.

 “We don't know anything about what levels can cause an effect in monk seals, whether lethal or sub-lethal, so it will be difficult to speak to whether the levels measured are ‘safe’ or not,” she says.

 Lopez also plans to evaluate seal movements and locations of sewage outflows and agricultural and industrial complexes to determine high risk areas that may factor into decisions on managing the seals.

 For Littnan, filling data gaps is his top priority, such as tracking the mother of January’s stillborn pup to see if she has signs of infection.

 “It would be very interesting to learn more about seals that [test positive for toxoplasmosis] but are not showing any clinical signs,” he said.

 If the mother tests positive, drugs might be available for treatment. NOAA is partnering with California’s Marine Mammal Center to build a monk seal hospital in Kona.

 To raise public awareness about toxoplasmosis and cat feces, NOAA has begun talking with the Hawai`i Humane Society, various interest groups and the health department.

 But given his experience with Hawaiian birds, Work of the U.S. Geological Survey says generating the political will to control cats is “very difficult.”

 “The `alala is a classic case in point,” Work says. Ten years ago, toxoplasmosis was identified as a threat at a national wildlife refuge in Kona that was created for the birds. Yet today, the cats remain at the refuge, while the `alala have been extirpated from the area.

 Scientists are concerned about the role the disease may play in the seals’ recovery.

 Under NOAA’s recovery plan, the population must grow from the current 1,100 to a minimum of 2,900 before it can be downlisted to threatened. In a recent article, NOAA scientists stated that “fishery interactions, direct killing, and disease could rapidly undo the current fragile positive trend” on the main islands.

 “The greatest need for seals right now is fostering the co-existence of seals and people. That’s the most immediate threat to population growth in the main Hawaiian islands,” Littnan says. Compounding the threat, “toxo and lepto will be there and will probably continue to operate in a background level.” |||||

– The feral cat population has exploded in Hawaii, where they are not native and face no natural predators—and this could spell disaster for the endangered monk seal. That's because cat poop often contains a parasite called Toxoplasmosa gondii, and when sewage and polluted runoff carry the infected feces to the ocean, it can prove lethal, reports Scientific American. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that eight Hawaiian monk seals have succumbed to the disease since 2001, which is a sizable number given that 1,100 are estimated to be alive today in the wild. The same bacteria have also killed California sea otters and helped send the Hawaiian crow into extinction, reports the Christian Science Monitor. But while conservationists call for the "humane euthanization" of some feral cats, animal welfare advocates oppose a "hierarchy in which the protection of certain animals comes at the suffering of others," as the president of the Hawaiian Human Society puts it. Monk seals are considered the most endangered pinniped in the country, and their numbers are expected to dip below 1,000 soon, with starvation among the young the largest known problem. Meanwhile, Hawaii's Division of Forestry and Wildlife estimates that 300,000 feral cats live on Oahu and as many as 400,000 on Maui, which is roughly two cats per human resident. NOAA is working with California’s Marine Mammal Center on a monk seal hospital in Kona to try to care for the sick ones before they die. (Humans have hunted Caribbean monk seals to extinction.)


Here is a news article: “Avengers: Infinity War” has maintained its staying power at the domestic box office.

 In its third frame, the Disney and Marvel blockbuster earned a huge $61.8 million. Combined with a near-record $200 million launch in China, “Infinity War” earned $343.1 million worldwide this weekend, for a global cume of $1.6 billion. On Saturday, it became the second-fastest film to cross the $500 million mark at the domestic box office.

 The superhero adventure has passed “The Avengers” ($1.519 billion), “Furious 7” ($1.516 billion), “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($1.405 billion), “Black Panther” ($1.229 billion), and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” ($1.332 billion) to become the fifth-highest grossing film of all time globally.

 Two mom-led releases got a Mother’s Day boost. Melissa McCarthy’s comedy “Life of the Party” debuted in second with $18.5 million from 3,656 locations. The Warner Bros. and New Line film, directed by her husband, Ben Falcone, is currently averaging a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a B CinemaScore. It marked one of the lowest openings for a McCarthy-starrer. In comparison, “The Heat” opened in 2013 with $39 million, “Spy” with $29 million in 2015, and “Tammy” with $21.4 million in 2014.

 Meanwhile, Gabrielle Union’s “Breaking In” launched in third with $16.5 million in 2,537 locations. The thriller from Universal has a 27% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The low-budget film produced by Will Packer cost approximately $6 million.

 “It’s great to see a female-led, action-packed thriller doing so well at the domestic box office this Mother’s Day weekend,” said Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution at Universal Pictures. “We have an amazing partner in Will Packer. He constantly delivers quality titles that audiences cannot get enough of.”

 The second weekend of Lionsgate and Pantelion’s comedy “Overboard” landed in fourth with $10 million, while the sixth weekend of Paramount’s “A Quiet Place” secured No. 5 with $6.3 million. “Overboard,” starring Eugenio Derbez and Anna Faris, remained steady in its sophomore outing, dropping just 31%. Its domestic tally currently sits at $29.6 million. John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place” had one of the best holdovers of the weekend, declining just 18%. To date, the horror film has made $169 million at the domestic box office.

 The year-to-date box office is up 4.9% from 2017, according to comScore. The box office is likely to see a boost in coming weeks as “Deadpool 2” opens May 18 and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” bows on May 25.

 RELATED VIDEO: ||||| This image released by Marvel Studios shows, front row from left, Danai Gurira, Chadwick Boseman, Chris Evans, Scarlet Johansson and Sebastian Stan in a scene from "Avengers: Infinity War." (Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel... (Associated Press)

 LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Avengers: Infinity War" is still ruling the box office in its third weekend in theaters.

 The Walt Disney Studios on Sunday estimates it has added $61.8 million from North American theaters, bringing its total domestic earnings to $547.8 million. Globally the film has now grossed over $1.6 billion, making it the fifth biggest of all time.

 The superhero blockbuster easily overpowered newcomers like the Melissa McCarthy comedy "Life of the Party" and the Gabrielle Union thriller "Breaking In."

 In a distant second, "Life of the Party" earned an estimated $18.5 million, while the modestly budgeted "Breaking In" took third place with $16.5 million.

 The mom-themed films were strategically timed to launch over Mother's Day weekend. Both drew mostly female audiences. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Melissa McCarthy jumped into the box-office fray with a new movie this weekend, but Avengers: Infinity War still rules, the AP reports. The Walt Disney Studios on Sunday estimates it has added $61.8 million from North American theaters, bringing its total domestic earnings to $547.8 million in its third weekend. Globally the film has now grossed over $1.6 billion, making it the fifth biggest of all time. The superhero blockbuster easily overpowered newcomers like the McCarthy comedy Life of the Party and the Gabrielle Union thriller Breaking In. In a distant second, Life of the Party earned an estimated $18.5 million, while the modestly budgeted Breaking In took third place with $16.5 million. The mom-themed films were strategically timed to launch over Mother's Day weekend. Both drew mostly female audiences. The comedy Overboard came in fourth with $10 million and A Quiet Place held fifth spot with $6.3 million, Variety reports.