– A 9/11 first responder with kidney disease close to losing his New Jersey home is taking his plight public in a big way: through his website and a series of tri-state area billboards, the Record reports. "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs outside MetLife Stadium and the Holland Tunnel and on NYC buses read, referring to the illness 44-year-old Mike Megna says he came down with due to dust at the decimated World Trade Center, where he toiled for three weeks after the attacks. Megna started seeing smaller symptoms, like a constantly runny nose and digestive issues, early on, but in 2006 blood began showing in his urine, and a diagnosis delivered heart-sinking news: He had a "super-rare" form of kidney disease that only 20 people in the world have. And while Megna, who's been disabled since 2011, has applied for compensation cash from the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010, there's a complication: Kidney disease isn't one of the recognized illnesses covered by the fund. That means the divorced dad of three isn't eligible for any money—even though Mary Ann McLaughlin, a Mount Sinai Medical Center researcher who petitioned the fund two years ago to add the disease based on initial research, has examined Megna's records and believes the WTC toxins "may more likely than not" be tied to his sickness. However, a rep for the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which runs the program, says a disease can be added to the list—and compensation issued—only after "published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence" shows "substantial support" for a direct link between the WTC fallout and the disease. Megna will have to hold tight, per the rep, who says once McLaughlin publishes her study, kidney disease eligibility will be considered. But that's time Megna—$120,000 behind on his mortgage and anticipating dialysis down the road (his kidneys are now functioning at 45%, per the Star-Ledger)—says he doesn't have. "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait," he tells the paper.

Expand this summary.

Mike Megna can't afford to wait for science.

 His kidneys are functioning at 45 percent, the bank has foreclosed on his West Milford home, and his urine is routinely pink.

 "I'm leading my life like I'm rotting from the inside," he said.

 He traces all this back to the three weeks he said he spent at Ground Zero, trying to rescue people he hoped were still alive in the smoldering debris of the World Trade Center.

 There is a fund to help 9/11 workers who developed health problems as a result of their work at the site, but Megna's kidney ailment isn't on its list of covered illnesses.

 In fact, his illness is so rare researchers at the Mayo Clinic just named it three months ago.

 In his frustration, Megna has taken out two billboards – one on Route 3 across from MetLife Stadium, the other on an approach to the Holland Tunnel – to plead his case.

 "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers," they state, accompanied by a photo of the burning towers, along with one of Megna and his three kids.

 They urge motorists to call the top administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program, John Howard, and list his phone number.

 One of the revolving digital messages even asks Donald Trump for help. ("I figured he was raising money for veterans, so he could buy my house. I'd pay him back, totally," Megna said. "Is that such a crazy idea?")

 The billboards mention his website, www.DoRightByMike.com, which tells his story.

 Howard, the director of the Fund, had no comment, said a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the federal agency that determines which diseases qualify for compensation.

 Megna, 44, has been told he needs to wait until medical researchers can prove a link between 9/11 exposure and his illness. His blunt response: "When they asked us to come down to help that day, I didn't wait."

 Megna was a Marine vet working as a Pompton Lakes police officer on the day of the terrorist attacks. He said he and his brothers, who worked for sheriff's departments in two counties, headed into the city because they hadn't heard from their father, a Port Authority police officer.

 After locating their father safe and sound, Megna said he and his brothers stayed to help with rescue efforts, often working as part of the "bucket brigade" clearing debris.

 Megna said he returned to the site nearly every day after work for as long as hope remained there might be survivors – about three weeks.

 "That should be the end of my story, but in 2007, I started urinating blood," he said during an interview in the ranch house he and his three children will have to vacate because of the foreclosure. (He is divorced.)

 After countless rounds of testing, his bewildered doctors could determine only that his bone marrow was producing some substance that was slowly attacking his kidneys.

 As his condition worsened, he became chronically anemic from the blood loss. Eventually he could no longer work and went on disability.

 (He'd resigned as a police officer after being indicted for failing to report a co-worker had leaked information to other members of the force about an undercover drug investigation. He was eventually sentenced in 2008 to probation for one count of hindering prosecution.)

 With money tight, he said he stopped paying his mortgage, assuring his bank he'd catch up on payments once he got money from the September 11th fund.

 When his application for a compensation award was rejected, the bank began foreclosure proceedings.

 Meanwhile, Megna had a follow-up biopsy earlier this year, and this time, to the surprise of his Veterans Administration doctor, the lab report came back with a diagnosis: "Monotype atypical anti-GBM nephritis."

 The disease had been documented by the Mayo Clinic, which had found it in just 20 people so far.

 Megna headed to Minnesota recently to meet doctors, a trip funded by New York State's Workman's Compensation, which has a special fund set up for Ground Zero volunteers.

 Stephen Erickson, his Mayo Clinic nephrologist, explained his ailment is a rare variation of an already rare kidney disease.

 The antibodies of the human immune system are produced in the bone marrow. Any defective antibodies are usually filtered out by the kidneys. In Megna's case, however, his defective antibodies actually attack the kidney filters, Erickson said.

 Since chemotherapy might do more harm than good, Erickson recommended more waiting – in this case, waiting until a better treatment comes along.

 "He has time," Erickson said of his patient. "It's not his personality to let trouble come to him. But he's better off waiting."

 While Megna was relieved to learn his illness wasn't moving quickly, having a disease that now has a name doesn't get him any closer to getting compensation.

 "You can't honestly say that 9/11 caused this, but something caused it," Erickson said. "There's really no letter I could write to the commission that would be of any help to them. There's really no way to do a study that can prove this – the numbers are too small."

 The problem is that the Fund awards compensation only if a person's illness has been scientifically associated with exposure to the terrorist attack sites.

 The Zadroga Act, which sets aside taxpayer funds to deal with the long-term health damage of 9/11, lays out the steps that must be taken to qualify for money:

 Researchers must first gather information about how many 9/11 responders have developed a condition, then compare it with the percentage of the general population that would come down with the same disease.

 Only if the 9/11 group's rate is higher than that of the general population can an illness be placed on the list of ailments that entitles the victim to a payout.

 "We have to follow the process that was put in place by Congress," said NIOSH spokeswoman Christina Spring. The World Trade Center Health Program funds some of the research projects aimed at establishing a connection between 9/11 exposure and illnesses.

 One of those grants is to researchers at Mt. Sinai Hospital to look into kidney ailments. An earlier study had pointed to a link, but not a strong enough one to get kidney problems on the list. That could change with new information, Spring said.

 "Some health conditions will take decades to show up," she said.

 Megna's mood changes moment to moment these days: He can be agitated, perched excitedly on the edge of his couch, raging against all the closed doors he has encountered.

 The very next minute, he'll slump back and say with a resigned wave of his hand, "I hate them all."

 "He's depressed. Look at him!," said his brother Christopher, a retired sheriff's officer who has his own crop of 9/11-related medical problems. Mike has gained weight, he said, and the Mountain Man beard his brother now sports isn't a fashion choice, but rather a sign he has simply given up.

 "I'm not asking for a pity party," Megna said. "How much sicker to I have to get?"

 Kathleen O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @OBrienLedger. Find NJ.com on Facebook. ||||| Mike Megna rushed to Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, to help look for survivors in the rubble of the fallen towers. Along with his two brothers, Megna, then a Pompton Lakes police officer, searched the debris pile and ruined buildings nearby for three weeks.

 jennifer brown/special to the record Mike Megna, a father of three, wants compensation for his rare kidney disease before he loses his home.

 Now sick and disabled from a rare kidney disease that he believes was caused by dust from the destroyed World Trade Center, he wants the Victim Compensation Fund created after the attacks to pay him for his losses, which may soon include the house in West Milford where he and his three children live.

 He's so desperate, he put his story up on billboards outside MetLife Stadium, the Holland Tunnel and on the sides of New York City buses. He paid for only one, but the advertising company helped him with the second billboard and the buses, he said, because they felt sorry for him.

 "Add Kidney Disease for 9/11 Rescue Workers!" the signs read, beside a photo of the bearded ex-Marine, identified as "Mike Megna, Sick 9/11 Responder." The backdrop includes a photo of the burning towers and a portrait of his family, and lists his website — DoRightByMike.com.

 "I want my disease to be certified," he said, so that the fund will provide compensation. "They owe me a lot of money."

 On a hot Monday afternoon, Megna fielded phone calls from reporters interested in his story while the truck from his former scrap-metal business – "Scrapman Mike" – stood in the driveway. He has sold the business because he's too tired for that work, he said.

 The list of health conditions eligible for coverage under the James Zadroga Health and Compensation Act of 2010 does not currently include kidney disease caused by the World Trade Center dust.

 "A health condition can be added to the list, only after published, peer-reviewed epidemiologic evidence in 9/11-exposed populations provides substantial support for a causal relationship between the 9/11 exposures and the health condition," said Christina Spring, a spokeswoman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which administers the program. Currently, the evidence is insufficient, she said.

 A medical researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, Mary Ann McLaughlin, petitioned the program two years ago to add kidney disease to the list, based on preliminary research, Spring said. But the program has not done so, pending the completion of that study — expected this year — and its publication.

 Although Megna is not included in McLaughlin's study, she met with him and examined his medical records.

 "It is my opinion that exposure from toxins from 9/11/01 may more likely than not be related to the development of Mr. Megna's biopsy-proven renal disease," she wrote in March 2015.

 "As soon as the McLaughlin study is published, the issue of adding kidney disease will be reevaluated for addition to the list," Spring said.

 Megna, however, is impatient. He's 44 and doesn't have time to wait. "I'm anemic. I can't get up in the morning. I can't afford my mortgage. I've been waiting eight years," he said.

 Megna has been monitored by the World Trade Center Responder Health Program at Rutgers/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School since 2003. For the first few years, his ailments were those common to many 9/11 responders and included a chronic runny or stuffy nose, digestive problems and anxiety.

 But "I started urinating blood in 2007," he said. He was in denial for months, but after rounds and rounds of tests, he finally received a definitive diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic.

 He has a "super-rare kidney disease," he said the team there told him, after a three-week work-up in June that included bone marrow and kidney biopsies and blood tests.

 Only 20 people in the world have been diagnosed with atypical anti-glomerular basement membrane nephritis, his Mayo doctors told him. For those afflicted, the antibodies produced by bone marrow are not filtered by the kidneys; instead they destroy the filters in the kidneys, leading to blood in the urine.

 Megna said he was reassured by the doctors that the disease was slow-moving and wouldn't kill him. But they said in eight or nine years he would likely need dialysis to replace the function of his damaged kidneys. By that time, he hopes further research will produce a treatment.

 He has been disabled since 2011 and receives medical treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 His quest now is for lost income so he can save his house, on which he owes upward of $120,000, he said.

 Megna received some money from the Victim Compensation Fund, a separate program run by the Department of Justice that aids people who were present at one of the crash sites and have suffered from a physical injury or from debris removal.

 He used part of that money to pay for the billboard, which ran for a month until mid-July, and website development.

 But the payout was based on his initial diagnosis of less severe respiratory and digestive ailments, and not on the kidney disease.

 If kidney disease becomes a recognized illness for 9/11 compensation, he will be permitted to reapply, according to a spokeswoman for the fund.

 "If you have already submitted a claim and a decision has been rendered on your claim, and you subsequently develop a new condition, your eligible condition increases in severity, or you incur a loss not accounted for in your original award, you may amend your claim,'' the spokeswoman said. "The [fund] will review the new information and determine if it provides the basis for a revised decision.'' The deadline to submit an amendment is Dec. 18, 2020.

 At the time of the World Trade Center attack, Megna was a Pompton Lakes police officer. He later resigned after being indicted and pleading guilty to hindering the prosecution of an undercover drug investigation. He was sentenced in 2008 to six months of Pretrial Intervention, a form of probation.

 The program through which Megna and thousands of other responders are monitored for the lingering effects of the dust cloud on 9/11 is named after James Zadroga, a North Arlington resident and New York City police detective who worked on the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero for about three weeks after 9/11.

 Soon after, his family said, he began experiencing flu-like symptoms and difficulty breathing — common symptoms in first responders that doctors called the "World Trade Center cough." Zadroga was recognized as the first police officer to die as a direct result of inhaling the toxic dust. He died at age 34 in 2006.

 Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton contributed to this article.Email: washburn@northjersey.com |||||


Summarize this article:

MALONE – One desperate man continued to elude 1,200 police as they searched 22 square miles of rugged, mountainous land in the northern Adirondacks on Saturday. As the search for cop killer David P. Sweat stretched into its 22nd day, investigators have begun to piece together the last days of his fellow escapee, Richard W. Matt. He was probably miserable. When he was gunned down Friday afternoon, Matt, the two-time murderer who grew up in the City of Tonawanda, was sick and drunk. It also looked like he had been outdoors for a long time, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation into the prison escape. The indication that he was sick came Wednesday night, as an army of federal, state and local law enforcement officers went door to door at homes and camps around Owls Head and Malone. A burglary of a cabin on Route 41 was reported. That is where police found soiled underwear, the source told The Buffalo News, and a DNA test showed they belonged to Matt. The underwear also told investigators that Matt was ill, possibly from having consumed spoiled food or bad water. And police believe Matt was intoxicated when he was killed. That clue came after authorities were alerted to another cabin burglary Friday morning, this time a camp at the base of Humbug Mountain just off Route 30, the main north-south artery through the area. Malone Town Supervisor Howard F. Maneely said Saturday that his nephew, Robert Willett, owns the camp. “He went in there Wednesday to check on things and it was all OK,” Maneely said. But his nephew’s son discovered a far different situation when he returned Friday morning. “The camp had been broken into and there were booze bottles on the table,” the supervisor said. “That’s when he got hold of the authorities.” There was a half-empty bottle of gin and other bottles on the table, a law enforcement source said. Maneely described the camp as typical of those in the area, used mostly during the fall deer season and for summertime family picnics. It features a kitchen, lounge area and three small bedrooms.

 Finding Matt Several hours later, a man who was hauling a camper on a trailer through Route 30 reported that someone had fired a shot at his camper while he was driving. At first, he thought it was a flat tire. He got out and checked it, found nothing, and drove another eight miles before finding the bullet hole. State police went to investigate and traced the path back eight miles, where they found another camp that had been broken into. Inside, they smelled gunpowder. A tactical team from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was helicoptered in and as they searched, they found Matt. He had a 20-gauge shotgun at his side, officials said. From his clothes and appearance, it looked like he had not bathed in a long time and had spent a great deal of time in the outdoors, a law enforcement source told The News. The tactical team challenged Matt, who did not give up his weapon. He did not say anything before he was shot, the source said. He did not fire his weapon. A strong odor of alcohol emanated from Matt’s body, the law enforcement source said. The News last week reported that as a young man, Matt had twice tried to commit suicide. And the special prosecutor who won the murder conviction against Matt said that he had been told in 2008 that, if Matt ever escaped, he would not be taken alive, according to the Associated Press. But a law enforcement source said it did not appear that Matt was committing “suicide by cop” when he was shot. Matt’s body was sent to Albany Medical Center on Saturday and was scheduled for an autopsy. His breakout from Clinton Correctional Facility with Sweat and the massive manhunt captivated the nation and led to wild speculation about where they could be hiding out. But in the end, Matt died just 40 miles from the prison. He was 49. His birthday was Thursday.

 Search for Sweat But Matt’s death brought investigators no closer to finding his accomplice. Authorities thought Friday night that they had Sweat surrounded. Investigators have been operating under the assumption that Sweat was near Matt when he was killed about 4 p.m. Friday. But the last time they had any evidence that Sweat was still in the area came from DNA samples collected from a seasonal hunting camp in Owls Head that had been discovered burglarized June 20, the first of four cabins where police believe the two had taken shelter. That cabin is located about eight miles east of where Matt was shot. The News incorrectly reported Saturday that DNA from Sweat had been found Wednesday in the cabin on Route 41 where the underwear was found. And there have been no confirmed sightings of Sweat. So it is possible the two parted ways days – possibly even a week – ago. Saturday night, investigators were waiting for results on DNA tests on items recovered from the cabin where the gunpowder was smelled to determine whether Sweat had been there. In the meantime, the armies of federal, state and local law enforcement officers weren’t letting up on the search around Titus Lake, even with heavy downpours of rain forecast for Saturday night and all day Sunday. Asked how long the search would continue, State Police spokesman Beau Duffy answered Saturday: “Until we catch him.” “For the foreseeable future, we will either find him in that area or decide he’s not there,” Duffy said, adding that there is no contemplation of leaving the Malone-area search now. He also said morale remains high among the searchers. “I hear them all the time say they won’t stop until they find him,” he said. “That’s their attitude.” ||||| Malone, New York (CNN) After a massive, more-than-three-week manhunt for David Sweat, the escaped murderer is back where he started -- in custody.

 Authorities said a New York State Police sergeant -- identified as Jay Cook -- spotted Sweat, and after Sweat ran, the sergeant gave chase.

 "At some point, running across a field, he realized that Sweat was going to make it to a tree line, and possibly could have disappeared, and he fired two shots," New York State Police Superintendent Joseph A. D'Amico told reporters.

 Sweat, who was unarmed, was hit twice in the torso.

 A photo exclusively obtained by CNN shows Sweat in custody moments after his capture. He appears bloodied and was wearing a camouflage outfit, not prison garb.

 He was taken into custody in the town of Constable, in upstate New York, very close to the Canadian border.

 CNN exclusive photo: David Sweat during his capture.

 "I can only assume he was going for the border, that he was that close," D'Amico said.

 Sweat was captured about 16 miles north of the location where fellow escapee Richard Matt was killed last week. The officer was alone when he shot Sweat.

 Sweat was transported to the Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, an officer at the hospital told CNN. He was later moved to Albany Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition, according to Dennis McKenna, medical director there.

 Emergency, trauma, intensive care, radiology and vascular surgery specialists are involved in his care, McKenna said.

 No law enforcement officers were injured during Sweat's apprehension.

 "The nightmare is finally over," said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. "We wish it didn't happen in the first place. But if you have to have it happen, this is how you want it to end."

 David Sweat was shot on the right side of this barn about two miles south of the Canadian border. #CNN #AC360 pic.twitter.com/zZ0LaVAqWg — Gary Tuchman (@GaryTuchmanCNN) June 28, 2015

 The break

 The arrest wraps up the statewide search for Sweat and his prison-break partner, Matt. Matt was shot dead Friday

 Sweat was imprisoned at the Clinton Correctional Facility for shooting dead an officer who pursued him after a robbery he committed.

 Behind bars, Sweat and Matt cozied up to a prison tailor and a guard who allegedly brought them tools , which they used to cut their way through a labyrinth of multiple barriers and underground passageways. They emerged to freedom through a manhole in the middle of a street.

 Guards discovered them missing on June 6, during a routine bed check.

 Law enforcement experts stressed Sunday that it's crucial Sweat survive so that officials can learn exactly how he and Matt escaped, and who helped them.

 "Now that we have Mr. Sweat, it gives us the opportunity to have some more questions and provide more facts on the overall situation," Cuomo said. "Anyone who we find who was culpable and guilty of cooperating in the escape will be fully prosecuted."

 D'Amico told reporters that investigators haven't yet interviewed Sweat, but that they hope to soon.

 Investigators have questioned guards at the Clinton Correctional Facility about what conversations they had with the escapees about life outside the prison, according to a law enforcement official.

 They believe Sweat and Matt were gathering information for almost a year about hunting cabins and the fields around the prison to help them navigate the terrain.

 It's believed their conversations with the guards might have given the escapees some knowledge of how to get around, the official said.

 The search

 Earlier Sunday, about 1,300 federal, state and local law enforcement officers were searching vehicles at roadblocks and scouring dense woods in upstate New York for Sweat.

 Since he and Matt broke out of the maximum security prison in Dannemora together -- and appeared to stick together on their flight from the law -- authorities were hopeful they could be right on Sweat's heels after encountering Matt.

 Searchers had at times followed two sets of footprints, but when they gunned Matt down one day after his 49th birthday, there was no sign of Sweat nearby.

 So, on all-terrain vehicles and in helicopters, they continued looking for the man who eluded them for three weeks, using infrared vision devices to peer through the night.

 D'Amico admitted that authorities had a hard time tracking the fugitives and offered a possible explanation: pepper.

 "We believe that possibly these two males were using pepper to throw the scent off of the dogs that were tracking them," he said.

 The search Sunday was focused on an area along New York's State Route 30 between County Route 41 in the town of Malone and County Route 26 in the town of Duane.

 'Thank God!'

 Audra Buchanan of Constable said she was stunned to hear recently that Sweat could be near her home.

 "We were so nervous," she said. "We've had our housed locked down."

 When she saw on CNN that Sweat had been shot and was in custody, she said she felt "an incredible sigh of relief."

 When she heard sirens and saw ambulances fly by her home, she thought, "Oh my God, thank God!" she told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux.

 Her 9-year-old daughter has been begging to go outside and play for weeks, and Buchanan said she's glad she can now let her.

 Sweat's mother described a similar feeling of relief. Pamela Sweat spoke to Time Warner Cable News after her son was captured.

 "We started crying because (he) wasn't killed," she said. |||||

– The escaped prisoner who was shot to death on Friday may have been both drunk and sick when troopers finally caught up with him, reports the Buffalo News. The body of Richard Matt reeked of booze, authorities tell the newspaper. That gibes with the report of a cabin owner who checked his place and found that somebody had gotten into his alcohol, polishing off half a bottle of gin and leaving other bottles on the table. It might have been a birthday bash: Matt had turned 49 the day before he was killed. His final days clearly weren't pleasant, however. The state of his body made clear that he'd been exposed to the elements, and—this part is a little gross—his soiled underwear suggests he'd been sick, maybe the result of consuming bad food or water. What's more, CNN reports that when troopers finally zeroed in on him, after a motorist reported a gun shot, it was a telltale cough that gave him away. They heard the sound in the woods, spotted Matt, and ordered him to raise his hands. Authorities say that while Matt didn't shoot at troopers—he had a shotgun—he also failed to comply with their order, and so they opened fire. (His escape partner David Sweat remains on the run, perhaps more dangerous than ever.)


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 হুম, সার্ভারে পৌঁছনোর একটি সমস্যা ছিল। পরে আবার চেষ্টা করবেন? প্রকৃত টুইট অন্তর্ভুক্ত করুন অন্তর্ভুক্ত মিডিয়া Include Tweet when logo is clicked ||||| Newly named “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah is facing backlash over old tweets in which he made controversial jokes about Jews, Israelis and women.

 Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn't look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car! — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) September 18, 2009

 South Africans know how to recycle like israel knows how to be peaceful. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 2, 2010

 Behind every successful Rap Billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man. #BeatsByDreidel — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) May 12, 2014

 "Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" - fat chicks everywhere. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 14, 2011

 Noah, a relatively unknown South African comedian, was named as Jon Stewart's replacement on the Comedy Central show on Monday morning.

 Fellow comedian Roseanne Barr slammed Noah for his jokes.

 @Trevornoah U should cease sexist & anti semitic 'humor' about jewish women & Israel. #comedyCentral — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) March 31, 2015

 UPDATE (3:23 p.m.): Comedy Central came to Noah's defense on Tuesday afternoon:

 Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included. To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair. Trevor is a talented comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central.

 Noah has still not issued a public statement on the controversy, though he seemed to address it in a quickly deleted tweet on Tuesday morning: “Twitter does not have enough characters to respond to all the characters on Twitter," he wrote.

 UPDATE (5:55p.m.): Noah issued the following comment via Twitter:

 To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) March 31, 2015

 Read more about: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah ||||| Photo by Justin Barlow/Gallo Images/Getty Images for MTV

 Not since John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate have the vetting capacities of a powerful political force been cast into such doubt. When Trevor Noah was announced Monday as the next host of satirical powerhouse The Daily Show, most observers had little familiarity with the 31-year-old, South African–born comic, save perhaps for his three awkward appearances on the program with current host Jon Stewart. The New York Times piece announcing the succession threw up a few vague red flags (Comedy Central never auditioned Noah, who provided reporter Dave Itzkoff with a weirdly self-aggrandizing non sequitur comparing himself to Beyoncé). But the excitement of a fresh face bringing a unique perspective to a hallowed franchise (Noah's mother is black and his father is white, which made their union illegal in South Africa's apartheid era), combined with Stewart's full-throated support, seemed like endorsement enough.

 Then people—notably BuzzFeed’s Tom Gara—started combing Noah's Twitter feed.

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 There were tweets that showcased Noah's breezy anti-semitism.

 Behind every successful Rap Billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man. #BeatsByDreidel — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) May 12, 2014

 And lower Jew tolerance? RT @UnreaIFacts: Blue-eyed people have a higher alcohol tolerance. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 22, 2012

 Messi gets the ball and the real players try foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easy, just like jewish chicks. #ElClasico — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 25, 2012

 There were tweets that put a spotlight on the polyglot Noah's fluency in fat-chick jokes.

 "Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" - fat chicks everywhere. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 14, 2011

 So now that Adele is singing, does that mean it's over? — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 13, 2012

 There were tweets that skipped across the landscape of Noah's imagination, where women are objects to be literally or figuratively pounded.

 Originally when men proposed they went down on one knee so if the woman said no they were in the perfect uppercut position. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) December 20, 2012

 In Thailand hookers are so cheap, even cheaper than food. Tough choice between Big Mac or Quarter Poundher Deluxe. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) January 5, 2011

 And so on.

 Ray J hit it first but Kanye hit it properly. — Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 21, 2013

 It's true that Twitter is a space for comics to try out material that isn't fully baked. And I have no doubt that Saint Jon Stewart has some fat skeletons in his closet—after all, he took over the Daily Show from smarmy king-of-the-bros Craig Kilborn, who strictly enforced a tiresome weekly quota of “Janet Reno looks like a man” gags. But during Stewart’s 16 years at the helm, The Daily Show has taken on a moral authority and responsibility that simply cannot condone this kind of bigoted and misogynist ... no, who am I kidding. The problem is not that Trevor Noah tells offensive jokes. It’s not even that he routinely breaks The Daily Show's covenant of speaking truth to power in favor of speaking truth to fat chicks or Thai hookers or, as the Washington Post’s Wendy Todd points out, black Americans who give their kids names that Noah disapproves of. The problem is that Noah’s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid. Are they even jokes? Are they meta-jokes, like the “My arms are so tired” airplane joke he made on his first Daily Show appearance? Or did he mean that as a joke, too?!? Trevor Noah: ontological mystery.

 Maybe his hiring is a form of basic-cable performance art. Maybe Jon Stewart just wanted to blow the building up as he strolled away with his shades on. No one will ever know. But Comedy Central’s haste and lack of due diligence amid so much eminently qualified talent—your Jessica Williamses, your Aasif Mandvis, your however many other fresh-faced unknowns with unique perspectives—is a surefire way of alienating your audience. Almost as surefire as dismissing an entire swath of that audience with one thunderously idiotic tweet among many. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Yesterday, Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah would be taking over the Daily Show, a fresh, biracial—albeit male—face to add to the late-night pantheon. But that was yesterday. Today, there's a tempest brewing over Noah's Twitter account, in which he says things like this, as spotted by Buzzfeed's Tom Gara: @Trevornoah: "'Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" - fat chicks everywhere." @Trevornoah: "Messi gets the ball and the real players try foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easy, just like jewish chicks. # ElClasico " @Trevornoah: "So now that Adele is singing, does that mean it's over?" @Trevornoah: "In Thailand hookers are so cheap, even cheaper than food. Tough choice between Big Mac or Quarter Poundher Deluxe." @Trevornoah: "Originally when men proposed they went down on one knee so if the woman said no they were in the perfect uppercut position." Reactions ranged from those accusing Noah of misogyny and anti-Semitism to those accusing him of just being lame, notes the New York Times. Comedy Central, though, stood by him. Noah "pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included,” says a statement. "To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair." Roseanne Barr, for one, tweeted that "U should cease sexist & anti semitic 'humor' about jewish women & Israel," reports Politico. Noah himself responded this morning in a quickly deleted tweet: "Twitter does not have enough characters to respond to all the characters on Twitter." In a Slate piece, Jessica Winter writes that while, sure, "Twitter is a space for comics to try out material that isn't fully baked," and Noah by no means has the monopoly on misogyny in comedy, "the problem is that Noah’s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid. Are they even jokes? Are they meta-jokes, like the “My arms are so tired” airplane joke he made on his first Daily Show appearance? Or did he mean that as a joke, too?!? Trevor Noah: ontological mystery."


Write a summary based on this article:

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. ||||| Vice President Joe Biden officiated his first wedding ever -- and it was for a same sex couple.

 Biden officiated over the wedding of two longtime White House staffers, Brian Mosteller and Joe Mahshie, at the Naval Observatory on Monday, his office said.

 Posting a photo of the ceremony on Twitter, Biden wrote, "Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys."

 Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys. pic.twitter.com/0om1PT7bKh — Vice President Biden (@VP) August 1, 2016

 His office said the vice president obtained a temporary certification from the District of Columbia to preside over the wedding ceremony, which was attended only by the grooms' families.

 Biden's wife, Jill, later tweeted: "Love is love!"

 The Vice President publicly endorsed same sex marriage in 2012.

 ABC News' Arlette Saenz contributed to this report. |||||

– The wedding of two White House staffers was extra special Monday, and not just because the vice president was in attendance. Joe Biden was actually the one to pronounce the couple husband and husband as he officiated his first ever wedding, reports ABC News. The couple—Brian Mosteller, the director of Oval Office operations, and Joe Mahshie, Michelle Obama's trip coordinator—specifically requested him, reports BuzzFeed. "Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier, two longtime White House staffers, two great guys" Biden tweeted alongside a photo of the ceremony. The wedding took place at the VP residence at 4pm, with only family present.


Article:
Brittany Murphy Autopsy -- 'Normal'

 Brittany Murphy Autopsy -- 'Normal'

 TMZ has learned's autopsy is complete. There were no signs of foul play, we've learned, and there was nothing that pointed to a cause of death. The cause of death has been "" pending other tests.Sources say thewill wait for the toxicology report, as well as the histopathology (study of her organs and tissues) and neuropathology (study of her brain).One source said the body appeared "normal." In addition, we're told she did not appear overly thin -- in contrast to some photos that surfaced several weeks ago. There was no evidence of trauma to the body.We're told the Coroner will not determine cause of death until the other reports are submitted -- in 4 to 6 weeks.One issue the Coroner is interested in -- what prescription drugs were in Brittany Murphy's system. ||||| The Los Angeles County Coroner's office will make a final determination of what caused the death of actress Brittany Murphy after toxicology results are completed in the next two months, officials said today.

 The medical examiner has completed Murphy's autopsy, but an official cause of death will be deferred until tests determine what substances, if any, were in her system that might have contributed to her death, said Ed Winter, a spokesman for the coroner's office.

 Murphy, 32, died Sunday of a sudden cardiac arrest. A law enforcement source, who declined to be named because of the ongoing investigation, said Murphy suffered internal bleeding before her death.

 It was unclear if an underlying medical condition might have caused or contributed to her death, officials said. Murphy, who appeared in "Clueless" and "8 Mile," was taking prescription drugs for medical ailments, authorities said.

 LAPD officials said today that they have finished their initial investigation into Murphy's death and concluded there were no signs that a crime occurred.

 -- Andrew Blankstein

 More breaking news in L.A. Now:

 No charges filed in vandalization of UC Berkeley chancellor's campus home

 Angeles Crest Highway reopened after rain-related closure

 2 bodies found in a Riverside County vineyard

 High winds, falling snow levels expected in Southern California

 LAPD: Brittany Murphy's death not a criminal matter

 Appeals court denies Roman Polanski's bid to throw out sex case

 'Everything back to normal' at LAX

 Federal investigators to look into cause of fatal San Diego Coast Guard crash

 Police seek shooter who killed 1, injured 2 in Mid-City

 Request for Station fire choppers not heeded, Times investigation shows |||||Summary:

– Brittany Murphy's autopsy is complete, but the LA county coroner's office won't determine an official cause of death until after the completion of toxicology tests, which could take as long as 2 months. The 32-year-old actress, who died yesterday after suffering cardiac arrest, was bleeding internally before her death, a source tells the Los Angeles Times. The body appeared "normal" and not unusually thin, another source tells TMZ.


Woman loses assisted suicide case

 MARY CAROLAN

 A severely disabled woman in the final stages of multiple sclerosis has lost her landmark High Court challenge to the absolute ban on assisted suicide.

 The three-judge High Court ruled today the absolute ban is justified to protect vulnerable others from involuntary death and does not breach Marie Fleming's personal autonomy and equality rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights.

 A "real risk" of removing the ban was that, even with rigorous safeguards, it "would be impossible to ensure that the aged, the disabled, the poor, the unwanted, the rejected, the lonely, the impulsive, the financially compromised and emotionally vulnerable would not avail of option in order to avoid a sense of being a burden on their family and society", it said.

 The court also found the Director of Public Prosecutions could not issue guidelines setting out what facts she would consider in deciding whether to prosecute cases of assisted suicide.

 Only the Oireachtas can change the law and it would be unconstitutional for the DPP to effect a change in the law by issuing guidelines which would have the effect of the law not being enforced, it said.

 However, it added, if there was "reliable" evidence after an assisted suicide of compliance with guidelines such as those set out by the UK DPP in relation to assisted suicide prosecutions, the court said it believed the DPP here would excerise her discretion "in this of all cases" in a "a humane and sensitive fashion".

 Giving the court's judgment, the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, said the court regarded Ms Fleming as "in many ways the most remarkable witness" all three judges had ever been privileged to encounter.

 "Her courage in adversity is both humbling and inspiring" he said.

 If the court could tailor-make a solution which would suit the needs of Ms Fleming alone without any possible implications for third parties or society at large, there might be a good deal to be said for her Artice 40.3.2 case [relating to personal autonomy]," he said. "But this court cannot be so satisfied."

 Given the public importance of the issues raised in the case, the court said it would award costs to Ms Fleming against the State and DPP.

 Outside court, Ms Fleming, in a statement read on her behalf by her solicitor, said she was "very disappointed and saddened" at the outcome.

 Ms Fleming’s solicitor Bernadette Peart thanked the court and other legal teams involved for giving the case a full and speedy hearing, given her client’s circumstances.

 She said: "Obviously Marie is very disappointed and saddened at today’s outcome and feels it would be inappropriate at the present time to discuss any specific legal or factual aspects of the case having regard to the likelihood of an appeal."

 Ms Fleming, a 59-year-old former lecturer living in Co Wicklow, had asked the court for orders allowing her be lawfully helped take her own life at a time of her choosing so as to avoid what she fears will be a distressing and undignified death.

 She argued, in her very particular circumstances, the blanket ban on assisted suicide in Section 2.2 of the Criminal Law Suicide Act 1993 breached her personal rights under the Constitution and ECHR.

 The State contended, while the ban may be unfair to Ms Fleming, it was a justified and proportionate measure necessary to protect vulnerable people from involuntary death.

 Ms Fleming, who is confined to a wheelchair, was in court today with her partner Tom Curran and other members of her family to hear the decision. It is expected she will appeal the 120-page judgment of the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Paul Carney and Mr Justice Gerard Hogan to the Supreme Court.

 Among the issues raised in the case was whether the rights to bodily autonomy, self-determination require provision for assisted suicide in circumstances such as those of Ms Fleming despite the public policy of preserving the right to life.

 Another central issue was of equality before the law. Ms Fleming argued the blanket ban was discriminatory as it meant she, as a disabled person, could not be lawfully assisted take her own life when an able-bodied person could lawfully take their own life.

 She had told the court Mr Curran is willing to help her end her life but she did not want him to be at risk of prosecution.

 The court was told doctors believe Ms Fleming may die within months and is unlikely to live beyond two years.

 Diagnosed with MS in 1986, her condition has deteriorated to a point where she is confined to a wheelchair with limbs paralysed, suffers acute pain and has difficulty swallowing. She fears she will ultimately be unable to communicate and will die a “horrible” death. ||||| * Court says impossible to tailor law on individual basis

 * Judge calls woman "most remarkable witness" court had seen

 * Follows high profile right-to-die cases in Britain

 By Sarah O'Connor

 DUBLIN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - An Irish woman terminally ill with multiple sclerosis lost her battle for the lawful right to die in the first case of its kind to be brought in Ireland, Dublin's High Court said on Thursday.

 Marie Fleming, a 59-year-old former university lecturer who is completely paralysed, made an impassioned plea last month to establish the right of her partner of 18 years to help her die, an act that could currently see him jailed in mainly Roman Catholic Ireland.

 A 'right to die' debate has played out through recent high-profile court cases in neighbouring Britain, where three people all failed in bids to win legal assistance to die. Assisted suicide is only permitted in four European countries: Belgium; Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

 Judge Nicholas Kearns said Fleming was the most remarkable witness any member of the court had encountered and acknowledged that her life has been "rendered miserable" after being "ravaged by an insidious disease".

 However he said it would be impossible to tailor legislation governing assisted suicide on an individual basis and doing so would be harmful to the public interest in protecting the most vulnerable members of society.

 "There are no words to express the difficulty we had in arriving at this decision," Kearns said, reading a summary of the 121-page judgement.

 "Yet the fact remains that if this court were to unravel a thread of this law by even the most limited constitutional adjudication in her favour, it would - or at least might - open a Pandora's box which would be impossible to close."

 "VERY SADDENED"

 Suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993, but the ban on helping someone to commit suicide remains, with a jail sentence of up to 14 years.

 Kearns said he felt sure the state, which agreed to pay all legal costs, would exercise its discretion in a humane and sensitive fashion in deciding whether to prosecute if Fleming were to be assisted in taking her own life.

 The mother of two adult children had told the court in a composed manner last month how her life had become totally undignified and too painful to bear, and said she had planned every detail, including funeral arrangements.

 Her partner hugged and kissed her after the judgement was handed out and, reading a statement on her behalf outside the court, her solicitor said Fleming greatly appreciated the enormous support she had received from members of the public.

 "Obviously Marie is very disappointed and saddened at today's outcome, and feels it would be inappropriate at the present time to discuss any specific legal aspects of the case having regard to the likelihood of an appeal," solicitor Bernadette Parte said.

 A recent poll found that large majorities of west Europeans favour the legalisation of assisted suicide.

 As well as in the four European countries, assisted suicide is also legal in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.

 The issue of amending the Irish constitution has also been highlighted recently following the death of a woman who was refused an abortion of her dying foetus, re-igniting a debate that has divided the country for decades. |||||

Write a summary.

– A 59-year-old woman in Ireland paralyzed with severe multiple sclerosis has lost her court fight against the nation's ban on assisted suicide, reports the Irish Times. Marie Fleming sought permission to end her life with the help of her partner of 18 years, but Dublin's High Court rejected the request, reports Reuters: "There are no words to express the difficulty we had in arriving at this decision," wrote one judge. "Yet the fact remains that if this court were to unravel a thread of this law by even the most limited constitutional adjudication in her favour, it would—or at least might—open a Pandora's box which would be impossible to close." The judge called Fleming "in many ways the most remarkable witness" he and his fellow judges had ever encountered, and the court ordered the state to pay her legal costs. Fleming's lawyer read a statement on her behalf, saying she was "very disappointed and saddened" at the ruling. She can still appeal.


Article:
Fifteen former staff members of the Church committee, the 1970s congressional inquiry into illegal activity by the CIA, wrote jointly to the US president

 The campaign to persuade Barack Obama to allow the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to return home to the US without facing prolonged prison time has received powerful new backing from some of the most experienced intelligence experts in the country.

 Edward Snowden downplays Trump victory: he's 'just the president' Read more

 Fifteen former staff members of the Church committee, the 1970s congressional investigation into illegal activity by the CIA and other intelligence agencies, have written jointly to Obama calling on him to end Snowden’s “untenable exile in Russia, which benefits nobody”. Over eight pages of tightly worded argument, they remind the president of the positive debate that Snowden’s disclosures sparked – prompting one of the few examples of truly bipartisan legislative change in recent years.

 They also remind Obama of the long record of leniency that has been shown by his own and previous administrations towards those who have broken secrecy laws. They even recall how their own Church committee revealed that six US presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, were guilty of abusing secret powers.

 “There is no question that Snowden broke the law. But previous cases in which others violated the same law suggest leniency. And most importantly, Snowden’s actions were not for personal benefit, but were intended to spur reform. And they did so,” the signatories write.

 The Church committee, or the US Senate select committee to study government operations with respect to intelligence activities, to give it its full name, sat in 1975-76 at a time of deep public anxiety about the rogue work of federal agencies. The aftershocks of Watergate were still being felt, and Seymour Hersh had exposed in the New York Times mass illegal activities by the CIA, including routine surveillance of anti-war groups.

 As the 15 staff members point out, the committee investigation led to the disclosure of jaw-dropping illegal acts including the planting of an FBI informant inside the civil rights group the NAACP, attempts to push Martin Luther King into killing himself, and Cointelpro, the vast program run secretly by the FBI to disrupt progressive organisations in the US.

 The lead signatories of the Obama letter are Frederick Schwarz, who was chief counsel to the Church committee and is now at the Brennan Center for Justice, and William Green Miller, the committee’s staff director who went on to become US ambassador to Ukraine in the 1990s. Together with their fellow former staffers, they add heft to a campaign to pardon Snowden that has already attracted the support of prominent public figures including the co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak, philanthropist George Soros and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web.

 Privacy experts fear Donald Trump running global surveillance network Read more

 In their letter, which they have also sent to the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the 15 cite the former CIA director David Petraeus as an example of the kind of official leniency that has so far eluded Snowden. Petraeus violated both the law and national security by leaking confidential information to his biographer and lover, then lied about it to the FBI.

 “Yet he was allowed to plead guilty to just one misdemeanor for which he received no jail time,” the letter says. The reference to Petraeus is pointed at a time when the former military commander is being actively considered by President-elect Donald Trump to become US secretary of state.

 Trump gains no mention in the former staffers’ plea to Obama, but he is the elephant in the room. The letter writers state euphemistically: “As the US relationship with Russia deteriorates, the risk to all interests involved increases.”

 They stop short of adding that Trump’s close ties to Russia, and his notorious flattery towards Vladimir Putin, could imperil Snowden’s current asylum in that country. ||||| Members of a committee that investigated the CIA during the Watergate era have urged President Obama to show leniency on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and strike a deal to allow him to return home.

 15 former members of the 1970s Church Committee, led by its former chief counsel Frederick Schwarz Jr. and ex-staff director William Green Miller, sent an eight-page letter to the President and Attorney General Loretta Lynch arguing that Snowden’s actions were a catalyst that helped change secret service policy for the better.

 “There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform. Whether or not these clear benefits to the country merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency,” the letter reads.

 Snowden has been living in Russia since he fled the U.S. via Hong Kong in 2013. He is charged with espionage for leaking internal NSA documents to the press and could face 30 years in jail should he return to American shores. While Obama has refused to pardon him, even in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump nominating a man who once said Snowden should be executed for head of the CIA, the Church committee group said Snowden’s disclosures have been instrumental in enacting much-needed change.

 The group argued that the information he brought to the public domain resulted in reform of the Patriot Act, a change in how the NSA gathers data from foreigners, and it more broadly alerted the American people to “what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to.”

 “When intelligence agencies operate in the dark, they often have gone too far in trampling on the legitimate rights of law-abiding Americans and damaging our reputation internationally. We saw this repeated time and time again when serving as staff members for the U.S. Senate Select Committee… that in 1975-76 conducted the most extensive bipartisan investigation of a government’s secret activities ever, in this country or elsewhere,” the letter further argued.

 Of course, Snowden did break the law with his actions.

 On the part, the group put forward examples of past cases around the misuse of classified documents, such as National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and CIA Directors David Petraeus and John Deutch. They argued that Snowden acted in a more selfless way than others who were shown leniency for their actions, and that this should be given due consideration.

 “Snowden’s explicit intent was to raise public awareness about activities that he believed (and that all three branches of government have to varying degrees affirmed) were illegal, or overbroad, so that there could be a robust public discussion about the proper scope of government surveillance.

 “Snowden did not try to mask his identity, or lie to the FBI. He knew he would pay a personal price. As he has,” the group added.

 Back in September, activists and lawyers from a number of human rights organizations came together to present Obama with a case to pardon Snowden. This time around, the former Church committee group is asking for leniency since it doesn’t believe that a full pardon is a feasible outcome. It closed its message to the President with the hope that authorities can “negotiate a settlement with Edward Snowden of the charges against him that both sides can accept.” ||||| Fifteen staff members who worked on a well-known bipartisan intelligence watchdog committee wrote to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday requesting the administration negotiate a plea agreement with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

 “There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform,” wrote the staffers who served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities — called the Church Committee, after its chairman, Idaho Sen. Frank Church.

 “Whether or not these clear benefits to the country merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency,” the authors continued.

 Frederick, or “Fritz” Schwarz, Jr., the Church Committee’s chief counsel who now heads up policy and legal advocacy organization the Brennan Center for Justice, penned the letter alongside the committee’s staff director, William Green Miller, and 13 other co-signers.

 Schwarz, who published a book last year on the allure of government secrecy called Democracy in the Dark, says he has been captivated by Snowden since the former National Security Agency contractor first made his disclosures. “I’ve known many whistleblowers starting when I was chief counsel of the Church Committee, and they’re often praise worthy … but [Snowden] seemed straightforward and genuine,” he said during a phone interview with The Intercept.

 In the 1970s, the Church Committee conducted an unprecedented investigation that uncovered abuses by the intelligence community and led to reforms. Schwarz recalled, during a recorded interview with the Brennan Center’s Michael German, being involved in the first and “most comprehensive” investigation into the intelligence community, which was aimed at being “open and rigorous” — challenging senators who willfully turned a blind eye to the nation’s spies and their misdeeds.

 The climate at the time, wracked with scandals like Watergate and leaks like the Pentagon Papers, “led to a pent up interest in what the secret government had been doing,” he said.

 The committee uncovered the NSA’s practice of retaining copies of telegrams sent overseas, the CIA’s experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs and use of domestic surveillance, and the FBI’s widely discredited program under J. Edgar Hoover, called COINTELPRO, involving the monitoring of constitutionally protected activities.

 Yet that climate of support for reform and investigation has changed, the authors argued. “The government has all but stopped making bipartisan reforms,” they wrote, arguing that this has left whistleblowers to take matters into their own hands.

 Snowden, who provided a massive trove of documents about the government’s worldwide surveillance regime to journalists in 2013, served as the spark to inspire lawmakers to reach across the aisle and amend the Patriot Act, ending the bulk collection metadata program in the summer of 2015, they wrote. And, his revelations uncovered the extent of overseas spying, which the Church Committee staffers note led President Obama to promise stronger privacy protections for foreigners.

 If Snowden hadn’t come forward, Americans might never have known about the abuses taking place, the authors argue. “We know first hand that lack of disclosure can cause just as many, if not more, harms to the nation than disclosure,” they wrote. “When intelligence agencies operate in the dark, they often have gone too far in trampling on the legitimate rights of law-abiding Americans and damaging our reputation internationally.”

 They also noted that the government has been lenient towards senior national security officials who have been involved in divulging secrets, like former CIA Director David Petraeus, who provided classified information to his biographer, with whom he was having an affair, and pled guilty to a simple misdemeanor.

 Petraeus is now reportedly being considered for a role in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

 “In all these cases, recognition of the public service the individuals had provided weighed against strict enforcement of the law, to come to a fair and just result,” the authors wrote.

 Meanwhile, the harsh treatment of other whistleblowers, like Thomas Drake and Chelsea Manning, may have inspired Snowden to take the route he did, they suggest.

 The authors directly challenged several assertions made by the House Intelligence Committee in a short unclassified excerpt of its investigation into Snowden’s motivations and actions, which concluded in September. The full contents of the House’s investigation remain classified, though the committee has submitted it for declassification and publication.

 Notably, the former Church Committee staffers did not advocate for a pardon, something President Obama has rejected as a possibility. Instead, they urged the government to consider offering Snowden a deal.

 “Under current law, the only way to weigh the public benefits of Snowden’s leaks and account for his aim to help America is for the government to mitigate the charges through settlement discussions,” they concluded.

 “I felt a flat pardon as opposed to what we call for, a negotiation with leniency, was very unlikely to happen,” Schwarz explained.

 When asked if the current political climate might stifle further reform, given the incoming administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s known volatility, Schwarz was diplomatic: “I think we need to be eternally watchful.” |||||Summary:

– “Snowden did not try to mask his identity, or lie to the FBI. He knew he would pay a personal price. As he has,” 15 former staff members of the Church Committee write in an 8-page letter to President Obama. The Church Committee investigated illegal activity by intelligence agencies in the 1970s, and now its experts are asking for leniency for Edward Snowden, the Guardian reports. According to the Intercept, the group argues that Snowden, acting selflessly, "stimulated reform" through his actions. The letter writers say that without Snowden, Americans may still not know “what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to," TechCrunch reports. The letter gives more weight to the movement to get Snowden pardoned, though the members of the Church Committee don't go that far; they want Snowden to strike a deal with the government. “There is no question that Snowden broke the law," they write. "But previous cases in which others violated the same law suggest leniency." They point to former CIA director David Petraeus, currently being considered by Donald Trump for secretary of State. He leaked confidential information in violation of national security but received no jail time after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. In contrast, Snowden is facing a sentence of 30 years if he returns to the US from Russia, where he has been living in exile.


Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Washington

 On Wednesday at 2:15 p.m., Ben Bernanke will do something that previous Federal Reserve chairmen considered a terrible idea. He will hold a news conference.

 Mr. Bernanke spent much of his academic career arguing that the Fed should be less opaque, and, as chairman, he has put his ideas into action. Now it’s time for those of us in the media to hold up our end of bargain. In the spirit of democratic accountability, we should ask hard questions — and we shouldn’t let him get away with the evasions and half-answers that members of Congress too often allow Fed chairmen during their appearances on Capitol Hill.

 One question more than any than other is crying out for an answer: Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?

 The Fed’s own forecasts suggest that the unemployment rate won’t fall below 5 percent for perhaps another five or six years. Mr. Bernanke believes the Fed “retains considerable power” to reduce unemployment faster, despite the fact that its benchmark interest rate is zero, as he’s said before. Yet he has been hesitant to use that power.

 Photo

 He is in a tough spot, to be fair. Several other voting members of the Fed’s monetary policy committee — and some prominent members of Congress — oppose aggressive action, because they worry it will set off inflation. But these critics always worry about inflation. They have been wrong again and again over the last two years. More important, they don’t have enough power to keep Mr. Bernanke from pursuing the policy he thinks is best.

 So the Fed’s decision to permit high unemployment for an extended period rests on his shoulders.

 As he has explained many times, the Fed has alternatives. It could announce that it would keep its benchmark rate at zero for a few years, which would probably hold down long-term rates. It could say that it was comfortable with higher inflation for a limited period of time, given how low inflation has been since 2007 and how high unemployment is. Above all, Mr. Bernanke could make clear that he considers years of widespread unemployment to be unacceptable.

 He has not done so, and he has yet to offer a satisfying rationale.

 Instead, he has said that more aggressive action brings risks. And it does. Low interest rates have the potential to spark inflation, by enticing millions of households and businesses to borrow money and causing the economy to overheat. Higher inflation could, among other things, increase borrowing rates for the United States government and worsen the deficit.

 But it’s worth keeping in mind that just about every decision involves some risk. Simply stating that more aggressive action brings risks is not a good argument against that option.

 Economists sometimes like to describe choices in terms of a concept known as expected value. The expected value of a decision is the odds of each possible outcome multiplied by the benefit (or cost) of that outcome. If you make an investment that has a 90 percent of breaking even and a 10 percent chance of earning you $5,000, the expected value is $500.

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 Now extend this concept to the Fed’s decision. The consequences of being too aggressive and creating an inflationary spiral are undeniably serious. But the odds still appear quite low. Put the two together, and you get an expected cost that is not high enough to be dictating Fed policy.

 One of the best guides to future inflation is recent core inflation — that is, inflation excluding food and energy prices, which bounce around a lot and often do not translate into big changes in other prices. Despite the uptick in core inflation, it has still risen at an annual pace of only 2 percent over the last three months. On only a few other occasions over the last 40 years has it been so low.

 This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, does the economy feel as if it’s on the verge of overheating?

 The expected cost of high unemployment, on the other hand, is steep. For one thing, the chances that unemployment will remain a problem are close to 100 percent. The debate is whether the country will return to full employment in four years or 10 years.

 For another, the consequences of high unemployment are also awful. With fewer jobs, states and cities are short of tax revenue. Families lose their life savings. People’s health can deteriorate. For the long-term unemployed, the financial damage can be permanent. “If things go on and they simply sit at home or work very irregularly,” Mr. Bernanke himself said last year, “when the economy gets back to a more normal state, they’re not going to be able to find good work.”

 Unemployment creates political problems, too. Historically, it has tended to make voters less willing to help their fellow citizens, as the economist Benjamin Friedman has written. It’s hard to imagine any grand political compromise — on the deficit, for instance — in an angry country.

 Mr. Bernanke is an admirable public official in many ways. He was calmly heroic during the worst days of the financial crisis. By making the Fed more open, he has taken the rarest of steps for a political figure: voluntarily giving up some of his power.

 Nonetheless, his job performance over the last year or so has been flawed. The Fed badly overestimated the economy’s strength in 2010 and took too long to correct its mistake. Despite his core belief in letting facts guide decisions, Mr. Bernanke has let himself be overly influenced by a group of colleagues who see inflation always and everywhere as a threat and unemployment as a mere nuisance.

 The news conference on Wednesday offers a chance to hold him accountable. The country’s leading Fed scholar — one Ben Bernanke, formerly of Princeton — would expect nothing less. ||||| WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday left its key interest rate at an historic low range of 0% to 0.25% and said its $600 billion bond-buying program would end as scheduled on June 30. Inflation has picked up and the Fed now says the economic recovery is proceeding at "a moderate pace," but the central bank still said the inflation pickup will be temporary and the jobs market is still a concern. The decisions were widely expected. The FOMC made only few changes to the language of the policy statement it issued in March and did not give guidance on the outlook of policy after the end of quantitative easing. The FOMC repeated that rates are likely to stay low for an "extended period." The Fed gave itself flexibility by adding that it would "adjust" its holdings of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities as needed. Attention now turns to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's first-ever news conference scheduled to begin at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. The Fed will also release its updated economic forecasts for 2011 and 2012 just before the press conference begins. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– No surprises from the Fed today: Rates are staying low, and its $600 billion bond-buying program remains on track to end in June, reports MarketWatch. The Fed sees the economic recovery moving at a "moderate pace" and downplayed the risks of inflation. Far more interesting will be Ben Bernanke's first-ever press conference at 2:15pm EST to explain the Fed rationale. David Leonhardt at the New York Times says business reporters "shouldn’t let him get away with the evasions and half-answers that members of Congress too often allow Fed chairmen during their appearances on Capitol Hill." A big one to ask: "Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?"


Summarize this article:

State-of-the-art forensic technology from South Africa has been used to try and unravel the mystery of what was smoked in tobacco pipes found in the Stratford-upon-Avon garden of British playwright William Shakespeare.

 Residue from clay tobacco pipes more than 400 years old from the playwright’s garden were analysed in Pretoria using a sophisticated technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry.

 Chemicals from pipe bowls and stems which had been excavated from Shakespeare’ garden and adjacent areas were identified and quantified during the forensic study. The artefacts for the study were on loan from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

 The gas technique is very sensitive to residues that can be preserved in pipes even if they had been smoked 400 years ago.

 What were they smoking

 There were several kinds of tobacco in the 17th century, including the North American Nicotiana (from which we get nicotine), and cocaine (Erythroxylum), which is obtained from Peruvian coca leaves.

 It has been claimed that Sir Francis Drake may have brought coca leaves to England after his visit to Peru, just as Sir Walter Raleigh had brought “tobacco leaves” (Nicotiana) from Virginia in North America.

 In a recent issue of a magazine called Country Life, Mark Griffiths has stimulated great interest in John Gerard’s Herbal, published in 1597 as a botanical book which includes engraved images of several people in the frontispiece. One of them (cited as “The Fourth Man”) is identified by Griffiths as William Shakespeare, but this identification is questionable.

 Possibly, the engraving represents Sir Francis Drake, who knew Gerard.

 Gerard’s Herbal refers to various kinds of “tobacco” introduced to Europe by Drake and Raleigh in the days of Shakespeare in Elizabethan England.

 There certainly is a link between Drake and plants from the New World, notably corn, the potato and “tobacco”. Furthermore, one can associate Raleigh with the introduction of “tobacco” to Europe from North America (notably in the context of the tobacco plant called Nicotiana, from Virginia and elsewhere).

 What we found

 There was unquestionable evidence for the smoking of coca leaves in early 17th century England, based on chemical evidence from two pipes in the Stratford-upon-Avon area.

 Neither of the pipes with cocaine came from Shakepeare’s garden. But four of the pipes with cannabis did.

 Results of this study (including 24 pipe fragments) indicated cannabis in eight samples, nicotine in at least one sample, and in two samples definite evidence for Peruvian cocaine from coca leaves.

 Shakespeare may have been aware of the deleterious effects of cocaine as a strange compound. Possibly, he preferred cannabis as a weed with mind-stimulating properties.

 These suggestions are based on the following literary indications. In Sonnet 76, Shakespeare writes about “invention in a noted weed”. This can be interpreted to mean that Shakespeare was willing to use “weed” (cannabis as a kind of tobacco) for creative writing (“invention”).

 In the same sonnet it appears that he would prefer not to be associated with “compounds strange”, which can be interpreted, at least potentially, to mean “strange drugs” (possibly cocaine).

 Sonnet 76 may relate to complex wordplay relating in part to drugs (compounds and “weed”), and in part to a style of writing, associated with clothing (“weeds”) and literary compounds (words combined to form one, as in the case of the word “Philsides” from Philip Sidney).

 Was Shakespeare high?

 Chemical analyses of residues in early 17th-century clay “tobacco pipes” have confirmed that a diversity of plants was smoked in Europe. Literary analyses and chemical science can be mutually beneficial, bringing the arts and the sciences together in an effort to better understand Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

 This has also begged the question whether the plays of Shakespeare were performed in Elizabethan England in a smoke-filled haze?

 One can well imagine the scenario in which Shakespeare performed his plays in the court of Queen Elizabeth, in the company of Drake, Raleigh and others who smoked clay pipes filled with “tobacco”.

 This piece is based on an article published in the South African Journal of Science in July 2015. ||||| Compounds Strange ... The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust allowed South African research scientists from the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria to analyze twenty-four pipe fragments found on the grounds of William Shakespeare's home. The findings, published in the South African Journal of Science, show that eight of the pipes tested contain traces of cannabis and two of the pipes contain traces of cocaine. Others appear to be laced with tobacco, camphor, and hallucinogenic nutmeg extracts high in myristic acid. Did Marijuana Fuel Shakespeare's Genius?

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– "To smoke or not to smoke" was not the question. Something had been smoked in the pipe bowls and stems unearthed from William Shakespeare' garden in Stratford-upon-Avon; the question was what. Researchers in South Africa now have gas chromatography mass spectrometry to thank for their answer. A piece in the Conversation based on the report published in the South African Journal of Science explains the "technique is very sensitive to residues that can be preserved in pipes even if they had been smoked 400 years ago." Eight of the 24 pipe-fragment samples tested were shown to contain cannabis; another had evidence of nicotine, and two more "evidence for Peruvian cocaine from coca leaves." Of those, only four of the cannabis samples were from Shakespeare's garden; the others were from the Stratford-upon-Avon area. Study author Francis Thackeray writes that the research establishes that a wide range of plants were smoked in the area during the early 17th century, and he leans on Shakespeare's own words to try to draw connections. Thackeray references Sonnet 76, which refers to "invention in a noted weed"; he interprets weed as cannabis and invention as writing. As for whether we can conclude that Shakespeare got high, Thackeray writes "one can well imagine" it. (In April, Texas researchers reported another Shakespeare find.)